Two Empresses

by Brandy Purdy

  Great black iron cauldrons were brought out to boil ears of corn and whole lambs were roasted on spits, gilded pitchers inlaid with precious gems filled with every flavor of sherbet imaginable were passed around, and there were music, singers and dancers, jugglers, acrobats, magicians, fortune-tellers, and puppet shows to entertain us.

  Abdul Hamid presented me with a gilded barge of my very own, another honor unknown in the harem, with a dozen oarsmen to row it. There was a gilded canopy for me to sit beneath, with curtains of fine pale pink gauze and a second set of gold-embroidered rose velvet that might be drawn to veil me from the world, or to protect me if I felt a sudden chill, and piles of pink and gold brocade cushions for me to rest upon, and trailing in the water behind, attached to the stern by golden chains, was a school of bejeweled golden fish called hirame. Any afternoon I wished it when the weather was fine, as long as I was veiled and properly attended by black eunuchs chosen by Lâle, I might go out and enjoy a pleasure cruise upon the Bosphorus. I was even given my own musicians to accompany and play for me while I enjoyed the fresh air and freedom of the sea.

  I wore a new gown made of the Sultan’s silk encrusted with gold and silver threads embellished with tiny twinkling diamonds and pearls, with trousers of pale golden champagne satin and golden curly-toed slippers underneath the full, open skirt. The Sultan’s yellow diamond, shining like the sun, radiating white diamond rays, filled my décolletage, the necklace to guard me against the evil eye was about my throat, and a wealth of diamonds and pearls were scattered in my golden hair, cleverly suspended from slim golden chains attached to my little round flat-topped hat. Though my veil, fringed with gold and pearls, hid all of my face but my eyes, I was smiling all the time. I sat on a cushion at Abdul Hamid’s feet and ate five ears of corn and gorged myself on roast lamb, börek, plump little pastries stuffed with meat and cheese, and the flaky layered, honey-drenched, nut-laden pastry called baklava. I was famished after my long, slumbering fast.

  I smiled up at Abdul Hamid when he reached for my hand and slipped onto my finger an enormous cabochon sapphire with a star captured inside.

  Despite all the dangers that surrounded me, I had never felt so safe, cherished, and loved before. When this man looked at me and held my hand I never wanted him to let go.

  CHAPTER 35

  I was taken by surprise one day when the heir to the throne, Prince Selim, shyly approached me, stammering his request as he fumbled with his spectacles. He would put them on for a moment, just long enough to get a clear look at me, then take them off again, and conceal them in the full embroidered sleeves of his caftan only to take them back out and put them right back on again.

  Speaking in such strangely accented French I barely recognized my own language, he asked me if I would read some of his French books aloud to him. He knew his accent was atrocious, and he was anxious to improve it. He had learned the language from his Italian tutor, Lorenzo, and that, along with Selim’s native Turkish, accounted for his uniquely awful accent.

  Selim confided that he greatly admired the French and he had even written a letter of friendship to King Louis XVI, though he had been disappointed in the short, stilted, formal reply he had received several months later.

  I told Selim I would be happy to help him with his French; my Turkish might profit by the experience as well, and it would be a pleasure to read some French books again. I urged him not to be downhearted about King Louis’s stiff phrasing. The King of France was a very shy man, I explained, a man more at ease in his own company, with his beloved books, and the clocks and locks he liked to make, than with other people, especially strangers. Everyone said he was like a fish out of water amidst all the court pageantry and he was often, unjustly I thought, judged cold and aloof.

  Selim had amassed a marvelous library of over three hundred French books; there were works of history, fairy tales, philosophy, novels, plays, poetry, science, medicine, military tactics, and even a full set of the encyclopedia. Each one was beautifully bound. It was customary in Turkey that each prince of the blood must learn an honest trade, and bookbinding was not only Selim’s chosen profession but also his passion. “Beautiful books deserve beautiful bindings,” he said, and often set those texts he considered jewels of wisdom, verse and prose, into bindings rich with gold, silver, pearls, and precious gems.

