Reign of the Favored Women by Ann Chamberlin Read Free Book Online Page A

wanted to give her something. The desire to give was, in fact, a physical need. “Is there nothing to be done to stop that maniac?” he attempted.
    “And just a moment ago you were wishing the same power for your Doge.”
    “But what should we do?” Andrea rocked on the edge of the cot. The rough wood cut deep into his thighs, but he ignored it. “Shall I have the ambassador request an immediate audience?”
    “You have never been allowed to see the Sultan yet. What makes you think he would see you now? Besides, you are but men, and we have seen he can terrorize men and pin them to the floor like moths.”
    In a rising panic, Andrea reminded himself that his true love was thrall to such barbarians. Is this what she was trying to tell him? He stammered, “No power on earth...”
    “Now, I didn’t say that,” the eunuch reminded him. “Those were your words. In our realm, there are one or two powers given the strength to withstand the wild whims of the Sultan.”
    “Pray God, what can they be?”
    “Well, first, the dervishes.”
    “Dervishes?” Andrea repeated impatiently. “The dervishes are mad.”
    “They are mad, allowed to be mad with Allah, and are both powerful and incorruptible in that they never have to play by the Sultan’s rules. If a dervish is corrupted to become the Sultan’s lackey, the people are not fooled and he loses his power among them. And if a Sultan dares to wield his laws above a dervish—to kill or imprison the holy man as he may do any vizier or pasha—he will only make a martyr. Even dead, a martyr has power over a Sultan. The more horrible the death, the more powerful the martyr. No, by hanging a dervish, a Sultan only puts the rope around his own neck. Even the janissaries will always follow the drumbeats of a naked dervish before they’ll follow the Sultan’s standard.”
    “That is all very nice for a Muslim,” Andrea said, exasperated, “but what am I to do as a Christian?”
    “Yes, well, I only spoke of dervishes first so you could see how the system works. There is, of course, one other refuge from the Sultan’s will.”
    “And that is...?”
    “The harem, of course.”
    “The harem! But that’s ridiculous! Those women are his slaves, as much as you are, ustadh. And worse than slaves. They are bound prisoners, never seeing the light of day. Why, no rat in Constantinople is more subservient to the Sultan’s will than the women of his harem.”
    “Now you are looking at the harem with Christian eyes, my friend. As if they were your Catherine de’ Medici or England’s Elizabeth, to be judged by the standards not only of Christians, but Christian men as well. Try to see them through my eyes. My eyes, half-man, half-woman, half-Christian, half-Turk, and then you may catch a glimpse of what it would be like to be all Turk and all woman. It is their very removal from the open, brazen affairs of men that gives them such power.
    “If Selim were to go about terrorizing his women and pinning them to the floor—as he could, indeed, if he wished—he would lose more than a night’s paramour. He would lose his honor. Every shred of it. A thousand years of military victory could not make up for that loss, for there is nothing more important a man owns than that which is totally out of his hands—the honor of his women. He would make a martyr more powerful than a thousand ragged dervishes because it would be of his own flesh and blood, from the very center of his heart, as we say. He might as well order lepers to sleep with all his women.
    “Ah, but here I am trying to explain to you something that is beyond words even as the dervish’s union with Allah is unspeakable. Usually I cannot even talk to my lady about these things. ‘Ghazanfer,’ she sighs, ‘you grow tedious and there is work to be done.’ Often I fear she does not understand the very harem she lives in. She was, after all, born and raised a Christian.”
    Here the eunuch paused, betraying