Sofia
Whore, I see.”Safiye could have escaped to the back room, but she did not. She sat taking the abuse calmly, almost with delight, for its vicarious effect on the brigand, just outside the door, was not lost on her. She had asked for and received, however grudgingly, the loan of the woman’s broken wood comb to substitute for her jewel-studded one that had gone with the brigand’s son to Constantinople. She made certain the brigand was in the hut when she cleaned its teeth of the black and gray strands as if of years of accumulated dust. Then she sat, for hours it seemed, combing out her yards of gold. She combed with the thoughtlessness that in reality bespeaks a deep self-absorption. Such an absorption only workers of spells lapse into over their amulets and piles of golden, fruitful grain in the back recesses of the marketplace.
“Here,” the wife said, reaching the end of all patience. “Here, girl. You grow pink-cheeked and fair on the toil and sweat of my hands. Why don’t you make yourself useful for a change instead of cluttering my kitchen with your demon-colored hair?” And she thrust a spindle at her.
Safiye took it, trying to oblige. “But what is it?” she asked.
“A spindle, stupid girl,” the woman sneered in triumph. Orhan was in the doorway, within earshot, and he could see how stupid this baggage of his was.
“A spindle?” Safiye did not know the word, and held the tool gently but clumsily so that all the previous work on it was in danger of being lost.
“Of all the simpleminded...!” The woman snorted, snatching the spindle back to save her last weeks’ efforts.
Safiye cried out—in affected alarm; there is no chance that she was really wounded.
“And who is so simpleminded but you, peasant!” The brigand shoved his wife away from Safiye with a snarl. “Can’t you imagine that there are women in this world who have never roughened their hands upon a spindle?”
“Useless leaches, dressed in the sweat of others,” the woman snapped back, “as you, Orhan, have said yourself so many times.”
“There are words in the Turkish language this girl knows that would send your simple head spinning, woman. As Allah is my witness, they would set you head spinning with their luxury, though she is but a newcomer to this country and this language.”
“And you are so fluent in the language of luxury,” the woman mocked, in the fury of the moment quite careless of her gizzard. “‘Bath,’ for instance. Now there’s a luxury you’re a stranger to, and I’m sure the fact hasn’t missed the girl. ‘Bath, bath, bath.’ Now whose head is spinning? I dare say you are even afraid of water, for Allah knows, I’ve never seen you come near it.”
The brigand rubbed his missing eye, but only for a moment. In the next moment he had snatched Safiye to her feet, sending the comb flying from her hand. It broke in two upon the floor, but Safiye, who had cried out in alarm at a violent movement not minutes before, said nothing.
“I shall show you who’s a peasant,” the brigand said.
“I bet you’re afraid of water, like a cat,” his wife retorted.
“I’ll show you!” the brigand said again. “I’m every bit as good as a Sultan’s son, and can bathe whenever I damn well feel like it. Not only that, but I can bathe with Murad’s very own attendant—whenever I feel like it. A pox on you, woman.”
And with that he dragged Safiye from the hut.
After the year’s first bout of stormy weather, it had turned balmy again. But this false return to summer and the warm colors of the leaves could not make up for the fact that the little mountain stream, running a hand deep over iron-cold slabs of stone, was kept from turning to ice overnight only by its movement. Even then, with a morning of sun on its back, it was a far, far cry from the blood-heat in which Murad liked to soak. However, Orhan was nothing if not immune to physical discomfort, especially when his pride was at stake. His clothes were off and he was in that water in a moment.
But it was not his wife, long out of earshot, almost out of memory, against whom he railed in that state. “Prince Murad, you’re a woman compared to Orhan, the Crazy One. By Allah, yes, you are.”
Safiye was left standing alone on the banks and I dare say that, braggart though he was, Orhan would have left her there. A mountain stream was his element; with a woman of courtly manners he was a stranger and quite honestly afraid of her. He even avoided her almond eyes as he fumed against her lover, and would have done so till the bath was over, had not a soft noise and movement in that direction wrested his attention. Safiye had removed her robe and stood there in underblouse and shalwars.
“I thought it best,” she said. “There are pearls on it, and surely, master, you would not want to risk having them wash away downstream.”
The brigand saw how the breath of a wind through the sheer underblouse tickled her nipples into tight little peaks and his heart pounded in an emotion to which he was a stranger. He called the emotion fear or shame, and clambered out of the water and onto a sun-warmed stone on the other bank to escape it. More disconcerting still was the state of his manhood, that thing he had boasted of all his life for the great control he held over its virility and it over womankind in general. He sought to hide it from her, but in a moment she had crossed the stream to him.
Even mystics relishing martyrdom will ease into impalement. But Safiye delved coaxingly on, once or twice, before she took him in completely. With her little white knobs of breast bouncing before his face, she whispered hoarsely, “Taste the pearls you’ve stolen from Prince Murad.”
Orhan