The Kadin - Bertrice Small [28]
Kiusem’s archenemy, Besma, had attempted to prevent the sultan from giving Selim this responsibility, claiming that Bajazet’s youngest son was an idiot and Magnesia would suffer. The Ottoman ruler thought that his second wife was merely being vicious. He did not realize that the few occasions Besma had seen Selim had been carefully staged by Hadji Bey to make Selim appear a dunce. This was all part of the wily agha’s plan to make Kiusem’s son appear harmless and ineffectual.
In Magnesia Selim was free to be himself, for Besma was so convinced he was useless that she sent no spies to watch him. Here the sultan’s youngest son grew from hesitant and shy adolescence to strong and sure manhood. The scholars had taught him well, and he governed fairly, with scrupulous respect for the laws of the empire and the Muslim faith.
Hadji Bey had taught him well, also. Slowly and carefully he gathered underground support for himself and his cause. A piece of luck brought him loyalty from the Crimean Tartars when he saved the life of a visiting high chieftain. The grateful man returned home full of praise for Selim and sent him as a gift two troops of Tartar horsemen to be his personal bodyguard.
He was now a man, and although he had been kept free of romantic entanglements longer than most Turkish princes, Hadji Bey and Kiusem decided the time had come for their serious young charge to learn the ways of women. Selim was seventeen and so well aware of his position that he did not think it odd when his mother and the agha explained to him that there must be no children as yet
“Women and children at this time will make you vulnerable to Besma’s treachery. When we have strengthened your position with the sultan and chosen the right maidens, then Selim—and only then—may you have sons,” said the agha. “In the meantime, should you desire a woman, you have but to ask, and the most beautiful and skilled of maidens will be brought to you. They are sterile, of course, so you need not fear.”
The prince trusted both his mother and Hadji Bey implicity, and so he obeyed. And in the capital, Besma, at first terrified by Selim’s appetite for women, chuckled with satisfaction as the time went by and no children appeared. Unaware that the maidens Selim bedded were sterile, she rejoiced to her own son, Ahmed, “Your brother’s seed is like sea water. Nothing grows in it!”
The years passed, and shortly before Selim reached his twenty-fourth birthday, Kiusem fell ill. The agha was informed and hurried to Magnesia from Constantinople.
Seeing Kiusem shocked the agha. She was clearly dying, and she did not deny it
“I know, old friend. My time grows short”
Tears sprang to his eyes, and he took her small white hand in his own slender brown one. Faintly she squeezed it “We must act now, Hadji Bey. You must obtain the sultan’s promise that Selim will be honored on his twenty-fifth birthday with the governorship of the Crimean province nearest Constantinople. And the girls, Hadji Bey. Bajazet must allow my son the pick of the maidens. No Ottoman has ever honored a son so. It will impress the people and secure my son’s future and safety. Besma will not dare to harm him if he stands high in the sultan’s esteem.”
“It will be as you wish, my dearest lady. I will not fail you.”
“The special ones—have you obtained them yet? They must be ready.”
“I have not found them, my lady. I must go myself.”
She looked worried. “There will be questions. You are the agha, not a buyer of slaves.”
“It is because I am the agha that no one will question my actions. They may think—I cannot stop that—but no one except the sultan himself may question me, and he will not, as he trusts me above all men.”
“Selim must be told everything now,” she said.
“I will do it myself, my lady. The prince must comprehend the seriousness of our undertaking. He is sometimes inclined to rashness, but from now on, he must act with extra caution and extreme self-discipline.