The Reign of the Favored Women

by Ann Chamberlin

  “Pray it may be a girl,” he said fiercely, “then Safiye may forget your threat and not spend the rest of her days pursuing you.”

  Mitra stood up firmly from the sedan. “I will not go without my sons,” she said one more time.

  “Your sons are the next to greet the new Sultan,” Ghazanfer said. “Muhammed has decreed he wants them and all the young princes circumcised today.”

  “But that is nonsense.” Mitra smiled, stretching the dimple out of her chin. “Princes are not circumcised without a party, a celebration...”

  “Yes.” Ghazanfer said no more. There was no need for more.

  It was not a religious man with a razor, but the deaf mutes with the silken cords that met the young princes in the circumcision pavilion. There were twenty in all who survived their father. The nineteen youngest were buried next to him in miniature little mounds by the mosque before the soil of his own grave had lost its clammy moistness.

  As for Mitra, she did not have long either to mourn or regret. On the chance that their children might be male and threats to the throne, she and six other members of the harem in various stages of the same condition were rowed out to sea by night. Here they were stuffed in weighted sacks and sent to the bottom whence divers retrieved tales for years to come, tales of seven sacks waving like seaweed in the current: this one trailing an amber curl, this one a hand the late Sultan had kissed so fondly and decked with an emerald ring.

  Her sisters went down cursing the she-devil whom they had trusted as their guardian and mistress and a thousand bargains broken. Mitra, I was told, recited poetry. Her final bubbles formed the shape of Allah’s all-encompassing hand. And sometimes, they said, the current moaned in the tones of a Persian poem.

  That evening after he’d wept over his brothers’ corpses, laid out in size and age from Mitra’s eldest to the youngest infant but three months old, Muhammed took to his bed a pair of the girls from the Golden Way. They were the two who had been most coy and artfully hid their faces to catch his fancy. The next night it was...

  But I forget them all after that. And it doesn’t really matter. To the outside world, a new reign had begun. But within, we still had Safiye.

  LXVII

  As his Grand Vizier, at the suggestion of his mother and his sister, Allah chose Ferhad Pasha. My lady Esmikhan made the supreme effort on one occasion to be carried and hauled up the narrow stairs to join Safiye in the Eye of the Sultan to see her beloved at work in the Divan. After that she protested that affairs of state had no interest for her and that she was uncomfortable to be so close to the world of men.

  I suspect these were just catchphrases anyone would accept to hide the real cause of her refusals. And the real cause was that peering down on the man through the Sultan’s Eye was too reminiscent of the first day she’d seen him, wet and exhausted fi-om his three days’ ride. It was similar, and yet too different.

  For she was no longer the young woman she had been to bloom like a rose at the first touch of the sun. And he was a man married to someone else. There was grey now beneath his beard, a dignified carriage and a caution brought on by weariness, perhaps. There was a definite and deep weariness in his eyes that had never been there before.

  Safiye was his mother-in-law.

  Then, too, the masculine form that had given Esmikhan the most exquisite of joys now wore the green robes of a grand vizier. It was the same costume she had seen so often on Sokolli Pasha. To look upon that costume was almost to look upon a second cuckolding. And now that she, too, wore streaks of grey, the all-justifying passion of youth seemed but an uncomfortable foolishness. She didn’t like to think of her love in such terms, so she never went again.

  In spring, when word came that the snow had cleared from the mountain passes, Ferhad Pasha left at the head of the army to war in Hungary against a coalition of Austrians and Germans. Ibrahim Pasha was temporarily elevated to take his place in the Divan.

  And then it was heard that, hardly at the borders of Bulgaria, the janissaries had revolted.

  Among the measures Ferhad Pasha took in the field to put down the rebellion was to exile two of the army’s leaders whom he felt were responsible. This move infuriated Safiye, for those men were her protégés, sure to do her will even when Ferhad would not. One of them, in fact, she had been grooming for the post of Grand Vizier when Ferhad should become dispensable. I suspect the man had grown tired of waiting, as ambitious men will.

