What holds anything—a tree, a hair, an intention—in place? A tangle of roots? The underside of the flesh? A law?
If I fell the tree, if I tear my hair against the force of nature’s will to cloak me, if I subvert my own intention with someone else’s, then what?
I will tell you. I bring what was beneath the crumbly mool into the light of day. I destroy one order with another.
It is dawn. I have not slept. Across the Bosporus the sun looks like a red dome atop the mosque of Asia. In an instant, it has lifted itself above the hills and sucked itself into something smaller and less red.
Gazanfer enters my room without a sound. He has made his way past Sumbul, who is a black outline behind him. Gazanfer is almost upon me before I see him. He looks discharged. He has no color, and his hands are dangling, the backs of them against his thighs, in an unnatural way.
I sit up, and I say, “It is the Sultan.” Gazanfer stands there. “Is it? What happened? Where is he?”
Gazanfer says, “In his . . .” He is barely able to stand.
“In his bath.”
“Alone? Oh God. Who is with him?”
Gazanfer is banging a fist on his chest. “No one, Valide. I had to come for you.”
“Esther, where is she, bring Esther here.” But she is there already, in the doorway. She has heard water.
“I will go with you,” she says coming in.
“No.” I press the sides of my head. “Yes.” I stop. “No.”
Sumbul is by my bed now, taking my elbow. He will come.
I put on slippers and a second robe, I look for the comb to hold back my hair; I go into the hall without it. Then I hear the water—a sheet of it sliding across the marble. It is already moving into the Golden Way. Sumbul has my arm and he lets it go. He knows. There is light in the corridor, but I go forward like someone in the dark who is heading toward life’s never being the same. You can do this, I say to myself. You can do this.
Selim is on the floor. He is splayed: his limbs are out at angles they never would be at in life. He is puckered and huge, and his head and neck are propped at a broken angle against the overflowing tub. Water is washing over his eyes, which are half-closed. Water is washing down the bridge of the family nose, washing into and out of the man I belong to. He is naked. He is larger than ever. He is huge-boned except for his little feet, but even they already have become big, his toes melded. His knees, his sex, everything is bluish-white and withered from the water and everything else that has happened to him since I last laid eyes on his body, before Murad was born. My balance is gone. I kick off my slippers, reach to close the spigot, and my back foot slips out from under me, and I am on top of him, across him like an X, and it is not fearsome or awful. It is normal and warm, and I think, I have missed you, Selim. I stay that way, and when I sit up I do not take my eyes off him. If I keep my eyes right where they are, I think I believe he will still be there. Not alive. But not any more gone than he is at that moment. Selim, where are you? I am saying. Can you hear me from there? Hear me. Help me, Selim. You are what has saved me from what is coming. I should have said that to you. You would have stayed longer, if you had known.
Let me see, indeed.
I see this: Selim was my protection. Not from deciding about Suleiman’s command. I had decided—when Astraea was about to give birth and in agony called for her own mother, and I held her in my arms until she delivered the child who had been conceived to protect the dynasty, the empire, and the order of things, and that child was a girl, and she was dead. I did not know I decided then, but I know it now: Suleiman’s command is the law and it was right for him, and let us say that it was even right for the empire, but it it was not right for me, and that decision was made firmer with the birth of every one of Selim’s children. Boys, girls, born alive or dead.
I asked to see. I am seeing.
Selim protected me not from what I would decide, but from what I might do. He did this by being alive.
Gazanfer, fly-eyed, is behind Esther, who is beside Sumbul. She whispers my name, inches her fingers under my arms. I tell them to leave me alone—all of them. Selim’s skin is sliding closer to his bones now. He is departing. I want no one there but me while this is happening. Except there is someone else, and it is Suleiman, and he is being carried toward me by the very tide that is taking Selim away. I stay there a long time.
Sokollu Mehmed enters my quarters and appears rested. He is unannounced. He says he will summon the messenger who, with no relays, will take six days to reach Manisa to notify Murad that the Sultan is dead; the throne empty. I tell him we will send word by carrier bird. Time is a greater risk than interception. Sokollu Mehmed then says, “The mute is alerted. I will see to the mothers.” He observes that I am assembling the parts of what he is saying and not saying. “Their welfare,” he says. And then he adds, “Suleiman Sultan knew you well. Certainly better than I. When the time comes all will be ready.” That is all he says, and he leaves, before I can think what to say, such as What do you mean, “all will be ready”? or Where will that mute be “when the time comes”? or “I decided not to do this seven years ago.”
