When she was ready she took the first honey-scented napkin and folded it.
“Please close your eyes,” she said, in a voice as soft as a dove’s. She laid the napkin firmly over his forehead, and he felt her fingers smooth the damp cloth over his eyelids, and mould it across his nose and cheekbones.
“Can you roll onto your side? Here, let me help you.”
A moment later he felt another cool cloth pressed around his chin and neck and shoulder. His left arm was lifted, and Marta’s fingers smoothed another napkin over the side of his chest and his back.
“Try not to move,” she said. As she worked her way down his body Yashim began to find his sensations returning. He felt her palms on his buttocks and thighs, through the cool cloth. At length she reached his feet, and helped him roll onto his back to finish wrapping his right side.
“I feel like an Egyptian mummy,” Yashim croaked. She put a finger to his lips. His voice had sounded weak and strained: he even wondered if she had heard what he said.
He must have dozed, because suddenly he was afraid he was being smothered, unable to open his eyes, crushed by a fearful pressure on his chest and limbs. He gave a cry, and tried to struggle free, but two small hands pressed him back by the shoulders and a voice whispered softly: “I am here, don’t worry. It’s all right. It’s better now.”
For a moment he felt her breath on his lips, and then she had removed the bandage over his eyes and he opened them to see her standing over him with the napkin in one hand and a shy smile on her face.
He smiled back. For the first time since she had touched him, he was conscious of his nakedness; conscious that he was, once again, alone with a woman. He raised himself gingerly on one elbow, and she seemed to feel it, too, because she turned to the candle and said: “If you feel better, you should wash. The honey will be sticky. I will fetch what you need.”
She was gone for a minute. When she returned she carried a basin of warm water and a robe draped over her arm. She set the basin down by the bed and laid the robe near his feet.
“There is a sponge in the basin,” she explained.
As she turned to go, Yashim said: “My arm is still very stiff.”
She shot him a smile and for the first time he saw her serious dark eyes twinkle.
“Then you will have to wash slowly,” she said, sweetly. And was gone.
Yashim sighed, and heaved his legs off the bed in a rustling cascade of napkins.
He washed himself, as the girl had said, slowly.
Aware that there was little time. Wondering what had become of Murad Eslek. Wondering what Marta meant to his friend Palewski—and he to her.
[ 98 ]
What is the time?”
Yashim had opened his eyes to find Palewski perched at the foot of his bed, his elbows resting on his knees, looking patiently into his face.
“After midnight. Marta has gone to bed.”
Yashim gave him a weak smile as a stray thought entered his mind. To Palewski I am only half a man—but the half he likes. The half he can trust. And he decided never to tell his friend about what happened between him and Eugenia at the Russian embassy.
“I have to thank you, Palewski, for saving my life.”
“And I you, my old friend, for allowing me to hobnob for an hour or so with the sultan.” He clapped his hands together. “It was a capital party!”
Yashim looked blank. Palewski told him about Derentsov’s challenge and the intimate conversation he had held with Sultan Mahmut IV.
“I get the impression, Yash, that the sultan has sleepless nights over this Edict of his. It will make him a very lonely man. He makes a lot of enemies.”
Yashim nodded. “I’m beginning to think that murder is the least of it. And tonight, but for you, they would have killed me too.”
“You were in a public place.”
But Yashim said: “I forgot something I’d learned. Working in the stoke-holes of the baths was one of the jobs that Janissaries took up, if they survived the purge. Tell me, you saw my signal?”
Palewski recounted the series of events which had brought him and the seraskier to the doors of the baths.
“The seraskier?” Yashim put in. “If I hadn’t been half-dead -he’s the man I need to speak to. I ought to go and find him.”
Palewski put out a restraining hand. “Marta left me particular instructions, Yashim. She expects to find you here in the morning. You are her patient. Perhaps you would like to drink some tea? Or something stronger?”
Yashim closed his eyes. “I’ve found out where the fourth man is going to appear.”
Palewski looked anxious. “Good, good,” he murmured. He straightened his back. “I’m sorry, Yashim, but do you know what I think? None of us are players in this scheme. We’re witnesses, at best: even you. It’s too—” He searched his mind. “You told me you had the impression that it was like a feast prepared, meze and a main dish, remember. Well, I believe you were right. We’re guests. And it’s a dangerous party.”
He stood up carefully and approached Yashim, crouching beside his pillow.
“You aren’t going to find anyone alive. None of the other cadets were killed where you found them. You won’t find this one being cooked in front of your eyes, either. Take this rest. You can go off, if you feel fit, very early in the morning after Marta has seen to you again.”
Yashim stared at the ceiling. It was sensible advice. He’d lost the time he needed, and nothing would bring it back. He wanted so much to do as his friend suggested, sleep—and trust to Eslek. He could be at the Kerkoporta by first light.
It was sensible advice. But in one particular, at least, the Polish ambassador could not have been more wrong.
[ 99 ]
The provisioning of a great city, the kadi liked to remark, is the mark of a successful civilisation. In Istanbul it was a business that had been honed close to perfection by almost two thousand years’ experience, and it could truly be said of the markets of Istanbul that there was not a flower, a fruit, a type of meat or fish that did not make its appearance there in season.
An imperial city has an imperial appetite, and for centuries the city had commanded daily tribute from an enormous hinterland. Where the Byzantines had managed their market gardens on the approaches from Thrace and Asia Minor, the Turks, too, raised vegetables. From two seas—the warm Mediterranean and the dark, gelid waters of the Black Sea—it was supplied abundantly with fish, while the sweetest trout from the lakes of Macedonia were carried to the city in tanks. From the mountains of Bulgaria came many kinds of honey to be turned into sweets by the master sweet-makers of Istanbul.
It was a finely regulated business, all in all, from the Balkan grazing grounds to the market stall, in a constant slither of orders, inspections, purchases and requisitions. Like any activity that needs unremitting oversight, it was open to abuse.
The kadi of the Kerkoporta market had taken up his job twenty years before, and earned himself a reputation for severity. A butcher who used false weights was hanged at the doorway of his own shop. A greengrocer who lied about the provenance of his fruit had his hands struck off. Others, who had jibbed a customer, perhaps, or slipped out of the official channels to procure bargain stock, found themselves forced to wear a wide wooden collar for a few weeks, or to pay a stiff fine, or to be nailed by the ear to the door of their own shop. The Kerkoporta market had become a byword for honest deal—ing, and the kadi supposed that he was doing everything for the best.