  But other news grieved my own lady more. It was said that in his wrath, Ferhad cursed the unruly troops and swore by Allah that no janissary should ever have the virility to get a child again until the Judgment Day. Whether the report was true or not, Esmikhan took the words to heart and rode them up and down through all possible double meanings meant just for her.

  Ferhad wished that he, too, as a young soldier had never gotten a child. Or he wished to berate Sokolli, dead and in his grave, forever allowing the men to marry. Esmikhan thought this unworthy of the man she loved. My lady and this man had not spoken to one another for a quarter of a century, and yet his words still had such power to move her.

  In the Divan, this report was also taken seriously. The janissaries, even in rebellion, were the might and power of the Empire, the right hand of Allah. The power of their arm was equal to the power of their other parts and to curse either was tantamount to cursing the future of the Empire and Islam as a whole. It was treason; worse, it was blasphemy. Ibrahim Pasha was immediately sent with a contingent to find out if the rumor was true. Ibrahim assumed from the first that it was and would find what he looked for. What Safiye promised he might find. He went to depose Ferhad and to claim the post of Grand Vizier for himself.

  Only my constant trips from my lady to Safiye and then of Safiye’s eunuchs to the Sultan’s private apartments finally got the precious firmen written and sent. Ferhad was under no circumstances to be killed.

  When the message was received on the front lines, Ferhad Pasha and a few of his faithful troops were holed up in a manor that was his personal property. The smell of blood had brought most of the janissaries in line—behind Ibrahim—and they had Ferhad Pasha totally encircled. Grudgingly, Ibrahim complied with the firmen. And that was the last word we had.

  * * *

  Some few nights later I was awakened. Darkness was thick and heavy everywhere I looked, but what had disturbed my sleep I could not tell. All I could hear were the sounds of my colleagues asleep in the little cubicles around me. Their snores and sighs drifted in and out of the open windows like moths in search of light in which to immolate themselves.

  Suddenly, something knocked against the edge of my bed. It knocked again and then would not stop, shaking things with such a violence that the corners of the earth seemed to roar.

  “Who is it? What do you want? Stop it!” I wanted to cry, but by the time the words had formed, I realized it was no mortal hand and no attack against me personally, but the hand of Allah shaking all the earth as if it were no more than a feather bolster and He a housewife giving a thorough cleaning.

  I did not move from where I was. It would be useless in any case, for if I did manage once to get to my feet, the earth would drop from beneath them between steps. And where should I go if I could walk? The violence attacked the palace from sea wall to sea wall and from the dungeons to the highest minaret.

  My colleagues were all awake now. I could hear some of them trying to murmur prayers, but the rest were silent, holding their breath, closing their eyes tight. We began to hear things now, the crashing of crockery. Something fell from the ledge three stories up and shattered in the courtyard just outside my door. The collision of other possessions was as if a thief were rummaging through an old trunk, careless of what he would leave behind, seeking only in a mad rush that which was of the most mundane value. Children cried and a woman or two screamed, but that was all. The rest of us held our breaths and waited.

  At last the earth twitched itself like a dog come from copulating, turned on its ta
il one more time, and settled down to sleep without a further spasm of guilt for its rash deed. I lay and listened to the returned stillness with more amazement than to the earthquake itself. Then I heard some of my colleagues out in the court wondering in low whispers. I got up and joined them, nodding in agreement at their formulaic comments on the power and mercy of Allah which is about all one can really say at a time like that.

  We did not think much about the women. There were eunuchs on duty in their quarters who could come and tell us if anything more serious than lost sleep and frazzled nerves had happened. One khadim began to tell us how in his village in the mountains they had suffered such an earthquake when he was a boy that the...It was as formulaic as praising Allah, but I moved nearer to lend a polite ear. As I did, I stepped on whatever bit of crockery it was that had fallen from the top floor.

  “By Allah, that I should come through the quake alive and have this happen afterwards!” I exclaimed as the other khuddam laughed in relief more than mockery and hastened, some to help stop the bleeding, others to pick up the pieces.

  In the midst of this, one of my lady’s maids came running in, white as milk spilled on anthracite. I was needed at once in our lady’s rooms, she said.

