The Court of the Favorites, in the Topkapi Palace, was an open and airy space surrounded by a colonnade on three sides. It was the work of the great Ottoman architect Sinan, who created the sublime panorama of Istanbul’s domes, which move forward and retreat in dignified counterpoint as the traveler approaches the city by sea.
Sinan also worked on buildings that were to be seen by very few people. The fourth side of the Court of the Favorites was enclosed by a low balustrade, beneath which Sinan had constructed a delightful bathing pool as a grateful addition to the amenities of the harem. Stretched out in the sun below the balustrade, part of the pool filtered back through the old Byzantine arches into deep, almost subterranean shade.
As autumn came, and the days shortened and the air grew cool, the eunuch of the baths would test the water with his skinny elbow, until the sad day arrived when he pronounced the pool closed for the season. Then the pool was drained, to protect the tiling from frost and ice; because it stood on a hill, the draining was swift and effective. The entrances were locked, to await the return of summer, and the sultan’s girls.
The girls were warned not to approach the balustrade, which was quite low; in spite of salt and gravel, the surface of the courtyard in winter was sometimes slippery with ice. But in recent years the filling and the emptying of the pool had become no more than a formality. The girls had gone. The pool became a seasonal tradition that continued because it was seasonal, and no one had thought, or would ever think, to order it stopped.
Hyacinth did not find it necessary to repeat the warning to the older women who had returned to the palace from Besiktas: they knew the danger already, and they rarely ventured out now that the frosts had come. Instead they remained indoors, clustering around the barely adequate fireplaces that warmed their lodgings, and complaining incessantly about the cold. Palewski was right: the Ottomans seemed not to reckon with winter until it was already upon them.
Thus the Court of the Favorites was largely deserted, and only Melda, who had the heat of youth in her veins, sought it out as a quiet place to sit, under the colonnade.
96
“Hyacinth,”the valide remarked as she watched the flakes settle in the tiny court outside her window, “should order someone to sweep away the snow. I never liked it, Tulin.”
Tulin smiled, and put down her embroidery. “That is because you were raised in a hot country, valide,” she pointed out. “Most of the ladies are Circassians, and it does them good to see the snow again.”
The valide made a moue. “I’m surprised any of them are capable of remembering that far back. If they are Circassian, which I doubt. You all pretend, Tulin.”
Tulin laughed pleasantly, and stretched. The valide shot her a surprised glance. “I would like Hyacinth to order the court swept,” she said.
“Of course, valide. If you are comfortable, I will attend to it right away.”
Tulin gathered her embroidery and set it on a footstool, then plucked a fur-lined pelisse from a hook by the door and whirled it around her shoulders.
Outside she moved fast, one hand to the wall to steady herself over the icy cobbles. A blast of cold wind hit her as she turned into the corridor that linked the valide’s court with the little suite of rooms set aside for the black eunuchs, and the cape fluttered.
She approached the door of the halberdiers. She could hear them beyond, conversing in low voices; now and then she caught the sound of a laugh, and of dice rattling on a table.
She stood and listened to the mesmerizing voices of the men. Her breath made puffs in the chill air.
The sound of a door opening in their room, and closing with a bang as the wind caught it, made her jump.
“I’m sorry, valide,” she said later as she shook the snowflakes from her pelisse and hung it back on the peg. “I looked everywhere, but I think that Hyacinth has gone out.”
The valide put her head on one side. “Hyacinth? Why do you want to find Hyacinth? It’s cold, cherie. I think you might want to put another log on the fire.”
It was true; the room had grown colder while she was out. Tulin reached into the basket and picked up a log. She noticed that her fingers were trembling slightly.
“There,” she said with a grunt as she heaved the log into the fire. “That’s much better.”
“Much better,” the valide echoed as she felt the warmth on her face: but she was aware that there had been something else she wanted, not fire, quite. She could not remember what it was. “Much better, yes.”
97
Hyacinth had not gone out. Indeed, just as he had feared, he would never again leave the palace, which had been his home for so many years.
There was no one alive, except the valide herself, who could have remembered the stringy little African boy who had arrived at the Topkapi Palace in the cold winter of 1789. When he had first seen snow, he had shrieked with terror: for a whole day he sat in the antechamber of the eunuchs’ apartments, with his hands over his funny little ears, and shrieked every time someone opened the door. The old eunuchs had found this quite hilarious; and some of the more mischievous girls had come to tease him, pretending the sky really was falling on their heads, until the Kislar aga of the day had shooed them all away, and sentenced Hyacinth to stand in the snow in bare feet until he understood what it was.
Which was also how he got his name, Hyacinth, growing most incongruously out of the snow-covered ground.
Hyacinth no longer minded the snow, of course. As it settled on his hair, and on his back, and drifted between his curled fingers, he was quite dead to the ancient terror it had once inspired.
He lay in the pool, on the tiles, exactly where he had fallen, as snow covered the lake of blood that seeped from his smashed forehead, and turned to dark ice on the frozen ground.
98
The man with the knife saw and heard the dog before the dog saw him.
It ran howling out of the pine trees, a big mastiff with a thick, matted yellow coat. A proper shepherd’s dog. When it stumbled and lurched sideways, snapping at its own tail, the man with the knife felt a tremor of fear.
He stood very still, thinking the mastiff might not see him if he did not move. Its eyes were sticky, foam lashing at its jaws, and it whirled from side to side, stumbling nearer to him across the frozen ground. But there was no purpose in its erratic course. There was a chance that the dog would simply pass him by.
When the dog was only a few yards away, the man reluctantly lifted his stick.
At no moment did the frenzied animal recognize the man, or make up its mind to attack: it seemed lost in its own suffering. But as he raised his stick, the dog flung itself at him, suddenly, with its lips peeled back and jaws wide.
The man was caught off guard, but he was strong and his aim was good. The stick connected with the dog’s muzzle in mid-spring, as the man stepped back. The dog landed heavily, shook its huge head, and bared its teeth with a strangled sound.
He hit it again, a more considered blow on the side of its head.
The mastiff staggered, and seemed about to fall, but as the man raised the stick again it sprang disjointedly. The vicious jaws snapped shut on the stick, and with a heave of its head it almost pulled it out of his hands.
The man pressed the stick to the ground, lowering the dog’s head, watching the saliva run toward his hands. It took great strength to hold the stick down. He wanted his knife.
The dog shook the stick a few times, then yelped and dropped back, jaws agape.
That was all the time the man needed. He plucked his knife from his belt and raised the stick, and when the dog came on again, grinding its fangs from side to side, he slammed the stick against its jaws with one hand and with the other stuck the knife straight and hard into the dog’s neck, behind the ear.