The Tournament (27 page)

Scandalous as such a view was, I couldn’t disagree with my teacher.

The Sultan smiled grimly. ‘You are most kind in your appraisal of my kingdom and I see that you are genuine. But the reality, I fear, is more complex.’

The Sultan caught himself for a moment, as if he was deciding whether or not to say more. He clearly decided that he would.

‘Mr Roger Ascham, you are a wise and clever man, so I will be candid with you. Imposing as my empire is, the
ummah
faces more internal challenges than external ones. I have worked very hard to make the Moslem world one of laws—so much so that my people call me the Lawgiver—but it has been a struggle every step of the way.

‘Ever since the death of the great Prophet, blessings and peace be upon him, Islam has been a faith divided. It is split into two competing factions: the Sunni and the Shia. The former are more progressive and believe in the legitimacy of the caliphs as leaders of the faith; the latter claim that only those who are descendants of the Prophet himself can lead.

‘My people are most ingenious. When the Roman lands to the west fell to barbarism, we retained the Greek texts, learned from them, and built grand cities and machines of war. My greatest problem is that the Shia have decided that any advancements are distractions from paying due observance to Allah. Worse, they preach that to advance is to be
against
Allah.

‘I have grave issues with this because it preaches honour in backwardness. And now I see the West rising again, rising every year, and it observes no similar restriction on advancement. I worry that the more the Shias preach backwardness as a virtue, the more the
ummah
will be overtaken by the West. How sad would it be if in five hundred years from now the kingdom of Islam is no further advanced than it is today?’

‘Can that be possible?’ Mr Ascham asked.

‘You would be amazed at what people can do and say in the name of piety. Right now, the most zealous of the Shia are agitating for even stricter laws against women: they want to ban women from showing their faces in public, their
faces
.’

I glanced at my teacher. I wanted to mention what had been discussed the day before with Michelangelo and Ignatius, but Mr Ascham shook his head imperceptibly.

The Sultan went on sadly, ‘The Prophet loved women, loved what they bring to this world. The world is beautiful precisely because of the balance between masculine and feminine energies. A society that is too masculine is destined to forever be at the mercy of men’s anger. My great fear is that my culture has reached its peak and is poised to decline from here, riven from within.’

The Sultan stared at the floor.

My teacher said softly, ‘I was aware of the schism in your faith but I was unaware of how bad things had become.’

I was also surprised. I was amazed at the notion that the culture that had built the magnificent metropolis of Constantinople might be at the zenith of its achievement. I looked at the Sultan’s grave expression and I saw a man staring into the abyss of a dark and frightening future.

In the West, royal courts worried about an all-conquering Islamic army rampaging across Christendom, and here the Sultan was seriously contemplating the possibility of his empire collapsing in on itself.

At that moment, the sadrazam appeared at the Sultan’s side and handed him something, a note of some sort, accompanied by a whispered message.

‘Thank you.’ The Sultan waved him away, then turned back to Mr Ascham. ‘So, how go your investigations?’

‘I am discovering many things,’ my teacher said, not untruthfully.

‘But have you discovered who murdered Cardinal Farnese yet?’

‘No. It seems everyone I seek to question on the matter meets an untimely end. First, the chef and his wife, then most recently the Austrian chess player, Maximilian.’

‘Do not concern yourself with the death of the Austrian player,’ the Sultan said simply, looking away.

‘But he was seen speaking with Brunello on several occas—’

‘You are to concentrate on the murder of the cardinal. The chess player’s death does not concern you.’ The Sultan then held up the note that the sadrazam had just given to him.

I caught my breath at the sight of it.

It was the same note Mr Ascham had shown me the night before, the one he had taken from the secret compartment in Maximilian’s shoe heel. While we had been here in the Hagia Sophia, the Sultan’s men had been in our rooms.

The Sultan indicated the code at the top of the note. ‘See these numbers and letters: “N – 16 K 20 G, 6 r”. It is a reference to my northern military dock. Right now, in that dock sit sixteen warships—or as they are known in German,
Kriegsschiffe
—twenty galleys—
Galeeren
—and six ramming ships, or
Rammschiffe
. Maximilian was a spy for Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, reporting back to him on my naval strength.’

At that moment, something became clear in my mind: the fishy-salty smell on Maximilian’s soles. It was not the smell of a kitchen but of a dock. The grey powder was gunpowder and the spots of blood found on them were the specks of spilled blood commonly found on a military dock.

The Sultan continued: ‘The virgin was also a spy. Her task was to report on my unvarnished moods, opinions, reactions and demeanour, as witnessed by her in the privacy of my Harem. As I said, I would prefer that you target your efforts on deaths that I do
not
know the cause of.’

My teacher swallowed hard. ‘As you wish.’

Just then, perhaps fortuitously, the sadrazam reappeared at the Sultan’s side. ‘Sire, that other matter has been taken care of. And your lunch with the Imam is prepared.’

The Sultan nodded. ‘Thank you. I shall come when this game is over—’

A collective gasp from the crowd made us all look around.

Vladimir had just taken Zaman’s queen.

The crowd murmured uncomfortably.

A familiar voice from my right piped up and said something in a Slavic tongue. It was Prince Ivan encouraging his player.

He saw me and said in English, ‘Princess Elizabeth. My man has the measure of this Persian. Zaman is good but he is no match for a player of Vlad’s skill.’

‘Do not speak too soon, Ivan. Pride goeth before a fall,’ I said.

Ivan said, ‘We take chess very seriously in Muscovy and we breed our players tough. Vlad has him figured out. I hope that your man does not find himself sitting across the board from Vlad, for I fear that Vlad will make short work of him, too.’

