The Janissary Tree (38 page)

He
laid his fist against his chest and bowed slightly. "By the sultan's order," he
murmured.

The
halberdiers recognized him and stood to let him pass.

He
found himself beneath the colonnade that ran along the western edge of the
valide's court. It had been raining, and the flagstones were gleaming and
puddled, the walls greenish with damp. The door to the valide sultan's suite
was open, but Yashim stood where he was, turning the situation over in his
mind.

What
was it, he asked himself, that created danger in the harem?

He
thought of the halberdiers he had just met, wearing their long hair like
blinkers.

He
thought of the chambers and apartments that lay beyond, as old and narrow as
Istanbul itself, with their crooked turns, and sudden doorways, and tiny
jewellike chambers crafted out of odd corners and partitioned spaces. Like the
city, they had grown up over the centuries, rooms polished into place by the
grit of expediency, rooms hollowed out of the main complex on a whim, even
doorways opened up by what must have felt like the pressure of a thousand
glances and a million sighs. None of it planned. And in this space, scarcely
two hundred feet square, baths and bedrooms, sitting rooms and corridors,
lavatories and dormitories, crooked staircases, forgotten balconies: even
Yashim, who knew them, could get lost in there, or find himself looking
unexpectedly from one window into a court he had thought far away. There were
rooms in there no better than cells, Yashim knew.

How
many people trod the labyrinth every day, unraveling the hours of their
existence within the walls, treading a few well-worn paths that led from one
task to the next: sleeping, eating, bathing, serving? Hundreds, certainly;
perhaps thousands, mingling with the ghosts of the thousands who had gone
before: the women who had lied, and died, and the eunuchs who pitter-pattered
around them, and the gossip that rose like steam in the women's baths, and the
looks of jealousy and love and desperation he had seen himself.

His
eye traveled around at the courtyard. It was only about fifty feet square, but
it was the biggest open place in the harem: the only place where a woman could
raise her face to the sky, feel the rain on her cheeks, see the clouds scudding
across the sun. And there were--he counted them--seven doors opening into this
court; seven doors; fifteen windows.

Twenty-two
ways to not be alone.

Twenty-two
ways you could be watched.

As
he stood below the colonnade, staring at the rain, he heard women laugh. And
immediately he said to himself: the danger is that nothing you ever do is a
secret in this place.

Everything
can be watched or overheard.

A
theft can be observed.

A
ring can be found.

Unless--

He
glanced at the open door to the valide's suite.

But
the valide wouldn't steal her own jewels.

He
heard the door behind him open and turned around. There, puffing with the
exertion and filling the doorway with his enormous bulk, stood the kislar agha.

He
looked at Yashim with his yellow eyes.

"You're
back," he piped, in his curiously tiny voice.

Yashim
bowed. "The sultan thinks I haven't been working hard enough."

"The
sultan," the black man echoed. His face was expressionless.

He
waddled slowly forward, and the door to the guard's room closed behind him. He
stood by a pillar and stuck out a hand, to feel the rain.

"The
sultan," he repeated softly. "I knew him when he was just a little boy. Imagine!"

He
suddenly bared his teeth, and Yashim--who had never seen the kislar
smile--wondered if it was a grin or a grimace.

"I
saw Selim die. It was here, in this courtyard. Did you know that?"

As
the rain continued to patter onto the courtyard, seeping through the
flagstones, staining the walls, Yashim thought: he, too, feels the weight of
history here.

He
shook his head.

The
kislar agha put up two fingers and pulled at his pendulous earlobe. Then he
turned to look at the rain.

"Many
people wanted him to die. He wanted everything to change. It's the same now,
isn't it?"

The
kislar agha continued to stare out at the rain, tugging on his ear-lobe. Like a
child, Yashim thought vaguely.

"They
want us," he said in a voice of contempt, "to be modern. How can I be modern? I'm
a fucking eunuch."

Yashim
inclined his head. "Even eunuchs can learn how to sit in a chair. Eat with a
knife and fork."

The
black eunuch flashed him a haughty look. "I can't. Anyway, modern people are
supposed to know stuff. They all read. Eating up the little ants on the paper
with their eyes and later on spraying the whole mess back in people's faces
when they don't expect it. What do they call it? Reform. Well, you're all
right. You know a lot."

The
kislar agha raised his head and looked at Yashim.

"It
may not be now, maybe not this year or the next," he said slowly, in his
mincing little falsetto voice, "but the time will come when they'll just turn
us out into the street to die."

He
made a flapping gesture with his fingers, as if he were batting Yashim away. Then
he stepped out ponderously into the courtyard and walked slowly across to a
door on the other side, in the rain.

Yashim
stared after him for a few moments, then he went to the door of the valide's
suite and knocked gently on the wood.

One
of the valide's slave girls, who had been sitting on an embroidered cushion in
the tiny hall, snipping at her toenails with a pair of scissors, looked up and
smiled brightly.

"I'd
like to see the valide, if I may," said Yashim.

112

***********

By
the time Yashim left the palace that Friday afternoon it was almost dark, and
at the market by the Kara Davut the stallholders were beginning to pack up by
torchlight.

For
a moment Yashim wondered if he should have joined Ibou, the willowy archivist,
for lunch, for he had had nothing to eat all day and felt almost light-headed
with hunger. Almost automatically he brushed aside the idea. Regrets and second
thoughts seldom occupied him for long: they were futile emotions he had trained
himself to resist, for fear of opening the floodgates. He had known too many
men in his condition eaten up by bitterness; too many men--and women,
too--paralyzed by their second thoughts, brooding over changes they were powerless
to reverse.