So, Sokollu Mehmed has known all along what Suleiman commanded me to do.
I tell Sumbul to leave my meals outside the door. Because she knows me, Esther is not surprised when I don’t receive her the next day or any of the other days in between, which are a single, endless day in which there is nothing rooted or unthreatened. And when Sokollu Mehmed brings the word that Murad is a day from the capital I am ready for nothing. I retreat. And when night falls, leafless trees make their lugging sound against the Black Sea gusts, and the wind dies, and there is only one thing left to hear: drops of water from the basin in my bath. Drops I never would hear in daylight. Why is it only in the dead of night that water reckons itself out loud? Seven, six, six, four, three. I am saying the boys’ ages. Then I whisper their names. Osman. Mustafa. Jihangir. Suleiman. Abdullah. Can I hear the sleeping breaths of those children? Can I hear the reasonable hopes of their mothers? Can I hear Astraea’s words of thanks when I tell her that her son is Selim’s favorite?
The next day of the dynasty depends on me. The decision I’ve long since reached versus the dead weight of order. Suleiman’s order. I owe my life to Suleiman. He honors me with his command. Do I not owe him the honor of obeying?
I stand on the black headland of morning. From there “right” and “good” are as indistinguishable as “right” and “wrong.” Trust, order, God, hope, birth, murder—everything merges. As happens to the horizon on a sweltering day, the line between earth and sky vanishes.
I step back into my room. There is a wall that’s dividing my mind. I am on one side of the wall. Suleiman is on the other. Murad and the boys are inside of the wall. I can hear them breathe. “It is murder,” I tell Suleiman over the wall. Suleiman says, Nothing is more important than order. “They are children,” I say. I have chosen my successors with care, Suleiman says back. You have armed your son well, he says. You have raised him to achieve power differently. I wonder if Murad can hear from inside the wall what his grandfather and I are saying. I wonder if Mehmed, at whatever distance death has put him, can hear. I hope he can hear. I want him to understand. Suleiman says, You will protect your son as necessary. I say, “I cannot, Efendimiz.” Suleiman says, You will not waver. Then we are not in the wall. We are in the Privy Chamber, in front of the fountain. Suleiman’s army is assembling to go to Szivetgar. He says in a voice I have never heard, I know you. A good choice. He says my name, and then he says, You are as good as my own. There they are—the words I’ve needed from the beginning. And hearing them I am his. I do not know how much I have needed those words until he speaks them. Perhaps I have thought that, over the years, the need has diminished, or been satisfied—by being married to his son, by bearing his grandson. But I have needed to hear the words from Suleiman himself. A man not perfect but great. A man most excellent, most original, most daring and just.
I open the door to the corridor. In front of me is a small and stocky male. Not a dwarf but not a usual-size person either. He is wearing blue breeches and a red cap that comes down like a Janissary’s but not exactly like it, and his shirt is tight and cut in a way that shows his chest, which is hard from work and which has no hair. Never have I seen a shirt like this one. The mute stares hard at what’s before him. He has no doubt. He himself is order. And so am I. A sharp unearthly light. He is the instrument, I am the word. I say to him “Let it be . . .” And he is gone. Gone like a hard-shelled insect, at an angle down the hall. Gone before I say done or hear my heart crack. Gone because my word is kept, and order kept as well.
An uncelestial calm descends. From that moment on, I do not think. I remove my headpiece and combs, bend over and shake out my hair. I stand up, gather my hair, secure it with the combs, and leave the veil behind. I set out for the terrace reserved for the rite. I’ve known of its existence since I first came here as a girl. Everyone has always known. In fact, I go not to the terrace but to a room that looks upon it. I do not think about where the boys are while I am waiting. I do not think about where their mothers are or what is happening to them as their sons are pried from their arms or their fingers unlaced from theirs. I do not wonder where Sokollu Mehmed or Esther are, and I do not think about what my mother or Sylvana might be saying to me from their graves. I even do not think about Mehmed—when he still had a chance in life—saying that were it to fall to him, he would not carry out the law. I think of Suleiman and about armies of warriors from the same family, the travesty and madness of that. I think of all of the sultans who have come before Murad, and I say their names out loud, and I think of the battles they have fought not with each other but with Persia and Mesopotamia, with Arabia and across North Africa, and the victories that have made our empire vast and varied. I think about the name that is mine thanks to Murad. I think about the Conqueror and his might and about what made him promulgate the law that binds us, and about the tree that is our family and that it must not be split or cut or allowed to rot, not even its extremities.
