Instead, Yashim recalled a legend in Grigor’s book, about the emperor being turned to stone.
“Max thought those stories carried a message,” Amélie explained. “Perhaps the tale of the priest means that the Greeks had time to hide their treasure before the Turks came in. Aya Sofia is one of the biggest buildings on earth. The most ambitious building project in world history, after the Pyramids.”
She took a lock of hair and twisted it with a finger.
“But there’s no crypt in Aya Sofia. Most churches have crypts, to represent the world of the dead. At Aya Sofia they raised the largest dome in the world, like a microcosm of the universe—the whole of God’s creation. It’s odd if they didn’t build a crypt in there, as well.”
Yashim broke the bread and dipped it into his soup. “It’s said that Mehmed came into the Great Church the morning after the assault and found a soldier hacking at the marble floor. He was angry. He said: ‘You soldiers can take whatever you can carry, but the building belongs to God—and me.’ Aya Sofia was preserved.”
“Perhaps he knew there was something under there. But they never got an opportunity to look, did they? As far as I know, Aya Sofia hasn’t been touched now for four hundred years.”
“They added minarets,” Yashim pointed out.
“On the outside.”
They looked at each other.
“That trick,” Yashim said. “The trick you were doing with the coin. Where did you learn that?”
Amélie laughed. “I still haven’t. Max used to teach me, but I haven’t got the fingers for it, I suppose. He could make the coin run through his fingers and then—pouf! It vanished. Just like that priest.”
Yashim drank his soup. He put down the empty bowl. “Your husband—Max. Dr. Lefèvre. He was a doctor of archaeology, wasn’t he?”
Amélie looked surprised. “Of archaeology? He was an archaeologist, yes. But he started out in medicine. He was a doctor of medicine.”
“A doctor of medicine,” Yashim repeated slowly. “I had no idea.”
There was a knock on the door, and Palewski came in, fishing a green bottle out of his coat pocket.
He bowed to Amélie and then peered closely at Yashim.
“He seems to have been eating soup,” he said. He patted the bottle. “Brandy. Excellent with soup. Good for invalids. I thought he might be dead.”
“He’ll live,” Amélie said.
Palewski looked disappointed. “Brandy’s good for a wake. I thought we might sit around his corpse, remembering, madame.”
“I think I’m recovering,” Yashim said in a small voice.
Amélie laughed. She glanced from Yashim to Palewski, and flexed her back. “Madame Matalya will want her bowl back, Yashim. I’ll take it down—and I’m a little tired.”
When she had gone, the ambassador uncorked the brandy and poured two glasses.
“It’s not the first time that you’ve saved my life,” Yashim said.
Palewski dismissed him with a wave. “I’m not too busy at the moment.”
Yashim smiled. With the sultan dying, most ambassadors would be filing their reports and trying to sound out the crown prince. The Polish ambassador could afford to wait on events.
“I don’t quite understand why I found you crawling out of a tunnel, Yashim.”
Yashim told him. He told him about Shpëtin’s little tin ball and the siphon. He told him how he had got lost in the maze, and about Xani’s body floating in the pool. He told him, too, how he had escaped.
“So Xani’s dead. They followed him into the siphon, killed him, and threw him down the pipe?”
“What else would they do? The little boy was watching the door from the other side of the road.”
“He saw them go in—and come out. He knows who they are.”
“But he can’t speak, Palewski.”
The ambassador cracked his knuckles.
Yashim levered himself up on one elbow. “There’s another thing. Amélie—Madame Lefèvre—read the Gyllius book. It gave her an idea.”
“The serpents’ heads?”
“Aya Sofia.”
Palewski shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“Gyllius mentions the serpents’ heads—but they were still in their place on the column when he was here. And in Delmonico’s time, too. That little book doesn’t tell us anything important about the serpents’ heads, Palewski. So why was it so important to Lefèvre?”
“I don’t know. But if it wasn’t the serpents’ heads, why would he have needed Xani? And then, why was Xani murdered, too?”
Yashim ran his hands through his hair. “Xani. Amélie. Gyllius’s book. I feel as though I’m trying to re-create a rare and astonishing dish from a memory of how it tasted, Palewski. We have all these ingredients in the dish—but the flavor’s wrong, somehow.” He looked up. “Amélie told me something just now. Lefèvre was a real doctor. Not a doctor of archaeology.”
“A doctor. So what?”
“I’m not sure. He spoke Greek fluently, too. Modern Greek. He learned it in the twenties, in the Greek provinces.”
“Are you sure? There was a war going on at the time.”
“Missilonghi, yes. That’s what interests me. Your poet—Byron, Millingen, his doctor.”
“Byron,” Palewski echoed. “It’s Thursday, Yashim. I’ve got an idea.”
“Thursday?” Yashim frowned. It was a ritual, their Thursday dinner; but time was short.
“I’m sorry, but I haven’t—”
“No, no, Yash. It’s quite all right. Tonight, for once, you’ll dine with me.”
89
YASHIM was relieved that he didn’t have to shop or cook. It was already past noon. He dressed with care, and an hour later he presented himself at the door of the sultan’s harem, in Topkapi Palace.
Hyacinth emerged from his little cubicle in the corridor and grinned, showing a row of reddish teeth. “I knew it would be you,” he said softly.
“The valide?”
The elderly eunuch wagged his head and looked serious. “Not receiving today. A little shock. She is resting.”
“Come on, Hyacinth,” Yashim said testily. “Everyone here is resting.”
Hyacinth giggled uncertainly and tapped Yashim on the chest with his fan.
“It seems it’s all your fault, Yashim,” he said. “You and your little favors.”
Yashim blinked. Years ago, when three hundred women or more were cooped up in the harem apartments, attended by a cohort of Black Eunuchs, it was only to be expected that everyone would know everyone else’s business. Now there was only one, the valide, with a handful of girls and a few attendants. But some things never changed.
“The bostanci refused her?”
Hyacinth’s hands fluttered. “I never said a word,” he insisted, raising his eyebrows. “Her Highness is not receiving—anyone.”
Yashim bowed; he admired the glint of steel beneath the black man’s gentle manner. But he wondered what would happen if he brushed him aside and pressed on. Hyacinth, he guessed, was stronger than he looked. A sort of giddiness swept over him. There would be no men-at-arms springing forward to enforce compliance; there never had been. It would never have been necessary.
“Is that you, Yashim?”
The voice from along the passage was unmistakable. Yashim looked up; Hyacinth whirled around.
The valide sultan was advancing very slowly along the passageway, one hand gripping the knob of a stick, the other raised to the shoulder of a girl whose arm was passed around the valide’s waist. What struck Yashim was not that the valide herself was bent, or very frail, or that her knuckles looked huge beneath the thin skin of her hands, but that she was wearing jewels: a welter of diamonds at her ears, around her neck, pearls gleaming from her diadem, and at her breast a lapis brooch with the figure N picked out in ivory. As she stepped forward into the sunlight it seemed to Yashim that she sparkled like a leaf after a storm.