The Janissary Tree (39 page)

A
wrestler, Yashim thought. The man was completely shaved. His neck sloped into
his big shoulders, which bulged from the armholes of a sleeveless leather
jerkin. The leather was black and glistened as though it had been oiled. He was
short legged, Yashim noticed, his bare feet planted a yard apart on the rug,
knees bent, slim waisted. There was no sign of a weapon beyond the string in
his right fist.

A
man who could crack me apart without even trying, Yashim thought. He took a
backward step, sliding his bare feet on the polished boards.

The
man gave a grunt and lunged forward, lowering his head like a ram, coming at
Yashim with surprising speed. Yashim flung back his arm as he leaped backward
and swept his hand across the kitchen block. His fingers felt the knife, but
they only knocked it: it must have spun, for when he tried to close on the hilt
his fingers met in the air, and as the wrestler's huge shoulder crashed against
his midriff he was rammed back hard against the block with a force that made
his head whiplash. He gasped for breath and felt the wrestler's arms fly upward
to pinion his own.

Yashim
knew that if the wrestler got him in his grip, he was finished. He lunged to
the right, throwing all the weight of his upper body against the wrestler's
rising arm, flinging his own arms out at the same time to grab at the handle of
the stockpot. With a wrench he snatched it up and swung it around over the
man's shoulder, but the lid was stuck and he had no room to do more than swing
the pot and clamp it against the wrestler's back before his arm was caught in
his grip.

A
band of leather was sewn around the collar of the man's jerkin, and as the pot
slid up the lid must have snagged against it. The man flipped back as the
boiling stock sloshed over his neck, and he let Yashim go.

The
surprise on the assassin's face when he slammed his taloned hand into Yashim's
groin and squeezed down hard was palpable. Certainly more palpable than
Yashim's groin.

The
assassin jerked back his arm as if he'd been stung. Yashim slid his right hand
up the assassin's left arm as hard as he could and then brought his left down
hard, gripping his wrist as he pivoted the man's arm against his own hand. There
was a crack and the arm went limp. The assassin clutched at it with his right,
and in a moment Yashim had taken his right wrist out away from his body and with
a heave sent the assassin curving in an arc that brought him around, doubled
up, and his right arm in a tight hold. The assassin had neither screamed nor
spoken a word.

Five
minutes later, and the man had still not spoken. He had barely grunted. Yashim was
at a loss.

And
then Yashim saw why the man had failed to speak. He had no tongue.

Yashim
wondered if the mute could write. "Can you write?" he hissed in the man's ear. The
look was blank. A deaf-mute? Long ago, in the days of Suleiman the Magnificent,
it had been decreed that only deaf-mutes should attend the person of the
sultan. It was a way of ensuring that nothing was overheard, that nothing they
saw could be communicated to the outside world. They signed at one another
instead: ixarette, the secret language of the Ottoman court, was a complex sign
language that anyone, hearing or deaf, speaking or dumb, was expected to master
in the palace service.

The
palace service.

A
deaf-mute.

Frantically,
Yashim began to sign.

115

***********

At
the other end of the city, Preen the
kdfek
dancer lay back on the
divan, staring at the dark window.

A
jet-black wig of real hair, bolstered with horsehair plucked from the tail, was
draped over a stand. Her pots of makeup, her brushes and tweezers, stood unused
on the dressing table.

Preen
tried to wriggle her frozen shoulder. The bandages the horse doctor had applied
creaked. When it came to treating breaks and bruises, the girls always turned
to the horse doctor: he had more practice and experience in a month than
ordinary sawbones saw in a lifetime, as Mina said, because the Turks looked
after their horses even better than themselves. He had probed Preen's twisted
shoulder and diagnosed a sprain.

"Nothing
broken, God be praised," he said. "When my patients break something, we shoot
them."

Preen
had laughed for the first time since her attack. Laughter wasn't the only
medicine the horse doctor used, either: he had salved her shoulder and neck
with a preparation of horse chestnut. He had then applied the bandages and
painted the result with hot gum.

"Tastes
dreadful," he observed. "And stops the loops from sagging and coming apart. Whether
or not it is medically necessary, who knows? But I'm too old to change my
prescriptions."

The
gum had set and dried, and now it creaked whenever Preen moved her shoulder. At
least she could work her fingers: two days ago they had been swollen and
immovable. Mina had come to help her eat, bringing the tripe soup she loved in
an earthenware bowl. Apart from the horse doctor and her friend Mina, Preen had
no visitors: she had resolved to turn even Yashim away, should he come. Without
her war paint she felt sure that she looked a fright.

She
looked different, certainly. Her own hair was cropped close to a downy fluff,
and her skin was very pale; yet Mina could see in the shape of her head and the
high-boned face more than a trace of the boy she had once been, eager and
fragile at the same time. With her big brown eyes she had pleaded with Mina to
stay the night, and Mina had curled up beside her friend and watched her sleep.

On
the third morning, Preen had had to tell her landlady that she had no intention
of paying extra for her so-called guest. The conversation had been conducted
through the door, because Preen refused to let the old woman come in.

"Perhaps
I should deduct rent when I am not home for the night?" she called out. "It is
your fault, anyway, that I have to have a nurse. I trusted you to keep an eye
on people coming and going! And you let in a murderer!"

There
was an outraged silence, and Preen grinned. Nothing could be more mortifying to
the landlady than to be accused of slackness when it came to peering through
her lattice. It was like doubting her faith.

That
was earlier. Now Mina was coming in with bread and soup for their supper.

She
helped prop Preen upright on the divan and handed her a bowl.

"You're
missing a lot of excitement, darling," she said, sitting on the edge of the
divan. "A positive invasion of handsome young men."

