The Janissary Tree (45 page)

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"Was
there a twist?" The valide smiled. "I like a twist."

"Yes,"
Yashim said. He thought of telling the unvarnished truth but knew that it would
never make a proper story. "The seraskier was rotten to the core. He planned
the whole thing."

The
valide clapped her hands. "I knew it!" she cried. "How did you guess?

"It
was a number of little things." Yashim told her how eager the seraskier had
been to spread panic at the murders, at which the valide nodded vigorously and
said that he was obviously being used. How, exactly, had the men been murdered,
she wanted to know.

And
Yashim told her.

He
explained that his friend Palewski had spoken with the seraskier in French at a
cafe one evening.

"When
he denied all knowledge of it! Ha ha!" The valide wagged a finger.

He
told her then about the Russian, Potemkin.

"What
a villain!" The valide snorted. "Ruined by his scar, no doubt. He must have
been charming, in his way, to lure the fellows into his carriage. But all the
same," she added, putting the image of the wounded charmer to one side and
considering the practicalities, "what did the Russians have to gain by getting
involved?"

And
Yashim told her.

"They're
poised for a takeover of Istanbul," he said. "Ever since the days of the
Byzantines they've dreamed of the city. It was the second Rome-- and Moscow is
the third. They wanted anarchy in Istanbul. They didn't care how it happened--a
Janissary coup, the seraskier going mad and proclaiming himself ruler,
anything. If the House of Osman was extinguished, imagine the consequences! They're
camped a week or so away. They'd claim to be restoring order, or to be
protecting the Orthodox, or to being sucked into the vortex one way or another,
it wouldn't matter how. Just so long as they could occupy the city and provide
themselves with a reasonable excuse afterward, when the European powers started
kicking up a fuss. The French, the English, they're terrified of letting the
Russians in--but once they're in, they'd be here to stay. Look at the Crimea."

"What
brutes!" the valide breathed. The Crimea had been taken by the Russians, by a
combination of threats and stealth and bloody war. "They backed the Greeks, as
well!"

"Everyone
backed the Greeks," Yashim reminded her soberly, "but certainly the Russians
lit the spark there, too."

The
valide was silent.

"To
think that all this was hovering over our heads while I dealt with the kislar
in the palace," she said after a pause. "I thought that was a drama, but it was
a sideshow."

"Not
really," Yashim suggested. "If the seraskier's plans hadn't come off--and they
didn't, did they--there would still have been a revolution, but for you. A
counterrevolution, as they call it, going back to the old ways."

"We
should thank the girl, of course. Asul," the valide pointed out. "I've seen
plays, you know. When I was young, I saw them in Dominique. I suppose you might
say I set the scene; but she performed the final act. Thanks to you, Yashim."

Yashim
bowed his head.

The
valide reached for a bag by her divan and pulled the string at its mouth.

"I've
got just the thing for you," she said.

She
fished inside the bag and brought out a book with a paper cover. She held it up
between her two hands and let Yashim read the title, emblazoned in red.

"
Le
Pere Goriot
," he read. "By Honore de Balzac."

"There."
She held it out. "Quite disgusting, I'm afraid."

"What
makes you give it to me?"

"They
say it's all the rage in Paris. I've read it now, and it's about corruption,
deceit, greed, lies."

She
patted the cover of the book and held it out to Yashim.

"Sometimes,
you know, I am so glad I never got to see France."