“So easy to take life “Murad said eventually, when he thought his voice would hold. But again control failed him as he continued, “So easy. And yet, so hard to give it.”
A cuckoo called, its mate responded, and in the silence between, the other birds they cuckolded. Safiye could feel her lover’s heartbeat like an inflammation in her own breast.
She said nothing, but waited until, in a few minutes, Murad began again. “Forgive me. Say you forgive me, my love.”
“Forgive you? Whatever for?”
“Forgive me that you are fated to a man who can never give you children.”
“No children?” Safiye exclaimed gently. “But that is Allah’s will, not yours, my own sweet love.”
“It is my fault. I know it. He punishes me because I fretted away time with the opium, and created worlds for myself that He did not create. That is blasphemy. I took opium and let it steal Allah-created desire from me. Most men blame their women for their childlessness, but most men are fools. And most men are not blessed with such a faultless creature as yourself. I have grieved much over this. Others may blame you, but I do not.”
“Your mother...” She didn’t know how to finish the phrase herself.
“Yes, I know my mother made your days in the harem a hell because she would have a grandson in her old age. But rest assured that I do not love you one whit less. I know it is not your fault. I saw this clearly today. Today, when I thought I’d struck you—Allah forbid! When I pulled up the wrapper, thinking to find your death-shriveled form. When I pulled my arrow out of the mare’s warm, dark insides, I brought forth only blood and death. What else do I do to you but that? What else have I only just done? In my anger against Heaven and myself? Served you no better than the poor, poor horse.”
“My love,” Safiye said with a thrill in her breast that was only contained by pressing Murad’s head to it. “Be at ease, my cool summer rain. For surely, if there is guilt here, we share it, as we share everything.”
They loved again, slower, deliberately this time, sharing guilt as much as they shared delight.
Near sunset, Safiye relinquished her lover’s arms for her eunuch’s. Ghazanfer had recovered her veils and stood with them placidly draped over his arm. The khadim had kept his faithful watch, even there in the woods, preserving the lovers’ privacy inviolate.
And it wasn’t until that moment, until she met his green eyes as he laid the ridge of silk to ride chafing over her nose, that she remembered. She remembered what she had forgotten in the midst of the horse’s death. She remembered she ought to have pressed her advantage and gained the legality of marriage.
And she remembered what lay melted in ornate silver cases, back in the overheated red velvet of her sedan.
PART III: ABDULLAH
XVII
“Good morning, madam.”
The Quince sailed into Esmikhan Sultan’s harem, trailing Bosphorus damp and cold after her. Winter lingered in earnest in the capital.
I prodded again: “This is a pleasant surprise.”
I really didn’t look for an answer. I had only ever had one good conversation with the midwife—the day she assured me no power on earth could restore my lost manhood. Otherwise, she had always been one of those women—the majority—for whom khuddam were just one more item of harem furniture. Like cushions and divans we were, there to make life comfortable, but never expected to intrude upon her business with conversation.
The Quince had presided closely over my lady’s health for over two years. I was familiar with the midwife’s quirks, as she must have been with ours, that my lady and I did not hold to the usual formalities between eunuch and mistress.
My lady’s little slave girl took the midwife’s veils and wraps as I’d taught her and hung them on pegs to dry. But even before her pinched, sour face was revealed, I could tell our guest’s manner was even more brusque and agitated than usual.
So I spoke to set her at ease. “We didn’t hope to have you back with us in Constantinople for many months more.” Though, if I’d thought about it, I would have done better to serve with the impassivity of a pillow—something she was used to—if I truly sought her comfort and not my own.
Frankly, curiosity put decorum the furthest thing from my mind at the moment. The last time we’d had the bustle of this woman in our house had been just before the sea lanes closed for the winter. At that time, Esmikhan had been daily hoping for Safiye’s return for the season. Such hopes had been dashed, then quickly dispelled by even happier news. Safiye’s condition forbade her removal on any long journey; my lady’s child was no longer the most royal expectation in the empire.
“Of course you must go to her,” my lady had told her midwife.
“Safiye isn’t due until three, four months after you, lady,” I’d interjected. “The midwife could see you, inshallah, safe and have plenty of time to travel on to see to your brother’s child.”
Esmikhan had chosen to ignore me and spoke exclusively to our guest. “Safiye will need you. And I—I have done this so many times I can manage with another midwife.”
The Quince hadn’t needed more convincing. She’d packed her things in an hour and caught the final ship out of the Golden Horn—to see to Safiye and the royal child she was expecting.
“My brother’s child, inshallah, will be heir to the throne,” my lady had said wistfully when at last we’d been alone. “It needs the best midwife, not I.”
Now, here was the Quince, back after only three months, no more. My lady was yet undelivered. The sea lanes had hardly opened again. Perhaps the midwife had even come by land. Or perhaps she’d not made it to Magnesia at all.
What could it mean? Curiosity prodded me to attempt one more speech. “Are we to expect you for an extended stay, madam?”
If she did plan to move back in with us, as had been her custom as long as Esmikhan carried her ill-fated children, I would need to know so I could make arrangements. The Quince could hardly deny me an answer to this.
