Peep-o! Her kalfa is Melda now, sitting in the arbor, on the stone seat where they have put the cushions. Peep-o!
Silly Melda! She is not looking. She doesn’t know there is a bear so close.
She glances around. The trees at the end of the harem garden are tangled, and black and white with snow, and the snow between is quite fresh and smooth. She sets off, planting her fur boots into the white coverlet one after the other. Counting. Melda cannot see her; the tree is between them.
One step, two step, three step, four.
The trees are close. She can see between them now, into the shadows. For a bear those shadows would be a good hiding place.
Roxelana stops. She turns her head and looks back with a dubious frown. Of course she cannot see her kalfa, because of the big tree. What she can see are her footprints in the snow, and for a moment she wonders how they got there, those footprints coming after her across the shrouded lawn. They have swerved from the big tree and chased after her, dark sockets running across the whiteness. They are headed right toward her. To where she is standing.
And before she can turn her head she knows that the bear is on the other side, in the shadows behind her. The little girl opens her mouth to scream, but nothing comes out.
She hears the kalfa calling, and sees herself running back toward the big tree, running too slowly, willing her face forward, with the footprints always just a step behind her.
She woke up, gasping, wide-eyed in the dark.
The quilt had slipped onto the floor: it made a shape in the dark, and Roxelana was cold and afraid and all alone.
114
In snow, Istanbul transformed itself from a city of half a million people into a fantastic forest running down to an icy shore: its domes were the earthworks of a vanished race of giants, its minarets gaunt boles of shattered trees, its roofs, blanketed under a rippling veneer of snow, terraced fields marked only by the arrowed tracks of birds and the dimpled pawprints of hungry cats. The rattle of porters’ barrows, the clatter of hooves, the usual hum of markets and muezzins and street hawkers were muffled. Some lanes were blocked; now and then great slides of snow would precipitate themselves from the roofs and land with a whump! on the street below.
Yashim glimpsed lamplight as he reached the water steps at Balat. He had left the valide in the care of two elderly eunuchs, who were to give her sips of lukewarm water whenever she awoke. Tulin had retired to the girls’ dormitory, taking her instrument with her. He had gone back down the stairs with the sound of Tulin’s flute blowing in his ears.
She played beautifully. She played, perhaps, as a consolation. But the music had needled him.
Lanterns hung from the mooring poles; two caiquejees were keeping warm by knocking ice from the base of the poles with the ends of their oars. Yashim had heard that the Golden Horn might freeze.
He stamped his feet and one of the caiquejees grabbed a lantern and swung it up.
“Fare, efendi?”
“Pera stairs,” he said. “How’s the ice?”
The man blew out his cheeks. He reached down into his caique and scattered the cushions, which had been piled up beneath a tarpaulin. “If it gets any thicker, I’ll carry you on my back,” he said cheerfully. “At your pleasure, efendi.”
The boatman picked up the oars and with a deft flick of his arm sent the fragile craft racing into the deep, still waters of the Golden Horn. Overhead a few stars shone among the drifting clouds, and on either bank the snow showed pale against the hills. Something was alive in the back of Yashim’s mind; something that wanted to be remembered, but lurked there, shy of the glare of his thoughts as if it feared the eye.
The boatman set him down opposite the steps that climbed the hill to the Galata Tower. Yashim was relieved to find that they had been swept and even scattered with ashes. His breath cooled on his cheeks as he climbed, pausing now and then to admire the snowy hills of Istanbul. A dog, whimpering on its cold paws, slunk past in the shadows. Yashim skirted the shacks that had spilled out around the base of the tower, and pressed on up a sloping street to the Grande Rue.
At the Polish residency, someone-Marta, perhaps-had scraped a path across the frozen carriage sweep to the front steps. As he slithered on the ice, Yashim wondered if it might have been better to leave the snow.
He thumped on the door and felt the frame quiver. A chunk of snow fell from the roof of the porch. Without waiting for an answer, Yashim pushed inside.
Inside it was even colder, but Yashim knew better than to linger in the darkened hall. He took the stairs gingerly, two at a time, using the rail to guide him.
He paused at the top. Palewski would be reading in his comfortable chair by the fire, perhaps working on his translation, surrounded by sheets of paper, a glass at his elbow. A band of light showed beneath the door.
Long ago, when they were new to each other, there had been courtesies on both sides, bows, salaams, even little speeches in the proper Ottoman style, and in good French. Yashim would have found it unthinkable that he should slip in unannounced, and unacknowledged; but years of friendship and understanding had knocked off the courtesies like so many rococo embellishments.
Yashim entered without knocking.
A comfortable heat radiated from a crackling log fire. The shutters were closed, the candles were lit, and across the room an oil lamp cast a pool of yellow light across a small round table covered with a green chenille cloth.
Palewski was sitting at the table, both hands laid flat on the chenille cloth. Opposite him sat his housekeeper, Marta. She too had her hands on the table.
A thread of blood was trickling from Palewski’s nose.
Behind Marta stood a man with a rifle, and the muzzle of the rifle was pressed against the nape of Marta’s neck.
Behind Yashim the door closed.
A voice he knew all too well spoke in his ear.
“So, Yashim. After all these years.”
115
“ I am sure you can appreciate your friends’ position,” Fevzi Ahmet said. “The ambassador made an effort to rearrange it, but you see I was able to change his mind.”
Palewski spoke without turning his head. “I’m sorry, Yashim. I thought it was you earlier, on the stairs.”
Yashim tasted bile in his mouth.
The pasha smiled. “I won’t detain them longer than necessary.”
“Necessary for what?”
“Securing your cooperation.”
Fevzi Ahmet folded his arms. In ten years his face had grown thinner, and his hair was gray. He had lost some of the thuggish beauty that had attracted the late Sultan Mahmut to him, but his black eyes were as deep and cold as ever.
What do you want?”
“Just put your hands up, over your head.”
Yashim glanced at Marta. Her eyes flickered toward him as he lifted his hands. He saw her jaw clench, and her eyes rolled upward. She blinked slowly, then looked at Palewski, and forced a little smile.
Palewski rubbed the tablecloth with his fingertips and held her gaze.
“You wonder why I have risked coming back to Istanbul?”
