Two Empresses

by Brandy Purdy

  He waved aside my worries and promised me that he would be well by spring. “The most wonderful thing in the world will happen to me then . . . with your consent.” He smiled and kissed my hand.

  In April, at the annual tulip fête, he confided, it was his dearest wish to emulate an earlier sultan, Süleyman the Magnificent, who had astonished the world, and rocked Turkey to its foundations, when he disbanded his harem and took his favorite kadin, Rox-alena, the Russian slave girl with the blazing red hair and matching fiery spirit, as his official wife and consort, bestowing upon her the rank of Empress that was usually accorded to the sultan’s mother. It was the greatest tribute and testament to his love that Süleyman could bestow upon his beloved and Abdul Hamid wanted to do the same for me.

  “My happiness is complete,” I said as I lay within the circle of his arms.

  But it was not to be. When the dawn came softly stealing through the latticed windowpanes Death stole his life away. I awakened in his arms and knew at once something was wrong. Abdul Hamid was cold and blue beneath the ermine quilt. His arms were stiff and cold about me, like a rigid cage made of skin and bones, and a length of my hair was twined around one of his hands like a golden bandage. When Lâle came, as he always did, to escort me back to the harem, I required his help to free myself from my lover’s last embrace.

  Before I left the Sultan’s bed, for what I knew would be the last time, I used Abdul Hamid’s jeweled dagger to cut off my hair where it was wound around his hand. He was holding it so tight, I liked to think it was a last message to me, telling me that he would never let go. I kept the dagger, as a remembrance, and let him take my golden locks to the grave with him.

  “There will never be a day when I do not think of you,” I said, and kissed his brow and closed his sightless eyes.

  * * *

  I felt my heart break and scatter like bits of red stone to make a mosaic that might be pieced and glued together in the semblance of a heart’s shape but would never be whole again. But this time I couldn’t surrender to the darkness and sink deep into the black mire of depression as I had when I lost Altin; I had to hold on and stay strong for Mahmoud. Senieperver would be watching me closer than ever before, her sharp eyes seeking out the chink in my armor.

  Now that Selim was sultan, Mustafa was one step closer to the throne, the heir apparent, and his half brother, Mahmoud, was next in line, all three of them cousins and brothers cast as pawns in this most dangerous game of dynastic chess, so deadly the Devil himself might have devised it.

  Selim was seen as weak, an idealistic dreamer who lacked the will to make his dreams real. But those dreams were nonetheless dangerous to all enemies of progress. Mustafa was a lazy, self-centered sybarite willing to leave all the business of ruling the empire in the hands of his power-mad mother and the corrupt and brutal Janissaries. Not a one of them had a single care for Turkey and its people, only their own selfish interests. Then there was Mahmoud, too young yet to be seen by anyone but Senieperver as a serious threat, but as he grew from boy to man that was certain to change. If Selim failed and Mustafa seized power, Mahmoud would be the great golden hope of every downtrodden, wronged, and abused soul in Turkey, and with Mustafa on the throne there would be thousands of them. Senieperver would not suffer such a formidable rival to live. I would have to be the wall standing between my son and death.

  Abdul Hamid had left me with a strong purpose to shore up my grief. “Take him and make him the sultan our son would have been, the sultan that I should have been,” he said when he gave Mahmoud to me. I would dedicate my life, to my last breath, to my last drop of blood, to keeping that promise.

  CHAPTER 37

  I stood upon the crenellated walls and watched the white-shrouded body of my lover, my friend, my would-have-been husband, Sultan Abdul Hamid I, being borne out of Topkapi Palace upon a plain wooden bier, to be entombed with his ancestors in the imperial mausoleum. There was no coffin, for the Muslims believed that the body must be returned directly to the earth with the head pointing toward Mecca. His nephew, the newly proclaimed Sultan Selim III, led the funeral procession. The only women allowed to walk behind him were the professional mourners Lâle had hired. Not one of the five hundred women who had belonged to the Sultan, known, desired, aspired to his favor, bedded, or even truly loved him were allowed to see him to his grave. The hired mourners shrieked and tore at their black hair and fell to the ground and groveled and rolled in the dirt and threw dust on their veiled heads, making sure the Kizlar Aga got his money’s worth. It was quite a spectacle.

