“Quite right, hanum efendi,” Hyacinth began. “But the Kislar aga-”
Talfa waved him off. “Does the valide know this girl is here?”
“I’m not sure, hanum ef-”
“That’s enough. The girl can speak. She can tell me why she has come to Topkapi. Well?”
Melda’s eyes flickered uncertainly toward the elderly eunuch, then down to the floor again. Talfa’s expression tightened. Hyacinth wrung his hands, and his head bobbed low. “Hanum efendi, you will allow me to interject. Melda is only staying with us for a short while, until she regains her-her strength. She has had”-he fluttered his fingers in the air, looking for the permissible euphemism-“an inauspicious occurrence, a shock, exactly, so the Kislar aga and Yashim efendi had her sent to us, to recover.”
“Ah!” Talfa barked, as if she had got the truth at last. “Yashim!”
Hyacinth bowed again, and said nothing. He had served in the palace for a long time.
Talfa continued to study the downcast girl. At length her expression softened, and she almost smiled.
“Come, come, little one. I don’t bite, you know.” She tittered, and heaved herself off the divan. “Necla, my love, I want you to stay here a little longer, on my account.” She patted her daughter’s hand. “It’s Melda, isn’t it? Let’s go somewhere quiet, just you and me, and we’ll have a little talk. Let’s see what your auntie Talfa can do for you. Eh?”
She took Melda’s hand in hers.
“Come on, my dear. I know just the spot. I was born at Topkapi, after all.” She turned to Hyacinth, and scrunched up her plump face with amusement. “Don’t look so worried, Hyacinth. Melda and I can have a little chat, and you can look after Necla.”
Hyacinth smiled uncertainly, and bowed. It was a deep bow, because he felt that something was wrong, and when he straightened up, Talfa and the girl were gone.
92
Darkness was falling when Yashim arrived at the Polish residency. As he climbed the stairs he heard the sound of a violin, and when he entered the drawing room Palewski motioned him to an armchair with a swoop of the fiddle under his chin.
He sat for several minutes, eyes closed, pondering the story of Fevzi Ahmet’s youth, the sister’s death, the father’s curse. He only noticed that Palewski had finished playing when the ambassador flopped into the neighboring chair.
Yashim opened his eyes. “Why do you think Fevzi Ahmet chose to defect?”
“Bitterness and greed,” Palewski replied, as if the answer were obvious.
Yashim turned his head. “You think he took Egyptian gold?” He sounded curious.
“I imagine,” Palewski answered more slowly, “that he took Egypt’s gratitude. The gold, I am afraid, was Russian. It often is.”
“But why, if he was working for the Russians, did Fevzi Pasha kill the man in the well?”
Palewski shrugged.
Yashim said moodily, “Husrev Pasha thinks the same as you.”
“Well, I may say that the grand vizier is not a fool. Istanbul is vulnerable without a fleet-and the Russians are very close already.” Palewski sighed. “I’m afraid Fevzi Pasha’s defection makes it likely that they will come, as they might say, to protect the city.”
“The European Powers won’t like that much,” Yashim said.
“Perhaps not,” Palewski said, and Yashim could hear the doubt in his voice. “And they should have thought about that twelve years ago, when they helped the Greeks get independence. I hate to say it, Yash, but your empire hasn’t many friends.”
“The French-or the English-wouldn’t let the Russians take it over,” Yashim said, stoutly.
“If it meant crowning the tsar in Ayasofya, no, they wouldn’t like that. But the Russians can afford to play it softly. They’ve been waiting centuries to restore the empire of orthodoxy to its original seat-Constantinople. A loose protectorate might be a useful start.”
He crossed to his shelves and dragged down an atlas.
“Whatever they say at the British Foreign Office-or on the Quai d’Orsay-about letting Russians into Constantinople, an independent Bulgaria would be popular with public opinion. Free the Moldavians?” He stabbed a finger at the map. “Give the Greeks a Black Sea state? Let the Walachians choose a king? Nations, that’s what the British cotton millers understand. And black the sultan’s eye, into the bargain? They’d love it, Yash.”
“And you? You’d like it too?”
Palewski ran his fingers distractedly through his hair. “I ask only for Poland,” he said. “A Russian Constantinople is not the way.”
“You’re sure?”
“The English cotton millers, Yashim, live far away. They stand in little danger of being spattered with the blood of the Bulgarians, or the Turks, or the Moldavians, if Russia decides to assume control. It would be very bloody. And Russia would be stronger.”
He seemed to sag over the atlas. After a moment he shut it, and walked to the window.
“It would be strange, wouldn’t it, if your Fevzi Pasha’s defection led to women and children being hounded to death in the Balkan hills?” He spread his arms and rested his hands on the sash. “I’m beginning to think that something needs to be done.”
“And yet,” Yashim said sadly, “we have no friends.”
“But between rulers there are no friendships. Only alliances of interest. And your empire, I’m afraid, has failed to provide them. Leaving the state even weaker than it appears.”
“No one to help?”
Palewski caught his eye. “No help that I can think of, Yash. And I am sorry, for all our sakes.”
93
Hyacinth shuffled across the frozen cobbles. The lady Talfa had gone home but the valide had been fretful all afternoon and he was feeling tired. His feet ached and the cold assaulted him when he stepped outside.
One little thing, Hyacinth thought, might cheer him up right now. The old lala s were drinking coffee, but coffee was always bitter, however much sugar you put in.
Tulin would never mind if he took a little piece of chocolate.
He would have asked her to prepare him some, the way she did; but there was orchestra rehearsal at Besiktas and Tulin was not due back until later.
He reached her door and turned the handle. It was almost dark inside, but the room was small and he had no doubt that he could find the chocolate easily. There would be a jar somewhere, and he could dip a finger into the dark, bitter flakes. Perhaps she would never have to know.
There was a jar. Hyacinth opened it expectantly, and shook it, and sniffed. It wasn’t chocolate.
He set the jar back on the floor and squatted on his hams, surprised. The corner of the room was full of jars. Not only jars: there were packets in paper, and little wooden boxes, and clay pots, and some tiny brass containers with lids. He opened one at random: it was a sticky paste that smelled familiar.
Hyacinth’s mouth turned down at the corners.
Chocolate was one thing. But as he opened one pot after another, and poked his fingers into packets and boxes, the turn of Hyacinth’s mouth deepened.
It was his duty now to talk to the girl, he thought.
But his desire was to speak to Yashim.
94
The man with the knife crossed the mountains in snow. He was used to the snow, to the cold, to picking his way along the mule tracks.
He did not consider the barking as he made his way down toward the valley. At this time of year dogs would be chained close to the sheep, to warn of the approach of wolves-or a stranger.
At last he lifted his head, and listened. The barking was growing closer. The man tightened his grip on his stick and loosened the knife in his belt.
With a strange dog you had to look big. Talk loud. Dogs understood firm signals. The man prepared by shifting his sheepskin coat onto his shoulders, just in case.