The Sultan's Daughter

by Ann Chamberlin

  “Indeed, lady, I had that honor.”

  Few women own as much power as the midwife in a harem. Of course, this explained the woman’s awkwardness. A midwife alone is included in a harem not because of her beauty and grace but because of her intelligence and skill. I was ashamed of the threat I’d felt from this woman at first and was glad I hadn’t acted on it.

  And how apt her nickname! Never had the exigencies of womanhood swollen out a more bulbous shape. Her skin had a yellow, quince-like cast to it, exaggerated by the olive green of her coin-trimmed head scarf and a great deal of facial hair she had not the self-absorption to remove. Not to mention her stored-fruit smell.

  “Nur Banu Kadin has decided the Quince ought to stay with you, my dear Esmikhan, until your baby is born.”

  This was Safiye speaking, diverting attention from the cloud that had imperceptibly passed over the conversation, for few had forgotten that my lady’s mother had died with her birthing. Did I owe Baffo’s daughter a debt of gratitude for this consideration? I doubted it. How could Safiye know of something that had happened in Turkey fifteen years ago? Or care?

  “For me, Auntie?” Esmikhan turned to Nur Banu.

  “It was Safiye’s idea.”

  “No one can deny the Quince’s skill,” Safiye said.

  “Bordering on magic,” Nur Banu concurred.

  The room was warm. Why did I shiver?

  Nur Banu continued: “The Quince well deserves her place as attendant to the births of princes and princesses.”

  My lady said: “To have the Quince sent to my lying-in, even just for an hour or two, even if she did no more than hold my hand...Why, this is an honor.”

  “Honor for a woman,” Safiye said, “equal to the honor for a man if your husband the Vizier puts in an appearance at the circumcision of his son.”

  “Well, you shall have her,” Nur Banu said. “In your house as a permanent guest, working her magics day and night against miscarriage and injury from these very early months.”

  “Auntie, this is an honor indeed.”

  “For the Sultan’s first great-grandchild, you should have expected no less.”

  Was there a subtle jab here by the older woman at Safiye’s continued childless state? Safiye turned with dignity to an open window, above such pettiness, and my lady moved quickly lest any offense be attributed to her failure as a hostess.

  “Thank you,” my lady said. “And thank you, Quince. We can make room for her, Abdullah, can we not?”

  Before I had time to reply to my lady’s deference, Safiye ingressed, “Oh, my dear Esmikhan. You don’t ask a khadim if the arrangements are to his liking. You tell him how things are going to be.”

  Where I had seen no difficulty with this extended visit before, with Safiye’s snipe I suddenly had a most desperate one. But how to express my unease? The rummage through my brain left me speechless for a moment.

  “You will see, Abdullah, that the Quince is made comfortable in the room next to mine.” Flawlessly, my lady took her cue from Baffo’s daughter.

  “As you will.” I bowed with stiffness as if I’d never made such a movement in my life before. Desperate for excuse, I continued, “But I must remind you, lady, the workmen for the summer rooms have stored their tiles and plaster there. It would take all day to clear it.”

  Safiye’s glance read, Well, then, you’d better get started right away, hadn’t you, eunuch?

  She said nothing, however, as if yielding graciously herself to the Sultan’s granddaughter, who said, “Of course, Abdullah, you’re right. But then the Quince must sleep with me in my room. You won’t mind, madam, will you?”

  “Not at all. This way I can better judge the instant, Allah forbid, anything should go amiss.”

  “It is most gracious of you.”

  As she spoke these words, my lady failed to see a glance that passed between the Quince and—of all people—Sofia Baffo. I was more determined than ever to stop this new arrangement in our home, but I could think of no way to do it. By this time, too, Esmikhan had already slipped her arm into Safiye’s and was leading the way toward the divans and the lattices thrown wide against the heat.

  Safiye said: “If you’d like, Esmikhan, the Quince can tell you right today if it’s a boy or a girl you’re carrying.”

  “Can she?” Esmikhan turned with such excitement to the midwife that the gauze of her head scarf stuck to the pink flush on her windward cheek. “Can you really do that, madam?”

