Apart from the sultan himself, and the palace eunuchs, he was the only man who could take up an invitation to enter the women’s quarters. The only man in the whole empire who could come and go at will. And when the palace turned to him for help it was his duty to oblige.
But that put him in a difficult position. He was engaged by the seraskier: the seraskier had called him in first.
A killing in the harem was bad. But what he was dealing with outside looked worse.
For the fourth cadet, time was running out.
But why?
Why now?
He took a deep breath, pulled back his shoulders, and walked around the corner into his street.
[ 35 ]
The Dresser of the Girls looked beseechingly at Yashim, then at the Kislar Agha, the chief black eunuch, who was spreading his considerable bulk across a chaise longue. Neither the Dresser or Yashim had been invited to sit.
Yashim privately cursed his impetuosity. He’d been taken into the palace just when the Valide Sultan took her evening nap, and the Kislar Agha had swiftly taken control. The Kislar Agha never slept. When Yashim had told him what he had to say, he had sent immediately for the dresser.
That was how the system worked, Yashim knew. Everyone had their own ideas about the imperial harem, but essentially it was like a machine. The sultan, pumping a new recruit in the cohort of imperial concubines, was simply a major piston of an engine designed to guarantee the continuous production of Ottoman sultans. All the rest—the eunuchs, the women—were cogs.
Christians viewed the sultan’s harem quite differently. Reading his way through some of the valide’s favourite French novels, it had slowly dawned on Yashim that westerners, as a rule, had an intensely romantic and imaginative picture of the harem. For them it was a honeyed fleshpot, in which the most beautiful women in the world engaged spontaneously at the whim of a single man in salacious acts of love and passion, a narcotic bacchanal. As though the women had only breasts and thighs, and neither brains nor histories. Let them dream, Yashim thought. The place was a machine, but the women had their lives, their will and their ambition. As for the hints of lascivious-ness, the machine simply let them off as steam.
The dresser was a case in point. He was something like a squeezed lemon, a sour and fussy creature, black, skinny, forty-five, meticulous about detail, with all the spontaneous effervescence of a dripping tap. The dresser’s tasks ranged from preparing the gozde, or chosen girl, for a sultan’s bed to buying their underwear. His staff included hairdressers, tailors, jewellers and a perfumier, whose own job involved, among other things, crushing and grinding scents, blending perfumes to suit the sultan’s taste, preparing soaps, oils and aphrodisiacs, and overseeing the making of the imperial incense. If anything went wrong, the dresser was the one to take the blame: but he always had lesser functionaries he, in turn, could kick.
“A ring, dresser,” the Kislar Agha was saying. “According to our friend here, the girl wore a ring. I do not know if she was wearing it when the unfortunate circumstance occurred. Perhaps you will tell us.”
The slight annular depression on the dead girl’s middle finger which Yashim had noticed before the Valide Sultan had interrupted his inspection of the body had interested him at the time. For all her finery and precious jewels, it had been the missing ring which recalled, however fractionally, her existence as a living person, with thoughts and feelings of her own. Perfectly engineered for the task she was never destined to perform—flawless, beautiful, perfectly accoutred, bathed and perfumed—had she nonetheless prepared to approach the sultan’s bed with the tiniest trace of an imperfection, a cold, white indentation on the middle finger of her right hand: the faint imprint of a choice?
Was the ring removed at the time of her death, or even later?
The dresser glanced at Yashim, who watched him without expression, arms folded patiently across his chest. The dresser gazed upwards, drumming his fingers nervously against his closed lips. Yashim had the impression that he already had the answer they wanted. He was trying to control his panic and work out the probable consequences of what he was about to say.
“Indeed. A ring. Just the one. She did wear the ring.”
The Kislar Agha tugged at his earlobe. He turned a bloodshot eye on Yashim, who said: “And the Page of the Chamber found the body. Can we talk to him?”
