And with the glass shattered the world.
Pushing Turks aside, I made my way alone to the open chaos of Bayazid Square and its hopelessly unsatisfied pigeons.
XXI
I fled down the street I’d climbed in Husayn’s company earlier that day, hoping the late afternoon surge of traffic would cover me.
He would come after me, of that I was certain. I was so certain that even an hour later, with the setting sun melting Ay a Sofia into pure gold, I was still taking my steps at a lope, trying to look all ways at once like a hunted rabbit. I actually thought I caught a glimpse of the bounce of his turban, there in the square before the greatest of all Constantinople’s holy places. Husayn was answering yet another call to prayer.
At this sight, real or imagined, my exhausted feet found one more burst of strength which carried me around the huge heap of the mosque to the left. There, off in a corner, I saw a dark doorway that seemed deserted enough. I claimed it.
A single torch left by workmen and reaching the end of its life illuminated thirty or so well-worn stone steps that sank downward. I followed them cautiously. The earth closed over me, shutting out all sound, all threat of the strange city in which I was alone and a foreigner.
As I descended, I began to hear water, lots of water, below and, off, beyond sight, a metallic drip, drip, drip. Frail but precise notes sounded as if the strings of a lute were being methodically touched. The failing torchlight revealed a great underground cistern in yellowed highlights, with enough water to provide an imperial city for the duration of the longest siege—or to keep the gardens of an extravagant palace green for several peaceful stints from May until October. I could not, in fact, see the end of either water nor the columns that held the arched roof over it. The columns, too, were rifled Byzantine, I noticed bitterly.
I bent and, with a cupped hand, tasted my discovery. It was dullingly cold but sweet. With quick scoops I replaced all that the baths had sweated from me.
Thus refreshed, I discovered that the notion of siege held my mind. Here, in this underground fountain, was water, safety, a deserted and secure hiding place.
When at last I emerged from the reservoir—when both torch and sun had finally burned out and all the world was dissolving down to a uniform sludge of twilight—the inkling of a new plan had formed in my mind. The top of the cistern’s stairs stank of cats, wiping the fresh, clean smell of the water below from my nostrils but not from my mind.
The thing to do now was to try to find the slave market. The slave market and Sofia Baffo.
***
The streets of Constantinople were silent and grave, cold with the disappearance of the sun. The public world of men, I saw, was but the vain, garish illusion of the day. It was the private life of the harems that was real, and to that reality all mortals retreated at night.
Like the blooms of some gigantic morning glory, the shops and houses had folded in upon themselves. But everywhere, I could feel the tight tendrils of the plant that remained after the blooms had faded. At first I feared my feet might become entangled in this unseen growth as I made my way through the streets alone. Then I assured myself that they were but the invisible connections between houses made by the women, women invisible themselves in veils or closed sedans. Yet by exchanging gossip, comfort, lore, and measures of flour, they made bonds that were strong enough to be sensed even in the dark.
I myself felt attached to such a tendril. It led me unfailingly to the great wooden gate of the slave market, but of course that gate was heavily bolted. It had been so since noon, for it was unmeet to expose either merchandise or buyers, all of the highest quality, to the heat of the day even in March.
Finding the rear of the establishment was not quite as instinctive. I had to calculate footsteps and try to work them through the domestic solids with a complicated sort of geometry. At last a strong tug on my invisible tendril assured me that I had the right alleyway. I climbed up a wall, over a roof of crumbling tile, and finally dropped into what, if one can recognize by sight what one hears by sound, was the very courtyard I had heard through Sofia’s windows that morning.
Yes, there were the windows, high up in one wall, still large enough for a man to crawl through. The only trouble was that they were shuttered. The shutters were flimsy with lattice so that the cool of a summer night’s air would not be lost. But now they were adjusted for the winter weather and might effectively keep out any thief such as myself. Determination must supply where inexperience failed.
The slave shop and its courtyard had been designed with security in mind, but long, uneventful years must have made the occupants careless. The produce and shade of a grape arbor had come to outweigh the danger of placing it right against the wall. It was a fragile ladder and it swayed ominously as I went at the shutter with an adze I had found leaning against an outbuilding. Between silence, security, and haste, no straight line could be drawn, but in spurts and starts I pursued my task.
The hinges began to give.
I am no theologian, yet I am persuaded that God has a special place in His heart for the insurgency of youth. Often He does no more than wink at what, if dared by an older man, would immediately bring down wrathful punishment. Up to this point, fantastic as it may seem,
