Now, on our return, Prince Murad himself was in the company. The most trustworthy harem gossip told me this was Safiye’s doing. Nur Banu and most of her suite were retreating from the mountains for the winter, as they always did. A skeletal harem only would be left to see to the needs of Selim during these cold months, and Safiye had no desire to be part of the powerless dregs. Yet now she could not be permitted to leave Murad’s side. Her only alternative was to convince the young prince to convince the sandjak and his father that he should winter in Constantinople, too. This Safiye accomplished in ways known not to the daylight disputations of the divan, but only to the secret nights of lovers.
Whatever the gossips said, I could not help but think that part of Murad’s purpose in making this journey was that he did not really trust me with the honor of his women. I could feel his suspicion like whiplash on my back every time I approached one of the curtained sedans. I did notice, however, that he was rather careless of my dealings with his sister, so I suspect he was more jealous of the curt Italian Safiye and I exchanged and the tension of a past he could feel between us than he was of Esmikhan’s virginity.
For her own purposes, Safiye handled this very well. Though my mistress barraged her with messages and tidbits of gossip all day long, sent on my feet and through my tongue, Safiye initiated nothing in response. All of her attention went elsewhere—via other eunuchs to the prince, who rode on his horse at the head of the column.
On our third noonday halt, I returned once again empty-handed to Esmikhan.
“What says Safiye?” my lady rose to ask.
“She said nothing, only took the message through her grille in silence.”
“She will not come and join me. Again.”
The hurt in Esmikhan’s voice was deep. She sat down once more, but found no comfort on the cushions her maids had fluffed up for her under an oak gone crimson and making the ground rough with its dropping fruit. Her maids tried to tempt her with dainties from the kerchiefs full of lunch, but they made the mistake of offering a little Turkish bonnet first.
“Safiye’s favorite,” Esmikhan sighed, and pleaded no appetite after that.
“Lady, Safiye is busy with her love,” one of the maids coaxed. “Soon you’ll have enough love of your own to keep you as busy as she is. Think of that. Think forward to your husband-to-be and do not be sad.”
The other girls murmured their agreement with these sentiments, but Esmikhan avoided their words and, while trying to avoid their circle of eyes as well, her gaze fell on me. I had not been dismissed and stood clumsily by, wondering if I should dismiss myself. The sudden excitement that beamed through the clouds of tears in her velvet brown eyes momentarily increased my apprehension. But when she saw me, Esmikhan suddenly let out a little laugh. Forced though it was, it was nonetheless an echo of our laughter three nights ago in her room in Kutahiya.
“Abdullah,” she said.
“Lady, I am at your service.” She held out her hand and insisted I take it in mine. Her hand was soft and warm. “You shall come and sit here on the cushions, Abdullah, right by me, and tell me everything there is to tell.”
“Lady?”
“Tell me all you can about Sokolli Pasha, who is to be my husband.”
“My lady, I’m afraid I do not know much at all.”
“Surely you have met him?”
“Yes,” I replied. “But only once.”
“See? That is once more than anyone else I know. All these silly women mean either to terrify me or to placate me with their false rumors. But they have never even seen him and I refuse to believe them. I will believe only you, Abdullah, so you must tell the truth. They say Sokolli Pasha is old. Is he so terribly old?”
The maids left off their protests of Esmikhan’s breach of etiquette to listen, for they were almost as curious as she was.
“He is not young,” I confessed. Then, to still the murmurs of disappointment this brought forth, I continued, “But, lady, this is said only because you yourself are in the bloom of your youth, Allah protect you, and would prove his better were comparison made between you on this count. You know well no man can bear defeat in any matter from his bride. He is the one who is supposed to defeat her.”
The disappointment turned to titters of delight at this statement.
But, “No, don’t you tease me, Abdullah,” Esmikhan said. “The others tease me; you must not. I understand Sokolli Pasha has been in my grandfather’s service for almost thirty years. I can do sums. He must be forty at least.”
