“With God’s help,” she said at last. “The people will stay quiet.”
She felt the pressure of his fingers as they clenched around her own.
100
George Compston picked up the note and turned it over in his hands. He walked through the embassy tapping it against his teeth, looking for Fizerly.
He found him with his feet up on a desk, rubbing olive oil onto his mustache. He started when he saw Compston.
“Got a note,” Compston said carelessly.
Fizerly swung his legs to the ground. “Is she pretty?”
Compston opened the note, read it quickly, and blushed.
“I’m afraid that’s between me and these four walls, old man,” he said rather thickly.
Fizerly shrugged. It was so infernally hot.
Compston read the note again. He’d lit a spark there! A Turkish Byron enthusiast-whatever next?
It was from that eunuch, Yashim.
101
The sou naziry slid from his horse and passed the reins to an apprentice. He knelt on the rim of the tank and plunged his hands into the cold water: it had been a hot ride, even beneath the trees. He wiped the dust of the road from his face and the back of his neck. Leka presented him with a towel.
“I don’t see anything wrong with the levels,” the sou naziry said. He patted the towel into a ball and tossed it at Leka. The reservoirs had been exactly as he had imagined: a drop of about six inches. Normal for the time of year.
“It is the old women who like to spread this kind of talk,” he added. “A sultan is about to die, and they think the sky is falling on their heads.”
The shade was black under the trees. There was no wind, but the forests exhaled a refreshing coolness and the monthly ride had given the sou naziry an appetite. It would be good to sit by the edge of the woods and eat.
The foresters had prepared the usual refreshments. A black tent was set up on the grass, with carpets and silver trays, and jugs of sherbet made of sour cherries and oranges covered with a little square of gauze, the edges weighted with dangling beads. To one side a fire was crackling under a tripod, where a cook was preparing a bulgur pilaf; two foresters were squatting by the tandir. Long before dawn they had begun to make and tend the fire, fetching brushwood and logs, reducing the wood to a pile of glowing coals. The pit they had dug was invisible, beneath a covering of baked mud and sticks.
The cook had selected a lamb from the flock the day before. He had skinned and gutted the animal, studding its flesh with garlic spikes before he rubbed it with a mixture of yogurt and sieved tomatoes, crushed onion and garlic, coriander and cumin. At dawn, when the fire began to sink, they trussed the lamb to a stake and lowered it over the pit, setting the meat deeper and deeper as the morning progressed, until it was cooking underground, sealed by a makeshift lid.
One of the foresters looked up. Recognizing the naziry, he motioned to his companion, and the two men carefully raised the lid. The naziry saw the slightest trickle of smoke emerge from the pit. Overthrowing the lid, the forester bent forward and with a flash of his knife removed one of the kidneys, which he presented to the naziry on the point. The naziry took the smoking morsel in his fingers and ate with relish, standing by the pit, gazing down into the glowing fire.
Men, like animals, were afraid of fire, the naziry thought. But fire itself feared the naziry. Fire was afraid of water.
One of the foresters yawned. He was holding a green branch, which he waved gently over the roasting meat to chase the flies away.
The naziry settled himself on the carpet, crossing his legs beneath him, and watched the men draw the lamb out of the tandir. Beyond, the sunlight glittered on the surface of the bent; frogs croaked in the reeds; swallows skimmed the water and rose twittering and whistling into the air. A servant picked up a silver tray and polished it carefully with a cloth. The cook nodded.
He arranged a mound of pilaf on the tray, then took the long knife hanging at his belt and began to carve the meat.
A horseman rode up the track and out of the trees. At the sight of the tent and the smoking meat, he reined in and bowed from the saddle.
The sou naziry raised a hand in greeting.
“May you eat well, efendi,” the stranger said politely.
The naziry hesitated. There was something familiar about the rider: he had an impression that they had met, but he could not remember where.
“Thank you,” he said.
The stranger slipped from the saddle. Holding the reins in his hand, he said: “Forgive me, naziry. I did not recognize you in the shade. I am Yashim. Yesterday I attended the valide, at the induction ceremony.”
The naziry had already realized who he was. “Yashim efendi, of course.” He glanced at the lamb. “You will join us, please.”
It was Yashim’s turn to hesitate. “You are most generous, naziry, but I do not mean to intrude,” he said.
“There is meat,” the naziry said, with a gesture toward the lamb. “And you have ridden far.”
He motioned to the syce to take Yashim’s horse.
Yashim sat down, and the tray of pilaf and lamb was brought to the tent. The two men ate quickly, in silence. Afterward came slices of bloodred watermelon, refreshingly sweet. Once or twice, Yashim caught the naziry looking curiously at him out of the corner of his eye.
A servant poured water, and they washed their hands.
The coffee was served on a salver, with a tchibouk.
“I have not been here for many years,” Yashim confessed at last. “This is the bent built by Sinan, isn’t it?”
The naziry grunted. “It is a bent, like another. Sinan repaired it, at our direction.”
At our direction! It was a magnificent phrase, Yashim thought, for Sinan’s career as an architect had begun almost three hundred years ago.
“It existed already, then?”
The naziry nodded. “It was smaller, I believe, in the Greek time.”
Yashim smiled. “I did not realise, naziry, that the guild had such a long memory.”
The naziry looked surprised. “How should it be otherwise?” He took a puff of his pipe. “Greek or Turk, a man needs water to live.”
“Of course.”
“For a village, it is enough to make a well. But for a city? The people must wash, and drink, and cook food, Yashim efendi.”
Yashim nodded.
“How do men make a city? You think a sultan claps his hands and it appears like the palace of a djinn? No, not even a sultan can do this. Water. Water to build a city. And water to defend it, also.”
“Defend it?”
“Of course. Great walls, brave soldiers, even a wise sultan in command-these can delay a city’s fall. But water decides the battle.”
Yashim considered the naziry’s remark. “Istanbul is vulnerable, then,” he said.
The naziry raised an eyebrow. “It is not as vulnerable as you might guess, Yashim efendi. That is our responsibility. But without us, the city is dust. It cannot eat. It cannot live.
“This,” he added, pointing the stem of his pipe toward the glittering bent, “is the blood of Istanbul.”
Yashim looked at the shimmering water. The foresters and the naziry’s men were squatting in a circle, sharing out the rest of the pilaf and meat.
“The men of the guild,” Yashim began, “they are all Albanians, aren’t they?”
The naziry made a motion of dismissal. “They are men who understand one another, that is all.” He was silent for a moment. “But yes, also we have a gift. Is it because we come from the mountains, that we understand the fall of water, and the measure of distances? I do not know how it is, but God gives every race some special task. A Bulgar knows his sheep. A Serb can always fight. A Greek knows how to talk and a Turk how to be silent. But we Albanians-we can read water.”
And keep secrets, Yashim thought. Sustain memories.
“You have great experience,” he said.