The Snake Stone: A Novel

THE crowd in the First Court was denser than before, and it was only a sufi, with hands upraised and one eye on the second gate, who noticed two figures emerging from the sanctity of the inner court. Perhaps, if the sufi had stopped to think, he might have guessed the identity of the veiled woman who walked slowly, with a stick, supported by her undistinguished companion; but the sufi had deliberately emptied his mind of all thoughts, the better to concentrate on the ninety-nine names of God.

Yashim felt the valide’s grip tighten on his arm as they advanced toward the crowd, and took it as a good sign. It was impossible for them to speak over the shouts and murmurs of the mourners thronging that vast space, but he noticed the valide’s head turning to and fro as she observed the faces of the men who surrounded them, and now and then she stopped, for a better look. In this way the valide betrayed her particular interest in little children, boiled corn, the traditional ululations of Arab women, and the rather scrawny mount of a long-legged Albanian cavalryman in French trousers.

Yashim wondered, as they walked slowly along, whether they should go as far as the Topkapi gate. He had a daydream in which he led the valide through the gate and out into the square; by the fountain they would pick up a carriage and rattle down the streets to the Eminonu wharf, where he would hand the elderly Frenchwoman into a French ship and send her off to enjoy herself in Paris. It was a daydream he had sometimes indulged on his own account, but he startled himself now, as if he had committed a treasonable act. He began to wonder where, indeed, he should lead the valide. She showed no sign of wishing to go back, yet her weight on his arm was growing and she was evidently beginning to tire.

Yashim began to steer the valide toward the great doors of the old church of St. Irene, at the far end of the Great Court. As they moved into the shade of the portico she patted his arm, as if she approved of his decision; he tried the little door and—to his surprise—it swung open.

They stepped inside; and as the door shut behind them with a click, the noise of the crowd was abruptly hushed, giving way to an ethereal silence, the silence, Yashim thought, of every consecrated place. Hadn’t Lefevre said that St. Irene had never been deconsecrated, never turned into a mosque?

The ancient weapons glinted on the walls.

He found a stone bench under a window, and the valide settled gratefully onto it. She lifted her veil.

“Thank you, Yashim,” she said, smiling. “I have always wanted to do that. The way the old sultans did—moving amongst their people, in disguise.”

“Selim himself met a baker so wise he raised him next day to the position of grand vizier,” Yashim said.

“Alors, Yashim, I’m not sure I saw anyone quite so exceptional.” She closed her eyes.

Yashim watched her. He folded his arms and leaned against a pillar. He wondered if she was asleep.

“My son told me an interesting thing, Yashim, just before he died,” the valide said quietly. Yashim jumped. “It was a secret, passed down the generations from one sultan to the next, and he told it to me because his own son would not come to listen. Do you know why that was?”

“No, Valide.”

“Because the boy was afraid. But why should a boy be afraid of death?”

Yashim had no answer. The valide glanced at him. “The crown prince, Yashim. No longer a boy, perhaps.”

“Abdul Mecid is our sultan now,” Yashim said.

“Yes.” She paused. “Enfin, he likes you.”

Yashim lowered his eyes. “He can barely know me.”

“Come, come. A boy talks to his grandmother. I think you’ll find he knows you better than you think.”

Yashim blinked, but the valide did not wait for her remark to sink in. “At the time of the Conquest,” she continued, “when the Turks took Istanbul, a priest was saying mass in the Great Church. He was using the holiest relics of the Byzantine church, the cup and the plate used at the Last Supper, but when the Turks broke in, he disappeared.”

“I’ve heard that legend myself,” Yashim admitted.

“Legend, Yashim?” The valide looked at him. “It is what the sultan told me before he died.”

Yashim inclined his head.

“Mehmed the Conqueror,” the valide continued, “had taken the city from the Greeks. But afterward he needed their support, of course. The Greek Patriarch agreed to treat the sultan as his overlord. But as for the relics, neither of them could accept that the other should possess them. Do you understand?”

“They found a compromise, didn’t they? A third party who would safeguard the relics forever, beyond control of the church or the Ottoman sultans.”

“Very good, Yashim. I wanted to unburden myself of this secret because—eh bien, I am not a church or a line of rulers myself. Someone needs to tell the crown prince, if I cannot.” She opened her eyes and glanced mischievously at Yashim. “But I suppose you already know who was found to hold the ring?”

“A guild, Valide. Without this guild, the sultan would not rule and the Patriarch would have no flock. For Istanbul could not otherwise exist.” He caught the valide’s approving glance. “It couldn’t have been hard,” he went on. “As far as I know, the cup and plate were already hidden in the cisterns, somewhere beneath the Great Church. They were already, in that sense, in the keeping of the watermen.”

“Bravo! The watermen’s guild, yes. They were always Albanians. You know what that means. Some Catholic, some Orthodox. And some, in time, were Muslims, too. But the first religion of the Albanian, as they say, is Albania. They call themselves Sons of the Eagle.”

“And this has been their secret,” Yashim murmured. A secret for which men were bound to die, linked by a fatal indiscretion. Monsieur Lefevre had always been too much the salesman.

He went across the apse to a wooden cupboard hanging on the wall. It was crudely made, its door fastened with a wooden catch. Inside he found a battered-looking copper goblet and a wooden plate, which had split and