Sofia
wrap the wound. As she took her hand from her shoulder Murad bent over and replaced it by his own. He took the end of her braid and weighed it in his hand. Then he let the plait fall and looked at the residue it left on his skin.“Ah,” he nodded. “Just as I thought. Gold dust. My mother is a sorceress.”
But his skepticism did not keep him from handling the braid again, undoing it, and slowly working its kinks loose with his fingers. He gently removed the pearl-set cap and its veil as he asked again, “Now what am I to do with you?” and shook his head as if to dispel the thoughts that crossed her mind or his.
The other braids came down one by one and Murad filled his lap with the luxury. “Now what am I to do with you?” he murmured once again.
Safiye began, “You might—”
“Might love you?” he covered for her hesitation and, taking a great mass of golden curls in each hand, he gently brought her face to his, “Yes, I might. And if Allah grants me mercy, I shall. I shall indeed.”
XXXVII
It was almost three days later before the door to the mabein opened and Safiye returned triumphant to the harem. The key to the mabein door had become a toy for the lovers. They had played hide-and-seek with it, first the slave hiding it from the master, who pretended he wanted to escape, and then the roles were reversed. Murad had hidden it last— under the cushions he sat on—and when Safiye had tried to reach under him to get it, he had drawn her into yet another long and lazy bout of love.
Afterward he slept, a long, thin body sprawled among the cushions, careless of his helpless nakedness. She had gently withdrawn the key, gathered up what clothes she could carry on one arm, and slipped out, leaving the key behind on the table.
“By Allah, I am famished!” were her first words to the harem’s inmates who met her dumbfounded as if she were someone raised from the dead.
During the three days, the lovers had fed upon the festival dainties, being too jealous of the world they were creating between themselves to allow it to be peopled by even so much as a deaf mute with a water jug. They had scrapped like kittens over the last of the crumbs, then come to love again two or three times more, their hunger for food only adding to their hunger for one another. Though she could have claimed any dainty she wanted from the harem kitchen, after three days of nothing but dates, pastries, leftover lamb, and the heady sweetness of love, plain water and last night’s pilaf sounded better than anything.
While she washed her hands and helped herself, the inmates crowded around to wonder and to hear the tale. The death of a pride of lions or fifty men in battle are the only feats a selamlik could ever find to compare to this in the harem.
“But what gift did he give you for such a long time?” “Allah forbid, we thought he might have killed you.” “Yes! We were about to send the eunuchs to see.” “Three days, by the Merciful One! I tell you, it would have killed me.”
“He must have given you something fine.”
“Come on. Tell us. What did he give you?”
Finally Safiye managed to fit the word “Nothing” into this barrage.
“Nothing?”
“I don’t believe it. She must be hiding it.”
“But I would have thought it too big to hide.”
“Is it a slave, perhaps?”
“A fine fat eunuch of your very own?”
“A villa on the Black Sea? Surely he could give nothing less.”
“I tell you, by my life,” Safiye said with a careless wave of her pilaf-greased hand, “he gave me nothing.” She helped herself to another mouthful and then said, “Except, perhaps— Allah willing—a son.”
She shot a glance particularly at Nur Banu as she said this. The older woman had lost enough of her pride that she would not hear the news secondhand and crowded around with the others. Besides, she had healed most of her wounds with the thought that it was her plan after all, even if it had worked out in spite of her.
Still, a touch of bitterness caught in Nur Banu’s throat as she said, “He gave you nothing? Well, you cannot have been such a success as all that if for nearly three days’ toil you have earned nothing.”
“Toil, lady? You call it toil?” Safiye met the woman’s eyes with a self-assured, almost taunting smile. “Well, for those who call it toil, let them charge a fee. I myself am quite content. Quite content,” she repeated, giving it the cushioned sigh it had had, no doubt, when murmured in the mabein.
“Do not blame your son,” Safiye continued. “Perhaps he would have given me a little something, but he was asleep when I left.”
“He was—? You mean you left while he was asleep? Without his permission? You left the room before he did?”
“Yes. Yes, yes, and yes.”
“Well, it simply is not done. Safiye, I insist that you return to the mabein at once and do not leave until my son says you may, gift or no gift.”
“Esmikhan Sultan.” Safiye ignored this demand and turned to the girl instead. “Esmikhan, will you come to the bath with me? I cannot tell you how good the water will feel! My skin is crusted with dried-on sweat.”
The young girl took the hand Safiye offered her without a moment’s glance at Nur Banu. There was a new power to be reckoned with in the harem and everyone knew it. Safiye, of course, could never displace the mother of the heir. But now she had won a claim upon the outside for herself. The mother of the heir no longer held her reins directly and this greatly weakened their force.
“And, lady,” Safiye called over her shoulder as she and Esmikhan walked offhand in hand towards the bath. “Lady, if