The Page of the Chamber, whose task was to lead the gozde to the sultan, was produced: he knew nothing about a ring. The Kislar Agha, who had been next on the scene, gave Yashim his answer only by a slight lowering of his eyelids.
“She was laid out in the bridal chamber, just as you saw her.”
“By -?”
“Among others, the dresser.”
The dresser could not remember if the ring had been missing then.
“But you might have noticed if it had been gone?” Yashim suggested.
The dresser hesitated.
“Yes, yes, I suppose that would have struck me. After all, I arranged her hands. Put like that, effendi, it’s obvious that she was wearing the ring when she—ah—she—”
“She died. Can you describe it?”
The dresser swallowed.
“A silver ring. Not of account. I’ve seen it quite often. Different girls wear it, pass it around. There are a lot of small pieces like that, not very special, that belong to the women in general, as it were. They wear them for a bit, tire of them, give them away. Frankly, I consider those sort of trinkets as beneath my notice -unless they are ugly, or spoil a composition, of course.”
“And you let her wear this ring to attend the sultan?”
“I thought it more prudent that she should keep the ring, than have an unsightly mark on her finger. I didn’t mention it.”
The dresser turned and twisted involuntarily from side to side.
“I did right, chief, didn’t I? It was only a ring. It was clean, silver.”
The Kislar Agha fixed him with a stare. Then with a shrug and a wave of his hand, he dismissed him from the room. The dresser backed out, bowing nervously.
The Kislar Agha picked up a peach and bit into it. The juice ran down his chin.
“Do you think he took it?”
Yashim shook his head.
“A bit of silver, why would he bother? But somebody took it. I wonder why?”
“Somebody took it,” the Kislar Agha repeated slowly. “So it must still be here.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
The black man leaned back and examined his hands.
“It will be found,” he said.
[ 36 ]
His excellency Prince Nikolai Derentsov, Order of Czar Peter, First Class, hereditary Chamberlain to the Czars of all the Russias, and Russian ambassador to the Sublime Porte, watched his knuckles whiten against the edge of his desk.
He was, as he would have been the first to admit, an extraordinarily handsome man. Now in his late fifties, well over six foot, his broad shoulders exaggerated by a high-collared, cutaway coat, his neck in a starched cravat, lace at his sleeves, he looked both elegant and formidable. He wore his steel-grey hair short, and his side-whiskers long. He had a fine head, cold blue eyes, and a rather small mouth.
The Derentsov family had found that life was expensive. Despite vast estates, despite access to the highest positions in the land, a century of balls, gowns, gambling and politics in St Petersburg had led Prince Nikolai Derentsov to the uncomfortable discovery that his debts and expenses greatly exceeded his income. His ability to attract a very beautiful young wife had been the talk of the late season—although beautiful young women are as common in Russia as anywhere else.
What animated the talk—what spurred the envy and congratulation—was that through his marriage the prince had also secured the benefit of her considerable fortune. Not that the people Derentsov moved among always put it that way. Behind his back they sniffed that the girl—for all her beauty—was Trade. Her father had made millions in fur.
“It app
ears that you have been careless,” Derentsov was saying. “At my embassy I cannot afford to maintain people who make mistakes. Do you understand me?”
“I am so sorry, Your Excellency.”
The young man bent his head. Nikolai Potemkin certainly looked sorry. He was sorry, too: not for what he had done, which was not his fault, but because the chief was angry and unfair and sounded as if he were going to sack him on the spot. He had been here only two months, slipping from a dead-end desk job in the Russian army to the diplomatic on the back of an elderly relative’s interest at court—a distant relative, the slenderest interest. The chance would not come again.
He was, like his chief, over six foot tall; but he was not handsome. His face, scarred from a sabre cut received in the Turkish war, had never healed well: a livid weal ran from the corner of his left eye to his upper lip. He was very fair, and his almost lashless eyes were watery and pale. In that struggle with a Turkish cavalier he had grappled the sabre with his bare left hand, and three of his fingers were now curled into a useless hook. Young Potemkin had come to understand that it was the diplomatic or…nothing. Five thousand acres on the borders of Siberia. A third-rate estate, shackled with debt, a thousand miles from anywhere at all.