  I began to read with him for an hour or two each afternoon. At first I read to him; then we began to take turns, passing the book back and forth between us, so that I might correct his pronunciation. Often we would linger sipping coffee and discussing what we had just read. He delighted in asking me many questions about France, the customs, people, and government, and I in turn learned much from him about Turkey.

  Through Selim I learned that France was in a terrible state of upheaval, a full-blown revolution was sweeping the land, much blood had been shed, most of it aristocratic, and the King and Queen were now prisoners of their own people. Things had gone rapidly from bad to worse since I had left. I wondered about Rose and prayed that she and her children were safe. Perhaps she had finally had her fill of Paris and gone home to Martinique?

  I enjoyed talking with Selim; he was a gentle, soft-spoken, beautiful dreamer. Beneath his jeweled turban, his head was filled with noble ideals and dreams of dragging his country out of the mire of ancient traditions that he believed only held Turkey back and made people think it a primitive and barbaric land. He wanted to modernize the law, education, and the whole system of government, using France as his inspiration. He wanted a printing press, a newspaper, French books translated into Turkish, and to encourage friendly diplomatic relations between his country and mine. Most of all, he despised the Janissaries, the enemies of progress, and the terror and peril of sultans, and dreamed of replacing them with a new, modern army. He hoped, one day, when he was sultan, to ask the French to help him accomplish this by sending officers to advise him and help equip and train his new army. Everything—infantry, artillery, cavalry, navy—was to be modern and new, modeled precisely on French lines. And he wanted new ships, not heavy, antiquated relics, and to build a cannon foundry and new walls and forts.

  Selim’s eyes shone like stars when he spoke of it, and I could not help but be drawn in. He made me want to share his dream, to see it all come true someday. But there was a certain vulnerability about Selim that also made me fear for him. There was a disturbing delicacy about his face, a weakness of the chin, a feminine cast about his eyes, that made me fear he would crumple in the face of cruel reality. He was so happy ensconced in his little private world of books and dreams, musing about philosophy, or sitting on the rim of a white marble fountain, playing his lute, or reciting poetry, in his brocade robes and turban amongst the tulips in the garden where his pet white peacocks roamed, that I could not even imagine him occupying a throne of absolute power, commanding all that he surveyed. He was a lovely, gentle man who would have made a far better, and I think far happier, scholar than a sultan; there was no ruthlessness or meanness in him at all. To be a great ruler and change the world a man must have not only the will but also confidence in himself and his convictions. Yet whenever I saw Selim sitting on the dais beside Abdul Hamid for some court entertainment or ceremony he seemed woefully out of place, wretchedly uncomfortable in his stiff-backed and bejeweled throne. He was like a bat caught in the sudden blinding brightness of full day wanting to fly back to the safe dark haven of its sheltering cave.

  I felt a special tenderness in my heart for Selim, something akin I think to what I would have felt if I had had a brother or a male cousin near my age whose friendship I cherished, but not carnal love, never passion. Selim was simply not a man to stir a woman in that manner; he might arouse a woman’s maternal feelings, the urge to nurture and protect, but not her baser natural instincts. My heart belonged to Abdul Hamid and I dreaded the day when Death would close his eyes and take him away from me. I didn’t even want to think about that day.

  * * *

  The time I spent w
ith his sweet nephew began to fuel jealous feelings and fancies in Abdul Hamid’s heart and head. One night when I went to him, he told me a story, an old Turkish fable, that also concealed a veiled warning.

