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.
“It’s not the first time that you’ve saved my life,” Yashim said.
Palewski dismissed him with a wave. “I’m not too busy at the moment.”
Yashim smiled. With the sultan dying, most ambassadors would be filing their reports and trying to sound out the crown prince. The Polish ambassador could afford to wait on events.
“I don’t quite understand why I found you crawling out of a tunnel, Yashim.”
Yashim told him. He told him about Shpetin’s little tin ball and the siphon. He told him how he had got lost in the maze, and about Xani’s body floating in the pool. He told him, too, how he had escaped.
“So Xani’s dead. They followed him into the siphon, killed him, and threw him down the pipe?”
“What else would they do? The little boy was watching the door from the other side of the road.”
“He saw them go in-and come out. He knows who they are.”
“But he can’t speak, Palewski.”
The ambassador cracked his knuckles.
Yashim levered himself up on one elbow. “There’s another thing. Amelie-Madame Lefevre-read the Gyllius book. It gave her an idea.”
“The serpents’ heads?”
“Aya Sofia.”
Palewski shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“Gyllius mentions the serpents’ heads-but they were still in their place on the column when he was here. And in Delmonico’s time, too. That little book doesn’t tell us anything important about the serpents’ heads, Palewski. So why was it so important to Lefevre?”
“I don’t know. But if it wasn’t the serpents’ heads, why would he have needed Xani? And then, why was Xani murdered, too?”
Yashim ran his hands through his hair. “Xani. Amelie. Gyllius’s book. I feel as though I’m trying to re-create a rare and astonishing dish from a memory of how it tasted, Palewski. We have all these ingredients in the dish-but the flavor’s wrong, somehow.” He looked up. “Amelie told me something just now. Lefevre was a real doctor. Not a doctor of archaeology.”
“A doctor. So what?”
“I’m not sure. He spoke Greek fluently, too. Modern Greek. He learned it in the twenties, in the Greek provinces.”
“Are you sure? There was a war going on at the time.”
“Missilonghi, yes. That’s what interests me. Your poet-Byron, Millingen, his doctor.”
“Byron,” Palewski echoed. “It’s Thursday, Yashim. I’ve got an idea.”
“Thursday?” Yashim frowned. It was a ritual, their Thursday dinner; but time was short.
“I’m sorry, but I haven’t-”
“No, no, Yash. It’s quite all right. Tonight, for once, you’ll dine with me.”
89
Yashim was relieved that he didn’t have to shop or cook. It was already past noon. He dressed with care, and an hour later he presented himself at the door of the sultan’s harem, in Topkapi Palace.
Hyacinth emerged from his little cubicle in the corridor and grinned, showing a row of reddish teeth. “I knew it would be you,” he said softly.
“The valide?”
The elderly eunuch wagged his head and looked serious. “Not receiving today. A little shock. She is resting.”
“Come on, Hyacinth,” Yashim said testily. “Everyone here is resting.”
Hyacinth giggled uncertainly and tapped Yashim on the chest with his fan.
“It seems it’s all your fault, Yashim,” he said. “You and your little favors.”
Yashim blinked. Years ago, when three hundred women or more were cooped up in the harem apartments, attended by a cohort of Black Eunuchs, it was only to be expected that everyone would know everyone else’s business. Now there was only one, the valide, with a handful of girls and a few attendants. But some things never changed.
“The bostanci refused her?”
Hyacinth’s hands fluttered. “I never said a word,” he insisted, raising his eyebrows. “Her Highness is not receiving-anyone.”
Yashim bowed; he admired the glint of steel beneath the black man’s gentle manner. But he wondered what would happen if he brushed him aside and pressed on. Hyacinth, he guessed, was stronger than he looked. A sort of giddiness swept over him. There would be no men-at-arms springing forward to enforce compliance; there never had been. It would never have been necessary.
“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.
