The Janissary Tree (34 page)

It
occurred to Palewski that any explanation he could give would sound thin, even
laughable. He turned to the seraskier's companions.

"Would
you excuse me? I'd like to borrow the seraskier for just one minute. Please
indulge me, efendi."

The
men made noncommittal gestures but said nothing. The seraskier looked from them
to Palewski with an impatient half smile.

"Very
well, Excellency." He was on his feet. "My apologies, gentlemen."

Palewski
took him by the arm and steered him into the street.

"Something
funny just happened at the baths," he began. "First they closed them, quite
suddenly, on a Thursday night." He had seized on this detail, which had so
baffled him at first, as being the oddest from a Turkish point of view. "They
are supposed to be cleaning them out, but a minute ago I watched someone waving
a flag out through a hole in the roof. I say a flag, because there is simply no
other explanation I can think of. It looked like, well, a signal. And now it
has stopped. D'you see, efendi? It may sound odd to you, but it really did look
like that--as if someone had been signaling, and then was stopped for some
reason. I wanted to go down there myself, but seeing you--well, I thought you
could make an inquiry with greater weight."

The
seraskier frowned. It sounded like rubbish, of course, and whatever went on in
a hammam was really no concern of his... and yet, the Pole was clearly agitated.

"For
your sake, Excellency, we will go and ask," he said, with as much gallantry as
he could muster.

97

***********

YASHIM
could hear voices. A tiny sliver of light cut into the darkness as he raised
his eyelids a fraction of an inch. Something that soothed him pressed for a
moment against his body, and was gone.

Dim
shapes moved in the light.
Dreadful accident... stroke of luck . .
. Then
someone was wiping his face with a cool wet cloth and Palewski's own face swam
into view.

"Yash?
Yashim? Can you hear me?"

He
tried to nod.

Palewski
put a hand under his head and tilted him forward.

"Drink
this," he said. Yashim felt the rim of a glass against his lips, but his lips
felt huge. His fingers seemed to be in gloves, they were so hard to bend.

"Can
he speak?" It was the seraskier's voice.

I
am dreaming, Yashim thought.

Hands
picked him up and moved him through the air. Then he was lying back again,
covered with a blanket.

Palewski
saw his friend settled on the litter and motioned to the bearers. To the
seraskier he said, "I'll take him to the embassy. He'll be safe there."

The
seraskier nodded. "Please let me know how he is doing later."

The
litter bearers shouldered their poles and followed the ambassador out into the
night.

Yashim
was aware of the jouncing of the Utter as they threaded through the dark
streets. He heard the
slap-slap
of the bearers' feet and the jingle of
little bells, and wondered how badly he was hurt. Sometimes the fabric of the
Utter rasped against his skin and he almost shouted out.

A
runner had gone on ahead to give Palewski's maid time to make up a bed and lay
a fire; when they arrived she was already on the stairs with a wedge of fresh
linen. Palewski took candles off a table in the hall to light the bearers' way,
and so expertly did they carry him that Yashim knew they were going upstairs
only by the slope of the ceiling.

They
transferred him to the bed. Palewski settled a fire in the stove that stood in
one corner of the room, tiled with a design of twining blue flowers, while
Marta appeared with a basin of cold water and a sponge, turning down the sheet
so that she could dab delicately at Yashim's inflamed skin.

Yashim
felt nothing, only a wave of nausea that now and then clutched at his belly and
made him retch. When he did, Marta cleaned him up without a word. He slept for
a while, and when he woke she was there again, with a spoonful of liquid so
bitter it made his mouth ache, but he swallowed and the nausea slowly
dissolved.

Marta
brought up a basin of warm water that smelled of lavender and honey. Yashim was
breathing steadily now. By the light of the candles he watched the silent Greek
girl, with her straight brow and olive skin, standing over the basin, absorbed
in her task. She took a pile of big linen napkins and one by one she soaked
them in the basin, wrung them out, and spread them on a clothes rack to cool. Her
straight black hair was gathered in two plaits, pinned to the sides of her head;
when she bent forward he could see the little hairs on the nape of her neck as
they caught the light.

When
she was ready, she took the first honey-scented napkin and folded it.

"Please
close your eyes," she said, in a voice as soft as a dove's. She laid the napkin
firmly over his forehead, and he felt her fingers smooth the damp cloth over
his eyelids and mold it across his nose and cheekbones.

"Can
you roll onto your side? Here, let me help you."

A
moment later he felt another cool cloth pressed around his chin and neck and
shoulder. His left arm was lifted, and Marta's fingers smoothed another napkin
over the side of his chest and his back.

"Try
not to move," she said. As she worked her way down his body, Yashim began to
find his sensations returning. He felt her palms on his buttocks and thighs,
through the cool cloth. At length she reached his feet and helped him roll onto
his back to finish wrapping his right side.

"I
feel like an Egyptian mummy," Yashim croaked. She put a finger to his lips. His
voice had sounded weak and strained: he even wondered if she had heard what he
said.

He
must have dozed, because suddenly he was afraid he was being smothered, unable
to open his eyes, crushed by a fearful pressure on his chest and limbs. He gave
a cry and tried to struggle free, but two small hands pressed him back by the
shoulders and a voice whispered softly, "I am here, don't worry. It's all
right. It's better now."

For
a moment he felt her breath on his lips, and then she had removed the bandage
over his eyes and he opened them to see her standing over him with the napkin
in one hand and a shy smile on her face.

He
smiled back. For the first time since she had touched him, he was conscious of
his nakedness, conscious that he was, once again, alone with a woman. He raised
himself gingerly on one elbow, and she seemed to feel it, too, because she
turned to the candle and said, "If you feel better, you should wash. The honey
will be sticky. I will fetch what you need."