“May Allah double his years,” I said. “My master is fifty -four.”
“No! Do not pray to double those years! Fifty-four! That is three times—almost four times my age! My father is younger than that!” Esmikhan wailed.
“Sokolli Pasha is a man of strong, fit body and keen mind. He is a soldier who will endure, Allah willing, at least two more decades of warfare, diplomacy—and love.”
“But I am just a child, with my whole life ahead of me. Allah, I am to be married to a grandfather!”
“If it is any comfort, lady, rumor has it, and my meeting with him did nothing to dispel it: Sokolli Pasha is as much a stranger to the ways of love as you are.”
“If he’s a healthy man, as you say, how is that possible?”
“Do not forget, lady. Sokolli Pasha was raised from his youth in the Enclosed School.”
“He is one of the tribute boys, then?”
Had Esmikhan been a Christian girl, with centuries of crusade in her upbringing, there might have been a tremor of horror in her voice. That, or at least deep pity to think that her betrothed had been one of the thousands of lads taken as a tribute from the Empire’s Christian communities every five years. These lads became the Sultan’s personal slaves, forcibly converted to Islam, never to see their families and homes again.
But Esmikhan knew only the Turkish side of the story in spite of the fact that in her seclusion she had never actually seen a tribute boy. She knew that Christian parents were as often as not glad to give up their sons and would try to cover up their defects in an attempt to get them chosen for the levy. To be taken away from the misery of poor, war-ridden lands on the border to the glittering capital with every chance for education and advancement usually outweighed any considerations of religion and family togetherness. It was not unheard of for Muslim families to put off circumcision and pay the local priest to pass their sons off as Christians, too, for even True Believers rarely knew such a good life as the most favored of the Sultan’s favored slaves.
Neither did Esmikhan turn up her little round nose to think that her husband would be a slave. Although the first lesson boys learned in the Enclosed School was absolute obedience to no master but the Shadow of Allah, the Sultan, they learned plenty ol other things, too. Those with brains were taught to read and write, those with brawn to fight; most were as handy with the pen as with the sword. There, in the barracks that became their home, nothing counted but individual ability, neither family’s prestige, wealth, nor the prejudice ol acquaintances. Some became gardeners, some cooks, some men of religion and study. The greater part ol them filled the ranks ol the janissaries, where their tierce devotion to the Sultan made them tight as one man and put even life a lowly second place. It one showed his devotion particularly well, he joined the Sultan’s private bodyguard.
But some very few, like Sokolli Muhammed Pasha, whose superior abilities had come to Suleiman’s notice before he was twenty, were set on the path toward becoming governors and pashas. They made up the very backbone of the Turkish government, tor the Sultan trusted them explicitly in a way he could trust no free-born Turk. They were his creations, after all. They were his slaves, even as pashas and viziers. All they managed to amass of worldly goods reverted to the imperial cotters upon their deaths, and the Sultan always maintained the right to send them to that death at a moment’s notice. No trial, apology, or explanation was possible. And their own muster mates pulled the bowstring it the lord but waved hi
s hand.
I told Esmikhan all I had managed to learn of Sokolli Pasha’s career from the day at nineteen or twenty, when, fresh from the hinterland of Europe, this young recruit had caught the Sultan’s eye and been set apart for better things. It was a simple tale, as all tales of unremitted success must be. He rose from post to post until now he sat among the pashas and viziers in the Great Divan itself and was followed in the Friday morning procession by a standard bearing three long horsetails.
“Sokolli Pasha’s elevation demands some outward display of extravagance lest diplomats and politicians refuse to believe he holds such power as his title declares,” I said. “He therefore purchased a large park in the City just across from the Aya Sophia Mosque.”
“I am not familiar with much of Constantinople outside the palace harem,” Esmikhan said. “But I have heard of that park. It is not far from the new palace, is it?”
