The Sultan's Daughter

by Ann Chamberlin

  XXIX

  The weather turned fair again, but not too hot to enjoy sitting in the garden in the afternoon. The roses, refreshed by the rain, bloomed their second bloom with a vigor I could not remember having seen in them before. Especially around my lady’s pavilion were they profuse, as if they grew without leaves at all, only buds and flowers, and they filled the air with their scent.

  Ferhad passed much time in the gardens, strolling with an ease and a delight that hid whatever anxieties might be weighing on his mind. My lady, too, took pleasure in the open air and often at corresponding times, though of course there was a high wall between the gardens of the selamlik and those of the harem.

  One particular afternoon when our guest had been with us over two weeks, I left my mistress alone in her pavilion playing her oud and singing a repertoire of rather melancholic songs while I had to see about some purchases Ali had made for the kitchen. I offered to send her a maid to keep her company, but she declined, saying I needn’t waken anyone from her afternoon nap on such an account; she was quite content to be alone. There are those who will say I was careless. Well, maybe so, but I certainly thought no harm.

  Besides, who can struggle against the will of God?

  When I reentered the garden, I remarked at once how beautiful my mistress’ song had become. I had not heard her sing so beautifully, nor yet so cheerfully, in a very long time. Like a lark ascending over the garden, I thought, and other birds would surely rise in answer.

  I approached the pavilion silently so as not to disturb the song. It was I who was disturbed by the scene instead.

  Esmikhan sat on her pillows in the pavilion. Dressed in pink and cloth-of-gold, so becoming with her dark hair and eyes, she looked like one prize rose among all the others. Her beauty did take me aback—a long acquaintance had made me forget that she could be striking when she chose—but there was something even more disturbing about the scene. There, standing among the roses, just behind and to the left of my mistress, stood the young Ferhad.

  She knew he was there. She must have known he was there—why else the change in the spirit of her song, and the high color in her cheeks? And yet she pretended she did not know. Why? Because if she gave but the slightest indication of knowing, he would have to beg pardon and flee for his life, and she would have to throw a veil over her face, and flee in the opposite direction.

  So the scene stood there, poised like a butterfly on the very point of a leaf that the slightest breeze would send fluttering away. So all stood breathless in that moment (and for how many endless moments before I came?), attempting to hold it suspended there forever.

  But this cannot be, my conscience soon caught up to my heart and said. This is my responsibility, and eunuchs have died for allowing less. Such destruction seemed a crime: men who think nothing of killing their fellow men are often moved to tears if they destroy a fragile butterfly. Still, it had to be done.

  I kicked a pebble in the path, the young man vanished before I could blink an eye. We all took normal breath and spoke again, though the words seemed loud and harsh at first.

  “How have you been?” I asked my lady tentatively. “Fine,” Esmikhan said. “Just fine,” as if it were a lie. I didn’t dare call her on it, but you may be certain I was twice the khadim after that, and I never let her out of my sight unless she was safe inside the harem.

  My lady spent a lot of time over the next few days standing at the grille and looking down into the selamlik, even when Ferhad was not there. She called for no ladies, nor could I draw her to finish our chess game, or into a new book of poetry. Still, there is no harm done but a little palpitation of the heart, I thought. A little exercise in that direction might do Esmikhan good. I control the doors between the worlds. We are still safe. Where there are no words, there can be but little love. I found comfort and an excuse for apathy in such musings until one day when my mistress called me to her.

  “Here, Abdullah,” she said, handing me a pink rose and a pale narcissus. “Would you be so kind as to take these flowers down to the selamlik and place them in a vase for me.” Then she added as a sort of apology, “I thought it might be more pleasant for our guest if he could have something new and bright to look at besides the same four empty walls.”

  “Just the two?” I asked. “Surely he would be more flattered by an armful of roses. Let me send one of the girls to the garden to cut them for you. Or perhaps a whole dish of narcissus would be nice—one of those that you so carefully forced in gravel.”