When I get to the terrace there is no one and nothing there. Then I see that I am wrong. There is something there. Blue bowstrings are laid out on a ledge. Even from my prospect above I can see that there are knots at the ends of the strings to assure a firm purchase. Then nothing. And then the mute appears against the blackness of the entrance to the terrace. He’s not even half the height of the doorway. Behind him is Selim’s oldest boy, Jihangir. The mute has him by the hand. They come into the sunlight. I squint trying to make out details, and swiftly six more mutes, built and clad like their leader, appear, one after the other, and each has one of Selim’s boys by the hand. That’s fourteen people, albeit small, on that narrow terrace, and there is not a sound except for everyone’s slippers scuffing on the stone, and that is because the boys are gagged, and their eyes are covered too, which I imagine makes them quieter still because they don’t know what is happening or because they think they are safe or because they are sons of the Sultan and have mothers who love them and until that moment because they had lives that were happy and full of promise. They may even be quiet because they think the small men who came for them are buffoons of their father’s. That they’re playing a game. Children that age would think such a thing. Everything the mutes do is in unison—placing the boys’ hands on the terrace wall so that their own hands are freed, getting behind the boys, taking up the cords and, as though those five, razor-slim, silken strings are one instrument, swooping them around the boys’ necks, crossing their wrists one over the other and—their muscles distending their tight shirts—pulling. The boys’ legs buckle all the same way, and though they don’t go down all at once, they go down fast, and for that I thank God—out loud I thank Him, and I think I might have made the sign of the cross, but I cannot be sure.
Then I hear an unheard-of sound, an airless purple gargle. Four of the five mothers have been spirited elsewhere, but Astraea has somehow broken free and caught sight from wherever she was of what has come to pass. She doesn’t need to confirm Osman’s condition—she doesn’t need to get close to his body. She knows. And she tears down the stairs through the harem gate, flies across the Meeting Place of the Jinns, the Courtyard of the Favorites, the Garden of the Elephants, and the Fig Grove. Barefoot across the frozen earth she sails, the frosted grass speeding her flight. The Black Eunuch crying after her catches her hem as she hurtles herself toward the Golden Horn, but the arc of her dive frees her from his grasp and releases her to the harbor’s depth. This is when I hear the earth howl from its core.
Murad had set out with a party of fewer than a dozen. He’d taken only four days to reach Panderma, where the Admiral of the Fleet was waiting for him. By oar and sail, hard against the freezing wind they had hauled themselves across and reached the capital not very long after Osman’s mother had sunk to the bottom of the Golden Horn.
He came to me directly, stood in the doorway nearly invisible, his presence making the darkness deepen. The attendants shuffled out as he came toward me. He was soaked, and when he dropped to his knees by my side, I felt the freezing journey on his coat. Then he was in my arms, and all the distance he’d traveled shuddered out of him. I held him close, then back, to have a look. He was a ruin. He’d become a little fat in the long time since I’d seen him; his breathing was effortful, and his eyes were red and swollen—from thinking about his father’s being dead? or that the fate of the Empire and its peoples was in his hands? or that the fate of his brothers was, too? Had Murad had a plan? An intention? Maybe Murad did have it in him. Maybe Suleiman was wrong. Maybe I should have given Murad the chance to carry out the law himself. Then I thought No. No. Of course Suleiman was right. Murad was—Murad is—incapable of killing his brothers. And he would have kept me from killing them, too, if I’d let him have the chance.
I had done the right thing. That is what I said to myself. That is what I believe I believed. And so, with a calm that was both real and not natural, I raised my hand to Murad’s bearded cheek and did what I would never do again—reaching to the top of his turban, unraveling the enormous length of muslin, removing the scarlet cap covering his skull, and putting my lips to his forehead. “Oh, Valide,” he murmured. “Oh God.”
Indeed.
