Yashim nodded. The four original tekkes. It fitted: it was what traditionalists would want.
“Which might explain something else that’s been bothering me,” he said aloud. “Not the timing—that’s the Edict—but the number. Why four? If you’re right, if someone is going back to the beginning, trying to start over, then four’s the obvious number. Four is the number of strength, like the legs of a table. It’s a reflection of earthly order. Four corners of the earth. Four winds. Four elements. Four is bedrock.”
“And it’s going back, to the very origins of the whole Ottoman enterprise! Holy War—and Istanbul as the very navel of the world.”
Yashim could hear the soup master explaining that the Janissaries had built the empire: that they, under the guidance of the Karagozi babas, had won this city for the faith.
“Whenever things have gone wrong, people have stepped forward to explain that we’ve simply deviated from the true old ways, that we should go back and try to be what we were when the whole of Europe lay trembling at our feet.”
“Well,” said Palewski drily, “not the whole of Europe.”
“Poland excepted, the valiant foe.” A look of doubt crossed Yashim’s face.
“But how do we work out which was the original, fourth tekke? Your map here doesn’t give dates, even if anyone knew them.”
Palewski bit his nails.
“If we had an older map,” he said slowly. “A really good one, to cross reference with this one. Most of these tekkes, after all, wouldn’t exist. You might get somewhere by a process of elimination.”
He rubbed his palms together.
“It would have to be a very good map,” he mused. Then he shook his head. “To be honest, I’m not sure there’s anything early enough for you. I certainly don’t have such a thing.”
Yashim set his jaw, and stared into the fire.
“Does the name Lorich mean anything to you?” He asked quietly. “Flensburg. Fifteen something.”
Palewski’s eyes widened.
“How on earth, Yash? It’s the most astonishing panorama of the city ever made. Or so I’ve heard. I’ve never seen it, to be honest. There must have been several copies but you won’t find one here in Istanbul, that’s for sure.”
“An astonishing panorama,” Yashim echoed. “But you’re wrong, my friend. I think I know just where to find it.”
[ 72 ]
Half an hour later Yashim was standing in the portico of the Russian embassy, toying with the irritating reflection that know—ing was not altogether the same thing as finding. He was only half a mile from Palewski’s ambassadorial Residency, and scarcely twenty yards from the map which he had seen hanging in the gallery in the vestibule upstairs. But for all his ability to reach the map, it might have been in Siberia.
The ambassador, it appeared, was not at home. Yashim wondered if he kept Palewski’s hours: perhaps he was even now in bed with his luscious wife. The idea upset him, and he asked to see the First Secretary instead. But the First Secretary could not be contacted, either. It occurred to Yashim to ask to see the ambassador’s wife: but common sense, as well as inherited notions of propriety, ruled that out. Even Christian women didn’t come to the door for every man who knocked.
“Is there anyone I can speak to? It’s very urgent.”
The moment he heard the deliberate, military tread Yashim knew who could be found to speak to him. The crippled hand. The ugly scar.
“Good afternoon,” Potemkin said. “Won’t you come in?”
As he followed the young diplomat into the great hall his eyes flickered automatically to the stairs.
“The staff do not usually admit people without an appointment. I am sorry if you have been waiting a long time. The ambassador and his staff have a heavy workload today. His excellency is expected at the palace tonight. I am afraid it is impossible that they should be interrupted.”
He sounded nervous, on edge, Yashim thought. He said: “You may be able to help me. The other day I saw an interesting map outside the ambassador’s office, which I’d like to look at again. I wonder…?”
Potemkin looked puzzled. “A map?”
“Yes. By Melchior Lorich. It is hanging in the vestibule upstairs.”
“I am sure His Excellency would be delighted to show it to you,” Potemkin said, more smoothly. “If you would care to put your request in writing, I will personally see that it receives his attention.”
“Now?”
Potemkin managed a half-smile. “I’m afraid that’s impossible. Requests of this nature take, what, a month or so to organise. Perhaps we can cut it down, though. Shall we say three weeks?”
“I know the map is just there, up the stairs. I’ll disturb no one.”
Potemkin continued to smile, and said nothing.
“Fifteen minutes,” Yashim said desperately.
“You forget, monsieur, that this is a working embassy. It is neither a museum, nor a public gallery. But I am sure that His Excellency the Prince would be delighted to consider your request—in good time. In the meantime, unless you have anything else…?”
“I don’t suppose you have had a chance to look at the porter’s accounts yet,” Yashim observed sardonically.
“No,” the attache agreed softly. “Not a chance. Allow me to show you out, monsieur.”
[ 73 ]
The ambassador’s wife, at that very moment, was being helped to undress by five eager handmaidens, who took each garment as it was relinquished and examined it with varying degrees of excitement and admiration.
The valide’s suggestion that she should bathe with the women of the sultan’s harem, coming on top of her offer of a puff on the narghile, had temporarily robbed Eugenia of the power of speech. She was not easily nonplussed, but it had occurred to her immediately that the sultan might take it into his head to enjoy a bathe himself. Alternatively, that he might choose to enjoy the spectacle from a concealed lattice. Finally she wondered if the valide was simply teasing her.
