The Snake Stone (30 page)

S
UPPORTED
by a sturdy slave girl on either arm, the valide descended from the litter in the great hall of the sultan’s palace at Besiktas. At the foot of the steps she graciously inclined her head to acknowledge the attendance of the sultan’s highest household officer, the chief Black Eunuch.

He stood at the head of a party of ladies, all dressed in the latest French fashion, ranged with their parasols for a stroll through the palace gardens; many of them craned their heads to see the valide better. She smiled at them, nodding.

“Ibrahim Aga,” she said. “Mesdames.”

The sultan’s concubines returned a murmured greeting. The chief Black Eunuch bowed deeply. “Valide.”

“I see you are filling out, Ibrahim. It’s most becoming.”

Ibrahim Aga smiled uncertainly. “Thank you, Valide. May I present the ladies?”

He escorted her down the line. The girls curtseyed, modestly lowering their eyes until the valide had passed. Now and then she put up a pale hand to straighten a lace jabot or to pinch a cheek, and for every girl she had a flattering word or two. “What lovely hair! Very pretty. A little less rouge, mademoiselle, perhaps. Your smile is charming,” and so on. The ladies blushed and smiled.

At the end she turned to the kislar aga. “They are a credit to you, Ibrahim. They dress well, and seem altogether charming. I am delighted to see them taking advantage of the garden. We did not always have such a luxury in my day.”

“Yes, Valide. We walk out every morning.”

The valide nodded and sighed.

“They need exercise, Ibrahim. Take me to the governess.”

The ladies bobbed politely as she began climbing the stairs. How very trivial they looked, the valide reflected, in their French gowns and corsets, their shawls and silk pumps: no more consequential than a tray of Belgian chocolates. A manufactory: yes. In her day, at Topkapi, how she and the others had prided themselves on their style—the way they wore color, the arrangement of their hair, the artful collage of shawls and pelisses, silks and furs. Then they had paraded like a pride of she-tigers, jewels ablaze, loose-limbed and glorying in their fine skin and perfect teeth! Not like these girls, these fashion plates, these trained canaries in their cage.

It was such a shame!

She paused at the top of the wide stairs, leaning on the rail. How very dead this palace was, how still. The French paintings hung unexamined on the stairs, like the epitaphs of soldiers who had died and were not remembered. Empty, straight-backed English chairs were ranged against the walls.

At the top of the stairs the chief governess was waiting to make her obeisance. Tall and plump, wearing traditional harem dress, she carried a long staff tipped in silver; a bunch of keys at her belt clanked softly as she bowed. At her signal, several girls stepped forward to help the valide out of her satin coat and conducted her to a sunlit room overlooking the sparkling water of the Bosphorus. She felt the breeze on her face. Sinking onto a gilded sofa she let the girls gently arrange her hair and smooth the creases in the folds of her robes. One girl plumped the pillows at the valide’s back; another fetched a stool for her feet.

“May we humbly offer a cooling sherbet, Valide Sultan?” The governess indicated a tray.

The valide settled back against the cushions and sighed. Always the same tender rituals, the same half-concealed glances of affection and respect: she should have made her visit sooner.

She took a sip of sherbet and returned the glass. Then she glanced at the governess and gave an almost imperceptible nod.

The imperial governess stepped up and took her place at the valide’s side, standing motionless with folded arms and lowered eyes. The sultan’s first wife, mother of the crown prince and the future Valide Sultan, glided into the room like a swan. With an elegant bow, she approached her imperial mother-in-law and took the hem of her robe in one hand. In a signal of respect and obedience, she made a motion of touching the hem with her lips and putting it to her forehead.

“How is Mecid, our imperial grandson, daughter?”

“He is praying for your good health, Valide.”

The remaining three Kadinefendis entered softly to greet their mother-in-law, one by one bowing and bringing her hem to their lips. They moved with graceful calm, silent and unhurried, and stood back to attention. The valide spoke to them kindly, and they blushed and smiled. Looking at their beautiful faces, their pretty smiles, she felt a lump rising to her throat.

Two girls helped her to her feet. The Kadinefendis bowed demurely, and the valide put her hand on the aga’s arm.

“
Allons
,” she said. She felt her heart fluttering in her breast.

Doors opened silently at the approach of the odd couple, the Black Eunuch with the tiny white woman hanging from his arm, taking slow, careful steps across the polished parquet. At monotonous intervals, the valide looked down through thickly curtained windows onto the Bosphorus below—a scene of activity that was at once vigorous, silenced, and remote. At last the valide entered the sultan’s bedroom.