  “You doubt my skill, lady?”

  “No, no. Of course not.”

  “Because such predictions are the easiest part of a midwife’s work.”

  Esmikhan caught a reproving glance from me, swept her hand in a studied gesture of welcome and said: “But first, you must all sit down. Make yourselves at home. Please. Welcome. Guests belong to Allah as well as to the hostess.”

  So the women draped their skirts around their feet as they tucked up on the various divans according to their status. My lady, however, who’d been pressing her hands together in order to contain her excitement, could no longer. She blurted out: “I should love to have you read the signs for me with your art, madam, if it is the will of Allah.”

  Having seen that thrill in my lady’s face, how could I begrudge her her midwife?

  II

  From a saffron-colored square of silk the midwife had given her, Safiye sprinkled a good cook’s measure of salt into the pale part of my lady’s dark hair. The well-ground crystals—none larger than the head of a pin, not a cook’s coarse lumps—glinted with anticipation, like sequins in her curls.

  Meanwhile, Esmikhan sat and blushed and squirmed to have every eye on her with her head uncovered, as she usually only bared it in the bath. Her locks were still sweat-damp and -dented into the shape of the cap she twiddled now between her fingers. She hadn’t been on such display even as a bride.

  “She squirms,” the Quince diagnosed.

  “She is only nervous,” Safiye protested, putting an arm about her friend’s brocaded shoulders. “Aren’t you, my dear?”

  Esmikhan made the effort not to be, and only blushed the more.

  “She doesn’t itch,” Safiye declared.

  “She does, but she restrains herself with a princess’s restraint “the Quince countered. “The salt doesn’t itch your scalp, does it, Esmikhan?”

  “No, no, not yet,” my lady replied, as though determined to create an itch if that would please.

  “You see? It should itch like lice, didn’t you say, Quince?”

  “No, it doesn’t itch. Is that bad?” Nervousness washed from my lady’s face to give place to a pallid fear.

  “It’s been long enough now,” Safiye urged the midwife. “She doesn’t itch.”

  “She doesn’t itch,” the Quince conceded with a shrug. “She carries a boy.”

  The company let out its bated hope in an audible sigh. “A boy! Mashallah! A boy!” They exclaimed all round and took turns congratulating their hostess.

  Over this pleasant confusion, I saw Safiye shoot slivers of almond eyes at the midwife, some sort of stern call to duty. The Quince shrugged without commitment, but asked me to fetch her a pair of scissors and a knife.

  These are sharp blades, I thought as I handed them to her with a complaisant little bow. Imagine them sinking into my flesh—or worse, my lady’s. My hand found the hilt of my own dagger and shifted it somewhat out of my sash, just in case.

  The happy bevy of women brushed the last of the salt out of Esmikhan’s hair and replaced her cap, its veils and its ruby-rose ornaments. While they were so distracted, the Quince slipped behind them to my lady’s vacated cushion on the divan. I followed the healer closely, saw her secret the two cutting implements behind the cushion, and got a firmer grip on my dagger. I had faced a pack of brigands in defense of my lady’s honor; I would not hesitate to face a midwife.

  “She sits to the left, she sits to the left.” Safiye’s declaration after having observed Esmikhan’s att
empt to settle back down on her cushions brought me up short.

  Wondering, delighted with surprise, Esmikhan withdrew the hardness she felt through the figured velvet and wool stuffing of the left side of her cushion. It was the knife.

  With another shrug, the Quince announced, “A boy. She sat on the knife. That means a boy.”

  Only another harmless divining device. I really did get too jumpy when Safiye was in the room.

  “Mashallah, a boy for certain.” Over all the renewed exclamations of joy, Safiye’s was the only one that seemed to contain a hint, not so much of sorrow, but almost of doom.

  “Mashallah” my lady echoed her guests. “Oh, but I grieve to have you here, Quince.”

  “Esmikhan, lady, why say you so?” Nur Banu asked.

