The Tournament (13 page)

As the rockets exploded and the crowd clapped, I glanced at the Sultan’s stage and saw a guard appear there and whisper in the ear of the Grand Vizier who—after a brief look of shock—whispered in the ear of the Sultan.

The Sultan cocked his head ever so slightly before resuming his happy observation of the fireworks display, giving away nothing.

Soon after, he left the stage, and with the departure of the sovereign, the banquet ended and gradually the Third Courtyard cleared as all the guests retired to their rooms for the night, greatly impressed by the dinner, the entertainment and the fireworks the Sultan had put on.

We returned to our quarters in the south pavilion. Mr Giles and Mr Ascham talked animatedly while I walked behind in silence. When we arrived at our lodgings, Mr Giles retired to his room while Elsie disappeared into the little room we shared.

Still troubled, I stopped my teacher as he made for his room.

‘Sir, a moment?’ I said softly.

‘Yes, Bess—’ He cut himself off. ‘By God, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. What’s wrong?’

‘I saw . . . I mean, Elsie and I . . . we saw something, in the Fourth Courtyard, something horrible—’

‘What did you see?’

I swallowed deeply. ‘We saw—’

‘
Make way for the Sultan!
’ a voice boomed from the hallway outside our rooms before the vestibule door was thrown open and four palace guards rushed inside. Striding in after them were, first, the Grand Vizier, and then Sultan Suleiman himself.

Mr Ascham and I stood with straight backs as though we were soldiers on parade. Mr Giles and Elsie emerged from their rooms, startled.

The Sultan spoke simply and directly.

‘There has been a murder in my palace. The visiting Cardinal Farnese. His body has been desecrated. The palace gates have been locked and patrolled since the banquet began, so the killer remains within these walls. I want him found.

‘You’—the Sultan stepped in front of my teacher—‘Mr Roger Ascham. I am advised by Michelangelo that you have distinguished yourself on several occasions in the unravelling of unusual crimes: a theft in Rome and a series of foul murders in England.’

‘I have, Your Majesty.’

‘You use logic as a tool, Michelangelo says.’

‘I did on those occasions.’

‘Does logic apply to the acts of madmen?’

‘It did in the Cumberland matter. A certain kind of woman harmed the killer as a child and so as an adult he attacked women of a similar kind.’

The Sultan gazed at Mr Ascham for a long moment, appraising him, taking this in.

‘A riddle for you, then,’ he said. ‘A test of your logical approach. A murderer is on the loose. The city lives in fear. The peasants in the slums think he kills men, women and children indiscriminately, but in truth he has killed two old mullahs, six young boys and three girls in their teens. His victims are always stabbed many times and once dead, the killer flays their cheeks and jawbones. Who is he and why does he do these things?’

My teacher returned the Sultan’s gaze. He thought for a good while before answering, and when at last he spoke, he did so slowly and in a most measured tone.

‘I would guess—from these very few facts you have given me—that your killer is a young man, perhaps sixteen years of age or thereabouts, and he has a facial deformity of some kind, a harelip or a tic. I would further posit that he is an idiot or of feeble mind or perhaps simply insane, but at the least he is a person of considerably low intellect.’

I listened in amazed silence. I couldn’t fathom how my teacher could deduce such specific things from so brief a postulation.

But he wasn’t finished.

He went on: ‘I draw these conclusions largely from the descriptions of the victims you have given me, for in purely logical terms, the nature of the victim can tell us something about the nature of the killer. Your killer sought solace from the two mullahs, but they told him he was an abomination, the spawn of Satan, that his deformity was an outward sign of inner impurity. In a frustrated rage, he killed them, stabbing them many times.’

‘Interesting. How do you know he is a
young
man?’ the Sultan asked.

