Not Less Than Gods (Company)

by Kage Baker

  “And now my camera’s broken,” said Pengrove mournfully, holding up the brass lens tube, which had parted company with the broken box. Bell-Fairfax had found them a quiet café in the Greek Quarter, to which they had retreated.

  “We can repair it tonight,” said Bell-Fairfax. “It doesn’t matter, does it? Be thankful he didn’t snatch off your hat and dance on that as well.”

  “Why that particular palace?”

  “Ludbridge wanted it photographed,” said Bell-Fairfax. “Entrances and exits and all. We’ll need to go back, once that fellow’s temper has cooled.”

  “Perfectly splendid palace, I must say,” Pengrove said indistinctly, through a mouthful of baklava. “Everyone here seems to dwell in either marble halls or filthy little huts. No middle classes, eh? And the state of those barracks! Never heard of chamber pots, clearly.”

  “They aren’t mentioned in the Arabian Nights, I believe,” said Bell-Fairfax, lounging back in his chair.

  “Ha-ha. And look at that sentry over there, look at him! You’d think his rifle was a broom, the way he’s leaning on it. My word, wouldn’t one of our sergeants-at-arms give him a tongue-lashing!”

  “Or one of our boatswains,” said Bell-Fairfax.

  “No way to run an empire,” said Pengrove, shaking his head. “I don’t envy their sultan. Well, shall we go out and buy a melon, and loiter about eating it and throwing the rinds everywhere, as we shoot Ludbridge’s palace? No point pretending to be publicly intoxicated anymore, but that ought to make us look suitably like a pair of ill-bred fools.”

  “Excellent thought,” said Bell-Fairfax. He paid their score and together they packed the camera equipment, closing up the ruined camera in its traveling-case; then they ventured out and found a fruit vendor’s stall on the far edge of the bazaar.

  “Oh, my word,” said Bell-Fairfax, as they approached. Pengrove followed his gaze and saw a Greek girl seated within the stall, holding her veil in place with a negligent hand, looking out boredly on the passing scene. She wore apple-green satin, trimmed with jonquil-yellow embroidery. Sloe-eyed, pale as perfect ivory, and the veil was far too thin to conceal the Byzantine beauty of her features.

  “She’s a picture,” affirmed Pengrove.

  “Indeed she is,” said Bell-Fairfax. He approached her and said something in Greek, with a curious soft intonation Pengrove had never heard him use before. It was suave, it was caressing, it acted on the nervous system like notes played on a violin. The girl looked up sharply; Pengrove saw her dark eyes widen, as Bell-Fairfax gazed down into them. She stammered some kind of reply, with a rosy color coming into her face. Bell-Fairfax said something further, in the same dulcet tones. She looked desperately hopeful, glanced once over her shoulder, and then spoke in a low urgent voice.

  Bell-Fairfax smiled broadly. By way of reply he reached into his inner coat pocket and withdrew a sort of flat wallet. He opened it and displayed its contents, which were not pound notes. She inspected them briefly, nodded, and rose and took his hand.

  “Mind the stall a moment, Pengrove, will you? There’s a good chap,” said Bell-Fairfax, dropping the camera bundle and allowing himself to be led into the depths of the booth.

  “But—but!” Pengrove looked around frantically, unable to believe what was happening. For some ten minutes he stood there petrified, expecting that at any moment some enraged phanariote would come storming across the bazaar asking after his daughter, or wife, or sister. Instead, the languid flow of the marketplace continued all around, in the sweltering heat. Flies buzzed. Donkeys plodded. Doves crooned sleepily. Elderly kitchen slaves bargained for onions with vegetable-stall keepers, both in such listless voices they might have been chatting in a Turkish bath.

  And then, cutting like a black arrow through the dreamy Arabian Nights scene, marched a phalanx of Westerners in sober black clothing. They were led by a dignified-looking elder who wore a clerical collar and a shovel hat. They walked with purpose, looking around them severely at the indolence they beheld.

