The Legacy of Grazia dei Rossi (57 page)

57

THE TRYST

Two long. Two short.

Before the signal was completed, the shadowy figure on the rock ledge had dropped down to the dock and stood poised to board the caique
that slid in, sleek as a swan, with its great gilt falcon, symbol of the House of Osman, rising upwards, wings spread as if to fly to the heavens. Without breaking the rhythm of the oarsmen, the princess’s steward, Narcissus, reached out a hand to help the waiting passenger onto the narrow deck of the craft. Once aboard, the passenger disappeared so silently through the curtains of the center cabin that anyone watching could believe the whole scene to be imagined.

In the past, Danilo had negotiated this move on many such nights, occasionally boarding very small vessels, sometimes larger ones, but never one as imposing as this one. Powered by eight oarsmen, four at the fore and four astern, its curtained cabin was softly padded, its floor and walls strewn with pillows, like a floating canopied bed.

Danilo smelled Saida before he reached out to touch her cheek, her chin, her rose-scented breast, then locked his arms around her as they sank into the pillows. By unspoken agreement, they did not speak but simply clung to each other wordless, as if only the flesh was powerful enough to verify that they were together at last.

It had been over a year since they last met. They were, as always, slaves to the clock, and all too soon a shrill blast of the caique’s
whistle shattered their golden moment.

“Enough!” Saida held up her hand. “No more time for kisses. We have the caique
for only an hour.”

“Only one hour?” This was even a shorter break than usual.

“One hour is more time than I dreamed of,” she responded. “I had given up all hope of ever seeing you again. But with Narcissus’s help, we may have one more night before we say goodbye forever.”

“Goodbye? We have hardly had a chance to say hello.”

“We always knew it would have to end.” She patted his cheek gently. “And now the end has come. The moment my father sets foot in his
selamlik,
he will be met by the
damat
that Hürrem has selected for me. All he need do to give my marriage his assent is touch the shoulder of the husband she has picked for me. And he will give it, be sure of that. The new Sultana has great influence on him. Give her credit. This
damat
is well chosen. He is an admiral, loyal and seasoned. At least he has his own teeth . . .” Her brave attempt at a joke sputtered out and she burst into tears. “I promised myself I would not cry.”

“What if I told you there was hope for us?” He reached over to touch her cheek. “Would that stop your tears?”

“I would say what I always say to you: my destiny was written on the stars the day I was born. The pearls have been sewn on my wedding veil. The Sultana has found a palace for me to live in. Nothing can stop this marriage from taking place.”

“What if I tell you that something has happened to stop it?”

“This is not a story in a French romance, Danilo.”

“At least give me a chance to tell you my news,” he pleaded. Taking her silence for assent, he reached out and cradled her in the crook of his arm. “This is a story about an avalanche in the Zagros Mountains,” he began. “About being sealed into a mountainous pass. About the threat to our entire army of death by starvation. About your brave father, the Sultan. He was like a beacon — always shining. He organized what he called ‘the greatest hunt in the history of the world.’ With him leading the way, we killed enough wild animals to feed an army twice our size. He saved us from starvation.”

Her eyes lit up. “Bravo, Papa!” she whispered.

This was all the encouragement he needed to continue. “But that is only half of the story. The struggle was over, we thought. We had even offered up prayers of thanks for our salvation. But as we began to pack up, we were attacked at the edge of the forest by a pack of wild beasts. That is when . . .” He paused and took a deep breath. There was no other way to say it: “I saved your father’s life.”

“You what?”

“I saved the Sultan’s life.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “Is this true?”

“Do I lie?”

She took a moment to consider, then slowly shook her head.“No, you are no fabulist. If you say you saved my father’s life, I believe you. Tell me what happened.”

And so he did, trying his best not to make himself out to be the hero of his story and succeeding only in further endearing him to her by his modesty. By the time he was done, the cloud of sadness had lifted from her face.

