“And Mahmut was just a child. Of course. Now he has reigned for a long time.”
“Reigned, but not ruled. He was under the control of the Janissaries, his own army, for almost twenty years.”
Grigor frowned. “So he should not be held to account for what happened before he destroyed the Janissaries? The murder of the Patriarch Bartholomew cannot be laid at his door?”
Yashim decided to let this pass. “There’s a mood in the city I’ve never known before, Grigor. Look at the money. The sultan is slowly dying, and the people are afraid of the money. Its value is sinking every day.”
“I am a priest, not a banker.”
Yashim turned his head and gazed out of the window.
“I meant it as an example,” he said slowly. “In former times, the death of a sultan stopped the clocks. Only the son who could buy off the Janissaries, take control of the treasury, and win the backing of the holy men succeeded to his place.”
“A barbaric arrangement,” Grigor said.
Yashim pressed on. “When the Janissaries killed Selim, they took power before anyone could react. But Mahmut’s illness casts a shadow over Istanbul.”
Grigor sighed. “All those years ago, when you helped me get away from here, I wandered among the monasteries of Bulgaria. My life changed. And I came back. Do you know why?”
“To join the church,” Yashim said.
“To join the church,” Grigor echoed, with a nod. “Of course.” He paused. “I came back, Yashim efendi, because this is my city. We Greeks do not govern it, I admit. But it governs us. For me, this city is not a reminder of what we were. A city of art? Paff! The place where we triumphed for a millennium-over barbarians, over the pope in Rome, over all our enemies-until the last one?”
He pursed his lips, a thoughtful look on his face. “We do not seek battles. Our concern is with the spirit and the mystery of life. Who rules is of no consequence to us. We obeyed an emperor. We obey a sultan. This is the order ordained by God, in the material world, and the Redeemer instructed us to make our peace with that order. Render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God. This is the Bible.”
Yashim inclined his head politely.
“Indeed,” Grigor continued, “before the Turkish Conquest we had a saying: better the sultan’s turban than the bishop’s miter. Anything but the pope in Rome. You Turks are merely the caretakers of our Constantinople.”
He leaned forward, his long beard brushing against the top of his desk. “It is Greek because its people are Greek. Because it is the scene of our triumphs-and all our trials, too.”
He jabbed the air with a plump finger.
“In this city the Greek faithful have experienced their deepest humiliations. The loss of western Christendom-Rome, Ravenna, all that-ended with the Great Schism with the pope, right here in the church of the Holy Wisdom, Aya Sofia. Then came the sack of the city by the crusaders, in 1204: for sixty years we endured the rule of heretics. The fall of the city in 1453, and the death of the emperor at its walls. Quite a catalog. We have suffered the loss of our churches, the rages of the mobs, the murder of our Patriarch-ah, yes, we have bought this city with our blood, and we survive. Constantinople is-I say it without blasphemy-our Golgotha.”
He held up his hands, fingers outspread. “Now, perhaps, you understand what I mean.”
Yashim sat very still. He was impressed.
But he had come for something else.
“Tell me about the Hetira, Grigor.”
A shadow slid across the archimandrite’s face. “I don’t know who they are: a many-headed Hydra, possibly. They have nothing to do with us here-but yes, their aims have a certain currency in some circles of the church. And beyond that, in the kingdom of Greece.”
A low bell sounded from far away. Grigor got to his feet and opened a cupboard. Inside hung his vestments.
“I officiate at mass,” he explained.
“I think they frighten people, Grigor,” Yashim said.
Grigor put his arms through his robes, one by one, and said nothing. He did not look around.
“I think there is something they kill to possess,” Yashim continued. “Or to protect. Some-I don’t know-some object, or some kind of knowledge. I think that when anyone gets too close, they react.”
“I see.” There was a look of scorn on Grigor’s face. “And you, angel, are you not afraid for yourself?”
“I am afraid only of my ignorance,” Yashim replied carefully. “I am afraid of the enemy I don’t know.”
The priest reached carelessly for a book on the shelf beside him.
“Your enemy is an idea. Greeks call it the Great Idea. For the time it takes to say a mass, you may look at this. After that, the book does not exist.” He laid the cope across his shoulders and turned to Yashim. “The church has no part in this affair of yours.”
They stared at each other, the eunuch and the priest. Then Grigor was gone, and Yashim was left alone, clutching the book in both hands.
32
For the time it takes to say a mass. Yashim sat down. The book was written-assembled was a better word- by a Dr. Stephanitzes, late physician-in-ordinary to the Greek army of independence. It had been recently published in Athens, the capital of independent Greece. The paper was cheap; the gold-blocked title on the cover was blurred around the edges.
Yashim had never come across such a book before-a wild flinging together of prophecy, prejudice, false premise, and circular argument. It preached a story that began with the collapse of Byzantine power in 1453 and wound its way, over hundreds of pages and many false starts and irrelevant asides, to its eventual restoration under its last emperor, miraculously reborn.
Yashim discovered the oracles of an ancient patriarch, Tarasios, and of Leo the Wise; the prognostications of Methodios of Patara; the curiously prophetic epitaph on the tomb of Constantine the Great, who had founded the city fifteen hundred years before; all of them twisted and sugared up by the visions of one Agathangelos, who foresaw the city liberated by a great phalanx of blond northern giants, while the Turks themselves were to be chased away beyond the Red Apple Tree.
This, then, was the Great Idea. A farrago of blasphemies and wishful thinking-but heady stuff, Yashim had to admit. Like sticking your nose through the gateway to the Spice Bazaar. If you were a Greek, and you wanted to believe, then here was the sacred text, without a doubt.
33
In the church of St. George, the archimandrite waved the censer again and filled the air with the grateful fragrance of sandalwood and frankincense. He intoned the words of the creed.
I believe in One God, Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth and of everything visible and invisible, he sang.
And in One Lord, Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages.
Light of Light, True God of True God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father, through Whom all things were made.
He sang the words; his body trembled to the majestic statement of faith; but his mind was elsewhere. Had he, he wondered, already said too much?
I acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
And then there was the book. The Ottoman authorities probably didn’t know that it existed. It was better that way.
