Jason Goodwin - The Janissary Tree

TheJanissary Tree

Jason Goodwin

CONTENTS:

**************

Yashimflicked at a speck of dust on his cuff.

"Oneother thing, Marquise," he murmured.

Shegazed at him levelly.

"Thepapers."

TheMarquise de Merteuil gave a little laugh.

"Flute!Monsieur Yashim, depravity is not a word we recognize in the Academie." Her fanplayed; from behind it she almost hissed, "It is a condition of mind."

Yashimwas already beginning to sense that this dream was falling apart.

Themarquise had fished out a paper from her decolletage and was tapping it on thetable like a little hammer. He took a closer look. It was a littlehammer.

Tap tap tap .

Heopened his eyes and stared around. The Chateau de Merteuil dissolved in thecandlelight. Shadows leered from under the book-lined shelves, and from thecorners of the room--a room and a half, you might say, where Yashim lived alonein a tenement in Istanbul. The leather-bound edition of Les LiaisonsDangereuses had slipped onto his lap.

Tap tap tap .

"Evet,evet," he grumbled. "I'm coming." He slipped a cloak around his shouldersand his feet into a pair of yellow slippers, and shuffled to the door. "Who isit?"

"Pageboy."

Hardlya boy, Yashim considered, as he let the spindly old man into the darkened room.The single candle guttered in the sudden draft. It threw their shadows aroundthe walls, boxing with one another before the page's shadow stabbed Yashim'swith a flickering dagger. Yashim took the paper scroll and glanced at the seal.Yellow wax.

Herubbed his finger and thumb across his eyes. Just hours ago he'd been scanninga dark horizon, peering through the drizzle for lights and the sight of land. Thelurching candlelight took his mind back to another lamp that had swayed in acabin far out at sea, riding the winter storms. The captain was abarrel-chested Greek with one white eye and the air of a pirate, and the BlackSea was treacherous at this time of year. But he'd been lucky to find a ship atall. Even at the worst moments of the voyage, when the wind screamed in therigging, waves pounded on the foredeck, and Yashim tossed and vomited in hisnarrow bunk, he had told himself that anything was better than seeing out thewinter in that shattered palace in the Crimea, surrounded by the ghosts offearless riders, eaten away by the cold and the gloom. He had needed to comehome.

Witha flick of his thumb he broke the seal.

Withthe scent of the sea in his nostrils and the floor still moving beneath hisfeet, he tried to concentrate on the ornate script.

Hesighed and laid the paper aside. There was a lamp screwed to the wall and helit it with the candle. The blue flames trickled slowly round the charredcloth. Yashim replaced the glass and trimmed the wick until the fitful lightturned yellow and firm. Gradually the lamplight filled the room.

Hepicked up the scroll the page had given him and smoothed it out.

Greetings ,et cetera. At the bottom he read the signature of the seraskier, city commanderof the New Guard, the imperial Ottoman army. Felicitations, et cetera.He scanned upward. From practice he could fillet a letter like this in seconds.There it was, wedged into the politesse: an immediate summons.

"Well?"

Theold man stood to attention. "I have orders to return with you to barracksimmediately." He glanced uncertainly at Yashim's cloak. Yashim smiled, pickedup a length of cloth, and wound it around his head. "I'm dressed," he said."Let us go."

Yashimknew that it hardly mattered what he wore. He was a tall, well-built man in hislate thirties, with a thick mop of black curls, a few white hairs, no beard,but a curly black mustache. He had the high cheekbones of the Turks, and theslanting gray eyes of a people who had lived on the great Eurasian steppe forthousands of years. In European trousers, perhaps, he would be noticeable, butin a brown cloak--no. Nobody noticed him very much. That was his special talent,if it was a talent at all. More likely, as the marquise had been saying, it wasa condition of mind. A condition of the body.

Yashimhad many things--innate charm, a gift for languages, and the ability to openthose gray eyes suddenly wide. Both men and women had found themselvesstrangely hypnotized by his voice, before they had even noticed who wasspeaking. But he lacked balls.

Notin the vulgar sense: Yashim was reasonably brave.

Buthe was that creature rare even in nineteenth-century Istanbul.

Yashimwas a eunuch.

**************

Inthe Abode of Felicity, in the deepest, most forbidden district of Top-kapiPalace, the sultan lay back on his pillows and picked fretfully at the satincoverlet, trying to imagine what could amuse him in the coming hours. A song,he thought, let it be a song. One of those sweet, rollicking Circassianmelodies: the sadder the song, the brighter the melody.

Hehad wondered if he could just pretend to be asleep. Why not? Ruler of the BlackSea and the White, ruler of Rumelia and Mingrelia, lord of Anatolia and Ionia,Romania and Macedonia, Protector of the Holy Cities, steely rider through therealms of bliss, sultan and padishah, he had to sleep sometimes, did he not? Especiallyif he was ever to reclaim his sovereignty over Greece.

Buthe knew what would happen if he tried to pretend. He'd done it before, dashingall the hopes and ambitions of the lovely gozde, the girl selected toshare his bed that night. It would mean listening to her sighs, followed bytimid little scratches against his thighs or his chest, and finally tears; thewhole harem would throw him reproachful glances for a month.

Soonshe'd be here. He'd better have a plan. Riding the rooster was probably safest:he was quite fat, frankly, and he didn't want anyone hurt. If only he could belying in bed with Hadice instead, who was almost as cuddly as himself, havinghis feet rubbed!

Hisfeet! On a reflex, he pulled his knees up slightly under the coverlet. Ancestraltradition was all very well, but Sultan Mahmut II had no intention of lettingany fragrant Circassian girl lift the covers and start crawling up toward himfrom the foot of his bed.

Heheard a slight commotion in the corridor outside. A sense of duty brought himup on one elbow, arranging his features into a smile of welcome. He could hearwhispers. Last-minute nerves, perhaps? The swooning slave suddenly resistant? Well,it wasn't likely. She'd got this far: almost to the moment she'd been trainedtoward, the event she had given her life to attend. A jealous squabble was morelikely: those are my pearls!

Thedoor opened. But it wasn't a bangled slave girl with swaying hip and fullbreasts who entered. It was an old man with rouged cheeks and a big waist whobowed and loped into the room on bare feet. Catching sight of his master, hesank to his knees and began to crawl until he reached the edge of the bed,where he prostrated himself on the ground. He lay there, mute and quivering,like a big jelly.

"Well?"Sultan Mahmut frowned.

Outof the enormous body there came at length a voice, piping and high. "Yourmagnifithenth, my lord, my mathter," the slave finally began to lisp. Thesultan shifted uncomfortably.

"Ithath pleathed God to catht a mantle of death over the body of one daughter offelithity whothe dreams were about to be fulfilled by your magnifithenth, mymathter."

Thesultan frowned.

"Shedied?" His tone was incredulous. Also he was taken aback: was he so veryfearsome?

"Thire,I do not know what to thay. But God made another the inthtwument of herdetheathe."

Theeunuch paused, groping for the proper form of words. It was awfully hard.

"Mymathter," he said at last. "She hath been stwangled." The sultan flopped backonto the pillows. There, he said to himself, he was right. Not nerves at all. Justjealousy. Everything was normal. "Send for Yashim," the sultan said wearily. "Iwant to sleep."