Having regained his apartments, he summoned a dozen senior officers to a briefing.
He followed the briefing with a short pep talk. Everything, he said, depended on how they and their men conducted themselves over the next forty-eight hours. Obedience was the watchword. He had every confidence that together they could meet the challenge that had presented itself.
That was all.
114
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YASHIM made a grab for the door. The man on the threshold sprang forward and for several seconds they fought for purchase, separated only by the thin door that lay between them. But Yashim had been caught off balance, and it was he who yielded first: he leaped away from the door and his assailant came barreling into the room, almost stumbled, but whipped around fast to face Yashim at a sagging crouch.
A wrestler, Yashim thought. The man was completely shaved. His neck sloped into his big shoulders, which bulged from the armholes of a sleeveless leather jerkin. The leather was black and glistened as though it had been oiled. He was short legged, Yashim noticed, his bare feet planted a yard apart on the rug, knees bent, slim waisted. There was no sign of a weapon beyond the string in his right fist.
A man who could crack me apart without even trying, Yashim thought. He took a backward step, sliding his bare feet on the polished boards.
The man gave a grunt and lunged forward, lowering his head like a ram, coming at Yashim with surprising speed. Yashim flung back his arm as he leaped backward and swept his hand across the kitchen block. His fingers felt the knife, but they only knocked it: it must have spun, for when he tried to close on the hilt his fingers met in the air, and as the wrestler’s huge shoulder crashed against his midriff he was rammed back hard against the block with a force that made his head whiplash. He gasped for breath and felt the wrestler’s arms fly upward to pinion his own.
Yashim knew that if the wrestler got him in his grip, he was finished. He lunged to the right, throwing all the weight of his upper body against the wrestler’s rising arm, flinging his own arms out at the same time to grab at the handle of the stockpot. With a wrench he snatched it up and swung it around over the man’s shoulder, but the lid was stuck and he had no room to do more than swing the pot and clamp it against the wrestler’s back before his arm was caught in his grip.
A band of leather was sewn around the collar of the man’s jerkin, and as the pot slid up the lid must have snagged against it. The man flipped back as the boiling stock sloshed over his neck, and he let Yashim go.
The surprise on the assassin’s face when he slammed his taloned hand into Yashim’s groin and squeezed down hard was palpable. Certainly more palpable than Yashim’s groin.
The assassin jerked back his arm as if he’d been stung. Yashim slid his right hand up the assassin’s left arm as hard as he could and then brought his left down hard, gripping his wrist as he pivoted the man’s arm against his own hand. There was a crack and the arm went limp. The assassin clutched at it with his right, and in a moment Yashim had taken his right wrist out away from his body and with a heave sent the assassin curving in an arc that brought him around, doubled up, and his right arm in a tight hold. The assassin had neither screamed nor spoken a word.
Five minutes later, and the man had still not spoken. He had barely grunted. Yashim was at a loss.
And then Yashim saw why the man had failed to speak. He had no tongue.
Yashim wondered if the mute could write. “Can you write?” he hissed in the man’s ear. The look was blank. A deaf-mute? Long ago, in the days of Suleiman the Magnificent, it had been decreed that only deaf-mutes should attend the person of the sultan. It was a way of ensuring that nothing was overheard, that nothing they saw could be communicated to the outside world. They signed at one another instead: ixarette, the secret language of the Ottoman court, was a complex sign language that anyone, hearing or deaf, speaking or dumb, was expected to master in the palace service.
The palace service.
A deaf-mute.
Frantically, Yashim began to sign.
115
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At the other end of the city, Preen the kdfek dancer lay back on the divan, staring at the dark window.
A jet-black wig of real hair, bolstered with horsehair plucked from the tail, was draped over a stand. Her pots of makeup, her brushes and tweezers, stood unused on the dressing table.
Preen tried to wriggle her frozen shoulder. The bandages the horse doctor had applied creaked. When it came to treating breaks and bruises, the girls always turned to the horse doctor: he had more practice and experience in a month than ordinary sawbones saw in a lifetime, as Mina said, because the Turks looked after their horses even better than themselves. He had probed Preen’s twisted shoulder and diagnosed a sprain.
“Nothing broken, God be praised,” he said. “When my patients break something, we shoot them.”
Preen had laughed for the first time since her attack. Laughter wasn’t the only medicine the horse doctor used, either: he had salved her shoulder and neck with a preparation of horse chestnut. He had then applied the bandages and painted the result with hot gum.
“Tastes dreadful,” he observed. “And stops the loops from sagging and coming apart. Whether or not it is medically necessary, who knows? But I’m too old to change my prescriptions.”
