Palewski had been almost right, he thought. A dangerous party: always a guest, never a player. Only obliged to stand by, confused and helpless, as the old, grand battle raged, a battle that would never be won between the old and the new, reaction and renovation, memory and hope. Coming in too late, when last night’s manti were already curling at the edges. Until he spoke to the bombardier, who swung the guns in time.
After a time he began to look around the room, not stirring but glancing from one object to the next before he saw what he wanted. He reached out and took it in his hand, half-smiling: a little cloisonne dagger with no pommel, only its beautifully enamelled hilt and scabbard making a single crescent, tapering to a fine point. He slid the dagger halfway out, and admired the gleam of its perfect steel, then pushed it back, hearing the tiny click as it settled into the scabbard again.
Damascus steel, cold drawn, the product of a thousand years’ experience—and the finer it was worked, the less it showed the labour. It was not as they crafted such things now. He wondered if she’d know the difference, not that it mattered. It was a beautiful and satisfying thing. Dangerous, but protective too. Perhaps she’d look at it now and then, and in her white northern world of ice it would bring back some memory to make her smile.
For several minutes he weighed the dagger in his palm, thinking of it; and then he frowned and set it gently aside, and got up and washed in the basin as best he could.
[ 130 ]
We have orders to admit no one until the disturbance has subsided,” the butler intoned, placing his large body in the doorway of the embassy.
“There is no disturbance,” Yashim said. The butler merely pursed his lips.
Yashim sighed, and held out a small package. “Would you see to it that this reaches Her Excellency the Princess?”
The butler glanced down and sniffed. “And from whom shall I say it comes?”
“Oh—just say a Turk.”
“Yashim!”
Eugenia was coming slowly down the stairs, one hand floating by the rail and the other at her cheek.
“Come in!”
The butler stepped back and Eugenia took Yashim’s hands in hers and led him to the sofa. The butler hovered over her.
“That’s all right,” she said. “We’re friends.”
“From the gentleman, Your Highness.”
The butler handed her Yashim’s packet, and stood back.
“Tea for our visitor, please,” Eugenia said. When the butler had gone she dropped the packet on her lap, took hold of Yashim’s hands again and looked him steadily in the eye.
“I think…we are going home.” She flashed a sudden smile, and squeezed his hands. “Derentsov—my husband—is furious. And frightened. He thinks he’s been betrayed.”
Yashim nodded slowly.
“You know who it was, don’t you?” Eugenia tilted her head back and appraised him with a slow smile. “They all think that you don’t matter. But you are clever.”
She saw Yashim glance away. “Do you want to know?” he asked her, quietly.
She shook her head. “It would spoil everything. I have a duty to my husband, and there are some secrets I can’t keep. He was raving this morning, saying he’d been compromised. No choice but to resign. Determined to return us to St Petersburg, and face the czar.”
“And the balls, and the dinners, and the ladies with their fans. I know.”
“It will be hard.”
“But you have a duty to your husband.”
They laughed softly together.
“What is this?” She said, hefting the packet in her hand.
“Open it, and see.”
She did, and watched him showing her the tiny catch which slipped the dagger from its scabbard.
“It reminds me of something,” she said mischievously. “And someone.”
Their eyes met, and the mischievous look disappeared.
“I don’t think—”
“That we’ll meet again? No. But…I will always dream. Of you.”
“If I told the ladies of St Petersburg—”
“Don’t say a word.”
Eugenia shook her lovely head. “I won’t,” she said. “I never would.”
She leaned forwards, tilting her head slightly to one side so that a lock of her black hair swung free.
“Kiss me,” she said.
They kissed.
Russian or otherwise, a butler is a butler. He is unflappable. He is discreet.
Yashim had gone before he served the tea.
[ 131 ]
So it seems that the seraskier was right,” said Mahmut IV. “It’s good that we had him in the city. But what a terrible accident, just when everything was going so well.”
“Yes, sultan.”
“They say he fell. I suppose he’d climbed up somewhere for a better view. Fires to fight, and all that, eh?”
“Yes, sultan.”
“We’ll give him a splendid funeral, don’t worry about that. You two got along pretty well, didn’t you?”
Yashim inclined his head.
“Something new, he’d have liked that. Gun carriages, maybe, and a few platoons of Guards firing volleys over his grave. Show that the sultan doesn’t forget his friends. We might even name the fire-tower at Beyazit after him. Ugly object. Seraskier’s Tower. Hmm. The empire honours its heroes, you know.”
The sultan picked at his nose.
“I never liked him much. That’s the worst I can say of him. At least he knew his duty.”
Yashim kept his eyes fixed on the ground.
The sultan looked at him with narrowed eyes.
“My mother says that you did a great deal to prepare her for the ordeal she passed through last night. It seems to me you did very little.”
He snuffed. Yashim looked up and caught his eye.
The sultan blinked and looked away.
“Hrrmph. I suppose it was enough in the end. And frankly, the eunuchs are perfectly quiet now. Takes one to catch one, I imagine.”
He picked up a little whisk and began to twirl it between his fingers.
“The point is, I need someone in here, since the kislar’s gone. Someone who knows the ropes, but a bit younger.”
Yashim froze. It was the second job he’d been offered in the last twenty-four hours. The eyes and ears of the new republic? Now it was power and the promise of riches. The second job he didn’t want.
He began to say that he wasn’t young. He was white. Whiteish, anyway—but the sultan wasn’t listening.
“There’s an archivist,” he said. “New man. Keen, good looking, it’d frighten some of the old men, wouldn’t it? I can’t replace them all. And I could keep an eye on him, too. Reminds me of the kislar when he was young, before he started spooning up this tradition stuff and murdering the girls. He wasn’t in on the whole charade, either. That’s what I like. Give him a frock coat and a baton. That’s it. My man.”
Yashim felt a flood of relief. He had no doubt that Ibou would prove to be a perfect Kislar Agha; a little young perhaps, but time would offer its inevitable solution. At least he would vault straight over all the terrible compromises and feuds that had driven the former incumbent to the verge of madness as he clambered his way to the top. And he would be quick to learn his duty. Maybe even genuinely grateful.
“The sultan is most wise,” he said. It was better not to say more.
“Well, well.” The sultan rose from his chair. “This has been a most interesting discussion. To be honest, Yashim, I sometimes think you know more than you say. Which may be wise in its way, too. It is for God to know everything, and for us to learn only what we need.”