Harem, page 11
'They say even the Grand Vizier fears Hürrem,' Sirhane said. 'The Kislar Aghasi told me that the Sultan even goes to her to discuss politics and that she advises him on military campaigns.'
'The Kislar Aghasi has a fertile imagination.'
'He swears it is true!'
'The Grand Vizier would have her drowned in the Bosphorus!'
'Perhaps he cannot,' Sirhane said and they all fell silent. Was that really the truth of it? Surely no one was more powerful than the Grand Vizier? 'Anyway, I feel sorry for Gülbehar,' Sirhane added. 'The Lord of Life has disgraced her.'
'Gülbehar is still first kadin,' another girl said. 'And one day she will be the Sultan Valide. Her day will come.'
'They say God is punishing the Lord of Life for making a witch his kadin. That is why his last son died in the cradle.'
'But Hürrem has two sons still living. And she carries another child now.'
'None of them will ever rival Mustapha!' another girl shouted and there the conversation ended. The girls' attention returned to the dancing bear and Sirhane kept to herself the other whisper she had heard from the Kislar Aghasi; that Hürrem was plotting to get rid of Mustapha also.
But that could never happen. The very thought was absurd.
Topkapi Saraya
It was quiet here among the kiosks and the ornamental ponds. Only the sigh of the wind through the chestnut trees and the gentle murmur of water in the ornamental fountains disturbed the gazelles grazing on the lawns.
Suleiman had always liked to walk here to compose his thoughts and find respite from the endless demands and entreaties that came every day from the Divan and the Harem. Once he would come alone. Lately he brought a companion with him.
The last five years had been many times blessed, he thought. When he returned from hunting at Adrianople, shortly after their first union, he had found Hürrem already plump with new life. Early the following year she gave birth to a boy. At the insistence of the Valide, they called him Selim.
He had not quite shared his mother's excitement. While she celebrated the consolidation of the Osmanli line, he brooded over future conflicts. He knew what his father had done to secure his throne. He supposed now his sons would have to do the same.
Hürrem was now his second kadin, but she had replaced the first in his affections. Gülbehar had been his sanctuary for so long, but he had never been able to share the burdens of his sultanate with her. That had been Ibrahim's role.
But when Achmed Pasha rose in revolt in Egypt he had been forced to send Ibrahim to crush him, and while he was gone Suleiman had brought the problems of state to Hürrem instead. To his surprise he found her shrewd beyond her years and with an innate grasp of the intricacies of court politics. He continued to confide in her, even after Ibrahim's return. Her caution was now a counterfoil to Ibrahim's aggression.
She had opened a new world to him. While Gülbehar was pliant and predictable, Hürrem continually surprised him. On one visit she might be sullen but passionate; on another effusive and playful. She could soothe him with her singing and her viol or excite him with her dancing. She could dress like a slim boy in military doman or like a houri in gossamer. He never knew what to expect from her, though she seemed to have an uncanny ability to anticipate his own moods.
Her delight in lovemaking was still unholy and he knew he must one day send her to the mufti for education. But for now her infidel soul afforded him endless pleasures. One cry of ecstasy gave him more pleasure than all the grovelling of foreign ambassadors in the Divan.
Hürrem was now his joy; everything else was duty.
The little Russian girl - he had taken to calling her, affectionately, 'russelana' - had carefully cultivated her friendship with his mother, the Valide, and Nature had helped her cement the alliance by providing her with another son, Bayezid. She had failed in the labour chamber only once, when she had produced a girl twin. The boy, Abdullah, had died just last year; but his sister, Mihrmah, was now three years old.
She was not the devoted mother that Gülbehar had been, but that did not trouble him overmuch; he wanted her all for himself.
'I want to talk to you,' he said to her as they walked in the garden.
'Yes my Lord?'
'It is the Hungarian question again. Frederick is sending an envoy to treat with us. He does not know that the voivoide, Zapolya, has sent his man also who has already met in secret with Ibrahim.'