“It’s quite all right,” the valide said. “The sultan never uses the women’s bath. The girls would be delighted, but if you’d rather not…”
That’s two of my three concerns answered, at least, Eugenia thought. “I’d be charmed,” she answered.
Minutes later she was laughing as the girls examined her stays, pulling funny faces. One girl puffed up her cheeks and blew. Another, to general merriment, mimed turning a little lock with a key. With a shrug of her firm, creamy shoulders, she demonstrated to Eugenia that Ottoman women enjoyed certain freedoms denied their European cousins. But when Eugenia stepped out of her petticoat, they stood back with what looked like sincere admiration for the effect—until they caught sight of her pubic hair. At this, with equal sincerity, they simply goggled in surprise. Then they helped her unlace, and escorted her into the bath.
Later, Eugenia was to reflect on the difference between a Turkish bath, and a Russian one. On her father’s estates outside Moscow she had often leaped from the steamy log cabin to gasp with pleasure in the snow, while the bathing attendants scrupulously beat her skin to a glow with a whippy bundle of birch twigs. In the harem bath the pleasure was attained without the pain, such as it was: the pleasure seemed infinite and curiously detailed. She was soaped, and rubbed, and massaged, and it seemed that no part of her body escaped the attentions of the girls, or of the stalwart woman who flexed her limbs, cracked her neck, and even bent her fingers and toes. It was only through a massive effort of will, which she afterwards half-regretted, that she conveyed her opinion of the hot wax and a razor which the bath attendant automatically produced. By the time she had bathed, and she was lounging naked on a sofa in the room beyond, surrounded by other women smoking, sipping coffee, and assessing their prize—and all her clothes—Eugenia had no idea how much time had passed. The chirruping of the women was very restful, and their birdlike cadences mingled with the smell of applewood and tobacco to take her back, when she closed her eyes, to a childhood in autumn, by a riv
er far away, and not so long ago.
She was woken by a cool hand on her shoulder. Automatically she pushed herself upright and found the Kislar Agha staring down at her impassively. Then he nodded several times, and showed his little teeth, making a gesture that she was to rise.
She got up slowly, smiling to her new friends. They smiled back, but fleetingly, and helped her to dress. She climbed into her petticoat first, then wrapped her corset around her front. One of the girls laced it at the back; she would have preferred it tighter, but somehow the atmosphere of levity that would have let her ask the girl to pull harder was missing now. She glanced to where the chief black eunuch was standing by the door, his gaze flickering around the room. When she was dressed she tilted her chin and looked him lazily in the eye. He gave a barely perceptible bow, and opened the door.
When she regained the valide’s suite, she found the old lady on her divan, chatting with a plump middle-aged man who sat straddling a western chair, rocking it back and forth.
The sultan turned and rose with a slight effort.
“Princesse!” He bowed, took her hand and pressed it to his lips. Eugenia sank in a low curtsey.
“Bravo!” The valide clapped her hands. “You escaped, I see, dressed just as beautifully as before. The girls,” she explained, “might easily have stolen her clothes.”
“Her clothes?” The sultan looked confused. “But we send to Paris every year, valide.”
Eugenia laughed pleasantly.
“I think, Your Majesty, it’s not the clothes themselves we women find interesting. It’s the way they’re worn. And everyone,” she added, unable to think of a suitable epithet for the sultan’s women, “has been delightful.”
By everyone she did not include the Kislar Agha. The Kislar Agha gave her the creeps.
[ 74 ]
Back again?”
“Stanislaw Palewski,” Yashim announced, “we have exactly four hours. You are going to a party.”
Palewski smiled and shook his head.
“I know what you’re thinking: the ambassadors’ concert at the palace. All very tempting, but I don’t do them any more. These days, I—” He spread his fingers. “To be frank, Yash, it’s a question of dress.” He lowered his voice. “A question, you might say, of moth.”
Yashim held up an imperious hand. “We aren’t talking about those horrible beetling jackets you people all wear. You have the most splendid clothes, and four hours in hand. I have already sent for the tailor. Tonight, you are set to appear at the palace as the living embodiment of Polish history.”
“Eh?”
“You’re going as a Sar—what’s it?”
“Sarmatian?”
“Exactly.”
The Polish ambassador folded his arms stubbornly.
“Of all the fool ideas. Who do you think you are? My fairy godmother?”
Yashim blinked, and Palewski gave a dry chuckle.
“Never mind, it’s an old story.” He frowned. “What are you doing?”
For Yashim had raised his arms and flicked out his hands, taking a backward step, as if Palewski were the djinn he had just conjured up out of the thin air.
Palewski narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “I’m sorry, Yash. I’d do anything for you, you know that. But only within reason. As the ambassador of Poland to the Sublime Porte I have a higher responsibility. Mine is a fallen nation, I know that. But stubborn, sir, very stubborn.” He wagged a finger. “Call it pride, or vanity if you like—but I tell you this. Not for your sake—not even for the sake of the Black Madonna of Czestechowa herself—will I mingle with my peers in a mouldy old dressing gown.”
