The Kadin - Bertrice Small [152]
Several weeks later, Khurrem announced to Cyra that she was with child. Remembering her conversation with Gulbehar, the sultan’s mother quietly increased her grandson’s bodyguards and added a food taster to his suite.
As for Suleiman, he was ecstatic over the prospect of becoming a father once again. Gulbehar’s barrenness had given rise to doubts he dared not voice even to himself. He had quickly fallen under Khurrem’s spell, and was so besotted with her that he forgot all else. During the months that followed, Suleiman would not take another maiden despite Khurrem’s condition. Nor did he visit Gulbehar at night, though he often visited her suite during the day.
Cyra was furious. “By introducing Khurrem into Suleiman’s bed, I was trying to keep him from being influenced by one woman, but he has only exchanged a soft, sweet fool for an ambitious beauty. Allah! what am I to do?”
“This is what comes of your meddling,” scolded Marian, “but you need not fear. As long as you live, Suleiman will heed you above all others.”
“That is small comfort, my friend. I would have him be a man as his father was. If he is influenced by his women, how long before he gives me only a mother’s respect but heeds not my words? I cannot let that happen!”
As Khurrem became swollen with her pregnancy and less attractive to the fastidious eye of the sultan, she begged Suleiman’s permission to withdraw to the lake kiosk. With Khurrem less available, the valideh firmly reasserted her influence with her son.
In the autumn of 1524, Khurrem presented Suleiman with their first child, a son named Selim. Eleven and a half months later, another son, Bajazet, was born to the Russian. He was followed by his sister, Mihrmah, and a third brother, Jahangir.
With three healthy sons—young Mustafa and the little prince Selim and Bajazet—the line of Osman was assured. Little Jahangir, born sickly and a hunchback, could never become sultan, since the law forbade the anointing of a deformed man.
However, animosity grew daily between Gulbehar and Khurrem. And as if the trouble between Suleiman’s two kadins were not enough, Cyra had another—and to her mind more serious—worry. Firousi was not well. The court physician, Alaeddin Cerdet, diagnosed a heart difficulty, complicated by a retention of fluids. If she were not taken away from her duties as kahya kadin and the constant excitement of the court, she could easily die.
The solution was, of course, painfully simple. The valideh discussed it thoroughly with Hale and Guzel, and in the end it was decided that Firousi would leave the Eski Serai to live with Hale and her family. Riza ben Ismet, Hale’s husband warmed Cyra’s heart with his enthusiasm. Now, he told the sultan valideh, he would have three beautiful blonds in his house—his wife, his daughter, and his mother-in-law—and he would of course, be the most envied man in the empire. My lady Cyra was not to worry, either, he continued for he would personally see that Firousi Kadin followed the diet prescribed by Alaeddin Cerdet and took plenty of exercise.
Unfortunately, Firousi was not inclined to be cooperative in this matter. “How,” she asked Cyra, her turquoise eyes flashing, “how can you send me away?”
“How can I not? You have heard the doctor’s diagnosis.”
“We have been together since the very beginning. We have never been separated since that one time you and Zuleika went to Persia with our lord Selim. When you returned we vowed never again would we be apart”
“Zuleika is dead Dead, because I allowed her to go into a plague-infested