by Tim Symonds
I sensed Shelmerdine studying our reactions as I read on.
‘Once on our soil these “Naval officers” were observed entering the Yildiz Palace. Why was this pair sneaking their way into the Palace? If they wanted to meet His Imperial Majesty Abd-ul-Hamid II they could have stayed aboard the battleship. The two men claim they are here to collect rare plants for a botanical garden. If so, why do they return to their battleship each night - why not take rooms where all the English milords stay, at the convenient Hotel d’Angleterre? We must question, are they truly here to pluck examples of the Giant Lobelia to take to Windsor Castle for His Majesty King Edward VII? Or are they ‘scouting’ the Palace for a convenient spot to carry out an assassination at the orders of the British Government? No doubt the pair has received instruction from the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew on which of Turkey’s 82 poisonous plants they should select for their evil purposes.’
Finally, pointedly, ‘This correspondent believes it would take the skills of the London poisons specialist Sherlock Holmes and his medical colleague Dr. Watson to carry out such a “pretty little plot”.’
Almost as soon as our feet touched Ottoman soil someone had exposed our identities. There wouldn’t be a carter, shop-boy, apprentice tanner collecting dog-dung from the streets or cabman in the whole of Stamboul who didn’t know of our presence and believe we were intent on assassination.
I asked, ‘If His Imperial Majesty has control over everything the newspapers publish, why did he permit this?’
‘It was distributed while the Chief Censor was aboard the battleship,’ came the reply. ‘No doubt someone’s knuckles will be rapped.’
A few minutes later the carriage took us over a rise. Ahead I could see a patch of open land filled with grave-slabs. The high walls were crowded in by the wooden buildings on every side. I looked at Shelmerdine.
‘Is that our cemetery?’
He shook his head.
‘Beit kvarot - the Jewish cemetery. See how the graves lie feet to the south-east... towards Jerusalem,’ he explained.
He stretched an arm towards a small stone hut in a far corner.
‘That isn’t used much these days but in olden times that’s where the corpses were circumcised.’
‘Corpses circumcised!’ I blurted.
‘During the time of the Spanish Inquisition many Jews never got circumcised until they were dead,’ Shelmerdine replied, ‘in case while they were alive they had to deny their Hebrew origins. That carried on for a very long time.’
***
Cemeteries are places where people can linger without gathering suspicion. It would verge on bad manners - an intrusion into another’s private deliberations - to pay more than passing attention to anyone else. We felt sufficiently anonymous in the overdress, the monk-like hoods pulled down over our foreheads.
Imperial princes and Ottoman grandees had paid handsomely to make the fashionable part of the cemetery their final home, attracted by the Eyüp Sultan Mosque and its funerary kiosks built by Mehmet the Conqueror. The cheaper graves were located further up the slope or on the periphery.
On the facade of the mosque charming little houses provided refuge to birds, protection from storms, rain, mud and the burning sun. A stand of plane trees reminiscent of Regent’s Park shaded the outer courtyard. Their branches supported nests of grey herons. ‘Graveyard’ cypress trees, some as ancient as the mosque itself, stood as guardians over the silent tombs. Beggars were doing a trade in wax vestas and lemons or a few nails. A small boy with black crape on his sleeve offered narcissi and religious trinkets for sale. Around the mosque several open graves were awaiting occupation.
A man acting as a tourist guide ran his finger along beautiful calligraphy written in white marble letters on a ground of verde antique. ‘The first Surah of the Kuran,’ Shelmerdine whispered at my enquiry. ‘By the calligrapher Yayha Sufi.’
Keeping his voice low Shelmerdine explained the burial ritual. The deceased Mehmed’s body was first being washed with scented water at the family home, the ears, nose and mouth stopped with cotton wool.
‘It won’t be long now,’ he assured us.