  My heart was a fountain of endlessly flowing tears. I wore white, the color of mourning, spangled head to toe with diamond brilliants weeping teardrop pearls. I had been brought up to believe that it was bad luck for a bride to wear diamonds and pearls upon her wedding day or else in the years to come she would have cause to shed many tears. Though most women put luxury over superstition and wore these impressive adornments anyway, it seemed somehow most fitting that I should wear these emblems of sorrow now as I mourned the husband of my heart.

  Mahmoud stood solemnly beside me and held my hand.

  “You really loved him,” he said.

  “With all my heart,” I answered, “and always will. I didn’t really begin to live until I met him, and the funny thing is everyone who ever knew me thought I was dead, but I had never been more alive. And he gave me the greatest gift of all—you!” I knelt and embraced my son.

  “No.” Mahmoud smiled and shook his head as he wrapped his arms around my neck. “He gave me the greatest gift of all—you!”

  I smiled through my tears and stroked his thin little face. “You are the reason my heart still beats.”

  “Don’t cry, Maman.” Mahmoud reached beneath my pearl-fringed veil to dry my tears with his own silk handkerchief. It was blue, the color of hope. “You will be with him again someday. The Koran says: The fortunate fair who has given pleasure to her lord will have the privilege of appearing before him in Paradise. Like the crescent moon, she will preserve all her youth and beauty and her husband will never look older or younger than thirty-one years.”

  “Abdul Hamid will like that.” I smiled and even laughed a little through my tears. “He always lamented the years that lay between us, but in Paradise he won’t have to worry about that anymore. He will be both the man I love and the man that he wanted to be.”

  I strained my eyes for one last sight of my beloved as the doors of the royal mausoleum swung open wide and swallowed him. As the top of his white-shrouded head disappeared inside I reached out my hand as though my love could bridge the distance and caress him one last time. Then he was gone. I didn’t wait to see the rest of the procession pass; none of that mattered. As tears blurred my eyes, I let Mahmoud take my hand and lead me back inside.

  * * *

  It was the custom that when a sultan died his harem was banished to the Old Palace, the Eski Saray, the Palace of Tears, the House of the Unwanted Ones, to live out their remaining years celibate and bitter. Situated down by the sea at Seraglio Point, it was mocked as an almshouse for old ladies, though its residents could be as young as twelve and most were in the prime of life and beauty. Its nearness to the sea was a constant reminder to those that dwelled within that their survival was truly an act of charity. Men who had dived off the point often came back with tales of hundreds of bodies, women sewn into weighted sacks, standing upright, bowing and swaying, with the current. That could very easily have been the fate of the dead sultan’s harem, but the new sultan chose to be merciful and grant them a living death instead of a watery grave.

  Entombed alive within the Eski Saray’s grim gray walls, waited upon by sad-eyed and arthritic eunuchs too old and feeble to serve in Topkapi Palace, these discarded women spent their days weeping to the tune of melancholy music or else seeking consolation in food now that there was no sultan’s eye to catch, and no one to care if they got fat, or finding solace in Sapphic affairs. Some of them could not bear to live witho
ut the sun of the sultan’s favor and committed suicide. Those he had never noticed and bedded believed their lives had been for naught and lamented that they would live and die without ever knowing a man’s touch. Some of them decided the eunuchs were better than nothing and did what they could with them; a man’s hands and mouth after all are still capable of giving pleasure even when he lacks the vital member. The moment the sultan died time was said to stop for the women in his harem, only it didn’t really, it yawned on and on for years and years and years and years....

  Far better, I thought, to be a sultan’s sister or daughter. The sultanas were also sent away from the splendors of Topkapi Palace, but they went to begin new lives as the wives of provincial governors or other men of wealth and eminence.

