“The tower?”
“Yep, I checked it out. The door you told me about, it’s still on the chain. I’ve been up there for an hour.”
“Hmmm. There’s another door, though, from the other side. On a lower floor. I’d better take a look. You stay here and keep your eyes open, but if I’m not back in half an hour, bring some of your lads and come after me.”
“Like that, is it? Half a minute, I’ll get someone to go with you now.”
“Yes,” Yashim said. “Why not?”
It took them only a few minutes to reach the parapet. The porter Eslek had found stamped along incuriously behind Yashim, but he was glad of his presence: the memory of the dark stairs leading down to that clean chamber still made him shiver. He unlooped the chain and once more set his shoulder to the door.
The porter protested.
“I think we didn’t ought to go in there. It’s not allowed.”
“I’m allowed,” Yashim said shortly. “And you’re with me. Come on.”
It was darker this time, but Yashim knew where to go. At the head of the steps he put his finger to his lips and led the way down. The tekke was just as he’d left it the day before. He tried the door: it was still locked. The porter stood nervously at the foot of the stairs, looking round in surprise. Yashim went over to the chest and raised the lid. Same collection of plates and glasses. Still no cadet.
Yashim straightened up.
“Come on, we’ll go back now,” he said.
The porter needed no second bidding.
[ 103 ]
The effendi had told him to keep his eyes open, and Eslek had been doing just that for several hours. He wasn’t sure what he was looking out for, exactly, or how he would recognise it when he found it. Something out of the ordinary, perhaps, Yashim had suggested. Or something so very ordinary that no one would give it a second glance—except, he had explained, perhaps Eslek himself. Eslek knew what went where, and who might be expected at a Friday market.
He scratched his head. It was all very ordinary. The stalls, the crowds, the jugglers, the musicians: it was like this every time. The market was busier, it being a Friday. What had happened that didn’t happen every day of the week? The meatball man had given him a free breakfast, that didn’t happen to you every day!
Thinking about the meatballs had reminded him of something.
He tried to remember. He’d been hungry, yes. And he’d seen that the meatballs were done, hadn’t he, before anyone else? Seen that much out of the corner of his eye while he poached a cube of bread—
Eslek jerked his chin. The little cube of bread. Nobody had noticed. There’d been no one manning the stall, and the little dog running round to turn the spit. Something he’d never actually seen before today, not in the market, at least. But so what?
He decided to take another look. As he threaded his way through the crowd, he caught sight of the meatball vendor with the flat knife in one hand and a pitta bread in the other, serving a customer. But he was looking the other way. When Eslek reached him he was still standing, as though transfixed, and the customer was beginning to grumble: “I said yes to sauce.”
The vendor turned back with a puzzled look on his face. Then he looked down at his knife, and the bread in his hands, as if he wasn’t sure why they were there. His customer turned away with a snort.
“Forget it. Life’s too short.”
The meatball man seemed not to have heard. He turned his head and looked over his shoulder again.
Eslek followed his gaze. The little dog was still trotting in the wheel, with his tongue hanging out. But it wasn’t the abandoned dog which attracted Eslek’s attention so much as the meat hanging on the spit. It had been tightly bound to set it once the heat caught it; but with no one about to baste the meat, it was beginning to shrink. The pack of meat was gradually unravelling, stiffening, revealing to Eslek the shape of the beast it had once been. Two of its legs, paring away from the surprisingly slender body, were thick; the other two were smaller, wizened, in an attitude of prayer. It could have been a hare, except that that it was ten times bigger than any hare Eslek had ever seen.
The meatball vendor must have noticed him, because he sud—denly said: “I don’t get what’s going on. There’s been no one at that stall all morning, not since I come. The dog must be fair knackered.” He swallowed, and Eslek could see his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “And what the fuck’s on the spit?”
Eslek felt the hairs prickling on the back of his neck.
“I’ll tell you one thing, mate,” he growled. “It sure as shit ain’t halal.”
He put a hand up to his amulet and gripped it hard. The meatball vendor began to mumble something: he was praying, Eslek realised, running through the ninety-nine names of God while he stared in horror at the trunk and limbs of a human being, popping and blackening over the smouldering coals.
[ 104 ]
Yashim didn’t hear the shouts until he was almost out of the tower. He and the porter stood on the parapet, trying to see round the aged cypress tree. In a moment the space below them was thronged with people trying to get away, cramming into the alley, voices raised. He heard several people shout: “The kadi! Fetch the kadi!” and a woman screamed. One of the juggler’s wooden batons sailed up into the cypress and clattered down again, striking against the branches, as the crowd jostled against him.
Yashim looked out over the square. There was no point trying to get down there, he realised, while crowds were still pouring down the alley. Someone beneath him stumbled, and a basket of vegetables went flying. “Go! Go!” The porter was hopping from foot to foot.
He could see the kadi now, stepping out of his booth into a knot of men all gesticulating and pointing. Further to the left he saw that a ring had formed among the stalls, leaving one of them isolated in the middle. He glanced below. The crowd had stopped running. People were standing in little groups, while those closest to the mouth of the alley had turned around, and were craning their necks nervously to watch the square.
