The Sultan's Daughter, стр. 96

“You might wish him to idle with his mother, however,” Esmikhan suggested.

“But how can I teach him if I don’t know about these things myself?”

Esmikhan was silent, for she knew no answer to this except, perhaps, one she carried like her unborn child, close to her heart, and whose time had not yet come.

As we turned to rejoin the rest of the women, Safiye happened to catch my eye with her sharp brown ones. She paused, then spoke in Italian. “You know, don’t you, Veniero? You were there when they held that meeting, and you did not have babies on the brain.”

I smiled quietly.

“Tell me,” she pleaded. “Tell me where they have gone and why.”

“I think my lady is right,” I said in Turkish. “You would do better to spend more time with your child.”

XLII

Not half an hour after I’d sent the messenger on his way to Astrakhan with a notice for the Grand Vizier that his wife had come to her time, another man arrived with news from the front. They must have passed one another in the streets by the quay, and perhaps even salaamed and wished each other “A joyful arrival.”

Yet the news from the front was as different from the good tidings of home as night is from day. The invasion of Astrakhan had woefully miscarried. Although it was at first successful, a force of a mere fifteen thousand Russians had come upon the Turks as they worked, unarmed at the canal, and put them to a dreadful, confused flight. The hand of Allah seemed to be against the expedition, too, for even of those who had managed to reach the safety of the boats without being ambushed and hacked to pieces, a mere seven thousand were returning. An early, sudden winter storm had surprised the ships at sea and sunk half the fleet.

Sokolli Pasha, the messenger said, knew that the disastrous news would precede him into Constantinople, and he wanted his wife not to fear unduly. She should know that he, at least, thanks be to Allah, was safe and would be home as soon as he could.

I waited as long as I dared after the messenger had gone to his barracks before going up to the birthing room. I had decided I would not break the news until after the child was born, but my lady read my face, and then it was better that she knew all than that she be kept guessing with nothing.

She gave a little cry when I had finished, whether from the labor or my words, I knew not.

“Please, do not fear, lady,” I said. “Your husband sends word that he, by the mercy of Allah, was spared.”

“But what about...?”

Pain, or again, perhaps dread, cut her words short, but I knew she could not help but think of the child’s father.

“I’m sorry, lady. I do not know. I will try and find out and let you know as soon as I can.”

Tears pressed silently from her eyes, but she nodded gratefully as I left.

I returned to the house at nightfall, having heard nothing. Even the disaster was as yet unknown in the streets.

“She’s having a hard time of it,” the Quince greeted me.

The midwife had poured gunpowder in a thin line across the threshold, and I knew if I crossed it, I could not come out of the birthing room again, for it was believed I would take the strength of pangs with me. They would only torment and bring forth nothing, so I stayed without and only peered in from time to time. The room was dark, and made darker still by the thick clouds of burning sandalwood and frankincense that were to make the labor sweet. I wondered, rather, how Esmikhan could even breathe, and I shrank when I imagined the incense drying in a still, suffocating mask on sweat and tears. I could barely make out the glimmer of the gilded cover of the great Koran the Quince had hung as a talisman above the point where the baby should be born. I couldn’t distinguish the figure of my lady huddling on the birthing stool beneath it from those of the other women—her maids and some from the Serai—who were in attendance to give her encouragement.

The women had set up a rhythmic chant of “Allah akhbar, God is great!” Esmikhan was encouraged to join in as she could, and all of them let their words blur into one long, sustained wail when the contractions came.

“The baby is buttocks first,” the midwife elaborated, “and I have so far been unable to get it turned around.”

Although my notion of a woman’s insides was very vague, I knew a slave girl in the palace had died from just such a difficulty within the last six months. The thought made me viscerally sick. But as there was nothing I could do, I went to my room and tried to spend an evening as usual.

Echoes of the women’s chant pursued me to my room and I found I could neither eat nor sleep nor read. My assistants and the khuddam who had come with the women from the palace were finding distraction in the general room by singing, telling tales, and playing chess. Careless clouds of laughter timed to the wails of the chant helped them forget that they were half women; that if the demon of childbirth brought death, they would find themselves on the slave block again.

Still, let them escape as they can, I thought, though I could not join them.

I let the women’s wails chase me out of the house, through the garden, and into the dark streets. Their echoes even seemed to come to me in the refuge I took in the hollow mosque at the end of the street. There I alternately prayed, paced, and wept, returning always to the weeping again (unmanly, but that did not bother me) whenever realization