  “Perhaps,” she said, blushing, “another day. Today I would like just these two.”

  I nodded and went to fulfill her wish, finding it odd, but certainly not amiss. Flowers were some diversion and one more innocent, I thought, than love poetry or long, sad songs. She was certainly not asking me to carry letters down to the selamlik, or anything else forbidden.

  In the selamlik, I hunted for the fine Chinese vase in its usual place in the wall niche, but it wasn’t there. I was about to call for Ali to ask where it might be when I saw it already out—placed curiously on the top of a low wooden chest. There were flowers in it, too, and they seemed very fresh. They couldn’t have been cut any earlier than that very morning.

  And it was a very curious bouquet altogether, not unattractive or slovenly, but very masculine. It consisted of really only one flower—an ox-eye daisy—which was flanked on one side by a leaf of a plane tree, and on the other by a sprig of cypress.

  “Now I see,” I thought. “My mistress has taken pity on our guest’s poor hand at arranging flowers, and thought it only polite to send him others...”

  But that thought hardly lived to take a breath before I knew it would not do, and condemned it, like some pre-Islamic father his unwanted girl-child, to the dust. In its place came, for no apparent reason, the lines of the Persian poet, so popular in the Turkish harems:

  I cried so much that I heard

  moaning and wailing from the cypresses.

  They confided in me and said,

  “0 that your heart could find peace with us,

  For your beloved was flourishing, and so are we.

  She was tall, and we are a hundred times taller.”

  Often since I’d first heard that poem recited, I had listened for “moaning and wailing from the cypresses” as a wind passed, and often thought, like the poet, of my love who was tall and fair, but now no more. And, like the poet, I had sadly whispered back to the trees:

  But what use are you to me

  When it comes time for kisses?

  So it was not strange that now, as I reached out to remove the cypress sprig from the vase, the lines should come to me again. What was strange was that I should also remember that the cypress, because it never loses its leaves like other trees, was often used by poets as a symbol of eternity.

  Plane leaves and ox-eyes also have their set meanings in the intricate melodies of romantic verse: the first, because it so resembles a hand, means touch or holding, and the flower is an emblem for the beloved’s face.

  Now I suddenly saw clearly that there was no coincidence here at all. The odd assortment of plants had been chosen and arranged with exquisite care and the message read: plane leaf, ox-eye, cypress, “I will hold the image of my beloved’s face in my hand forever.”

  So what did the rose and the narcissus mean—the reply that I was delivering like some furtive love letter? My mistress had sent message bouquets by me before—to other women: a bunch of rue or musk for remembrance because the scent staved in the hand long after the flowers were gone, or a pair of pomegranates, like breasts, to felicitate a friend upon the weaning of a child. Before I had always known the code. This would be a little more difficult.

  The narcissus, I knew, usually had reference to the eve, but the rose had innumerable meanings: as a bud, it was a new baby; it could represent the cheek, the face, the bosom, the nose, the lips...

  The possible images were infinite, but when I hit upon the right one, I knew it at once. It
was one of my mistress’s favorite verses by the poet Manuchihri—

  The scented breeze brings news to the narcissus

  That the rose has come out of seclusion.

  ‘She promises a rendezvous with you in the garden,’ it says,

  And the narcissus bows down in happiness at this promise.

  How plainly, how perfectly the poem captured the situation, as if the poet had written with no other lovers in mind! And yet—how impossible! How eternally impossible!

  “Lady,” I said, turning to face the grille where I knew she was watching. (And I noticed how perfectly placed the vase was before that grille so she could not miss the message.) “Lady, I cannot do this.”

  There was only silence from the grille in reply. She knew I had guessed and she also knew that I could not go against what was my very reason for being—to stand as a guardian to her virtue. Yet the silence continued, and in it I read an awful thing: If I should betray her now, I might never have her confidence again as long as I lived, and that was a thought worse than death.