  “Because her presence is a clear indication that no baby more royal than my own is expected in the coming months.” Esmikhan reached for Baffo’s daughter’s hand. “Dear Safiye, can’t you give me word that my child will have a little cousin to play with?”

  Safiye, it seemed, had so little hope of becoming pregnant that she couldn’t even hunch her shoulders and say, “If Allah is so pleased.”

  One of Nur Banu’s slaves, Aziza, began to accompany the conversation and the feasting with the same haunting tune my lady had sung earlier:

  “One thousand and one tales have been written about me.

  My home is this place where gods are buried.

  And devils breed.

  The land of holiness.

  The backyard of hell.”

  Aziza had a lovely voice. She was a pretty thing, too, but now consigned to the rank of menial since Prince Murad had rejected her in favor of Safiye. I suppose she sought to ingratiate herself to the company in the best way she knew how. She would show she was not unpleasantly aloof.

  After Safiye had achieved her purpose—the entrusting of Esmikhan and her unborn child to the astringent mercies of the Quince—Baffo’s daughter had completely turned from the society of the room. She gazed absently now through the latticework of polished olive wood. Even a guest who’d been to two weddings and a circumcision before she entered our rooms would have shown more interest in the dainties that Esmikhan presented. It was nothing short of ill-mannered to ignore platter after platter, crowded rim over rim beneath the tulips on the room’s three low tables.

  My lady personally supervised the kitchen and was not averse to getting her velvets dusted with flour as she turned out the various Turkish sweets as delightful and voluptuous as their names: “Woman’s Navel,” “Ladies’ Thighs,” “Lips of the Beauty.” There was lokhoum, that fruit paste that called for the stirring of two pots over the flame simultaneously, in white grape, mulberry, apricot, and quince jelly flavors. And of course, my lady had turned out hundreds of deep-fried “Little Bonnets of the Turks,” one entire extra tray for no other reason than that they were Safiye’s favorites. But these, too, Baffo’s daughter seemed to ignore that day.

  I surprised myself by taking Safiye’s negligence personally. It wasn’t presumptuous to include myself in the credits for the stacks of treats with which we dazzled, honored, and rather overwhelmed our guests. I had done what was asked of me to make these trays for the palate what the intricate inlay of mother-of-pearl and ivory of the new rooms were to the eye. No, I realized as my offense grew. I took pride in my part, though a year ago I would have scoffed at it as being something “any housewife can do.” Of course, any Turkish housewife was confined to that house. She needed her eunuch to make things run smoothly, and I had done it. Why else was I hovering around up here with the women instead of downstairs with my cronies if not to see how it all went?

  If I say so myself, my lady and I were learning to work well together. Economy meant nothing to her, as a princess first and now a Vizier’s wife. She was used to having any desire appear at the first thought, and it became my challenge to work that magic for her. Spurred by her taste and delight in the best the world had to offer, and the world’s best marketplace, Constantinople, out our front door, I had shopped. When desire to disparage the skill had crept up on me, sometimes just to keep my self-respect, I had remembered my training under my dear dead uncle. To haggle, bargain, and trade was done by the richest of merchants as well as the lowliest housewife.

  So I gave credit to myself, even if the ladies gave it to their hostess. All my trips to the bazaar for fabric swatches before she finally settled on that figured magenta velvet for the divans that ran around three walls. All the purchasing of skilled seamstress-slaves for the gold work on drapes and coverlets. All the hauling of Persian carpets back and forth as they failed to please in the salon’s afternoon light. Not to mention the simple logistics of letting workmen into the inner sanctum while at the same time giving the ladies some sort of privacy. All the trips to the latrine—which were frequent at this stage of my lady’s pregnancy—had to be negotiated, for the only route lay through this salon. And there was the master’s mother, a gnarled, deaf blank most of the time, but apt to disorientation and immodest wanderings when her environment was disturbed.

