Yashim and the seraskier entered stooping at the waist, and after they had advanced five paces they prostrated themselves on the ground.
“Get up, get up,” snapped the sultan testily. “About time,” he added, pointing at Yashim.
The seraskier frowned. “Your Imperial Majesty,” he began. “A situation has arisen in the city which we believe—Yashim effendi, and myself—to be of the gravest potential consequence to the well-being and security of the people.”
“What are you talking about? Yashim?”
Yashim bowed, and started to explain. He spoke of the Edict, and the murder of the cadets. He described a prophecy uttered centuries ago by the founder of the Karagozi order of dervishes—and caught the sultan’s warning frown.
“Be careful, lala. Be very careful of the words you choose. There are some things one cannot speak about.”
Yashim eyed him levelly. “Then I don’t think it will be necessary, sultan.”
There was a silence.
“No,” Mahmut replied. “I have understood. Both of you, approach the throne. We don’t want to shout.”
Yashim hesitated. The sultan’s words had reminded him of the last lines in the verse: The silent few become one with the Core. Approach. What could it mean? He took a step closer to the sultan. The seraskier stood stiffly beside him.
“What do you say, seraskier?”
“There may be upwards of fifty thousand men preparing to take to the streets.”
“And Istanbul could be burned to the ground, is that it? I see. Well, we must do something about that. What do you have in mind?”
“I believe, sire, you must let the New Guards occupy the city temporarily,” Yashim explained. “The seraskier is reluctant, but I can’t see a better way of guaranteeing public safety.”
The sultan frowned and tugged his beard. “Seraskier, you know the temper of your men. Are they ready to take such a step?”
“Their discipline is good, sultan. And they have several commanders who are level-headed and decisive. With your permission, they could take up positions overnight. Their presence alone might overawe the conspirators.”
Yashim noticed that the seraskier soundend less hesitant now.
“All the same,” the sultan observed, “it could become a battle, in the streets.”
“There is that risk. In those circumstances we would simply have to do our best. Identify the ringleaders, limit the damage. Above all, sultan, protect the palace.”
“Hmm. As it happens, seraskier, I hadn’t been planning to remain in the city.”
“With respect, sultan. Your safety can be guaranteed, and I think that your presence will help to reassure the people.”
The sultan answered with a sigh.
“I am not afraid, seraskier.” He rubbed his hands across his face. “Get the men ready. I will consult with my viziers. You can expect an order within the next few hours.”
He turned to Yashim.
“As for you, it is high time you made progress in our enquiry. Be so good as to report to my apartments.”
He dismissed them with a gesture. Both men bowed deeply and walked backward to the door. As they closed on the audience room, Yashim saw that the sultan was sitting on his throne, his fist bunched against his cheek, watching them.
[ 110 ]
Outside the door the seraskier stopped to mop his forehead with a handkerchief.
“Our enquiry? You should have told me that you were working on a case in here,” he muttered reproachfully.
“You didn’t ask. Anyway, as you heard, I gave yours priority.”
The seraskier grunted. “May I ask what the enquiry concerns?”
The seraskier was too brusque. On the parade ground it would do, perhaps: soldiers promised their unwavering obedience. But Yashim wasn’t a soldier.
“It wouldn’t interest you,” Yashim said.
The seraskier’s lips drew tight.
“Perhaps not.” He stared Yashim in the face. “I suggest, then, you do as the sultan said. As I will.”
Yashim watched the seraskier stepping briskly towards the Ortakapi, the central gate leading to the first court. It wasn’t a position he’d enjoy to be in himself. On the other hand, if the seraskier handled it well, both he and the Guard would emerge with honour. It was an opportunity to restore the reputation of the Guards, somewhat tarnished by their failures on the battlefield.
And a duty, too. Not just to the sultan, but to the people of Istanbul. Without the Guards, the whole city was in danger from the Janissary rebels.
