The Reign of the Favored Women Read online

  Contents

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  FAMILY TREE

  THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND THE EMPIRE OF VENICE IN 1562

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  PART I: ABDULLAH I

  II

  III

  PART II: ANDREA IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  PART III: ABDULLAH X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  XXI

  XXII

  XXIII

  XXIV

  XXV

  XXVI

  XXVII

  XXVIII

  XXIX

  XXX

  XXXI

  XXXII

  XXXIII

  XXXIV

  XXXV

  XXXVI

  PART IV: FERHAD XXXVII

  XXXVIII

  PART V: ABDULLAH XXXIX

  XL

  XLI

  XLII

  XLIII

  XLIV

  XLV

  XLVI

  XLVII

  XLVIII

  XLIX

  L

  LI

  LII

  LIII

  LIV

  LV

  LVI

  LVII

  LVIII

  LIX

  LX

  LXI

  LXII

  LXIII

  LXIV

  LXV

  LXVI

  LXVII

  LXVIII

  LXIX

  LXX

  GLOSSARY

  The Reign of the Favored Women

  Ann Chamberlin

  OTTOMAN EMPIRE TRILOGY: BOOK 3

  Copyright © 1998 by Ann Chamberlin

  All rights reserved

  A Forge Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

  Distributed by St. Martin’s Press

  175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010

  Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

  Jacket art, The Music Lesson, by Frederick, Lord Leighton, courtesy of Bridgeman/Art Resource, NY Map by Ellisa Mitchell

  The excerpts from The Honest Courtesan Veronica Franco, Citizen and Writer in Sixteenth-Century Venice by Margaret F. Rosenthal, Copyright © 1992 by Margaret F. Rosenthal. Reprinted by permission of University of Chicago Press.

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN-10: 0312865929

  ISBN-13: 978-0312865924

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  For

  Carl and Jo Ann

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Much of the list is the same as for the first two volumes of this trilogy, but repetition should not indicate a lack of appreciation, rather the opposite.

  I owe a great deal to the friendly people in Turkey, especially the guides at the Topkapi palace who hardly raised a brow as I went through the harem again and again. I’d like to thank my in-laws, Cal and Jo Ann Setzer—to whom this volume is dedicated—for their support, which allowed me to make that trip. And my husband and sons for their patience while my mind was elsewhere.

  Kourkan Daglian, Ruth Mentley, Harriet Klausner, Alexis Bar-Lev, and Dr. James Kelly all unstintingly shared their expertise with me. Again I’d like to thank the Wasatch Mountain Fiction Writers Friday Morning Group for their support, patience, and friendship. Teddi Kachi and Leonard Chiarelli at the Marriott Library, as well as all the Whit-more and Holladay librarians—especially Hermione Bayas and Larraine Blamires—never stinted in their assistance. Early in the process, Debra Sandack and the book club offered their opinions. Near the end, Dave Willoughby, Marny Parkin, and others in the Life, the Universe, and Everything Symposium did so as well.

  I’m afraid Gerry Pearce will still disagree with the decisions of orthography I have made. He—and any other person knowledgeable in these spheres—will appreciate the difficulties I’ve faced walking the line between Arabic, Persian, Turkish, both Ottoman and modern, and common English usage. Yes, I know I am still inconsistent from word to word but no longer—I hope—from one use of a single word to the next. At this point—and for the reader’s ease—I’m not going to agonize any more. If you’d like, Gerry, we can try to thrash it out over dinner again. Your turn to buy.

  There is another woman to whom I owe much but she didn’t want her name mentioned. She knows who she is. She doesn’t approve—except of good spelling and grammar.

  Of course, there are my editor and dear friend Natalia Aponte, and Steve, Erin, Karla, and all the other folks at Tor/Forge.

  And finally, Virginia Kidd, my agent.

  Without these folks, The Reign of the Favored Women would have existed, but never in the light of day. None of them is to be blamed for the errors I’ve committed, only thanked for saving me from making more.