“My hero!” She held out her arms.

Now he was the one to resist. “Wait. The best is yet to come. The day I parted company with the Sultan, he gave me his undertaking to grant me anything within his power. ‘If the day comes when you need anything from me,’ were his exact words, ‘you need only call on me, and if it is within my power your wish will be granted.’ Well, the time has come. And on the day your father returns to his capital, I will seek audience and ask for your hand in marriage.”

For once in her life, Princess Saida was rendered speechless. This time she did not open her arms to him. Instead she withdrew to the far end of her seat and began to chew on her thumbnail thoughtfully.

“Time is short. You must be quick and clever.” The little general had taken over. “It will not be easy for you to speak to my father alone. Once Hürrem has her hands on him she will never leave his side.”

She tapped her fingers against her head as if ordering her brain to invent a strategy. And to be sure, within moments she had found one. “What if I make her a part of our plan? What if I get her to beg the audience for me?”

“How can you do that?” Danilo was genuinely bewildered.

But Saida was, as she said, “a graduate of the harem,” where strategies were part of the curriculum. “What if I tell her that I agree to marry her candidate but that I want my father to hear it from me?” As the plan materialized in her brain she talked more and more quickly. “I am invited to her kitchen tomorrow for a cooking lesson. While we cook, I will tell her of my intention and ask her to arrange an audience for me, alone, with my father. She will be pleased to do it. She wants this marriage very much.”

This line of thinking was so foreign to Danilo’s nature, he found it hard to follow. “Why?” he asked. “Why should she care which man you marry?”

“Maybe she plans to use me and my
damat
against the Grand Vizier in the council. Who knows? What is important is that I think I can persuade her to arrange an immediate audience with my father.” She clapped her hands like a child. And with a smile of ravishing delight, she leaned in toward him. “You are truly my paladin, come to save me after all. Kiss me.”

As he leaned forward obediently, a newly soft voice whispered in his ear, “And tonight you will get your reward.”

58

SHERBET

Because she had to make arrangements with her steward for the evening ahead, Princess Saida got a late start on the Sultana’s culinary session at Topkapi. To make matters worse, her litter was brought to a standstill halfway up to Palace Point by the crowds gathered to witness the semi-annual ice delivery from Mount Olympus. For some reason, the citizens of the capital never ceased to be amazed by the icemen from the frozen north. In the temperate climate of Istanbul, they were an exotic novelty with their snowy turbans, frosty eyebrows, the blankets of furs they were wrapped in, and the dangling ice crystals that hung from their beards and earlobes like cascading diamond drops. Whenever they came to town, admiring onlookers lined the streets wondering at the frosty cavalcade of donkeys and wagons piled high with huge flannel-wrapped blocks of ice, dug out of pits many miles away, to be stored in deep caverns all over the town for the pleasure of the sherbet-loving Turks. Sherbet was, beyond doubt, the favorite sweet of the inhabitants of the city, rich and poor, in all seasons.

Like her fellow townspeople, Princess Saida relished the cool, refreshing sweet and had to admit to herself that, foolish though she knew it was, she wouldn’t mind learning Hürrem’s secret of concocting a sherbet to please a king.

As she tapped her toe impatiently against the stool at her feet, she licked her lips as if to recall the taste of the delicacy, and the memory turned her mind to the woman behind the recipe she was about to learn. Living in her grandmother’s suite in the harem, the princess had been on hand from the beginning to witness Hürrem’s astonishing transformation from concubine to queen. Marooned in the sea of humanity that blocked the progress of her litter, Princess Saida amused herself by tracing the Sultana’s ascent of the Ottoman ladder step by step.

