Jason Goodwin - The snake stone

Yashim glanced at the satchel. It might contain anything-food, clothes, a reliquary, a woven rug. He wondered what books were in it-whether, in fact, it contained nothing but ancient Bibles, illuminated tracts, commentaries written on vellum filched from ignorant monks, venal priests, the greedy and the gullible.

“You are quite safe here,” Yashim said quietly. “Quite safe.”

Lefevre glanced up and swung his head around the room like a frightened animal.

“Are you ill?”

The word seemed to strike Lefevre to the quick. He froze, staring into space. Then he was staring at Yashim.

“To get out. Get away. You’ll help me? A foreign ship-not Greek.” He shuddered and groaned and pressed his hand to his face. “No one to trust. I trust you! But they’re watching. They know me. It’s so dark. And wet. Nobody knows them. Please, you must help me!”

He slid from the divan and stretched out his hands. Yashim raised his chin: it was horrible to see the man groveling, feverish, prey to his terrors. “Who are they? Who do you mean?”

Lefevre squeezed his hands together, and his mouth became a rictus of despair.

“What have you done?”

Lefevre’s eyes flickered toward the satchel, then back at Yashim’s face. “You think-? My God, no. No. No.”

He shuffled on his knees toward the satchel and tore at its straps with shaking hands. Out spilled a collection of old clothes, a leather flask, a few printed books. Lefevre picked at them, spreading them around. “No, monsieur. You will trust me. Help me, yes. I have nothing. No one.”

Yashim turned his head away. After what Malakian had told him about Lefevre’s methods, he was not ashamed of his suspicions. But he was ashamed for this man who now knelt muttering among his meager belongings strewn across the floor.

“Please,” he began awkwardly. “Please don’t think that I accuse you of anything. I will help you, of course. You are my guest.”

He surprised himself with his own assurance. But as he later reminded himself, there was something rather terrible about being a stranger in a city where even the dead belonged. Perhaps they were not quite so different, he and this Frenchman he didn’t like.

Lefevre clutched at his words with weary gratitude. “I don’t know what to say. They know who I am, you see, but you-you can find me the ship?”

“Of course. You must stay here, and in the morning I shall find you a way out.” There was a bond between them now. It couldn’t be helped. He must act with grace. “You must eat first, and sleep. Then all things will seem better.”

Yashim turned to his little kitchen and with rice, saffron and butter created a pilaf in bianco, as the Italians would say; a soothing pilaf.

Later, Lefevre dropped off to sleep cross-legged. Yashim eased him into a recumbent position and then, for want of anywhere better, lay down on the sofa beside him. Twice in the night, Lefevre had bad dreams; he twitched and ran his hands excitedly across his face.

Yashim was not superstitious, but the sight made him shudder.

Early the next morning, leaving the Frenchman sleeping on the divan, Yashim walked down to the Horn and took a caique over to Galata, the center of foreign commerce. In the harbormaster’s office he asked for the shipping list and scanned it for a suitable vessel. There was a French 400-tonner, La Reunion, leaving for Valetta and Marseilles with a mixed cargo in four days’ time; but there was a Neapolitan vessel, too, Ca d’Oro out of Palermo, which had already been issued with bills of lading. The Italian ship would certainly be cheaper; if Lefevre was going back to France, he’d easily pick up another berth in Palermo, so the voyage might not be that much longer-and there was the undeniable advantage that the Ca d’Oro might leave the very next day. Yashim had no desire to prolong the Frenchman’s agony of mind a moment longer than was necessary.

He found the Ca d’Oro ’s captain in a little cafe overlooking the Bosphorus. He had heavy eyebrows that met above his nose, and wore a plain summer cutaway coat, which looked as if it had been rigged up by the sailmaker. The coat was dirty, but the man’s fingernails were very clean when he offered Yashim a pipe. Yashim declined the offer but accepted coffee. Certo, the Ca d’Oro would leave on the morning tide, God willing; si, there were berths. The gentleman could come aboard directly; or tonight if he preferred, it was all the same, the ship’s boat would be running back and forth from the dockside all day with returning crew and last-minute purchases. Or one of the caiques might bring him out.

He handed Yashim a spyglass and encouraged him to look out for the ship.

“You’ll see her close in to shore, signor. Two-masted brig, high in the poop. Old? Si, but she knows her duty, ha ha! She could find her own way to Palermo after all these years, maybe.”

Yashim squinted down the telescope and found the ship, low in the water, with a couple of sailors standing in the waist and the white and gold of Naples hanging limply from her stern. Rather old, for sure, and fairly small-but there, she was the vessel he’d have taken himself, if he was in a hurry. Lefevre seemed to be in a hurry.

The captain spread out a few papers on the table. “Half in advance, forty piastres, it’s normal.” He made some notes on a worn sheet of paper. “Your friend’s name?”

Yashim’s mind went momentarily blank. “Lefevre,” he stammered finally.

The captain glanced up. “ Francese, bene. He has all his papers, of course-passport, quarantine certificate?”

Yashim said yes, he had all the right documents. He hoped it was true; at least Lefefvre would be on board and under way before anything was known about it. Lefevre wasn’t an innocent: he’d take care of himself.

The captain wrote the name down on his sheet and put the folded papers away in his coat. Yashim dug out the purse from his belt and counted out forty piastres in silver onto the table. The captain picked two coins at random, bit them, and returned them to the pile with a grunt. “It’ll pass,” he said.

They shook hands. “What are you carrying?”

The Italian grimaced. “You name it. Rice. Egyptian cotton. Pepper. Bees. Eighty pieces of Ottoman silver, I hope, and a Frenchman!”

They both laughed, meaninglessly.

The archaeologist was still sprawled out on the divan when Yashim returned home. He raised his head weakly when the door opened, but he seemed to have lost some of the nervous energy of the night before. Yashim set about making coffee while he explained the arrangements he had made.

“Tonight? That is very soon. Ca d’Oro — I don’t know her. Does she go to France?”

“Palermo.”

“Palermo?” Lefevre frowned. “It’s certainly not France.”

“No. There was a French ship, but she wasn’t leaving until Monday.”

“Monday. Perhaps the French ship would have been better. I might spend a fortune waiting in Sicily.”

“Well, you owe me forty piastres for the berth. You must pay the same again to the captain.”

“But how much was the berth in the French ship?”

“I didn’t ask. More expensive, for sure.”

“You say that,” said Lefevre, sitting up and picking his teeth with a fingernail. “There’s something wrong with the Ca d’Oro?”

“Nothing at all. She’s smaller. But she’s leaving tomorrow. You wanted to get out, that’s what you said.”

“Of course, of course. But enfin, Palermo.” Lefevre sucked the air through his lips. “You should have woken me.”

Yashim banged the coffeepot on the edge of the table to settle the grounds.

“I’m confused,” he confessed. “Last night I thought you were afraid of someone. Or something.” He reached for the cups, and found the question that was on his mind. “Is it the Hetira?”