The Reign of the Favored Women

by Ann Chamberlin

  I knew she spoke truthfully. And how many times had she made similar reproaches but I had been too driven on my course to hear? I heard now and saw besides what two months of lonely grief had done to her. She’d lost weight markedly, and this was not just from the holy month of fasting. Yet the loss of weight seemed no more geared to getting her up off her cushions than the gaining of it had been. The deflated flesh sagged back onto those supports as if it was too weak and lifeless to ever budge again.

  This was the woman I’d married. In a mystical, symbolic sense, yes, it was true. She was incomplete without me, and my life had no meaning without her. It had been that way since I’d first knelt at her side and answered her question, “What is he like, this man I must give my body to?”

  “There’s no man I’d rather be a slave to,” had been my reply and with those words, we’d become slaves together, yet together, freer than that man who owned us, who’d never learned how to need another and was now dead.

  I knelt beside her once again, oblivious of the crowd in the room with their gossip and needlework. I took her little hand in mine, her stumpy little hand that was now like five little half-stuffed white sausages, and promised her, “No more revenge, by Allah.”

  “Thank you, Abdullah,” she said, and smiled as if it were a rare new practice. She closed her eyes and laid back on her pillow, perhaps to take her first sleep in two months.

  I rose to leave her thus, but then stopped to ask after Gul Ruh. “I don’t see her in the room.”

  “No. She doesn’t spend much time with us old ladies. You know that.”

  Yes, I had known that before, at home. But here in the palace, where did she go?

  “I don’t know. But you’ll find her. I know you’ll take care of her for me, Abdullah.” Esmikhan slept.

  I had no idea of all the nooks and crannies, rooftops and cellars the renewed palace might provide for a young woman to hide in. And she’d had two full months in which to find the very best one. My few inquiries were met with cither a shrug or (and my heart pounded with sudden fear) “Gul Ruh? Who is she? Is she that short dumpy girl the Lady Safiye has laying out her clothes these days? No, I didn’t even know we had a girl called Gul Ruh.”

  It rapidly became clear that my young mistress had spent very little time with her mother and the others in Safiye’s main room since her arrival.

  I knew no other plan of action than to start at the farthest kiosk and work my way from top to bottom throughout all the harem looking with the eyes of a child. I had done this once before: I remembered the terrible fire and prayed God might allow me to find her so unharmed as on that first occasion. If she should be found with her cousin Muhammed again, that would have very different implications this time than last. But I knew very few people for whom those implications would be all together bad. Still, some of the horrible panic of that ancient .search came back to me and I moved as quickly as I could without, I hoped, jeopardizing any thoroughness.

  I entered a part of the palace I’d never been before. A drafty hall ran between slaves’ dormitories deserted now in favor of the braziers and blankets in the main rooms downstairs. Then I heard something that made me forget all about Gul Ruh.

  I heard a couple murmuring Persian - the language of love—between themselves as a native tongue. Most of it I understood simply because there are words well-known to one even with a cursory know ledge of the love poets.

  “No, no. Please, no,” she said.

  “Why?” asked he.

  “He will know.”

  “He will not know. How should he even guess? There is no danger of children…”

  “But we can’t. You—”

  “My love, I have told you before. The cutter was merciful. Most merciful. I can still give us both the greatest of pleasure. Much greater than you’ve ever known with that old man. The pleasure of the open roses in the gardens of Harun ar-Rashid.”

  Here I heard her give a little deep throated groan. I think the word pleasure in Persian is so construed of both light and dark sounds that even a stone would find itself constricted at the mere whisper, “pleasure”.

  “But perhaps the knife was not so merciful after all,” he continued, with a note of angry frustration in his voice. “lf only you knew what I have endured all these months. So close to you and yet so far.”

  “My love, my diamond, my jewel. Don’t you think I have endured it, too? By Allah, yes. But we must not. It is our Fate. It is not to be. Not yet. Wait until I am free and then…”

  “You will go back to Persia and I—I will still be here in the belly of the heretic beast.”