Prince Derentsov drummed on the desk with his finger tips.
“The damage is done. In a few minutes we will talk to an emissary of the Sublime Porte. Let’s get it clear. You met the men once. You spoke in French. You gave them a lift and dropped them—where?”
“Somewhere near their barracks, I’m not sure. I’ve only been out in the city a few times.”
“Hmph.” The prince grunted. “Nothing else, understand? Very well.”
He rang a bell, and asked the orderly to bring in the Ottoman gentleman.
[ 37 ]
The Russians noted Yashim’s appearance.
An insignificant fellow, the ambassador thought. No rank.
Junior Attache Potemkin felt a surge of relief, struck by the thought that if the Turks themselves gave this interview such low priority, his chief could hardly rank his error as a sacking offence.
They watched Yashim bow. The ambassador did not offer him a seat.
“I’m grateful for your help today,” Yashim said. The prince sneered and looked away. Yashim caught the expression and smiled.
“We understand that Count Potemkin spent some time with four officers of the Imperial New Guard last week. You are Count Potemkin.”
Potemkin bowed.
“If I may ask, were you friends? You have not been long in Istanbul.”
“No. I still hardly know my way around.” Potemkin bit his lip: that was supposed to come later. “We weren’t friends. Just friendly.”
“Of course. Then you had met before?”
“Not at all. We met at the gardens, by pure chance. I suppose we were all slightly curious. We spoke, in French. I’m afraid my French is not good,” Potemkin added.
Yashim saw no reason to flatter him.
“And you discussed—what?”
“To tell the truth, I hardly remember. I think I told them about this.” Potemkin raised his palsied hand to his face. “War wounds.”
“Yes, I see. You are a man of experience in battle.”
“Yes.”
“What were you doing in the gardens?”
“Looking round. Taking a walk.”
“A walk? What for?”
“I thought maybe I could get some exercise. Somewhere quiet, where I would not attract so much attention.”
Yashim thought the mangled Russian could probably cause quite a stir in a city street.
The ambassador yawned, and prepared to stand.
“Is that all? I am sure we all have our duties to perform.”
Yashim bowed. “I merely wanted to ask the attache, how did he leave the gardens?”
The ambassador sighed, stood up, and waved a hand.
Potemkin said: “We left together. I dropped them off, somewhere near the barracks, I think. I don’t know the city well.”
“No, I understand. You took a cab?”
Potemkin hesitated and glanced at his chief.
“Yes.”
“How did you share the fare?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You dropped them off. I assume you came on here, to the embassy.”
“That’s right.”
“So how was the cabman paid? Did you share the fare?”
“Oh, I see what you mean.” Potemkin ran his fingers through his hair. “No, no, it was my treat. I paid. I was coming back anyway, as you say.”
“Can you remember how much? It might be very important.”
“I don’t think so,” the ambassador intervened, in a voice of deep scorn. “As I just said, we are all busy. So, if you will allow us—”
Yashim had turned to face the ambassador. He cocked his head slightly to one side and put up a hand.
“I am sorry,” he said, very deliberately. “But I must insist. Count Potemkin, you see, was the last man to see the guards alive.”
The ambassador’s eyebrows flickered for an instant. Potemkin’s eyes widened.
“Good Lord!” he said. He did not look at Yashim.
“Yes, it is very sad. So you see, anything we can do to trace the men’s last movements could be helpful. Such as finding the cab driver.”
It was a punt, Yashim thought. Not quite impossible.
“I am quite sure that Count Potemkin will not remember how much the cab cost,” the prince said smoothly. “We do not encourage our officials to carry much money. Cabs are paid off by porters, at the entrance.”