  FAMILY TREE

  THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND THE EMPIRE OF VENICE IN 1562

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  * Indicates a documented historical character

  ABD AR-RAHMAN—Son of the deceased Mufti, eventually husband to Gul Ruh.

  ABDULLAH—The narrator of the story, Esmikhan’s eunuch guardian.

  AGOSTINO BARBARIGO*—Andrea’s father, proveditore of Venice.

  ANDREA BARBARIGO*—Scion of a wealthy Venetian house, in this novel, lover to Safiye.

  ARAB PASHA*—A protégé of Sokolli Pasha, governor of Cyprus and beloved of Gul Ruh.

  AYSHA SULTAN*—Daughter of Murad and Safiye, sister to Muhammed.

  BETULA—Daughter of the Mufti and Umm Kulthum, sister to Abd ar-Rahman.

  DJWERKHAN SULTAN*—Daughter of Selim the Sot, half-sister to Murad and Esmikhan.

  ESMIKHAN SULTAN*—Daughter of Selim and half-sister to Murad, the woman Abdullah must guard.

  ESPERANZA MALCHI*—Safiye’s Jewish Kira.

  FATIMA SULTAN*—Daughter of Murad and Safiye, sister to Muhammed.

  FERHAD PASHA*—Advanced first to Master of the Imperial Horse, later Agha of the Janissaries and Grand Vizier, in this novel, Esmikhan’s lover.

  FERIDUN BEY*—Secretary of Sokolli Pasha.

  THE FIG—The midwife who apprentices to and later replaces the Quince.

  FOSCARI—Andrea Barbarigo’s father-in-law-to-be.

  GHAZANFER AGHA*—Formerly Mihrimah’s eunuch, now Safiye’s, he eventually gains the post of kapu aghasi.

  GIORGIO VENIERO—Abdullah’s Italian name.

  GIUSTINIANI—A sea captain, native of the island of Chios.

  GUL RUH SULTAN—Esmikhan’s daughter.

  HUSAYN—A Syrian merchant and old family friend of Abdullah, later known as Hajji.

  JOSEPH NASSEY—Sultan Selim the Sot promised to give kingship of Cyprus to this Jewish companion.

  THE KIRA*—Women, often Jewish, who brought bundles of goods in for the ladies of the harems to purchase and also served as messengers between secluded women and the outside world.

  MIHRIMAH SULTAN*—Daughter of Suleiman, aunt of Esmikhan.

  MITRA—A slave girl Safiye purchases and gives to Murad as a concubine. She is of Persian origin and a poet.

  MUFTI*—The highest religious judge in Turkey, in this novel, Abd ur-Rahman’s father.

  MUHAMMED III*—Turkish Sultan from 1595-1603 c.e., son of Murad and Safiye.

  MURAD III*—Turkish Sultan from 1574-1595 c.e., son of Selim and Nur Banu, lover of Safiye.

  MUSLIM—As a personal na
me, it is Andrea Barbarigo’s Turkish name.

  NUR BANU SULTAN*—The woman who purchased Safiye, she is a former concubine of Selim, mother of Murad, and stepmother of Esmikhan.

  PIALE PASHA*—The Kapudan Pasha, admiral of the Turkish navy.

  THE QUINCE—Midwife to the Imperial harem.

  SAFIYE*—Born the daughter of the Venetian governor of the island of Corfu, she was captured by pirates and became the concubine of Murad III.

  SELIM II*—Known as the Sot, Turkish Sultan from 1566-1574 C.E., father of Murad and Esmikhan, Nur Banu was his concubine.

  SOFIA BAFFO*—Safiye’s Venetian name.

  SOKOLLI PASHA*—Muhammed Pasha Sokolli, Turkish Grand Vizier, married to Esmikhan Sultan.

  SULEIMAN I*—Known in the West as the Magnificent and in the East as the Lawgiver, Turkish Sultan from 1520—1566 C.E., father of Selim and grandfather of Murad. He is already deceased at the start of this novel.

  UMM KULTHUM—Widow of the Mufti, mother of Abd ur-Rahman, eventually mother-in-law to Gul Ruh.

