Jason Goodwin - An Evil eye

Yashim peeled a curtain aside and peered out. At first he could make nothing of the high, blank walls, until the carriage veered to the right, flinging him back again, and they rolled under the High Gate, which gave its name-Sublime Porte-to the Ottoman government.

The driver pulled on the reins; the cab’s pace lessened; the door was flung open and a young man in a Frankish uniform and cap saluted Yashim. As they bustled up the steps the young man’s sword clinked on the marble; then they were through the front door, scurrying down corridors where anxious faces peered at them in the candlelight, where doors opened noiselessly at their approach.

Yashim knew exactly where they were going. He’d been there before, to the private chamber of the grand vizier, the man who held the reins of the empire for his sultan’s sake.

The cadet threw open a door and ushered him in with a sweep of the hand.

A lamp was burning on a great mahogany desk.

“Come.”

The rumble of the vizier’s voice came from the divan, placed in an alcove at the far side of the room. Yashim half turned, in puzzlement.

“Husrev? Mehmet Husrev Pasha?”

As he approached the divan, he could make out a heavy figure sitting cross-legged in the half-light, wearing a Circassian shawl and a tasseled, brimless cap.

As the pasha gestured to the edge of the divan, his ring caught the light. It was a sign of office, but until now Yashim had seen the ring of the grand vizier on someone else’s hand.

“Changes, Yashim efendi,” the old pasha growled, as if he had read Yashim’s mind. “A time of change.”

Yashim settled on the edge of the divan. “My pasha,” he murmured. He wondered how the change had been made, what had become of Midhat Pasha. “I was detained at the palace. I offer you my congratulations.”

Husrev fixed him with a weary stare. His voice was very deep, almost a whisper. “The sultan is very young.”

“We must be grateful that he can draw upon your experience,” Yashim replied politely.

The old pasha grunted. He pressed his fingertips together in front of his face, brushing his mustache. “And at the palace?”

“Sultan Mahmut’s women were slow to leave.” Yashim bit his lip; it was not what he should have said. Not when Husrev himself had moved so fast.

Perhaps Husrev Pasha thought the same, because he gave a dismissive snort and slid a sheet of paper across the divan. “Report from the governor of Chalki. A dead man, in the cistern of the monastery.”

“Who was he?”

The pasha shrugged. “Nobody seems to know.”

“But-he was killed?”

“Perhaps. Probably. I want you to find out.”

“I understand, my pasha.” For the second time that day, he was being asked to do someone else’s job.

Husrev Pasha’s heavy-lidded eyes missed little. “Have I said anything to displease you, Yashim?”

Yashim took a deep breath. “Is it not a matter for the governor, my pasha? The kadi, at least.”

“Would I send for you if it was enough to direct the kadi? The governor?”

Yashim heard the anger in his rumbling voice. “Forgive me, my pasha. I spoke without thinking.”

To his surprise, the old vizier leaned forward and took his knee in his massive paw.

“How old are you, Yashim?”

“Forty.”

“I have seen what may happen when a sultan dies. When you were a little boy, Yashim. We thought the sky was falling on our heads. Bayraktar’s Janissaries stormed the Topkapi Palace. In the provinces there was fear-and fighting on the streets of Istanbul. The Muslims afraid of the Greeks.”

Yashim listened, and said nothing.

“The city is quiet today,” the old pasha continued. “But the weather is hot, and the sultan is young. I am a little afraid, Yashim. Men have hopes I do not yet understand. Some have demands. Between demand and threat you cannot pass a horsehair. And the state is weak. Russia, as you know, gains every day at the expense of our people. Moldavia and Wallachia are occupied by the tsar’s troops, to the mouth of the Danube. Serbia rules itself, with their aid. Georgia and the Armenian lands are under Russia now.”

He cracked his huge knuckles. “Egypt is strong. Long ago, we could count on Egypt; that time is past. Mehmet Ali Pasha is not to be trusted. We are caught, Yashim, between hammer and anvil.”

He picked up a pile of documents at his elbow and let them drop heavily onto the divan. “With these, I must govern this empire. I must keep the peace.” He shrugged. “This is a dangerous time for all of us, Yashim, and I do not know exactly where the danger lies. Perhaps from a corpse in the Christians’ well.”

“I understand, my pasha,” Yashim replied. “Your eyes must be everywhere.”

“If not, Yashim, they would fill with tears.” He rubbed a massive thumb and finger over the bridge of his nose. “Tomorrow morning will be sufficient,” he said.

Stanislaw Palewski, Polish Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, put up a hand to steady his straw hat as a light wind threatened to tip it by the brim.

“This,” he remarked, “is better than Therapia.”

Yashim, beside him on the bench, grunted assent. When Istanbul lolled in the dog days, under the summer sun, the other European ambassadors liked to retreat to their summer residencies at Therapia, up the Bosphorus; only Palewski remained in town. He lacked funds; he lacked a summer residency; he lacked, in point of fact, a country.

It had been Yashim’s idea to invite Palewski to spend a cooling day out on the water, traveling to the island of Chalki and back. Yesterday’s work in the harem had exhausted him, and the cannons booming out across the water had sounded like the blood pounding in his own head. The breeze at Marmara blew as well as the breezes of Therapia, and at a fraction of the cost: a ticket to the island could be had for a sequin-a seat on deck, a view over the water, a chance of seeing dolphins, and a glass of sweet tea into the bargain.

Palewski was Polish, from his tongue to his heart, and represented a country that no longer existed-at least, it was not recognized by any of the Christian courts of Europe. The Ottomans sustained the notion that their old proud foe existed still; they accepted the credentials of an ambassador whose country had been swallowed by its neighbors. They even sustained the ancient custom of paying the ambassador a stipend for his maintenance, for magnanimity was the mark of a great empire, and old habits died hard; but the stipend was small and did not stretch to summer residencies.

They made, perhaps, an unlikely couple, Palewski and Yashim; though anyone who had seen them together on the deck of the felucca might have noticed that both, in their way, were conservatively dressed. Palewski’s coat was well cut, in the old fashion, if slightly shabby, and his waistcoat was more colorful than the age prescribed; while Yashim’s embroidered waistcoat and white pantaloons belonged to a style that was fast disappearing in the capital. Most Ottoman gentlemen followed the lead of their late sultan in adopting dress coats and tight black trousers, beneath a scarlet fez. Yashim wore a fez, but it was swathed in a strip of linen, some twelve feet long, which he wound tightly around his head as a turban. On his feet he wore the comfortable leather slippers that the Ottomans had always worn, before the sultan persuaded them into tight-laced boots and woolen socks.

An odd couple, then, but with more in common than might have at first appeared-not least a shared desire to escape the summer heat and enjoy the breezes out to sea.

The largest of the Prince’s Islands advanced swiftly over the sun-pricked waters. The sails were furled, one by one; the canvas slapped, the chain ran out, and soon the boat was drawn alongside the quay. The Greek sailors stepped ashore with coiled rope and lazy familiarity.