She raised her chin. “He wasn’t political, Yashim. Not a warrior. Not a diplomat. Not a merchant, either. He simply had a gift. A near-magical ability to freeze the moving finger-time.”
“Freeze it? How?”
“In paint. In pencil. He understood pattern-but he also helped to pioneer the art of portraiture. He was an adept in both worlds-the world of pattern and geometry, which is eternal, and in seeing the eternal in the things that change and are subject to time.”
“I see.”
“After Gentile painted Mehmet’s portrait, the idea caught on-in Venice, rather than Istanbul.” She lifted the glass to her lips. “But the pattern kept its meaning. A mutual inheritance from the Byzantines. An esoteric bond between our two cities.”
Yashim frowned. “The sultan entered a secret compact? Through Gentile Bellini?”
Carla smiled. “Nothing so sinister, Yashim. It was simply a pattern, an interpretation, we could share. A point of contact between our two worlds.”
Yashim leaned back. “And perhaps an effort to describe them, too? The links are made at various points around the square.”
Carla looked very radiant in the candlelight. Her hair, pinned back, glowed against the gloom of the great dark room. Her eyes sparkled, lit by her slow smile.
“The pupil has excelled the teacher.”
“But if it was essentially a symbol of peace-” Yashim hesitated.
She nodded slowly. “The pattern reconciles, Yashim. It’s true. In an immutable square, those fixed and opposing points are linked and reconciled in an endless weave. Com’era, dov’era. East with West, Venice with Istanbul, death and life, man and woman.” She gazed at him, her eyes bright. “But then came Cyprus.”
Yashim remembered. It was a long time ago: in 1570, Ottoman troops had swarmed across the richest jewel in the diadem of islands that linked the Venetian empire through the eastern Mediterranean. A year later the Venetian fleet, backed by Spain, had destroyed the Ottoman navy at Lepanto.
“Cyprus-and the battle of Lepanto-changed the meaning of the symbol. It came to stand for dominion and war. After that, I suppose, both sides developed a style of combat based on the Sand-Reckoner’s diagram.”
Their eyes met.
“Joseph Nasi helped Sultan Selim to finance the attack on Cyprus,” Yashim said. “In return, he was made Duke of Naxos.”
“Go on.”
“So when Abdulmecid chose the name for his disguise, he was sending some sort of signal. A hostile one.”
Carla shrugged, and the shadows slid across the hollows of her shoulders. “Close. I think-not altogether hostile. Only realistic. Venice is an occupied state for now, and so our relationship with Istanbul cannot be com’era, dov’era.” She gave a small, secret smile. “But your new sultan has a romantic streak, too. And a certain-curiosity. That’s why he came.”
She touched a finger carelessly to her lips, and Yashim knew immediately what the contessa did not say.
“And the Bellini? The portrait of the Conqueror?”
Carla laughed softly.
“It was something sentimental. A link-the last link-between the Aspis and the throne of Osman.”
“You didn’t think-it might be something dangerous to possess?”
“It belonged to me. It was no one else’s affair. Until now.”
“May I see it?”
She gazed into his eyes. Yashim felt his head swim: the contessa was beautiful, but by candlelight she seemed ethereal.
“Of course,” she said. “Come.”
93
She walked ahead of him, with an aching grace, holding the candelabra in her right hand and the train of her skirt in her left.
They entered a corridor, where she paused at a door.
“This is my room,” she said.
The candlelight filled the room with shadows. On one side stood a magnificent bed, with richly carved posts and hangings of figured damask. At the end of the bed was a broad, low sofa, covered in tattered silk, which Yashim guessed had come from Istanbul. The floor was covered in a soft Turkish carpet.
On the wall opposite the bed, between two full-sized portraits, hung a small curtain.
The contessa gestured to the portraits. “My parents.”
Yashim’s heart was thumping.
Lucia d’Istria had been a very beautiful woman. Her daughter had inherited her fair hair and even her smile, but Carla’s eyes belonged to the count. They were blue, steady-and a little hard.
Yashim’s own eyes flickered to the curtain.
The contessa put a hand to his shoulder. “Do you want to see it very much?”
“Yes.”
“Ask me, then. Say it.”
He turned his head and regarded her curiously. “I want to see the painting very much,” he said.
She gave a crooked smile, reached out, and tweaked the curtain pull.
“There.”
94
Yashim’s first feeling was one of relief, as he saw that the panel was much larger than the painting Palewski had been shown.
It stood framed in a simple band of gold, about twenty inches high and sixteen inches wide. Inside the frame was another, a painted arch that framed the portrait of the aging sultan like a window, its sill draped with heavy brown damask embroidered with pearls, florets of rubies and emeralds, and a silver threadwork crown. There were six crowns, in two columns, on either side of the frame. Mehmet was the seventh sultan.
Yashim peered up at the portrait. The arched brows, the long slender nose, and the pronounced chin were all traits he recognized: when Abdulmecid was old and sick, he too might look like this.
“Mehmet the Conqueror,” he murmured.
