The Snake Stone: A Novel

“Is that you, Yashim?”

The voice from along the passage was unmistakable. Yashim looked up; Hyacinth whirled around.

The valide sultan was advancing very slowly along the passageway, one hand gripping the knob of a stick, the other raised to the shoulder of a girl whose arm was passed around the valide’s waist. What struck Yashim was not that the valide herself was bent, or very frail, or that her knuckles looked huge beneath the thin skin of her hands, but that she was wearing jewels: a welter of diamonds at her ears, around her neck, pearls gleaming from her diadem, and at her breast a lapis brooch with the figure N picked out in ivory. As she stepped forward into the sunlight it seemed to Yashim that she sparkled like a leaf after a storm.

Yashim bowed.

“The bostanci!” The valide stopped and worked her hand on the cane. “Il m’a refuse!”

Hyacinth lowered his eyes. His hands were draped around his enormous belly. The girl cast a frightened glance at Yashim.

The valide set both hands on the head of her cane. Very slowly she drew herself upright.

“Pssht!” She raised her chin. Hyacinth and the girl withdrew, bowing.

“Refused, Yashim,” the valide repeated quietly. “Why not? I am an old woman, far from the seat of power. The bostanci no longer fears me.”

Yashim stepped closer.

“The sultan should have stayed in Topkapi. My son.”

They looked at each other.

“How long, Yashim?”

“A few months,” he said. “Weeks.”

The valide’s hands rubbed together on the head of her stick.

“So little time,” she whispered at last. And then her lip trembled, and to Yashim’s astonishment the corner of her mouth lifted into a regretful smile.

“Men,” she said. “Ils font ce qu’ils veulent.”

They do what they want. Yashim bent his head.

“Mais les femmes, Yashim. They do what they must.” She turned around. “And you, Yashim, I wonder? Perhaps you do what we need. Give me an arm.”

Slowly, without talking, they made their way back up the corridor to the valide’s courtyard.

90

THE valide lay back on the divan, against a spray of cushions.

“The bostanci makes me tired, Yashim. No, don’t go. I have something to tell you. A coffee?”

Yashim declined. The valide settled the shawl around her legs.

“I thought I would die of loneliness when the sultan moved first to Besiktas. I have not been alone for sixty years, and I had grown so used to people around me, everywhere, at all times. For the first few weeks, I was in mourning, I admit. And you were very charming, to visit me—even if it was only my novels you wanted! No, no. I am teasing.

“But then I discovered something, Yashim. How to explain? Look: there is a little bird which comes to my window every day, to get food. The gardeners showed him to me—I had never noticed him before. Just a little bird! You may laugh, mon ami—but I scattered crumbs.”

Cross-legged on the divan, Yashim hunched forward and stared at his hands. He had a peculiar sense that he knew what the valide was about to describe. Years ago, as a very young man, almost a boy, he had constructed hope.

“Believe me, Yashim, the place was quiet. One little bird—c’est rien. But little by little I began to see that it was not a matter of one bird at all. There were many. And more than birds. The gardener told me there were djinns. He said, ‘Now they have room to breathe, at last!’” The valide paused. “I come from a superstitious island, Yashim.

“Remember the great women who have passed through these apartments, Yashim. People remember them. Kosem Sultan. Turhan Sultan. These are the rooms they kept, the corridors they used. I think of them, and I feel that I am still valide sultan—for them. For all the women who have lived here, within these walls. So many, Yashim.”

He bowed his head. He wanted to say that when one is spent and useless in the world’s eyes, it is still possible to live for others. For the living or the dead.

“Yes, Valide,” he murmured. “I understand.”

She regarded him narrowly.

“I think you do, Yashim. Djinns, ghosts: these are the privileges of age. But like the little birds, there are men of flesh and blood who inhabit this place. One sees them more clearly.”

Her world is shrinking, Yashim thought: the girls, the eunuchs, nothing more. Every day, the circle will grow smaller.