The snake stone yte-2

by Jason Goodwin

  The valide heard him out in silence.

  “With God’s help,” she said at last. “The people will stay quiet.”

  She felt the pressure of his fingers as they clenched around her own.

  100

  George Compston picked up the note and turned it over in his hands. He walked through the embassy tapping it against his teeth, looking for Fizerly.

  He found him with his feet up on a desk, rubbing olive oil onto his mustache. He started when he saw Compston.

  “Got a note,” Compston said carelessly.

  Fizerly swung his legs to the ground. “Is she pretty?”

  Compston opened the note, read it quickly, and blushed.

  “I’m afraid that’s between me and these four walls, old man,” he said rather thickly.

  Fizerly shrugged. It was so infernally hot.

  Compston read the note again. He’d lit a spark there! A Turkish Byron enthusiast-whatever next?

  It was from that eunuch, Yashim.

  101

  The sou naziry slid from his horse and passed the reins to an apprentice. He knelt on the rim of the tank and plunged his hands into the cold water: it had been a hot ride, even beneath the trees. He wiped the dust of the road from his face and the back of his neck. Leka presented him with a towel.

  “I don’t see anything wrong with the levels,” the sou naziry said. He patted the towel into a ball and tossed it at Leka. The reservoirs had been exactly as he had imagined: a drop of about six inches. Normal for the time of year.

  “It is the old women who like to spread this kind of talk,” he added. “A sultan is about to die, and they think the sky is falling on their heads.”

  The shade was black under the trees. There was no wind, but the forests exhaled a refreshing coolness and the monthly ride had given the sou naziry an appetite. It would be good to sit by the edge of the woods and eat.

  The foresters had prepared the usual refreshments. A black tent was set up on the grass, with carpets and silver trays, and jugs of sherbet made of sour cherries and oranges covered with a little square of gauze, the edges weighted with dangling beads. To one side a fire was crackling under a tripod, where a cook was preparing a bulgur pilaf; two foresters were squatting by the tandir. Long before dawn they had begun to make and tend the fire, fetching brushwood and logs, reducing the wood to a pile of glowing coals. The pit they had dug was invisible, beneath a covering of baked mud and sticks.

  The cook had selected a lamb from the flock the day before. He had skinned and gutted the animal, studding its flesh with garlic spikes before he rubbed it with a mixture of yogurt and sieved tomatoes, crushed onion and garlic, coriander and cumin. At dawn, when the fire began to sink, they trussed the lamb to a stake and lowered it over the pit, setting the meat deeper and deeper as the morning progressed, until it was cooking underground, sealed by a makeshift lid.

  One of the foresters looked up. Recognizing the naziry, he motioned to his companion, and the two men carefully raised the lid. The naziry saw the slightest trickle of smoke emerge from the pit. Overthrowing the lid, the forester bent forward and with a flash of his knife removed one of the kidneys, which he presented to the naziry on the point. The naziry took the smoking morsel in his fingers and ate with relish, standing by the pit, gazing down into the glowing fire.

  Men, like animals, were afraid of fire, the naziry thought. But fire itself feared the naziry. Fire was afraid of water.

  One of the foresters yawned. He was holding a green branch, which he waved gently over the roasting meat to chase the flies away.

  The naziry settled himself on the carpet, crossing his legs beneath him, and watched the men draw the lamb out of the tandir. Beyond, the sunlight glittered on the surface of the bent; frogs croaked in the reeds; swallows skimmed the water and rose twittering and whistling into the air. A servant picked up a silver tray and polished it carefully with a cloth. The cook nodded.

  He arranged a mound of pilaf on the tray, then took the long knife hanging at his belt and began to carve the meat.

  A horseman rode up the track and out of the trees. At the sight of the tent and the smoking meat, he reined in and bowed from the saddle.

  The sou naziry raised a hand in greeting.

  “May you eat well, efendi,” the stranger said politely.

  The naziry hesitated. There was something familiar about the rider: he had an impression that they had met, but he could not remember where.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  The stranger slipped from the saddle. Holding the reins in his hand, he said: “Forgive me, naziry. I did not recognize you in the shade. I am Yashim. Yesterday I attended the valide, at the induction ceremony.”

