"It"s all right, princess. We"re back. Did you get frightened while we were away?"
Roxelana blinked. She looked silently at Melda"s braided collar, and at the b.u.t.tons of her tunic.
Only later, when they were all lying together at night, did she say: "I don"t like that funny hat, Melda. I don"t like it when you wear those hats."
Melda gave her a squeeze. "It"s just for the orchestra. To make us look smart for the sultan."
Roxelana was quiet for a while. "I think they make you look ... bad."
"Why?"
"I don"t know."
"Go to sleep," Elif murmured. "They"re just hats. Shhh."
37.
YASHIM picked his way through the marketplace, where a few street dogs scavenged among the litter of husks and hulls, rinds and squashed fruit.
George was still there, swinging baskets of summer vegetables onto a handbarrow.
"Why yous comes so late, eh? Yous buying cheap today, efendi? Like beggarmans?"
Yashim shrugged. "I"m looking for a boy. Run off from school."
"Maybe he finds himselfs a good job." George picked up an empty basket and began slinging eggplants, tomatoes, zucchini, and garlic into it. He dragged a handful of parsley from a bunch in a clay pot and stuffed it into the basket. "I am sorry that you loses this boy, Yashim efendi, but today"-he put his hand on his chest and smiled-"today, I finds a boy."
"A boy? Where?"
George laughed. "Eleuthra, my daughter, she gives me a big grandson this morning. A Hercules, Yashim efendi! Big like this." He measured out a giant baby between his huge hands, and spat to one side the way you did when you heaped praise upon one so young and defenseless.
Yashim smiled. "I"m glad for you, and for your daughter. May G.o.d bless the child."
George thrust the basket of vegetables at Yashim. "This is for yous. As my friend."
When Yashim got home, he put the vegetables on the table and went over to the divan. He knelt down and reached under the quilt until his hands closed on a small box, which he took to the window.
George was forever giving Yashim his vegetables for nothing because Yashim had saved his life; but the weight of his obligation was becoming so burdensome that Yashim was almost tempted to buy elsewhere, on the sly. The trouble was that George always brought the youngest and freshest produce to market. Some people sold vegetables, and some grew them: George did both.
Yashim picked through the coins in the box. They turned up in the bazaar from time to time: Byzantine bezants from the days of Greek dominion, Persian silver from the reign of Shah Abbas, crude rubles from the early Russian tsars. Sometimes a gypsy, sitting over his tiny lamp with his tweezers and pliers, would open his little sack of metalware and pull out a coin from a distant era or a faraway place.
His fingers closed around a sliver of pure gold, a Persian daric from the age of Darius, found by a caiquejee in shallow water. It had come out of the water as bright and clear as it had gone in, two thousand years before-or so the goldsmith who had weighed and priced it had said.
Now he put it on the shelf. He would give it to George"s grandson. It was, he hoped, a lucky coin. He would have a little box made for it, to stop them from punching a hole in it and having the boy wear it around his head.
He went back to the kitchen and began sorting the vegetables from the basket. He did it slowly, turning each one in his hand as though looking for blemishes, letting his thoughts settle.
A boy was loose in Istanbul. It was not a disaster. For a quick-witted young man, Istanbul was a very interesting place; a hospitable place, even, Yashim reflected.
When the tutor said no one had ever run away from the palace school, Yashim had not tried to contradict him. But one hot afternoon, near the end of his last year in the school, Yashim had walked out of the gates and down the hill to the Grand Bazaar.
Yashim"s father had sent him to the palace school because he could think of nothing else that might a.s.suage the agony of his condition. So Yashim had been older than the other boys: already, in most respects, a man. Loose in the city, he had walked at random all that day, and spent the night curled beneath a caique upturned on the sh.o.r.e. In the morning the caiquejee had found him there, fast asleep, and given him breakfast. A day later Yashim returned to the school. The old lala, his tutor, made no comment-he seemed to think he"d gone to Eyup, to the tomb of the Companion of the Prophet.
But a few days later he had been introduced to Fevzi Ahmet.
Yashim took two eggplants, topped and tailed them with his paring knife, and sliced them lengthwise. He laid the slices on a plate and sprinkled them with salt.
Three weeks ago, in the dying days of Sultan Mahmut"s reign, a Russian agent had visited Chalki. Evidently not for the good of his health. Not for the good of his immortal soul. He came because Fevzi Ahmet, the Kapudan pasha, lived on the island.
Perhaps he came to spy on the Kapudan pasha. Perhaps Fevzi Ahmet found him in his garden, or rifling his papers. Time was short; the fleet about to sail. He killed the Russian with his bare hands, disposed of the corpse in the monastery well, and left.
But if Fevzi Pasha had caught a spy-why would he try to conceal the body? Why, above all, would he not try to inform the grand vizier?
If Fevzi Pasha wanted the death to remain secret, the dead man must mean more to him than he wanted anyone to know.
38.
IT took Yashim less than two hours to reach Chalki. He crossed in a hired felucca because he did not want to be observed, landing at a small fishermen"s jetty about half a mile from the main quay.