“But of course,” Yashim said. “I am afraid I have been stupid. The porters, naturally, would keep a record of their disbursements.”
The prince stiffened, realising his mistake. “I will have Count Potemkin look into it. If we learn anything, of course we will inform you.”
Yashim bowed. “I do hope the Count has no travel plans. It may be necessary to speak with him again.”
“I am sure there will be no need,” said the prince, gritting his teeth.
Yashim went out, closing the door.
The prince sat down heavily at his desk.
“Well!” he said.
Potemkin said nothing. The interview, he felt, had gone rather well.
He would not, after all, be going home.
[ 38 ]
Once outside the prince’s office Yashim stood for a moment in the vestibule, frowning. A liveried footman stood to attention by the open mahogany doors. Lost in thought, Yashim walked slowly round the room until he found himself standing in front of a framed map which he pretended to examine, seeing nothing.
Nobody, he reflected, had asked him any questions. Was that odd? The work of an embassy was to pick up information; but they had shown no interest in his enquiry. They might have heard that the men were dead, true. But he said that Potemkin was the last man to see the men alive, and nobody asked him how he knew. It was as if the subject failed to interest them, and that was interesting.
Even more interesting, though, was the lie about the cab.
The lie—and the fact that the prince had known about it.
The fact that the prince himself had attempted to cover up.
“Excusez-moi, monsieur.”
Yashim turned. For once, he was almost nonplussed.
He hadn’t noticed her come in.
Yet standing beside him now was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
[ 39 ]
Madame,” he murmured. She was tall, almost as tall as him, and he guessed that this was the princess, the ambassador’s wife, although he might have expected someone older. The princess looked barely twenty. Her hair was drawn up to reveal her slender neck and shoulders, though a few black ringlets danced exotically against her fair skin. He noticed the tips of her ears, the soft curve of her chin, the almost Turkish slant of her cheekbones. Her large black eyes sparkled.
She was looking at him
with an air of amusement.
Yashim could hardly understand how the footman could stand there unmoved, when the most ravishing creature, dark-eyed, black-haired, her face seemingly sculpted from the virgin snow, glided in front of him unchaperoned. Was he blind?
“I am Eugenia, monsieur. La femme de I’Ambassadeur le Prince.”
The ambassador’s wife. The ambassador’s woman. Her voice was singularly low. Her lips barely moved when she spoke.
“Yashim,” he murmured. He noticed that she had extended her hand, the fingers pointing to the ground. As if in a dream he took it and pressed it to his lips. The skin was warm.
“You should be more adventurous, Monsieur Yashim,” she said, dimpling her cheek.
Yashim’s eyes widened. He felt the blood rush to his face. “I…I am sorry—”
“I meant, of course, looking at old maps of your city.” She looked at him again, with curiosity. “You do speak French, or am I dreaming? Wonderful.”
“The map? Interesting, of course—it’s one of the first detailed maps of Istanbul ever made, shortly after the Conquest. Well, a hundred years or so. 1599, Flensburg, Melchior Lorich. All the same, I suggest we look at some of the paintings. Then, perhaps, you can form an idea of what we are like.”
Yashim was scarcely listening to what she was saying. The sensation he was experiencing was unlike any he had ever known before, and he recognised that it was not merely the effect of her beauty which produced it. Ordinary men might be staggered, he supposed, but for Yashim? Ridiculous! Beautiful women paraded by him every time he entered the sultan’s harem.
He saw them, sometimes, all but naked: how often they teased him, with their perfumed breasts and full thighs! How they pleaded with him, these perfect creatures, for a stray touch of what was forbidden and unknown! Yet they always seemed to him, in some fundamental sense, to be clothed, veiled, forbidden.
Here was a woman almost fully dressed—though he gazed at her lips, at the hollow in her throat, at her bare slender shoulders. It was she who seemed the more naked.
2006 - The Janissary Tree Page 11