The Janissary Tree (28 page)

When
she regained the valide's suite, she found the old lady on her divan, chatting
with a plump middle-aged man who sat straddling a Western chair, rocking it
back and forth.

The
sultan turned and rose with a slight effort.

"Princesse!"
He bowed, took her hand, and pressed it to his lips. Eugenia sank in a low
curtsey.

"Bravo!"
The valide clapped her hands. "You escaped, I see, dressed just as beautifully
as before. The girls," she explained, "might easily have stolen her clothes."

"Her
clothes?" The sultan looked confused. "But we send to Paris every year,
Valide."

Eugenia
laughed pleasantly.

"I
think, Your Majesty, it's not the clothes themselves we women find interesting.
It's the way they're worn. And everyone," she added, unable to think of a
suitable epithet for the sultans women, "has been delightful."

By
everyone she did not include the kislar agha. The kislar agha gave her the
creeps.

74

***********

"BACK
again?"

"Stanislaw
Palewski," Yashim announced, "we have exactly four hours. You are going to a
party."

Palewski
smiled and shook his head.

"I
know what you're thinking: the ambassadors' concert at the palace. All very
tempting, but I don't do them anymore. These days, I--" He spread his fingers. "To
be frank, Yash, it's a question of dress." He lowered his voice. "A question,
you might say, of moth."

Yashim
held up an imperious hand. "We aren't talking about those horrible beetling
jackets you people all wear. You have the most splendid clothes and four hours
in hand. I have already sent for the tailor. Tonight, you are set to appear at
the palace as the living embodiment of Polish history.

"Eh?"

"You're
going as a Sar--what's it?"

"Sarmatian?"

"Exactly."

The
Polish ambassador folded his arms stubbornly.

"Of
all the fool ideas. Who do you think you are? My fairy godmother?"

Yashim
blinked, and Palewski gave a dry chuckle.

"Never
mind, it's an old story." He frowned. "What are you doing?"

For
Yashim had raised his arms and flicked out his hands, taking a backward step,
as if Palewski were the djinn he had just conjured up out of the thin air.

Palewski
narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "I'm sorry, Yash. I'd do anything for you, you
know that. But only within reason. As the ambassador of Poland to the Sublime
Porte, I have a higher responsibility. Mine is a fallen nation, I know that.
But stubborn, sir, very stubborn." He wagged a finger. "Call it pride, or
vanity if you like--but I tell you this. Not for your sake-- not even for the
sake of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa herself--will I mingle with my peers in
a moldy old dressing gown."

75

***********

"His
Excellency is not at home," the butler rumbled.

He
stood with the door ajar, peering at the Turk who had rung the bell.

"I
would prefer to wait," Yashim said. "My time is of no consequence."

The
butler weighed this remark. On the one hand, it implied a compliment to his
master who was, of course, a busy man. On the other, nobody in Istanbul ever
said quite what he meant. He studied Yashim. His clothes were certainly clean,
if simple. He'd like to rub that cloak in his fingers, to make sure it was
really cashmere, but yes... he might be a man of consequence, after all.

"If
you will step in," the butler intoned, "you may find a chair in the hall."

Yashim
did, and sat down on it. The butler closed the door behind them with an audible
click. Yashim sat facing the door he had just come through and two enormous
sash windows that descended almost to the floor. The staircase to his left
swirled up at his back to the vestibule overhead. The butler walked
majestically across to a bewigged footman, in breeches, who stood solemnly at
the foot of the stairs, and murmured a few words in Russian. The footman stared
out straight before him and made no response.

"I
trust you will not have too long to wait," the butler said, as he passed Yashim
and disappeared through a door to his right.

Yashim
sat with his hands folded in his lap.

The
footman stood with his hands by his sides.

Neither
of them moved for twenty minutes.

At
the end of that time, Yashim suddenly started. He raised his head. Something
had attracted his attention at the window. He leaned slightly to one side and
peered, but whatever it was that caught his eye seemed to have gone. He kept a
watch on the window nonetheless.

About
thirty seconds later he was almost on his feet, staring. The footman's eyes
slid over him, and then to the window, but the window was black and revealed
nothing to him.

But
Yashim's attention was called to something almost out of sight. Curious, he leaned
farther over to the right, to follow it better. From where he stood, the
footman realized that he couldn't see what the foreigner was looking at.

He
wondered what it could be.

Yashim
gave a little smile, whistled through his nose, and continued to watch, craning
his head.

The
footman rubbed his fingers against his palms. The foreigner, he noticed, had
jerked his head slightly, to keep up with the event occurring outside. It
seemed to be moving away, out of his line of sight, because the fellow was
leaning forward now.

Very
slowly, Yashim leaned back in his chair. He looked puzzled. In fact, he simply
could not imagine the significance of what he appeared to have seen.

Something
within the grounds, the footman knew.

When
there should be nothing. No one.

The
footman wondered what it could have been. It had to be a fight. A light in the
dark, in the grounds. Going around the side of the embassy.

What
would the butler have done? The footman glanced at the Turk, who was still
sitting exactly where he had sat half an hour before. Wearing a slight frown.

Having
seen something he hadn't expected. That nobody else had observed.

The
footman took a measured step forward, hesitated, then continued to the front
door and opened it.