  The naziry had already realized who he was. “Yashim efendi, of course.” He glanced at the lamb. “You will join us, please.”

  It was Yashim’s turn to hesitate. “You are most generous, naziry, but I do not mean to intrude,” he said.

  “There is meat,” the naziry said, with a gesture toward the lamb. “And you have ridden far.”

  He motioned to the syce to take Yashim’s horse.

  Yashim sat down, and the tray of pilaf and lamb was brought to the tent. The two men ate quickly, in silence. Afterward came slices of bloodred watermelon, refreshingly sweet. Once or twice, Yashim caught the naziry looking curiously at him out of the corner of his eye.

  A servant poured water, and they washed their hands.

  The coffee was served on a salver, with a tchibouk.

  “I have not been here for many years,” Yashim confessed at last. “This is the bent built by Sinan, isn’t it?”

  The naziry grunted. “It is a bent, like another. Sinan repaired it, at our direction.”

  At our direction! It was a magnificent phrase, Yashim thought, for Sinan’s career as an architect had begun almost three hundred years ago.

  “It existed already, then?”

  The naziry nodded. “It was smaller, I believe, in the Greek time.”

  Yashim smiled. “I did not realise, naziry, that the guild had such a long memory.”

  The naziry looked surprised. “How should it be otherwise?” He took a puff of his pipe. “Greek or Turk, a man needs water to live.”

  “Of course.”

  “For a village, it is enough to make a well. But for a city? The people must wash, and drink, and cook food, Yashim efendi.”

  Yashim nodded.

  “How do men make a city? You think a sultan claps his hands and it appears like the palace of a djinn? No, not even a sultan can do this. Water. Water to build a city. And water to defend it, also.”

  “Defend it?”

  “Of course. Great walls, brave soldiers, even a wise sultan in command-these can delay a city’s fall. But water decides the battle.”

  Yashim considered the naziry’s remark. “Istanbul is vulnerable, then,” he said.

  The naziry raised an eyebrow. “It is not as vulnerable as you might guess, Yashim efendi. That is our responsibility. But without us, the city is dust. It cannot eat. It cannot live.

  “This,” he added, pointing the stem of his pipe toward the glittering bent, “is the blood of Istanbul.”

  Yashim looked at the shimmering water. The foresters and the naziry’s men were squatting in a circle, sharing out the rest of the pilaf and meat.

  “The men of the guild,” Yashim began, “they are all Albanians, aren’t they?”

  The naziry made a motion of dismissal. “They are men who understand one another, that is all.” He was silent for a moment. “But yes, also we have a gift. Is it because we come from the mountains, that we understand the fall of water, and the measure of distances? I do not know how it is, but God gives every race some special task. A Bulgar knows his sheep. A Serb can always fight. A Greek knows how to talk and a Turk how to be silent. But we Albanians-we can read water.”

  And keep secrets, Yashim thought. Sustain memories.

  “You have great experience,” he said.


  The naziry shrugged. “Even with a gift, a man must learn. Do you see the blood of a man-his liver-his lungs? A doctor sees a man this way, after many years’ experience. You see a city: you see its streets, its hills, its houses, its people. But you do not see as deeply as we can. We, who are members of a guild two hundred strong.”

  “And what do you see, naziry?”

  “Another city, Yashim efendi; like a maze. In parts it is older than memory.” He puffed thoughtfully on his pipe. “A dangerous place for a man without experience.”

  Yashim leaned forward. “There was a man called Xani-”

  “It is a maze,” the naziry repeated.

  He raised his hand, and the servant stepped forward.

  “I wish to sleep,” the naziry said. “Take these away.”

  He put his hand to his chest and inclined his head very slightly toward Yashim. “As I say, a most dangerous place.”

  He lay back on the carpet and closed his eyes.

  Yashim sat watching him for several minutes, not moving.

  The naziry began to snore.

  102

  Dr. Millingen came down the steps of his house and climbed into the sedan chair waiting for him in the road. The chairmen shouldered their burden and began to lope placidly through the crowd streaming downhill toward the Pera landing stage.

