“You are impertinent and treasonable. Go back to your barracks!”
“Sire, you force us to-”
“You haven’t considered this, Kabakji Bey. Without me there is no sultan, the caliphate goes unruled. The crown prince has disappeared and without him you have no successor. You cannot go further.”
The man drew himself up impressively and flung out an arm. It pointed directly to the tower and held.
Renzi pulled back from the window instinctively.
“He wants us to show Prince Mustafa,” Zorlu hissed.
“No!”
“We must.”
“I-I can’t do this to Selim!”
Zorlu pushed past, throwing the grille window wide and thrust Mustafa up to it.
There was an instant roar of recognition and a chant began: “Sultan Mustafa Han! Sultan Mustafa Han!”
Drums rolled and volleyed, and wild shouts of jubilation echoed up.
Renzi went reluctantly to the window to see the entire mass in ecstatic gyrating, waving scimitars-and a single lonely figure. In his rich robes and turban, Sultan Selim gazed up, and even over the distance his look, with its terrible accusation of betrayal, pierced Renzi to his soul.
Slowly, Selim turned about and walked back into his harem.
“So, you have your triumph, Kose Musa,” Ataullah said. “But here’s something that’ll give you pause.”
“Now what can that be, I wonder?” Musa said comfortably, sipping his sherbet.
“Only that the Nizam-i Cedid Army in Edirne has just learned of the rising and is marching back to restore Selim to his powers.”
Musa put down his goblet. “That is not what I wanted to hear.”
“There’s every chance they’ll do it, with their new weapons and numbers.”
“They have to be stopped.”
“There is only one way.”
“If you are saying …”
“I am, Vizier Musa. It’s the only sure cure.”
“Who will do it?”
“That’s your business, is it not?” Ataullah answered silkily.
Renzi heard them. This time muted, subdued. A jingling of accoutrements, the heavy tramp of many boots.
He’d expected them to come. It was logical. An inevitable outcome of the course they had taken.
Dully he watched from the window as the last act began.
“Eunuch Mahmut! Hear me! Deliver up to us the person of Selim Osman, by strict order of the Sultan Mustafa.”
After an interval it was repeated.
“If we must enter, there will be none spared. This is our final word.”
Selim came to the gates, flanked by eunuchs, Pakize clutching him, imploring, tearful.
He saw the bared blades and tried to break free. Two men, stripped to the waist and with scimitars at the ready, darted forward but Pakize threw herself in front of her master. It didn’t stop them-the first swing of the sword laid open her arm and, thrusting aside her shrieking form, Selim was cut down in a merciless hacking until his lifeless body lay still.
Renzi slumped back, stricken by what he’d brought about.
The hunt for the last loyal supporters of Selim went on throughout the city and long into the night.
“We’re safest here,” Renzi told Jago, and his terrified household. He could not admit that, in view of his central part in the uprising, he was more likely to be hailed a hero by the “winning side” than anything. He dreaded the prospect and, just as soon as he could, he would leave this beautiful and terrible place.
Sleep would not come. On the one hand there were the brutal images seared on his memory-that look of Selim’s would haunt him to the end of his days.
But on the other hand he could go back to London and rightly claim that, while the English had been humiliated and banished, he had brought about the same thing for the French. Summarily ejected and identified so thoroughly with the wrong side, they would never be a threat again.
His achievement-at such cost to others-was no less than the saving of empire and the thwarting of Napoleon Bonaparte.
In the early morning a platoon of moustachioed Janissaries came for him. When Zorlu tried to intervene, he was thrown aside.
Renzi was taken to a rough, unsprung carriage, which ground off, out of the courtyard, through the Imperial Gate and into the city. At that hour the streets were deserted and the noise of their passing echoed sharply off the buildings.
He had no idea what was going on and, without Zorlu, could not find out. He tried to remain calm.
After an interminable journey along grey-glistening sea-walls they took a sharp turn inland.
Through the side window Renzi caught a glimpse of a fortress with many towers, which for some reason meant something to him. Then he had it: in his childhood he’d been taken by an illustrated account of old Constantinople. This was the famed Golden Gate, the entry point to the fabled city of the Byzantine emperors, its massive gates then gilded, with four bronze elephants at guard.
Now dour and oppressive, it loomed over him as the gates swung open and they continued on to the shadowed interior.
He was handed over without ceremony and hustled up stone steps to a guarded cell in one of the ancient towers. He was pushed in, the door crashing to behind.
Human stench wafted over him. There was a low bed on either side of the gloomy room, rushes on the floor, a single high, barred window.
A voice behind startled him. He swung around. It was Sebastiani, his arms folded and a cynical smile playing.
“Well, well. Our English lord. How the mighty have fallen.”
Renzi was instantly on guard. So the French were taken too.
How much did Sebastiani know? If his character as an amiable noble fool was penetrated, his worth to Congalton in the future-should ever he get out of here-would be little or nothing.
“These Ottoman dolts, they have no conception how to treat their guests,” Renzi said peevishly. “And what all this means is beyond me. Obviously there’s been some mistake.”
“Oh? If you’re Selim’s friend, it explains everything, don’t you think?”
“We got along together well, I admit. A talented writer, composer-he and I rather enjoyed our few visits.”
“He did speak well of you, I remember. But do tell, when your fleet came you disappeared from mortal ken. We assumed you had been an unfortunate victim of the understandable loathing of the English at the time. Where did you go?”
“Ha!” Renzi spat. “Those accursed Janissaries. They locked me up in some prison, said it was Selim’s orders and that it was for my own protection. I was outraged! I, a noble lord, sitting for days in a cell, like a common felon.”
“It must have been a harrowing experience for you, milord,” Sebastiani soothed, but with a mischievous smile.
“Just so. I had no idea what was going on, no one to talk to and-”
“I do understand. So that is why you took against His Sacred Majesty and warmed to the idea of a revolt.”
Renzi froze. “Why do you say that, General?”
“Why? I do have it as a fact that it was you hid the Prince Mustafa, a necessary pre-condition for any rising.”
“Well, I …”
“A cynic might go on to observe that, for the sacred goal of frustrating us in our legitimate relations with the Sublime Porte, a devious plot might well have been conceived by a high-placed Englishman to overthrow the friends of the French. Yes?”
Renzi allowed a look of astonishment to be quickly replaced by one of gratification. “You really think I could do something like that, General? That’s very kind in you to say. However, I’m embarrassed to admit the concealing was from quite another motive.
“You’ve no idea how expensive travel is in Oriental lands. Simple daily comforts come at extraordinary prices and, to be truthful about it, the delay while you warriors sorted things out between you has been ruinous to my purse. So, when an offer was made by the rebels to … Well, it was difficult to refuse gold in hand, and with Selim having treated me like that …”
“Quite so. And for your efforts you are now rewarded with this.”
“It’s disgraceful! I can only think there’s been some confusion and that when the new sultan discovers what has happened to a noble of England he’ll be sorely angry.”