  “No, no. I have wealthy family and friends in Persia. We will raise your ransom.”

  “And we shall live happily ever after with ‘our’ children, another man’s sons?”

  “Yes. That is the bargain my brother bought with his martyr’s blood.”

  “But have you seen her make any move to fulfill her side of the bargain?”

  “No, not yet. But she will, I know. When Murad dies. Even she dare not move until Muhammed is safe upon the throne.”

  “Allah grant it may be tomorrow.”

  “Hush now. I shall have to be going soon or I shall be missed. Recite just one more verse and then we must say good-bye.”

  The man obeyed, dropping his voice for the recitation until I could no longer hear the individual words. Still, I guessed it must be that most common of love poems, Khayyam’s Rubiyat. The couple was clearly far gone in love, needing neither the new nor the turgid to spur them on.

  “With me along the strip of herbage strown

  That just divides the desert from the sown

  Where name of Slave and Sultan is forgot...

  Look to the blowing Rose about us—‘Lo,

  Laughing,’ she says, ‘into the world I blow,

  At once the silken tassel of my Purse

  Tear and its treasure on the garden throw...”

  He did not come to the end of his verse before she interrupted him with their own refrain again.

  “No, no. Please, love, no.”

  “Why? Oh, why?”

  “He will know.”

  “He will not know...”

  By now I had followed the voices to their source. Setting my ear against the closed door to confirm it, I then quietly lifted the latch and slipped in. Why I did not make my presence known at once and run instead of slip along quietly to stop that thing, I shall never know. Perhaps they were so far gone that the lack of control reached out and strangled me as well. But I must also plead how startled I was—there, in the Sultan’s harem! Such a thing had never been seen or even thought before, and both the horror and the unknown of it gave rise to a stumbling confusion.

  I was standing in the doorway of a long, dark dormitory, lined on either side by the pallets of the slaves, as regular as janissaries on review. The occupied bed stood out at once, as will a soldier with his bandolier askew. It was about two-thirds down on the left-hand side and I suspect it had been chosen because the clerestory of windows above skipped it with its light. Yet, one could guess how long it had been since the choice had been made, for half the pallet now caught the slant of the midwinter sun.

  That weak light was more than enough to allow me to pick out the figure of the woman. She lay on her back and I noticed for the first time a curious, distinctive sort of roundness to her chin, pierced in the center by a dimple. Her caplet was gone and her amber-colored hair was a pillow of fire beneath her head. One elbow was up as that hand luxuriated in that hair. It also served to elongate and emphasize the breast on that side.

  The top buttons of her waist-cinching jacket had been undone and the undershirt loosened enough to leave the breasts loose, low mounds rounded by their own weight but with startling peaks of nipple in high contraction. These the dark head of her partner bent from time to time to nuzzle until she groaned aloud and pushed that head away.

  Then I could see that die belt of her shalvar was loose as well.<
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  All of this I saw in a flash, and in that same flash recognized who the couple were. Although the man had died his outer, identifying robes and was still in deep shadow, the fact that the woman was Safiye s Mitra meant he could ooh be one—Nur Banu’s Persian eunuch.

  In that same moment, he suddenly shed the last of his garments. He did so in a sine, rapid movement. But as the man’s site of generation still hovered over her shoulders, the young woman gasped to see what existed where only atrophy should be. He was kneeling astride her, but in die half a blink while his garment was still in the air, she managed to work herself free from that straddle with a reflexive shudder. Now his arms were free at last. They caught her shalvar and draped them down about her knees so she could not stand, but stumbled to the ground again. On all fours now, Mitra tried to crawl away down the aisle between the ranks of beds.

  Her escape would have been hopeless, but I came alive. I rushed and shouted at them as if they were dogs copulating in the street. And as one rushes at dogs, I picked up a pitcher of ice-cold water on my way. Before any of us knew what had happened, I’d dashed them with it.

