The Snake Stone (27 page)

Y
ASHIM
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.

T
HE
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.

Y
ASHIM
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.

“Efendi.”

He turned, recognizing the voice.

“I saw you cross the Hippodrome, efendi.”

Yashim smiled at his friend. He had known, in the kebab house a few days earlier, that they would soon meet.

“I am glad to see you,” he said, and it was perfectly true. Seeing Murad Eslek standing in front of him, short, sturdy, and grinning from ear to ear, Yashim realized exactly why they were supposed to meet. Murad Eslek was a man who took each day as it came. He thought on his feet. He was efficient, reliable: a friend. He had once saved Yashim’s life.

But above all, Murad Eslek was an early riser. Every day, long before dawn, he would be at one of the market gardens beyond the city walls, overseeing the delivery of vegetables and fruit to half a dozen street markets around Istanbul. Carts and mules; donkeys with panniers; Murad Eslek and his men saw them into the city and arranged their distribution, so that when Istanbul woke up the stalls were piled high, as if by magic, with all the produce of the season.

“There’s something I wanted to ask you,” Yashim said. “Shall we have a coffee together?”

D
R.
Millingen closed his bag and snapped the catch shut.

He glanced up the bed, to where the sultan lay drowsing against the pillows. Ten grains: enough, and not too much. Laudanum helped ease the pain.

The doctor frowned. When he told the eunuch that his business was with the living, not the dead, he was telling a half-truth. Sometimes people who were well came to him, he bled and dosed them, and they lived. Sometimes he protected people who would otherwise have died. But his business was with neither the living nor the dead: it was with the dying.

His job was to give them courage, or grant them oblivion; for it was seldom death itself that people feared. For most of them, it was the realization of its approach; as if death was easy, but dying came hard.

The sultan was sunk back against the pillows, and his skin was sunk back against the bones: he looked papery. His mouth was open, at a slight angle; his eyelids were almost purple. His breathing was so faint as to be almost imperceptible.

Millingen bent forward to put his hand close to the sultan’s mouth.

The sultan opened his eyes. They were lifeless and yellowed around the dark core of the iris.

“S’agit-il des mois, des jours, ou des heures?”
His lips barely moved. Hours or days? Millingen had heard that weariness before. The sultan did not lack courage.

“On ne sait rien,”
he said quietly.
“On va de jour en jour.”

The sultan did not drop his gaze. Only his hand moved slowly over the counterpane, as if there were some effort he wished to make.

“Sultan?”

“The crown prince. Summon him now.”

“Yes, Sultan. I will send for him.”

Millingen turned and went to the door, instinctively aware that he was being watched. At the door he looked back. The sultan moved a finger: go.

He opened the door and stepped out into the corridor. Two footmen snapped to attention on either hand, and a small, thin man in a fez sprang up from the sofa.

“He asks to see the crown prince,” Millingen said. He knew it was probably futile; the prince had a morbid horror of the disease.

The little man bowed. Millingen wondered if he knew it was futile, too, as he scurried off down the corridor.

Millingen folded his arms and let his chin sink toward his chest.

A week, he thought. If only he could have another week.

A memory of something he had once read came into his mind: Suleyman the Magnificent, dead in his screened litter, rushed from the battlefield as if he were still alive. The grand vizier having discussions with his corpse, in order not to alarm the troops.

He pushed the thought aside.

This is not the age of Suleyman now, he told himself. This is the nineteenth century.