She
arched her eyebrows. "Men in tight trousers! The New Guard."

Preen
rolled her eyes.

"Doing
what, exactly?"

"That's
what I asked them. Taking up
positions,
they said. Well, I couldn't
resist it, could I? I said I could show them a few they hadn't thought of."

They
giggled.

"But
what does it mean?" Preen demanded.

"It's
for protection, apparently. All that plotting and killing, it's coming to a
head. Oh, Preen, I'm sorry--you look white as a sheet. I didn't mean-- I mean,
I'm sure it's got nothing to do with what happened the other day. Look, why
don't you ask your gentleman friend?"

"Yashim?"

"That's
right, dear. Yashim. Come on, eat your soup and put on your face. I'll help
you. You can walk, can't you? We'll get a chair and go and find him right now."

The
truth, of course, was that Mina was getting just a tiny bit bored of her
nursing duties. She fancied an outing, especially when there was something
exciting going on outside. So she was her most persuasive and overruled Preen's
doubts.

"It's
just that--I don't feel safe," Preen admitted.

"Nonsense,
darling. I'll be with you, and we'll find your friend. It'll be fun, who knows?
You'll be perfectly safe going out. Just as safe as staying here. Safer."

Later,
Preen was to remember that remark.

116

***********

YASHIM,
as it happened, was already dealing with his second visitor of the evening.

Palewski
had come up the stairs to sniff the aroma on Yashim's landing, but for once he
was disappointed. There was a faint smell of onions, he imagined, and perhaps
boiled carrot, but the insubstantial clues failed to gel: it could be any
number of recipes. Then he noticed the shoes, a pair of sturdy leather sandals.

Company,
he supposed. He knocked on the door.

There
was a slight delay, and the door opened an inch.

"Thank
God it's you," Yashim said, pulling the door open and scooping Palewski through
into the room.

Palewski
almost dropped his valise in surprise. Yashim was holding a large kitchen
knife, not that it mattered. What struck his notice instead was the body of a huge
man, facedown on the carpet, largely enveloped in a knotted sheet.

"I've
got to do something about this maniac," Yashim said shortly. "I've tied his
wrists with the corner of a sheet, but now I'm out of ideas."

Palewski
blinked. He looked at Yashim, and back at the body on the floor. He realized
that the man was breathing hard.

"Perhaps
what you need," he said quietly, fumbling at his waist, "is this."

He
held out a long cord, made of twisted silk and gold thread.

"It
went with my dressing gown. My Sarmatian finery, I should say."

Together,
they bound the man's wrists tightly behind his back. Yashim undid the sheet and
wrapped it around his legs: the man was so docile that Palewski found it hard
to credit what Yashim was saying.

"A
wrestler?" Then he silently mouthed the word: "Janissary?"

"Don't
worry, he can't hear, poor bastard. No, not a Janissary. It's odder than that. Worse
than I thought. Look, I have to reach the palace immediately. I don't know what
I could have done with this fellow if you hadn't come. Will you stay? Keep an
eye on him? Prick him if he tries to move."

Palewski
was staring at him in horror.

"For
God's sake, Yash. Can't we get him to the night watch?"

"There
isn't time. Give me an hour. There's bread and olives. You can leave him here
after that. If he gets free, so be it--though you could try knocking him on the
head with a saucepan before you go. For my sake."

"All
right, all right, I'll stay," Palewski grumbled. "But it's not what I joined
for, you know. One night, intimate conversation with the sultan. Next night,
quiet evening with friends. Third night, silent vigil over murderous
three-hundred-pound wrestling deaf-mute. I think I'll have a drink," he added,
sliding his valise closer.

But
Yashim was hardly listening.

"It's
two I owe you," he said over his shoulder, as he cleared the top flight of
stairs in a single jump.

117

***********

The
Kara Davut was always busy on a Friday night. The shopkeepers and cafe owners
set out lanterns above their doorways, and after mosque, families paraded up
and down the street, stopping for a sherbet or an ice, queuing for hot street
food and thronging the coffee shops. Children chased each other in and out of
the crowds, shouting and laughing, only occasionally called to order by their
indulgent parents. Young men gathered around cafe tables, those who could
afford it sitting with a coffee, the others at their elbows chatting and trying
to catch a glimpse of the local girls, decorously swathed in chador and
yashmak, who walked accompanied by their parents, but all the time signaling
with their gait and the movement of their heads and hands.

Yashim
didn't think he was imagining that the atmosphere tonight was different. The
street was as full as ever, even more crowded than usual, but the children
seemed quieter, as if they were playing on a shorter rein, and the knots of
youths in the cafes seemed larger and more subdued.

This
impression of subdued expectation didn't evaporate as Yashim hurried toward the
palace. He had failed to find a chair and guessed that the chairmen would
contribute to the confusion approaching the city: if not ex-Janissaries, they
were still a rough crew, the sort of men who went to swell a mob or serve the
rabble if they scented an opportunity.

As
he half walked, half jogged through the streets and alleys, he was surprised to
meet no soldiers on the way, none of the little platoons the seraskier had
forecast at every street corner. How soon would they secure the city?

He
had an answer of a kind as he swept out of the maze of streets behind Aya Sofia
and onto the open ground that lay between the mosque and the walls of the
Seraglio. A pair of uniformed guardsmen ran toward him, shouting: behind them
he could see that the whole space was occupied by soldiers, some on horseback,
several platoons in what looked like a drill formation, and others simply
sitting quietly on the ground with their legs crossed, waiting for
instructions. Beyond them he thought he could make out the silhouettes of
mounted cannon and mortars.