Hürrem’s first moves were unexceptional. As a neophyte concubine she simply emulated the tried-and-tested route taken by countless slave girls before her to attract the Sultan’s attention. From her first day in the harem she was an eager student of the arts taught to these girls to enhance their charms. Although not endowed by nature with a talent for music and dancing, she attended those classes as conscientiously as she did the ones devoted to cosmetics, skin care, costume, and hairdressing. But the first purchase she made from the Jewish bundle-women who supplied the needs and wants of the harem girls was an expensive illustrated manuscript of instructions on the varieties of sexual positions — more than sixty — to intensify the pleasures of intercourse. And no matter what temptations there were to laze the hours away, as most of the Sultan’s girls did, Hürrem could always be found at the end of the day curled up in her bedroll with her copy of
The Perfumed Garden
, a local version of the
Kama Sutra
. One evening Saida had accidentally come upon the girl, believing herself unobserved, lying flat on her back, her legs apart, her knees bent toward her chest, muttering aloud as she proceeded to enact the moves described in the manuscript:

“
Her legs stretched, she lies down on her right side. He gets behind her and places one of his thighs on hers and the other one between her legs. With his saliva he lubricates his member and starts rubbing it on her vagina
and anus; when he reaches a point close to ejaculation he pushes to the nearest hole speedily. But since anal intercourse is wickedness he must save his semen for the proper destination.
”

Never having been exposed to anything like this before, Saida could not tear herself away as the concubine went on.
“In a stooped position she waits for her man. When he is there she starts her behind to dancing slowly, then faster . . .
”

Beneath her coverlet Hürrem was swaying from side to side as she read.

“She sucks him deep within her. This position is very convenient for an unexpected quick flight and can give amazing pleasure to the couple.”

Judging from the increasing frequency of Hürrem’s attendance at the Sultan’s bed, Saida concluded as she crept away that the concubine had learned her lessons well. Earlier, the Sultana-to-be had also distinguished herself from the other girls lined up when the Padishah visited the harem, by greeting him with a smile while all the others were posing in the traditional manner like frozen Byzantine madonnas. On one occasion she even laughed out loud. And once she had found a way into his bed, she made sure to get pregnant as soon as possible and crowned her efforts by producing a boy child. This baby was followed quickly by two more sons, giving the Sultan a choice of heirs to preserve the succession, just in case the crown prince Mustafa should fall ill or fall from his horse, or otherwise disqualify himself by dying young.

And now, Saida reflected, only one barrier remained to prevent Hürrem — still only the Second
Kadin
— from reaching the height of her ambition: the living presence of the First
Kadin
, Rose of Spring, mother to the Sultan’s first-born, Crown Prince Mustafa. So far Hürrem had managed to have Rose of Spring dispatched to Manisa, where Mustafa was serving a term as governor. With Rose of Spring out of the way, the Second
Kadin
had spent her effort persuading the Sultan to marry off the remaining favorites in the harem one by one, until there were fewer and fewer concubines left for the Sultan to visit. And finally, when the Sultan was languishing deep in grief over the death of his beloved mother, the Second
Kadin
disengaged herself from the harem and established a suite beside him in the
selamlik
at Topkapi. This unheard-of arrangement had led to the wedding that shocked the world.

Almost as shocking, the Sultan had proclaimed that the ceremony of marriage had transformed the former slave into a freeborn Sultana like the Ottoman princesses of old. And today, in the Sultan’s long absences, Hürrem acted as her husband’s regent, the second most powerful person in the empire.

Digging into her memory, Saida could see a clear picture of the wretched Second
Kadin
when she first arrived as a gift to the Sultan from his boon companion, the Grand Vizier Ibrahim. The girl had come to the Valide Sultan’s suite as a suppliant, helpless as a child, throwing herself on the mercies of the Sultan’s mother and pleading for her help. What had happened to turn that pathetic girl into an all-powerful empress? What had enabled her to make that unprecedented leap of status? There had to be a key, an event, as there always was in the Persian fairy tales read to the princess at bedtime by her grandmother. The dear face came to her mind. And with the vision came a sudden understanding. While the Valide Sultan lived no one could have taken her place. But once she was dead . . .