  The sounds that followed were as loud as they were inhuman. Nur Banu’s eunuch bellowed like a bull. I met him with equally vehement curses, and the woman cried and squealed and caterwauled like a stuck pig.

  I must have been almost as startled and dazed as they, for the next thing I realized, the eunuch was coming at me with a heavy brass ewer and murder in his eye. I hedged around until I’d put myself between that threat and the girl, but I could do little more. One blow I deflected with my pitcher, but it was only cheap pottery and it shattered in a thousand sharp-edged pieces all over the beds and the floor around us. Though I raised a now-empty hand against it, the next blow landed square on my right temple and brought me to my knees. The strength of those arms certainly had nothing effeminate about it.

  My head seemed to burst with the blare of trumpets and my vision narrowed with popping circles and stars. In all that colliding mass of sensations, there was only space for one image to penetrate. By all that is in the earth, but it was a bizarre one! His member—on which indeed there were the scars of a cutter’s knife, but very faint and shallow—let loose at that moment and sent milky ribbons of fertility floating down on every side. I was grateful for the next blow, brought down with the anger of orgasm, that blanked me away from my senses altogether.

  I came almost immediately to see again. From my curious perspective on the ground I saw the naked Persian drop his weapon and stagger backwards helplessly. I thought I must be dreaming or that he had already dealt me the death blow and I had gone beyond, for I could make no sense of this. Then I saw a great pair of hands about his neck that were not his own and, as he sank beneath their throttle, the grim, flattened face of Ghazanfer Agha rose behind him, the very image of Death.

  In a moment, blue blood filled the Persian’s face and Ghazanfer Agha tossed him to the floor, lifeless as a bundle of rags. The Hungarian was in a quandary then, whether to come to my aid—and masses of blood from my head made my wounds seem worse than they actually were—or to do his duty first and go to the sobbing young woman. But by then the noise had brought most of the rest of the harem running up to see and there were plenty of arms for both of us. Ghazanfer Agha made his choice and he chose me, grunting between his teeth as he carried me to one of the pallets, “I knew we couldn’t trust the product of Mu’awiya the Red’s knife.”

  Quickly my head was stanched and wrapped and a few other cuts I’d received from falling on the shattered crockery were seen to as well with uncommon gentleness.

  “I’ll be all right now,” I said, attempting to get up.

  “No, you’d better just lie still,” said the giant Hungarian.

  I protested again. “I can at least make it to my own room and let these girls straighten up here.”

  I indicated the hovering slaves who were actually doing more staring and whispering than straightening. They found a loved-on bed a wonderful anomaly—as if it were a meteorite landed in their midst and guaranteed to give beauty and fertility. Others were examining the ewer, fingering its new dents as if by so doing they could inject some passion into their own dull lives. Ghazanfer looked at them and then nodded and helped me to my feet, taking most of the weight upon himself.

  At the door among the crowd still standing and staring, I saw Gul Ruh. I smiled to reassure her all would be well, then managed to raise my free hand up and lay it on her head.

  “What are you doing here, little one?” I asked, trying to laugh. It was, after all, looking for her that I had found myself in this mess. “This is no sight for your young eyes.”

  She took my hand gratefully in hers and proceeded to walk downstairs beside me. In spite of the fact that if it hadn’t been for Ghazanfer Agha, I probably would have gotten myself killed, I was the hero of the hour and she was delighted to be seen with me. But a squeeze of her hand brought other values to my mind. Dear Abdullah, it seemed to say. I know you would do the same or more for me, to save me from a union I do not desire.

  L

  Before my pain-racked body reached my room, the Persian’s was in the sea. The rites of Islam were not disgraced by application to him.

  Mitra had been helped to her room, too, and was cleaned up a bit. But then she was deserted to wonder about her fate in solitude. She called to see her two little boys, but their nurses would not even allow them to enter the room of one whom the head eunuch might condemn to death at any moment.

