The Sultan's Daughter (40 page)

“Push, my lady.”

“Can’t.”

“You must.”

“Hurts.”

“You must. You will die if you don’t.”

“Already...”

“No, by Allah. Think of the child,” I hissed in her ear, hoping the other women would not be listening, but of course they were. “Think how it was conceived. Think of Rumi’s Stone in Konya and the blessings of the Almighty. Think of the nightingale’s song.”

“Uh-uh,” she gave a little grunt of refusal.

I could feel the swell of another pain building in her and I countered it with the vise of my arms.

“Esmikhan,” I shouted. “Push! Push!”

“Allah’s will…”

“Esmikhan. I will not let you die. If you die, I will die as well. By all that is holy, I swear it. I will not live without you. I love you, Esmikhan. More than life. Do not kill me as well.”

I think she could feel my tears hot upon her neck where the sweat was already clammy as a corpse.

“Abd...” She began to say my name, but turned her strength into a push instead.

“That’s it,” I exclaimed. “Again. Once more.”

“No...,” she said, but she did, sucking strength from my arms until they felt as weak as mint jelly. Again.

She did, and suddenly there was a sound of rushing water. Through my slippers, my feet got wet. And a tiny wriggle of white and red slipped out into the Quince’s hands.

The attendants opened their mouths to rejoice as if they had witnessed a miracle. They shut them again immediately and went about their work in silence. Whatever the miracle of life, etiquette would not allow them to jubilate.

“What...What...?” Esmikhan found strength to ask, for the Quince was keeping the child to herself for a moment—a long moment of internal struggle, or so it seemed.

The Quince blinked away some nagging thought and then said, with a faint smile, “I’m just tying off the cord, lady. She’s a perfectly healthy girl, Allah shield her. There, the cord’s all done.”

“Don’t remember...,” Esmikhan murmured with confusion and gratitude. But then she fainted dead away.

Her body was as limp as if she had pushed her own life from her as well as that of the child. Between breast and thighs she was so misshapen as to be unrecognizable as human, but her breath still came in shallow little tugs. I laid her down on a mattress and tried to give her senselessness some comfort. Shyly, tenderly, I planted a kiss on either bruised eyelid. Then I bent my head and wept, harmonizing with the dry, healthy yells of the baby.

“Shall I go tell the master?”

It was one of my seconds who addressed me, everyone coming and going over the gunpowder now as they pleased. At first I couldn’t imagine whom he meant by “the master.”

“Sokolli Pasha,” he said. “He’s come home, Allah be praised. Been in the house this hour or more.”

“No, no. I’ll go,” I said, groping for water to wash away my tears.

“My lady wishes to announce to you that her face is black. It is Allah’s will.” I stood and faced the tall figure of a man whose beard seemed to have gone completely white since I’d last seen him. He had not bothered to dye it during the last month or so.

He looked at me closely as if trying to read something more in my message than the traditional way of saying, “The baby is a girl.” Then he smiled and said, “He who allows dark shadows to settle on his face when a girl is born to him, or decides to keep her only with disgrace—does it not say in the Koran that his judgment is faulty?”

“Then may I offer my congratulations, Master?” I asked.

“Congratulations?” Sokolli Pasha laughed a very dry, horrible laugh. “Congratulations. We have lost Astrakhan and for this I get congratulations?”

“Master, I meant...”

“Abdullah, I know.”

There was an uncomfortable silence, which Sokolli Pasha soon stirred as a mother may rock the cradle of her silent child to see it stir and comfort herself that it only sleeps.

“The young men fell like rain “he said, “thousands of them. I may not be vizier tomorrow morning, you may as well know that, Abdullah. Then I shall be obliged to divorce your mistress and the child...And all because of that Lala Mustafa, may Allah plague him. Yes, he has his beady black eye on my post. He would like nothing better than to be Grand Vizier himself. He’s been plotting for it ever since the business with Bayazid. That handsome young son of Suleiman’s would never have rebelled if Lala Mustafa had not meddled with the correspondence between Constantinople and Bayazid’s sandjak. Though lively and popular, Bayazid was not a rebellious son. But Lala Mustafa and the boy’s mother, that Russian...”

