The Legacy of Grazia dei Rossi

by Jacqueline Park

  “When I got your note this morning, I asked myself why, after so many absent days, is the princess coming to be with me on this day of beauty of all days? Could it be that she is finally getting ready to take her place in the world as a woman? Is she, at last, ready to leave her childhood behind? Could this be a first step toward womanhood? The thought makes me very happy” — a slight squeeze of the hand — “and it is sure to please your father.” Then, with a signal to the Amazon to help her down from the high table, “Now let us go and be cleaned and perfumed.”

  Taking the girl’s hand as a friend might, or a sister, she led the princess into the heart of the hamam, the tepidarium, where their bodies would be soaped, scraped, and sluiced with water, an especially lengthy process since the water had to be tipped from a series of sinks that lined one wall of the room and carried, basin by basin, to be poured over the prone bodies of the women on the marble couches. It certainly would not have challenged the ability of the royal plumbers to have bathtubs installed in which to perform this procedure, but everyone knew that bathtubs were where jinns and evil spirits liked to hide out. And so the two women endured the lengthy showering patiently, thus guaranteeing their safe departure from the rinsing room un-hexed and un-cursed.

  Next came a gracious gift from the Sultana to her stepdaughter: the offer of a rose-petal rub, fresh rose petals being the luxury of the few who could afford them. Now, rubbed to a fragrant rosy pink, the Sultana and her stepdaughter entered arm in arm into the finishing room where the hairdressers and the nail dyers worked their magic.

  Here, Saida lent herself happily to the art of the hairdresser who shampooed her hair with fresh eggs, smoothed it with butter, and twisted it around rags into a mop of shining curls. Of the cosmetics, she did not avail herself. Her grandmother had strictly forbidden her to use skin-whitening paste or kohl or henna. Although the Valide herself had used henna to cover her grey hair and color her nails and routinely rimmed her eyes with black kohl, these things, she insisted, were tools for old women who wanted to look young, not for girls in the bloom of youth. And, out of respect, the princess continued to abide by her grandmother’s dictum.

  But the Sultana was under no such interdict — nothing but the full menu of cosmetics for her. First, her face was covered with a masque of almond and egg yolks, then bleached with a jasmine and almond paste. Then, a masque of henna for the hair and nails and a thick line in India ink to draw her eyebrows together. Last, beaten egg whites to banish the lines at the outside corners of her eyes. And this was only the basic beauty treatment. Still to come, to be applied at the last possible minute before coming face to face with the Sultan, a powder of ground-up pearls and lapis would be applied to the eyelids, a black beauty patch placed high on the cheek, and the invaluable kohl stick would turn the eyes into pools of moonlight. Hürrem’s eyes were transformed into pools of moonlight just thinking of it. And, at her side, glancing into the rotunda mirror at her own shiny curls, Saida decided that, on balance and compared with other afternoons she had spent in the Sultana’s hamam, this one had come to a good end.

  It was in this spirit that she turned to Hürrem to thank her and bid her goodbye.

  “You will not stay to sup with me?” The mouth took on a tight edge. “I have ordered a delicious pilaf because I know it to be your favorite dish.”

  Saida’s apologies were profuse. “If only I could.” She sighed. “But, sadly, I have ordered my house steward to have my horses at the palace gates in good time to get me home before evening prayers. He is waiting for me as we speak.”

  But Hürrem was not one to be thwarted by a mere steward. “Let him wait,” she ordered. Then, in a more conciliatory tone: “I fear that you don’t eat enough.” She leaned over to pinch Saida’s thigh. “Skin and bones.” Then, in an intimate whisper: “Men don’t like skinny women. If you were living here with us, we would put some meat on those bones.”

  It took only a breath to fill the silence that followed with more words. “Now about this steward who is waiting at the gate, I feel it is my duty to remind you, since your grandmother, may she rest in heaven, is no longer with us, that we are not meant to serve the convenience of slaves. It is they who serve at our pleasure.”

