Another red flutter. “On the contrary, Signor Cardoso, I think it will be a real triumph. How could it be otherwise? On one side is Selim, displaying all the power of the Ottoman Empire, and on the other is an undefended island, far away from any possible ally.” She pointed with her fan. “Look at Don Yossef. Look at him carefully, because he is the true author of all of this. And most importantly, he’s the one who’s paying the bill.”
I turned toward her; she was pleased to have attracted my attention.
“The Nasis are bankers, and the only art to which they have ever devoted themselves is finance,” she said. “We pay for the wars of the sovereigns. This time, instead of a useful percentage, it would seem that we are going to receive a crown.”
Nasi wasn’t merely dedicating himself to the most powerful army in the world — he was financing it. Perhaps that was his hope: to move his credit to a more resonant coin than gold and silver. To buy the freedom of the future kingdom. It wouldn’t be the Israelites conquering Jericho, but at least a Jew’s money would make it possible. Watching that great destroying machine pass by, I wondered if it would be enough.
“So it seems that I am about to be a queen,” Reyna went on. “Melancholy and alone.”
“You seem to be neither of those things, my lady,” I lied.
“You couldn’t possibly understand. All women who are forced to live in the shadow of a great man have something in common: hushing up his weaknesses, weaving tapestries in the empty silence of a palace. I’m sure the Sultan’s consort would agree with me.”
“And I’m sure that many women would like to be in your place.”
Rather than turning toward me, she let her eye fall on Dana. “And yet sometimes a servant has more freedom than a queen.”
She said nothing more, but that was enough to spark my suspicion, and suspicion, in a man of my profession, is as vast as a mine and more inflammable than pitch. Those words, addressed to me as she referred with her eyes to Dana, were a precise allusion. I remembered Dana’s words after the first night that I had spent with her. She had told me repeatedly not to tell anyone what had happened between us.
I was a thousand times more harmless, for you, with a dagger in my hand.
I had to discover whether Reyna knew, or even merely imagined, that her chambermaid was spending almost every night in my room.
The cheers of the crowd drowned out my thoughts. A long line of cannon, pulled by oxen and escorted by companies of artillerymen, had entered the hippodrome. There were cannon of every size, caliber and style, embellished with a thousand ornaments, with mouths shaped like the jaws of lions and wolves. Culverins, bombards, mortars, serpentines, siege cannons and half-cannons. A black snake whose tail I still couldn’t see even when the head had traveled halfway around the arena.
Leading the monster was a piece of artillery that would never see the coast of Cyprus, but which the Ottomans venerated like a talisman. It was the huge bombard of the Hungarian engineer Orban, used during the siege of Constantinople. I counted thirty pairs of oxen forced to pull it, and judged that it was at least fifteen feet long. In spite of its size, I suspected that during the siege it had been more of a hindrance than a help. You couldn’t fire it more than twice a day, and that had allowed the Byzantines to rebuild during the night what the cannonballs had destroyed during the day. And yet, more than a century later, that basilisk more than anything else bore witness to the superiority of the Turks over the European fortresses.
Now the guilds of armorers, foundry men and other war-related trades were preparing to close the parade. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Donna Reyna handing a note to Dana and whispering something in her ear. Dana nodded a few times, and then slipped away.
I saw her emerging among the crowd, and a few moments later I excused myself too, to go and join her outside the hippodrome.
When I found her, she was walking quickly along the Imperial Road. I stepped forward and gestured to her to follow me into an alleyway, because in Constantinople it isn’t thought seemly for a man and a woman to stop in the street and talk.
The burned-out ruins of an old wooden house offered us shelter from the eyes of passers-by.
“What’s going on?” she asked me impatiently.
“I’m worried that Donna Reyna knows about us.”
She laughed, not troubled in the slightest by that possibility. A rat-squeak from a pile of rubbish echoed her laughter. “If she knew, she would have dismissed me already.”
I wasn’t satisfied. “Have you said or done anything that might have alerted her? Think very hard.”
“Certainly not. Calm down.” She stroked my cheek with her hand. “Now let me go, I’m in a hurry.”
“What do you have to do that’s so urgent?”
She tried to push past me, but I stood in her way. “Donna Reyna’s business.”
“Business!” I tried to smile, but I couldn’t. “What kind of business?”
“None of yours, Manuel. Let me go.”
I pushed her away so that I could stare into her eyes. “You know what my job is at Palazzo Belvedere. Don Yossef has chosen me to collect rumors and clues. There is no business within the Nasi family that is not my business too.”
She gave me a glance that I couldn’t interpret. It might have expressed annoyance, surprise or disappointment. A drop of sweat ran down her forehead from under her veil.
“Has the frenzy of battle gone to your head, Manuel? Perhaps seeing all those janissaries in a row, ready to crush the enemy, has made you want to do the same?” And with those words she pushed me aside and returned to the street.
Panting, I waited for my breathing to slow. The air was hot and smelled of ashes and carrion. With no particular haste, I stepped into the Imperial Road, recognized her yellow kerchief and started following her toward Santa Sofia. A pack of unhealthy-looking dogs decided to do the same to me. I hoped their barking wouldn’t make Dana turn round, before a few lobbed stones persuaded them to shut up and go somewhere else.
Past the ancient church, now turned into a mosque, was the Augustus Gate, the chief entrance to the walls of the Seraglio. I saw Dana dart inside and decided to follow her. No particular formalities were required to enter the first courtyard. As soon as I was inside, I slowed my pace and kept my distance, concerned that I might be noticed. Unlike the first time I had been here, there wasn’t much activity along the avenue, but I certainly couldn’t hide myself behind a cypress tree, nor could I go another way: This was the only possible route. On the other hand, for the same reason, it wasn’t hard for me to keep my eye on my quarry, even from a distance. Dana stopped at the second gate, chatted with the guards and was allowed in shortly afterward.
I experienced a moment of indecision. My eye fell on the fountain to the right of the entrance, where the hangman is said to wash his hands and his sword once his work is done.
Taking care not be too hasty, I turned around and went back where I had come from, hoping that no one had noticed my strange behavior. I had come in, I had walked to the middle of the courtyard, and now I was turning on my heel, all for no clear reason. I remembered the stories I had heard in Galata, of merchants beaten on the spot, just for having raised their voices or ridden their horses too quickly.
Once outside, I thought about what I had seen. I tried to remember which buildings opened onto the second courtyard. I recalled the kitchens, the stables, the Sultan’s harem, the Council Chamber and the rooms leading off it for the private audiences of the various viziers.
I thought that Donna Reyna’s message must be meant for a member of the Divan. And it couldn’t have been an innocent one. Otherwise, why would Dana have been so reticent? Couldn’t she have told me quite straightforwardly what was going on at the Seraglio?