The Janissary Tree

by Jason Goodwin

75

  ***********

  “His Excellency is not at home,” the butler rumbled.

  He stood with the door ajar, peering at the Turk who had rung the bell.

  “I would prefer to wait,” Yashim said. “My time is of no consequence.”

  The butler weighed this remark. On the one hand, it implied a compliment to his master who was, of course, a busy man. On the other, nobody in Istanbul ever said quite what he meant. He studied Yashim. His clothes were certainly clean, if simple. He’d like to rub that cloak in his fingers, to make sure it was really cashmere, but yes… he might be a man of consequence, after all.

  “If you will step in,” the butler intoned, “you may find a chair in the hall.”

  Yashim did, and sat down on it. The butler closed the door behind them with an audible click. Yashim sat facing the door he had just come through and two enormous sash windows that descended almost to the floor. The staircase to his left swirled up at his back to the vestibule overhead. The butler walked majestically across to a bewigged footman, in breeches, who stood solemnly at the foot of the stairs, and murmured a few words in Russian. The footman stared out straight before him and made no response.

  “I trust you will not have too long to wait,” the butler said, as he passed Yashim and disappeared through a door to his right.

  Yashim sat with his hands folded in his lap.

  The footman stood with his hands by his sides.

  Neither of them moved for twenty minutes.

  At the end of that time, Yashim suddenly started. He raised his head. Something had attracted his attention at the window. He leaned slightly to one side and peered, but whatever it was that caught his eye seemed to have gone. He kept a watch on the window nonetheless.

  About thirty seconds later he was almost on his feet, staring. The footman’s eyes slid over him, and then to the window, but the window was black and revealed nothing to him.

  But Yashim’s attention was called to something almost out of sight. Curious, he leaned farther over to the right, to follow it better. From where he stood, the footman realized that he couldn’t see what the foreigner was looking at.

  He wondered what it could be.

  Yashim gave a little smile, whistled through his nose, and continued to watch, craning his head.

  The footman rubbed his fingers against his palms. The foreigner, he noticed, had jerked his head slightly, to keep up with the event occurring outside. It seemed to be moving away, out of his line of sight, because the fellow was leaning forward now.

  Very slowly, Yashim leaned back in his chair. He looked puzzled. In fact, he simply could not imagine the significance of what he appeared to have seen.

  Something within the grounds, the footman knew.

  When there should be nothing. No one.

  The footman wondered what it could have been. It had to be a fight. A light in the dark, in the grounds. Going around the side of the embassy.

  What would the butler have done? The footman glanced at the Turk, who was still sitting exactly where he had sat half an hour before. Wearing a slight frown.

  Having seen something he hadn’t expected. That nobody else had observed.

  The footman took a measured step forward, hesitated, then continued to the front door and opened it.

  He glanced to the left. The spaces between the columns of the portico were dark as pitch. He took a step out, and another, craning for a better view.

  He sensed a darkness at his back and half turned. The Turk filled the doorway.

  The Turk held out his hands, palms up, and shrugged. Then he gestured to himself and to the gatehouse.

  “I’m going,” he said in Turkish.

  The footman understood the gesture. His anxiety increased.

  The Turk descended the steps.

  The footman waited until he had cleared the portico, then ran very quickly down the steps himself and headed left, into the dark.

  Privately he relished the little cold wind that hit him on the face but could not in a thousand years ruffle his artificial hair. Still he saw nothing. He darted to the corner of the building and looked down the side of the east wing.

  It was as far as he dared to go.

  76

  ***********

  YASHIM sprinted back up the steps, crossed the empty hall, and took the stairs three at a time. At the top he slowed and put his hand on the doorknob of the vestibule.

  What if there was another footman, as before, standing sentinel in there?

  He squeezed the handle and stepped inside.

  The room was almost dark. Two candles burned in their sconces at the far side of the room, really too far away to be of any use to him. He turned to the right, gliding along the gallery. The oils were hard to make out, but as he passed one of them he paused. He stepped aside, to let the meager light reveal it, and even though it was mostly shadow, the composition of figures closely grouped at its center was unmistakably that of the czar and his amorous czarina, with their little children.

  He went back up the gallery.

  Two shoulder-high portraits. A full-sized rendering of a man on a horse. A scene he could not decipher, including a river and a mass of men and horses surging toward it. Another portrait.

  And he was back at the door. He could hear the footman banging the door downstairs.

  He looked around in astonishment.

  The vestibule still housed, as he remembered, a positive Parliament of Russian nobles, a total Hermitage of royal heads. As for landscapes, well, many versts of the Russian steppe had been crammed in there, too, where Cossack hussars stooped in village streets to kiss their sweethearts farewell.

  There wasn’t a map of Istanbul to be seen.

