Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [205]
Kiaya Khátún, unsurprised, did not stir from her pile of delicate cushions. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘That is the function of the harem precisely. Did you believe you had joined a seminar for feminine culture? Very few of your companions, I promise you, would wish it. Do they strike you as unhappy? They have nothing to do but study how to make themselves desirable. Were they to tell you the truth, their only complaint might well be that, under this Sultan, it is put to no use.’
Philippa’s straight brown gaze did not waver. ‘I know. They’re not unhappy,’ she said. ‘Any woman will run to seed like that, given the chance. You get sort of hypnotized by the mirror, and you’re still painted when they lay you in your coffin. I don’t want it to happen to me.’
There were some papers lying at Kiaya Khátún’s side. She picked them up with her little, ringed hands, and looked up at Philippa. ‘If you are summoned by the Sultan you will have to go. You know that.’
‘Yes,’ said Philippa. ‘The boys are told the same thing. But they go to school.’
‘Outside the bedchamber,’ said Kiaya Khátún, watching her quietly, ‘the boys will have men’s lives to lead. Moreover, it has been ordained by Mohammed that women should not be treated as intellectual beings … lest they aspire to equality with men.’
‘Do you agree?’ said Philippa Somerville directly.
There was a little silence, during which Kiaya Khátún, her black eyebrows arched, stared at Philippa, coolly surprised. But when she spoke, she sounded less angry than thoughtful. ‘You are an outspoken child, are you not?’ said Güzel. ‘I will answer your question with another. Are there any of your acquaintance, men or women, with whom you do not consider yourself equal?’
‘Kate,’ said Philippa, and flushed. ‘My mother. And my father, when he was alive. And there’s a woman in Scotland … whose name is Sybilla,’ She stopped.
‘You have, I see, a commendable degree of honesty,’ said Güzel gravely. ‘There are three people to whom you feel inferior.’
From pink, Philippa went scarlet all down her neck and the flat, transparent front of her blouse. ‘Then I put it badly,’ she said. ‘There are three I know will always be better than I am, no matter how long I live. As for everybody else, I don’t see how I can tell till I’m older. When you’re sixteen you’re inferior to practically everybody. I can do what I like with Kuzucuyum, for he’s only two. If he were sixteen he might very well show me up as a moron.’
‘And his father?’ said Güzel.
‘Shows everybody up as a moron,’ said Philippa, who had learned a good many skills in a month. ‘The point is, even if you were equal to him, you wouldn’t feel equal to him, if you know what I mean. My mother can handle him.’
Kiaya Khátún veiled her eyes over the laughter within them. ‘Your mother,’ she said, ‘seems to have enjoyed a large number of successes.… I am having you registered for a short course of tuition in the Princes’ school. You will be escorted there and back every morning, and we shall see later whether the course might be developed. The report here says that you are exceptionally quick to train, if one ignores your slow progress with Turkish. Also’—as Philippa, paling with pleasure and amazement, was opening her mouth—‘you are further advanced than any in the harem, I am told, in the execution of music. In the afternoons, from now on, you will have the extra duty of presenting yourself to play in the apartments of Roxelana Sultan, and to perform any other service she may require. This will take you out of the main building of the harem and is an exceptional honour. I shall accompany you.’
Which was how, as Philippa confided to her diary later that evening, the Fates took a hand