The Snake Stone: A Novel

“Proud, Valide?”

“Mais, bien sur. Only a milksop has no enemies. To be hated—that is a mark of character. Hold by your friends, take risks, and—ecraser les autres a la merde!” She raised a delicate eyebrow. “I did not become valide as a reward for politesse, Yashim. But these days people are far too timid and polite. It’s good to hear you talk, even if the details are inappropriate for an old lady’s ears. Go on, have another pastry. I have no appetite.”

“I hope I haven’t spoiled it,” Yashim said.

The valide cast him a mischievous look. “Not at all. Perhaps you have restored it. What are you reading? But of course, your collection is destroyed, and you have come to me for a book.”

“No. It’s something else I want, Valide.” He saw the corners of her mouth harden. “For the sake of the archaeologist, your compatriot,” he began, sweetening the story with a little lie, “I’d like to consult with the master of the watermen’s guild.”

That “consult,” he thought, was a good touch.

“Et alors?” The valide gave a little shrug. “I am so out of touch, my friend.”

It was Yashim’s turn to use the mischievous look. “I don’t think so,” he said.

The valide suppressed the beginning of a smile. “Enfin, I may be able to write a note. The sultan’s bostanci could help, I think; he deals with the watermen all the time. He’s an old friend, though he goes by some other title these days. Commissioner of Works, or nonsense of that sort.”

She knows his new title perfectly well, Yashim thought. She sits here, in a palace half deserted, and not a thing that goes on here or in Besiktas escapes her notice.

The valide rang a little silver bell. “Notepaper, and a pen,” she told the girl who answered. “In the meantime, Yashim, you may read to me a little from this book. I don’t understand it, and I don’t think I like it. But it also makes me laugh. So don’t be afraid—I shan’t be laughing at your accent.”

And with this whisper of a challenge, the faintest tinkling of her spurs beneath the raillery, she held out a copy of Stendhal’s Le Rouge et le noire.

70

“TELL me,” Yashim said. “Tell me about the ancient Greeks.”

Amelie was lying facedown on the divan, her head in the sunlight, resting her chin on her hands. Yashim heard her giggle.

“I could talk for days,” she said. She moved her head so that her cheek was resting on her fingers, and she looked at him. “Let’s do a swap,” she suggested. “I’ll tell you about the finest hour of ancient Greece, and you tell me about your people. The Ottomans. Their greatest moment.”

Yashim cocked his head. “Agreed,” he said. He crossed his legs and sat by her in the window. “A time of war? Or a time of peace?”

Amelie smiled. “War first,” she said.

“Ah, war.” Yashim straightened his back. “The sultan Suleyman, then. Suleyman, the Giver of Laws. In French —the Magnificent. He is twenty-two when he leads our armies to Belgrade. The White City—impregnable, lying between two rivers, the Sava and the Danube, defended by the hosts of Christendom. It is a long and a weary march…”

He told of Suleyman’s victory at Belgrade, and his conquest of Rhodes two years later, of his prowling the borders of Austria, and humbling Buda.

“You look different when you talk like that.”

“Different?”

“Fierce. Like Suleyman.” She nestled her cheek against her palm, and her hips moved against the carpeted divan. “Tell me about peace.”

“I’ll tell you about a poet,” Yashim said. “In time of poetry—with a sultan who surrounds himself with poets. Every night they hold a Divan of poetry, each man trying to outdo the other with the beauty of his words. Rhyme, meter the highest expressions of love and sadness and remorse. But the sultan is better than them all.”

He heard Amelie give a little snort. He glanced down. Her eyes were closed, and a light skein of her brown hair had fallen across her cheek. She was smiling.

“Ah, but he was,” Yashim insisted. “He was a poet of love—because of all our sultans, he was the one who loved one woman most. He had hundreds of women—the most beautiful girls from Circassia and the Balkans—but one he loved beyond all the rest. She had red hair and pale white skin, and dark, dark soulful eyes. She was—they say she was a Russian. Roxelana. He married her.”

He bent forward and softly recited the lines he knew by heart.

Amelie lay still for a few moments. “What was his name? The poet-sultan?”

“Suleyman. Suleyman the Magnificent.”

She opened her eyes and sought him out. He was very close.

“The same sultan,” she murmured. She arched her back and raised her head, until she was looking at Yashim.

Slowly, hesitantly, she moved closer to him. Her eyes flickered from his eyes to his lips.

Yashim felt himself weightless, like a feather in the wind.