The Kadin - Bertrice Small [31]
“How many women does my father have?” he asked, never taking his eyes from the scene below him.
“At this moment about three hundred,” replied Hadji Bey, “but there are only about a hundred and ten gediklis. There are three kadins, five ikbals, and about a dozen guzdehs. The rest are servants.”
The prince did not answer, and the agha chuckled Though he had never functioned as a man, he was an appreciative connoisseur of the female body. Under his watchful eye, only the most exquisite beauties were trained as gediklis. Sitting back for a moment Hadji Bey and Selim viewed the living picture below them.
The baths were constructed of a pale pink marble with a domed roof of rose-colored glass panes. Spaced at various intervals along the walls were dark-blue and beige tiled panels from which sprang deep, shell-shaped rose marble basins with hot and cold gold waterspouts in the form of flowers. Several large rectangles of pink marble filled the center of the room. These were used for seating, resting, and massages. It was a beautiful foil for the various maidens who composed the sultan’s harem—dusky Spaniards and Moors, golden Provençals and Italians, coffee-colored Egyptians, cloud-white Grecians and Circassians, coal-black slave girls from Nubia.
Gradually the room emptied until only about a dozen maidens remained Selim started as a woman accompanied by several young girls entered the room.
“Ah,” said the agha, “the lady Refet.”
The prince was slightly discomfited at seeing his aunt “I had forgotten how identical in looks she is to my late mother,” he said.
“Not quite,” observed Hadji Bey. “Your mother had a rather charming mole, but it is not your aunt I have brought you to see. She guards the three special ones. Can you tell me which they are?”
Selim’s eyes moved to the little group. A tall, golden-skinned girl with almond-shaped eyes unbraided her long ebony hair.
“That one,” he said.
The agha nodded.
“And if you have not chosen that rosy-buttocked silver-blond, I shall.” He pointed toward Firousi.
“Correct, my son. And the third?”
But he did not speak, and the agha, following the prince’s gaze, smiled with satisfaction, for Selim was staring at Cyra. She reclined on one of the marble sofas, three slave girls attending her. One manicured a slim foot, another a slender hand, while the third rubbed a strand of her lovely red-gold hair with a silk cloth to give it more luster.
“That is Cyra,” said Hadji Bey. “Is she not lovely?” He did not wait for the prince to answer. “She is in many ways wise beyond her years. Your aunt tells me she speaks several languages fluently and has become a perfectly accomplished maiden in the Turkish fashion. It is fitting that she be the mother of your sons. Your father’s indiscriminate breeding produced Ahmed. However, my son, you must be gentle with her, for though she has been schooled by our women in the arts of pleasing her lord, she is still a virgin. In her land, whence she is newly come, men and women are fairly equal in many things. She retains her independence, and we have taken great care not to break her spirit You have never known a woman for more than one or two nights. They were women skilled only in the arts of love. Cyra will be shy at first but treat her with candor, Selim, and she will love you to the death.”
During the next few days, Selim thought of Hadji Bey’s words, and he thought of Cyra. The agha had puzzled him. Allah had created woman for man’s pleasure, and certainly the women he had possessed had given him pleasure, but nothing more. Suddenly he wondered if he had given them pleasure, too. And if a man were to spend a lifetime with a woman, there must be more than a simple physical act between them. Animals mated, too, but had not Allah given man dominion over the animals? If man was the superior being, then it must be love that made him so.
He was twenty-five years old, and he did not know what love was. Would Cyra teach him? What was she really