  I begrudged Esmikhan none of her guests’ delighted praises for the accomplishments of either interior decorating or the kitchen. In the service of the kitchen, too, I had risen to the challenge, aiding the success in ways that a secluded woman cannot imagine. Who saw to the quality of the olives, the honey, shrewed the merchant for his rancid oil? When this sudden warm snap made the icemen’s usual cartloads melt, who arranged for the horseback riders? The riders had raced the nearly twenty farsakh from the mountain the Turks called Olympus, vying with the ancient Greek place of the same name, where the snowcap is stored over summer in caves. The riders had raced back with their panniers of ice wrapped in flannel and cooling vines showing only the first hint of dampness. I had paid them what such a chase was worth so our guests had to give no thought to the delicious coldness of their sherbets. They had only to make a choice of flavors from the assortment with which my lady dazzled them—rosewater, aloe, linden, ambergris, or gardenia.

  Esmikhan had worked on the blending of syrups like an Alto Adige vintner with his wines. These oversweetened things with ingredients I was used to calling perfumes and medicines were hard for a Venetian to take in the place of his daily libation. Sometimes I wanted a glass of the basic old Bardolino in the worst way. And I often thought that, given the present state of my life, I would quickly and easily drown in my cups—if cups were available. That was one more void for which to damn Islam.

  But at Esmikhan’s hand I had learned to appreciate the tang of lemon-almond with a little linden—innocent of intoxication. And to appreciate that sherbet could sicken if it wasn’t cold. I saw to it that every glass she served was very, very cold.

  I did not mind that our guests gave Esmikhan the credit, nor even that she took it to herself with blushes of pleasure. That was the form of Turkish manners; watching the quiet satisfaction of others was a new sort of triumph for me.

  When I was a man, I had disparaged such things, and would have turned away to look at the view as if I were above food and drink, even as Safiye was doing. Her disregard shamed me and, when I saw through the shame, I was infuriated. Baffo’s daughter was a woman; she should know better.

  Her negligence was almost as if she had written off Esmikhan. The world of power and politics might write off my dear, sweet lady, might not even know that she existed. Because Esmikhan had no wish in her heart but to please—and particularly to please Safiye, whose beauty, liveliness, and daring held my lady entranced—men would take my lady for granted. Would Baffo’s daughter do the same?

  Or would Baffo’s daughter reject another woman just for having a baby? In Safiye’s almond eyes this condition seemed almost to remove my lady from the cycle of living instead of entrenching her all the more deeply in it.

  “Ah, she dreams of her prince.”

  The Quince spoke, watching Safiye’s detachment with a long, warm, bubbly drag on her pipe. The midwife had brought h
er own wad for the bowl and I couldn’t distinguish its smell over all the other odors compressed in that hot room.

  The lattice work at the window mimicked the room’s new inlay, with the gleam of blue-gray sky in place of mother-of-pearl. Over a fringe of pine and cypress, the height of the house’s situation revealed a prospect of the sea, its islands and the blue-hazed Asian mountains.

  No chance existed that Safiye would see Murad through that window. At her feet bloomed no more than a quiet spot in the harem garden where the tulips, in profusion, remained oblivious or even defiantly careless of the power ploys of men. I suspected her mind was not on Murad, but that was because mine was not.

  Lawn was being cut somewhere by men with scythes, hard, but sweet-smelling work. These spring sights and sounds reminded me once again that a year almost to the day we had first come to this city, Safiye and I. She had told me once how she had passed regiments of tulips to enter “the belly of this beast”—as she’d called the imperial harem—for the first time.

  But I should have known better than to think that Safiye’s thoughts had time for any such sentimentality. Still less were they, as Esmikhan’s compassion made her weep to think, centered on prayers for a child of her own.

  Safiye did not speak to defend herself, however. Curiously, it was Nur Banu who did, leaping into the silence after the Quince’s statement rather more hastily than necessary.

  “Allah preserve him, my friend, but do you remember the night my son was born?”

  “I do indeed.” The midwife smiled, nodding at Esmikhan to listen now and gain a young woman’s education for her own birthing.

  “We had a time getting him to suck, didn’t we? Four wet nurses we went through, and all the time it was his own perversity.”

  “Yes. The little lion refused to suck for three...”

  “Four days. It was four.”

  “Yes, it was almost four days.”

  “I was sure he would starve.”