Darkness. He was in the pit again. His limbs twitched. He opened his eyes and there was Amélie, the steaming bowl, his own room.
“The Gyllius. You read it?”
“Yes.”
“And it suggested—some idea?”
“Yes. I think so.”
Yashim closed his eyes again. He was very tired, but he was not afraid of the dark. He, above all people, could not be afraid of the dark.
Long ago, reaching manhood, he had stepped into a region that was darker than any tunnel underneath the city, an unrelieved blackness that ran through his veins and turned his eyes backward in their sockets. His despair had been a cell from which there was no escape at all: the prison of his own ruined body.
But in the end he had found a way. Not a way out, exactly, but a way, perhaps, of seeing in the dark. It made him useful. Yashim the eunuch: a guide when others fell into the darkness, too.
Until sometimes a woman came, beautiful, shedding her own light, a woman, perhaps, with brown eyes and a cloud of brown hair, who watched him as he slept. And fetched him soup. And who shed so much light that as she passed he was dazzled, blinded—and would stay blind, long after she had gone away. Groping in the dark, again.
It was not her fault.
Yashim opened his eyes. Amélie had her arm stretched out, and she was looking at her hand with a concentrated expression on her face, wiggling her fingers.
Then the coin fell to the floor. She bent to pick it up.
“The Great Church,” Amélie said, turning the coin around her thumb. “Aya Sofia.”
Elvan knocked on the door. Yashim sent him to the Libyan baker for a round of bread. He took the coin with a curious glance at Amélie, and sped off on his errand.
“The Byzantine Greeks believed in an old legend about Aya Sofia,” Amélie explained. “The legend was that one day an enemy would succeed in breaking into the city. Everything would appear lost—except that the enemy would never reach the Great Church. Before that happened, the archangel Gabriel would appear with a flaming sword and drive the invaders out.”
“Hmmm.” Yashim looked doubtful. “It didn’t happen.”
“No. But Max always said that every myth contains a kernel of truth. So when the Turks broke into the city there was, in fact, a miracle at Aya Sofia. Just not the miracle everyone hoped for.”
“No archangel.”
“No. But a priest, saying mass. When the Turks arrived, he vanished.”
“Vanished?”
“Stepped into one of the great pillars, apparently, carrying the Host. The legend goes that he’ll reappear on the day the cross is raised over the dome again.”
Yashim frowned. He tried to picture the scene: Ottoman troops crashing against the great doors of the church, the terrified people huddled inside for protection, and a priest at the altar with a cup and plate. Something about the picture in his mind was vaguely familiar: he couldn’t remember. Something he’d seen, perhaps? Something Lefèvre had said. But at that moment Elvan reappeared with the bread, and the memory was lost. Yashim gave him a few piastres, and he bowed out with unusual solemnity.
Instead, Yashim recalled a legend in Grigor’s book, about the emperor being turned to stone.
“Max thought those stories carried a message,” Amélie explained. “Perhaps the tale of the priest means that the Greeks had time to hide their treasure before the Turks came in. Aya Sofia is one of the biggest buildings on earth. The most ambitious building project in world history, after the Pyramids.”
She took a lock of hair and twisted it with a finger.
“But there’s no crypt in Aya Sofia. Most churches have crypts, to represent the world of the dead. At Aya Sofia they raised the largest dome in the world, like a microcosm of the universe—the whole of God’s creation. It’s odd if they didn’t build a crypt in there, as well.”
Yashim broke the bread and dipped it into his soup. “It’s said that Mehmed came into the Great Church the morning after the assault and found a soldier hacking at the marble floor. He was angry. He said: ‘You soldiers can take whatever you can carry, but the building belongs to God—and me.’ Aya Sofia was preserved.”
“Perhaps he knew there was something under there. But they never got an opportunity to look, did they? As far as I know, Aya Sofia hasn’t been touched now for four hundred years.”
“They added minarets,” Yashim pointed out.
“On the outside.”
They looked at each other.