The shutters were half drawn against the glare of the sun, and for a few moments the valide paused on the threshold, peering around. She moved slowly across to the bed. The aga fetched a chair, and as she sat down she groped on the counterpane for her son’s hand.

She found it, bony and cold: for a moment her heart skipped a beat, but then she felt the faint returning squeeze of his fingers, and saw the pillows twitch as he turned his head.

For a long time neither of them said a word.

“My little lion,” the valide said softly at long last, and with her other hand she bent forward and traced her fingers across his brow, to brush aside a lock of hair.

“Mother.”

She squeezed his hand. “Courage, always,” she whispered. It should never be like this, she thought; the old bring no comfort to the dying.

A mother cannot bury her own son.

The sultan’s eyes slid away from hers. “He does not come.”

The valide said nothing. The crown prince was young and yet afraid of death.

The sultan shifted slightly under the bedclothes. “There is much that he cannot understand, Valide.”

He breathed with difficulty, and speaking was a struggle, but he spoke for several minutes, still holding his mother’s hand, unburdening his mind.

The valide heard him out in silence.

“With God’s help,” she said at last. “The people will stay quiet.”

She felt the pressure of his fingers as they clenched around her own.

G
EORGE
Compston picked up the note and turned it over in his hands. He walked through the embassy tapping it against his teeth, looking for Fizerly.

He found him with his feet up on a desk, rubbing olive oil onto his mustache. He started when he saw Compston.

“Got a note,” Compston said carelessly.

Fizerly swung his legs to the ground. “Is she pretty?”

Compston opened the note, read it quickly, and blushed.

“I’m afraid that’s between me and these four walls, old man,” he said rather thickly.

Fizerly shrugged. It was so infernally hot.

Compston read the note again. He’d lit a spark there! A Turkish Byron enthusiast—whatever next?

It was from that eunuch, Yashim.

T
HE
sou naziry slid from his horse and passed the reins to an apprentice. He knelt on the rim of the tank and plunged his hands into the cold water: it had been a hot ride, even beneath the trees. He wiped the dust of the road from his face and the back of his neck. Leka presented him with a towel.

“I don’t see anything wrong with the levels,” the sou naziry said. He patted the towel into a ball and tossed it at Leka. The reservoirs had been exactly as he had imagined: a drop of about six inches. Normal for the time of year.

“It is the old women who like to spread this kind of talk,” he added. “A sultan is about to die, and they think the sky is falling on their heads.”

The shade was black under the trees. There was no wind, but the forests exhaled a refreshing coolness and the monthly ride had given the sou naziry an appetite. It would be good to sit by the edge of the woods and eat.

The foresters had prepared the usual refreshments. A black tent was set up on the grass, with carpets and silver trays, and jugs of sherbet made of sour cherries and oranges covered with a little square of gauze, the edges weighted with dangling beads. To one side a fire was crackling under a tripod, where a cook was preparing a bulgur pilaf; two foresters were squatting by the tandir. Long before dawn they had begun to make and tend the fire, fetching brushwood and logs, reducing the wood to a pile of glowing coals. The pit they had dug was invisible, beneath a covering of baked mud and sticks.

The cook had selected a lamb from the flock the day before. He had skinned and gutted the animal, studding its flesh with garlic spikes before he rubbed it with a mixture of yogurt and sieved tomatoes, crushed onion and garlic, coriander and cumin. At dawn, when the fire began to sink, they trussed the lamb to a stake and lowered it over the pit, setting the meat deeper and deeper as the morning progressed, until it was cooking underground, sealed by a makeshift lid.

One of the foresters looked up. Recognizing the naziry, he motioned to his companion, and the two men carefully raised the lid. The naziry saw the slightest trickle of smoke emerge from the pit. Overthrowing the lid, the forester bent forward and with a flash of his knife removed one of the kidneys, which he presented to the naziry on the point. The naziry took the smoking morsel in his fingers and ate with relish, standing by the pit, gazing down into the glowing fire.

Men, like animals, were afraid of fire, the naziry thought. But fire itself feared the naziry. Fire was afraid of water.

One of the foresters yawned. He was holding a green branch, which he waved gently over the roasting meat to chase the flies away.

The naziry settled himself on the carpet, crossing his legs beneath him, and watched the men draw the lamb out of the tandir. Beyond, the sunlight glittered on the surface of the bent; frogs croaked in the reeds; swallows skimmed the water and rose twittering and whistling into the air. A servant picked up a silver tray and polished it carefully with a cloth. The cook nodded.