  With my foot still bleeding onto the rags, I was in no condition to be chasing off through the harem, so I put her off for a while. Had she never been in an earthquake before? Thank Allah, we were all alive. Trying to get back to sleep again would be the best for all concerned.

  So I stalled, I stalled so long and so unforgivably that I gave my mistress time to get herself to the eunuch’s quarters. Then I knew it was no common terror that stirred her. Never in all our years together had she come to see me. It was always the other way around.

  I hobbled up on one and a half feet and gave my bed for her maids to ease her onto. There she sat, speechless with tears, wringing a handkerchief and looking at me with eyes like saucers filled to the brim by a host of lavish generosity. That look stirred me enough to wave the anxious girls and eunuchs from the room.

  The instant they were gone, her grief exploded. “He is dead!”

  “He? Who is he?” The Sultan, it occurred to me, but I banished the thought from my mind with an “Allah forbid.” Fratricide on ascension made for a rule free from pretenders, but it did nothing to protect the Empire from the upheavals the minority of a three-year-old boy would cause.

  “He,” she said, her voice quavering on the syllable like that of a dervish on the Name of his Goal. But she mixed it with such anguish, I knew she could only mean Ferhad Pasha.

  “It is just a dream the quake caused,” I said. “Ferhad Pasha is far from here. Perhaps where he is they didn’t even feel the shocks.” I comforted her with such things. “It is Allah’s will. You do not know but what this is only an evil spirit come to haunt you this dark night.”

  But I could convince myself no more than I could convince her. The reverberations of that “He” had sent chills down my spine. By the eerie lamp light I saw my lady as if she were a corpse. I also saw the vein of a new crack in the plaster of the ceiling over the bed’s head that had not been there when I finally closed the book I was reading and blew out the flame that night. Allah only knew how close any of us was to death at any time. Perhaps one more shake would have sent the two upper stories down on me, on Esmikhan...

  I shivered again, held her and prayed until she slept. Not long after that the muezzin called the dawn prayer with renewed vitality and meaning. He called people from the rubble of their houses in the poorer sections, called to people who had not ceased to pray since the earth had shaken them to their knees several hours earlier.

  And word came in hushed, fatidic tones later that afternoon, ridden hard and fast from the troops on the border. Ferhad Pasha was dead. Some persons unknown had crept into his manor by night and murdered him. His head was cut off. Some said, afraid that the very words might set the earth shaking again, that men close to Ibrahim had tossed and kicked that head like a ball around their campfires.

  I don’t think anyone ever gave my lady those details. She was feverish enough without when she woke from her sleep. Because she was spared such details, I hoped she might recover in a week or two.

  But she never did again rise from her bed. The earthquake, some said. Running around that night and catching cold. They were people who had not heard her say that “He,” like a dervish calling on his God. “He,” It, which is neither a young man in spahis garb, nor a grand vizier, but something which encompasses all the earth and yet dwells in so little space as the heart of a gnat.

  That same strength with which she brought forth her daughter against all odds of physical endurance stood with her again throughout that winter, but in the spring, when the army was making ready to march once more, I knew her time could be numbered in hours. Her daughter and grandchildren and those of us who loved her were already there, sleeping and taking our meals in the presence of Death to ease the way into Paradise and remind ourselves that our times too, would come. But when she began to fade back into a time when they were carefree girls together and called on the name of Safiye, I thought I should go and see if the daughter of Baffo would not come now. Surely, for this old, dear friend, she could not refuse.

  I was told the Queen Mother had retired for the night. Because even sleep cannot forestall death, I pursued her further. I was surprised to find the doors to the Queen Mother’s apartment’s unguarded past the first courtyard. The door to her main chamber was even ajar. I took courage and let myself inside. The room was deserted. Lamps had never been lit there that evening, nor had the bolsters and cushions been unfolded.

  So in this final wish I disappointed my lady: I returned to her side and held her hand until she died, peacefully in her sleep. Perhaps she was convinced her friend was with her all the time. But in my heart I hoped I was sufficient. I had had to be, time and time again in life.

  I, at least, was not disappointed. There was no blessing of life my lady had not given me. And now she gave me the sorrow, the gift of her death.

