The soup master’s eyes suddenly narrowed.
“Off Marmara. The wind has been set from the west all week.”
[ 107 ]
The seraskier pursed his lips.
“I doubt it can be done. Oh, operationally, yes, perhaps. We could flood the city with the New Guard, a man at every corner, artillery—if we could get it through—in the open spaces. Such as they are.”
He scrambled to his feet and went to stand by the window.
“Look, Yashim effendi. Look at these roofs! What a mess, eh? Hills, valleys, houses, shops, all straggling around little lanes and alleys. How many corners do you think I could find out there? Ten thousand? Fifty thousand? And how many open spaces? Five? Ten? This is not Vienna.”
“No,” Yashim agreed quietly. “But nevertheless—”
The seraskier raised a hand to stop him.
“Don’t think I misunderstand you. And yes, I think something could be done. But the decision would not lie with me. Only the sultan can order troops into the city. Troops under arms, I mean. You think he can take this decision so fast?”
“He did thirteen years ago.”
The seraskier grunted. “Ten years,” he echoed. “Ten years ago the people were united with the sultan’s will. Nobody could deny that the Janissary menace had overwhelmed us all. But today—what do we know? You think Stambouliots will welcome my men with open arms?
“There is another thing I hesitate to point out. What happened ten years ago was not the work of a day. It took months, you could say years, to prepare for victory over the Janissary rabble. We have twenty-four hours. And the sultan is—older. His health is not so good.”
He drinks, you mean, Yashim thought. It was common knowledge. Everyone knew that M. Lebrun, the Belgian wine merchant in Pera, handled far more stock than the foreign community could account for. And what about the discovery only last year of a veritable mountain of long-necked bottles, in the woods close to where the sultan liked to take his family for picnics?
“There will be a Janissary insurrection,” said Yashim flatly. “I think it will take the form of a fire, or many fires, I don’t know. Either sooner or later the sultan will have to order in the Guards, to keep order and deal with the conflagration, and I for one would prefer it was sooner.” He stepped away from the window and turned to face the seraskier.
“If you won’t, I will try to talk to the sultan,” he said.
“You.” It wasn’t a question. Yashim could see the seraskier weighing him up. He stood with his back to the light, his hands clasped behind his back. The silence deepened.
“We will go together, you and I,” the seraskier announced at last. “But you, Yashim effendi, will make it clear to the sultan that this was your suggestion, not mine.”
Yashim stared at him coldly. One day, he thought, he would come across a man in the sultan’s service who was not a trimmer, who would stand up and stand out for his beliefs. But not today.
“I will take responsibility,” he said quietly.
I’m only a eunuch, after all.
[ 108 ]
Their footsteps echoed off the high walls of the seraglio as they walked across the first court. Usually on a Friday the place would have been busy, but a combination of grey skies and the suppressed tension hanging in the air had left the great court all but deserted. Ceremonial guardsmen stood to attention around the perimeter walls, as silent and immobile as the Janissary guards whose stillness had once struck chill into the hearts of foreign envoys. Yashim wondered if the New Guards were not, in their own way, more sinister: like German clockwork dolls rather than real men. At least the Janissaries had possessed their own swaggering panache, as his friend Palewski had pointed out.
His fingers closed on a scrap of paper tucked beneath his belt. Coming across the Hippodrome, he had swerved on an impulse from the bronze serpent and cut across the dirt to the Janissary Tree, knowing what he would find: the
