The soup master shot him a scornful look. “They say that because they are afraid, and must fight together. That is nothing. There were men in the corps I loved because they could handle a falcon, or make poetry, better than anyone in the world before or since. Believe me. There was a brave fighter who trembled like a leaf before each battle, but fought for ten. We looked after each other, and we loved each other—yes, they loved me because I could make them food anywhere, the same way we loved the cobbler who would see us shod even when he had nothing but bark and pine needles to work with. We were more than family. We had a world, within a world. We had our own food, our own justice, our own manner of religion. Yes, yes, our own manner. There are various ways to serve God and Mohammed. To join a mosque is one way, the way of the majority. But we Janissaries were mostly Karagozi.”
“You’re saying that to be a Janissary was to follow a form of Sufism.”
“Of course. That and all the other rituals of being a Janissary. The traditions.”
The traditions. In 1806 the sultan, Selim, had begun to train up a parallel army to the Janissaries. In that respect it had been a forerunner of Mahmut’s New Guard. But Selim, unlike Mahmut, had had little time to organise: the result was that when the Janissaries rebelled against their sultan, they crushed him, and destroyed his reformed army. The rebel Janissaries had been led by Bayraktar Mustafa Pasha, commander on the Danube.
“So you were there,” Yashim suggested, “when Selim was forced off the throne, in favour of his brother Mustafa.”
“Sultan Mustafa!” The Albanian ground out the title with scorn, and spat. “Girded with Osman’s sword, maybe, but mad like a dog. After two years the people were thinking how to get Selim back. Bayraktar had changed his mind as well, like all the rest of us. We were in Istanbul, at the old barracks, and for a night we prayed for guidance, talking with the Karagozi dervishes.”
“They told you what to do?”
“We stormed the Topkapi Palace next day. Bayraktar ran through the gates, crying for Selim.”
“At which point,” Yashim recalled, “Mustafa ordered Selim to be strangled. Along with his little cousin—just in case.”
The soup master bowed his head.
“So it was. Sultan Mustafa wanted to be the last of the House of Osman. Had he been the last, I think he would have survived. Whatever else we might have been, we Janissaries were loyal to the House. But God willed otherwise. Even though Selim was killed, the little cousin escaped alive.”
Thanks to his quick-thinking mother, Yashim reflected. At the crucial moment, with Mustafa’s men scouring the palace with their bowstrings, the crafty Frenchwoman he now knew as the Valide Sultan had hidden her boy beneath a pile of dirty laundry. Mahmut became sultan by the grace of a heap of old linen.
“You were there?”
“I was in the palace when they brought the boy to Bayraktar Pasha. I saw the look on Sultan Mustafa’s face: if he had seemed mad before, then—” The soup master shrugged. “The chief Mufti had no choice but to issue a fetwa deposing him. And Mahmut became sultan.”
“For myself, I was tired of this kind of soldiering. Rebellion, fighting in the palace, the murder of Selim.” He gestured with his arm: “Back and forth, here, there. I’d had enough.”
The soup master took a deep breath, and blew the air through his cheeks.
“I left the corps at the first opportunity. I was a good cook, I had friends in Istanbul. In five years I was working for myself.”
“Did you give up your pay-book, too?” Plenty of men had been on the payroll, drawing a Janissary’s wage and enjoying all the privileges of the corps without the slightest intention of turning up for war. It was a well-known scam.
Mustafa hesitated. “Not immediately,” he admitted. “But within a few years I no longer needed help, and I gave it in.”
Yashim doubted it, but said nothing.
“You can check the records. I ceased to be a Janissary in May 1815. It took courage. You wouldn’t understand.”
Yashim did his best. “They didn’t want to let you go? Or you wanted the money?”
The Albanian shot him a look of contempt.
“Listen. I go where I want. Today is an exception. I didn’t need the money, I was doing well.” Yashim blinked,