“That trick,” Yashim said. “The trick you were doing with the coin. Where did you learn that?”
Amélie laughed. “I still haven’t. Max used to teach me, but I haven’t got the fingers for it, I suppose. He could make the coin run through his fingers and then—pouf! It vanished. Just like that priest.”
Yashim drank his soup. He put down the empty bowl. “Your husband—Max. Dr. Lefèvre. He was a doctor of archaeology, wasn’t he?”
Amélie looked surprised. “Of archaeology? He was an archaeologist, yes. But he started out in medicine. He was a doctor of medicine.”
“A doctor of medicine,” Yashim repeated slowly. “I had no idea.”
There was a knock on the door, and Palewski came in, fishing a green bottle out of his coat pocket.
He bowed to Amélie and then peered closely at Yashim.
“He seems to have been eating soup,” he said. He patted the bottle. “Brandy. Excellent with soup. Good for invalids. I thought he might be dead.”
“He’ll live,” Amélie said.
Palewski looked disappointed. “Brandy’s good for a wake. I thought we might sit around his corpse, remembering, madame.”
“I think I’m recovering,” Yashim said in a small voice.
Amélie laughed. She glanced from Yashim to Palewski, and flexed her back. “Madame Matalya will want her bowl back, Yashim. I’ll take it down—and I’m a little tired.”
When she had gone, the ambassador uncorked the brandy and poured two glasses.
“It’s not the first time that you’ve saved my life,” Yashim said.
Palewski dismissed him with a wave. “I’m not too busy at the moment.”
Yashim smiled. With the sultan dying, most ambassadors would be filing their reports and trying to sound out the crown prince. The Polish ambassador could afford to wait on events.
“I don’t quite understand why I found you crawling out of a tunnel, Yashim.”
Yashim told him. He told him about Shpëtin’s little tin ball and the siphon. He told him how he had got lost in the maze, and about Xani’s body floating in the pool. He told him, too, how he had escaped.
“So Xani’s dead. They followed him into the siphon, killed him, and threw him down the pipe?”
“What else would they do? The little boy was watching the door from the other side of the road.”
“He saw them go in—and come out. He knows who they are.”
“But he can’t speak, Palewski.”
The ambassador cracked his knuckles.
Yashim levered himself up on one elbow. “There’s another thing. Amélie—Madame Lefèvre—read the Gyllius book. It gave her an idea.”
“The serpents’ heads?”
“Aya Sofia.”
Palewski shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“Gyllius mentions the serpents’ heads—but they were still in their place on the column when he was here. And in Delmonico’s time, too. That little book doesn’t tell us anything important about the serpents’ heads, Palewski. So why was it so important to Lefèvre?”
“I don’t know. But if it wasn’t the serpents’ heads, why would he have needed Xani? And then, why was Xani murdered, too?”
Yashim ran his hands through his hair. “Xani. Amélie. Gyllius’s book. I feel as though I’m trying to re-create a rare and astonishing dish from a memory of how it tasted, Palewski. We have all these ingredients in the dish—but the flavor’s wrong, somehow.” He looked up. “Amélie told me somet
hing just now. Lefèvre was a real doctor. Not a doctor of archaeology.”
“A doctor. So what?”
“I’m not sure. He spoke Greek fluently, too. Modern Greek. He learned it in the twenties, in the Greek provinces.”
“Are you sure? There was a war going on at the time.”
“Missilonghi, yes. That’s what interests me. Your poet—Byron, Millingen, his doctor.”
“Byron,” Palewski echoed. “It’s Thursday, Yashim. I’ve got an idea.”
“Thursday?” Yashim frowned. It was a ritual, their Thursday dinner; but time was short.
“I’m sorry, but I haven’t—”
“No, no, Yash. It’s quite all right. Tonight, for once, you’ll dine with me.”
89
YASHIM was relieved that he didn’t have to shop or cook. It was already past noon. He dressed with care, and an hour later he presented himself at the door of the sultan’s harem, in Topkapi Palace.