  Pengrove stared at them, struck by the contrast between the men and their surroundings. A fragment of muttered conversation drifted to him: “. . . don’t think twice about slaves here, and white slaves to boot . . .” They were American voices.

  When had he heard mention of Americans in Constantinople, recently? Memory of the voices Hobson had picked up came back to him. Instinctively Pengrove’s hand rose to his lapel and he captured the Americans’ likenesses with the hat-camera. Then they had passed him, sprinting quickly up a flight of stairs to an upper terrace.

  Pengrove was still staring after them when the Greek girl emerged from the booth, followed by Bell-Fairfax. Looking smug, he kissed her hand and then tipped his hat to her. With a radiant smile she replied effusively, showering him with compliments of some kind, and ended by seizing up a pair of melons and pressing them upon him, with many expressive, not to say suggestive, gestures. He accepted them and turned to Pengrove with a smirk. “Shall we go?”

  Pengrove waited until they were a decent distance away before rounding on him. “What did you think you were playing at?” he demanded.

  “I should have thought that was obvious,” said Bell-Fairfax, drawing out his penknife and pausing by a wall to cut a melon into quarters.

  “And what about, ‘No, Pengrove, we have a job to do’? What about considering what Ludbridge would say? What about bloody French letters?”

  “I happen to keep a ready supply of them with me at all times,” said Bell-Fairfax.

  “And . . . and . . . you’ve just been a beastly cad and seduced some virgin, instead of a brothel girl!”

  “She wasn’t a virgin,” said Bell-Fairfax, putting a slice of melon into Pengrove’s waving hand. “And I didn’t seduce her. I merely asked, in the politest possible fashion, whether she would be available and she answered with enthusiasm. We had a brief pleasant encounter, entirely unobserved by anyone, and have parted on the best of terms.”

  “You practically mesmerized her! I saw it!”

  “No such thing.”

  “But . . . but you’re in the East, for God’s sake, and there might be . . . consequences,” said Pengrove, subsiding enough to take a bite of melon.

  “Not with a French letter,” said Bell-Fairfax calmly. “And, as I believe I mentioned, I do have some sort of natural immunity to these things.”

  “I never met such a brazen chap in all my life,” Pengrove grumbled.

  “Nonsense. If you like, I’ll show you the brothel after we’ve finished the job.”

  They strolled back to the district in which the mansion stood, and found that the irate policeman had departed the scene. They wandered all along the outer garden wall, placidly eating melon as they noted the large dog that came rushing to the gate, barking furiously. They made their way around to the side of the house that faced the sea, and stood there awhile by a long low private pier, tossing pebbles and bits of melon-rind into the Bosporus. Now and again they glanced over their shoulders to note the women watching them from behind the second-story latticework.

  They picked their way back to the road and observed as the master of the house returned, a strangely grubby little bureaucrat for such a magnificent residence. They raised their hats as his coach rattled past, and watched with interest as he clambered out onto the back of a servant, swearing at his major domo for not meeting him with a cup of sherbet.

  Ambling on, they observed the ancient plane tree that overhung the garden wall of the mansion next door. Bell-Fairfax, looking about first to make certain they were unobserved, made an experimental leap and caught the lowest branch of the tree. Pulling himself up through the boughs, he at once drew the attention of the large dog of that particular garden, who promptly set up such a commotion that Bell-Fairfax scrambled back down into the street and ran, speedily catching up with Pengrove, who was already running.

  “Do you suppose we’ve been publicly stupid enough?” inquired Pengrove, when they were able to pause for breath
.

  “Perfectly idiotic,” said Bell-Fairfax.

  “Seen a way into that house?”

  “Yes. Did you photograph him?”

  “I did. Might we perhaps go to the brothel now?”

  “Don’t see why not,” Bell-Fairfax replied. As he settled the bundle of equipment on his shoulder, there came an impact on the air and then the boom of cannon fire, the sound echoing in waves off the hillsides and steep streets.

  “Are they saluting someone?” Pengrove shaded his eyes with his hand, peering out at the harbor. “There are some fancy-looking boats coming in over there. Really quite Arabian Nights, you know.”