He arranged a mound of pilaf on the tray, then took the long knife hanging at his belt and began to carve the meat.

A horseman rode up the track and out of the trees. At the sight of the tent and the smoking meat, he reined in and bowed from the saddle.

The sou naziry raised a hand in greeting.

“May you eat well, efendi,” the stranger said politely.

The naziry hesitated. There was something familiar about the rider: he had an impression that they had met, but he could not remember where.

“Thank you,” he said.

The stranger slipped from the saddle. Holding the reins in his hand, he said: “Forgive me, naziry. I did not recognize you in the shade. I am Yashim. Yesterday I attended the valide, at the induction ceremony.”

The naziry had already realized who he was. “Yashim efendi, of course.” He glanced at the lamb. “You will join us, please.”

It was Yashim’s turn to hesitate. “You are most generous, naziry, but I do not mean to intrude,” he said.

“There is meat,” the naziry said, with a gesture toward the lamb. “And you have ridden far.”

He motioned to the syce to take Yashim’s horse.

Yashim sat down, and the tray of pilaf and lamb was brought to the tent. The two men ate quickly, in silence. Afterward came slices of bloodred watermelon, refreshingly sweet. Once or twice, Yashim caught the naziry looking curiously at him out of the corner of his eye.

A servant poured water, and they washed their hands.

The coffee was served on a salver, with a tchibouk.

“I have not been here for many years,” Yashim confessed at last. “This is the bent built by Sinan, isn’t it?”

The naziry grunted. “It is a bent, like another. Sinan repaired it, at our direction.”

At our direction! It was a magnificent phrase, Yashim thought, for Sinan’s career as an architect had begun almost three hundred years ago.

“It existed already, then?”

The naziry nodded. “It was smaller, I believe, in the Greek time.”

Yashim smiled. “I did not realise, naziry, that the guild had such a long memory.”

The naziry looked surprised. “How should it be otherwise?” He took a puff of his pipe. “Greek or Turk, a man needs water to live.”

“Of course.”

“For a village, it is enough to make a well. But for a city? The people must wash, and drink, and cook food, Yashim efendi.”

Yashim nodded.

“How do men make a city? You think a sultan claps his hands and it appears like the palace of a djinn? No, not even a sultan can do this. Water. Water to build a city. And water to defend it, also.”

“Defend it?”

“Of course. Great walls, brave soldiers, even a wise sultan in command—these can delay a city’s fall. But water decides the battle.”

Yashim considered the naziry’s remark. “Istanbul is vulnerable, then,” he said.

The naziry raised an eyebrow. “It is not as vulnerable as you might guess, Yashim efendi. That is our responsibility. But without us, the city is dust. It cannot eat. It cannot live.

“This,” he added, pointing the stem of his pipe toward the glittering bent, “is the blood of Istanbul.”

Yashim looked at the shimmering water. The foresters and the naziry’s men were squatting in a circle, sharing out the rest of the pilaf and meat.

“The men of the guild,” Yashim began, “they are all Albanians, aren’t they?”

The naziry made a motion of dismissal. “They are men who understand one another, that is all.” He was silent for a moment. “But yes, also we have a gift. Is it because we come from the mountains, that we understand the fall of water, and the measure of distances? I do not know how it is, but God gives every race some special task. A Bulgar knows his sheep. A Serb can always fight. A Greek knows how to talk and a Turk how to be silent. But we Albanians—we can read water.”

And keep secrets, Yashim thought. Sustain memories.

“You have great experience,” he said.

The naziry shrugged. “Even with a gift, a man must learn. Do you see the blood of a man—his liver—his lungs? A doctor sees a man this way, after many years’ experience. You see a city: you see its streets, its hills, its houses, its people. But you do not see as deeply as we can. We, who are members of a guild two hundred strong.”

“And what do you see, naziry?”

“Another city, Yashim efendi; like a maze. In parts it is older than memory.” He puffed thoughtfully on his pipe. “A dangerous place for a man without experience.”

Yashim leaned forward. “There was a man called Xani—”

“It is a maze,” the naziry repeated.

He raised his hand, and the servant stepped forward.

“I wish to sleep,” the naziry said. “Take these away.”

He put his hand to his chest and inclined his head very slightly toward Yashim. “As I say, a most dangerous place.”

He lay back on the carpet and closed his eyes.

Yashim sat watching him for several minutes, not moving.

The naziry began to snore.