  “Just what my grandmother used to say when she felt I was being indulgent with Narcissus,” Saida concurred.

  “Wise woman.” The Sultana nodded her approval.

  “She was especially concerned that I be well trained in household management,” the girl went on. “One of the maxims she handed down to me is that on any day that you entrust a slave with a sum of money to spend on your behalf, you must insist that a complete accounting be rendered before the setting of the sun. ‘Delay is fatal,’ she used to say. ‘It is in the nature of coins to disappear in the dark.’”

  This time, it was the Sultana who remained silent and the princess who filled the silence that followed.

  “Earlier today,” she continued, “I sent my steward to the bazaar with a good sum of money to make some purchases, while I was attending the hamam. At that time, remembering my grandmother’s wise words, I ordered him to come and fetch me home in good time so that he could make an accounting of his expenditures and return the unspent coins before supper time.”

  “Of course.” A veteran of the battle of wills, Hürrem easily recognized when she had irretrievably lost a point. She also knew how to turn defeat to her advantage.

  “Very well, I will let you off tonight,” she conceded. “But I must insist that you rejoin me tomorrow morning in my kitchens. I have a surprise for you. Here is a clue. What day is tomorrow?”

  “Friday,” Saida answered readily, into the game in spite of herself.

  “And what happens on Fridays?”

  Fridays were the days that the Sultan rode through the streets of Istanbul to say his evening prayers at the mosque in the sight of all. But tomorrow the Sultan would still be marching toward the capital. Saida racked her brain but could not think of another important Friday event.

  “I will tell you.” The Sultana had regained her good temper and was enjoying the game. “Friday is the day that the camels come down from Cyprus bearing the ice for the sherbet. I am going to prepare the secret syrup that I use to make sherbets for my Sultan. You know how he dotes on my sherbets.”

  And, indeed, the princess had heard praise for the lady’s ices from her father’s lips on more than one occasion.

  “For the first time” — Hürrem leaned forward confidentially — “I intend to share that secret with another woman. You!”

  Herself an inveterate pursuer of secrets, the Sultana simply could not imagine anyone whose head would not be turned by being one of only two women in the world to know a secret way to bring light to a sultan’s eye.

  As she watched the princess’s fleet, slim figure make off to find her steward, the lady could not help but congratulate herself on finally having found a tidbit to brighten the dull, listless eyes of the pale princess. And as Saida bounced along through the streets of the capital to her safe haven in the Old Palace, her eyes were indeed sparkling. And her cheeks flushed. But her head was not filled with thoughts of sherbet recipes. What she was seeing in her mind’s eye was a cloaked figure jumping down from a rock ledge in response to a signal — two long, two short — from an approaching caique. Strong legs, broad shoulders, a mass of gold curls, a pair of blue eyes, and, after months of longing for it and dreaming of it, the embrace of the only man she would ever love.

  57

  THE TRYST

  Two long. Two short.

  Before the signal was completed, the shadowy figure on the rock ledge had dropped down to the dock and stood poised to board the caique that slid in, sleek as a swan, with its great gilt falcon, symbol of the House of Osman, rising upwards, wings spread as if to fly to the heavens. Without breaking the rhythm of the oarsmen, the princess’s steward, Narcissus, reached out a hand
to help the waiting passenger onto the narrow deck of the craft. Once aboard, the passenger disappeared so silently through the curtains of the center cabin that anyone watching could believe the whole scene to be imagined.

  In the past, Danilo had negotiated this move on many such nights, occasionally boarding very small vessels, sometimes larger ones, but never one as imposing as this one. Powered by eight oarsmen, four at the fore and four astern, its curtained cabin was softly padded, its floor and walls strewn with pillows, like a floating canopied bed.

  Danilo smelled Saida before he reached out to touch her cheek, her chin, her rose-scented breast, then locked his arms around her as they sank into the pillows. By unspoken agreement, they did not speak but simply clung to each other wordless, as if only the flesh was powerful enough to verify that they were together at last.