The gum had set and dried, and now it creaked whenever Preen moved her shoulder. At least she could work her fingers: two days ago they had been swollen and immovable. Mina had come to help her eat, bringing the tripe soup she loved in an earthenware bowl. Apart from the horse doctor and her friend Mina, Preen had no visitors: she had resolved to turn even Yashim away, should he come. Without her war paint she felt sure that she looked a fright.
She looked different, certainly. Her own hair was cropped close to a downy fluff, and her skin was very pale; yet Mina could see in the shape of her head and the high-boned face more than a trace of the boy she had once been, eager and fragile at the same time. With her big brown eyes she had pleaded with Mina to stay the night, and Mina had curled up beside her friend and watched her sleep.
On the third morning, Preen had had to tell her landlady that she had no intention of paying extra for her so-called guest. The conversation had been conducted through the door, because Preen refused to let the old woman come in.
“Perhaps I should deduct rent when I am not home for the night?” she called out. “It is your fault, anyway, that I have to have a nurse. I trusted you to keep an eye on people coming and going! And you let in a murderer!”
There was an outraged silence, and Preen grinned. Nothing could be more mortifying to the landlady than to be accused of slackness when it came to peering through her lattice. It was like doubting her faith.
That was earlier. Now Mina was coming in with bread and soup for their supper.
She helped prop Preen upright on the divan and handed her a bowl.
“You’re missing a lot of excitement, darling,” she said, sitting on the edge of the divan. “A positive invasion of handsome young men.”
She arched her eyebrows. “Men in tight trousers! The New Guard.”
Preen rolled her eyes.
“Doing what, exactly?”
“That’s what I asked them. Taking up positions, they said. Well, I couldn’t resist it, could I? I said I could show them a few they hadn’t thought of.”
They giggled.
“But what does it mean?” Preen demanded.
“It’s for protection, apparently. All that plotting and killing, it’s coming to a head. Oh, Preen, I’m sorry—you look white as a sheet. I didn’t mean— I mean, I’m sure it’s got nothing to do with what happened the other day. Look, why don’t you ask your gentleman friend?”
“Yashim?”
“That’s right, dear. Yashim. Come on, eat your soup and put on your face. I’ll help you. You can walk, can’t you? We’ll get a chair and go and find him right now.”
The truth, of course, was that Mina was get
ting just a tiny bit bored of her nursing duties. She fancied an outing, especially when there was something exciting going on outside. So she was her most persuasive and overruled Preen’s doubts.
“It’s just that—I don’t feel safe,” Preen admitted.
“Nonsense, darling. I’ll be with you, and we’ll find your friend. It’ll be fun, who knows? You’ll be perfectly safe going out. Just as safe as staying here. Safer.”
Later, Preen was to remember that remark.
116
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YASHIM, as it happened, was already dealing with his second visitor of the evening.
Palewski had come up the stairs to sniff the aroma on Yashim’s landing, but for once he was disappointed. There was a faint smell of onions, he imagined, and perhaps boiled carrot, but the insubstantial clues failed to gel: it could be any number of recipes. Then he noticed the shoes, a pair of sturdy leather sandals.
Company, he supposed. He knocked on the door.
There was a slight delay, and the door opened an inch.
“Thank God it’s you,” Yashim said, pulling the door open and scooping Palewski through into the room.
Palewski almost dropped his valise in surprise. Yashim was holding a large kitchen knife, not that it mattered. What struck his notice instead was the body of a huge man, facedown on the carpet, largely enveloped in a knotted sheet.
“I’ve got to do something about this maniac,” Yashim said shortly. “I’ve tied his wrists with the corner of a sheet, but now I’m out of ideas.”
Palewski blinked. He looked at Yashim, and back at the body on the floor. He realized that the man was breathing hard.
“Perhaps what you need,” he said quietly, fumbling at his waist, “is this.”
He held out a long cord, made of twisted silk and gold thread.
“It went with my dressing gown. My Sarmatian finery, I should say.”
Together, they bound the man’s wrists tightly behind his back. Yashim undid the sheet and wrapped it around his legs: the man was so docile that Palewski found it hard to credit what Yashim was saying.
“A wrestler?” Then he silently mouthed the word: “Janissary?”
“Don’t worry, he can’t hear, poor bastard. No, not a Janissary. It’s odder than that. Worse than I thought. Look, I have to reach the palace immediately. I don’t know what I could have done with this fellow if you hadn’t come. Will you stay? Keep an eye on him? Prick him if he tries to move.”
Palewski was staring at him in horror.
“For God’s sake, Yash. Can’t we get him to the night watch?”
“There isn’t time. Give me an hour. There’s bread and olives. You can leave him here after that. If he gets free, so be it—though you could try knocking him on the head with a saucepan before you go. For my sake.”
