After a few minutes he neared the Tekfur palace of the Porphyrogenitus, where Şehzade Selim was in residence, and carefully kept an extra street back from the high grand edifice – there was no point in risking trouble now. As he passed the building and neared the walls once more, his heart skipped a beat. The figure was no longer visible on the wall top! He mentally berated himself. Of course he wouldn’t be. Selim was serious about his security, and the palace adjoined the city walls. That section would not be free to walk along, so the Romani must have descended at the last set of wall stairs! Damn it.
Casting up a quick prayer to the mother of God and to Saint Hubert, the patron of hunters, Parmenio dithered. To pick up the trail, he would have to risk getting very close to Selim’s palace and would also have to head some way back along the wall. But then the man would already be long gone and there would be little chance of Parmenio regaining the trail. Biting his cheek, he pondered. If the man had filtered into the streets around here, he would either be moving back close to Dragi’s community, which seemed unlikely, or towards Greek Phanar, which seemed equally implausible. So he must still be moving south, despite having descended from the walls.
With a preparatory breath he began to run, heading for the walls and the street that ran along inside them to the south of the Tekfur, where it crested the sixth hill. He was so surprised that he almost yelped when he turned a corner onto that wide street and almost ran into a woman emptying a bucket of waste onto the filthy cobbles. Blinking and trying to calm down, his grateful gaze fell upon the Romani, who was a few hundred yards down the street, strolling unconcerned alongside the wall.
Keeping himself well back, Parmenio shadowed the figure towards the rise, pleased at how, since his days of mercantile shipping, despite still carrying a little excess around the midriff, he seemed to have become so much more lithe and quiet. But then he’d never walked – and often run – as much in his life as he had in Skiouros’ company. Five years ago he could never have stalked someone.
Five years ago, he’d never needed to, his brain threw in sourly.
With a frown of concentration, the Genoese sailor followed his quarry up past the Hadrianople gate, the dome of the Saint Saviour church passing by on the other side as they topped the hill and began the descent to the south. With no surprise at all, Parmenio entered Sulukule on the heels of his prey. This, the oldest Romani district in the city, was a confusing mass of interconnecting streets, each little more than an alleyway, like a spider’s web across the city. A man could easily become lost in there and with the increasing certainty that their enemy were based here, Parmenio began to question the wisdom of entering such a place. Dragi had told him that Sulukule would be dangerous.
Swallowing his nerves, he watched the man he’d followed turn from the main street by the walls and disappear into the sprawl. Ah well… nothing ventured, as they said.
Pausing at the corner, he stepped into the Romani community, just hoping that their opposition merely resided within this mass of housing, and not that they filled it entire. If so, this was likely to be the shortest hunt in history.
Three turnings into the mass, he had come to two conclusions: firstly that he was in no danger of being observed by his prey, since the entirety of the population seemed to have their doors open and be spilling out into the street playing games, drinking and dancing, providing excellent cover for a stealthy pursuit. Secondly, that it was going to take every ounce of his nervous brain to commit this route to memory.
Indeed, he was having trouble remembering each landmark as he turned corners when he became aware that his quarry had reached his destination. As the man stopped and broke into conversation with someone, Parmenio approached a small store selling rugs, clothing, shawls, jewellery, musical instruments and all manner of things from trestles in the street. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the men chat and then nod and shake hands. His prey then moved down what appeared to be a cul-de-sac and into an open door. He contemplated following, but it was clear to him that the two old men sitting and playing chess on a table near the entrance to the cul-de-sac were guards, watching any who approached the short street. Satisfied that at least he had identified the place, Parmenio moved on, having bought a rather nice mug from the stall for the look of things. Once he deemed himself safely past those two gaming sentinels, he began to explore the periphery of the cul-de-sac area. The one-storey timber houses of the Romani in this area had been joined together, the narrow cut-throughs between them sealed off with heavy fencing, and each of those houses presenting no doors or windows to the rear. It was almost an enclosed fortress-like compound within the Romani neighbourhood.