“Not far at all. And I think that was the master’s first consideration in the purchase. He can answer the Sultan’s summons within half an hour from deep sleep at home to full command in the Great Divan. Of only minor consideration to him are the land’s lovely waters and plantings and the gentle rise that was the perfect spot to build a palace of his own. The palace has been built, too, by the loving hand of Sinan.”
“My grandfather’s own royal architect?”
“Yes. And it is a building very worthy of his famous skill. But always Sokolli Pasha remembers that on his death, it will all revert to the throne. What is the use of building a small private kingdom, of marrying, of begetting sons, when all his efforts will only leave them paupers at his death? So he never has peopled this palace with wives and children. Besides, the Enclosed School taught its prize pupil well. None of the things that give other men pleasure are a temptation to Sokolli’s discipline. More than fine clothes, music, or women, he loves duty. In fact, compared to a day spent enforcing the Sultan’s will upon distant provinces, foreign ambassadors, and whining tax collectors, any other pastime drives him to impatience with its frivolity.
“There is one way a high-ranking slave of the Sultan might leave a permanent name for himself on the earth, and Sokolli Pasha has taken full opportunity of this,” I explained to Esmikhan.
“He can build medresses and endow awqaf,” she suggested.
“Yes, there is hardly a province that does not boast a brand-new religious school, mosque, or dervish tekke bearing the master’s patronym. But where other men hoard behind them, in their harems, Sokolli Pasha has remained a Spartan indeed.
“Now, at last, in his fifty-fourth year, private pleasure is offered to him. Not only offered, but presented to him in a way he cannot possibly refuse—in the person of the Sultan’s own granddaughter as a solemn duty to guard with life and honor. Because of your royal Ottoman blood, he need not worry on his own death for the care of either you or the children we pray Allah may grant to you. The state will see to that. I suspect Sokolli Pasha has yet to get over the shock of this honor, and he will certainly never overcome the burden of it.
“I’ll wager,” I said finally, daring to meet her eye and wink, “he will be shy in your presence, and you are the one who will have to do some coaxing.”
Esmikhan blushed prettily at my words, then said, “But tell me, is he handsome? Is the pasha handsome? That is the most important. It shall all be easier if he is handsome.”
I smiled gently and chose my words carefully. “I’m afraid, lady, that I cannot answer that.”
“Oh, but you must,” Esmikhan said, tears rising quickly in her eyes again, though this time they were tears of frustration rather than grief.
“Please, lady, you must understand that a man, even if he is a eunuch, does not look at another man the way a woman would. Understand, too, that I am but new to this calling and have but little practice in being—shall I say?—a woman’s eyes.
“Poor, poor Abdullah!” Esmikhan interjected briefly, simply to give me encouragement.
“Please understand, lady, that the first—and only—time I ever laid eyes on Sokolli Pasha, it was to view him as my new master, and not as your new husband.”
“But tell me what your impression was. Surely a wife is often no better than her husband’s slave.” Esmikhan reached out a hand to my shoulder and fixed me with her clear brown eyes.
This look and those words struck me deeply and forged within me a bond with this young woman I sensed at once would never be broken. Indeed, I have sometimes felt that Esmikhan and I were married with those words, sworn into a marriage much closer than she would ever enjoy with the pasha and one more real, for it was made between our spirits. Bodies did not enter into the question at all.
I spoke quietly now, and from the heart, wishing there were not so many ears to overhear us. “Lady, you bade me speak the truth, and so I shall. Sokolli Pasha is not what you would call handsome. But do not fret. Hear me. What women call ‘handsome’ I have often found to be closer to my definition of ‘delicate’—a quality one would rather find in one’s infant sons than in one’s husband. For example, I have often been told that I am handsome—and the reaction when I walked into the harem at Kutahiya convinces me that my recent pain has not so greatly altered it. But I wouldn’t do you much good as a husband, would I?” I said this, and she nodded, but our eyes avoided contact, as if my words were a formal lie covering a truth we knew was deeper.