  Dr. Millingen settled his hands on the clasp of his leather bag. Edinburgh, he thought, had prepared him for much, but nothing could ever quite reconcile him to a sedan chair. The sultan had ordered it, of course, so there was little point in refusing the apparent honor-and as a mode of transport it was certainly well suited to the steep and convoluted streets of modern Pera, where a horse might struggle through the crowd, or slip on the cobblestones going downhill. But Millingen always felt ridiculous, and exposed, like a cherry on an iced cake.

  He breathed heavily and patted his bag. It was all in the mind. The thing to remember was that no one cared but him. He caught sight of his own reflection in the wide glass window of the Parisian patisserie, in his swaying litter, and smiled to himself. The cherry on the cake, indeed.

  Nobody in Istanbul would give him so much as a second glance.

  103

  Palewski bit down on the eclair and wiped a squirt of creme anglaise from his cheek with his thumb. “Pera, these days. It’s not the patisseries I object to,” he mumbled. “Only the people.”

  Yashim nodded, and took a sip of his tisane, watching the English doctor disappear, swaying, through the Pera crowds.

  He reached into his coat and pulled out an envelope, which he smoothed flat on the little marble table. “The people,” Yashim echoed finally. “And when, do you think, they began to change?”

  There was no mistaking the chairmen’s livery. Even without the gold edging, the waistcoats they were wearing were far too new and clean to rank them with the ordinary chairmen of the city. It was Besiktas, then, for the doctor. He could be gone for hours.

  Palewski raised an eyebrow and sucked the end of his thumb. “For hundreds of years,” he said, “Istanbul’s people lived in peace together. That started to change after ’21,” he said thoughtfully.

  “The rioting against the Greeks.”

  “Riot. Massacre. Whatever, Yashim. Hanging the Patriarch.”

  “Driving out the old Phanariot dynasties.”

  Palewski frowned. “More than that, Yashim. Fear and mistrust. They hanged the Patriarch from the gate of his own church; then they got the Jews to cut his body down. They say the Jews cut it up to feed to the dogs. I doubt it, frankly. But that isn’t what matters. The Turks were afraid. They turned on the Greeks. The Greeks were afraid. Now they hate the Jews. Everything changed.”

  Yashim nodded.

  “Then the Janissary business five years afterward,” Palewski added. “End of a tradition.”

  “It didn’t take long for the new men to appear, did it?” Yashim leaned forward. “Mavrogordato. Did he arrive here before, or after, the Janissary affair?”

  Palewski picked up a napkin. “Before, I’d swear. He was in Istanbul by ’24, at the latest.”

  “Mavrogordato couldn’t have known Meyer, then?”

  Palewski considered the question. “Meyer was at Missilonghi in 1826, but Mavrogordato was here in Istanbul, getting rich and keeping his head down.”

  “Hmmm. When Lefevre-Meyer-visited Mavrogordato the other day, he got an unsecured loan. Why not? French, archaeologist, very respectable. But whatever Lefevre told the banker, it upset Madame. It made her-curious. She called me in, remember?”

  “You said she was confused.”

  Yashim nodded. “Mavrogordato had never seen Meyer. Madame hadn’t seen Lefevre. She only had her husband’s account of their meeting-and his description of the man who came asking for money.”

  “And?”

  Yashim glanced out of the window. “She began to suspect.”

  Palewski had picked up his eclair, but he set it down again. “Suspect? You mean-that Lefevre was a phony?”

  “Lefevre said something that made Mavrogordato give him money. And Madame to wonder who Lefevre really was.”

  “Go on.”

  “She wondered if he might be Dr. Meyer.”

  “Madame Mavrogordato? She knew Meyer?”

  “Mavrogordato, you see, wasn’t at Missilonghi.” Yashim drained his cup. “She was.”

  “And met Meyer?”

  The door to the street opened with a jangle of bells, and a man with shiny whiskers and a black cane came in: it was just like Paris.

  “Better than that,” Yashim said. “She married him.”

  Palewski groaned and buried his face in his hands.

