The Harem Midwife by Roberta Rich

involved?
    As Mustafa fumbled for another key from around his waist, Hannah realized why she had been called. Any of the palace midwives had the skill to ascertain whether or not a girl’s hymen was whole. But in a palace of intrigue, lying, and double-crossings, the Valide trusted only Hannah to tell her the truth.
    “And if she is not a virgin?” Hannah asked.
    Mustafa unlocked the door of a small room. “The dockworkers and sailors are not fussy about where they plow and cast their seed. Off to a brothel she will go.”
    Hannah had seen the pox-ridden, half-starved girls in cages by the docks. She would not wish such a fate on anyone.
    Her concern must have showed on her face, for Mustafa said, “Do not look so worried. The exam is a formality, I assure you. Leah is not more than fourteen, I would guess.” He smiled. “The Sultan caught a glimpse of this little peasant when she was brought in yesterday and has talked of nothing since. She is a
gözde
, a girl in the eye of the Sultan. Hence the urgency.”
    Mustafa held open the door of the room. He gestured her in, then looked around. It took a moment for Hannah to realize she was in the dormitory where they kept the newly arrived girls, a spartan room, dimly lit, but no doubt much more comfortable than the simple hut the girl had probably grown up in.
    “I have moved the other odalisques to another dormitory so we may have privacy,” said Mustafa. “Leah?” he called.
    A slim shaft of moonlight entered through a high clerestory window framed with gossamer curtains swishing in the breeze. When Hannah’s eyes adjusted, she saw a sleeping mat rolled up neatly on the floor. Stacked in the corner were a stool, a divan, a prayer rug, and a scattering of cushions, one of which had been slashed. A flurry of goose feathers floated in the air. Through the high window drifted the fragrance of jasmine and roses from the palace gardens.
    “Where is she?”
    Mustafa touched his pine-pitch torch to a candle in the wall sconce, sending an arabesque of smoke to the ceiling, where it flattened and dispersed like a low-hanging cloud. “Where, indeed?”
    The scent of rancid beef tallow filled the room. No expensive beeswax candles in this quarter of the harem. Hannah glanced at the ceiling but saw only the timbers. She squinted, searching the corners of the room.
    Mustafa spied the girl first. He gestured to the window far above his head. Crouched on the ledge, half hidden by the billowing curtains, was a form radiating predatory stillness. It took Hannah a moment to realize she was looking at a girl and not a wild animal. Her eyes were opened wide in terror. Her hands curled around the window ledge. Behind the fear was the determined aggression of a creature that has been cornered, a creature expecting brutality and therefore coiled to spring. God knows what she had been through thus far in her short life.
    Mustafa pulled the stool under the ledge and climbed on it. He teetered as he stretched up to grasp the girl’s thin, muscular leg. Hannah held her breath, afraid he would give a sharp yank and bring the child crashing to the floor. Instead, he murmured soft words of encouragement as though coaxing a kitten out of a tree. The girl shrank farther back onto the ledge, one hand reaching behind her to clutch the iron grille. Mustafa continued making cooing sounds. Moving closer, his face upturned, he reached up again to seize her leg. She kicked at him with a determined little foot. Mustafa’s turban toppled off. The
aigrette
, theelaborate filigreed gold pin set with rubies and diamonds that held his turban in place, came loose, and the turban and quill clattered to the floor. A muscle twitched in Mustafa’s cheek as he climbed down from the stool and bent to retrieve his turban and quill. No doubt he was regretting that he had not forced a gold-foiled opium pill between the girl’s lips after she first arrived.
    “Mustafa, let me try,” said Hannah, but Mustafa