[ 75 ]
His Excellency is not at home,” the butler rumbled.
He stood with the door ajar, peering at the Turk who had rung the bell.
“I would prefer to wait,” Yashim said. “My time is of no consequence.”
The butler weighed up this remark. On the one hand, it implied a compliment to his master who was, of course, a busy man. On the other, nobody in Istanbul ever said quite what they meant. He studied Yashim. His clothes were certainly clean, if simple. He’d like to rub that cloak in his fingers, to make sure it was really cashmere, but yes…he might be a man of consequence, after all.
“If you will step in,” the butler intoned, “you may find a chair in the hall.”
Yashim did, and sat down on it. The butler closed the door behind them with an audible click. Yashim sat facing the door he had just come through, and two enormous sash windows that descended almost to the floor. The staircase to his left swirled up at his back to the vestibule overhead. The butler walked majestically across to a bewigged footman, in breeches, who stood solemnly at the foot of the stairs, and murmured a few words in Russian. The footman stared out straight before him, and made no response.
“I trust you will not have too long to wait,” the butler said, as he passed Yashim and disappeared through a door to his right.
Yashim sat with his hands folded in his lap.
The footman stood with his hands by his sides.
Neither of them moved for twenty minutes.
At the end of that time, Yashim suddenly started. He raised his head. Something had attracted his attention at the window. He leaned slightly to one side and peered, but whatever it was that caught his eye seemed to have gone. He kept a watch on the window nonetheless.
About thirty seconds later he was almost on his feet, staring. The footman’s eyes slid over him, and then to the window, but the window was black and revealed nothing to him.
But Yashim’s attention was called to something almost out of sight. Curious, he leaned further over to the right, to follow it better. From where he stood, the footman realised that he couldn’t see what the foreigner was looking at.
He wondered what it could be.
Yashim gave a little smile, whistled through his nose, and continued to watch, craning his head.
The footman rubbed his ringers against his palms.
The foreigner, he noticed, had jerked his head slightly, to keep up with the event occurring outside. It seemed to be moving away, out of his line of sight, because the fellow was leaning forward now.
Very slowly, Yashim leaned back in his chair. He looked puzzled. In fact, he simply could not imagine the significance of what he appeared to have seen.
Something within the grounds, the footman knew.
When there should be nothing. No one.
The footman wondered what it could have been. It had to be a light. A light in the dark, in the grounds. Going round the side of the embassy.
What would the butler have done? The footman glanced at the Turk, who was still sitting exactly where he had sat half an hour before. Wearing a slight frown.
Having seen something he hadn’t expected. That nobody else had observed.
The footman took a measured step forwards, hesitated, then continued to the front door and opened it.
He glanced to the left. The spaces between the columns of the portico were dark as pitch. He took a step out, and another, craning for a better view.
He sensed a darkness at his back and half turned. The Turk filled the doorway.
The Turk held out his hands, palms up, and shrugged. Then he gestured to himself and to the gatehouse.
“I’m going,” he said in Turkish.
The footman understood the gesture. His anxiety increased.
The Turk descended the steps.
The footman waited until he had cleared the portico, and then ran very quickly down the steps himself, and headed left, into the dark.
Privately he relished the little cold wind which hit him on the face but could not in a thousand years ruffle his artificial hair. Still he saw nothing. He darted to the corner of the building and looked down the side of the east wing.
It was as far as he dared to go.
[ 76 ]
Yashim sprinted back up the steps, crossed the empty hall and took the stairs three at a time. At the top h
e slowed and put his hand on the doorknob of the vestibule.
What if there was another footman, as before, standing sentinel in there?
He squeezed the handle and stepped inside.
The room was almost dark. Two candles burned in their sconces at the far side of the room, really too far away to be of any use to him. He turned to the right, gliding along the gallery. The oils were hard to make out, but as he passed one of them he paused. He stepped aside, to let the meagre light reveal it, and even though it was mostly shadow, the composition of figures closely grouped at its centre was unmistakeably that of the czar and his amorous czarina, with their little children.
He went back up the gallery.
Two shoulder-length portraits. A full-sized rendition of a man on a horse. A scene he could not decipher, including a river and a mass of men and horses surging towards it. Another portrait.
And he was back at the door. He could hear the footman banging the door downstairs.
He looked around in astonishment.
The vestibule still housed, as he remembered, a positive Parliament of Russian nobles, a Hermitage of royal heads. As for landscapes, well, many versts of the Russian steppe had been crammed in there, too, where Cossack hussars stooped in village streets to kiss their sweethearts farewell.
There wasn’t a map of Istanbul to be seen.
Where the map had been, he was looking at a portrait of a gouty czar.
He took a step closer. The czar looked surprised: perhaps he didn’t like to be ignored. Even in the feeble candlelight Yashim could still make out the faint outline of the frame, bleached against the painted woodwork.
They had got rid of the map.
Yashim hardly had time to register this appalling thought when he heard footsteps mounting the stairs.
Without a second’s hesitation Yashim lunged for the door at the far end of the room. The handle turned easily, and in a moment he was through.
2006 - The Janissary Tree Page 19