Hyacinth emerged from his little cubicle in the corridor and grinned, showing a row of reddish teeth. “I knew it would be you,” he said softly.
“The valide?”
The elderly eunuch wagged his head and looked serious. “Not receiving today. A little shock. She is resting.”
“Come on, Hyacinth,” Yashim said testily. “Everyone here is resting.”
Hyacinth giggled uncertainly and tapped Yashim on the chest with his fan.
“It seems it’s all your fault, Yashim,” he said. “You and your little favors.”
Yashim blinked. Years ago, when three hundred women or more were cooped up in the harem apartments, attended by a cohort of Black Eunuchs, it was only to be expected that everyone would know everyone else’s business. Now there was only one, the valide, with a handful of girls and a few attendants. But some things never changed.
“The bostanci refused her?”
Hyacinth’s hands fluttered. “I never said a word,” he insisted, raising his eyebrows. “Her Highness is not receiving—anyone.”
Yashim bowed; he admired the glint of steel beneath the black man’s gentle manner. But he wondered what would happen if he brushed him aside and pressed on. Hyacinth, he guessed, was stronger than he looked. A sort of giddiness swept over him. There would be no men-at-arms springing forward to enforce compliance; there never had been. It would never have been necessary.
“Is that you, Yashim?”
The voice from along the passage was unmistakable. Yashim looked up; Hyacinth whirled around.
The valide sultan was advancing very slowly along the passageway, one hand gripping the knob of a stick, the other raised to the shoulder of a girl whose arm was passed around the valide’s waist. What struck Yashim was not that the valide herself was bent, or very frail, or that her knuckles looked huge beneath the thin skin of her hands, but that she was wearing jewels: a welter of diamonds at her ears, around her neck, pearls gleaming from her diadem, and at her breast a lapis brooch with the figure N picked out in ivory. As she stepped forward into the sunlight it seemed to Yashim that she sparkled like a leaf after a storm.
Yashim bowed.
“The bostanci!” The valide stopped and worked her hand on the cane. “Il m’a refusé!”
Hyacinth lowered his eyes. His hands were draped around his enormous belly. The girl cast a frightened glance at Yashim.
The valide set both hands on the head of her cane. Very slowly she drew herself upright.
“Pssht!” She raised her chin. Hyacinth and the girl withdrew, bowing.
“Refused, Yashim,” the valide repeated quietly. “Why not? I am an old woman, far from the seat of power. The bostanci no longer fears me.”
Yashim stepped closer.
“The sultan should have stayed in Topkapi. My son.”
They looked at each other.
“How long, Yashim?”
“A few months,” he said. “Weeks.”
The valide’s hands rubbed together on the head of her stick.
“So little time,” she whispered at last. And then her lip trembled, and to Yashim’s astonishment the corner of her mouth lifted into a regretful smile.
“Men,” she said. “Ils font ce qu’ils veulent.”
They do what they want. Yashim bent his head.
“Mais les femmes, Yashim. They do what they must.” She turned around. “And you, Yashim, I wonder? Perhaps you do what we need. Give me an arm.”
Slowly, without talking, they made their way back up the corridor to the valide’s courtyard.
90
THE valide lay back on the divan, against a spray of cushions.
“The bostanci makes me tired, Yashim. No, don’t go. I have something to tell you. A coffee?”
Yashim declined. The valide settled the shawl around her legs.
“I thought I would die of loneliness when the sultan moved first to Besiktas. I have not been alone for sixty years, and I had grown so used to people around me, everywhere, at all times. For the first few weeks, I was in mourning, I admit. And you were very charming, to visit me—even if it was only my novels you wanted! No, no. I am teasing.
“But then I discovered something, Yashim. How to explain? Look: there is a little bird which comes to my window every day, to get food. The gardeners showed him to me—I had never noticed him before. Just a little bird! You may laugh, mon ami—but I scattered crumbs.”
Cross-legged on the divan, Yashim hunched forward and stared at his hands. He had a peculiar sense that he knew what the valide was about to describe. Years ago, as a very young man, almost a boy, he had constructed hope.