Headstones leaned in attitudes of gentle abandon, some with replicas of turbans, like old men reflecting. Cemeteries are repositories of stories, remembrances of human beings who have done their time on earth and gone on to the Great Beyond. One headstone inscribed with intricate Ta’lik calligraphy caught my eye. I passed my binoculars and note-book to our interpreter and asked him to translate it. Rather than a Koranic quotation, it was a poem:
‘Well did he know the end of this life, for he had been familiar with its beauties; thinking his appointed time yet another gazelle-eyed one, he said “My dark-eyed love” and followed it.’
The combination of hot sun and cemetery took my thoughts back to my military days. Cemeteries in India kept half-a-dozen outlying graves permanently open for contingencies and incidental wear and tear. In the Hills many of these pre-prepared graves were pathetically small, readied for European children arriving weakened from the Plains who succumbed to the effects of the Rains or from pneumonia attributed to ayahs taking them through damp pine-woods after sunset.
Twenty minutes passed. A strikingly handsome wood-pigeon walked busily and bulkily about the sparse grass, its nocturnal home a nearby cherry-tree grown from a mourner’s discarded stone. I reached for a handkerchief. Offensive smells from decaying newly-buried corpses were now overpowering the scent from evaporating tree resins.
The sun rose higher in the sky. Swaddled as we were, the temperature was becoming intense.
‘They should be here any minute,’ Shelmerdine repeated reassuringly.
To pass the time Holmes questioned our guide on the tradition surrounding the Sword of Osman.
‘The ceremonial girding of the scimitar takes place between five and fifteen days after a Sultan’s accession,’ came the explanation. ‘After that the Sword returns to its resting place and remains under constant guard until the next Sultan is enthroned.’
‘Who has the right to approach it?’ my companion enquired.
‘The Sharif of Konya perhaps. The Sultan of course. And the Chief Armourer to check the blade’s condition. No-one else.’
‘No-one at all?’ I persisted.
‘No-one,’ the dragoman replied.
‘Not even the Sultan’s wives?’ I heard Holmes ask.
‘Certainly no woman, however high her rank.’
Just when I wondered if the dragoman had got his cemeteries wrong, a turban hove into sight over the gradient. I pointed it out to Holmes with a surreptitious motion of my handkerchief. The turban rose higher and higher until it was in full view, resting on a body wrapped in a white cloth. The bier supporting the corpse became visible, then the men carrying it. Onlookers seemingly going about their day sprang to the alert, jumping in with offers to support the burden on the final steps to the mosque. I brought the binoculars to bear, hiding them under my capacious hood to reduce the reflection. A short yataghan lay by the turban, sinuous as a swallow’s wing. The procession passed along a seated line of scribes clutching pen sharpeners and paper scissors and entered the mosque courtyard. The pall bearers lowered the bier on to a stone while a group of men at a chosen spot among the tombs began digging at the hard ground.
‘It’s our man,’ Shelmerdine muttered in reply to my questing look. ‘Hence the weapon on his chest.’
In a muted voice our guide described the funeral ritual.
‘When the corpse has been submitted to the soil and the last footsteps of the burial party die away, two Examining Angels from heaven named Munkar and Nekir appear at the sepulchre to interrogate the deceased’s soul. They ask three questions: “Who is your God?” “Who is your Prophet?” and “What is your religion?”.’
The pit ready, the torso arrayed in a w
hite shroud was lowered into it and turned on its right side to face Mecca. The Imam leant down near the dead man and whispered in his ear the precise replies the deceased should give to the terrible Angels. The mourners threw a few handfuls of soil on the corpse and a large flat stone was lowered over it. A cavity had been carved into the stone, designed to accumulate water for thirsty birds or small animals.
The bearers and mourners dispersed. The three of us were completely alone in the vast burial area. A shudder ran through me, unsettled by the thought of the Examining Angels Munkar and Nekir.
Shelmerdine and I looked at Holmes.
‘What now?’ I asked.
‘We wait,’ Holmes replied. ‘We may expect the dead man’s widow here soon. At the very least she’ll want to pray for her husband’s soul near his corpse, even at the risk of being captured.’
