Disappointed, he stared down into the tank. He should pick up the ball, block the necessary distribution pipes with the rags, and then drop the ball into the exit pipe, to float away on its long journey through Istanbul. 3,5,6. Then 2. Light from a spangling of small holes in the roof of the chamber danced and dissolved on the surface of the water, as black and depthless as a pool of oil. With a sigh he bent forward and retrieved the tin ball. For a moment the light seemed to bounce from the surface around the chamber, a sudden brightening that Enver caught in the corner of his eye; then it settled once more, and he shivered. He had heard the brothers’ stories of ifrits and demons who haunted the darker corners of the cisterns; but it was growing cold now, too.
He gripped the ball in his fist and stared down at his own reflection in the black water.
For a fraction of a second, he caught sight of a second face, staring up out of the dark tank.
Enver had no time to wonder. He gasped, and something took him by the back of his head, so that the last thing Enver Xani saw in this world was the sight of his own face rushing toward him, its mouth open in a silent scream.
39
IT was late in the evening when Yashim arrived at the gate of Topkapi Palace. Two halberdiers scrambled to their feet as he entered, and one of them placed his foot carelessly over a pair of dice on the stones.
“Quiet times,” Yashim murmured.
The halberdiers grinned foolishly. Yashim went past them and into the first, more public court of the palace. He crossed the cobbles in the shade of the planes, remembering when the great court had been full of people—soldiers respectfully dismounting, the standing grooms, the pashas coming to and fro, surrounded by their retinues, cooks bawling out orders, flunkeys darting everywhere on errands, cartloads of provisions rolling slowly toward the imperial kitchens, turbaned kadis gravely discussing the judgments of the day, oblivious to the noise, harem carriages rattling off toward some sheltered picnic spot by the Sweet Waters, Black Eunuchs trotting home with their shopping in a string bag, a swaggering group of Albanian irregulars, trying not to look awed, with pistols in their sashes, little boys staring up at the collection of severed heads displayed on the column, and around them, between them, the ordinary people of Istanbul, whose conversation was an underlying murmur like the sea.
The court was silent; only the gardeners squatted at their quiet tasks, beneath the swaying branches of the planes.
Where, Yashim wondered, had it all gone? Not to Besiktas, certainly, the sultan’s new Frankish palace on the Bosphorus, where sentries in kepis stood to attention outside little boxes, close to the railings. At Besiktas, carriages turned in smartly across the raked gravel, wheels crackling on the stones, and people in stamboulines got out, went up the steps, and disappeared.
Across the First Court stood the Gate of Felicity, whose conical towers could be seen from the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn. He wondered if it was still the Gate of Felicity, now that it no longer opened into the dwelling place of God’s Shadow on Earth. Could one still count oneself happy to pass through that gate, yet no longer able to share the same ground as the sultan himself?
As soon as he had phrased the question in his mind, Yashim knew it wasn’t the ground that he was thinking of, but the shadow of protection under which he had always operated. The sultan trusted him. A word would save him—but the word would not come from a sick man, far away in his palace on the Bosphorus. The French ambassador’s report would pass into other hands. Yashim’s involvement with the archaeologist would seem, at best, foolish. The slur would mark him like a stain on his character, a faint question mark over his good judgment.
He knocked, and waited. After a while the wicket gate opened, and an old halberdier of the tresses, a man he knew, welcomed him in without ceremony.
“The valide, it will be, efendi. She’s expecting you?”
Yashim nodded. Only a few years ago—it seemed a lifetime—he would have been challenged instantly and whisked through with the certainty that a hundred pairs of eyes were watching him enviously from behind! The old man fished up a bunch of keys and led Yashim across the Second Court, fiddling with them in his hand.
“I have ’em all now, efendi,” he said cheerfully. He payed them out as they walked: the key to the kitchens, the key to the stable block. “This one,” he said, holding a huge iron key up to the light, “you’d never guess.”
“The grain bins,” Yashim said.
“That’s right, efendi. That’s the one. The grain bins. Heavier than the grain now, I expect. This little one?”
“I’ve no idea,” Yashim admitted.
The old man chuckled. “I’ll show you something, efendi. Just you watch.”
They stopped at a small door set into the farther wall of the Second Court. To their left stood the divan room, with its vast jutting eaves, where the great pashas had discussed the business of an empire that stretched from the gates of Vienna to the Pyramids. Kingdoms had been broken in that hall; armies raised for glory, and for defeat; the fate of whole races settled; men had been honored or destroyed by a word, a sign, a stroke of the pen. Now it was empty.
The halberdier fitted the key into a tiny lock. With a single twist the door swung open.
“Surprised, efendi? That’s right, that little key.”
There was no need to say any more.
Yashim went inside. The entrance to the harem was like a street in miniature, open to the sky for the next few yards, with the windows of the Black Eunuchs’ apartments projecting over the paving stones. Only it was a street of perfectly polished marble, with fountains that flowed from niches in the walls; and it was utterly silent.
The door closed behind him. He heard the slap-slap of slippers on the flags, and an old black man in a beautifully embroidered kaftan and a vast white turban came around a corner, fanning himself with a fan made of reeds.
“Hello, Hyacinth.”
“Oy, oy, Yashim. It’s getting late.”
“I’m sorry.” Only two or three years earlier, this would have been the most important time in the life of the harem: the hour of gossip and intimacy over food, when thousands of succulent dishes would stream from the palace kitchens to the sultan’s apartments; the hour, above all, of the gözde’s final preparations, bedecking, perfuming, calming the nerves of the girl fortunate enough to have been selected to share the sultan’s bed that night. The whole harem would have fluttered and twittered like a forest of little birds.
The stillness was audible now.
“Ask the valide, Hyacinth, if she will receive me.”
40
“C’EST bizarre, Yashim. As he gets older, my son grows more and more infatuated by the European style—yet I, who was born to it, find that I prefer the comforts of oriental tradition. He hardly comes here anymore, only to see me. His new palace delights him. I find it looks like a manufactory.”
Yashim inclined his head. The Queen Mother was propped up on her sofa against a cloud of cushions, with the light as ever artfully arranged behind her head, a blind drawn across the little side window, and a shawl across her legs. She walked rarely now, if at all; yet her figure was still graceful and the shadows on her face revealed the beauty she had once been and still, in a sense, remained. Beneath a kaftan of silk velvet she wore a fine chiffon robe whose collar and sleeves were embellished with the most delicate Transylvanian lace; the lace, Yashim recalled, was made by nuns. The swirl of her turban was fixed in place by a diamond and emerald aigrette. Her hands were white and delicate. Did the valide not know that her son was dying at Besiktas?