With little doubt now that he had located their opposition, Parmenio pinched the bridge of his nose, tried to recall all his list of landmarks and began to make his slow, careful way back towards the main street and to the house of Ben Isaac in Balat.
A mile and a half across the ancient city and over the water, Don Diego de Teba cursed for the thousandth time as his good boots, bought at great expense in Heraklion, slipped in something foul and indescribable in the grass of the waterfront. Ahead of him, the man in the black cloak moved entirely unconcerned. Diego had begun his pursuit by shadowing in the most careful manner, but had of late begun simply following him openly. The man was either profoundly over-confident or utterly stupid. Not once since he’d descended the walls near the Golden Horn had he looked over his shoulder.
Reaching the sea walls, the cloaked man had passed through one of the old crumbling gates and down to the waterside, where a few late evening fishermen were making the most of the peace and quiet. The Spaniard had followed his prey along the waterfront until the man had reached a jetty where half a dozen small rowing boats were moored under the watchful eye of a local who seemed to control this private ferry service. There, the cloaked man had tipped the owner with a coin or two and clambered into a boat, rowing himself swiftly out and across the water. Taking a chance, Diego waited until he was some way from shore and then followed suit, paying what he considered an exorbitant price for such a vessel and then easing himself out into the almost still waters of the Golden Horn. The current was negligible and he found he had almost no trouble keeping to course as he followed the cloaked man across the wide expanse towards the Galata shore, despite his lack of experience with boats.
The man had docked quickly, giving the boat to the man who kept the jetty at this northern side, and Diego had followed suit two minutes later, trailing the cloaked man on along the waterfront opposite the ancient city, in this almost-as-ancient suburb.
For perhaps two more miles the Spaniard followed the mysterious stranger, through a gate into rising winding streets in a district that looked so oddly Italianate compared with its master across the water. It came as little surprise to him when they rounded a high brick wall, built in what he was beginning to recognise as an old Byzantine style, and discovered that the building they had just skirted was the cloister of a large church. The building was still intact and showed all the signs of use, but was oddly dissimilar to the other Byzantine churches he had seen thus far in his days in the city. With only one small cupola visible and a tall belfry, it bore a far closer resemblance to the churches to which he was used in the west.
The cloaked man disappeared in through the church doorway and Diego followed carefully. As he approached, his suspicions were confirmed by the distinct and familiar sound of Catholic mass held in high church Latin. He had absolutely no doubt of his findings as he lurked near the door and peered inside to see a small knot of men – five in all, including his own quarry, standing in the centre of the nave discussing something in hushed voices. As the tired man removed his cloak, Diego could see that he was wearing hose and an Italian-style arming jacket, his clothing so clearly foreign. Two of the other four men were dressed similarly, in drab and sombre colours. The other two, however, confirmed everything Diego had begun to suspect. One wore a red doublet with a white cross – the everyday co
lours of the Knights Hospitaller. The other bore a small eight-pointed white cross on the chest of his black doublet, another common symbol for the order. Five Hospitallers.
And there could be no doubt now that they were working with the opposing Romani to put prince Ahmed in power – a man Diego knew would consider dealing with the Vatican if it put him on the throne. The knights clearly had a stake in this matter on behalf of their Borgia master.
For a moment, Diego found himself staring longingly into the church’s interior. It had been a long time since he’d given confession, restricted from access to catholic churches on Crete by his fugitive status and unable to find such a place in this city. It was his church. And, at the most basic level, for all their current apparent status as the enemy, the Hospitallers were his people, warriors of the Papacy, questers for God, and not connected to the inquisition in any way. He felt he ought to be able to go in and pray, or to shake the hands of these soldiers of God, rather than steal through the city pursuing them. Why was he helping his friends undermine a plot to bring the Ottoman world close to the catholic fold? Surely he should be working towards that goal, not trying to halt it?