There was no doubt in Yashim’s mind that the fourth murder had completed a stage, established the preliminaries. The old altars had been re-consecrated, in blood. The second stage was underway, Yashim felt sure of that.
Wake them. Approach.
What did it mean?
Within the next seventy-two hours, he sensed, they would all find out.
He saw the seraskier disappear into the shadow of the Ortakapi. Then he turned and headed for the harem apartments.
[ 111 ]
Hello, stranger!”
It was almost a whisper. Ibou the librarian doubled up his long arm and waggled the fingers in greeting.
Yashim grinned and raised a hand.
“Off to work?” he asked in a low tone. By long-established custom, no one ever raised their voice in the second court of the palace.
Ibou cocked his head.
“I’ve just finished, actually. I was going to get something to eat.”
Yashim thought he sensed an invitation.
“Well, I wish I could come with you,” he said. And then: “You’ve come out of the wrong door.”
Ibou gave him a solemn look, then turned his head.
“It looks all right to me.”
“No, I mean from the Archives. I…I didn’t know you could get through on this side.” Yashim felt himself blushing. “It doesn’t matter. Thanks for your help the other night.”
“I only wish I could have done more, effendi,” Ibou replied. “You can come and see me again, if you like. I’m on nights for the rest of this week.”
He salaamed, and Yashim salaamed back.
Yashim went into the harem by the Gate of the Aviary. He could never pass this gate without thinking of the valide, Kosem, who two centuries before was dragged here from the apartments naked by the heels, and strangled in the corridor. That had been the finale to fifty terrifying years, in which the empire was ruled by a succession of madmen, drunkards and debauchees—including Kosem’s own son Ibrahim, who had his rooms papered and carpeted in Russian furs, and rode his girls like mares…until the executioner came for him with the bowstring.
Dangerous territory, the harem.
He stepped into the guard room. Six halberdiers were on duty, standing in pairs beside the doors which led to the Court of the Valide Sultan and the Golden Road, a tiny, open alleyway which linked the harem to the selamlik. The halberdiers were unarmed, except for the short daggers they wore stuffed into the sash of their baggy trousers; they only carried halberds on protective duty, as when on rare occasions they escorted the sultan’s women out of the palace. In the meantime they had a single distinguishing characteristic: the long black tresses which hung from the crown of their high hats as a token that they had been passed for entry into the harem. Yashim remembered a Frenchman laughing when the function of the hair was explained to him.
“You think a mane of hair will stop a man from seeing the sultan’s women? In France,” he had said, “it is the women who have long hair. Is it so, that they cannot steal glances at a handsome man?”
And Yashim had replied, rather stiffly, that the halberdiers of the tresses only went into the more public areas of the harem, to bring in the wood.
He laid his fist against his chest and bowed slightly.
“By the sultan’s order,” he murmured.
The halberdiers recognised him, and stood to let him pass.
He found himself beneath the colo
nnade which ran along the western edge of the valide’s court. It had been raining, and the flagstones of the court were gleaming and puddled, the walls greenish with damp. The door to the Valide Sultan’s suite was open, but Yashim stood where he was, turning the situation over in his mind.
What was it, he asked himself, that created danger in the harem?
He thought of the halberdiers he had just met, wearing their long hair like blinkers.
He thought of the chambers and apartments that lay beyond, as old and narrow as Istanbul itself, with their crooked turns, and sudden doorways, and tiny jewel-like chambers crafted out of odd corners and partitioned spaces. Like the city they had grown up over the centuries, rooms polished into place by the grit of expediency, rooms hollowed out of the main complex on a whim, even doorways opened up by what must have felt like the pressure of a thousand glances and a million sighs. None of it planned. And in this space, scarcely two hundred feet square, baths and bedrooms, sitting rooms and corridors, lavatories and dormitories, crooked staircases, forgotten balconies: even Yashim, who knew them, could get lost in there, or find himself looking unexpectedly from one window into a court he had thought far away. There were rooms in there no better than cells, Yashim knew.
