The Janissary Tree (7 page)

"It's
a very old door," the master replied sensibly. Yashim almost added, "And none
the worse for that," but decided against it. The lock was stiff; the master
winced and the key slid sideways in the slot, depressing the necessary pins. The
door opened lightly.

They
were in a large, low-ceilinged room, lit by an iron grating so high up in the
opposite wall that a portion of the ceiling had been sloped upward to meet it. A
few dusty rays of the winter sun fell on a curious collection of objects,
ranged in shelves along the side walls. There were wooden boxes, a stack of
scrolls, and a line of metal cones of varying sizes whose points seemed to rise
and fall like the outline of a decorative frieze. And there, at the back of the
hall, stood three enormous cauldrons.

"All
our old weights," said the master. He was looking lovingly at the metal cones. Yashim
repressed his impatience.

"Old
weights?"

"Every
new master sees to it that the guild weights and measures are renewed and
reconfirmed on his appointment. The old ones then are stored here."

"What
for?"

"What
for?" The master sounded surprised. "For comparison. How else can any of us be
sure that the proper standards are being kept? I can place my weights in the
balance and see that they accord to a hair's breadth with the weights we used
at the time of the Conquest."

"That's
almost four centuries ago."

"Exactly,
yes. If the measures are the same, the ingredients must also be the same. Our
soups, you understand, do not merely conform with the standards. They are--I do
not say the standard itself, but a part of it. An unbroken line that comes down
to us from the days of the Conquest. Like the line of the house of Osman
itself," he added, piously.

Yashim
allowed for a suitably impressed pause.

"The
cauldrons," he suggested.

"Yes,
yes, that is what I'm thinking about. There seems to be one missing."

15

****************

The
seraskier sat on the edge of the divan, staring down at his shiny leather
riding boots.

"Something
will have to be announced," he said finally. "Too many people know what's
happened as it is."

The
workmen had been too scared to touch the obstruction in the drain once they
knew what it was. Leaving it still concealed across the mouth of the drain,
they had fled downhill to inform the caretaker of what they had found. The
caretaker informed the imam, who was at that moment setting out to climb the
minaret to call the morning prayer. In a hurry, not quite knowing what to do,
the imam sent the caretaker to track down the morning watch: the old man could
hear the sound of the prayer breaking out all over the city as he scurried
through the streets.

There is no God but God, and Muhammad is His Prophet.

By
dawn light, a group of men could be seen milling about the drain. One of them
had been sick. Another, hardier, braver, or more desperate than the rest for
the night watch's proffered sequins, had manipulated the grotesquely misshapen
corpse out of the drain and onto the cobbles, where it was finally bundled onto
a sheet, wrapped, and hoisted onto a donkey cart that went slipping and swaying
down the slope to the Nusretiye, the Mosque of the Victory.

The
workman who had made the discovery had already gone home, to sleep off his
horrors or sluice them away in the vivid warmth of the baths. His mate, better
shielded from the shock, remained to enjoy his moment with the crowd. Already
his story was being retailed with appropriate embellishments among latecomers
to the scene, and within the hour several versions of events were circling
through the city. By lunchtime these stories were so finely rounded that two of
them were able actually to pass each other without the slightest friction,
leaving some people to believe that it had been a day of oddities in which an
Egyptian sphinx had been dug up out of the foreshore while in Tophane a nest of
cannibals had been surprised at their gory breakfast.

The
seraskier had intercepted the rumors considerably earlier. He heard that a man,
very possibly one of his missing recruits, had been found in bizarre
circumstances close to the Mosque of the Victory. He sent to the mosque for
more information and learned that the body had been put into an outhouse
normally used by some of the workers on the site. He dispatched a note to
Yashim, who was at that moment eating his
borek
in the cafe on the
Kava Davut, suggesting they meet at the mosque, and rode over to see.

16

****************

The
fact that the stranger knew more about the missing cauldron than he did seemed
in some degree sinister to the master of the Soup Makers' Guild.

"Is
this some kind of a joke?" he demanded furiously, when his eyes had--rather
superfluously, Yashim thought--devoured the storeroom in a fruitless search for
the enormous missing cauldron. After all, you could hardly conceal a cauldron
the size of an ox behind a few scrolls and hand weights. At the same time Yashim
felt sorry for the master: such a thing, he was almost certain to say, had
never happened before in all the history of the guild. Now it had happened on
his watch: a theft.

"I
can't believe it. I have the key." He held the key up and stared at it, as if
it might suddenly break down and confess to illicit behavior. Then he shook it
angrily. "This is highly irregular. Twenty-four years!" He glared at Yashim.
"I've been here twenty-four years." Yashim shrugged amiably.

"Do
you keep the key with you all the time?"

"In
the name of God, I sleep with my keys!" the master snapped.

"You
might update the lock."

The
master cocked his head and leaned slowly toward Yashim.

"You
say you come from the palace," he growled. "What is this? You are some
inspector?"

Yashim
nodded slowly. This is a man, he thought, who feels easy with power. He glanced
again at the master's hands. The massive fingers were loosely curled.

"You
could say that." More briskly he added, "When did you last come in here?"

The
soup master drew breath through his nose, and as he exhaled, Yashim wondered
what he was considering: the answer to the question? Or whether to answer the
question.