  Kislar Agha, “the head of the girls,” was Nur Banu’s creature and should not have hesitated a moment before fetching Mitra out and sending her to join her lover at the bottom of the sea. Indeed, there were few of us who ever doubted that the false eunuch had been acting under the Queen Mother’s orders every luring step of his way.

  Nur Banu must have told him, “Come, today is the day. I order it. She is over her impurity from the birth of her last son and is attracting the Sultan again. You must disgrace her today or live forever disgraced in my eye.”

  And perhaps she had even given him a pepper infusion to quicken his blood and rubbed his privates with honey and nettle to coddle and enflame them before he left her that morning. He may not have known how greatly his life was at risk. But Nur Banu knew.

  A refined, white Persian eunuch from the knife of Mu’awiya the Red did not come cheaply. Nonetheless, that was a sacrifice the Queen Mother made willingly to rid herself of the greatest threat to her power—that Persian girl of Safiye’s. That girl’s poetry had won her two sons from the loins of the master and she had been invited back yet again over the most beautiful Circassian the Valide Sultan could muster. So Nur Banu had paid the price of such a eunuch and surely she would do all in her power to see she got what she’d paid for—even after the man was dead.

  But Safiye, too, had her means. She must have worked quickly the moment she sensed what was afoot up in the slave’s dormitory. Overstepping the head black eunuch, she burst in on the Sultan and several of his companions, her veilless state indicating a grief on the edge of insanity that could not be ignored. But she had the sense to keep the news to herself until the strangers had been excused so the word would get no further than those ears that commanded life and death in all the Empire.

  “Our fair Mitra whom you love so dearly, the mother of two of your sons, has been foully attacked in your own harem. She has been attacked by one your own mother dared to introduce to thwart your honor and dignity in the guise of a eunuch. By the merciful will of Allah, one of my most diligent khuddam was able to stop and kill the man before the deed was actually done. Come to the room and see for yourself his accursed seed spilled on the floor. There is none, by the mercy of Allah, on her.

  “The man has paid with his life as is only well and just, but there are those who would condemn Mitra as well. Lord, think of the love she bears you—and you for her. Think of the two little sons she has given you, bright, healthy boys to carry your name and your
glory to the ends of the earth when you—Allah forbid—are gone. Should they be condemned to the shadow of motherlessness at such an early age for no sin on their mother’s part at all?

  “Finally, think of her poetry, her beautiful voice, that caressing she gives that most romantic of tongues learned at her mother’s knee. Could you live with yourself knowing you had denied the world that pleasure?”

  No, Murad found in his heart that he could not. Nur Banu was not to be totally unsatisfied, however. Mitra was banished from the imperial presence for one full year. But Murad made the decree as if he himself were to blame and it was penitence laid to his own head.

  Safiye could not have been more pleased under the circumstances. She made plans at once for the woman to be sent to the fresh, open air of the palace in Edirne where her sons would grow healthy and strong and all three of them would be far from Nur Banu’s intrigue. Safiye also arranged for musicians and poets to accompany the party and for a courier to go up there once a week with word of the latest in literary fashion and the Sultan’s personal taste.

  Though a year is a terribly long time in the short life of a concubine—-her glamour may easily fade in that period—it is not so very long in the life of a reciter of poetry. And, as the separation decree was couched in such terms of personal denial by the Sultan, it was easy to imagine that their reunion would be a passionate and enduring one when it happened—if a weakness in Murad’s resolve did not cause it to happen sooner.

  All of this Safiye had seen to before she bothered to go and tell Mitra of her reprieve. Relief quite made the poor woman swoon, but as soon as she was brought to her senses, she was on the floor again, on her face in deep gratitude and humility before the mistress who had saved her life.

  “How shall I ever be able to thank you?” she asked Safiye.

  “Dear child, your life is all the thanks I need,” Safiye replied. She smiled and, taking the younger woman’s face in her hands, kissed her tenderly on each cheek. “And remember, I still have part of a bargain coming to you—your freedom on the day Murad should die.”