“Believe me, Yashim, the place was quiet. One little bird—c’est rien. But little by little I began to see that it was not a matter of one bird at all. There were many. And more than birds. The gardener told me there were djinns. He said, ‘Now they have room to breathe, at last!’” The valide paused. “I come from a superstitious island, Yashim.
“Remember the great women who have passed through these apartments, Yashim. People remember them. Kosem Sultan. Turhan Sultan. These are the rooms they kept, the corridors they used. I think of them, and I feel that I am still valide sultan—for them. For all the women who have lived here, within these walls. So many, Yashim.”
He bowed his head. He wanted to say that when one is spent and useless in the world’s eyes, it is still possible to live for others. For the living or the dead.
“Yes, Valide,” he murmured. “I understand.”
She regarded him narrowly.
“I think you do, Yashim. Djinns, ghosts: these are the privileges of age. But like the little birds, there are men of flesh and blood who inhabit this place. One sees them more clearly.”
Her world is shrinking, Yashim thought: the girls, the eunuchs, nothing more. Every day, the circle will grow smaller.
“Don’t suppose I am thinking of Hyacinth or my slaves,” the valide said. “The sultan—and his pashas—may have thought that everything in this palace depended on them, but they were wrong.”
“Valide?”
“Each year, on the same day, someone puts flowers on the column where they displayed the heads of rebels.”
“I see.”
“It’s only an example. But when things are calm and clear, and you watch, you find that many things haven’t changed. I have not changed because I am used to these walls, these courtyards and apartments. Just as the watermen are used to meeting in the arsenal.”
Yashim blinked. “The watermen?”
“They are, as I understand it, the oldest guild in the city. They would not go to Besiktas.”
Yashim pictured the arsenal, an ancient basilica that formed the lower corner of the first, most public court of the old palace. It had been used as a storehouse and a treasury; the last time he had seen inside, its walls were hung with flags and standards, and patterned with an arrangement of pikes and halberds from another age.
“But I don’t understand. Why would they meet there?”
The valide gave
a pretty shrug. “Not why, Yashim, but when.” She raised a finger. “Tomorrow morning. They have a ceremony to introduce a new member to the guild.”
She watched Yashim’s astonishment with satisfaction. “I may attend,” she added. “As the oldest representative of our House, it is my right. But I am not so strong as before. I shall need assistance. Perhaps, Yashim—”
“I am at your service, Valide,” Yashim said humbly.
91
YASHIM walked slowly out from the palace. Time was short, he’d told Palewski; but so far he hadn’t made much headway. He wondered what he should do next.
He thought of visiting the hammam, but instead of returning to Fener he found himself in the Hippodrome again, considering the broken column.
The serpents of the column emerged from a bronze ring, where you could read the names of thirty-one Greek cities—Athens, Sparta, Patras, Mycenae, and the rest of those jealous, warring city-states that combined in 479 B.C. against the Persian invader. At the battle of Plataia, the Persians were defeated by an army of Greeks, united for the very first time.
To commemorate that victory, the bronze weaponry and armor of the defeated Persians were melted down and recast to make the Serpent Column. It was set up at Delphi, a neutral place, the seat of the oracle respected by all Greeks alike. Entwined one upon the other, the three serpents soared into the air: unity was strength.
Yashim supposed that had the battle gone the other way, there would have been no Greece. No philosophy; no academy; no Alexander—and no Greeks.
Solemnly, he leaned against the rail. Twelve years ago, the Greeks had attempted to unite again. What was it that Dr. Millingen had said? That the Greeks were incapable of working together. Missilonghi was scarcely a battle. It was a siege, and the Greeks had lost it. No Serpent Column could be cast to commemorate those years.
But Lefèvre had been there, hadn’t he? A doctor, like Millingen. Working together—for a cause.
Yashim pressed his forehead against the railings and closed his eyes. He tried to think: he had a sense that time was running out.
The Snake Stone Page 20