He did not need to explain the problem to her; somehow she already knew. Suleiman's army, marshalled by Ibrahim, had annihilated the Hungarians on the plain of Mohaçs just two years before. Their king had drowned in the swamp when his horse fell on him during the retreat. Since Hungary was too far away for permanent occupation, he had withdrawn his troops after the battle and it had since become a wasteland of warring bandits, coveted by noblemen such as Zapolya and the great Hapsburg family, under Frederick. But they could not have it without coming to terms with him first. Who should he treat with?
'What are your thoughts, my Lord?'
'We have slain the king and the horses of the Osmanli have set their hoofs in Buda, so it is now in the dominion of Islam. Why should I treat with either of them? I am the King of Hungary now.'
'So every summer you must send your army to regain what it has conquered the year before. One day you will grow tired of it.'
'The dogs are always at the door when there are scraps to be had.'
'But you must guard every entrance to the house. If you become too preoccupied with one, the robbers may enter by another door.'
'I shall not treat with Frederick. Then I would have exchanged a starving dog for a rabid wolf.'
'What about Zapolya?'
'Zapolya is an upstart. He is no king.'
'What is a king? It is not the crown that makes a king, it is the sword. Make Zapolya your gatekeeper and let him have a piece of iron for his head. In return demand his tribute and free passage for your army. While there is no border, you remain his master.'
'He is not strong enough to hold back Frederick's armies.'
'He can keep the borders until a real army is assembled against him, one that is worthy of your attention. You may even use Zapolya to lure Frederick into the contest and drown him in the swamp also.'
Suleiman stared at the black waters of the Bosphorus, white foam streaked across the surface by the wind. On one side lay Asia, on the other Europe. She was right; one could not look too long at one side for fear of forgetting the other.
'Zapolya, then.'
'If my Lord considers my counsel proper. In all things I defer to your greater wisdom.'
Suleiman nodded, pleased with Hürrem's diplomacy. Ah, she was a rare treasure indeed.
The Eski Saraya
Suleiman and Gülbehar ate kebabs of lamb on silver skewers with pine kernels and drank perfumed rosewater from goblets of Iznik glass. After the gediçli had removed the bowls they sat for a long time in silence.
'Have I offended you in some way, my Lord?' Gülbehar said at last.
'No. Why?'
'You have not asked for me these many months. When you do come, it is only to see Mustapha.'
'Do not deem to question me.'
Gülbehar hung her head. Suleiman felt sorry for her; she had been a good wife. All she had ever asked of him until now was some Venetian satin or Baghdad silk or a tortoiseshell comb. And she had given him Mustapha.
He had not wanted to hurt her this way. But each moment he spent with her, he compared her to Hürrem and his impatience grew. He could not be at ease with her; his frustration turned inevitably to anger.
He got to his feet. Gülbehar looked up at him, startled. 'You are leaving, my Lord?'
'I have matters of state to attend to.'
Gülbehar looked miserable. 'Hürrem.'
It was an unpardonable breach of protocol but Suleiman decided to ignore it. 'My Lady,' he said and took his leave of her.
***
It was always dusk in the Eski Saraya. Even on a summer midday, the sun could not chase the shadows from the warren of dark panelled rooms and endless corridors. It was a world of dusty lanterns and baroque mirrors coated with ancient grime. Sloe-eyed women with dark rubies in their hair appeared on shadowed staircases like ghosts, ungratified and forgotten.
It infected Hürrem's mood. I am a heartbeat from such a living death, she thought.
She had come so far. She had given him sons and somehow kept him from this neglected storehouse of pleasures. None of it had been easy. The strain of child-bearing had sapped her energies and after each confinement she had surrendered herself to Muomi's ministrations and to vials of the gediçli's foul potions in order to restore her figure. She had wet nurses for the children so her infants would not suckle her breasts dry.
Yet all she had won thus far could be snatched away from her in an instant. Only one woman in here had power over her own life and that was not the wife of the Sultan, but the mother. She could not wait for fate to be kind; to wait on destiny was to wait forever. She must force her own fortune.