In the silence peculiar to places inhabited only by the souls of the Dead, I ruminated on my own epitaph. A day or two before the Battle of Maiwand I’d put my papers in order and checked my Last Will and Testament - a small sum to my elder brother, the rest to my regiment. With the pomposity of youth I arranged with the regimental masons for the Urdu words Sarvatra Izzat O Iqbal - ‘Everywhere with Honour and Glory’ - to be carved into my headstone. In the event a wound from a flintlock bullet followed by enteric fever at Peshawar would hardly qualify as glorious considering we gave out the base hospital address as ‘Café Enterique, Boulevard des Microbes’ - and we lost the battle against Ayub Khan’s forces. Neither the wound nor the fever did for me.
The words painted on my battered old tin dispatch box - ‘John H. Watson, M.D. Late Indian Army’ - would be a less over-ripe epitaph, though my attachment to the Berkshires did not strictly constitute the Indian Army. Perhaps I would copy the Spartans -
WATSON
In War
I pondered how my life, like most people’s, had seemed led more by kismet than my own will. Perhaps more apt would be ‘I only thought to make, I knew not what’ . What I would want buried with me was easier - my watch, whistle, knife, helmet and field-glasses and a memento of my wife Mary’s love. And puttees. And possibly one of Holmes’s briar pipes for sentiment’s sake.
‘So what will it be?’ Holmes asked me.
‘What will what be?’ I exclaimed, jolting back to the present.
‘The wording of your epitaph?’
‘Why, Holmes...’
His hand came up sharply to silence me. He inclined his head in the direction of a stand of cypresses. Precisely as he predicted, a woman had seated herself there, shaded from the harsh sun. She stared in the direction of the newly-dug grave, tears coursing down her cheeks. It could only be our quarry, Mehmed’s widow.
Silently the three of us approached her, expressions intent, garbed like a marauding band of Grim Reapers or the Brethren of the Misericordia. She struggled to her feet, staring at us in abject fear as we herded her deeper into the grove for privacy. She mouthed words in Ottoman Turkish which I took to be begging for mercy or a protest of innocence.
Holmes drew back the heavy hood from his face.
‘Tell her we’re not here to do her harm. We come as intermediaries. We believe we can help her.’
Shelmerdine translated Holmes’s words. My comrade’s blue eyes showed he was a Ferenghi, a foreigner. The petrified woman’s gaze switched to us, half-frightened, half-hopeful.
‘Tell her we only wish to know how her husband died,’ I ordered.
Hesitantly the Armourer’s widow began to talk. An edict had arrived from the Palace. Her husband Mehmed and she were to try for a child. For a boy. Immediately.
‘Why should the Palace order that?’ I asked.
‘They wanted Mehmed to have a son,’ came the reply. ‘No other Armourer knew his methods. Many times the Palace begged him to pass on the alchemy to another. He always refused, saying he would only pass his secrets to a son, otherwise he would go to his grave with them.’
She threw us a pleading look.
‘Mehmed was thirty years my elder. I was his third wife. We had no children. Only girls.’
‘The edict you received,’ I heard Holmes ask, ‘was it from the Sultan himself?’
She hesitated. Holmes assumed his sternest aspect.
‘Tell her we are her best hope,’ he commanded.
The woman replied in a low voice.
‘She says she has no hope,’ Shelmerdine translated.
Staring towards the fresh grave, the woman cried piteously, ‘They will drown me in the sea. I shall soon join my husband in Jannah - or Jahannam.’
After a long pause she looked back at us.
‘The order came through an emissary.’
‘Male or female?’ asked Holmes.
‘A woman. She came to Pera. She said she was acting on orders from the Palace.’
‘Was this woman dressed in a lace-trimmed dress beneath a black çarşaf,’ Holmes continued.
She looked at him in stupefaction, nodding.
‘You see, Watson,’ Holmes muttered, ‘it was Chiarezza. Her hurry was such she didn’t even take time to hide her identity.’
He turned back to the widow.
‘Please continue.’