Yashim broke into a trot along the parapet, leaped down the steps and darted up through the passageway. Somebody clutched at his arm, but he shrugged them off, dodging his way back into the square between the knots of bystanders. As he ran towards the ring of men he saw Murad Eslek leading the kadi forwards. The men shuffled aside to let them through, and Yashim dashed through on their heels.
One glance showed him all he needed to see.
The kadi was speechless. The spit was still turning; at every turn one of the wizened arms flopped towards the ground. Yashim stepped forwards and put his hand on the wheel, and the little dog simply sank down inside it, panting.
“We need to rake out the fire,” Yashim said, turning to Eslek. “Get the porters, and a barrow. A donkey cart will do. We’ve got to get this…this thing out of here.”
Eslek closed his eyes a moment and nodded. “I…I never thought—” He didn’t finish his sentence but turned away to organise the porters.
The kadi, meanwhile, had started ranting at the crowd, waving his fists.
“Get away! Go back to work! You think I’m finished, do you? I’ll show you! Some kind of joke, is it?” He clapped his fists to his temples and stared at them all, rocking on his heels. In his market! Disgrace. Disgrace and shame. Who had done this to him?
He stalked forwards, and the men stumbled back to get out of his way. He strode to his booth and went in, slamming the door.
In the stunned silence which followed a few men, like Yashim, seemed to notice the smell for the first time. Pleasant, rich without being heavy, like veal. They, too, turned away.
The meatball vendor was loudly and violently sick.
Yashim saw Eslek returning with the porters, carrying brooms and rakes.
He spoke to him for a few minutes. He interviewed the meatball vendor, who was unable to stop himself shuddering.
No one had seen anything. As far as the meatball vendor was concerned, the spit was already runnin
g before he started setting up. He’d thought it strange, yes, but he had work to do and hadn’t given it another thought until after daybreak. He’d been concerned for the dog, really.
It was the dog that had caught his attention, at the first.
[ 105 ]
The valide’s jewels sparkled in the yellow light. In that greasy chamber they were the only objects that could catch the eye.
There was magic in them. The magic that conferred power. No one could look away from these jewels, any more than a rabbit could take its eyes off a snake.
The smooth fingers stole forward and stroked them.
Ferenghi magic, maybe. What difference could that make? The fingers stiffened. There might be words that needed to be said. Invocations. Incantations. That was an unforeseen possibility. This zigzagged figure that appeared on each of the jewels could be a word, perhaps, or a sound.
No. Possession was what mattered most. Whoever held the jewels enjoyed the power they conferred. Napoleon, to scatter even the armies of the faithful—everyone knew that he had luck beyond the ordinary share. Fool! He had parted with the jewels and his luck had changed. And the valide, too: she’d done well for herself ever since the jewels arrived. Clawed her way to the top, across a battleground far more dangerous than any the French emperor had ever faced, where whispers were lances, and knowledge battalions, and beauty marched in the ranks.
We knew all about that, didn’t we? Knew how hard it was to emerge standing from that melee, not to be kicked back, pulled down, to wither in obscurity. And then to reach one’s goal, to stand at the apex, to have complete power over creatures who grovelled and cringed at a single word!
Nothing could destroy that. No one could take that away.
Not with these in one’s possession.
And a pair of lips puckered and came forward to kiss the jewels.
[ 106 ]
Yashim curled his fingers around the little cup and stared down gratefully at the black liquid settled heavily inside. No spice and a hint of sweet. As he brought it to his nose, a shadow fell across the table and he looked up in surprise.
“Please,” he said, motioning to a stool.
The soup master placed his enormous hands on the table and sank his weight onto the stool. His eyes swung around the cafe, taking in the other customers, the two stoves, the glittering wall of coffee pots. He gave a sniff.
“The coffee smells good.”
“It’s fresh Arabica,” Yashim replied. “They roast the beans here every morning. Too many people buy the Peruvian kind, don’t you think? It is cheap, but it always tastes stale to me.”
The soup master nodded. Without moving his hand from the table he raised his fingers and nodded solemnly at the proprietor, who came forward bowing.
“Coffee, very sweet, with cardamom. No cinnamon.” The cafe owner walked over to his stove. “I don’t like cinnamon,” the soup master added.
They discussed the question politely until the coffee arrived. Yashim was inclined to agree with the soup master that cinnamon in bread was an abomination.
“Where do we get these ideas?” The soup master’s eyebrows shot up in perplexity. “For what?”
Yashim shrugged and said nothing.
The soup master put down his cup and leaned forwards.
“You wonder why I am here. Last night the guards did not show up for work. It is the first time. I thought you might be interested.”
Yashim cocked his head. He was wondering why the big man had come. He said: “I’d rather talk about the past. Twenty, twenty-five years ago. The Janissaries kicked up trouble, didn’t they? What did they do, exactly?”
The soup master ran his fingers over his moustache.
“Fires, my friend. We had men in the corps who could lead a fire easy as a gypsy with a bear. I said we—I meant they. I was not involved. But this was how they made their feelings known.”
“Where were the fires, mostly?”