'Muomi! Muomi!'
Her gediçli appeared instantly. She had been hovering at her post outside the door.
'Come here,' Hürrem said.
Muomi sank to her knees beside her. 'My Lady?'
'There is something I want you to do.'
'Another potion?'
Hürrem nodded. 'Yes. Another potion. I want you to make one that will kill Mustapha for me.'
Chapter 28
The stone kitchens below the Old Palace were cramped and hot, and smelled of spice, sweat and steam. Heat rose in waves from the open furnaces, and there was a constant clatter of pots and kettles. Cooks shouted at underlings and at each other, while veiled gediçli scurried through the fug of heat and noise with dishes and teas.
So in this hubbub the harried pages and servants and cooks paid no particular attention to the tall black girl carrying the tray of oranges; even if they had, even the most observant of them would not have realized that the platter of oranges she had with her as she left was different from the one she had brought in with her.
***
At fourteen years, Mustapha was everything Suleiman had hoped for in a son. Like every prince he was trained at the Palace School, with the elite of the boys recruited in the devshirme. He had proved an outstanding swordsman and horseman, and he was besides an outgoing and popular boy, already a favourite among the Yeniçeri who came to cheer him at the çerit - a horseback game using wooden javelins - in the Hippodrome.
He was also a talented scholar. He had already learned his Qu'ran, Persian and mathematics. Suleiman was sure the Osmanlis could have no better shahzade than this.
Today he sported a plum-coloured bruise above his right eye, which was almost swollen shut. Suleiman shook his head in feigned horror as his son knelt to kiss the ruby ring on his right hand.
'What happened to you?'
'It happens all the time,' Gülbehar said. 'He was hit by a javelin in the çerit. Tell him to take more care. Nothing I say to him seems to make any difference.'
'Should I be more careful, father?' Mustapha asked him and grinned.
'You should take care not to get hit so often.'
'He would spend all day on his horse if he could,' Gülbehar said.
'There is nothing wrong with that. There was a time when the Osmanlis did not have fine palaces to sit in, or laws to make. It is good the next Sultan knows how it feels to have a horse under him.'
Look how big the boy has grown, Suleiman thought. He was almost as tall as Suleiman himself, and he had the first sprouting of a beard on his chin. His eyes were bright with the optimism of youth; when I was his age I was consumed with terror, wondering when Selim's shadow would fall across my face. Thank God Mustapha will never know such a father.
Gülbehar sat on the divan and folded her hands on her lap. 'Leave us now, Mustapha, I wish to talk to the Lord of Life alone.'
Mustapha sala'amed to Suleiman, kissed his mother on the cheek and left the room.
'You are too severe with him,' Suleiman said, after he had gone.
'I have to be. He is all I have.'
'A young man should enjoy his youthful pleasures while he still can. He will have responsibilities soon enough.'
'Every day he brings back from the Hippodrome some fresh injury. Last week he was thrown from his horse three times! What if he gets killed in that stupid game? I have no son and no master. My life is over.'
'As God wills,' he said.
'He is the shahzade. Do you not take a care to worry what may happen to him?'
'A Sultan must be a soldier as well as a statesman. A few scars from the Hippodrome will only make him stronger. What of you? Are you well?'
'What does it matter to you? You only ever come here to see Mustapha.'
'That is my right.'
'Do I no longer have rights?'
Suleiman knew she had him there; he had ignored the nobet geçesi, the 'night turn' that was the prerogative of every kadin. He should by custom sleep with her at least once a week.
She had never questioned him before. He leaped to his feet and guilt made his fury even more potent. 'You may be first kadin, but you are also still my slave. You will do as I say and you will not presume to question me!'
Gülbehar wilted in the face of his anger. 'Once you would never have spoken to me so,' she murmured and hung her head. 'The little red-haired minx has bedevilled you. She wants dominion over the entire Harem - even over you!'
'Isn't that what you want also?'
She looked up miserably. 'I just want to serve you.'