‘Because of his other victims. You say he killed six boys,’ Mr Ascham said, ‘which means he killed more boys than he did any other group. I’m guessing the dead boys teased him about his disfigurement. Boys are cowards: they do not taunt full-grown adults or youths a lot older than they are, hence my guess that he is about sixteen. Similarly, the girls probably rejected his advances or tittered at his ugliness, and again, in an idiot’s rage, he slaughtered them.’

‘This is all based on
your
premise that he has a deformity,’ the Sultan said. ‘How do you know for certain that this is the case?’

‘The skinning of the faces of the victims,’ my teacher said. ‘He imposes on them in death the same disfigurement he bears in life. The final revenge.’

The Sultan pondered my teacher for a long time, taking in his conclusions. I myself was still somewhat stunned that my courteous and unassuming teacher could apply his logical mind so skilfully to so gruesome a riddle.

Mr Ascham asked, ‘This murder that occurred inside your palace tonight, does it bear any similarities to the ones you have just described to me?’

‘It does. And I find your deductions most intriguing, most intriguing. You will come with me. Now.’

My teacher was whisked away by the Sultan and his men.

I did not go with him. I returned to the room I shared with Elsie to find Elsie whipping off her evening gown and putting on a different dress, the light silk thing that she had bought in the Grand Bazaar.

‘What are you doing?’ I whispered.

‘I am going to the Crown Prince’s gathering, of course,’ she said. ‘Now that your boring old schoolmaster is occupied elsewhere, this is the perfect chance to slip away. I thought you said you might come, too.’

‘Oh, no,’ I said quickly. ‘No.’ I found boys interesting, yes, but a gathering—with wine and dancing and young men—was not something I felt confident attending at all. Nor did I like the idea of venturing out into the night on an evening when a man had been murdered. But most of all, I was simply worried about Mr Ascham and I wanted to be here when he returned. I didn’t like Elsie calling him boring.

‘Have it your way,’ Elsie said before sweeping out of the room lightly on her toes, carrying her sandals in her hands, leaving me standing there in our room alone.

An hour later, I heard the outer door to our rooms open and close. My teacher had returned.

I hadn’t slept. I couldn’t. I had just sat on my bed and waited tensely, waited for the sound of that door opening. I sagged with relief when I heard Mr Giles greet my teacher. ‘Roger, what the Devil is going on?’

Sitting with my ear to the curtain that separated my room from the vestibule, I listened in on the subsequent conversation between Mr Giles and my teacher.

Mr Ascham said, ‘The Sultan took me to a special dungeon, separate from the main dungeons beneath the Tower of Justice, deep within the palace. It is a series of cages built into the bones of some old Roman ruins. You won’t believe what he showed me.’

‘What?’ Mr Giles asked.

‘In one of the cages of this dungeon was a mute boy of about sixteen with a ghastly harelip and the deep brown skin of a tannery worker. He scurried around the cell more like an ape than a man, grunting like an animal. He had the mind of a small child.’

‘You were right . . .’

‘I was. But then the Sultan said: “My men caught this lad six days ago, standing over the body of his latest victim. We have not told anyone that the killer has been caught. And now, tonight, I have a high-ranking cardinal from Rome, the Pope’s brother, killed in an identical manner. Can you explain
this
with your logic, Mr Roger Ascham?”

‘“Did the boy escape from his cell during the banquet?” I asked the Sultan.

‘“No,” he said. “He was here the whole time. Which means I have a problem.”

‘“You do,” I said. “You have another killer on the loose, one who is shrewd enough to impersonate the insane boy in an attempt to conceal his own crime.”

‘“Yes,” the Sultan said darkly. “Like many royal courts, mine is a den of ambition and intrigue, deception and flattery, of men and women who would curry my favour to enhance their stature or get into my bed. Add to that the foreign ambassadors who report my every move to their masters and one will see that it is a tangled web of enmities, alliances and outright scheming. I trust no-one.

