The Kadin - Bertrice Small [116]
“Mother!” cried the shah. The soldiers restrained him.
“Zuleika.” The sultan nodded to his kadin, who rose languidly from her place and, moving gracefully, stood beside the Persian queen. “Now, my boy,” said Selim, “before you stand two women. One was born a princess, the other a slave. Can you tell me which is which?”
“Is this a joke, my lord?”
“No, Shah Ismail. It is a riddle.”
“There is no riddle! My mother was born Princess Plum Jade of Cathay.”
“Like your father, Shah Ismail, you accept the obvious too quickly. Zuleika!”
“My lord Selim?”
“Face this women and unveil yourself.”
Zuleika raised a slim hand to her veil. It fell from her proud face and slipped silently to the floor. The eyes of the Persian queen widened in horror, and with a terrified shriek she fell to the floor crying, “Mercy, mistress! Mercy, I beg of you!”
Brushing aside the sultan’s guards, the shah rushed to his mother’s side and frantically tried to raise her. “It is your victory,” he said to Selim. “She is frightened. She has always been a nervous woman.”
“Well she might be,” replied the sultan. “Hark to me, Shah Ismail! I am going to tell you a true story.”
The boy ruler managed to get his mother settled among some cushions, where she continued to tremble and sob softly.
Selim began, his rich voice holding all the hall “Twenty-two years ago, a young princess left Cathay with a large caravan guarded by the emperor’s soldiers. She was to be married to the king of a neighboring country. At the border between the two countries, her intended husband’s soldiers replaced her brother’s, and all the servants, with the exception of one slave girl, returned to Cathay.
“Unfortunately for the princess, her royal husband-to-be had a beautiful but evil concubine who had secretly left her harem and ridden out with the soldiers to get a look at the royal bride. This woman wielded great influence over the king. She feared that a younger. more beautiful and intelligent girl—especially a queen—could destroy her power. She decided to see the bride before her lord did, and, if necessary, dispose of her.
“Greeting the princess warmly and with honeyed words, she found her worst fears confirmed. Not only was the maiden young and exquisitely fair, but she was highly intelligent Acting swiftly, that evening the concubine slipped a powerful sleeping draft into the princess’s cup, and in the night two soldiers, bribed by this wicked woman, took the princess, whom they believed to be a slave, overland to Baghdad, where she was sold in the poorest slave market.
“Fortunately, the princess was purchased by the agha kislar of my father’s household. He was passing by on his way out of the city, and immediately recognized a priceless pearl among the common stones. Meanwhile, the concubine substituted the bride’s slave girl as her lord’s bride.”
At this point the Persian queen began to wail and rip her garments.
“Miserable pawn of dog offal,” hissed Zuleika in their Chinese dialect “control yourself! You would be a queen, now act like one—if not for your son’s sake, then for my family’s name, which you have usurped!”
“Oh, mistress,” wept the woman in the same dialect “she made me do it! She said I would die a horrible death if I didn’t I was alone in a strange land, and frightened. I did not want to die.”
“And you thought we should never meet again, eh, Mai Tze?”
“I have suffered for my evil. The old shah hated me and my plainness. Our marriage was not consummated for almost five years. Only when he became convinced by his advisers that his people would accept only a legitimate heir did he come to me. Then he returned to her bed! She even wields more influence over Ismail than I do. Do not I beg of you, kill me!”
“Do you think I would avenge myself on so insignificant a creature as you?” snapped Zuleika. “It is Shannez I have come for. And, in Allah’s name, get off your knees and stand up!”
The queen struggled to her feet and stood cowering before the sultan, who now took up the thread of his story.
“When I was twenty-five, my father honored