  It had been over a year since they last met. They were, as always, slaves to the clock, and all too soon a shrill blast of the caique’s whistle shattered their golden moment.

  “Enough!” Saida held up her hand. “No more time for kisses. We have the caique for only an hour.”

  “Only one hour?” This was even a shorter break than usual.

  “One hour is more time than I dreamed of,” she responded. “I had given up all hope of ever seeing you again. But with Narcissus’s help, we may have one more night before we say goodbye forever.”

  “Goodbye? We have hardly had a chance to say hello.”

  “We always knew it would have to end.” She patted his cheek gently. “And now the end has come. The moment my father sets foot in his selamlik, he will be met by the damat that Hürrem has selected for me. All he need do to give my marriage his assent is touch the shoulder of the husband she has picked for me. And he will give it, be sure of that. The new Sultana has great influence on him. Give her credit. This damat is well chosen. He is an admiral, loyal and seasoned. At least he has his own teeth . . .” Her brave attempt at a joke sputtered out and she burst into tears. “I promised myself I would not cry.”

  “What if I told you there was hope for us?” He reached over to touch her cheek. “Would that stop your tears?”

  “I would say what I always say to you: my destiny was written on the stars the day I was born. The pearls have been sewn on my wedding veil. The Sultana has found a palace for me to live in. Nothing can stop this marriage from taking place.”

  “What if I tell you that something has happened to stop it?”

  “This is not a story in a French romance, Danilo.”

  “At least give me a chance to tell you my news,” he pleaded. Taking her silence for assent, he reached out and cradled her in the crook of his arm. “This is a story about an avalanche in the Zagros Mountains,” he began. “About being sealed into a mountainous pass. About the threat to our entire army of death by starvation. About your brave father, the Sultan. He was like a beacon — always shining. He organized what he called ‘the greatest hunt in the history of the world.’ With him leading the way, we killed enough wild animals to feed an army twice our size. He saved us from starvation.”

  Her eyes lit up. “Bravo, Papa!” she whispered.

  This was all the encouragement he needed to continue. “But that is only half of the story. The struggle was over, we thought. We had even offered up prayers of thanks for our salvation. But as we began to pack up, we were attacked at the edge of the forest by a pack of wild beasts. That is when . . .” He paused and took a deep breath. There was no other way to say it: “I saved your father’s life.”

  “You what?”

  “I saved the Sultan’s life.”

  She shook her head in disbelief. “Is this true?”

  “Do I lie?”

  She took a moment to consider, then slowly shook her head.“No, you are no fabulist. If you say you saved my father’s life, I believe you. Tell me what happened.”

  And so he did, trying his best not to make himself out to be the hero of his story and succeeding only in further endearing him to her by his modesty. By the time he was done, the cloud of sadness had lifted from her face.

  “My hero!” She held out her arms.

  Now he was the one to resist. “Wait. The best is yet to come. The day I parted company with the Sultan, he gave me his undertaking to grant me anything within his power. ‘If the day comes when you need anything from me,’ were his exact words, ‘you need only call on me, and if it is within my power your wish will be granted.’ Well, the time has come. And on the day your father returns to his capital, I will seek audience and ask for your hand in marriage.”

  For once in her life, Princess Saida was rendered speechless. This time she did not open her arms to him. Instead she withdrew to the far end of her seat and began to chew on her thumbnail thoughtfully.

  “Time is short. You must be quick and clever.” The little general had taken over. “It will not be easy for you to speak to my father alone. Once Hürrem has her hands on him she will never leave his side.”

  She tapped her fingers against her head as if ordering her brain to invent a strategy. And to be sure, within moments she had found one. “What if I make her a part of our plan? What if I get her to beg the audience for me?”

  “How can you do that?” Danilo was genuinely bewildered.

  But Saida was, as she said, “a graduate of the harem,” where strategies were part of the curriculum. “What if I tell her that I agree to marry her candidate but that I want my father to hear it from me?” As the plan materialized in her brain she talked more and more quickly. “I am invited to her kitchen tomorrow for a cooking lesson. While we cook, I will tell her of my intention and ask her to arrange an audience for me, alone, with my father. She will be pleased to do it. She wants this marriage very much.”