  “Let’s see,” said Bell-Fairfax. They sprinted, pacing the big caiques in their stately progress across the Bosporus, and arrived at a white mosque with a water landing, white steps coming down to the blue water.

  “Oh, frightfully Arabian Nights!” exclaimed Pengrove. “Look!”

  Bell-Fairfax had to crane his neck to see, for the view was being rapidly blocked by the Sultan’s guard, marching to line the steps of the mosque. A band accompanied them, shrilling on fifes, rattling and thundering on drums and playing, of all things, the “Turkish March” by Beethoven.

  “By Jove,” said Bell-Fairfax. “Here’s the Sultan himself.”

  “I can’t see!” fretted Pengrove. Bell-Fairfax picked him up bodily and pushed him up into the branches of a cypress, a little awkwardly because he was unwilling to tear his gaze from the spectacle. The caiques were splendid, gilded and carved, with canopies of gold and velvet. The most magnificent of them bumped gently against the landing now, and a number of officials stood forward to help the Sultan from the boat.

  Pengrove, sprawling on his cypress branch, saw a young man in a military uniform, gold lace over silk, and his fez bore a high white cockade. His lean face was handsome, but he looked exhausted and somber as he stepped forth onto the white staircase. He smiled and nodded his thanks, nonetheless, to the vizier who hurried to open a red silk parasol over him.

  Pengrove, with great presence of mind, raised his hand to his lapel and took a picture of the young man, before the parasol hid him utterly: Abdülmecid I of the House of Osman, Thirty-first Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Caliph of Islam, sick and weary, shoulders bowed under the weight of the past but dutifully climbing the steps toward the future.

  Ludbridge held the photographs up to the lamplight, sorting through them slowly. “Well done,” he said. “Really first-rate. Full marks for both of you.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Pengrove, a little crossly. The carnal splendors of the mystic East had, it must be said, fulfilled all his expectations; but a superfluity of ripe melon, sweet pastries and Turkish coffee had combined badly with a choppy ride back across the Golden Horn, and a lengthy session developing the images from his camera in an airless closet had not improved matters.

  Ludbridge came to one image, and peered at it. “What the hell’s this?” He held up the shot of the Americans walking through the Greek Quarter.

  “Oh!” Pengrove cleared his throat. “Those are some Americans I saw. One of ’em’s a clergyman, you can see from his hat, and I thought—how funny, I wonder if they’re the same chaps Hobson overheard next door? So I took their portrait. Just with the hat-camera, of course, and anyway my talbotype box had been smashed to pieces by then—which reminds me, we’ve got to get hold of some glue so it can be mended—”

  “That’s rather a coincidence,” said Ludbridge, slowly turning the picture in his fingers. “Did Bell-Fairfax see them too? What did he think?”

  Pengrove went red-faced. “Well, er—no, he didn’t see them, he was—erm—in the back of a fruit stall at the time.”

  “What was he doing in the back of a fruit stall?”

  “Buying melons. I suppose.” Pengrove studied a fly sitting motionless on the ceiling.

  “What the devil is the matter with you?” demanded Ludbridge. “You’re blushing like a bloody schoolgirl.”

  “Well, I didn’t like to ask what he was doing in the back of the stall, it was a private matter—” Pengrove cast a furtive glance at the door, hoping that Bell-Fairfax and Hobson would return from their late supper. Ludbridge’s eyes narrowed.

  “Was it indeed? He’d gone back there with someone, had he? Was it a boy?”

  “Oh, no!” Pengrove’s monocle fell out. “A female, really a very charming—”

  “Well then, what in hell’s got you stammering like that? Especially as I understand you both went off to his favorite brothel tonight. Though that’s rather a lot of fornication in one day for a man on duty, I must say . . . so he’s a ladies’ man?”

  “I don’t like to peach on a chap,” said Pengrove miserably. “And it didn’t do any harm to the job, honestly, he was quite discreet and the girl didn’t complain and . . . and really it was just the sort of thing a rotten bounder on a grand tour would do, which is what we were pretending to be, only . . .”

  “Only what?”