As Ivan turned back to watch the match, I observed him for a moment. There was a definite intensity to him, but it was an earnest type of intensity. More than anything, he just wanted respect; for himself, his people, his duchy. I saw him as a future ruler: intelligent and proud but forever vexed by the way other nations looked down their noses at his principality.

A short time later, Vladimir won the first game—and rather easily, too, it must be said. Ivan looked over at me and gave me a knowing nod.

At that point, the Sultan abruptly stood and thus so did everyone else in the hall. ‘Please excuse me,’ he said to my teacher, ‘I must depart for a short time. The duties of a ruler never cease. It has been most interesting talking with you. Please, continue your investigations.’

Then he bowed politely and left the hall.

I was about to head back to our regular seats when my teacher did a most precocious and presumptuous thing. He leaned over to the queen and said in Greek, ‘Your Highness? Might I indulge a word?’

The queen eyed my teacher coolly, but after a moment nodded. ‘A very brief one.’

AS THE SECOND GAME
of Zaman’s and Vladimir’s match began, our chairs were brought beside the queen’s throne.

‘Are you enjoying the tournament, Your Highness?’ Mr Ascham whispered politely.

‘Very much so.’

‘You play chess yourself?’

‘A little.’

‘Forgive me, but I have never had the opportunity to ask this of an actual queen and I must take this chance: do you, as a queen, delight in the fact that the most powerful piece on a chessboard is the queen?’

‘I confess to taking some pleasure in the notion, yes.’

She was speaking blandly, idly, indulging my teacher, her eyes fixed on the match.

Then Mr Ascham whispered, ‘Are you aware that Cardinal Cardoza knows of your affair with the wrestler, Darius, and extracts unnatural favours from Darius in exchange for keeping your liaison secret?’

The queen blinked.

Once.

Her head did not move as she continued to gaze out at Zaman’s ongoing match. It was barely perceptible, but I saw her swallow before she turned to face my teacher.

‘I am aware, Mr Roger Ascham of Cambridge, England, that my husband has enlisted your aid in unravelling the murder of the visiting cardinal. I was not aware that I had become the subject of your investigation.’

‘Your Highness, I seek only the truth.’

‘The truth is not always worth finding.’

‘Are you aware that Cardoza knows of your affair and extracts favours from Darius in exchange for keeping it secret?’

A long pause. Then the queen said, ‘I am and I am not.’

‘You will have to explain that to me further.’

‘I do not
have
to do anything, for I am a queen and you are not. Remember this, Englishman. I am aware that Cardinal Cardoza knows of my dalliance. He has known for two weeks now and in that time he has pressed
me
for certain favours. Not of the carnal variety—the cardinal does not like women—but of a royal nature. Intervening when his priests are caught molesting boys in their confessionals, freeing them from the Sultan’s jail with a word to the guards.’

‘And how, then, are you not aware?’

The queen bowed her head.

‘I was not aware that my Darius had given his body to the cardinal as payment for his silence,’ she said softly. ‘I fail to see, however, what connection this has with your inquiries into the death of Cardinal Farnese.’

‘If my theory on the matter is correct, it holds a most important connection.’

‘And what is that theory?’ the queen asked.

I leaned forward, listening intently, for until then, beyond a single cryptic comment about Cardinal Farnese being murdered by mistake, I myself did not know the theory that had been formulating in my teacher’s mind.

Mr Ascham said, ‘I believe that Cardinal Farnese was killed by accident and that the mutilation of his face in the manner of the lunatic was a sham perpetrated by the killer to disguise his, or her, error.’

‘An accident?’ the queen said, giving voice to my own silent confusion.

‘Yes,’ my teacher said. ‘For, you see, Cardinal Farnese died from poisoning, not from his ghastly wounds. But this is something of a paradox because, as I see it, no-one in this palace had a truly compelling reason to murder the visiting cardinal. But several people, including you and your lover, the chef and a whoremonger, had great reasons to murder Cardinal
Cardoza
.’

My breath caught. This was the first I had heard of this and it made an odd kind of sense.

‘It is my theory,’ Mr Ascham went on, ‘that Cardinal Farnese, dining in Cardinal Cardoza’s private rooms, ate from Cardinal
Cardoza
’s plate and inadvertently ate poisoned food intended for Cardinal Cardoza. I am of the belief that every murder is committed for a reason, a logical reason that benefits the murderer. I am thus on the hunt for the person or persons who would benefit from Cardinal Cardoza’s death, and you, Your Highness, are one such person.’

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My teacher, speaking ever so boldly, was all but accusing the Sultan’s wife of murder.

The queen did not move, kept staring forward.

Then, oddly, her lips curved into a smile.

‘Mr Ascham, one does not rise from slave to concubine to queen without knowing how to navigate an imperial court and arrange for the removal of certain rivals. If I desire someone to be killed, then killed they will be. If I were to tell my dear husband that you, for example, were vexing me, by tomorrow morning you would find yourself at the bottom of the Sea of Marmara with your ankles tied to an old cannon. On the other hand, I could simply order that you be strangled in your sleep tonight.

‘I do not need to kill in secret or via the subterfuge of poison, sir. Like the queen in chess, I wait for my moment and when I move, I move brutally and decisively. But the queen in chess is not invincible—she can be taken by any other piece; likewise, she can also be trapped on a square and be forced to bide her time before she can emerge to wreak her vengeance.’

The queen’s tone was icy and perfectly calm despite the subject matter.

I found myself shaking, my heart beating ever faster.

Clearly, Cardinal Cardoza had boxed her in, but from what I was hearing—if I was interpreting her correctly—the queen was planning retaliatory action against him.

‘Your Highness is very direct in both her words and, apparently, her actions,’ my teacher said. ‘I hope I do not find myself on the receiving end of them merely for carrying out the Sultan’s investigation.’