“There is nothing of the cuddly little boy in Sokolli Pasha.
He is of a single and firm mind, and his features reflect this. He is tall, perhaps a hand taller than I am. He has a thin, sharp nose and rigid, cleanly formed brows and jaw. They tell me his surname ‘Sokolli’ means ‘falcon’ in his native Serbian language, and if he has his ancestor’s looks, they were aptly named indeed. He has the regality of that bird, but also the impatience with frivolity and with fancy looks of a wild predator.
“Nonetheless, I felt great relief come into my slave’s heart when I saw him. ‘Thanks be to Allah,’ I said, ‘here is a master I can trust.’ He may not be handsome. He may not love to sit and listen for hours on end to poetry or music as I do. But he is a man who knows and loves his duty and would rather die than not fulfill it. I know that if I am ever beaten or mistreated at his hands, it will only be because I strongly deserve it. If I do my duty to him, he will do his to me and never be intentionally unkind. He will feed me and clothe me and see that my needs are met and that I am not unhappy, as far as it is in his power and Allah’s will. As a slave, I rejoiced greatly in that.”
“And as a bride,” Esmikhan said, lying back against her pillows with a great sigh of relief, “I rejoice, too.”
Unfortunately, there was little time for her relief to be exploited in true relaxation there under the oak tree. The call went up that it was time to be moving if we were to reach our night’s lodgings. Esmikhan allowed me to take her hand and help her to her feet. I packed her into her sedan, then closed the lattice behind her with tenderness, like closing the lid on a jewelry case. I gave signal to the bearers that they might at last approach and heave the burden to their shoulders. I walked along side for a few hundred paces with my hand still on the grille as if for further security. But my thoughts were far away.
My first and, to date, my only meeting with Sokolli Pasha still played through my mind, and it was not in the hopes that I might glean further details from it to lighten Esmikhan’s fears. The strength of our union made me remember some part of that meeting I had ignored until then.
There I had sat, among bolts of fabric and packets of spices purchased against the wedding. I was one gift among many, and that fact did little to make me feel proud of my role. It chafed my humanity to be treated like just so many dry goods and I had, so far, been unable to form the words “my master” on my lips in the dreadful fear of how bitter they would taste.
Then Sokolli Pasha had entered the room. Black Ali, who had made the purchases—more with the gaudy eye of an old spoiled slave than with any sense of a delicate young l
ady’s taste—had to call the master’s attention to the pile, reminding him that they needed his perusal to make the purchases final.
Sokolli Pasha obviously had other things on his mind and wanted to return to them instantly. “Fine, fine, Ali,” he said quickly, cutting explanations, apologies, and little marketplace triumphs short.
Then his falcon’s eye fell on me. I bowed, as I had been taught, but I did it stiffly, hoping to express in that one movement how I thought a government, his government, that would allow such things happen to honest men, stank to high heaven.
“The khadim you ordered, master,” Ali said, grinning.
“So I see.”
“A fine khadim. And I got a good deal on him besides.”
“Good, Ali. Very good.”
Sokolli Pasha spoke the words, but had to clear his throat on them, and he blanched noticeably until I dropped my eyes before his obvious discomfort. He did not ask my name or whether I knew my business—which I truly did not. He simply stared at me for a moment or two as if struggling with a memory he thought he had long ago dispelled. When he gained control of that memory and was his usual man of severe restraint again, he laid his hand ever so briefly on my shoulder, then quickly turned and left the room. At the moment, I had been too relieved that he did not decide to reject me and send me back to that slave market again.
But now I found, with my hand similarly on Esmikhan’s grille, that the moment still haunted me. I said nothing to my lady, of course, for what was I to make of it, even to myself?
XLI
“His mother? Oh, Abdullah, Sokolli Pasha has a mother? Why didn’t you let me know before this?”
Sofia Page 24