How many people trod the labyrinth every day, unravelling the hours of their existence within the walls, treading a few well-worn paths which led from one task to the next: sleeping, eating, bathing, serving? Hundreds, certainly; perhaps thousands, mingling with the ghosts of the thousands who had gone before: the women who had lied, and died, and the eunuchs who pitter-pat-tered around them, and the gossip that rose like steam in the women’s baths, and the looks of jealousy and love and desperation he had seen himself.
His eye travelled around the courtyard. It was only about fifty-foot square, but it was the biggest open place in the harem: the only place where a woman could raise her face to the sky, feel the rain on her cheeks, see the clouds scudding across the sun. And there were—he counted them—seven doors opening into this court; seven doors; fifteen windows.
Twenty-two ways to not be alone.
Twenty-two ways in which you could be watched.
As he stood below the colonnade, staring at the rain, he heard women laugh. And immediately he said to himself: the danger is that nothing you ever do is a secret in this place.
Everything can be watched, or overheard.
A theft can be observed.
A ring can be found.
Unless—
He glanced at the open door to the valide’s suite.
But the valide wouldn’t steal her own jewels.
He heard the door behind him open, and turned round. There, puffing with the exertion and filling the doorway with his enormous bulk, stood the Kislar Agha.
He looked at Yashim with his yellow eyes.
“You’re back,” he piped, in his curiously tiny voice.
Yashim bowed.
“The sultan thinks I haven’t been working hard enough.”
“The sultan,” the black man echoed. His face was expressionless.
He waddled slowly forwards, and the door to the guard room closed behind him. He stood by a pillar and stuck out a hand, to feel the rain.
“The sultan,” he repeated softly. “I knew him when he was just a little boy. Imagine!”
He suddenly bared his teeth, and Yashim—who had never seen the kislar smile—wondered if it was a grin, or a grimace.
“I saw Selim die. It was here, in this courtyard. Did you know that?”
As the rain continued to patter onto the courtyard, seeping through the flagstones, staining the walls, Yashim thought: he, too, feels the weight of history here.
He shook his head.
The Kislar Agha put up two fingers and pulled at his pendulous earlobe. Then he turned to look at the rain.
“Many people wanted him to die. He wanted everything to change. It’s the same now, isn’t it?”
The Kislar Agha continued to stare out at the rain, tugging on his earlobe. Like a child, Yashim thought vaguely.
“They want us,” he said in a voice of contempt, “to be modern. How can I be modern? I’m a fucking eunuch.”
Yashim inclined his head. “Even eunuchs can learn how to sit in a chair. Eat with a knife and fork.”
The black eunuch flashed him a haughty look.
“I can’t. Anyway, modern people are supposed to know stuff. They all read, don’t they? Eating up the little ants on the paper with their eyes and later on spraying the whole mess back in people’s faces when they don’t expect it. What do they call it? Tanzimat— the reform era. Well, you’re all right. You know a lot.”
The Kislar Agha raised his head and looked hard at Yashim.
“It may not be now, maybe not this year or the next,” he said slowly, in his mincing little falsetto voice, “but the time will come when they’ll just turn us out into the street to die.”
He made a flapping gesture with his fingers, as if he were batting Yashim away. Then he stepped out ponderously into the courtyard, and walked slowly across to a door on the other side, in the rain.
Yashim stared after him for a few moments, then he went to the door of the valide’s suite, and knocked gently on the wood.
One of the valide’s slave-girls, who had been sitting on an embroidered cushion in the tiny hall, snipping at her toenails with a pair of scissors, looked up and smiled brightly.
“I’d like to see the valide, if I may,” said Yashim.
[ 112 ]
By the time Yashim left the palace that Friday afternoon it was almost dark, and at the market by the Kara Davut the stallholders were beginning to pack up by torch light.