  Where the map had been, he was looking at a portrait of a gouty czar.

  He took a step closer. The czar looked surprised: perhaps he didn’t like to be ignored. Even in the feeble candlelight Yashim could still make out the faint outline of the frame, bleached against the painted woodwork.

  They had got rid of the map.

  Yashim hardly had time to register this appalling thought when he heard footsteps mounting the stairs.

  Without a second’s hesitation, Yashim lunged for the door at the far end of the room. The handle turned easily, and in a moment he was through.

  77

  ***********

  The Russian ambassador put a monocle to his eye and then let it fall without a sound as his eye expanded in surprise.

  “This I do not believe!” he muttered, to no one in particular. A second secretary, standing close by, stooped as if to gather up the remark and put it to his ear; however, he heard nothing. He raised his head and followed his master’s gaze.

  Standing by the entrance with a glass of champagne in one hand and a pair of kid gloves in the other was Stanislaw Palewski, the Polish ambassador. But he was like no Polish ambassador the Russian had ever seen. In a face as pallid as death itself, his blue eyes flashed with interest: but it was not the expression on his face that astounded the minister of the czar.

  Palewski was dressed in a calf-length padded riding coat of raw red silk, fantastically embroidered in gold thread, with magnificent ermine trim at the neck and cuffs. His long waistcoat was of yellow velvet: unencumbered by anything so vulgar as buttons, it was held at the waist by a splendid sash of red and white silk. Below the sash he wore a pair of baggy trousers of blue velvet, stuffed into flop-topped boots so highly polished that they reflected the checkerboarding of the palace floor.

  The boots, Yashim’s tailor had said defiantly, were beyond his help.

  But now, thanks to some judicious polishing of the ambassador’s feet, it was impossible to detect that the boots were holey at all.

  “It’s an old trick I read about somewhere,” Palewski had remarked, calmly blacking his toes with a brush. “French officers did it in the late war, whenever Napoleon ordered an honor guard.”

  78

  ***********

  YASHIM p
ulled the door closed behind him, releasing the handle gently so as to make no sound.

  He was just in time: even as he put his ear to the door he could hear the other door being flung open. Someone marched into the room, and then stopped.

  In five seconds they’ll be through this door, too, Yashim thought. He looked around, hoping to find a hiding place.

  And realized immediately that the Russian ambassador’s gorgeous young wife, wearing a shimmering sable cape, was sitting at a mirror, gazing at him openmouthed.

  And apart from the fur, she was naked.

  79

  ***********

  PRINCE Derentsov flung a look at the Austrian ambassador, a man with no visible neck, a vast mustache, and a belly like a Bukovina wineskin. He had been standing with his back to the doors, so that Derentsov had the satisfaction of watching his reaction to Palewski as, noticing some change in the expression of the little man he was speaking to, he turned and caught sight of the Polish ambassador.

  His heavy jaw dropped. His eyes bulged from his head. He went from sallow to a sort of imperial purple.

  Silly fool, Prince Derentsov thought. Certainly the Pole’s coming here tonight, dressed like that, was a deliberate insult to the powers that had silenced his bickering little nation forty years before. But that Austrian sausage merchant’s reaction would give the Pole some satisfaction.

  The Austrian was trying to catch his eye, dabbing a plump paw in the air like a wounded seal. Derentsov turned on his heel and began to speak to his second secretary.

  The British ambassador, without disturbing his conversation, allowed his eyes to flicker now and then from his Austrian counterpart to Prince Derentsov. He tugged at his lip to restrain a smile.

  The American ambassador said, “I’ll be danged!” He wanted to walk right up and shake Palewski by the hand, but he was new, not only to Istanbul but also to the ways of diplomatic protocol. I’ll talk to that fellow before the evening’s out, he thought.

  The French ambassador edged around slightly so that when Palewski moved into the room he quite naturally gravitated into the Frenchman’s little group.

  And the imperial bandmaster, Giacomo Donizetti, being Italian and highly romantic, held a whispered discussion with the first violinist. His program of light German occasional music drew to a discreet end and, after a moment of rustling scores, the band launched into the latest Chopin polonaise. Some of the cleverer people in the ballroom broke into applause. Prince Derentsov, naturally, continued his conversation.

  Sultan Mahmut chose this moment to enter the room. He heard the applause and, feeling his confidence revive—for he hated these international affairs—moved to speak to the French ambassador.

  Later on he tried to explain it to his mother.

  “I thought he looked damn fine. So did Concordet, I suppose. I wish we could have a regiment like that, all sash and color. He looked like one of us.”

  “That much I understand,” the valide sultan broke in crisply. “What I can’t understand is why you had to have him locked up.”

  The sultan twisted his fingers.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Valide. Nobody was locked up. I merely had him escorted to a side room. I—I interviewed him later. Same with the Russian, Derentsov, and it was all his fault, suggesting the duel. Practically under my nose!