  “He hypnotized the girl,” said Pengrove. “I think. He looked straight into her eyes and—but he wasn’t doing it with his eyes, I don’t think, it was his voice. Yes, it was the voice. I never heard a voice like that in my life, the way he was . . . he was tempting her. It made me ashamed.”

  Ludbridge was silent for a long while, staring out the window at the lights of Stamboul.

  “Yes,” he said at last. “Yes, I know what you mean. He uses that voice on women. Well.” He rose to his feet and, going to his trunk, put the photographs away. “None of us are saints, I suppose. Still, we won’t accomplish much if he has to fuck every pretty girl who catches his eye. I’ll have to have a word with him about it.”

  “I’ve investigated our foxes,” said Ludbridge. He was walking with Bell-Fairfax through the cemetery, high above the city, in the bright heat of midday; the green cypresses made welcome pools of shade, and rustled in the breeze off the Golden Horn.

  “Your little pasha with the seaside palace is as nasty a piece of goods as you might find in a long summer’s day. Got his office by performing certain criminal services for his betters; built his fortune pocketing bribes and other people’s taxes, and extorting anyone he could get his hooks into, and the odd bit of murder of wealthy heirs. You can imagine what he stands to lose if the Sultan can enforce reforms. He’s been named in connection with no less than three assassination attempts on the Sultan himself. Slipped through the noose every time, letting other men take the blame.

  “Plenty of people are frightened enough of him to perjure themselves blue in the face on his behalf. Dear civilized Sultan won’t pursue the matter, naturally, so the pasha’s free to keep plotting.”

  “Then it’s a moral act to execute him, sir,” said Bell-Fairfax, with certainty. Ludbridge, looking at him sidelong, raised an eyebrow.

  “Moral, you say. Yes, very likely. I thought we’d go across tonight.”

  “I’ve thought how it might be managed,” said Bell-Fairfax, stammering a little. “There’s an adjoining residence, with a big plane tree in its garden—we could climb up in its branches until we can see in through his windows, and perhaps shoot him—though there are dogs, and I’m not sure what we might do if they give the alarm—”

  “Tut-tut! How d’you suppose a man my age is going to go scampering up a tree? A nice sight I’d look! We’re not stealing apples, Bell-Fairfax. No, I know how it’s to be managed. Pengrove’s excellent photographs made it fairly obvious. A good day’s work, that, by the pair of you.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Looking away, Bell-Fairfax smiled, but Ludbridge saw it.

  “Which is to say, it was a good day’s work when you were attending to your job,” said Ludbridge, in mild tones but with a hint of thunder beginning to roll. “Now, I can understand a happy little visit to the daughters of joy at the end of the day, with your work accomplished. But what the hell was this business with the Greek girl in the marketplace, eh? Who d’you think you are, bleeding Tom Jones? Damned fool thing to
do, and damned disappointing as well. I’d have thought you had more self-control than that. And don’t you think Pengrove ran to me and tattled on you, either! You put a fellow Resident in the position of having to try to cover up for your gross dereliction of duty. By God, son, it won’t do.”

  Edward flinched, and stared at the path as they walked. “No, sir,” he muttered.

  “A man with a weakness is a danger to his comrades. You ought to know that. You were the last person I’d have suspected of losing his head here and doing something as foolish as skirt-chasing. And in Constantinople, of all places! Makes me wonder if you’re fit for the job.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t ‘Yes, sir’ me, I want to know whether you can be trusted! Talk to me. Why did you do it?”

  Bell-Fairfax had gone scarlet. “Habit, I suppose, sir.”

  “Habit?.”

  “Yes, sir. I, er, I often indulge my, er, inclinations with the fair sex.”

  “Habit? You make a habit of seducing innocent girls? And don’t tell me it won’t happen again, because if one thing’s certain in this sorry life it’s that a man with an addiction will do it again, whether it’s drink or women or anything else. And you’re already the fucking wonder of the Royal Navy, aren’t you, with a list of conquests like Don Giovanni!”

  Bell-Fairfax looked up, startled. “I never told you that.”