“I thought it was you,” Yashim said. “At first.”
He heard the ticking of the clocks, the rustle of Madame Mavrogordato’s silks, the chink of her spoon on the saucer as she laid it down very slowly.
“It should have been me,” she said. “Revenge is a dish-”
“Eaten better when cold, yes. I’ve heard that phrase. I don’t believe in it, either.”
Madame Mavrogordato narrowed her eyes and glared at Yashim. “When I heard that he had died-that he had been killed in the street? I didn’t believe it. That was not how it would happen-to him. He had more lives than a cat.”
More skins than a snake, Yashim thought.
Madame Mavrogordato leaned forward. “But they said it was him. Why?”
Yashim put his fingers together. “He was carrying Lefevre’s bag. The dogs had got to him-there was very little left. Except that he had perfect teeth. I wondered about that. Lefevre spoke with a lisp. Later, I learned that he had lost two teeth in a brawl-at Missilonghi.”
Some expression Yashim could not catch passed across the godlike face.
“Then what happened? Who was he?”
Yashim shrugged. “A man Millingen sent to fetch Lefevre off the ship. Millingen wanted Lefevre out of harm’s way, so he had him confined in a house somewhere down by the docks.” He hesitated, wondering whether he should say what he suspected: that her supposed son, the impatient Alexander, had been his jailer.
“Someone else was supposed to bring Lefevre’s bag to the doctor’s house,” he said finally. “A servant. He was unlucky: the killers tracked him down. But they got the wrong man.”
Madame Mavrogordato nodded slightly. “And Millingen? Why did he want Lefevre hidden?”
Yashim shifted slightly in his seat and sighed. “Dr. Millingen learned that Lefevre’s life had been threatened. He, too, believed that axiom about revenge.”
“So he thought I had ordered his death?”
“They were friends, once. And Millingen, of course, was interested in the relics. He expected Lefevre to tell him what he knew, in return for saving his life. The Ca d’Oro is one of your ships, isn’t it?”
Madame Mavrogordato gave a brief nod.
“When Millingen’s man was killed,” Yashim went on, “and identified as Lefevre, Millingen decided to say nothing about it. At first, I suppose, he thought he had diverted you. But later, when other people died, he realized what I had guessed-that it wasn’t you at all.”
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