George
the Greek came swarming out from behind his stall as Yashim stood picking over
the remains of a basket of salad leaves. The sight seemed to drive him into a
frenzy.

"What
for yous comes so late in the day, eh? Buying this old shit! Yous an old lady? Yous
keeping rabbits now? I puts everything away."

He
set his hands on his hips. "What you wants, anyways?"

Yashim
tried to think. If Palewski came to dinner, as promised, he'd want something
reasonably substantial. Soup, then, and
manti
--the
manti
woman
would have some left, he was sure. He could make a sauce with olives and
peppers from the jar. Garlic he had.

"I'll
take that," he said, pointing out an orange pumpkin. "Some leeks, if you have
them. Small is better."

"Some
very small leeks, good. Yous making balkabagi? Yous needs a couple of onions,
then. Good. For stock: one carrot, onion, parsley, bay. Is twenty-five
piastres."

"Plus
what I owe you from the other day."

"I
forgets the other days. This is today."

He
found Yashim a string bag for his vegetables.

The
manti
woman was still at work, as Yashim had hoped. He bought a pound
of meat and pumpkin
manti,
half a pint of sour cream in the dairy next
door, and two rounds of
borek,
still warm from the oven. And then, for
what felt like the first time in days, he went home.

In
his room he lit the lamps, kicked off his street shoes, and hung his cloak on a
peg. He trimmed the wicks and opened the window a fraction of an inch to clear
the accumulated air. With an oil-soaked scrap of rag and a handful of dry twigs
he started a fire in the grate and scattered a few lumps of charcoal on top. Then
he began to cook.

He
dropped the stock vegetables into a pot, added water from the jug, and settled
it on the back of the stove to reach a simmer. He slid a ripple of olive oil
over the base of a heavy pan and chopped onions, most of the leeks, and some
garlic cloves, putting them on to sweat. Meanwhile, with a sharp knife he
scalped the pumpkin, scooped out the seeds, and put them aside. Careful not to
break the shell, he scraped out the orange flesh with a spoon and turned it
with the onions. He threw in a generous pinch of allspice and cinnamon, and a
spoonful of clear honey. After a few minutes he set the pan aside and dragged
the stockpot over the coals.

He
put a towel and a bar of soap in the empty water basin and went downstairs to
the standpipe in the tiny backyard, where he unwound his turban and stripped to
the waist, shivering in the cold drizzle. With a gasp he ducked his head
beneath the spout. When he had washed, he toweled himself vigorously, ignoring
his smarting skin, and filled the water jug. Upstairs he dried himself more
carefully and put on a clean shirt.

Only
then did he curl up on the divan and open the valide's copy
of Les Liaisons
Dangereuses.
He could hear the stock bubbling gently on the stove; once
the lid jumped and a jet of fragrant steam scented the room with a short hiss. He
read the same sentence over a dozen times, and closed his eyes.

When
he opened them again he was not sure if he had been asleep; there was someone
knocking on the door. With a guilty start he scrambled to his feet and flung
back the door.

"Stanislaw!"

But
it wasn't Stanislaw.

The
man was younger. He was kicking off his shoes, and in his hand he carried a
silken bowstring, looped around his fist.

113

***********

The
seraskier walked briskly across the First Court of the palace and stepped out
through the Imperial Gate, the Babi-Humayun, into the open space that separated
the palace from the great church, now a mosque, of Aya Sofia. After the
unnatural stillness of the palace he was struck by the returning noises of a
great city: the rumble of iron-hooped cartwheels on the cobbles, dogs worrying
and growling at scraps, the crack of a whip, and the shouts of mule drivers and
costermongers.

Two
mounted dragoons spurred their horses forward and brought up his own gray. The
seraskier swung up gracefully into the saddle, settled his cloak, and turned
the horse's head in the direction of the barracks. The dragoons fell in behind
him.

As
they passed beneath the portico of the mosque, the seraskier glanced upward. The
pinnacle of Justinian's great dome, second in size only to the basilica of St.
Peter's in Rome, stood high overhead: the highest spot in all Istanbul, as the
seraskier well knew. As they jogged along, he scanned the lay of the land for
the hundredth time, mentally setting up his artillery batteries, disposing his
troops.

By
the time they reached the barracks, he had made decisions. To scatter his
forces through the city would be futile, he reckoned; it might even increase
the danger to his men. Better to choose two or three positions, hold them
securely, and make whatever forays were necessary to achieve their ends. Aya Sofia
was one assembly point; the Sultan Ahmet Mosque to the southwest would be
another. He would have liked to put men into the stables of the old palace of
the grand vizier, just outside the Seraglio walls, but he doubted that the
permission would be forthcoming. There was a hill farther west that provided a
clear trajectory toward the palace.

It
was the palace, essentially, he had to think about.

Having
regained his apartments, he summoned a dozen senior officers to a briefing.

He
followed the briefing with a short pep talk. Everything, he said, depended on
how they and their men conducted themselves over the next forty-eight hours. Obedience
was the watchword. He had every confidence that together they could meet the
challenge that had presented itself.

That
was all.

114

***********

YASHIM
made a grab for the door. The man on the threshold sprang forward and for
several seconds they fought for purchase, separated only by the thin door that
lay between them. But Yashim had been caught off balance, and it was he who
yielded first: he leaped away from the door and his assailant came barreling
into the room, almost stumbled, but whipped around fast to face Yashim at a
sagging crouch.