  LXVIII

  After her mother’s death, Gul Ruh insisted that I come and live with her. It seemed the best plan, although she already had a full hierarchy of eunuchs and I would be living in the honor, yet the inactivity of semiretirement. I agreed to that, nonetheless—for what should I do in the palace?—and prepared to relinquish my cubicle to one of the black khuddam who now, except for Ghazanfer, were all the staff.

  Ghazanfer came to say good-bye and, though I had vague recollections that he had taken time during our bereavement to offer comfort, my grief had been too deep to recall any but this interview in detail. For some reason I mentioned my nighttime search for his mistress and how distressed I was that I hadn’t been able to find her in time for her to sit at Esmikhan’s side.

  “Safiye avoids deathbeds,” Ghazanfer said.

  “Yes, I know. But you’d think for such a good old friend...”

  “Friend? Does my mistress have friends, I wonder? Who do you suppose will be at her deathbed, eh?”

  “Allah postpone the day.”

  Ghazanfer did not amen me, but went on. “Your mistress was one of the sweetest and gentlest of Allah’s creatures, and yet Safiye saw that sweetness and gentleness as shortcomings, things to be exploited for her own use. That is her shortcoming. She feels herself immortal as if daily consumption of power and worldly wealth were an elixir for eternal youth. Others take time to die. Others die because through some personal failure they let the zenith of their powers pass, because they are not smart enough or strong enough to avoid poisoners, palace accidents, or merely the throes of daily life.”

  I had never heard Ghazanfer speak so harshly, nor yet so truly against his mistress and I wondered at it. He was a changed man since his failure to rescue Mitra. But I wondered more at the words that followed.

  “Safiye has passed her zenith now. Not that she isn’t as physically strong as ever, but time never waits and always brings up other
generations in one’s stead. I see this. She sees it, too, though she is loath to admit it, even to herself. She will fight it—even the mere admission—to the end. She is the Queen Mother, yet she dare not sleep in the Queen Mother’s chambers. One night she sleeps here, another night there, taking only her most trusted maids with her, telling no one beforehand where to find her. Is that a woman at the zenith of her power?”

  “So that is why I couldn’t find her that night?”

  “Of course. I do happen to know she wasn’t sleeping anywhere that night—that night when your lady’s passing took the last of what was good and gentle from this place and left us all the weaker for it. That was when the Sultan had just announced he planned to go into battle in Hungary himself this year instead of trusting the army to Ibrahim Pasha alone. That front, as you know, was left a shambles by last year’s rebellion and neglect. Your late master, may he rest in peace, was wont to say, ‘Grand Viziers may turn and flee, but when the Padishah himself leads Allah’s armies, there is no turning back nor defeat.’

  “The presence of a powerful head is, of course, what this Empire needs,” I suggested.

  “Yes, needs, oh, so painfully. And yet Safiye is loath to let her son go. On the frontier, she thinks, too many hearts and hands can come between Muhammed and herself. She must stay behind in the harem, and too much policy may be decided without her.

  “Our young Sultan, you may know, is much enamored of his position, both of its pomp and of its duties. He would not be swayed this time. And so she determined on a plot to make him see how much he was needed here at home. She sent troops devoted to her throughout the Empire with orders to massacre all Christians.”

  “The Christians!” I exclaimed. “But she...”

  “Yes, she herself was raised as one and has often taken their part in the past. But such devotions are merely the pawns of power to her. Even were she not a Christian born, is it not women’s place, in their own weakness, to protect other underlings? Fortunately for all of us, Muslims and Christians alike, the mother of the Crown Prince got wind of this plot. And she did not forget her Greek upbringing, much less her own humanity. Her pleas and tears, though outward signs of weakness, were strong enough to turn our Sultan’s heart against his mother. He thwarted Safiye by sending warning of his own to all the Christian communities, prohibiting Christians from entering places where the assassins were, until the threat should pass. He has also sent out a firmen that any man in his pay found guilty of such atrocities against a minority wall surely be put to death. Well, as you can see, the massacre never took place and Muhammed has marched north with the armies as planned.