Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [204]
The Prophet had said a few other things too, as she was reminded on the day when her eyebrows were plucked. It had been altogether one of the less happy days, when Kuzucuyum, who had a slight temperature, had been kept in the nursery quarters, and when, that morning, she had received with the other novices her first lesson, in Kiaya Khátún’s golden, ironical voice, on how to attract, to foster and to satisfy the peculiar cravings of man.
One does not live on a farm in the Border country of England and remain unduly naïve. On the other hand, for Philippa up to that day, the world had been divided into people, some of whom, like Kate and herself, were female, and some of them male. Whatever the sex of your friend, you extended to him or to her the kindness, the courtesy, the thoughtfulness which affection prompted, and would expect to receive the same in return. Very occasionally, at Flaw Valleys, Philippa had observed someone—a servant, a neighbour—embark on some long, subtle campaign designed to prompt favours. They had received short shrift from Kate.
Between human beings, it was an indignity. Between friends, it was an insult. Between man and woman, as a means to promote love, it seemed to Philippa, there would be surely nothing more childish and degrading than a planned and detailed exercise to provoke and allure.
‘Look, it doesn’t hurt,’ Laila had said soothingly as Philippa sat bolt upright under the tweezers. ‘You’ll look a different person.’
Philippa gazed at her with the eyes of despair. ‘But I’m a different person now. All they’re doing is making us all look the same.’
‘Lie down.’ The Mistress of the Baths stood no nonsense. ‘There is a standard. You must conform to it.’
Fleur de Lis, amused, said, ‘Your hair shines. You do not mind that? Then why object to having your features improved?’
Between finger and thumb, the tweezers nipped their implacable way over her skin. ‘All right,’ said Philippa. ‘Let’s take care of what’s there already. But why spend so much time and emotion and energy upon improving on it? I’m happy with my face as it is. If it’s not frightening you or the eunuchs silly, I don’t see why we can’t all leave it alone.’
The Mistress paused, tweezers in hand, and regarded her. ‘You have good points,’ she said. ‘The eyes; the bones. I have little to complain of in the hands. The flesh will come. But you have not yet that which will draw your lord’s eyes as you stand with the others in the Golden Road. One day—Allah preserve her, long hence—Roxelana Sultan will enter the green fields of Paradise, or, Allah forbid, the Lord himself will leave to walk in the paths of the Blessed. Then each night one of you will be chosen; and will be sent to me, and to Kiaya Khátún and the Wardrobe Mistress to be bathed and painted and scented and robed as you have been shown. Then, when you enter the Grand Seigneur’s chamber, and the old women part the sheets at the foot, and you draw yourself up, as you have been taught, until you lie at his side … then you will have need of every art you have learned, to charm and to arouse; to pique and to surprise; to know when to satisfy and how to leave unsatisfied something he will not take to another.
‘If you please him; if you do as you have been told, you may become First Khátún, his bedfellow, with a suite of your own, where he may visit you: where you may cook for him and entertain him by day as well as by night. If you bear him a son, you may rule, through your son, the whole Ottoman Empire. Now will you lie still while I pluck?’
In spite of her goose-pimples, Philippa laughed. But later, taken to task alone by Kiaya Khátún for her disobedience, Philippa indulged in spite of herself