Shaking his head at his own confusion and the idiocy of it all, he turned from the welcome light of the blessed Virgin and scurried out into the deepening night to make his way back to the house of Ben Isaac. The damage his allegiance to Skiouros was doing to his faith was something he would have to ponder on at a later date. For now he should get back and report his findings.
But in the near future, he had a feeling that he was going to have some unpleasant soul-searching choices to make.
Chapter ten – Of crones and killers
May 26th - Three days to the festival
SKIOUROS peered through the window of his small apartment, tired but as alert as he could manage. Four days of investigation and near misses in the palace had led to precisely naught. Forced to spend much of his time tending the palace grounds in order to maintain his guise, he had found fewer opportunities to spend in observation of his surroundings than he’d expected, and none of the other lesser gardeners had been particularly forthcoming during rare social moments. He was not sure whether their reticence was due to a natural unwillingness to discuss such subjects, strictures laid down by Şehzade Korkut or the head gardener, or possibly the fact that he was new and as yet unknown to the rest of the staff. Most worryingly of all, perhaps his guise was slipping – his accent too poor or his golden facial bristles putting them off. Either way, he was learning nothing, and time was thundering on towards the festival and the earth-shaking events apparently planned for that day.
But then, yesterday morning, he’d made a small breakthrough. Not enough to consider the whole thing a success, but a small breakthrough nonetheless.
Looking through this very window as he massaged aching muscles, he’d spotted something familiar and aggravating across the square opposite the main gate. The beggar who had been plying his trade there when Skiouros first arrived had moved on and in his place an old homeless person had set up stall there, a dirty blanket spread out on the ground before them selling home-made charms and the ubiquitous Turkish wards against the evil eye. Nothing unusual. Such figures were commonplace throughout the city and neither passing authorities, the ghazi at the palace gate, or the janissaries of the barracks nearby gave the figure a second glance.
But as he’d peered at the vagrant, a suspicion had quickly formed in Skiouros’ mind. Half an hour’s careful observation had confirmed his belief that the figure was more than a beggar or street hawker, but was in fact watching the palace gates carefully and continually. It had come as no surprise when, a short time later, the figure had stood to stretch cramped legs and he had recognised the old Romani witch who had made her presence felt so often during that dreadful week five years ago. The Khoraxané dede Babik, was it? What they called her? And if she was as important to the opposition as the Romani seemed to believe, then this was something entirely different to the small groups set to watching Mustafa’s house.
His mind racing with the discovery, Skiouros had kept watch on the watcher. The old woman stayed in position until the Dhuhr call to prayer warbled out across the city from every minaret at noon. Almost as though her task was done, the old woman packed up her blanket and goods and disappeared. Skiouros, who had managed to escape the five daily prayers through his strangely solitary position, had assumed she had gone to pray, but when the rest of the population re-emerged afterwards there was no sign of her. Logging the times in his head, he had rushed out to catch up on his work, but made sure to return every quarter of an hour and have a glance through the window. Later in the afternoon, when the sun was at its highest, she reappeared and set up shop once more. On regular checking, Skiouros noted her continued presence for an hour, until the sun’s shade began to tint with the orange of later afternoon, and the Asr prayer call rang out. Once more, she gathered her gear and was gone.
Skiouros had considered the timing and, scuttling out to continue his work, kept an eye on the sundial that stood before the half-moon pool. When he judged that an hour and a half had passed, he made his way back to his room and rushed over to the window. Sure enough, there was the old woman busy unfolding her blanket and laying out the charms for sale. One hour before each call to prayer, she was there. Nodding to himself, he watched her intently for that hour until the Maghrib call at sunset, and then again when she turned up for an hour in true dark before the Isha’a call. She was almost expectant in her manner and her body language suggested frustration each time she packed and left. She was not just observing the palace, but actively waiting for something. For what? For Şehzade Korkut’s head to come rolling out of the gate? Clearly not. But there was one of her allies in the palace – there had to be, waiting to end the prince when the time came – and she had to have been waiting for something from him. Either she was waiting for news from him, or to impart some to him. Either way, watching her would reveal the killer in the palace.