Sokolli Pasha stopped here as if he were afraid to say more. Then he smiled at me.

“I know what gossip among slaves is like,” he said. “I am a slave myself and was once the lowest of the pages in the palace. Gossip may lose me favor in Selim’s eyes faster than a drunken rage could. So I’d thank you, Abdullah, if you’d let it be known among whomever you gossip with the truth about Lala Mustafa in Astrakhan. Although he pretended to be behind it, he wanted the mission to fail for no other reason than that he knew how dear it was to my heart. From the moment we marched off, he was among the soldiers, whispering.

“‘What is this land of Russia we must fight?’ he asked. ‘It is a land where the nights are unnaturally long in winter and the days too long in summer. In order to keep Allah’s laws and to pray, both after sunset and before dawn, one must deprive oneself of healthful sleep. During the month of fasting, when food and water may be taken only during the nighttime hours, surely the long days will kill us. This is a land Allah created to remain in heathen hands, for clearly, one cannot be a good Muslim in Russia.’ “

“He got the Mufti convinced of this philosophy, too. By the time we were set upon, the men had no will to fight and defend themselves. Allah’s will was against it, they thought, so what good were their arms? Even Selim the Sot had known better than to come to that forsaken place. They were cut down miserably as they fled. Now we shall never have that canal, the only thing that could have broken this deadlock between Persia and our empire. Now we will fight against each other with no progress on either side until we are both weak and exhausted and open prey for Christians. You mark my words, some day...And for all of this, you congratulate me?”

Sokolli Pasha sighed wearily and shook his head. But then he remembered where he was, my presence, and the news I had just brought him.

“But how can I be downcast?” he asked, trying to fight the sarcasm inherent in his words. “This night I have become a father at last. Good Abdullah, send my best wishes to my wife. I shall come and have a look at the child whenever you think it wise. In the meantime, here. Here is a little present for the girl.”

Sokolli Pasha laid a little wooden figure in my hand. It was round-bodied and colorfully painted—very un-Muslim. The body opened to reveal another figure inside, and another and another—seven little dolls nesting cozily all together. I raised my head from this toy’s examination to smile in amazement at my master. Who would have thought the Grand Vizier capable of such things?

The smile he returned to me was honest enough, but it seemed to hide some disturbing nuance I couldn’t quite place. “It’s not my doing,” he apologized about the gift. “Did I have time for such things with the army falling apart on me? You’ll go shopping for me, Abdullah, and get whatever is needed for the celebration we must give in ten days’ time. Sweets for the guests, something nice for the mother and the little girl from the” (he cleared his throat—on purpose?) “Father. Whatever you like. Whatever is customary. I don’t know.”

I looked again at the little wooden dolls, almost afraid to ask. Sokolli Pasha answered my look and my hung head. “That came from the Master of the Imperial Horse. A remarkable young man. He and his squad managed to surprise a group of Russians, killing scores of them and rifling their saddlebags. This, he said, was my cut of the booty. He would be obliged if I gave it to my child with his best wishes.”

And Sokolli Pasha fixed such an eye on me that I had to bow at once and escape the room.

I fled into the harem, where I found my lady, sleeping with her daughter in her arms. Quietly, I set the wooden dolls between them where they would find them when they awoke. Then I sat in the shadows on the opposite divan and simply watched them sleep. Mother and daughter were somehow like nesting dolls themselves, a brief glimpse of eternity in the shifting patches of latticed sunlight. For though both faces seemed crushed and bruised with exertion, their identical dark curls plastered with sweat to their foreheads, there was the peace of paradise there between them.

And I,
I thought,
of all the men that new babe might ever know, I alone could sit and watch them sleep like this.

All praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds!

The Compassionate, the Merciful.

Unbidden, the words of the Sura came to my lips. And unbidden, I thanked whatever Power there might be for the fate It had sent me.