‘“But you, Roger Ascham, you come here with no agenda and a reputation for acumen which you have just proved to me: with but a few facts, you were able to describe this deranged boy whom you had never seen before almost to the last detail.” ‘The Sultan said, “The cardinal’s body has been removed from view, but word of his death will get out. Keeping rumours at bay in a palace is impossible. And so I will allow the fiction that Cardinal Farnese was killed by the insane fiend to continue, but in the meantime,
I want his killer found
.

‘“I need an outsider, someone with no connection to this palace, to investigate this crime and find the murderer. And I need that investigation performed without compromising my tournament. The criminal behind this wanted to embarrass me in front of the world and he almost succeeded.

‘“My tournament will thus go ahead as planned, but as it does, I want you to find this killer and bring him before me. Will you accept this task?”

‘What could I say?’ my teacher said to Mr Giles. ‘I did not come here to meddle in palace intrigues or investigate murders. Indeed, I found the whole Cumberland affair for which I am now apparently famous to be wholly unpleasant. Plus, I have to watch over young Bess. Bringing her to Byzantium was already a bold thing to do. I didn’t expect something like
this
to be added to it. But he is the Sultan. What option did I have? So I just said, “Your Majesty, I will do my best to find your killer.”’

SHORTLY AFTERWARD, MR ASCHAM
and Mr Giles retired, and so did I.

But still I couldn’t sleep. Myriad images swirled inside my mind: of the cardinal’s fat naked body in the rippling pool, of his grotesque half-skinned face, of fireworks exploding, guards running and gates slamming shut.

Beside me, Elsie’s bed lay glaringly empty.

I stared at it a little jealously. I envied Elsie’s ability to think only of herself at such a time. I couldn’t help but put myself in the minds of others. I imagined the dead man’s no doubt horrifying final moments. I imagined the Sultan’s fury. I thought of my teacher and this great new obligation foisted upon him: to be personally commissioned by a sovereign often reduced the most resolute gentleman to a quivering wreck; my father had executed men for failing him in matters far less important than this. And lastly, I thought of Mr Ascham’s consideration of me in the whole affair: he still worried about me. Perhaps Elsie was better off living life the way she did.

Evidently, my teacher also couldn’t sleep. Sometime after midnight, I heard him pad out into our vestibule. He was pacing, thinking. Then he apparently came to a decision because he ducked back into his room and returned a few moments later wearing his boots and leather longcoat. He was heading out.

I pushed through the curtains.

‘Sir, where are you going at this hour?’

‘Bess?’ He looked at me askance, realising. ‘You heard my conversation with Giles, didn’t you? About the cardinal’s murder and the deranged boy in the dungeon?’

I nodded.

‘Then you know of my newfound commission.’

I nodded again.

Mr Ascham sighed. ‘I cannot sleep. I have too many thoughts running around my head. The Sultan has given me complete freedom of movement and action inside the palace, so I thought I might go downstairs and examine the body of the slain cardinal.’

‘May I come with you?’ I asked. ‘I too cannot sleep.’

Mr Ascham suddenly looked at me very closely. ‘Wait a moment.
This
was what ailed you earlier, when you wanted to speak with me, wasn’t it? But then we were interrupted by the arrival of the Sultan. Do you know something about this matter, Bess?’

‘I saw the cardinal’s body. It was horrible, just lying there in the shallow pool—’

‘Wait, wait, wait. You saw the body
as the murderer left it
?’

‘Yes, sir, I did. But I didn’t mean to . . .’

Mr Ascham held up his hand, digesting this revelation. ‘Don’t apologise, you did nothing wrong. In fact, you may be of some use. Can you show me where you saw it?’

‘Why, yes, of course.’

My teacher frowned in thought. Clearly, he was weighing up his options: the help I could provide him versus the dangers of exposing a young princess of England to further gruesome sights.

‘You have a stronger constitution and a sharper mind than many adults I know, Bess. But there is a fiend on the loose here and your father will have my head if anything happens to you. Although’—a strange look passed over his face—‘it
could
actually be good for you. What better lesson for a potential future queen: to peer through a window into the hearts of men’s souls.’