The eye she turned on me simmered with impatience that I, the cushion, had forced any pronouncement from her at all. “I just come for a little visit,” she said in clipped tones.
And then we were in my lady’s presence, so I retreated to my post by the door of the room and trusted Esmikhan to draw out the details.
My lady sat on the floor before the low table on which lay one of the seven or eight dainty meals she ate a day at this stage of her pregnancies, when the huge mass of child pressed awkwardly on her stomach. Earlier that morning, I had placed a metal brazier packed with fresh coals under that table and a heavy rug over the top of it. My lady had gone directly from her nighttime quilts to this rug. Though other pregnancies in the ninth month had prostrated her with the heat, so grim and cold was this day that she kept all of the lower half of her body tucked under the insulating rug, her knees and feet almost touching the room’s only source of heat.
The light was bad through the window. I’d lit a lamp or two but considered lighting more. Unpainted olive-wood lattice was difficult to distinguish from the gray of the sky beyond. Many other details in the room were obscured as well, but in the darkest corners the sweet smell of the sandalwood I’d put along with other fuel in the brazier snuggled the nose. The weather outside, vacillating between a drizzle and an even damper fog, hissed in the ear. The entire mood, close to sightless though it was, remained safe from the world’s cold blasts. As usual, I liked to see my lady as a gem—perhaps dull onyx today—in a setting of my own design.
But the effect was lost on the Quince.
Esmikhan’s reaction upon seeing her guest was much as mine had been. Even our words were identical,-though the Quince eked this rehearsal out with greetings in return and a salaam as negligent as her usual attentions to such forms.
When my lady reached the part about the length of her stay with us, the Quince repeated, “Just a little visit “but added, “Just long enough to see my prize patient and the new child, mashallah.”
There was no reply. As she raised herself from the obeisance and got her first good look at my lady in the half-light, the Quince started. She could not have been more shocked and surprised if Esmikhan had pulled a pistol and shot her. The midwife’s usual color grew yet more pallid and green, and that pronounced the fuzz on her face more as well.
“Madam, what is the matter?” My lady attempted to raise her awkward bulk to assist, for her guest suddenly seemed to demand it.
“Nothing,” said the older woman in a tone that betrayed a bold-faced lie.
“What can I get you? Some watered yogurt? Sherbet?”
When the Quince managed no reply to this but a weak gesture, Esmikhan sent for both, and a warming broth besides.
“Madam, please, have a seat.” My lady was on her own feet now and caught her guest by the elbow. She signaled everyone else still in the room—including me—for cushions and rugs.
I was just behind the quince-shaped hips, plumping pillows, when the midwife found the strength to put up a little protest. “Your child has not been born yet, majesty?” she choked. And I saw that, in nervous hands, she was fingering a large gold coin—such as one might offer an infant as a birth gift—too distracted at the moment to find a place to hide it.
“Mashallah, no,” Esmikhan replied. “But let’s not worry about me right now.”
“But we figured...”
“Yes, I figured it would be here by now, too.” Esmikhan shrugged, other concerns on her mind. “This one is tenacious, that’s all. Allah willing he may be of life as well.”
“But—but they told me you’d delivered.”
“Who told you that? Madam, you must relax.”
“Some...someone.”
“Allah’s will, I wish they were right. I’d have no complaint if I’d finished with this business a fortnight ago, as we’d thought.”
“But she said, clear as day, ‘Yes, the princess delivered.’
“She—whoever she is—must have confused it with another time. It is easy to do, I suppose. Mashallah, there’ve been so many...” Esmikhan’s voice faded as her concern for the Quince reached another peak. “Madam, what ails you? Can I send Abdullah for a physician?”
“No physician, no,” the Quince said with a sudden vehemence that gave her the aspect of returning health. “Those charlatans. I’ll be fine, a good deal better than if you send for a physician. Just a momentary ... a momentary weakness, I assure you. I’ll be fine.”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then seemed to resign herself—to death? Something just as momentous passed before the bitterness of her face. But when she opened her eyes and breathed again, the midwife seemed almost herself.
“Madam?” my lady asked.
“I’ll be fine,” the Quince repeated. “Maybe a little pilaf.”
Esmikhan quickly set the rest of her meal and a napkin before the other woman. The napkin afforded, I felt, no use for its station, encrusted with gold thread on every crossing of warp over weft as it was.
“Khadim?” the Quince said then through one mouthful, her fingers reaching after another.
“Madam?” I had almost regained my post after the flurry with the pillows but stepped from it once more with a little nod.
“Down in the sedan chair is a green and gold kerchief of comfits. Fetch it for me, will you? I think—I think they may help. My heart...”
“Of course, madam.”
“Oh, and khadim?”
I turned back at the door. “Madam?”
“I will be prevailing on your hospitality. Until the child is born. You can send the men back to the palace for my things.”
“Madam?” I stopped and asked only because I couldn’t believe my ears had heard such a complete about-face.
“Abdullah, at once,” my lady ordered impatiently, still very much concerned that any vexation of her guest might exacerbate the frightful condition once more.