  Please, please put them in the vase. Just this once, her silence seemed to ring out through the selamlik. Don’t you think I know our love is impossible? It is just the passing infatuation of a brokenhearted princess for a lonely, bored spahi. I expect nothing more. But just this one, brief exchange. Don’t you know how Manuchihri’s poem continues? It is not a happy ending, I know. But I still love it for its beauty. The lover is described as a cloud, the lady as a garden:

  He returned from abroad,

  His eyes brimming with tears,

  And he awakened his mistress with those tears.

  She reached out and tore her veil.

  And emerged from hiding with her face like the full moon.

  The lover gazed on his beloved from afar,

  And shouted a shout heard by all ears.

  With fire in his breast he tore his heart open

  So that his mistress could see his hidden fire.

  The water of life flowed from his eyes

  To bring forth plants from his beloved,

  But...her body was ruined by the heat...

  His mistress would not bloom...

  For all our tears, I know our love is as impossible as the love of a cloud for an enclosed garden: we can never embrace. Still, just this once, Abdullah—or I shall die...

  I succumbed to the silence. I placed the two flowers in the vase, and even brought the leaves and the ox-eye up to my mistress so she could keep them always with her in the harem. But I determined most firmly that at this first serious trial of my duty since Chios, perhaps even since the brigands, I would not fail. I would confront our guest that very night, allowing him no more evasion, and find out just what he meant by disrupting the peace and honor of our home.

  He was standing, strong and vibrant, in meditation before the vase, one finger gently circling the petals of the rose. A sudden panic filled my heart at how overwhelming the task of a eunuch was—to somehow be stronger than men who are real men—and I decided to ask Sokolli Pasha as soon as he got back if I couldn’t have two or three aides.

  I’ll admit now that what I felt was more than the threat to my station. Jealousy. I begrudged the man every angle of his body, every battle-earned muscle. I begrudged him the way he made water. The jaundice of a Barbary pigeon crept up my back and neck and prickled under my turban like heat rash, like an infestation of lice.

  Young Ferhad turned to me with a smile totally unguarded and without malice. Did he expect me to be carrying another very welcome message? I wouldn’t have given him anything at that moment. Apparently he expected nothing, for he was the one who spoke first, bursting with news of his own.

  “Sultan Suleiman is dead,” he announced. “May Allah have mercy on his great soul.”

  I repeated the blessing in a murmur. “When did this dread event happen?” I asked when my thoughts came clearly again.

  “A week before I arrived here to take your hospitality.”

  The metal of nerves that could keep such news a secret for so long shocked me more than the news itself.

  “I feel I can tell you now,” Ferhad continued, “for Sultan Selim, who arrived from Kutahiya three nights ago, has successfully consolidated his power in the Serai.”

  “Prince—I mean Sultan Selim—has arrived in Constantinople? That is curious. You may know the lady I serve is his daughter, yet she received no word from him.”

  “This is not the time to be placing the womenfolk in jeopardy by giving them too much knowledge. But I feel it is safe for you to know now, because Selim left early yesterday morning with a small, fast-riding guard.”

  “Selim come and gone and we knew nothing of it?”

  “I knew your mistress is one of the Blood whom this must touch deeply, so I did feel obliged to say something as soon as possible. Still, it was best to wait ‘til the new Sultan had outdistanced any enemy who might want to send word to the army before he gets there. Even so, it must not become general knowledge yet. Keep it from the gossips among your staff if possible.”

  I nodded.

  “I hope you will convey to your mistress my profound sympathy upon the death of her grandfather, and my sincere wishes and prayers for the blessings of Allah to be on her illustrious family, now as her father rises to the throne.” His tone was stilted and formulaic as if there were much he would have said, but dared not.

  I nodded again to assure him I would pass on the message, even though I was certain every word had already been heard through the lattice.

