Yashim wondered, as they walked slowly along, whether they should go as far as the Topkapi gate. He had a daydream in which he led the valide through the gate and out into the square; by the fountain they would pick up a carriage and rattle down the streets to the Eminönü wharf, where he would hand the elderly Frenchwoman into a French ship and send her off to enjoy herself in Paris. It was a daydream he had sometimes indulged on his own account, but he startled himself now, as if he had committed a treasonable act. He began to wonder where, indeed, he should lead the valide. She showed no sign of wishing to go back, yet her weight on his arm was growing and she was evidently beginning to tire.
Yashim began to steer the valide toward the great doors of the old church of St. Irene, at the far end of the Great Court. As they moved into the shade of the portico she patted his arm, as if she approved of his decision; he tried the little door and—to his surprise—it swung open.
They stepped inside; and as the door shut behind them with a click, the noise of the crowd was abruptly hushed, giving way to an ethereal silence, the silence, Yashim thought, of every consecrated place. Hadn’t Lefèvre said that St. Irene had never been deconsecrated, never turned into a mosque?
The ancient weapons glinted on the walls.
He found a stone bench under a window, and the valide settled gratefully onto it. She lifted her veil.
“Thank you, Yashim,” she said, smiling. “I have always wanted to do that. The way the old sultans did—moving amongst their people, in disguise.”
“Selim himself met a baker so wise he raised him next day to the position of grand vizier,” Yashim said.
“Alors, Yashim, I’m not sure I saw anyone quite so exceptional.” She closed her eyes.
Yashim watched her. He folded his arms and leaned against a pillar. He wondered if she was asleep.
“My son told me an interesting thing, Yashim, just before he died,” the valide said quietly. Yashim jumped. “It was a secret, passed down the generations from one sultan to the next, and he told it to me because his own son would not come to listen. Do you know why that was?”
“No, Valide.”
“Because the boy was afraid. But why should a boy be afraid of death?”
Yashim had no answer. The valide glanced at him. “The crown prince, Yashim. No longer a boy, perhaps.”
“Abdul Mecid is our sultan now,” Yashim said.
“Yes.” She paused. “Enfin, he likes you.”
Yashim lowered his eyes. “He can barely know me.”
“Come, come. A boy talks to his grandmother. I think you’ll find he knows you better than you think.”
Yashim blinked, but the valide did not wait for her remark to sink in. “At the time of the Conquest,” she continued, “when the Turks took Istanbul, a priest was saying mass in the Great Church. He was using the holiest relics of the Byzantine church, the cup and the plate used at the Last Supper, but when the Turks broke in, he disappeared.”
“I’ve heard that legend myself,” Yashim admitted.
“Legend, Yashim?” The valide looked at him. “It is what the sultan told me before he died.”
Yashim inclined his head.
“Mehmed the Conqueror,” the valide continued, “had taken the city from the Greeks. But afterward he needed their support, of course. The Greek Patriarch agreed to treat the sultan as his overlord. But as for the relics, neither of them could accept that the other should possess them. Do you understand?”
“They found a compromise, didn’t they? A third party who would safeguard the relics forever, beyond control of the church or the Ottoman sultans.”
“Very good, Yashim. I wanted to unburden myself of this secret because—eh bien, I am not a church or a line of rulers myself. Someone needs to tell the crown prince, if I cannot.” She opened her eyes and glanced mischievously at Yashim. “But I suppose you already know who was found to hold the ring?”
“A guild, Valide. Without this guild, the sultan would not rule and the Patriarch would have no flock. For Istanbul could not otherwise exist.” He caught the valide’s approving glance. “It couldn’t have been hard,” he went on. “As far as I know, the cup and plate were already hidden in the cisterns, somewhere beneath the Great Church. They were already, in that sense, in the keeping of the watermen.”
“Bravo! The watermen’s guild, yes. They were always Albanians. You know what that means. Some Catholic, some Orthodox. And some, in time, were Muslims, too. But the first religion of the Albanian, as they say, is Albania. They call themselves Sons of the Eagle.”
“And this has been their secret,” Yashim murmured. A secret for which men were bound to die, linked by a fatal indiscretion. Monsieur Lefèvre had always been too much the salesman.
He went across the apse to a wooden cupboard hanging on the wall. It was crudely made, its door fastened with a wooden catch. Inside he found a battered-looking copper goblet and a wooden plate, which had split and been repaired with thin iron staples. He’d seen them both before. Water and salt: cup and plate. This much, at least, even Grigor could not have guessed. He remembered the relief in Grigor’s voice: for old times’ sake.
“I spent a week with some people who thought they knew exactly where the relics were,” he said, turning to the valide. “They put it together out of old books.”
And Grigor had believed them, hadn’t he? Raised the alarm. Condemned men to death.
The valide sniffed. “When we get back to the apartments, I think I shall ask you to read to me a little. Monsieur Stendhal.” She put out her stick and got to her feet. “It’s cold in here.”
He took her arm, and they went slowly out of the old church. In the shade of the portico, the valide put up her hands to adjust her veil.
“Your friends—I suppose they were very disappointed, non?”
Yashim cocked his head. “Disappointed? I think you could say that. One of them, in fact, wound up dead.”
“Well, well, Yashim. I’m sure you will want to talk about it. It just goes to show that you can’t believe everything that you read in books, n’est-ce pas?”
She dropped her veil, and they passed out together from the shade into the sun, leaning close together like old friends.
Also by Jason Goodwin
Fiction
The Janissary Tree
Nonfiction
A Time for Tea:
Travels Through China and India in Search of Tea
On Foot to the Golden Horn:
A Walk to Istanbul
Lords of the Horizons:
A History of the Ottoman Empire
Greenback:
The Almighty Dollar and the Invention of America
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank the usual suspects among my family and friends for their encouragement and advice, not least Richard Goodwin, who read the manuscript at an early stage—and hopes that Amélie will make it back to Istanbul one day.
Berrin Torolsan inspires cooks and scholars alike with her writing in Cornucopia, that beautiful and indispensable quarterly devoted to all things Turkish. Not only has she generously shared her knowledge of Ottoman cookery and history with me, she has also read the book with a critical eye. I should point out that all its errors, deviations, and flagrant misrepresentations are mine alone: fiction, I’m afraid, is no respecter of fact.
Translators, editors, proofreaders, and designers around the world brought Yashim’s debut in The Janissary Tree to life in thirty-two languages. Thanks to Agnieszka Kuc in Poland, Nina van Rossem in Holland, Fortunato Israel, and my Italian translator, Cristiana Mennella, who made L’Albero dei Giannezzeri such a successful giallo. I have been grateful for the enthusiasm of, among others, Sylvie Audoly in Paris and Elena Ramírez in Barcelona.