“Thousands?”
“I knew a handful, so I gave them the work. Night duties. Discreet.” He closed his eyes and shook his head slowly. “I can’t understand it. Ten years, and all good, quiet men. Grateful for the work.”
“So what would they want a cauldron for, do you suppose?”
The soup master opened his eyes and fixed them on Yashim.
“That’s what I don’t understand. It was only a pretend cauldron, anyway. You can’t do it with a cauldron made of black tin. It would only be make-believe.”
Yashim thought of the dead officer, coiled in the cauldron’s base.
“It was always pretending, wasn’t it?” Yashim asked. “That’s what you said. Tripe soup made of beans and bacon.”
The soup master looked at him in surprise, and folded his hands.
[ 19 ]
You must get Yashim back!” The Valide Sultan crooked her finger and wagged it at her son. “We may all be murdered in our beds.” Sultan Mahmut II, Lord of the Horizons, Master of the Black Sea and the White, put up his hands and rolled his eyes. It was scarcely conceivable, he thought, that three hundred able-bodied women—and in this sum he included his mother, for sure—could be actually murdered, one by one, in the very sanctum of imperial power.
All the same he allowed himself to play with the idea. He would keep the delightful Fatima safely by his side at all times and by the end, through a simple process of elimination, they would know who the killer was. Then he and Fatima would spring out among the throttled beauties and despatch her. He would announce that he was too shaken by the experience to take on any more wives; it would be unfair on them, he was far too old. He would marry Fatima, and she would rub his feet.
“Valide,” he said politely. “You know as well as I do that these things happen. There is probably a very good explanation.”
He wanted to point out that it would almost certainly be a very trivial explanation, but he sensed that his mother would feel slighted by the insinuation. This was her realm, shared with the Kislar Agha, the chief black eunuch, and everything which happened in it had to be serious.
“Mahmut,” the valide said sharply. “I can think of a very good explanation. The murderess wants you.”
“Me?” The sultan frowned.
“Not in bed, you silly fool. She wants to kill you.”
“Aha. It was dark, and she mistook some ambergrised houri for her sultan and throttled her before she realised her mistake.”
“Of course not.”
“So what was that girl, then? Strangling practice?”
The Valide Sultan cocked her head.
“Maybe,” she admitted. “I suppose it might take practice. I don’t suppose many of the girls have done a lot of strangling before they come.” She patted the cushion beside her, and Mahmut sat down.
“I was more worried that she might simply be hurrying the moment,” the valide continued. “She has her place in the order. Sooner or later she will be alone with you. She wants it sooner. Then she can kill you.”
“So she knocks off the nice girl and moves up one on the list? I see.”
“You make it sound ridiculous, but I have been here a lot longer than you. I know just how ridiculous things can turn out to be extremely serious. Trust me. Trust a mother’s intuition.”
“I trust you, of course. But what I don’t see is why the murderess is in such a rush. And by killing the girl she’s slowed the thing down, anyway. After this, I shan’t have to see any of them for days. My nerves, mother.”
“It makes the thing more sure. That unfortunate girl might have infatuated you. You might have kept after her for weeks on end. She might have, I don’t know, rubbed your feet the way you like.”