  “But the Sultan, may Allah have mercy on him, is—was—in Hungary leading the armies of the Faith,” I protested. “Surely those men must know by now that their commander is dead. The secret cannot be kept from them.”

  “Our master, Sokolli Pasha, is a very brave and careful man,” Ferhad replied. “The Angel of Death came quickly to Suleiman in his tent while the army was in siege around the small mountain fortress of Szigeth. The Grand Vizier, now the Bearer of the Burden, knew that if word got out, the soldiers would refuse to fight any longer, would break the siege, and all go back to their homes to wait and see if they liked the way succession came. The breaking of a siege and a retreat is not a good way to begin any man’s reign, especially for the man who must follow a leader as great as Suleiman was—may his Faith be found pure before Allah.

  “But Sokolli Pasha was well prepared for such an event. At once he sent a single messenger with the news in an encoded message from the camp at Szigeth. That man and another brought the word to Sofija within the week. I had been posted in Sofija, never out of sight of my horse, for months, and I did my best to carry the word as quickly yet as silently as possible here, to Constantinople, which, Allah willing, I have accomplished. Another single man met me at the gate and took it on to Kutahiya. This ring I have of your lord allowed me to stay here, enjoying your hospitality, in a place where I would not be dogged constantly for news of the front, news which, if I was tempted to tell it, could be very dangerous indeed.

  “Now, as to how Sokolli Pasha managed the plot there on the front, I will tell you what I know. He and the two physicians in attendance were the only souls who witnessed the death. I have been told the Grand Vizier himself strangled the physicians, but I personally do not think that possible. It is hard enough to keep one dead body a secret, but three?

  “I think he simply refused to allow the doctors to leave the tent. He slept, guarding them, on the floor beside the dead Sultan’s bed. The physicians applied embalming salts, I believe, and the cold of approaching winter in the mountains was with Sokolli Pasha to slow the rotting of his master’s flesh. But for living flesh willingly to join in that chill is discipline indeed.

  “To the men outside, the Grand Vizier announced, ‘Our master is ill. He is resting.’ When food was brought for the lord, Sokolli Pasha and the physicians partook of the small portions of a sick man so even the cooks would not suspect.

  “And though all the army had to be kept at a dis
tance for the ruse to work, Sokolli Pasha went out almost hourly with messages for the troops. These were messages he himself had penned, but which read like the words of the Sultan. They spoke encouragement and fire for the Faith. They contained orders for forays and astute maneuvers to weaken the enemy.

  “Sometimes the dead body of the Sultan was painted with cinnabar to give it more life. It was propped up stiffly and, through a gauze curtain, seen by those outside to be watching the progress of the siege with interest and eternal determination.

  “Well, I have since learned that within two days of the death, the fortress was taken and victory won. The dead Suleiman, through Sokolli Pasha, praised and thanked his men and handed out gifts to those who had been particularly valiant, as had always been his generous wont in life. Then the order was given that, to avoid the dangerous snows, retreat would be made from Europe until another year. Slowly, and with as much order and discipline as when they had set out with their Sultan alive, the army began following his carriage home, that carriage which, still unknown to them, had become his hearse. Every night, the Sultan’s tent was pitched and the physicians carried him into it on a stretcher to rest, and back to the carriage come daylight.

  “Allah willing that all continues thus smoothly, Selim should meet the army in Belgrade. Only then will rumors be allowed to leak out and proofs given. Only then, when a new Sultan is there to take over command from the corpse of his father, and receive the oaths of loyalty from his men.”

  “Allah willing, it will all come about as you say,” I amen-ed the remarkable young spahi before me.

  “Amen indeed,” he said, breathing a sigh, “though it grieves me that I shall have to take leave of this lovely home tomorrow morning to ride north with further intelligence.”

  “It is indeed a pity,” I said, able to speak now for myself as well as my mistress.

  When I returned to her, “He reminds me so much of you,” Esmikhan confessed, trying to laugh at her tears.