As he’d lain in bed last night, Skiouros had decided that the Romani woman must be waiting for to given news to her fellow inside – what useful news could he pass to her? – and had begun to formulate a plan. He couldn’t confront her, of course – he couldn’t leave the palace grounds without ruining his guise and endangering himself, and he doubted she would willingly reveal anything anyway, even if he caught her, which he somehow doubted. But if she was as impatient as she seemed, then he was sure that her contact was overdue. The man must go to her soon. Skiouros would have to watch for him.
And so he had risen while even the owls were still rubbing their eyes with tired wings and got to work early in the pitch dark of the dead of night, rushing through his daily tasks in order to maintain his position and cover while buying himself enough free time the next day to watch the old woman when he should be working. And then he had started the observation with the crone’s arrival an hour before the Fajr call, while the sun was still just a kiss and a promise of the day ahead. Again, nothing happened during her first or second prayer call session, and the tension in the old Romani woman seemed to be increasing exponentially with each passing visit. Her man must be truly overdue.
Then, as the shadows began to lengthen in the afternoon sun, the old woman thanked profusely a passing merchant who had purchased a blue and white eyeball charm from her, and then looked up in a mixture of surprise, relief and anger. To the casual observer, the man in the grey tarbouz skull cap simply bent at the stall, perused half a dozen charms, and then purchased one from the woman with a brief exchange of haggling. To Skiouros, prepared for the meeting, the body language was telling, and though he could not hear what the pair were saying from such a distance, he could see her berating him, see his defensive excuses, identify acceptance on both sides and a resolution reached.
The man rose again, draping the purchased charm around his neck, and then turned and strode back towards the palace gate. Skiouros peered at him through the window. He was one of th
e kitchen staff, if Skiouros had identified his clothing correctly. The young Greek had not been inside the main palace itself, of course, and had seen little of the staff from within, but he was comfortable with his deduction. And who better to kill a prince than a cook, after all? He remembered with bitterness the poisoned fruit that had ended Cem Sultan’s life in Napoli.
Time was now of the essence. Readying himself for what must come next, Skiouros dashed out of the kiosk… and almost fell over another of the Bostancı on the gravel path outside. Righting himself in a faint panic, the disguised Greek burbled an apology.
‘In a rush, Sincabi? You look tired.’
‘Working hard,’ Skiouros replied, trying to sound exasperated. ‘Still catching up on three days of neglect after my predecessor left.’
This seemed to satisfy the other gardener, who nodded his understanding.
‘The entire corps in the palace is being called into the main building this evening. You will also be required to attend.’
Skiouros felt a knot of fear settle in him. ‘Something important?’
‘The Şehzade is holding a review of his palace staff. Inconvenient, I know, but who would deny a prince.’
Inconvenient, indeed. Potentially fatally so, in fact. But this current interruption was every bit as inconvenient. Skiouros tried to look tired and calm, and nodded his acceptance. ‘What time?’
‘After the Maghrib prayers, when it is dark.’
‘I will be there.’
The man smiled understandingly and turned, strolling off towards the main path once more, heading for the ivory pavilion. Skiouros reached for his rake and began to drag the dirt under a hedge idly for a moment, watching as the man left, but the moment he was out of sight, he shouldered the tool and turned, running off past the decorative flower garden, between the trees and towards the main gate. As he approached the point where his arcade met the main path through the grounds, he slowed. The sound of the great decorative portal slamming shut echoed across the grass, and Skiouros prayed he wasn’t too late. Ducking past the third-to-last tree in the line, he unshouldered his implement and began to gently tease the earth, his nervous eyes raking the main path instead.
Pasha's Tale Page 18