The fishermen he found mending their nets told him that Fevzi Pasha had bought the konak about three years before. He had made himself unpopular with the islanders by forbidding them to use the rocks down by the sh.o.r.e below the house; he claimed that he and his household-his women, the fishermen a.s.sumed-required absolute privacy. This in spite of the high walls that surrounded the konak and its gardens.
"You"d have to pile those rocks one on top of another to look over that wall," one fisherman remarked. "Perhaps he"s afraid someone wants his money."
"I wouldn"t mind seeing it," another added. "He doesn"t spend it around here, leastways."
"Too right. What, a couple of fellows to do his garden?"
"Never sends to the market, either."
"That"s right. Only a little market, kyrie, not like what you"d see in the city. But it"s money for the islanders. Muslims here, as well as Christians, but he won"t use them. Everything from stores, I"m told."
Yashim took a good look at the pasha"s house and grounds. The estate stretched to about three acres, enclosed by an eight-foot wall topped with overhanging tiles, built to take advantage of every natural slope; even from the hillside it was impossible to see over it. There were two gates, the lesser one approached by a narrow mule track.
Yashim could hear dogs barking within the walls.
Later in the afternoon, while he was drinking tea in a small cafe along the sh.o.r.e, he again met the fisherman who cooked with tomatoes, and he took advantage of the license of the islands to invite him for a drink.
For a Muslim to sit with a Christian, openly drinking ouzo-even if the Muslim gentleman stuck to his tea-would have been unthinkable in most parts of Istanbul itself. Perhaps, in a dark Tophane tavern where foreign sailors regularly loitered for their billets, such a meeting would just have been possible; but here on the island-that place for romantic a.s.signations, as Palewski had said-the rules seemed to be more relaxed. Yashim sipped his tea while his new friend watered his raki and drank it, flushed and happy, at Yashim"s expense.
Within an hour, Yashim had found out how to get into the pasha"s garden.
"But not dressed like that, if you"ll forgive me, kyrie," the young man ventured, with a charming smile. Then some of his confidence seemed to evaporate, because he added, "You"ll have to wear some of Dmitri"s things," and scowled, as if the reality of what he had agreed to do had just struck him.
"Let"s talk to Dmitri, then, my friend." Yashim stood up. The young fisherman got slowly to his feet, punching his fist into his palm.
"My trouble, kyrie, is that I talk too much."
39.
AS Dmitri predicted, the gate opened as the distant bells of the monastery rang for vespers.
"I"ve brought my mate again," Dmitri said, jerking his thumb.
Yashim put a finger to the brim of his hat. The doorkeeper let them through the gate and closed it after them, shooting two bolts before he walked away.
"I"ll be back in an hour," he said gruffly, over his shoulder.
Dmitri picked up a watering can from beside the gate. "You can take the mattock," he said.
Yashim swung the mattock over his shoulder and followed the gardener to the well, set back behind a hedge of p.r.i.c.kly pears and a drooping willow tree. He laid the mattock down, and glanced over the p.r.i.c.kly pears.
Across a courtyard, neatly paved in a geometric pattern of small stone blocks, a tilted apple tree was laden with small fruit. Just beyond it stood a fine konak, with spreading eaves and whitewashed walls.
The shutters on the ground floor were closed.
Beyond the konak was another door, which belonged to a small lodge, or guardhouse, built up against the wall.
A dozy blackbird sang in the apple tree. Otherwise the courtyard was perfectly still. A huge fig drooped its man hands from the southern wall, and from it arose the hum of drowsy bees; the cobbles below were stained and spotted by dropped fruit.
A pair of swallows worked the intervening air.
As if to dispel a dream, Yashim brushed a hand through the air above his head, and approached the konak across the dry cobbles.
40.
AT this hour of the day when the sun slanted almost horizontally across the landscape, you could sometimes make out dark forms behind the latticework that protected the upper windows of every Ottoman house. Men spoke of glimpses of a pretty hand, or a pair of liquid eyes, to which imagination attached the figure of a houri from Paradise. Yashim ducked under the pears and walked quickly across the courtyard to the back door.
My name is Yashim: I am a lala from the palace, he could say. We have been concerned for your safety while the pasha is away.
n.o.body answered his knock. He listened. No footsteps; no whispers.
Yashim tried the shutters. They were fastened from the inside, but overhead was a balcony facing away from the church and toward the hills. With a swift glance around, he shinned up from the shutter to the bal.u.s.trade.
A lattice door pierced by a thousand little openings was shut fast by an inside hook. Yashim slipped a knife from his belt and slid the blade into the jamb. It clicked against the hook and the door swung free.
He stood, breathing heavily in the doorway.
Once before he had entered a harem like this, by stealth. He"d been looking for a man hiding among the petticoats-and Fevzi Ahmet had been waiting for him downstairs.
Now it was Fevzi"s house. Fevzi"s harem.
He stepped through the doorway.
"Ladies! Ladies! I am Yashim, a lala from the palace! Come out, and do not be afraid!"
41.
FEVZI Ahmet, coming into the guardroom. Pulling off a pair of gloves.
He spits.
"Nothing. A time waster."
"Perhaps I could talk to him? I"ve been wondering-perhaps he doesn"t realize what he knows?"
Fevzi pours himself a gla.s.s of tea. "No. There"s no point, Yashim."
"Never give up-you say that yourself, Fevzi efendi."