[ 74 ]
Back again?”
“Stanislaw Palewski,” Yashim announced, “we have exactly four hours. You are going to a party.”
Palewski smiled and shook his head.
“I know what you’re thinking: the ambassadors’ concert at the palace. All very tempting, but I don’t do them any more. These days, I—” He spread his fingers. “To be frank, Yash, it’s a question of dress.” He lowered his voice. “A question, you might say, of moth.”
Yashim held up an imperious hand. “We aren’t talking about those horrible beetling jackets you people all wear. You have the most splendid clothes, and four hours in hand. I have already sent for the tailor. Tonight, you are set to appear at the palace as the living embodiment of Polish history.”
“Eh?”
“You’re going as a Sar—what’s it?”
“Sarmatian?”
“Exactly.”
The Polish ambassador folded his arms stubbornly.
“Of all the fool ideas. Who do you think you are? My fairy godmother?”
Yashim blinked, and Palewski gave a dry chuckle.
“Never mind, it’s an old story.” He frowned. “What are you doing?”
For Yashim had raised his arms and flicked out his hands, taking a backward step, as if Palewski were the djinn he had just conjured up out of the thin air.
Palewski narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “I’m sorry, Yash. I’d do anything for you, you know that. But only within reason. As the ambassador of Poland to the Sublime Porte I have a higher responsibility. Mine is a fallen nation, I know that. But stubborn, sir, very stubborn.” He wagged a finger. “Call it pride, or vanity if you like—but I tell you this. Not for your sake—not even for the sake of the Black Madonna of Czestechowa herself—will I mingle with my peers in a mouldy old dressing gown.”
[ 75 ]
His Excellency is not at home,” the butler rumbled.
He stood with the door ajar, peering at the Turk who had rung the bell.
“I would prefer to wait,” Yashim said. “My time is of no consequence.”
The butler weighed up this remark. On the one hand, it implied a compliment to his master who was, of course, a busy man. On the other, nobody in Istanbul ever said quite what they meant. He studied Yashim. His clothes were certainly clean, if simple. He’d like to rub that cloak in his fingers, to make sure it was really cashmere, but yes…he might be a man of consequence, after all.
“If you will step in,” the butler intoned, “you may find a chair in the hall.”
Yashim did, and sat down on it. The butler closed the door behind them with an audible click. Yashim sat facing the door he had just come through, and two enormous sash windows that descended almost to the floor. The staircase to his left swirled up at his back to the vestibule overhead. The butler walked majestically across to a bewigged footman, in breeches, who stood solemnly at the foot of the stairs, and murmured a few words in Russian. The footman stared out straight before him, and made no response.
“I trust you will not have too long to wait,” the butler said, as he passed Yashim and disappeared through a door to his right.
Yashim sat with his hands folded in his lap.
The footman stood with his hands by his sides.
Neither of them moved for twenty minutes.
At the end of that time, Yashim suddenly started. He raised his head. Something had attracted his attention at the window. He leaned slightly to one side and peered, but whatever it was that caught his eye seemed to have gone. He kept a watch on the window nonetheless.
About thirty seconds later he was almost on his feet, staring. The footman’s eyes slid over him, and then to the window, but the window was black and revealed nothing to him.
But Yashim’s attention was called to something almost out of sight. Curious, he leaned further over to the right, to follow it better. From where he stood, the footman realised that he couldn’t see what the foreigner was looking at.
He wondered what it could be.
Yashim gave a little smile, whistled through his nose, and continued to watch, craning his head.
The footman rubbed his ringers against his palms.
The foreigner, he noticed, had jerked his head slightly, to keep up with the event occurring outside. It seemed to be moving away, out of his line of sight, because the fellow was leaning forward now.
Very slowly, Yashim leaned back in his chair. He looked puzzled. In fact, he simply could not imagine the significance of what he appeared to have seen.
Something within the grounds, the footman knew.
When there should be nothing. No one.
The footman wondered what it could have been. It had to be a light. A light in the dark, in the grounds. Going round the side of the embassy.
What would the butler have done? The footman glanced at the Turk, who was still sitting exactly where he had sat half an hour before. Wearing a slight frown.
Having seen something he hadn’t expected. That nobody else had observed.
The footman took a measured step forwards, hesitated, then continued to the front door and opened it.
He glanced to the left. The spaces between the columns of the portico were dark as pitch. He took a step out, and another, craning for a better view.
He sensed a darkness at his back and half turned. The Turk filled the doorway.
The Turk held out his hands, palms up, and shrugged. Then he gestured to himself and to the gatehouse.
“I’m going,” he said in Turkish.
The footman understood the gesture. His anxiety increased.
The Turk descended the steps.
The footman waited until he had cleared the portico, and then ran very quickly down the steps himself, and headed left, into the dark.
Privately he relished the little cold wind which hit him on the face but could not in a thousand years ruffle his artificial hair. Still he saw nothing. He darted to the corner of the building and looked down the side of the east wing.
It was as far as he dared to go.
[ 76 ]
Yashim sprinted back up the steps, crossed the empty hall and took the stairs three at a time. At the top he slowed and put his hand on the doorknob of the vestibule.
What if there was another footman, as before, standing sentinel in there?
He squeezed the handle and stepped inside.
The room was almost dark. Two candles burned in their sconces at the far side of the room, really too far away to be of any use to him. He turned to the right, gliding along the gallery. The oils were hard to make out, but as he passed one of them he paused. He stepped aside, to let the meagre light reveal it, and even though it was mostly shadow, the composition of figures closely grouped at its centre was unmistakeably that of the czar and his amorous czarina, with their little children.
He went back up the gallery.
Two shoulder-length portraits. A full-sized rendition of a man on a horse. A scene he could not decipher, including a river and a mass of men and horses surging towards it. Another portrait.
And he was back at the door. He could hear the footman banging the door downstairs.
He looked around in astonishment.
The vestibule still housed, as he remembered, a positive Parliament of Russian nobles, a Hermitage of royal heads. As for landscapes, well, many versts of the Russian steppe had been crammed in there, too, where Cossack hussars stooped in village streets to kiss their sweethearts farewell.
There wasn’t a map of Istanbul to be seen.
Where the map had been, he was looking at a portrait of a gouty czar.
He took a step closer. The czar looked surprised: perhaps he didn’t like to be ignored. Even in the feeble candlelight Yashim could still make out the faint outline of the frame, bleached against the painted woodwork.