"I
don't know," he said finally. "About a month ago. Maybe more. Nothing was
missing."

"No.
Who guards the place at night?"

In
Istanbul it was always people who mattered. Whom you knew. The balance of
favors.

The
soup master's breath was rapid.

"How
is the Guild House guarded after hours?"

"We
employ guards. I myself sleep overhead."

"How
many guards?"

"Oh,
two, maybe three."

Yashim's
face remained expressionless. "They have keys?"

"I
told you, I sleep with the keys. They have the key to the main gate, of
course--I give it to them at night and collect it back first thing in the
morning."

"May
I see it?"

The
master fished up the loop and ran his fingers through a bunch of keys. Finding
the right one, he showed it to Yashim, who raised his eyebrows. It was another
of the old-fashioned sort, something like a big comb of wood, with pegs of
varying length for teeth.

"You
say two or three guards. Do you mean two? Or do you mean three? Which?"

"Well,
I--" the master broke off. "It depends."

"On
what? The weather? Their mood? What I see here is a place that runs by the
book, yes? No deviation from routine, no innovation, no coriander in the soup. Right?"

The
master lifted his chin.

"But
when we come to the regulation of the night watch, you don't know how many
guards are employed. Two
or
three? Maybe it's five. Maybe none."

The
master of the Soup Makers' Guild lowered his head for a second. He seemed to be
thinking.

"It's
like this," he said slowly. "There are always enough guards. Sometimes it's
two, sometimes three, just as I said. They aren't always the same men, night
after night, but I know the bunch. I trust them, always have. We go back a long
way."

Yashim
noticed something imploring in the man's tone. He caught his eye.

"They're
Albanians, aren't they?"

The
master blinked. He looked steadily at Yashim. "Yes. What of it?"

Yashim
made no answer. He reached out and took the master's hand in his, and with the
other he gripped the man's sleeve and rolled it back. The master jerked away
with an oath.

But
Yashim had already seen what he had expected. A small blue tattoo. He had not
been quick enough to recognize the actual symbol, but there was only one reason
why a man would carry a tattoo on his forearm.

"We
can talk," he suggested.

The
master compressed his lips and closed his eyes.

"All
right," he said.

17

****************

THOROUGHLY
shaken and repelled by the condition and appearance of the naked corpse, the
seraskier returned to his apartments to find Yashim--in a state of ignorance and
unconcern--examining the spines of the military manuals and regulation books
that filled the bookshelves opposite the divan.

While
he waited for the seraskier's anger to blow itself out, Yashim questioned him
about the discovery of the second corpse, asking for details about the position
of the drain and the condition of the body. The effort of describing the way
the corpse was trussed seemed to rob the seraskier of his temper, but he
kneaded the back of a chair with his fingers, making it creak. Yashim wondered
if he would sit down.

"I
had thought," the seraskier concluded bitterly, "that we might have got
somewhere by now. Have we got anywhere?"

Yashim
pulled at his nose.

"Efendi.
I still do not understand how the men went missing. Did they go out together?"

"Yes,
so I understand."

"Where?"

The
seraskier sighed. "Nobody seems to know. They came off duty at five. They went
back to their dormitory and spent some time there--I know, because they
overlapped with the men coming on for night duty."

"Doing
what?"

"Nothing
much, apparently. Loafing on their bunks. Books, a game of cards, something
like that. The last man out saw two of them playing cards."

"For
money?"

"I--I
don't know. Probably not. I hope not. These were good young men."

"The
man who saw them playing, was he the last man to see them at all?"

"Yes."

"So
nobody checks on people as they leave the barracks?"

"Well,
no. The sentries are there to check people as they come in. Why should they
check people going out?"

To
help a man like me in a situation like this, Yashim thought. That was one
reason; he could think of others. A question of order and discipline.

"Do
the men generally go out, for whatever reason, in uniform?"

"Five
or ten years ago, it was uncommon. Now we encourage the men to be in uniform at
all times. It is better for the people of Istanbul to become acquainted with
the new ways, and better for the men. It improves their morale."

"And
useful for you, too, to check on how they behave."

The
seraskier cracked a rare, dry smile. "That too."

"Would
they visit a brothel? Did they have girls? I'm sorry, efendi, but I have to
ask."

"These
men were officers! What are you saying? The men, yes, the ordinary men see
women in the streets. I know about that. But these were officers. Of good
family."

Yashim
shrugged. "And there are good brothels, too, by all accounts. It doesn't seem
very likely that these four went and sat out the whole evening in a well-lit
cafe, in their uniforms. That's no way to go missing, is it? Sometime in the
course of their evening, their paths had to cross the path of their abductor. Their
murderer. Somewhere--what? Murky, out of the light. In a boat, maybe. On a dark
path. Or in some shady place--a brothel, a gambling saloon."

"Yes,
I see."

"May
I have your permission to interview the officers who shared their dormitory?"

The
seraskier blew the wind between his teeth and stared down at the floor. Yashim
had been here before. People wanted solutions, but they always hoped they could
reach them without creating a fuss. The seraskier wanted to make a public
announcement but was not, it seemed, quite ready to risk offending or alarming
anyone. The forces of the padishah, he would aver, are working ceaselessly and
with complete confidence to bring the perpetrators of this evil deed to
light--and he wouldn't mean a word he said.