“All right, all right, I’ll stay,” Palewski grumbled. “But it’s not what I joined for, you know. One night, intimate conversation with the sultan. Next night, quiet evening with friends. Third night, silent vigil over murderous three-hundred-pound wrestling deaf-mute. I think I’ll have a drink,” he added, sliding his valise closer.
But Yashim was hardly listening.
“It’s two I owe you,” he said over his shoulder, as he cleared the top flight of stairs in a single jump.
117
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The Kara Davut was always busy on a Friday night. The shopkeepers and cafe owners set out lanterns above their doorways, and after mosque, families paraded up and down the street, stopping for a sherbet or an ice, queuing for hot street food and thronging the coffee shops. Children chased each other in and out of the crowds, shouting and laughing, only occasionally called to order by their indulgent parents. Young men gathered around cafe tables, those who could afford it sitting with a coffee, the others at their elbows chatting and trying to catch a glimpse of the local girls, decorously swathed in chador and yashmak, who walked accompanied by their parents, but all the time signaling with their gait and the movement of their heads and hands.
Yashim didn’t think he was imagining that the atmosphere tonight was different. The street was as full as ever, even more crowded than usual, but the children seemed quieter, as if they were playing on a shorter rein, and the knots of youths in the cafes seemed larger and more subdued.
This impression of subdued expectation didn’t evaporate as Yashim hurried toward the palace. He had failed to find a chair and guessed that the chairmen would contribute to the confusion approaching the city: if not ex-Janissaries, they were still a rough crew, the sort of men who went to swell a mob or serve the rabble if they scented an opportunity.
As he half walked, half jogged through the streets and alleys, he was surprised to meet no soldiers on the way, none of the little platoons the seraskier had forecast at every street corner. How soon would they secure the city?
He had an answer of a kind as he swept out of the maze of streets behind Aya Sofia and onto the open ground that lay between the mosque and the walls of the Seraglio. A pair of uniformed guardsmen ran toward him, shouting: behind them he could see that the whole space was occupied by soldiers, some on horseback, several platoons in what looked like a drill formation, and others simply sitting quietly on the ground with their legs crossed, waiting for instructions. Beyond them he thought he could make out the silhouettes of mounted cannon and mortars.
This has the makings of a complete disaster, he thought fiercely—an opinion confirmed on the spot, as the two soldiers ran up to block his way.
“The way is closed! You must go back!” They were holding their guns across their chests.
“I have urgent business at the palace,” Yashim snapped. “Let me through.”
“Sorry. These are our orders. No one is to come through here.”
“The seraskier. Where is he?”
The nearest soldier looked uneasy. “Couldn’t say. He’ll be busy anyways.”
The second soldier frowned. “Who are you?”
Yashim saw his chance. He jabbed a ringer.
“No. Who are you? I want your rank and your number.” He didn’t know much about military organization, but he hoped he sounded better than he felt. “The seraskier is going to be very unhappy if he gets to hear about this.”
The soldiers glanced at one another.
“Well, I don’t know,” one of them muttered.
“You know who I am,” Yashim asserted. He doubted that, very much, but there was an angry edge to his voice that wasn’t faked. “Yashim Togalu. The seraskier’s senior intelligence officer. My mission is urgent.”
The men shuffled their feet.
“Either you take me to the Imperial Gate right now, or I will speak to your commanding officer.”
One of the soldiers glanced around. The Imperial Gate loomed black and solid in the darkness only a hundred yards away. The corps commander—he might be anywhere.
“Go on, then,” said the soldier quickly, with a jerk of his head. Yashim walked past them.
After he’d gone, one of the men let out a sigh of relief.
“At least we didn’t give our names,” he remarked.
118
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YASHIM felt the hairs prickling on the back of his neck as he picked his way among the soldiers waiting patiently on the ground. At any minute he expected to be challenged again, delayed again. A shout was all it would take.
There it came. One shout, and another. He saw the men around him turn their heads.
But they weren’t looking at him.
Another shout: “Fire!”
Yashim swiveled, following the men’s gaze. Over their heads, beyond the silhouette of the great mosque, the sky had lightened Uke an early dawn. A dawn rising in the west. A dawn rising upwind of the city of Istanbul. As he watched, he saw the light go yellow and flicker.
For a few seconds he stood transfixed.
Around him the men strained uneasily, taking up their rifles, awaiting the order to rise.
Yashim broke into a run.
119
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The flap in the lattice dropped open with a click as Preen and Mina reached the corridor at the foot of the stairs, but they sailed past it without a word, noses in the air. On the street they nudged each other and giggled.
For ten minutes they walked eastward, looking for a chair to carry Preen. Preen seemed to have recovered her poise on leaving the house, leaning only slightly on Mina’s arm, looking hungrily around as if she had been in bed for a month instead of a couple of days. A few men threw them curious glances, but finally she could bear it no longer.
The Janissary Tree Page 29