  UWEIS*—A rowdy native Turk, companion to Murad.

  PART I: ABDULLAH

  I

  After the very difficult birth of her daughter, my dear lady, Esmikhan Sultan, eventually learned to walk again with the aid of a cane. But she moved more like a duck than a woman and therefore preferred to be carried, either in her sedan or in a chair one of my assistant eunuchs and I would contrive by crossing our hands. She could sit for short periods without discomfort, but mostly she preferred to lie about in the harem, propped up with innumerable pillows.

  Plump before, now inactivity and contentment made her fat.

  To me Esmikhan was as dear as ever, but then, I had been forcibly removed from the realm where physicality was important. Huge breasts dominated her entire body. She nursed the child herself for four full years, and then it was Gul Ruh, teased by other youngsters for being a baby, who shook her head and said, “No, thank you, Mama,” of her own accord.

  This saucy weaning was as yet far in the future, however, one day of her daughter’s first spring. The women of the imperial palace had invited a jeweler to display her wares, and my lady came, too. More than the jewels, she had wanted to show Baby Gul Ruh the gazelle fawns that always enlivened the Sultan’s gardens at that time of year. Esmikhan caught my gaze over the child’s delight, and the gentle love I read in my lady’s round, gazelle-brown eyes was delight enough for me.

  The day was so warm and bright however that we soon retreated inside with the rest of the harem as if the heat of summer were already upon us. Here, behind the bastion of the walls and playing fountains, we sank into the exquisite artifice that was harem reality.

  Turkish women called their procurers Kira. Usually Jewish, always female, these were the wives or daughters of merchants who entered the harems to peddle their families’ goods where men would not be allowed. This particular jeweler’s wife was Esperanza Malchi. Her fathers had been expelled from Spain almost eighty years before, in 1492 as Christians tell the years, and had spent some years in Venice before finally ending their wanderings in Constantinople’s jewelry suq.

  And that particular day, as the culmination of her show, Esperanza Malchi produced a ruby necklace so magnificent it quite made the head reel.

  “Come, ladies,” she replied to the “oohs and ahs” with a purr that matched her black-cat features. “To truly appreciate the unique qualities of the major gem, you must view it in the light. Come to the window, if you please.”

  As if she were Moses and they the liberated Israelites, the Kira led all the women to the advantage of a high window on the other side of the room. Only my lady, her daughter, and I remained behind because Esmikhan had decided—wisely, I thought—that the pleasure of seeing a ruby in sunlight was not worth the trouble of getting up and moving to the window.

  Because my lady was a married woman, not a slave, and a daughter of the Sultan besides, with an income of her own, the Kira had placed the display case right at her elbow, the better to tempt her. Most of the others could only look and sigh. Now, while they were all busy at the window, Esmikhan idly ran her fingers through the box’s contents: the ransom of any European prince. But I think my lady fingered the gems from boredom.

  If Esmikhan did look with interest, it was to consider trinkets for her daughter, who, at almost seven months old, lay nestled against her expansive breast. Esmikhan plucked out a pair of pendant earrings and held them up to the baby’s ears: Was it too early to pierce that petal-like flesh?

  I was more struck by the look of the father in the child. Remarkable, I mused, how the sunburnt features of a cavalry officer remolded themselves in plump pink baby skin. Surely my lady thought of her lover every time she looked at her daughter. Grief, loss, and guilt tainted each such thought, for Gul Ruh was not the Pasha’s legitimate child. But only my lady and I must ever know that secret.

  I sometimes wished I’d stopped the clandestine exchange of letters and gifts between the two lovers sooner—or more effectively. Those wordless missives of flowers and leaves that only the love-blind could read, how dangerous if discovered. And sometimes I knew the stab of my own jealousy, that the dashing Ferhad Pasha offered my lady something I could not. This wasn’t the case with Sokolli Pasha, the old grey Grand Vizier to whom she was legitimately married.