“An English milord might pay for it,” Carla said. “Or an art dealer from America, even. To them it would be-what? An old master, with a curious tale behind it. Better than the rich man’s Vivarini, but scarcely equal to his Titian, or his Veronese.” She tossed her head. “It deserves better.”
“You want to observe the pattern, don’t you? Not step out of it.”
“Precisely. You are an Ottoman, Yashim. I know that. Perhaps you are not a pasha, but you are from the palace. You understand the pattern: not to explain it, maybe, but to use it. If anyone is to return the painting to Istanbul, it must be you.”
“You said it was your pride to be the last of the Aspis, Contessa. What did you mean?”
“They say a good captain goes down with his ship, Yashim Pasha. So it is, with families like mine. The old families, who lived for the Republic. I took a vow-and I was not alone.”
“A vow to be celibate-like a nun?”
She smiled at him. “I would say more precisely, a vow never to marry. The Austrians could take La Serenissima-but they could never take us. The blood of the Republic.”
Was it true, Yashim wondered, that these old families were the blood of the Republic? They had directed its course for centuries, certainly: but where had it run? Into the sand, at last. Surely the blood of Venice flowed in the veins of the sailors who manned the ships, the oarsmen, the soldiers? Wasn’t Venice as much a speechless painter, or a cheeky gondolier, as an Aspi or a Gritti? Wasn’t Venice a place for the living rather than a bitter memory, frozen for all eternity?
The contessa had made a choice: but for her, perhaps, it was not too late. For Yashim, the choice was already made.
“Are you not afraid,” he said gently, “that you have abandoned Venice?”
She was very still: only the candlelight caught a misting in her eyes.
She shook her head. “I made a vow. And Venice will not rise again.”
Their eyes met. Then:
“Yes,” she answered very softly. “Yes, that is my only fear.”
95
Her arms moved out to him.
“I haven’t been afraid to love,” the contessa said. She slipped her hands around his chest.
Yashim looked down. “I think, madame, you do not want-”
“I want, Ya
shim. I really want.”
“I am a eunuch.”
She laughed softly. “A eunuch? Why not? I’m not waiting for a man, or a woman-or a eunuch, Yashim.” She smiled a secret half smile. “I’m waiting for a lover.”
But later, much later, he saw the tears run down her cheeks.
“Don’t stop,” she breathed softly. Her face gleamed in the candlelight.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I only-”
“Shhh.” She touched his head. She threw herself back in a slender arch, stabbing her fingers into the sheets, her wild golden hair flying across the pillow.
“Tell me,” she said later. “Tell me how it happened.”
Yashim was silent for a time. His glance moved around the room, seeing the louvered shutters against the windows, the patterned damask of the curtains around the bed, the paneled walls glimmering pearl gray, the dark spaces where the portraits hung.
“How is nothing,” he said slowly. “It is done as it is done. By the knife.”
He dreaded her next question: even now, after all these years, he had no complete answer. Men’s motives continued to surprise him. Women’s, too.
“Why?”
He shook his head. “Who knows? Whether a thing is done from duty, or desire.”
Their eyes met.
“Once,” she began, “I–I went to Istria. I had a son.”
She said it so abruptly that Yashim blinked.
“A son,” she repeated through gritted teeth.
Yashim was still.
“I was so young. So-so resolute.”
“Resolute?”
“The vow I made, Yashim.”
She shuddered and covered her face with her hands. “I gave him away,” she said tonelessly. “I wouldn’t come back to Venice with a baby. So I gave my baby away.”
Yashim said nothing: there was nothing he could say.
“I have spent my life trying to forget him.”
She drew up her face and stared at the wall, her fingers to her temples.
“And there is not a day I do not think about him.”
Her breath hissed between her teeth. “I have never told this to a soul. I wonder why I’m telling you?”
Invisible Yashim, the lover who leaves no mark.
“Perhaps I am telling you because I think you will not judge me.”
“No one can judge but God.”
She stood up, erect and graceful, and poured a glass of wine.
“He would be twenty-four,” she said. “A little peasant boy from Istria.”
“Would you-would you look for him?”
She shook her head. “I tried. Two years ago I went back to the convent where he was born. They understood, Yashim, those nuns. They understood, they prayed with me-but they couldn’t help. They said-they said that my son was a blessing to a woman who had lost her child.” She clenched her hands. “And I have become that woman, Yashim. Not by the will of God, but by my own. My own!”
She picked up the glass and drained it, and with a wild laugh she flung it into the fireplace.
“Why should I ever be afraid, Yashim? You can be frightened only when you have hope, and I have none.”
But later she curled up to him: “I want you to take me again, caro.”
But Yashim only shook his head and stroked her hair until she fell asleep.
Then he got up, silent and weary, and went to the room that had been prepared for him.
96
He dreamed Palewski’s dream that night: of a never-ending search beneath the stones of Venice, and each stone had to be turned, one by one, by hand. But there was nothing underneath: only earth and water. And there was a woman, wringing her hands beside him.
He could still hear her groans and cries when he woke up, in the dark, and lay there listening against his will.