The soup master shrugged. “In the port, in Galata, over here by the Golden Horn. Sometimes it was as if the whole city was smouldering, like underground. They had only to lift a cover somewhere and—whoosh! Everyone felt it. Danger all around.”
Like now, Yashim thought. The whole city knew about the murders. They understood what was happening. The place was tense with expectation. There were three days to go before the sultan proclaimed his Edict.
“Thank you, soup master. Did you notice the direction of the wind today?”
The soup master’s eyes suddenly narrowed.
“Off Marmara. The wind has been set from the west all week.”
[ 107 ]
The seraskier pursed his lips.
“I doubt it can be done. Oh, operationally, yes, perhaps. We could flood the city with the New Guard, a man at every corner, artillery—if we could get it through—in the open spaces. Such as they are.”
He scrambled to his feet and went to stand by the window.
“Look, Yashim effendi. Look at these roofs! What a mess, eh? Hills, valleys, houses, shops, all straggling around little lanes and alleys. How many corners do you think I could find out there? Ten thousand? Fifty thousand? And how many open spaces? Five? Ten? This is not Vienna.”
“No,” Yashim agreed quietly. “But nevertheless—”
The seraskier raised a hand to stop him.
“Don’t think I misunderstand you. And yes, I think something could be done. But the decision would not lie with me. Only the sultan can order troops into the city. Troops under arms, I mean. You think he can take this decision so fast?”
“He did thirteen years ago.”
The seraskier grunted. “Ten years,” he echoed. “Ten years ago the people were united with the sultan’s will. Nobody could deny that the Janissary menace had overwhelmed us all. But today—what do we know? You think Stambouliots will welcome my men with open arms?
“There is another thing I hesitate to point out. What happened ten years ago was not the work of a day. It took months, you could say years, to prepare for victory over the Janissary rabble. We have twenty-four hours. And the sultan is—older. His health is not so good.”
He drinks, you mean, Yashim thought. It was common knowledge. Everyone knew that M. Lebrun, the Belgian wine merchant in Pera, handled far more stock than the foreign community could account for. And what about the discovery only last year of a veritable mountain of long-necked bottles, in the woods close to where the sultan liked to take his family for picnics?
“There will be a Janissary insurrection,” said Yashim flatly. “I think it will take the form of a fire, or many fires, I don’t know. Either sooner or later the sultan will have to order in the Guards, to keep order and deal with the conflagration, and I for one would prefer it was sooner.” He stepped away from the window and turned to face the seraskier.
“If you won’t, I will try to talk to the sultan,” he said.
“You.” It wasn’t a question. Yashim could see the seraskier weighing him up. He stood with his back to the light, his hands clasped behind his back. The silence deepened.
“We will go together, you and I,” the seraskier announced at last. “But you, Yashim effendi, will make it clear to the sultan that this was your suggestion, not mine.”
Yashim stared at him coldly. One day, he thought, he would come across a man in the sultan’s service who was not a trimmer, who would stand up and stand out for his beliefs. But not today.
“I will take responsibility,” he said quietly.
I’m only a eunuch, after all.
[ 108 ]
Their footsteps echoed off the high walls of the seraglio as they walked across the first court. Usually on a Friday the place would have been busy, but a combination of grey skies and the suppressed tension hanging in the air had left the great court all but deserted. Ceremonial guardsmen stood to attention around the perimeter walls, as silent and immobile as the Janissary guards whose stillness had once struck chill into the hearts of foreign envoys. Yashim wondered
if the New Guards were not, in their own way, more sinister: like German clockwork dolls rather than real men. At least the Janissaries had possessed their own swaggering panache, as his friend Palewski had pointed out.
His fingers closed on a scrap of paper tucked beneath his belt. Coming across the Hippodrome, he had swerved on an impulse from the bronze serpent and cut across the dirt to the Janissary Tree, knowing what he would find: the same mystic verses that had been puzzling him all week.
They had been pinned to the peeling bark. This was how the Greeks advertised their dead, Yashim thought, with a piece of paper nailed to a post or tree. He had pulled down the paper and studied it again.
Unknowing
And knowing nothing of unknowing,
They sleep.
Wake them.
A fire in the night, Yashim thought. A call to arms. But what did this mean?
Knowing,
And knowing unknowing,
The silent few become one with the Core.
Approach.
He folded the paper and tucked it into his belt.
[ 109 ]
The sultan kept them waiting for an hour, and when he met them it was not in the private apartments, as Yashim had expected, but in the throne room, a room that Yashim had seen only once fifteen years before.
He had not seen the sultan, either, for several years. Mahmut’s beard, which had been jet black, was red with henna, and the keen dark eyes had turned watery, sunk beneath folds of fat. His mouth seemed to have drooped into a pout of permanent disappointment as if, having tasted everything that money could buy in the world, he had found it all to be sour. He waved them in with a chubby hand, larded with rings, but made no effort to rise from the throne.
The room itself was as Yashim remembered it, a jewel box of the coolest blues, tiled from the floor to the apex of the dome in exquisite Iznikware, a frozen dream of a garden that twined and dripped and hung festooned around the walls.
2006 - The Janissary Tree Page 25