It had been seven days since Selim died. Only six of us knew what had happened—concerning Selim, I mean. Sokollu Mehmed Pasha. The Admiral of the Fleet. The messenger, Esther, and Gazanfer, who had packed him in ice. We alone knew that the Empire was without a sultan. The mutes and I alone knew the rest. And Sokollu Mehmed—yes, I assumed he did as well, though I did not seek him out, nor did he come to me. But he knew. After all.
Take them, I indicated to Sumbul as I walked Murad around the ill-smelling heap of pelts. He collapsed on the window seat and buried his face in his hands. “Where is he?” Murad said.
“In the Privy Chamber. You should take some rest first, though. You are dead tired, Aslanim.”
Murad didn’t answer. He held out his hand. I took it, closed my eyes, and I thought I might never let it go. Murad saw that. “Are you all right?” I nodded. “Was it you who found him?” I shook my head. Told him what had happened. Murad raised his hands, spread his fingers and drove them into his hair. “Oh, Valide,” he said, raking, then digging. “I am so sorry.”
Until that moment, I had never considered that Murad had precisely the same force of concentration that Mehmed—his uncle Mehmed—had had. They both paid attention to what was before them. They both saw things clearly. And what Murad saw at that moment was his mother, whom he loved, and whose husband was packed in ice in a nearby room. What mattered to Murad at that moment was my grief. And I wondered—since he did see clearly—if he could tell I was dreading what he would think—what he would feel—when I told him what had been done. “I know,” I said over and over, trying to be capable of his own sympathy; trying, somehow, to join him. “We will manage. We will.” And then we went to see his father.
Selim was out of the ice and on a bier. The mutes had husked his frozen head and shoulders—everything the color of a bruise. His beard glimmered with stars of frost, and his sealed eyes bulged as though they still held an image. Murad let out a high-pitched groan, dark and womanly. I thought it might have been a recognition. Selim’s face did look like Bragadin’s on the pike.
“Leave me to this,” Murad said quietly. His tongue was flicking about catching tears. He put his hand on his father’s. The cold of it. “Please,” Murad said.
I returned to my chamber. The call to prayer warbled over the city. Midday. I had heard no prayer at dawn. I had heard nothing.
Murad was gone a long time. When he came back he was different. He had been not with Selim but with his death. I understood. He said, “Dear Valide, I wish to see my brothers.”
“You will,” I said. “Tomorrow. There is time.”
“Now,” he said. He wasn’t perturbed. “I wish to see them now.”
“Murad, you are tired and . . .”
“Valide, you are tired. And I understand. Gazanfer will take me.”
“Gazanfer?” Murad nodded toward the dark of the doorway. “We will be alone now,” I said to Gazanfer fairly steadily. “I will take you, Murad—but not yet. You need to rest, and—you are right—so do I. Then we will talk. I will take you to them. But not now.”
Murad struggled with what to say next. I handed him a cup of water. Pushed a little pine bowl of dates closer to him. “We can talk now.” There was a sudden heaviness. Of the present being attached to the down-pulling past. Of the future having the same force and weight. “Or.” He paused. “Or, at least for now, I wish you to know my intention. I intend to spare my brothers.”
There it was—the line. Everything was about to be after whatever was said next. I heard myself say, “I understand, Aslanim.”
I heard Murad say, “I knew you would.”
“Do not worry, Murad.”
“I am not worried.”
“Murad.” The tone. He stiffened. “The decision . . . Murad, you understand . . . in this matter . . . about your brothers . . . there is no choice. The decision can only be one way.”
Stiffer still. “That is not so.”
“Aslanim, please. Have some tea. Sleep. We’ll see each other in the morning.”
“Why do you talk this way? You speak to me as though I am a child. What do you mean There is no choice?” The cords in his neck were hard, straight up and down.
“It is the law, Murad. You know that. It is not up to any of us.”
“It surely is. I am Sultan.”
Quietly, very calmly, I said, “In fact, you are not yet—not until you are invested with the Sword of the Prophet. And I do not exaggerate when I say that you may not be Sultan for long if one of the pretenders lives.” Had lived.
In a voice darker than Bragadin’s livered lips, Murad said, “They are children, Valide.”
“And you will not concern yourself with this matter,” I continued. “You do not need to. It is why I’m here, Murad.”
He let out a choked groan and turned away.
“Aslanim.” He said nothing. “Murad. Please. Look at me.”
“Do . . . not . . . say . . . it.”