‘She said His Imperial Highness was concerned that Mehmed was getting old. The emissary said the Chief Astrologer foretold Allah the Dispenser of Events would smile on us that very night if I summoned my husband. The woman gave me a potion to add to Mehmed’s evening meal. She said it was specially prepared by the Chief Pharmacist. The potion would make him strong and I would bear him a son.’
‘And you did as you were told?’ I asked.
‘Of course. I begged Mehmed to come home. Mostly His Majesty keeps him at the Palace.’
‘How did you secrete the potion in his food?’ Holmes asked.
In the desperate hope these two strangers from another world could help her, the widow removed a small object from her clothing and stretched an open hand towards us. In her palm lay a reliquary ring. I gazed at it dumbfounded.
‘Watson,’ Holmes said quietly, ‘I believe that’s what you went back for at the bazaar, rather than the gold watch, isn’t that so?’
I took the ring from the woman and examined it.
‘It’s certainly very similar,’ I replied.
‘Very similar, yes, but is it identical? Look carefully. We must be certain.’
‘Yes,’ I affirmed, ‘it’s identical sure enough. See the scratch on the toadstone. It’s the very ring the Jewess showed us.’
‘Except,’ Holmes went on, ‘for one small but critical fact. It is no longer a reliquary ring. Note the hole freshly bored through the bronze. At someone’s instruction it has transmogrified into a poison ring in the great tradition of the Borgias. Watson, if you had informed me this ring was missing when you returned to buy it, we may have prevented the Chief Armourer’s death.’
I turned back to the unfortunate woman. In as sympathetic a tone as I could muster, I asked, ‘And how soon did your husband... pass away... after you administered this potion?’
Shelmerdine translated my question into Turkish. She broke into heavy sobs.
‘Hardly had he... I did as I was instructed. I sprinkled it on his favourite dish, okra with cinnamon to deepen the flavours. Then we went to our bed and made love.’
Her shoulders shook with grief.
‘I must have sprinkled too much.’
She stumbled and repeated, ‘Hardly had he...’
She added something in a whisper to Shelmerdine.
He turned back to us.
‘She says just after he carried out his function as a husband things went wrong,’ Shelmerdine translated. ‘Mehmed sat up and cried out he was dying. He started to complain of pins and needles. His face and limbs went numb.’<
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A tearful description of the Chief Armourer’s final moments followed. Abdominal pain was followed by dizziness, hyperventilation and sweating. As was the custom among the Palace retinue her husband kept an antidote to poison called Tiryak al-Faruq, prepared with painstaking care by the Chief Physician. However the antidote seemed only to intensify his agony and speed his death. Confusion set in. Mehmed no longer recognised his wife or where he was. He died in her arms.
The widow added something in a firmer voice. Our interpreter looked dubious.
‘She claims he just had time to make the Shahada, the declaration of faith.’
I tapped the ring over my palm. Tiny specks of a powder fell from the box.
‘Monkshood!’ Holmes and I proclaimed in unison.
We were familiar with the plant and the poisonous aconite it produced. A considerable part of the attic at our old Baker Street lodgings had been taken over by Holmes’s phials of poisons. The array was visited regularly by plain clothes detectives from the Metropolitan Police Criminal Investigation Department, and even the French Sûreté Nationale and America’s Pinkerton detectives. Because of the shape of its flowers monkshood is also called Devil’s Helmet or Friar’s Cap, or more prosaically wolf’s bane. It was said Cleopatra used aconite to kill her brother Ptolemy XIV so she could put her son on his throne. The only post-mortem signs are those of asphyxia. The poison’s very name in Greek means ‘without struggle’.
‘Holmes, you and the Sultan were correct,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t a fatal overdose of an aphrodisiac like cantharidin. It was deliberate murder.’
‘Directed by whose hand I wonder?’ Holmes mused. ‘Hardly the Sultan’s - and certainly not this woman’s.’
With our attention on her the widow gestured towards her husband’s now-deserted grave. To my surprise she switched to French.
‘Those men, those men who were carrying my husband’s body. I have seen some of them before. They were at our house. They came there three nights in a row. I saw their faces, except the man in charge. He always wore a hood over his face.’