Madame Mavrogordato’s lips moved into a thin smile. “But when it happened, when it really did happen, it was a woman. It would take a woman, Yashim efendi: Max Meyer was not a man just anyone could kill.”
“Four men died first, on his account.”
Madame Mavrogordato drew back her head. “Four men, efendi? You think—only four?”
She turned her head to fix him with her dark eyes, and he met them with a jolt of recognition.
“You can believe what you want to,” she almost spat. “Millingen—what an English gentleman! A bad show, he thinks, Dr. Meyer cutting loose like that. Leaving his young wife behind, as well. Shocking behavior! I don’t think Millingen would recommend him to his London club.”
She was almost shaking. Yashim couldn’t tell if it was with anger or contempt.
“But I knew that man. You should have heard what he said to me, the promises he made, the innocence he tore apart with his bare hands like a veil in front of my eyes. He bared me to the world, then spat upon me and turned away.” She lowered her voice, and two tears ran down her cheeks. “The man who could betray me like that—he could betray anyone. The Turks caught him, I’m sure of that. And he sold them Missilonghi, in return for his own miserable life. He sold us all, Yashim efendi. And you talk of four men dead. Four men!”
She stood up and went to the windows, wiping her hands across her cheeks.
“I’m so glad she killed him, Yashim efendi. I am so very, very grateful.”
She put out a hand, to touch the curtains. Yashim heard a knock at the door of the apartment.
Madame Mavrogordato’s fist balled around the silk. “She must have hated him very much,” she said.
The knock came again, louder. The woman at the window turned her head. “Come!”
The footman entered the apartment and bowed. He glanced at Yashim.
“Hanum,” he faltered. “The sultan is dead.”
Madame Mavrogordato turned her face away. “Have the shutters drawn at the front of the house, Dmitri.”
“Yes, hanum.”
“The groom will know to put crepe on the carriage. Also the horses’ bridles. Ask the cook to see that there is enough for tomorrow, before the markets close. Monsieur Mavrogordato will eat at home. That is all.”
“I will see to it, hanum.”
When the footman had gone, neither of them spoke for several minutes.
“The sultan is dead,” Madame Mavrogordato said at last. “Long live the sultan.”
Yashim stared at his hands. He caught the irony in her tone, but he was thinking of someone else.
He got to his feet. Madame Mavrogordato had closed her eyes and between clenched teeth she gave out a strangled moan.
126
ACROSS the Golden Horn, in a dilapidated mansion close to the Grande Rue, a man stood listening at an open window.
“So that’s that,” he said at last, so quietly that the girl in the room could only imagine he had spoken. She set the tray down carefully on the desk.
From the windows she heard the distant muezzins calling the prayer for the dead.
Palewski turned. The bottle on the tray was old and squat. Many years ago, a Polish nobleman had ordered it among a few dozen such from one of the best Cognac houses in France, to lay down in the cellars on his estate. That man was Palewski’s father. “It’s good Martell,” he’d say. “If in doubt, dump the paintings but hang on to the brandy.”
Palewski pulled out a penknife and slit the wax around the neck. He pulled the cork and poured a measure into each glass.
Gently he picked up both glasses by the stem.
Marta blushed. “Lord—I cannot—I—”
Palewski shook his head. “It’s to remember him by,” he said. “He ruled this empire for as long as I’ve known Istanbul. All your life, Marta.”
He held the glass to the light. “To Mahmut!”
“To Mahmut,” Marta echoed, smiling.
127
IT was the noise that startled him, even before he saw the crowd: a murmur of voices like the sea. The halberdiers stood to attention in the gate, and in the First Court of the seraglio, where only a few days before he had walked in absolute stillness, Yashim found himself jostled and surrounded on all sides.
Sultan Mahmut was dead. In the faces that surrounded him Yashim saw expressions of anguish and despair; he read fear in one man’s eyes, and in the next, expectancy; he heard the murmur of the sutras, and laughter, and the cry of the corncob seller calling his wares. A distinguished pasha walked by in a swirl of cloak and leather, with his horse, a gray, curvetting at the groom’s hand on the bridle. An elderly man, bareheaded, lay spread-eagled facedown on the ground, as if he had fallen from the sky. A phalanx of small children stood silently against the wall. A yellow dog heaved itself up from the shade of a plane tree and stalked stiffly away, as if disgusted to have its sleep disturbed, while a man in a fez, with an enormous belly, wept openly on the shoulder of another man, dressed like a servant. Many people—Muslim, Armenian—counted their beads, and watched.
The sultan had died at Besiktas, like the jewel in a box; but here to Topkapi, to the ancient palace of the sultans, to the great old court of the people of the empire, the people came with their hopes and their regrets.
Yashim advanced through the crowd to the second gate. The halberdiers did not recognize him at first and lowered their pikes, but the key holder saw him and nodded him through. They walked in silence to the little door to the harem, with so much and so little to say.
He found Hyacinth sobbing in a little chamber off the corridor.
“Who’s with the valide, then?” he demanded.
Hyacinth raised his little red-rimmed eyes to his. “Oh, Yashim! We are all so very sad!”
“So I see,” Yashim said.
He found her alone and fully dressed, seated on the edge of the sofa with her hands in her lap.
“I hoped it would be you, Yashim. I see that you, too, refrain from weeping.”
Yashim said nothing.
“I’ve sent the rest of them away. I can’t bear to see their faces all crumpled up, the runny noses. Pure chicanery. They have no idea what will happen to me, so they are sorry for themselves. They have hearts like walnuts.”
Yashim suppressed a smile. “The First Court is full of people, Valide. It reminds me of the old days.”
“Yes?” The valide raised her head, as if to listen. Her silver earrings chinked together softly.
“It’s a strange thing, Yashim,” she said, in a surprisingly small voice. “I do nothing at all from day to day but grow old—yet I find that today of all days, I have nothing to do. I can only sit.”
Yashim rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Then he knelt at the valide’s side. “I have an idea,” he said.
128
THE crowd in the First Court was denser than before, and it was only a sufi, with hands upraised and one eye on the second gate, who noticed two figures emerging from the sanctity of the inner court. Perhaps, if the sufi had stopped to think, he might have guessed the identity of the veiled woman who walked slowly, with a stick, supported by her undistinguished companion; but the sufi had deliberately emptied his mind of all thoughts, the better to concentrate on the ninety-nine names of God.
Yashim felt the valide’s grip tighten on his arm as they advanced toward the crowd, and took it as a good sign. It was impossible for them to speak over the shouts and murmurs of the mourners thronging that vast space, but he noticed the valide’s head turning to and fro as she observed the faces of the men who surrounded them, and now and then she stopped, for a better look. In this way the valide betrayed her particular interest in little children, boiled corn, the traditional ululations of Arab women, and the rather scrawny mount of a long-legged Albanian cavalryman in French trousers.