For a moment Yashim wondered if he should have gone to eat lunch with Ibou, the willowy archivist, for he had had nothing to eat all day and felt almost light-headed with hunger. Almost automatically he brushed the idea aside. Regrets and second thoughts seldom occupied him for long: they were futile emotions he had trained himself to resist, for fear of opening the floodgates. He had known too many men in his condition eaten up by bitterness; too many men—and women, too—paralysed by their second thoughts, brooding over changes they were powerless to reverse.
George the Greek came swarming out from behind his stall as Yashim stood picking over the remains of a basket of salad leaves. The sight seemed to drive him into a frenzy.
“What for yous comes so late in the day, eh? Buying this old shit! Yous an old lady? Yous keeping rabbits now? I puts everything away.”
He set his hands on his hips.
“What you wants, anyways?”
Yashim tried to think. If Palewski came to dinner, as promised, he’d want something reasonably substantial. Soup, then, and manti—the manti woman would have some left, he was sure. He could make a sauce with olives and peppers from the jar. Garlic he had.
“I’ll take that,” he said, pointing out an orange pumpkin. “Some leeks, if you have them. Small is better.”
“Some very small leeks, good. Yous making balkabagi? Yous needs a couple of onions, then. Good. For stock: one carrot, onion, parsley, bay. Is twenty-five piastres.”
“Plus what I owe you from the other day.”
“I forgets the other days. This is today.”
He found Yashim a string bag for his vegetables.
The manti woman was still at work, as Yashim had hoped. He bought a pound of meat and pumpkin manti, half a pint of sour cream in the dairy next door and two rounds of borek, still warm from the oven. And then, for what felt like the first time in days, he went home.
In his room he lit the lamps, kicked off his street shoes and hung his cloak on a peg. He trimmed the wicks and opened the window a fraction of an inch to clear the accumulated air. With an oil-soaked scrap of rag and a handful of dry twigs he started a fire in the grate and scattered a few lumps of charcoal on top. Then he started to cook.
He dropped the stock vegetables into a pot, added water from the jug, and settled it on the back of
the stove to reach a simmer. He slid a ripple of olive oil over the base of a heavy pan and chopped onions, most of the leeks, and some garlic cloves, putting them on to sweat. Meanwhile with a sharp knife he scalped the pumpkin, scooped out the seeds and put them aside. Careful not to break the shell he scraped out the orange flesh with a spoon and turned it with the onions. He threw in a generous pinch of allspice and cinnamon, and a spoonful of clear honey. After a few minutes he set the pan aside and dragged the stock-pot over the coals.
He put a towel and a bar of soap in the empty water basin and went downstairs to the stand-pipe in the tiny back yard, where he unwound his turban and stripped to the waist, shivering in the cold drizzle. With a gasp he ducked his head beneath the spout. When he had washed he towelled himself vigorously, ignoring his smarting skin, and filled the water jug. Upstairs he dried himself more carefully and put on a clean shirt.
Only then did he curl up on the divan and open the valide’s copy of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. He could hear the stock bubbling gently on the stove; once the lid jumped and a jet of fragrant steam scented the room with a short hiss. He read the same sentence over a dozen times, and closed his eyes.
When he opened them again he was not sure if he had been asleep; there was someone knocking on the door. With a guilty start he scrambled to his feet and flung back the door.
“Stanislaw!”
But it wasn’t Stanislaw.
The man was younger. He was kicking off his shoes, and in his hand he carried a silken bow string, looped around his fist.
[ 113 ]
The seraskier walked briskly across the first court of the palace, and stepped out through the Imperial Gate, the Bab-i-Humayun, into the open space which separated the palace from the great church, now a mosque, of Aya Sofia. After the unnatural stillness of the palace he was struck by the returning noises of a great city: the rumble of iron-hooped cart-wheels on the cobbles, dogs worrying and growling at scraps, the crack of a whip and the shouts of mule-drivers and costermongers.
Two mounted dragoons spurred their horses forwards and brought up his own grey. The seraskier swung up gracefully into the saddle, settled his cloak, and turned the horse’s head in the direction of the barracks. The dragoons fell in behind him.
2006 - The Janissary Tree Page 26