  “Once upon a time, a nightingale loved a rose,” he began as he drew me down to sit upon his knee, “and the rose, aroused by its song, awoke trembling upon her stem. It was a white rose”—he caressed the pale skin of my bare arms beneath the slit gold-latticed coral satin of my trailing, floor-length sleeves—“like all the roses in the world at that time—pure, white, innocent, and virginal. As the rose listened to the nightingale’s song, something in her heart was stirred. Then the nightingale came ever so near and whispered into the quivering heart of the white rose: ‘I love you.’ At those words, the little heart of the rose blushed, and in that moment, pink roses were born. The nightingale, encouraged, came closer and closer, and though Allah, when He created the world, intended that the rose alone should never know earthly, carnal love, the rose opened her now pink petals wide”—Abdul Hamid’s hand drifted down, between my legs, and caressed me through my coral satin trousers, causing me to grow moist and tremble with desire—“and the nightingale stole her virginity. In the morning, the rose, in her shame, turned red; thus the red rose was born. And although, ever since, the nightingale has come every night since to ask for her divine love, the rose has refused him. For Allah never meant roses and birds to mate. And though the rose trembled at the voice of the nightingale, her petals remained forevermore closed to him.”

  We sat in silence for a moment, and then he asked me what I thought.

  “I think that I am neither a rose, nor is Selim a nightingale, nor have you, Allah’s Shadow on Earth, any cause for the least concern that his voice might make me tremble and open my pink petals,” I said frankly.

  I stood and gave Abdul Hamid my hand.

  “I also think that that which you do not attempt to chain you keep more freely and firmly bound.”

  “Ah, Nakshidil!” he sighed as he enfolded me in his arms, his fingers weaving through the golden waves of my hair. “Why could I not have been a young man like Selim when you came into my life? It is the curse of old age to always believe that youth wants youth.”

  “But age has given you wisdom and taught you patience and kindness,” I answered, “and I would not trade that, I would not trade you, for anything, or anyone. Just think—if I had come to you in your youth, hasty lust might have blinded you and prevented you from seeing me, and loving me, as you do now. Once you were sated you might have been done with me, my novelty would have quickly paled and you would have been on to your next conquest, and I would have spent the rest of my life languishing like a fat, pampered cat on a velvet cushion instead of coming to you like this.” I looked deep into his dark eyes and caressed his bearded cheek. “I would not sacrifice a single year of your life, or even a single wrinkle or the gray hair you hide under that terrible black dye, for a young man’s body, whether it was your soul within it or another’s. It is you, as you are, that I love,” I said, with my heart and the whole truth in every word, and then I kissed him.

  * * *

  In the morning I awoke so ill I thought I had been poisoned again. I struggled and stumbled across the room, bile burning my throat and tears blurring my eyes. I could not contain the sickness and grasped the nearest vase and vomited into it. Before I was finished, I fell, the great green and gold vase, almost as high as my breasts, falling with me and shattering beneath my weight.

  Abdul Hamid woke at the sound and found me groaning and gasping, naked and miserable upon the floor, shivering, pale, and weak in a pool of broken porcelain and vomit. He tenderly stroked back my hair, heedless of the mess that soiled it, and gathered me up in his arms and carried me back to the bed. He sent for his physician and brought a gold basin filled with water and tenderly cleaned me as best he could while we waited.

  The Greek physician came and examined me and, after asking a few significant questions, solemnly delivered great instead of grave news. I was pregnant.

  * * *

  I had the most arduous and unpleasant pregnancy I think any woman ever endured. The sickness never left me. I lost flesh even as my belly swelled. My hair lost its luster and my skin took on a sickly yellowy ashen hue and there was a constant, panging ache in my pelvis and lower back. The mere mention of food made me ill. The smell or sight of it made me retch. I lay abed all day, so listless and weary no matter how many hours I slept that I could barely bear to lift my head up. It took every ounce of will I possessed to rise, bathe and dress, and go to Abdul Hamid, carried in the gilded litter he now sent every night to carry me along the Golden Path, and to smile for him and assure him that I was well.

