Free The Harem Midwife by Roberta Rich Page A

yourself.”
    He glanced at the girl. “Good. Then I will leave you to your work.” He turned to leave with the eunuch guards, but first bent down and scooped up the knife and tuckedit in his sash. The air stirred. One of the girl’s tresses tumbled from the ledge and settled on the floor. “May Allah be with you,” Mustafa said. He bowed and backed out of the room, closing the door behind him.
    “Do not lock the door, Mustafa. There is no need,” Hannah said. She heard several voices in the corridor as he addressed the eunuchs. To Hannah’s relief, there was no scrape of the bolt.
    Mustafa called through the door, “Two eunuchs are standing by, Hannah. If you need them, you have only to shout.”
    “Leah will be sensible,” Hannah said, catching the girl’s eye as she spoke.
    Before Mustafa’s footsteps receded, Leah said, “I hate him. His simpering voice, his fat hips, the way he waddles.”
    “Mustafa no more wished to be a eunuch than you wished to be captured and sold into slavery.”
    Leah wiped her face on the sleeve of her shift, which was a colour that was no colour—the hue of stray dogs, of kitchen rags used too long to scour pots, of poorly cured cheese.
    “Do you know how the Arab slavers make young boys into eunuchs?” Without waiting for an answer, Hannah said, “When Mustafa was nine years old, he was captured by a slaver outside his village near Lake Chad with several of his cousins while they were swimming. The other boys and Mustafa were bound around the chest and upper thighs. Their private parts were cut off and the boys were then buried in sand up to their necks and given no water or foodfor nine days. When Mustafa was dug up, he was more dead than alive. He was the only one of the boys to survive.” She paused. “You have noticed the gold quill in his turban? He must insert that into himself so he can make water.”
    Leah’s lovely face lost its hard look, her bottom lip quivered.
    “The Arabs took him by caravan to Alexandria, where he was sold at ten times what a normal boy would have fetched. And then he was sold on through various markets until he reached Constantinople.”
    Hannah intended the story to give the girl heart, to show her that adversity could be overcome, but Leah looked so upset that Hannah was sorry she had told her.
    “Why has Mustafa sent you?”
    “To examine you to ensure you are a virgin.” Hannah gestured to the divan. “Slip off your clothing and tell me how old you are.”
    The girl remained standing. “I have seen fourteen summers,” she said, making no move to remove her shift.
    She appeared much younger. Mountain girls often looked young because of their meagre diets of
plov
and gruel. Many had deformed pelvises from inadequate food.
    Leah was not ready for the Sultan’s couch. Surely she had not even commenced her flowers. Dare Hannah suggest to the Valide that the Sultan wait a year or two until the girl was older? She paused to reflect. What a ludicrous idea. God’s Shadow on Earth be denied? If he wanted a girl, he had only to raise his finger and she was his. Nor would substituting another girl in Leah’s place be anoption. Hannah had heard the tale, as who had not, of a Circassian slave who years ago sold her rendezvous with old Sultan Selim to another girl. The Circassian slave was never seen again. One thought gave Hannah hope. The Sultan, who was surrounded by the loveliest girls in the Empire, was like a gardener who refused to pick any flower except one—Safiye.
    Leah climbed onto the divan, squatting as though tending a fire, knees hugged to her chest, her child-fragile neck inclined, head resting on her knees, chopped hair raised like the bristles on a hedgehog. She rocked back and forth to give herself comfort. As Hannah watched, all traces of Leah’s wild self disappeared. She looked now like the terrified and exhausted child she was. Hannah dug in her bag, found a vial, and poured a few drops of almond oil into her hands.