The Janissary Tree

Yashim felt his heart grow still. With it, his mind cleared.

The seraskier was still talking. “For the patient the agony brings relief,” he was saying. “We can be modern, Yashim: we must be modern. But do you really think modernity is something you can buy? Modernity isn’t a commodity. It’s a condition of the mind.”

Something stirred in Yashim’s memory. He clutched at it, an elusive shape, a form of words he’d heard before. The man was still talking; he felt the memory slipping away.

“It’s an arrangement of power. The old one is over. We have to think about the new.”

“We?”

“The governing classes. The educated people. People like you and me.”

No one, Yashim thought, is like me.

“People need to be directed. That hasn’t changed. What changes is the way they are to be led.”

None of us are alike. I am like no one.

I will stay free.

[ 127 ]

I’m going down, now,” the seraskier said quietly. “And you -you’ll stay up here, I’m afraid. I thought you might come with me, but it doesn’t matter.”

He gestured with his gun, and Yashim stepped out of the archway onto the sloping roof.

“Shall we just change places, slowly?” The seraskier suggested. They circled each other for a few seconds, and then the seraskier was in the arch.

“You see, I’m not going to shoot you. I still think you might want to change your mind. When the troops fall back. When this place starts to burn.”

But Yashim wasn’t really listening. The seraskier had seen his eyes stray from his face, and then widen, almost involuntarily. But he mastered an impulse to turn around. Deflection tactics were no more than he expected.

Yashim’s surprise was not at all affected. Behind the seraskier, up the stairs, two extraordinary figures had made a silent appearance. One was dark, the other fair, and they were dressed like believers, but Yashim could have sworn that the last time he had clapped eyes on these two they had been wearing frock coats and cravats in the British embassy.

“Excusez-tnoi,” the fair one said. “Mais—parlayvoo fran$ais? ”

The seraskier spun round as though he had been shot.

“What’s this?” he hissed, turning a wary look on Yashim.

Yashim smiled. The fair young man was glancing round the seraskier, putting up a hand to wave.

“Je vous connais, m’sieur -1 know you, don’t I? I’m Compston, this is Fizerly. You’re the historian, aren’t you?”

There was a tinge of desperation in his voice which, Yashim thought, was not misplaced.

“They are officials at the British embassy,” he told the seraskier. “Much more modern than they look, I imagine. And efficient, as you say.”

“I’ll kill them,” the seraskier snarled. He jabbed his gun at them, and they shrank back.

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Yashim said. “Your republican dawn could quickly turn into dusk if you bring British gunboats to our doorstep.”

“It’s of no consequence,” the seraskier said. He had regained his composure. “Tell them to get out.”

Yashim opened his mouth to speak but his first words were drowned by a muffled crump that sounded like a clap of thunder. The ground trembled beneath their feet.