  Even when it was deemed no longer safe to take pleasure from me, he still sent for me every night. He liked to talk over the business of the day with me and hold me in his arms, my back resting against his chest and his hands enfolding my belly, to feel the child move within. He gave me an even larger apartment with sumptuous hangings of has ulhas silk twinkling with diamonds and pearls, and the ebony wood bed and the cradle beside it, to await our child’s arrival, were both encrusted with bloodred rubies.

  My rivals reveled in my sickness and the loss of my looks and spent even more time than ever over their own beauty rituals and practicing the arts of love, confident that the day would surely come, and soon, when Abdul Hamid would tire of me and desire another livelier and healthier woman.

  At any given hour the baths were crowded with women, all desperate to be more beautiful than ever before. The dressmakers and embroiderers feared for their sight, they were at their labors day and night, and the bath attendants’ arms ached to the point where they would almost have welcomed amputation they were in such demand for massages, but the harem of Sultan Abdul Hamid had never looked more alluring. The women’s hair shone like black satin and their dark eyes sparkled like starry nights. They plied their pumice stones more diligently than ever before, lined their eyes with black kohl or even ink, reddened their lips and cheeks with cochineal, whitened their skin with a paste of jasmine and almonds, used masks of egg whites to tighten their skin, and experimented with a hundred and one perfumes, and rubbed their skin with a cream made of pulverized pearls to lend it luster. They washed their long hair with egg yolks or even butter to make it shine and some even resorted to henna and indigo to lend its darkness enticing, come hither red and blue flashes. They painted intricate lace-like designs and whole gardens of flowers on their skin with henna; some even dared draw delicate but erotic pictures on their denuded pubic mounds and even perfumed their interiors by crouching over bowls filled with fragrant embers of frankincense, sandalwood, and myrrh, using their robes like a tent to prevent the sweet fumes from escaping. The singers had never sung better, the dancers had never possessed such sinuous sensuality, and those who recited poetry had never put such passion into the words before; even the shadow puppet shows exuded eroticism. Every woman was wishing, willing Abdul Hamid’s handkerchief to drop for her, but it never did. From the night I met Abdul Hamid no other woman’s foot ever trod the Golden Path.

  The women gossiped, and some even gloated, about how grim and solemn the harem midwife and the Sultan’s physician looked whenever they left my room after examining me. Some even came in feigned solicitousness just for the pleasure of standing over me, to see with their own eyes just how low and wretchedly ill I was. Bets were being placed all over the palace about not whether but when I would die, would I succumb before the child was born or after, and if it would die too, or, if by Allah’s grace I survived, I would retain the Sultan’s favor.

  * * *

  As the hour of birthing grew nearer, a great gilded kiosk with one immense open-air chamber was prepared for me in the palace gardens amidst a sea of red and yellow tulips. It was scrupulously scrubbed from floor to ceiling and the walls were painted red. The bed was laid with red silk sheets and a quilt of the same material, and a diaphanous red curtain was
hung across the center of the room like an immense veil. A birthing chair, like a throne of gold ornamented with rubies, and pitchers, and basins, and even birthing utensils made of gold were brought in and laid out in readiness. Even the linen towels the midwife would use were embroidered with golden threads.

  In the harem the birth of a sultan’s child was viewed as a celebration. Instead of giving the expectant mother privacy, alone with the midwife and a trusted few she wished to have near in her travail, the doors were thrown open wide in welcome and any woman or eunuch who wished to might enter. Everyone came in their finest array bearing gifts, including the wives of important men eager to gain or retain the Sultan’s favor.

  Endlessly replenished refreshments were served on gilded plates with drinks poured from golden pitchers into golden cups. The smell of strong coffee was constantly in the air. One hundred strong and sturdy mules had been sent on the seventy-mile trek to the great ice pits on Mount Olympus to bring pure, fresh snow to make sherbets especially for this occasion. Every manner of fruit juice available was put to use to flavor them, and there were even some special ones made of violets and roses or coffee flavored with cloves. My favorite, cinnamon, was there in abundance, but I was too sick to even think of taking a sip.