  The valide saw his point. It was on her advice, several years ago, that the sultan had issued a formal decree, backed by the ulema, forbidding the practice of duels within the empire. It was aimed principally at those stubborn Circassian mountaineers whose distant feuds occasionally brought heartache and anxiety into the sultan’s harem and irritated the valide sultan, but it applied also to the touchy foreigners of Galata.

  “The British ambassador brought Palewski within earshot of the Russian,” the sultan explained. “So it was his fault, too. I wasn’t there, but Stratford Canning apparently made some effort to catch Derentsov’s attention and the Russian swerved so abruptly that he elbowed Palewski’s glass and ended up with champagne all down his shirt. You know what they’re like. Well, you can imagine, anyway. Derentsov claimed he had been insulted. The Pole pulled out a handkerchief and started to swab his chest— hee hee hee!”

  “Mahmut!”

  “Well, it was funny, Valide. The Russians have never once acknowledged Palewski’s existence. They always pretend they haven’t seen him. But here was Derentsov calling for pistols at dawn and the Polish ambassador dabbing at him with a napkin!”

  The valide, too, gave herself up to the humor of the situation.

  “But what did the Pole say?”

  Mahmut rocked about, his eyes closed. “He said—hee hee hee—he said—Ali ha ha—‘Well in that case I accept the challenge and you can use your own handkerchief!” Hee hee hee!“

  The valide sultan, who had not laughed for several years, or more, felt carried along by her son’s laughter. It was many years since she had been to a party, but she knew how funny men could look together.

  Sultan Mahmut simmered down first, with an occasional snort of hilarity interrupting his story.

  “After that, I had to separate them. The Pole came away very politely. I talked to him and let him go. Derentsov was snarling by the time I got to him—jabbered about infringement of his diplomatic rights and all that. I let him rant and then I said my piece about duels and the law, just as I’d told the Polish ambassador. I said that the mark of a civilized nation was its respect for the individual, and the individual’s respect for law, and that of course I understood that other nations had different principles, but that within the empire that I control, dueling is forbidden. This, I said, is why we have laws—and laws, I added, that will be strengthened and clarified in a matter of days. In the meantime, I asked only for his apology.”

  “And?”

  “If his release had been dependent on his apology, Valide, the Russian ambassador might still be waiting in that room. I took some mumbled words—curses, I’m sure—as a sign of contrition and told him so. Then I suggested he go home and walked out.”

  “‘Flute, mon brave! You are very clever!”

  The valide took her son by the ears and gave him a kiss.

  80

  ****************

  BEFORE Yashim could recover himself, Eugenia had pointed with an imperious finger. “You could try under the bed.”

  Yashim needed no second bidding. He fairly dived for the bed and wriggled beneath it. He saw Eugenia approach the door in her bare feet; she plucked something from the bed as she passed. A silk peignoir swished through the air and swirled around her ankles.

  There was a knock on the door. Yashim strained to hear, but all he could make out was Eugenia’s “nyet, nyet” and a few murmured words. The door closed, and the feet stood again by the edge of the bed. Then the peignoir slid to the floor in a soft cloud, and the feet disappeared.

  Eugenia was sitting in bed, right on top of him. She was waiting for her Turk to emerge. She wore a little smile and nothing else.

  Feeling ridiculous, Yashim scrambled to his feet and bowed.

  “Forgive me, Excellency,” he said. “I lost my way. I had no idea—”

  Eugenia pouted. “No idea, Monsieur Ottomane? You disappoint me. Come.”

  She ran her hand down between her breasts. By the jewels, Yashim thought, she is lovely: lovelier than the girls in the sultans harem. Such white skin! And her hair—black as shining ebony.

  She drew one knee up and the silk sheet rode up, exposing a long, slender thigh.

  She wants me, Yashim thought. And I want her. Her skin: he longed to reach out and stroke it. He longed to inhale her strange, foreign fragrance, figure her curves with his hands, touch her dark lips against his own.

  Forbidden. This is the path of passion and regret.

  This is where you cannot go. Not if you value your sanity.

  “You don’t understand,” said Yashim desperately. “I’m a—a—” What was that word the English boy had used? It came back
: “I’m a freelance.”

  Eugenia looked puzzled.

  “You want me to pay?” She laughed incredulously and shook her curls. Not only her curls. “What if I don’t?”

  Yashim was confused. She saw the confusion on his face and held up her hands.

  “Come,” she said.

  She put her hands flat on the bed, behind her back. Yashim groaned softly and closed his eyes.

  Five minutes later, Eugenia had discovered what Yashim meant by freelance.

  “Better and better,” she said and threw herself back against the pillows. She raised a slender knee.