Muttering a prayer for her soul. A prayer against the darkness of the night.
He rolled swiftly aside and leaped to his feet.
That scream-was it really the sound of a woman mourning?
Or the sound of danger?
After the scream, silence.
The corridor was pitch-dark. Yashim felt his way along the wall. He reached a door and passed it. The next door he opened: slatted moonlight filtered through the louvered shutters onto the four-poster bed, hung with dark drapery; the room felt huge and empty.
He was about to shut the door when a low growl made the hair stand up on the nape of his neck.
He took a step into the room, wishing he had a candle.
And a white shape launched itself through the air and slammed him back against the wall.
He felt soft hair whip across his face and hard nails dragging across his chest.
She bit him like a wild animal, on the neck, on the cheek, clawing at his chest and shoulders.
He got a hand beneath her chin and flung her back. He could taste blood on his lip.
Carla staggered back and then flung herself forward again, sobbing and biting.
Yashim grabbed her arms and tried to force them down. She whirled around from side to side, trying to break his grip, dragging him back toward the bed.
Then he was on top of her, pinning back her hands above her head. Her hips writhed under him.
She spat into his face.
Yashim shook his head. Furious, he dragged a cord from the post and doubled it around her wrists. She twisted under his grip, almost threw him off, so he shifted his weight farther up her body. Her legs thrashed the bed.
With a heave he shifted her shoulders across the bed, bringing her wrists to the bedpost. As he leaned over her to tie them back, she jerked her head, snapping at him.
She made a furious lunge at the cord with her arms, trying to move it.
With a spring Yashim was off the bed, standing close, panting.
The cord held.
Carla gasped, reaching for breath. Between gasps, she began to laugh.
Yashim closed his eyes; his chest heaved.
She thought she had won.
He felt a rush of anger: if she had won, then he had lost.
Let it be, he told himself. Let it be.
His breathing eased.
And something cold, and very fine, slid up beneath Yashim’s ear as a voice whispered in it softly, “Thank you.”
97
Seconds passed.
Yashim supposed that Carla had laughed again.
He was very still now. He felt the blade below his ear.
But just one thought ran through his mind, like a drumbeat.
Te ekkur ederim meant “thank you” in Turkish.
Yashim tensed his stomach. His shoulders bunched.
And he jackknifed. He took a step forward, his shoulders dropped, and he doubled at the waist.
He sensed, rather than felt, the blade slicing through the soft skin behind his ear.
He kicked back abruptly with one leg.
His hope was that the Tatar had lost form: killing Venetians was like liming a tree for birds.
His foot connected, but not hard: the next moment, the Tatar had a grip of his ankle. Left hand-Yashim wrenched himself forward and took a mouthful of the bed.
With both hands on the mattress he launched himself backward.
The Tatar sidestepped easily, but now Yashim was at his back. As the Tatar whipped around, Yashim flung out one fist, and then the other. The raised knuckle of his middle finger sank into the Tatar’s cheek.
The Tatar had him by the scruff of his neck; Yashim felt himself choke and flailed blindly. Then the Tatar seized his waistband and with a grunt sent him crashing through the air-Yashim raised his hands and the shutters burst apart like rotten twigs.
But Yashim was already twisting as he flew: his knees doubled against the windowsill and for a second he saw the dark bulk of buildings swing upward. His head cracked against the wall-in a moment the Tatar would flip his feet through the window, and he would be gone.
Instinctively, Yashim tensed his legs. With a fi
nal effort he jerked himself upright: the Tatar was at the window.
Yashim grabbed him with both hands-but the momentum was too feeble to carry him into the room. As he fell back again he kicked out, spinning them both into space, precipitating the Tatar over and over into the air.
Only in Venice would anyone survive a two-story drop.
The Tatar smacked into the water first. Yashim seemed to pummel in on top of him and was thrashing and coughing as he came up for air.
He kicked out, in panic: the Tatar was still beneath the water.
Yashim scudded back, toward the security of the palazzo wall, and there, in the faint glow of lamplight on the water, he saw the Tatar break the surface ten yards away.
He was swimming away, up the canal.
Yashim wished he could let him go.
He wiped his mouth with his fingers and tasted blood.
With his other hand he found the knife. The knife that Malakian had given him for an asper: the cook’s knife.
A knife that a hunter might carry, too, for slipping off a pelt.
The knife that was made of damascene.
Yashim kicked off from the wall and began to hunt.
98
“WonderfuL, wonderful,” Palewski murmured. He had his boots before the fire and a sheaf of drawings on his lap.
“Very good!” he said enthusiastically, holding a drawing of the cottage up before his eyes. He nodded vigorously, and his new friend chuckled and bobbed about.
Rather like having a child of one’s own, Palewski thought.
“Wonderful,” he said again, picking a new sketch out of the heap. “Maria, have you seen what our friend has done?”
Maria came over and leaned against his chair. Palewski felt the roundness of her breast against his cheek.
“This,” he said. “And this.”
Maria heaved a sigh. “Incredible! Like an angel!”
“Perhaps you’d like to sit here and look through them, Maria?”
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