She
was gone for a minute. She returned with a basin of warm water and a robe
draped over her arm. She set the basin down by the bed and laid the robe near
his feet.

"There
is a sponge in the basin," she explained.

As
she turned to go, Yashim said, "My arm is still very stiff."

She
shot him a smile and for the first time he saw her serious dark eyes twinkle.

"Then
you will have to wash slowly," she said, sweetly. And was gone.

Yashim
sighed and heaved his legs off the bed in a rustling cascade of napkins.

He
washed himself, as the girl had said, slowly.

Aware
that there was little time.

Wondering
what had become of Murad Eslek.

Wondering
what Marta meant to his friend Palewski--and he to her.

98

***********

"WHAT
is the time?"

Yashim
had opened his eyes to find Palewski perched at the foot of his bed, his elbows
resting on his knees, looking patiently into his face.

"After
midnight. Marta has gone to bed."

Yashim
gave him a weak smile as a stray thought entered his mind. To Palewski I am
only half a man--but the half he likes. The half he can trust. And he decided
never to tell his friend about what happened between him and Eugenia at the
Russian embassy.

"I
have to thank you, Palewski, for saving my life."

"And
I you, my old friend, for allowing me to hobnob for an hour or so with the
sultan." He clapped his hands together. "It was a capital party!"

Yashim
looked blank. Palewski told him about Derentsov's challenge and the intimate
conversation he had held with Sultan Mahmut II.

"I
get the impression, Yash, that the sultan has sleepless nights over this edict
of his. It will make him a very lonely man. He makes a lot of enemies."

Yashim
nodded. "I'm beginning to think that murder is the least of it. And tonight,
but for you, they would have killed me too."

"You
were in a public place."

But
Yashim said, "I forgot something I'd learned. Working in the stokeholes of the
baths was one of the jobs that Janissaries took up, if they survived the purge.
Tell me, you saw my signal?"

Palewski
recounted the series of events that had brought him and the seraskier to the
doors of the baths.

"The
seraskier?" Yashim put in. "If I hadn't been half dead--he's the man I need to
speak to. I ought to go and find him."

Palewski
put out a restraining hand. "Marta left me particular instructions, Yashim. She
expects to find you here in the morning. You are her patient. Perhaps you would
like to drink some tea? Or something stronger?"

Yashim
closed his eyes. "I've found out where the fourth man is going to appear."

Palewski
looked anxious. "Good, good," he murmured. He straightened his back. "I'm
sorry, Yashim, but do you know what I think? None of us are players in this
scheme. We're witnesses, at best: even you. It's too--" He searched his mind.
"You told me you had the impression that it was like a feast prepared, meze and
a main dish, remember? Well, I believe you were right. We're guests. And it's a
dangerous party."

He
stood up carefully and approached Yashim, crouching beside his pillow.

"You
aren't going to find anyone alive. None of the other cadets were killed where you
found them. You won't find this one being cooked in front of your eyes, either.
Take this rest. You can go off, if you feel fit, very early in the morning
after Marta has seen to you again."

Yashim
stared at the ceiling. It was sensible advice. He'd lost the time he needed,
and nothing would bring it back. He wanted so much to do as his friend
suggested, sleep--and trust to Eslek. He could be at the Kerko-porta by first
light.

It
was sensible advice. But in one particular, at least, the Polish ambassador could
not have been more wrong.

99

***********

The
provisioning of a great city, the kadi liked to remark, is the mark of a
successful civilization. In Istanbul it was a business that had been honed
close to perfection by almost two thousand years' experience, and it could
truly be said of the markets of Istanbul that there was not a flower, a fruit,
a type of meat or fish that did not make its appearance there in season.

An
imperial city has an imperial appetite, and for centuries the city had
commanded daily tribute from an enormous hinterland. Where the Byzantines had
managed their market gardens on the approaches from Thrace and Asia Minor, the
Turks, too, raised vegetables. From two seas--the warm Mediterranean and the
dark, gelid waters of the Black Sea--it was supplied abundantly with fish, while
the sweetest trout from the lakes of Macedonia were carried to the city in
tanks. From the mountains of Bulgaria came many kinds of honey to be turned
into sweets by the master sweet makers of Istanbul.

It
was a finely regulated business, all in all, from the Balkan grazing grounds to
the market stall, in a constant slither of orders, inspections, purchases, and
requisitions. Like any activity that needs unremitting oversight, it was open
to abuse.

The
kadi of the Kerkoporta market had taken up his job twenty years before and
earned himself a reputation for severity. A butcher who used false weights was
hanged at the doorway of his own shop. A greengrocer who lied about the
provenance of his fruit had his hands struck off. Others, who had gypped a
customer, perhaps, or slipped out of the official channels to procure bargain
stock, found themselves forced to wear a wide wooden collar for a few weeks, or
to pay a stiff fine, or to be nailed by the ear to the door of their own shop. The
Kerkoporta market had become a byword for honest dealing, and the kadi supposed
that he was doing everything for the best.

The
merchants found him officious, but they were divided as to the best way to deal
with him. A minority were for clubbing together to manufacture some complaint
against him from which he would be unlikely to recover; the majority shrugged
their shoulders and counseled patience. The kadi, some suggested, was merely
establishing his price. Will not an ambitious carpet dealer wax lyrical over
the colors and qualities and rarity of his carpet, as a prelude to negotiation?
Will not a young wrestler hurl all his strength into the contest, while the
older man uses no more than he actually needs to use? The time would come, they
argued, when the kadi would start to crack.