He
glanced to the left. The spaces between the columns of the portico were dark as
pitch. He took a step out, and another, craning for a better view.

He
sensed a darkness at his back and half turned. The Turk filled the doorway.

The
Turk held out his hands, palms up, and shrugged. Then he gestured to himself
and to the gatehouse.

"I'm
going," he said in Turkish.

The
footman understood the gesture. His anxiety increased.

The
Turk descended the steps.

The
footman waited until he had cleared the portico, then ran very quickly down the
steps himself and headed left, into the dark.

Privately
he relished the little cold wind that hit him on the face but could not in a
thousand years ruffle his artificial hair. Still he saw nothing. He darted to
the corner of the building and looked down the side of the east wing.

It
was as far as he dared to go.

76

***********

YASHIM
sprinted back up the steps, crossed the empty hall, and took the stairs three
at a time. At the top he slowed and put his hand on the doorknob of the vestibule.

What
if there was another footman, as before, standing sentinel in there?

He
squeezed the handle and stepped inside.

The
room was almost dark. Two candles burned in their sconces at the far side of
the room, really too far away to be of any use to him. He turned to the right,
gliding along the gallery. The oils were hard to make out, but as he passed one
of them he paused. He stepped aside, to let the meager light reveal it, and
even though it was mostly shadow, the composition of figures closely grouped at
its center was unmistakably that of the czar and his amorous czarina, with
their little children.

He
went back up the gallery.

Two
shoulder-high portraits. A full-sized rendering of a man on a horse. A scene he
could not decipher, including a river and a mass of men and horses surging
toward it. Another portrait.

And
he was back at the door. He could hear the footman banging the door downstairs.

He
looked around in astonishment.

The
vestibule still housed, as he remembered, a positive Parliament of Russian
nobles, a total Hermitage of royal heads. As for landscapes, well, many versts
of the Russian steppe had been crammed in there, too, where Cossack hussars
stooped in village streets to kiss their sweethearts farewell.

There
wasn't a map of Istanbul to be seen.

Where
the map had been, he was looking at a portrait of a gouty czar.

He
took a step closer. The czar looked surprised: perhaps he didn't like to be
ignored. Even in the feeble candlelight Yashim could still make out the faint
outline of the frame, bleached against the painted woodwork.

They had got rid of the map.

Yashim
hardly had time to register this appalling thought when he heard footsteps
mounting the stairs.

Without
a second's hesitation, Yashim lunged for the door at the far end of the room. The
handle turned easily, and in a moment he was through.

77

***********

The
Russian ambassador put a monocle to his eye and then let it fall without a
sound as his eye expanded in surprise.

"This
I do not believe!" he muttered, to no one in particular. A second secretary,
standing close by, stooped as if to gather up the remark and put it to his ear;
however, he heard nothing. He raised his head and followed his master's gaze.

Standing
by the entrance with a glass of champagne in one hand and a pair of kid gloves
in the other was Stanislaw Palewski, the Polish ambassador. But he was like no
Polish ambassador the Russian had ever seen. In a face as pallid as death
itself, his blue eyes flashed with interest: but it was not the expression on
his face that astounded the minister of the czar.

Palewski
was dressed in a calf-length padded riding coat of raw red silk, fantastically
embroidered in gold thread, with magnificent ermine trim at the neck and cuffs.
His long waistcoat was of yellow velvet: unencumbered by anything so vulgar as
buttons, it was held at the waist by a splendid sash of red and white silk. Below
the sash he wore a pair of baggy trousers of blue velvet, stuffed into
flop-topped boots so highly polished that they reflected the checkerboarding of
the palace floor.

The
boots, Yashim's tailor had said defiantly, were beyond his help.

But
now, thanks to some judicious polishing of the ambassador's feet, it was
impossible to detect that the boots were holey at all.

"It's
an old trick I read about somewhere," Palewski had remarked, calmly blacking
his toes with a brush. "French officers did it in the late war, whenever
Napoleon ordered an honor guard."

78

***********

YASHIM
pulled the door closed behind him, releasing the handle gently so as to make no
sound.

He
was just in time: even as he put his ear to the door he could hear the other
door being flung open. Someone marched into the room, and then stopped.

In
five seconds they'll be through this door, too, Yashim thought. He looked
around, hoping to find a hiding place.

And
realized immediately that the Russian ambassador's gorgeous young wife, wearing
a shimmering sable cape, was sitting at a mirror, gazing at him openmouthed.

And
apart from the fur, she was naked.

79

***********

PRINCE
Derentsov flung a look at the Austrian ambassador, a man with no visible neck,
a vast mustache, and a belly like a Bukovina wineskin. He had been standing
with his back to the doors, so that Derentsov had the satisfaction of watching
his reaction to Palewski as, noticing some change in the expression of the
little man he was speaking to, he turned and caught sight of the Polish
ambassador.

His
heavy jaw dropped. His eyes bulged from his head. He went from sallow to a sort
of imperial purple.

Silly
fool, Prince Derentsov thought. Certainly the Pole's coming here tonight,
dressed like that, was a deliberate insult to the powers that had silenced his
bickering little nation forty years before. But that Austrian sausage
merchant's reaction would give the Pole some satisfaction.