  This line of thinking was so foreign to Danilo’s nature, he found it hard to follow. “Why?” he asked. “Why should she care which man you marry?”

  “Maybe she plans to use me and my damat against the Grand Vizier in the council. Who knows? What is important is that I think I can persuade her to arrange an immediate audience with my father.” She clapped her hands like a child. And with a smile of ravishing delight, she leaned in toward him. “You are truly my paladin, come to save me after all. Kiss me.”

  As he leaned forward obediently, a newly soft voice whispered in his ear, “And tonight you will get your reward.”

  58

  SHERBET

  Because she had to make arrangements with her steward for the evening ahead, Princess Saida got a late start on the Sultana’s culinary session at Topkapi. To make matters worse, her litter was brought to a standstill halfway up to Palace Point by the crowds gathered to witness the semi-annual ice delivery from Mount Olympus. For some reason, the citizens of the capital never ceased to be amazed by the icemen from the frozen north. In the temperate climate of Istanbul, they were an exotic novelty with their snowy turbans, frosty eyebrows, the blankets of furs they were wrapped in, and the dangling ice crystals that hung from their beards and earlobes like cascading diamond drops. Whenever they came to town, admiring onlookers lined the streets wondering at the frosty cavalcade of donkeys and wagons piled high with huge flannel-wrapped blocks of ice, dug out of pits many miles away, to be stored in deep caverns all over the town for the pleasure of the sherbet-loving Turks. Sherbet was, beyond doubt, the favorite sweet of the inhabitants of the city, rich and poor, in all seasons.

  Like her fellow townspeople, Princess Saida relished the cool, refreshing sweet and had to admit to herself that, foolish though she knew it was, she wouldn’t mind learning Hürrem’s secret of concocting a sherbet to please a king.

  As she tapped her toe impatiently against the stool at her feet, she licked her lips as if to recall the taste of the delicacy, and the memory turned her mind to the woman behind the recipe she was about to learn. Living in her grandmother’s suite in the harem, the princess had b
een on hand from the beginning to witness Hürrem’s astonishing transformation from concubine to queen. Marooned in the sea of humanity that blocked the progress of her litter, Princess Saida amused herself by tracing the Sultana’s ascent of the Ottoman ladder step by step.

  Hürrem’s first moves were unexceptional. As a neophyte concubine she simply emulated the tried-and-tested route taken by countless slave girls before her to attract the Sultan’s attention. From her first day in the harem she was an eager student of the arts taught to these girls to enhance their charms. Although not endowed by nature with a talent for music and dancing, she attended those classes as conscientiously as she did the ones devoted to cosmetics, skin care, costume, and hairdressing. But the first purchase she made from the Jewish bundle-women who supplied the needs and wants of the harem girls was an expensive illustrated manuscript of instructions on the varieties of sexual positions — more than sixty — to intensify the pleasures of intercourse. And no matter what temptations there were to laze the hours away, as most of the Sultan’s girls did, Hürrem could always be found at the end of the day curled up in her bedroll with her copy of The Perfumed Garden, a local version of the Kama Sutra. One evening Saida had accidentally come upon the girl, believing herself unobserved, lying flat on her back, her legs apart, her knees bent toward her chest, muttering aloud as she proceeded to enact the moves described in the manuscript:

  “Her legs stretched, she lies down on her right side. He gets behind her and places one of his thighs on hers and the other one between her legs. With his saliva he lubricates his member and starts rubbing it on her vagina and anus; when he reaches a point close to ejaculation he pushes to the nearest hole speedily. But since anal intercourse is wickedness he must save his semen for the proper destination.”

  Never having been exposed to anything like this before, Saida could not tear herself away as the concubine went on. “In a stooped position she waits for her man. When he is there she starts her behind to dancing slowly, then faster . . .”