The price, in Cairo, was correspondingly high.
“Perhaps you can help me, Ibou.” Somehow Yashim doubted it: most probably the delicious young man was in the library as a favour to some infatuated older eunuch. He scarcely looked old enough to know what a Janissary was, let alone to have mastered the system in the archives.
Ibou had put on a serious, solemn expression, his lips pursed. He really was very pretty.
“What I’m looking for,” Yashim explained, “is a muster roll for all the Janissary regiments in the empire prior to the Auspicious Event.” The Auspicious Event—the safe, stock phrase had tripped out by force of habit. He’d have to be more explicit. “The Auspicious Event—”, he began. Ibou cut him off.
“Shh!” He raised one hand to his lips, and fanned the air with the other. His eyes rolled from side to side, pantomiming caution. Yashim grinned. At least he knew something about the Auspicious Event.
“Do you want names? Or only numbers?”
Yashim was surprised.
“Numbers.”
“You’ll want the digest, then. Don’t go away.”
He turned and teetered away into the darkness. At length, Yashim saw the distant candle begin to move, swaying a little until it disappeared. Behind the stacks, he supposed.
Yashim did not know the archive well, just well enough to understand that its organisation was comprehensive and inspired. If a vizier at the divan, or council meeting, needed a document or reference, be it ever so remote in time, or obscure by nature, the archivists would be able to locate it in a matter of minutes. Four or five centuries of Ottoman history were preserved in here: orders, letters, census returns, tax liabilities, proclamations from the throne and petitions running the other way, details of employment, promotion—and demotion, biographies of the more exalted officials, details of expenses, campaign maps, governor’s reports—all going back to the fourteenth century, when the Ottomans first expanded out of Anatolia across the Dardanelles, into Europe.
He heard footsteps returning. The candle and its willowy bearer appeared out of the darkness. Apart from the candle, Ibou’s hands were empty.
“No luck?” Yashim could not keep a trace of condescension out of his voice.
“Mmm-mmm,” the young man hummed. “Let’s just take a look.”
He turned up a series of wall lights above the reading bench, and knelt on a cushion. Above the bench itself ran a shelf containing nothing but tall, chunky ledgers with green spines, one of which the boy pulled down with a thud and opened on the bench. The thick pages crackled as he turned them over, humming quietly to himself. Eventually he ran his finger down a column on the page and stopped.
“Got it now?”
“We’ll get there eventually,” Ibou said. He closed the ledger with a heavy whump! and lifted it lightly back into place. Then he sauntered over to a set of drawers built into the wall near the door, and pulled one out. From it, he selected a card.
“Oh.” He looked at Yashim: it was a look of sadness. “Out,” he said. “Not you. You’re nice. I mean the records you wanted.”
“Out? To whom?”
“Tsk, tsk. That’s not for me to say.”
Ibou waved the little card in front of his face as if he were opening and shutting a fan, with a flick of the wrist.
“No. No, of course not.” Yashim frowned. “I was hoping though—”
“Yes?”
“I wondered if you could possibly tell me what revenue the beyerlik of Varna derived from…from mining rights in the 16703.”
Ibou put his lips together and blew. He looked, thought Yashim, as if he were about to give the figures from memory.
“Any particular year? Or just the whole decade?”
