Part 8 (1/2)

”I am here, valide.”

At the band girl's signal, two slim black eunuchs bent forward to help the valide to her feet. She flinched impatiently, but at last she was upright between them.

”You, too, Yas.h.i.+m. I expect a visit, soon.”

The harem ladies stood respectfully as the valide walked away, supported on either hand by eunuchs. Tulin, the flautist, hovered around them. Yas.h.i.+m found himself face-to-face with Sultan Mahmut's widowed sister.

”We miss you in the harem, Yas.h.i.+m.”

Yas.h.i.+m blinked: the resemblance to Mahmut was strong. Poor Talfa. She should have borne a son before her husband died. With only Necla, she had returned to the imperial harem.

She took a lock of her hair and curled it on a pudgy finger.

”I've been thinking about the way you live ... outside,” she said, in the little high voice of the harem. ”I often wonder why that is?”

”It was settled many years ago,” Yas.h.i.+m replied cautiously. ”By your n.o.ble brother's wish.”

”Peace be on him,”Talfa said, letting the curl of hair spring free. ”Sultan Abdulmecid-I suppose he must have confirmed the arrangement.”

Yas.h.i.+m hesitated. The new sultan had not revoked Yas.h.i.+m's permission to live outside the palace walls. Nor, on the other hand, had he confirmed it. Yas.h.i.+m guessed that Talfa knew as much.

”I am where I hope I can be most useful, hanum efendi,” he replied. ”And in the Abode of Bliss, are you not under the gaze of the all-powerful sultan?”

Talfa turned her head slightly and a dimple appeared on her cheek.

”The sultan has so many cares, Yas.h.i.+m efendi.” She gave him a slanting gaze under her lashes. ”It isn't fair that you should leave it all to him. And you were very good the other day. You could be so useful here, efendi.”

She giggled lightly.

Yas.h.i.+m bowed, and felt his blood run cold.

26.

AS the caique turned up against the sluggish current, Palewski leaned back on the hard cus.h.i.+ons and stared at the footings of the new bridge.

For centuries, people had talked about throwing a bridge across the Golden Horn. On the Stamboul side lay the bazaars, the palaces, and the temples of faith; on the Pera side lived the foreign community, now a mixed bag of Italians and Levantines, who operated so many of the commercial enterprises of the empire. The great Byzantine emperor Justinian, who gave his city the incomparable Ayasofya, was supposed, by some, to have strung a chain of boats across the waterway. If he had done so, only the idea of the chain had survived: medieval Constantinople had protected itself from attack on the seaward side by hauling a ma.s.sive chain, whose links weighed fifty pounds apiece, across the mouth of the Horn. In 1453, when the city fell to the Ottoman Turks, Mehmet II had dragged his s.h.i.+ps over land to get around it.

Fifty years later, the renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci had submitted a design for a bridge shaped like a curving bow, or a crescent; the sketch was put on file and forgotten. Three centuries pa.s.sed. Then the late sultan-proponent of change everywhere in the empire-entrusted the project to his favorite, the Kapudan pasha Fevzi Ahmet, commander of the fleet. A man who had a reputation for getting things done.

Palewski sighed. Where the great plane tree that shaded the sh.o.r.eline on the Pera side had stood, the ground looked dusty and hard-baked. The pasha's bridge would be as ugly and practical as any of the new buildings that had disfigured the old city in the past twenty years-the commercial houses of Pera, the blank barracks of the New Troop on uskudar, the sultan's hideous new palace at Besiktas. Worst of all, he thought, it would dissolve the ancient distinction between Stamboul, with its palaces and domes and bazaars, and modern, commercial Pera across the Horn.

It was growing dark when the caique dropped him at the Balat stage. Palewski tipped the oarsman and made his way unhurriedly through the steep streets before stopping at a sunken doorway picked out in bands of red and white stone. The widow Matalya opened the door and Palewski removed his hat.

”Gone out, efendi,” the old lady remarked. ”Messengers back and forth, and I don't know what. Would you like to wait?”

Palewski agreed, and went on up to Yas.h.i.+m's apartment carrying his old portmanteau, stuffed with a shawl. Wrapped in the shawl was an excellent brandy-1821-which the French amba.s.sador had once given him, though Palewski had forgotten why. He sat on the divan while the familiar outlines of the flat bled into darkness; just before it became too dark to see, he stood up and fumbled with the lamp. In Yas.h.i.+m's kitchen various plates and bowls were covered with muslins. The brazier was barely warm: he poked his finger into the coals, then wiped the soot off absently on his coattails. At last he found a piece of bread and a painted gla.s.s, and settled down to read Yas.h.i.+m's latest Balzac.

At the beginning of chapter three he eased off his shoes and drew his feet up onto the divan.

27.

THE great oda, overlooking the Bosphorus, emptied out. The orchestra packed up their instruments. The ladies of the harem drifted away. The children were shepherded off by the black eunuchs, still sniffling. It had been a very remarkable day; not an auspicious one. There was lots to discuss later.

Only the lady Talfa remained, with her slave.

”Bring me coffee.”

Yusel heaved herself to her feet and was about to waddle off when she raised her hands in surprise. ”What have we here?”

On the carpet at the foot of the divan sat a little girl, fast asleep, with her head on her knees.

Yusel bent down and shook her gently. ”Best run along now, little one.”

The girl saw Yusel bending over her and scrambled to her feet, looking blankly from Yusel to the lady Talfa.

Yusel mimed a low temmena, a bow with the hand almost trailing the ground. The girl took the hint. She presented Talfa with a graceful bow.

She looked about five years old.

”Very pretty, very nice,” Talfa murmured. The sad events of the afternoon had put her into a good mood. ”And what, little one, is your name?”

”Roxelana, hanum.”

”Charming! And tell me, Roxelana, who looks after you?”

Roxelana glanced down and traced a pattern in the carpet with her little slippered foot. ”No one, hanum.”

Talfa frowned. ”No one? Where do you sleep?”

”I sleep-with the girls.” She slid her foot against her leg. ”Wherever I am, hanum.”

”The Kislar aga knows about this? And Bezmialem?”

The little girl glanced up, biting her lip.