  As the reigning favorite, the First Kadin, I had no choice but to go with the others to the Palace of Tears. My heart broke yet again when Lâle told me that this meant I must also leave Mahmoud. It would be up to the new sultan, Mahmoud’s cousin Selim, and Mahmoud’s tutor to ensure my son’s safety now. Entombed in the Palace of Tears there was nothing I could do to protect him; I would be powerless.

  * * *

  As I embraced Mahmoud one last time and climbed into my litter, to join the long, mournful procession of women and baggage heading down to Seraglio Point, my life changed again in a way I never expected.

  Selim appeared, resplendent in red and white, his new authority resting lightly as a silk cloak upon his shoulders. Saddened by his uncle’s death, Selim was yet euphoric in anticipation of all the wonderful things he planned, and he wanted me there to see them.

  Boldly, he advanced, put his arms around my waist, and lifted me down from my litter.

  “Your place is here,” he said, “with Mahmoud, and with me.”

  CHAPTER 38

  It was unprecedented; no kadin belonging to a dead sultan had ever been allowed to remain in Topkapi Palace after her Lord and Master died. The whole palace was in an uproar. Malicious tongues began to wag about Selim and me. Senieperver threw a magnificent tantrum. She descended from her litter and refused to budge and ordered her servants to take her things back inside. If I was staying with Mahmoud, she must be allowed to stay with her son too. Mustafa needed her, she said, as much as Mahmoud needed me. Selim, cowed by her fury, and in the spirit of fairness, allowed it; he could think of no justifiable reason to refuse. And it didn’t really matter where she was. Senieperver would never stop plotting against him; it would be easier to watch her under the same roof.

  Selim immediately set to work changing our world. He began with books. The full French Encyclopédie must be translated into Turkish so the people could reap the benefits of its knowledge. This was followed by volumes on mathematics and military tactics, scientific treatises, poetry, plays, philosophy, and novels. And there should be new schools and the system of taxation must be improved; the people’s backs were breaking under the strain of the sums they must suffer to pay, and the tortures the Janissaries doled out when they couldn’t pay. Turkey’s fortifications must be strengthened, the navy was a travesty, the ships lumbering and antiquated, and something really must be done about the pirates; the Barbary Corsairs were a terror and menace to every soul who sailed upon the sea.

  The turmoil in France had begun to subside, the Revolution was over, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were amongst the thousands who had died, their heads stricken off by a killing machine known as the guillotine, royalty had been abolished, and a body of government called The Directory ruled the Republic of France now. Selim sent the Directors letters, proclaiming admiration and friendship and requesting that a capable and clever officer be sent to evaluate and help retool the Turkish army; everything must be made new and modern.

  While he waited for an answer, Selim began to pay awkward court to me. Though he had a brand-new harem, he had yet to make use of it.

  He despised the ceremonial visits to the harem, but they were a tradition, a ritual, as old as his bloodline. So reluctantly Selim would go forth, with the Kizlar Aga walking ahead of him, ringing a golden bell to alert the women to his presence and announcing: “Behold our Sovereign, Emperor of the True Believers, Shadow of Allah upon Earth, The Prophet’s Successor, The Master of Masters, Chosen amongst the Chosen, our Padishah, the Sultan, Selim III! Long live our sultan! Let us admire him who is the glory of the house of Osman!”

  The women would be thrown into a frenzy of preparation. Though they sat around all day, devoting themselves to looking their best in case the Sultan came, there was always some last little thing to be done, another touch of cochineal, an adjustment to the hair, a pair of slippers or a vest changed for another, as no odalisque ever appeared before her Lord and Master in the same costume twice. They would assemble in two long rows and the Sultan would walk between them, like a general reviewing his troops. As he passed, every woman hoped he would pause before her and drop his handkerchief. After this inspection, he would be invited to sit upon a divan and plied with sweetmeats and sherbets, a savory snack, or coffee or tea if such was his pleasure, and the newest or most promising women, handpicked by the Sultana Valide, if there was one, or the Kizlar Aga if there was none, would be brought before him for a closer look. When he saw the one who pleased him best, if he had not already done so he was supposed to drop his handkerchief. But Selim never did. Every time he took out his handkerchief the women’s hopes rose, only to crash when he only made use of it to blot his brow or blow his nose. He never even put on his spectacles during these visits, so all the odalisques, their beauties and charms, and the toil they had taken over their toilettes, passed by him in a blur. Selim could not see clearly more than three inches past the end of his nose. He would sit and nibble comfits uncomfortably and then he would stand up and leave.