I stood up. “Look at me.” He wouldn’t. “It is done.”
In one ropelike move, Murad rose. The heat coming off him made the walls heave. He was not enraged, as far as I could see, nor was he shamed either. Those things would come later. Right then, he was simply altered. He was molten. Molten the way the roof above the terrace had been when the boys were strangled and when the lead would have become liquid and coursed down the walls and onto the tiles and risen around the mutes like a full-moon tide about to drown everything in roof. Murad was able to say only this: “Who are you?” And though I wished to remind him that order does and must exist in this world and that the heavens prove it and that we on earth can emulate it, his question was so chilling and reasonable that I could not say a word.
At dawn the next day, cannons that exist only for the purpose announced that the throne had been claimed. Murad III, successor to beleaguered Selim II, who had succeeded the Magnificent, who had succeeded the Grim, was invested with the Sword of the Prophet.
Oath of allegiance taken by Murad III upon acceding to the throne:
With God’s help, I have gained the sultanate. On this date, with the perfect concurrence of the viziers, ulema, and people of all stations, high and low, I have ascended the throne of the sultanate that has come down to me from my forefathers. The hutbe has been recited and coins struck in my name. As soon as you receive this decree, proclaim my enthronement to the people in all cities and towns, have my name mentioned in the hutbes in the mosques, have cannon salutes fired from the citadels. . . .
Save for the muffled clop of hooves wrapped in velvet, all was silent as the Sultan advanced from one courtyard to the next, from innermost to outer, the new hope of his people.
At the Bab-iHumayun he paused, took in the crowd, and, with the slightest rowel of his rubied spur, Murad set the cortege in motion. “May the Sultan and His realms endure a thousand years,” called out the Keeper of the Gate.
“Ten thousand,” I whispered, alone, at the top of the Tower of Justice. “This is your turn, Murad. Your reign. It is deserved. You are secure. Believe me.”
The highest-ranking officers of state, the chief administrators of the Palace, the avant-garde of the Janissaries, platoons of eunuchs, and residents, thousands of them from every district, were all there, waiting in silence for what they had come to see, and when it came—Selim’s coffin, draped in the Prophet’s green, topped with Selim’s turban—the quiet crowd became quieter still, out of respect for Selim and for the throne and for death.
It was Sokollu Mehmed’s idea to have Selim’s sons follow at a distance. That, too, out of respect, but also with an eye to the unknown, for what the people were about to see was something they’d never witnessed before, did not expect, and might not be able to comprehend—for the lawful execution of brothers had, until the day before, taken place outside the capital—usually far outside—and one by one.
Crossing over the sill of Bab-iHumayun from inside Topkapi to where the people were—tens of thousands of them—a small green-draped box came into view. Then another one. Then another after that. When the fourth appeared the crowd’s quiet, already dense, became solid. Silent for sure, but deafening. And before the fifth cleared the gate the people were not silent, were speaking—their lips were moving—and I imagined they were counting out loud. Women drew their veils across their faces. Men put their hands to their mouths. Many had to turn away altogether for the knowledge of what was in those boxes all borne by Janissaries was too much. Do you know what a six-year-old weighs? A three-year-old? I could have carried Osman’s box myself. But there were four soldiers for each boy, and I imagine that it was the knowledge of the insufficient weight on their shoulders and of death’s being light that pushed the bearers’ eyes identically outside their heads, like scarabs’ eyes. I thanked God that Little Mehmed had not yet arrived from Manisa.
You can do this, I whispered again to Murad far, far below. You can lead this terrible parade. It won’t last long. Then it begins. Everything. The worst is done, Aslanim. For you. You can do the rest—convey power, assure order. You can. You will.
Murad in his mourning purples, pulled back his chin and curled his lower lip into his mouth. It was an expression I’d seen a hundred times during his lessons as a boy, when he was concentrating, when one thing was leading to another. Don’t stop, Aslanim. Don’t mind the way they look. Don’t waver, and your people will know this is right. He didn’t stop or falter, and when the procession advanced the silence resumed. A blind man would not have known there was a person in those streets, let alone a parade, because there wasn’t a sound—not from the fur-soled pall-bearers and not from the army or the navy either. From the Tower of Justice I looked out in four directions upon streets filled with a grieving people who had the merged intensity of larvae, and they gave to the streets themselves a soft-bodied motion of sorrow and disbelief.