  I was never sorry I’d broken the master’s trust to allow the single night’s indiscretion. It had saved my lady from self-destructive heartbreak. It had produced this lovely dear rose to fill her childless arms. And yet, I couldn’t be easy with the memory, nor with people’s comments, given innocently enough, that “There’s nothing of the Vizier in her, is there?” The very hint of adultery could not go well for a great man’s wife in this land: even a Sultan’s daughter could not hope to escape the death sentence if the charge were ever proven. Never mind how it would go for the eunuch entrusted with guarding her virtue. I tried, therefore, to shut the thought out of my mind.

  Gul Ruh grabbed at the earrings, so my lady put them back, cooing all the while, and slipped a plain gold bangle on the fat little wrist instead. The child instantly took the bangle off and began to teethe on it. With the little hands and mouth safely occupied, Esmikhan introduced her daughter’s eyes to the intricacies of a locket she fished out of the velvet-lined box. I noticed only briefly that the mosaic work above the clasp was Venetian. Then I closed my mind to all but the sense of contentment in the baby prattle that followed.

  “I don’t know what that is, sweetheart,” was the next thing I was aware of my lady saying.

  I idly glanced over to see what had caught her and the baby’s attention. Esmikhan had found a scrap of paper concealed inside the locket. She opened the paper, looked at both sides, then shrugged and folded it again.

  “My very sweet mountain stream, I think it is nothing. Only scribbling. Or it is a magic spell which, I pray Allah, you may never have need of.”

  Esmikhan quickly snapped the paper back in the locket lest uninitiated use of such magic cause bad luck. But before she had time to return the locket to the box, it was snatched a little too roughly from her—by the Kira.

  “I’m sorry, most gracious Esmikhan Sultan,” Esperanza Malchi said. “This particular piece is not for sale.”

  “I was only curious about what was inside...”

  “It is nothing,” the Kira said, and put the locket, instead of back into the box, into her bosom.

  “There, see, I told you, honey blossom. It is nothing.” These words gave the impression the world is really good, kind, and free from all intrigue. My lady lied.

  The rest of the women had followed the Kira back to the divan and took up their places again. The ruby necklace, I discovered, had found its way around Safiye’s neck.

  I was not surprised. How to describe Safiye to those who never saw her? Lover to my lady’s brother. Prince Murad, heir to the Ottoman throne. Mother of his only son to date, Muhammed, who was three years old. This mundane recital of functi
ons falls far short. That she was the most beautiful woman in the world, even seven years after I first fell under her spell in a convent garden in Venice, I was not alone in believing. Brown eyes as cool as autumn leaves, a promiscuity of golden hair, skin as flawless and unchanging as marble. Tall and wallow, she had movements like a ribald song.

  And beneath these features lay a soul with perfections of its own. Perfect in ambition, perfectly unflinching of either love or mercy to gain its own ends. Like demon-cold at midnight, she took the breath away.

  The exorcism I had undergone to break her spell over me was hardly something I would recommend to the rest of her victims. What the tumble from Venetian seaman to harem eunuch had left me, I’d only just begun to call a life again.

  Suffice it to say that Safiye—whom I’d once known as Sofia Baffo—got everything she wanted. My purpose was simply to see that what she got cost nothing more of me, nor more of those souls who, in spite of everything, had become so dear to me.

  As far as I was concerned, Safiye could have the Kira’s ruby necklace. It sat against the white flesh of her neck as if it had seeped there from the inside, as if alabaster could really bleed.

  “Send the bill to Prince Murad, Magnesia,” Safiye said, admiring herself in a mirror, “for I shall have this.”

  “How dare you!” Nur Banu was livid.

  Nur Banu had been Sultan Selim’s lover—once upon a time—and had produced Murad, his first-born son. As such, she was nominal head of the imperial harem. Her four hundred ghrush had bought the golden-haired Venetian beauty for her son’s bed. Safiye, of course, had long ago outstripped the older woman’s tutelage. Nur Banu was the only one who still attempted to contain the natural force she’d unwittingly loosed upon the world.

  “How dare you demand such things of my son?” Nur Banu asked. “You refused to spend more than three months with him this winter. And half that time you were on the road.”