“He did, you’re right. What pasha?”
“The Kapudan pasha,” Yashim said slowly. “He took the fleet off, before the sultan died.”
The admiral of the Ottoman fleet was always known as the Kapudan pasha: the term was from capitano, borrowed-like so many other Ottoman nautical words-from the seafarers of Italy.
“The Kapudan pasha? Fevzi Ahmet, of the ghastly bridge?”
Yashim sank his head into his hands. “Fevzi Ahmet Pasha,” he murmured. “Commander of the fleet. I should have known.”
“Known what, Yash?”
“That he could do a thing like this.”
Palewski raised an eyebrow. “I had no idea you knew him.”
“Oh, yes,” Yashim replied softly. “I knew him-very well.”
30
At the palace at Besiktas, the lady Talfa turned her head slightly in the mirror, and caught a glimpse of Elif, frowning.
“That will do, Yusel,” the lady Talfa said, waving her black slave away. She stared at Elif and Melda in the mirror for a few moments. “Your charge is a little girl. She is called Roxelana.”
“I am afraid, hanum, that will not be possible.”
Elif bowed her head as she spoke and kept her hands held humbly to her chest. Talfa couldn’t see her look of sleepy satisfaction, but she heard it in the sweetness of her voice.
“Have you forgotten who I am?” Talfa, too, could make her voice sound sweet.
“No, hanum efendi. I know who you are.”
“And you, Melda? It is Melda, isn’t it? You think it will not be possible, either?”
Melda half glanced sideways; her head, like Elif’s was bowed. “I–I don’t know, hanum efendi.”
“Well, isn’t that strange? Elif thinks it quite impossible, and you don’t know.” Talfa picked up a tiny cup and sipped the coffee. She set the cup down again, and swiveled on her stool. “The last time we met, you seemed so very sure of everything. Now, I think, we are beginning to learn, aren’t we?”
Elif cocked her chin. “We are orchestra girls, hanum efendi. Melda plays viola and the mandolin. I am first violin. Donizetti Pasha makes us practice for hours every day.”
Talfa touched her hair. “Do try to lighten your voice, my dear. For the sake of the sultan and his other ladies, if not your own. There are plenty of girls who have the harem voice, so I suggest you pay them a little more attention. Now,” she added, spreading her hands, “it’s lovely that you can play, of course. But I fail to see what your music has to do with the little girl.”
Elif compressed her lips, feeling the heat in her face. “We have our duties, Talfa hanum efendi,” she said. “To the sultan’s music.”
Talfa tilted her head and gave a silvery giggle. “I think you’ll find that playing an instrument is a privilege, my dear, not a duty. So it has always been considered in the harem. It passes the time, you see. Which leaves you, in effect, with no duties at all. You are a simple girl, but you must see that your sultan feeds and clothes you. Do you expect to give nothing in return?” She shook her head, smiling. “No, no. You will take charge of the little girl. You will teach her the ways of a harem lady, as best you can. It is by teaching that one learns oneself. She is a girl of rank, so you will behave very well with her.” She dipped her finger. “You will keep your eye on her, at all times. And I,” she added, “will keep an eye on you.”
She clapped her pudgy hands together, twice, before Elif or Melda had a chance to reply.
Yusel stepped in at the door, and bowed.
“Our guests are leaving,” Talfa said, waving a hand. “You may take the coffee away.”
The two girls backed out of the room, their heads lowered.
Outside the door, in the court, Melda avoided Elif’s eye.
“The bitch!” Elif hissed. “I’d like to kill her-and that little brat!”
She stamped her foot and balled her fists.
“Don’t you look at me like that,” she snarled, through gritted teeth. The tears stood in her eyes. “You’d best be my friend, Melda. Because I’ll do it, someday. Just you watch!”
31
Yashim awoke to a pounding in his head and squinted at the sunlight. He rubbed his temples, swung his legs off the divan, and groaned.
The pounding did not stop.
“ Evet. I’m coming, I’m coming,” he grumbled, picking his way past the empty dishes. A young soldier stood at the door.
The soldier saluted.
“Come in.”
As he stepped in he whipped off his kepi and tucked it under his arm, standing stiffly amid the remains of last night’s feast. The half-empty brandy bottle stood on a low table close to the soldier’s knee, but the soldier was too rigid to notice it.
Also, Yashim realized, probably too young to recognize it.
“I have come from the palace school, efendi. The principal requests that you attend on him immediately.”
The palace school-of course. In Yashim’s day, the young men had worn turbans and pantaloons.
Yashim sighed. “Very well. If you would be so kind as to run down to the cafe on Kara Davut and order coffee for me? One for yourself, too, if you like.”
The boy positively quivered with correctness. “We should not lose time, efendi.”
“Which is why you could order coffee while I dress.”
Half an hour later they arrived at the school gate, whose huge curling eaves projected over the street. Yashim turned to look back at the view, both novel and familiar: two sloping, crooked streets lined with low wooden houses, running down to a tiny open space. Not quite a square, nor even a piazza, it was simply a haphazard confluence of sloping lanes paved with huge, smooth cobbles. A thread of water spun from a brass spigot into a small ornamental fountain, fed from the aqueduct he could see in the distance, built by Emperor Trajan more than a thousand years ago.
Istanbul was a city that packed time like a spyglass in its case. It was a place where centuries passed in moments, and where a minute-like this one, standing on the school steps-could seem like an age. Yashim had not been back to the palace school, where the empire trained her best and brightest boys, for fifteen years.
“I lived here once,” Yashim said.
The boy’s eyes swiveled briefly toward him. “Yes, efendi.”
Yashim sensed the boy’s doubt and disappointment. “And you are-nineteen?” He smiled, a little sadly. “Almost ready to graduate, I suppose.”
“Seventeen, efendi.”
“You look older. Tell me, what talents do you have?”
The boy looked at him levelly. “Talents? Very few, efendi, from what I’m told.”
They crossed the courtyard. At the foot of the stairs Yashim hesitated, inhaling the familiar smell of sweat and roses. “It’s not Pirek lala still?”
The cadet looked blank. “Efendi?”
They came out onto a gallery overlooking an enclosed courtyard. For a moment Yashim was tempted to hang back: the man leaning over the rail was Pirek lala, the old eunuch with the iron-shod stick.
He blinked, and the old lala was gone.
