For the next few days they remained camped in the hills. Murad would allow no one but Adora to wait on him. Though the other servants might serve her and do her bidding, the sultan insisted that his beautiful royal slave do everything for him from bathing him to cooking their meals. This latter was proving a disaster, and Murad finally relieved her of that particular task after several badly cooked and burned meals.

“I cannot believe that anyone with your intelligence could be so clumsy, so inept at the cookfire,” he chuckled as he rubbed lamb fat on her latest burn.

Furiously she yanked her hand away. “I have been trained to use my mind, not my hands! Inept at the cookfire! I should hope so! I am a princess of Byzantium, not a servant!”

A slow, lazy smile lit his features. “You are my slave, Adora, and while you may not be skilled at cooking, you are becoming skilled enough in other matters to make me forget your lack of culinary ability.”

With a cry of outrage she hurled a silken pillow at him, snatching up a cloak she ran from the tent. But his deep mocking laughter followed her. She fled to a small, rocky glade set above the camp, a place she had discovered just the day before. It was lushly carpeted in thick, deep green moss, and hidden by beech and pine trees. She sat by a small natural basin hollowed out of the rock by dripping water.

She wept. She was not a slave! She was not! She was a princess born. She would not, could not, be his whore. She twisted the sodden linen handkerchief. The problem was that men treated her as a pretty plaything, a soft body upon which they could satisfy their lusts. An empty vessel, like a chamberpot, into which they could empty themselves. God! Had it always been like that? Must it continue to be?

The courtesans of ancient Greece were respected for their intellects as well as their bodies. So were the queens of ancient Egypt, who had ruled with their men as equals. But she could hardly expect that kind of thinking from a race just a generation off the steppes, who still preferred tents to palaces. These men expected their women to cook over fires and care for animals. She laughed aloud. At least she hadn’t been subjected to the indignity of pitting her wits against a herd of goats! She had an uncomfortable feeling that the goats might outwit her. She could almost hear Murad’s laughter.

On a branch beside her a wild canary sang his exquisite song, and she looked ruefully up at him. “Ah, little one,” she sighed. “At least you are free to lead your life as you choose.” A bird had more control over its life than a woman! She rose to return to the encampment, and was startled to find the sultan standing in the shadows of a large rock, watching her.

Irrational anger flooded her. She had thought of this glade as a personal retreat. “Am I allowed no privacy?” she snarled at him.

“I feared for your safety.”

“Why? What you want of me can easily be given by a thousand women far more eager to please you than I am.” She attempted to push past him, but he gripped her cruelly about the soft upper arm. “You will bruise me!” she cried at him.

“And if I do? You are mine, Adora! Mine to use as I so choose!”

“The body, yes!” she flung at him. “But unless you have all of me, you have none of me. And you will never possess my soul!” Her voice was triumphant.

A black fury engulfed him. For four days she had been spitting at him like a hellcat. He could render her helpless to desire, but when he was finished with her, her amethyst eyes mocked him, telling him that he did not really own her. His anger had become uncontrollable. Kicking her legs out from beneath her, he sent her falling to the ground.

The wind was knocked out of her, seeing the vicious look in his eyes, she was truly frightened. Slowly, deliberately, he straddled her, pulling her cloak apart, methodically ripping her garments open. She fought him, terrified. “Please, my lord, please! No! I beg of you, my lord! Not this way!”

Brutally he drove into her resisting body. She moaned with pain. He increased his tempo and suddenly his seed was spilling into her. Then he lay still. When his breathing had returned to its normal pace he stood up, pulling her roughly after him.

“Return to the camp. You are not to leave it again without my permission.”

Gathering the cloak about her, she stumbled down the path. Safely within her own tent she gave orders for a bath. When it arrived she dismissed the slaves. Carefully she gathered the shreds of her clothing and, tying them in a bundle, stuffed them into the bottom of a trunk. She could dispose of them later, and no one would know what had happened.

He had raped her! Just as brutally as any soldier would rape a battle captive! He was a brute! If she had needed further proof of how he really felt about women, this was certainly it.

Then suddenly silent tears slid down her cheeks to mingle with the bath water. She hated him, yet she loved him. She disliked admitting this to herself. But it was possible that Ali Yahya was right. If she were to conquer Murad, she might have to use her body. She would, after all, be a fool to allow some brainless girl to gain control of the sultan. She had to face the fact that at twenty-three, the mother of a half-grown youth, she was no longer in the first flush of youth.

A sob escaped her, and she looked guiltily around. It would not do for the slaves to hear her weeping. She put her face in her hands to muffle her weeping and allowed her sorrow to pour forth. Then, as she began to grow calm, she faced the realization that she had driven him to it. It was as though she had wanted to force him into acts of bestiality so that the comparison with her beloved Alexander would be greater. She must face facts. Alexander was dead. He would never return again. She would never hear his voice calling her “beauty” in that tender, half-amused way. Her fate was with the man who had first touched her heart and soul. Her fate was with Murad.

Having him to herself was an incredible opportunity. If she had not been so busy feeling sorry for herself, she would have realized this. She swore softly. After today she would not be surprised to see him order their return to Bursa-and that must not happen! She must work quickly.