  The women were puzzled and miffed. There they were, three hundred beauties all brought in fresh for his pleasure; how could he not want even one of them? Two rumors were current: One said that Selim preferred boys; where women were concerned he was still a virgin.

  Such a thing was not unknown or uncommon. The white eunuchs who served as the Sultan’s body servants, dressing and bathing him and serving his meals, were always lovely young creatures with slim, pale, smooth bodies smothered in attar of roses. Christians like me, taken by pirates or as the spoils of war while they were still in early childhood, they were often gilt or red haired. It was not at all unusual for them to stir a man’s lust; their beauty rivaled most women’s. It was only when—if—they grew older, faded and flabby, bitter, bored, that they lost their allure and were sent to serve elsewhere in the palace while new fresh and beautiful ones were brought in to replace them, in and out of the sultan’s bed. The white eunuchs’ lives were likened to the brief span allotted a butterfly; they did not tolerate the operation that deprived them of their manhood as well as the black eunuchs did and many remained frail creatures and died young. A white eunuch who attained the age of twenty was considered old. Only one retained lifelong power, for however long he lived and was fit to serve, the Chief White Eunuch, the Kapi Aga. As the Kizlar Aga ruled the harem, he ruled the Selâmlik, the men’s domain.

  The other rumor pointed the finger of blame directly at me. Everyone had seen Selim pluck me from my litter and countermand centuries of tradition by commanding my continued presence in Topkapi Palace. Many ears had heard him say “Your place is here, with Mahmoud, and with me.”

  We were both young and attractive; it was hard not to believe that attraction, not altruism, was the reason he had insisted upon my staying. Whenever I went to Selim’s library, to read and talk with him, everyone suspected the worst of us: that conversation was just a cloak to conceal lovemaking. Lâle, conveniently forgetting the damage done to my womb, worried endlessly that I would conceive a son by Selim. My protestations that we were not lovers fell on deaf ears. No one believed me. Maybe that was because Selim wanted us to be and it showed in his eyes every time he looked at me.

  * * *

  Time passed and the
gossip continued, Selim still ignored his harem, and no new heirs were born to the Osman dynasty. He was busy with his reforms, and I occupied myself with my son’s education and took my pleasures where I found them. It was a quiet life, and a peaceful one, I was content. Selim and I remained friends and I did my earnest best to ignore the yearning in his eyes that told me that he wanted more.

  * * *

  One night he sent Lâle to me with my old trunk. Out came the pink taffeta ball gown, and all its accessories. I was amazed to see it; I had thought it long gone, if I had even thought of it at all. I suppose it must have been sitting in a storeroom somewhere. Selim wanted me to put it on. Lâle clearly disapproved, but he was the Sultan’s servant; he couldn’t very well advise me to refuse.

  It was funny how foreign the petticoats, stays, silk stockings, and high-heeled shoes, fancier versions of the clothing I used to wear every day, now seemed. I had become so accustomed to Turkish clothes I felt like I was looking at a stranger when I stood before my mirror in protruding panniers and pink taffeta flounces with my hair caught up in mounds of curls garnished with silk roses, gold tassels, and pink plumes. My figure had grown fuller in the years since I had come to Topkapi Palace and the stays bit much tighter, the laces straining to hold me inside this lavish pink confection. I wanted nothing more than to take it right back off so I could breathe freely again.

  “Shall we?” Disapprovingly Lâle held out his hand to me. My white fingertips and his black ones barely touched across my jutting panniers as he accompanied me, for the first time since Abdul Hamid had died, down the Golden Path we used to walk together almost every night and again the morning after.