The Snake Stone: A Novel

Until sometimes a woman came, beautiful, shedding her own light, a woman, perhaps, with brown eyes and a cloud of brown hair, who watched him as he slept. And fetched him soup. And who shed so much light that as she passed he was dazzled, blinded—and would stay blind, long after she had gone away. Groping in the dark, again.

It was not her fault.

Yashim opened his eyes. Amelie had her arm stretched out, and she was looking at her hand with a concentrated expression on her face, wiggling her fingers.

Then the coin fell to the floor. She bent to pick it up.

“The Great Church,” Amelie said, turning the coin around her thumb. “Aya Sofia.”

Elvan knocked on the door. Yashim sent him to the Libyan baker for a round of bread. He took the coin with a curious glance at Amelie, and sped off on his errand.

“The Byzantine Greeks believed in an old legend about Aya Sofia,” Amelie explained. “The legend was that one day an enemy would succeed in breaking into the city. Everything would appear lost—except that the enemy would never reach the Great Church. Before that happened, the archangel Gabriel would appear with a flaming sword and drive the invaders out.”

“Hmmm.” Yashim looked doubtful. “It didn’t happen.”

“No. But Max always said that every myth contains a kernel of truth. So when the Turks broke into the city there was, in fact, a miracle at Aya Sofia. Just not the miracle everyone hoped for.”

“No archangel.”

“No. But a priest, saying mass. When the Turks arrived, he vanished.”

“Vanished?”

“Stepped into one of the great pillars, apparently, carrying the Host. The legend goes that he’ll reappear on the day the cross is raised over the dome again.”

Yashim frowned. He tried to picture the scene: Ottoman troops crashing against the great doors of the church, the terrified people huddled inside for protection, and a priest at the altar with a cup and plate. Something about the picture in his mind was vaguely familiar: he couldn’t remember. Something he’d seen, perhaps? Something Lefevre had said. But at that moment Elvan reappeared with the bread, and the memory was lost. Yashim gave him a few piastres, and he bowed out with unusual solemnity.

Instead, Yashim recalled a legend in Grigor’s book, about the emperor being turned to stone.

“Max thought those stories carried a message,” Amelie explained. “Perhaps the tale of the priest means that the Greeks had time to hide their treasure before the Turks came in. Aya Sofia is one of the biggest buildings on earth. The most ambitious building project in world history, after the Pyramids.”

She took a lock of hair and twisted it with a finger.

“But there’s no crypt in Aya Sofia. Most churches have crypts, to represent the world of the dead. At Aya Sofia they raised the largest dome in the world, like a microcosm of the universe—the whole of God’s creation. It’s odd if they didn’t build a crypt in there, as well.”

Yashim broke the bread and dipped it into his soup. “It’s said that Mehmed came into the Great Church the morning after the assault and found a soldier hacking at the marble floor. He was angry. He said: ‘You soldiers can take whatever you can carry, but the building belongs to God—and me.’ Aya Sofia was preserved.”

“Perhaps he knew there was something under there. But they never got an opportunity to look, did they? As far as I know, Aya Sofia hasn’t been touched now for four hundred years.”

“They added minarets,” Yashim pointed out.

“On the outside.”

They looked at each other.

“That trick,” Yashim said. “The trick you were doing with the coin. Where did you learn that?”

Amelie laughed. “I still haven’t. Max used to teach me, but I haven’t got the fingers for it, I suppose. He could make the coin run through his fingers and then—pouf! It vanished. Just like that priest.”

Yashim drank his soup. He put down the empty bowl. “Your husband—Max. Dr. Lefevre. He was a doctor of archaeology, wasn’t he?”

Amelie looked surprised. “Of archaeology? He was an archaeologist, yes. But he started out in medicine. He was a doctor of medicine.”

“A doctor of medicine,” Yashim repeated slowly. “I had no idea.”

There was a knock on the door, and Palewski came in, fishing a green bottle out of his coat pocket.

He bowed to Amelie and then peered closely at Yashim.

“He seems to have been eating soup,” he said. He patted the bottle. “Brandy. Excellent with soup. Good for invalids. I thought he might be dead.”

“He’ll live,” Amelie said.

Palewski looked disappointed. “Brandy’s good for a wake. I thought we might sit around his corpse, remembering, madame.”

“I think I’m recovering,” Yashim said in a small voice.

Amelie laughed. She glanced from Yashim to Palewski, and flexed her back. “Madame Matalya will want her bowl back, Yashim. I’ll take it down—and I’m a little tired.”

When she had gone, the ambassador uncorked the brandy and poured two glasses.