So I went, found the kerchief, and gave the orders. I had no doubt I’d found the right bundle. It was the only thing in the sedan, no medicines, no spells as a midwife on anything more than a social call must surely carry. I wondered at this, but not overlong. The bundle I found exuded the heavy smell of an evergreen forest—mastic gum—and seemed innocent enough.
Somewhat less reassuring was the conversation I had with the bearers. We exchanged small talk as they prepared for the trek back to the imperial palace. I had seen to it that they were offered refreshment and narghiles to warm themselves in the lower rooms while they waited out the Quince’s return and I hated to see them torn from such comforts in any rush.
So I said something innocuous like: “It was certainly nice of the Quince to come so soon upon her return from Magnesia. She can hardly be rested from her journey.”
The head bearer was a Greek, with brows that met in the middle of a heavy forehead over a hooked nose. He gave this reply: “Not at all. The midwife’s been in town these two, three weeks. She did seem to want to keep her presence a secret, but nonetheless she delivered a set of twins in that time—mashallah—and two or three others. All wonderfully healthy babes, thanks be to Allah. Cured a few rheumatisms and fevers as well. Now if she could only cure me of the life of a bearer...”The fellow shifted his shoulder muscles in his own form of cure.
I didn’t know what to make of this information, so I followed the drift of our pleasantries from there in their usual fashion. At length the men sloshed off in ankle-deep mud and were soon lost from my view in the fog.
But I stood staring at the spot where they’d disappeared for some time after. It seemed odd to me. First, that the Quince should be back in Constantinople so soon before Safiye’s time. By St. Mark—or whomever one prayed to in such events (I was beginning to forget things like that)—this didn’t bode well for the empire’s heir.
Even more disconcerting was the notion that the midwife should have been avoiding us once she did return. Although it was clearly her place to be with the princess throughout the confinement, the Quince had given priority to other cases instead. She had purposely stayed away from my lady until—well, until some informant, confused in her facts, had said the baby was already safely delivered. The Quince didn’t want to deliver this baby. Was she afraid she might fail us again?
By the time I returned to the brazier-snug room, the first part of the mystery, at any rate—how it was that the Quince had returned to Constantinople when Safiye’s child wasn’t due until late spring—was in the process of being unraveled.
“Safiye? How is she?” My lady felt her guest was so far out of danger now that she could begin the inquiry. “Pray Allah she is well. And the child—the child was not untimely born, Allah forbid—that you left her so soon?”
“Safiye is well.”
“Thank heaven. And the child?”
“Just as well as could be when I left them. No thanks to its mother, I must say.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
I tendered the kerchief towards its owner, who snatched it from my hand. Her fingers shook with something akin to greed—this was weakness, indeed—as she unknotted the bundle. She would not answer the question until she had popped one of the golden balls of sugar revealed by the kerchief’s petals into her mouth to chase the pilaf.
“I mean,” the Quince said over her sippet, “I hadn’t been in Magnesia through a single hour of prayer before Safiye was asking me to get rid of it for her.”
My lady looked almost as ill as her guest had not long before, which was a greater drop from her accustomed blooming health than from the Quince’s sallow. “You don’t mean...?”
“I do mean.” The midwife made a face around her chewing as if at some bitter medicine, then continued. “‘I won’t carry
it,’ that Fair One says. ‘He hasn’t married me; I am not a legal queen. I won’t have a prince unless I am a queen.’“
“Madam, you refused.”
“Of course I refused,” the Quince snapped.
“I didn’t mean to suggest, madam, that you could be capable of such a crime.”
The Quince gave her hostess and her patient an even, unflinching look, then popped another comfit in her mouth. She seemed to wait until the candy masked her words before she spoke them.
“I’ve emptied many a womb before,” the midwife said. “Don’t think I haven’t. And don’t look so scandalized, majesty. I think it no sin at all for a poor woman who already has too many mouths to feed; for a woman whom another pregnancy might well kill. When a rich man calls me to clean out his slave girl so he doesn’t have to free her or her child, well, I usually refuse then. And in this case—as Allah is my witness—I wouldn’t do it. The heir to the throne? Safiye’s own child? I wouldn’t do it.”
The Quince looked at my lady across the table under which their knees must nearly touch. The look was almost a dare. “I do have my limits, princess.”
“Of course you do, madam.” Esmikhan retreated from what had been an attitude of subservience in the first place.
“‘Why else do you think I tolerate you here?’ the Fair One tells me. Me, her Quince! And ‘Then I will get someone else to do it.’ And she did. Tried a few old wives’ concoctions. They didn’t work. Made her good and sick to her stomach for a while, but never a spot of blood nor a single cramp. Amateurs they are out there in the provinces.”
“So she will keep the child?”
“The Fair One has no choice. For the first time in her life, perhaps, Safiye Baffo has no choice.”
“It is Allah’s will.”
“Yes, and she hates it.” The midwife gave a thin smile, sour in spite of all the sweets she’d eaten. “She was much too far along, anyway, when I got there for even my methods to work in perfect safety. Why, she’d already got herself the hardest little round belly.” The Quince popped another comfit, having studied it as if it were a swollen belly, too.
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