'Then serve me by keeping your silence,' he said.
He turned his back, his silk kaftan flapping about his heels. Like a great bird taking flight, she thought, leaving forever. The black mutes at the door watched impassively, staring fixedly ahead like statues. Kadins came and went. The Harem remained always the same.
***
That night after the final prayer the killerji-bashi came to Mustapha's chamber and asked him if he would like to eat. Silent pages brought him his meal on a gold tray. There were tiny cubes of meat broiled in herbs, squash stuffed with rice, figs in sour cream and fresh oranges.
The meal was served in blue and white porcelain bowls each hand painted with hatayi scrollwork. The killerji-bashi tasted each dish for poison, as he did at every meal, then bowed and left the room. Mustapha sat cross-legged on the carpet and ate in silence. Occasionally he raised the index finger of his right hand and a page would step forward to refill his golden goblet with sherbet.
When he had finished Mustapha looked at the oranges. He chose one, peeled the skin from one side of it, and tasted it. It was dry and slightly sour. He dropped it on the tray and pushed it away.
Instantly another of the pages stepped forward with a bowl of perfumed water. Mustapha dipped his fingers in the bowl and allowed him to dry them. Then he got up and went to his bedchamber. It was customary for the pages to eat whatever he left and as he left the room he saw them fall on his leftover dishes like starving street dogs.
Other servants unrolled his sleeping mattress for him but he did not feel tired. He sat at the Qu'ran stand and read two more suras by the light of the candle before the first spasm gripped his stomach.
***
By the time Gülbehar arrived, the pages who had served the prince's meal were already dead. Mustapha was pale and shaken but still alive. The Palace physician had administered an emetic and Mustapha groaned as his empty stomach rebelled once more.
Gülbehar cradled her son in her arms. He must be really ill, she thought, for he lets me do it. 'How could you let this happen?' she screamed at the terrified guards. 'Who did this to my son?'
'We will find them,' the Kapi Aga promised. By the prophet's Holy Beard, if Mustapha had died his own head would already be mouldering on the Gate of Felicity.
Gülbehar rocked Mustapha in her arms like a baby, sobbing with rage and fear. 'Who did this?'
Mustapha's chief food taster was delivered to the bostanji-bashi who awaited him in his torture chamber below the Ba'ab-i-Sa'adet. He was examined closely, but he insisted on his innocence between his screams. However he was at least finally able to indicate which food had contained the poison, by the simple expedient of force-feeding him each morsel that remained from the shahzade's supper.
'It was the oranges,' the bostanji reported. 'Somehow they poisoned the oranges.'
Suleiman ordered that everyone involved in the preparation of the prince's food be examined also; the two cooks and the pages who had brought the tray from the kitchen died screaming, pleading their innocence, begging for a mercy that never came.
Chapter 29
Gold spigots dripped warm water into the marble bath. Naked bodies, alabaster, coffee and ebony, beaded with moisture, glided through the steam under a cavernous dome. Black gediçli in gauzy bath chemises scooped water into gold-plated bowls and poured it over the heads of the odalisques.
Hürrem perched on the edge of the navel-stone, a huge hexagonal slab heated from beneath by an underground furnace. Muomi soaped her back with rich lather. The other girls passed, their eyes averted, either from jealousy or from fear.
Muomi's knuckles worked the muscles in her back. Later she would have her work on her stomach and thighs. She would not allow herself to grow old and fat in here. A girl must have fangs in this snake pit.
She tried not to brood over her recent failure. The oranges had been her idea. She knew the killerji-bashi would not suspect a whole fruit. She had pierced the oranges with needles herself and Muomi had poured the hemlock in through the tiny pinpricks in the rind. Fate and a fussy nature had saved the shahzade.
Never mind, she would find some other way.
Gülbehar walked past. The bath chemise clung to her heavy breasts and Hürrem noted with satisfaction that her waistline was growing thicker. A slave girl hurried behind her carrying a silver platter of candied fruit. She supposed eating was all she had to look forward to these days.
