ink, until the scarlet, blue, black, crimson, and gold alternated all down the page. And the flourishes of her final letters, the great sweep of loose tails and flight of upper and lower curves gave the impression of vines and tendrils, even of birds, in a full-color garden of visual delights.
Belqis’s heart was towards illumination, obviously, towards delicate and intricate replication of Allah’s most beautiful handiwork on the tight, formalized confines of her page. But since Allah Himself, perhaps in jealous rage, had prohibited such blasphemy to those of His creatures who worshipped him, her art took this form instead, splitting the bounds of her casing quietly, subtly, as the rosebush did in the harem entryway.
All at once my mind jerked back from such musings as if it had been burned. I had suddenly realized that under cover of Belqis’s riveting performance, Safiye had taken out a sheet of paper of her own. So may sleight-of-hand masters work their magic in the public squares. Or pickpockets.
I looked closer. Thin, white, and watermarked with a crown, I recognized Safiye’s paper as coming from a Venetian firm. No one would connect it with the harem. And the Fair One had taken up a pen of her own and been writing for I knew not how long. On pretense of keeping an eye on Gul Ruh out in the yard, I slipped around so I could read some of Safiye’s writing instead.
Safiye wrote in Italian, of course. Her pen was outpacing the scribe’s, each painstakingly executed syllable of the Turkish equaling three or four words of the quick, hard Italian letters. And in the place of airy, meaningless flattery came much of substance.
I could not read everything over Safiye’s shoulder, draped with her thick blond braids. I did not dare let on that I suspected too much, raising either her scorn or her increased caution—I’m not certain which I feared more. That she did not scrupulously hide what she wrote convinced me that, as far as this letter was concerned, she did not care too much that I knew what message she was smuggling abroad.
Then Safiye noticed my attention and smiled, thick with more diversion—flirtation. Such a look would always send a stabbing memory pain to my groin—and set me even more on guard.
Safiye addressed my watchfulness: “Any letter in Turkish would have to go through the outer clerk’s office to receive a Divan-approved translation into whatever foreign language necessary. But you see, since Catherine and I are both native speakers of Italian, there is no need. I make my own translation as we go along and spare the clerk’s office the trouble.”
The points of almond in Safiye’s glance dared me to call her on this, and I almost did.
But though Esmikhan might not see the danger in a parallel letter, she did see it in my opening mouth. “Pray Allah, you two,” my lady said. “Don’t start your bickering in Italian again. I can’t bear it.”
So, for my lady’s sake, I resisted. Still my face burned under the almond sweetness of Safiye’s triumphant smile. I knew she was diverting my attention, so I redoubled it, yet under such a veil that it may seem to have halved instead.
Obviously, what Safiye wrote in Italian on paper with a Venetian watermark was not going to be a faithful translation of the Turkish. I suspected she’d already written two or three lines while Belqis was still smoothing and creasing in the margin.
Just as obviously, this was not the first time the Fair One had employed this means of smuggling correspondence, not just to lovesick Venetian attachés but to foreign heads of state. France had refused to join the Christian alliance at Lepanto, I recalled. Was this due to Safiye’s hand? How many other foreign states received her letters-within-letters? What else could be laid at her deceptively cloistered door? What did she offer them? And what did they grant in return? The answers to such dangerous questions were impossible to answer at the moment. But I
Belqis’s heart was towards illumination, obviously, towards delicate and intricate replication of Allah’s most beautiful handiwork on the tight, formalized confines of her page. But since Allah Himself, perhaps in jealous rage, had prohibited such blasphemy to those of His creatures who worshipped him, her art took this form instead, splitting the bounds of her casing quietly, subtly, as the rosebush did in the harem entryway.
All at once my mind jerked back from such musings as if it had been burned. I had suddenly realized that under cover of Belqis’s riveting performance, Safiye had taken out a sheet of paper of her own. So may sleight-of-hand masters work their magic in the public squares. Or pickpockets.
I looked closer. Thin, white, and watermarked with a crown, I recognized Safiye’s paper as coming from a Venetian firm. No one would connect it with the harem. And the Fair One had taken up a pen of her own and been writing for I knew not how long. On pretense of keeping an eye on Gul Ruh out in the yard, I slipped around so I could read some of Safiye’s writing instead.
Safiye wrote in Italian, of course. Her pen was outpacing the scribe’s, each painstakingly executed syllable of the Turkish equaling three or four words of the quick, hard Italian letters. And in the place of airy, meaningless flattery came much of substance.
I could not read everything over Safiye’s shoulder, draped with her thick blond braids. I did not dare let on that I suspected too much, raising either her scorn or her increased caution—I’m not certain which I feared more. That she did not scrupulously hide what she wrote convinced me that, as far as this letter was concerned, she did not care too much that I knew what message she was smuggling abroad.
Then Safiye noticed my attention and smiled, thick with more diversion—flirtation. Such a look would always send a stabbing memory pain to my groin—and set me even more on guard.
Safiye addressed my watchfulness: “Any letter in Turkish would have to go through the outer clerk’s office to receive a Divan-approved translation into whatever foreign language necessary. But you see, since Catherine and I are both native speakers of Italian, there is no need. I make my own translation as we go along and spare the clerk’s office the trouble.”
The points of almond in Safiye’s glance dared me to call her on this, and I almost did.
But though Esmikhan might not see the danger in a parallel letter, she did see it in my opening mouth. “Pray Allah, you two,” my lady said. “Don’t start your bickering in Italian again. I can’t bear it.”
So, for my lady’s sake, I resisted. Still my face burned under the almond sweetness of Safiye’s triumphant smile. I knew she was diverting my attention, so I redoubled it, yet under such a veil that it may seem to have halved instead.
Obviously, what Safiye wrote in Italian on paper with a Venetian watermark was not going to be a faithful translation of the Turkish. I suspected she’d already written two or three lines while Belqis was still smoothing and creasing in the margin.
Just as obviously, this was not the first time the Fair One had employed this means of smuggling correspondence, not just to lovesick Venetian attachés but to foreign heads of state. France had refused to join the Christian alliance at Lepanto, I recalled. Was this due to Safiye’s hand? How many other foreign states received her letters-within-letters? What else could be laid at her deceptively cloistered door? What did she offer them? And what did they grant in return? The answers to such dangerous questions were impossible to answer at the moment. But I
Similar Books