  Yashim looked through the big glass window. Farther up the street, the door of Millingen’s house opened and closed again, and a man in the livery of a servant ran lightly down the steps with a basket in his hand. The crowd was very dense, and the servant lifted the basket and set it on his shoulder.

  “Compston told me that Meyer seduced a Greek woman at Missilonghi,” Yashim explained. “Lord Byron made him marry her.”

  Yashim followed the bobbing basket through the crowd: the man was going to the market.

  Palewski shook his head. “That may be true. But it doesn’t mean that she was the woman we know as Madame Mavrogordato.” He frowned. “She couldn’t be-her son, Alexander, must be at least twenty years old.”

  “If he is her son.”

  “No-but! Yashim, you told me yourself, Alexander’s the spitting image of her.”

  “She’s his aunt. Monsieur Mavrogordato is her brother.”

  “Brother?”

  Yashim stirred the envelope with a finger. “I got Compston to do a little research for me. He dug up the name of Meyer’s wife, and guess what?”

  “It was Mavrogordato?”

  “Christina Mavrogordato. She’s living with her brother and his son.”

  Palewski sat hunched over his eclair. After a few moments he raised his head.

  “But why?”

  “I think what happened was this. Meyer escaped Missilonghi-and abandoned her. Somehow she survived the massacre and made her way to Istanbul, where her brother was already doing very well. He was a widower-he had a child, Alexander, living in Chios. Alexander needed a mother.”

  “But she could still have declared that she was his sister,” Palewski objected. “No impropriety there.”

  Yashim shook his head. “She knew what Meyer was like: he’d abandoned her to save his own skin, but there was no knowing whether he might try coming back. Her brother was a very rich man. And legally, she was Meyer’s wife.”

  “She was afraid he’d claim her-and touch Mavrogordato for money, into the bargain?”

  Yashim leaned forward. “She’s lived with that fear for the past thirteen years. The Orthodox church teaches that a woman belongs to her husband. Christina Mavrogordato was Meyer’s property. And she had had her fill of Meyer. Meyer seduced her. He abandoned her. But he liked mone
y.”

  Palewski put his fingers flat on the table. “An interesting sidelight on this situation,” he said slowly, “is that it proves Lefevre to have been not only a bounder, a coward, a bolter, a traitor, and a thoroughgoing shit, but a bigamist, as well. Unless-” A look of comical horror crossed his face. “You don’t think he had become a Muslim, too?”

  Yashim flashed him a look of mild rebuke.

  “A joke, Yashim. Sorry.” He folded his arms. “So Madame Mavrogordato had Lefevre killed, then.”

  “I thought so, once.” Yashim got to his feet. “I haven’t got much time, and there’s something I still need to find out.”

  “From whom?”

  “Dr. Millingen-indirectly. I’m going into his house. Do you want to come?”

  “No doctors for me, Yashim.”

  “But he won’t be there.”

  Palewski narrowed his eyes. “I’m not sure that makes it any better. I’m still the ambassador, you know. And I am planning on enjoying this eclair.”

  104

  Yashim crossed the street, mounted the steps, and rapped smartly on the knocker to Dr. Millingen’s house. When nobody answered, he launched himself into the crowd. Twenty yards down the street he entered a bakery. He walked past the counter with a nod to the baker, past the loaves, through the kitchens, and out of the shop at the back, into a small yard surrounded by a low wall. Yashim heaved himself up onto it and jumped lightly down the other side, just managing to avoid crushing a clump of horseradish growing in Dr. Millingen’s tiny physic garden.

  From a door in the far wall a cinder path led directly through the garden to the back door. Yashim moved closer to the house. The windows on the ground floor were barred, the back door locked with a patent American mechanism, but there was a coal hopper at the end of the house, which suggested possibilities. Yashim went to work on the padlock, and after a few minutes he saw it click open. He lifted the doors and lowered himself into the chute.

  Some loose coal was pressed up against a sliding panel at the bottom of the chute. Yashim lifted the larger lumps aside, working his fingers into the grit to find the lower edge of the panel. It slid upward with a sound of falling coal.