Shouting for a slave, she sent for Ali Yahya. By the time the eunuch arrived she was wrapped in a mauve silk robe. Dismissing the slaves, she swiftly told the eunuch what had happened, finishing with, “I am a fool, Ali Yahya! A fool! You were right, but if the sultan orders our return to Bursa now, I may have lost my best opportunity. Will you still help me?”

The eunuch smiled broadly. “Now, Highness, you speak as a wise woman!” he enthused. “I had begun to fear that perhaps I was mistaken in my judgement of you.”

“What do you gain in all of this?” she suddenly asked.

“Power and riches,” was the equally frank reply. “What else is there for me? I will guide you, and protect you against all enemies, including your own self. When your son is safely born I will help you to plan his future so that he will one day take up the sword of Osman as did his grandfather and father.”

“And if Murad’s seed is potent?” said Theadora quietly. “Then what of his other sons by other mothers? He has told me, Ali Yahya, that he will take no wives in either the Muslim or the Christian sense, but rather he will choose favorites from a harem he intends to keep.”

“And it is I who will choose that harem, my princess. I shall choose the youngest, the loveliest, the most exquisite of creatures for the pleasure of my lord and master. Each maiden entering his bed will surpass her predecessor in beauty.” He stopped, and chuckled wickedly. “And each maiden will surpass her predecessor in stupidity. Murad may rail at you for your intelligence, Highness, but it is your mind that fascinates him, far more than he knows or is willing to admit. You will shine like the full mid-summer moon amid a group of minor, insignificant stars. Fear not the children of these other women, for there will be none. There are ancient ways of preventing conception, ways known to me.”

“And are these girls to be so free of brains that they will willingly permit you to render them sterile? Come, Ali Yahya! That is too much to believe.”

“They will never know, Highness. Eunuchs are not born, my princess, they are made. I was born free, far to the east of this land, in a place where the religion of ancient Chaldea was still practiced. And still is worshiped, even now. I was neutered by my own parents and pledged to those ancient gods. I served in our temple as apprentice to the high priest. Together we served Ishtar of Erech, the Goddess of Love and Fertility. The temple’s priestesses were trained to service the lusty male worshippers of the deity, for each maiden was Ishtar incarnated, and to couple with a priestess of Ishtar of Erech was to lie with the goddess herself. Fathers brought their sons to experience their first carnal act in the arms of Ishtar. Men with problems of impotence paid great sums to be cured by these skilled women. Bridegrooms spent the night before their wedding with priestesses in order to insure their own fertility and that of their brides.

“If precautions had not been taken, few women would have remained priestesses long. Those girls consecrated to Ishtar of Erech enter the temple school at age six for at least six years of training. Once they reach puberty they must serve the goddess for five years. Therefore, before they sacrifice their virginity to Ishtar, they are placed in a light trance by the surgeon high priest, and a pessary device is inserted within their wombs. That device is removed and replaced regularly, always when the girl is in the trance state.

“None of the girls is permitted to perform their duties without the protection of this implant, not until they have served their five years. At the end of that time the pessary is removed for the Spring Festival of Ishtar, and enough of the maidens become pregnant at that time to satisfy the worshippers of Ishtar as to her influence on fertility.

“I served ten years in the temple, beginning when I was seven. I learned the arts of putting another person into a trance, and of making and implanting these pessary devices.

“When I was seventeen a troop of Muslims rode into my remote village and destroyed our temple. The priest and high priestess were killed. The rest of us were carried off into slavery. I have used the skills taught me many times. I will use them for you, if you will agree to bear the sultan his sons.”‘

Theadora looked the eunuch over gravely. “You are indeed a powerful friend, Ali Yahya. But satisfy my curiosity in one thing. Why me? Why not some nubile, pretty, witless little thing?”

“It is your very intelligence that makes me choose you, Highness. You understand and quickly grasp situations. You will be loyal to the sultan-and to me. You are above the petty squabblings of the harem maidens and will be a stabilizing influence upon your lord. You will rear your children wisely to serve this empire well.

“A younger, stupid girl would inevitably turn out to be greedy for riches, greedy for power. She would try to play politics. We will have a certain amount of that as it is, Highness, but as long as you remain supreme in the sultan’s heart, the small influence of these girls will be like insect bites-occasionally irritating, but totally unimportant.”

She nodded. “Now,” she said worriedly, “I must consider best how to get back into Murad’s good graces.”

The eunuch’s eyes twinkled. “Why, you will weep, my princess, and you will fling yourself into his arms, sobbing your apology,” he said.

“Ali Yahya!” She was laughing. “He will never believe such softness from me. Rather, it will arouse his suspicions.”

“He will believe if you are clever, Highness. He is angry and beginning to lose patience with this battle between you. I will gently stoke the fires of his anger, telling him he did right this afternoon in asserting his mastery over you. Encouraging him to continue the lesson this evening.”

“And thus encouraged,” Adora took up the thread of the eunuch’s thought, “he will come roaring into my tent like an outraged bull. I will exhibit a momentary, small, defiant attitude before going to pieces.”

“Excellent, Highness! As I have said, you are quick to grasp the point.”

Again she laughed. “Go, then, old schemer, and rouse my lord and master to proper fury. But remember, to give me time to dress and anoint myself properly.”

“I will send two serving women immediately,” he said. Then he left her. The eunuch walked across the compound to find the sultan bathing in his tent.