Jason Goodwin - An Evil eye

The pasha looked pale. “It is happening…” he muttered. He sprang to his feet and went to the door. “That complicates things-for you. For the sake of your friends, I imagine you can find a way.”

“A way?”

“To get my daughter out of the harem.”

Yashim shook his head. “I can’t just walk out of the sultan’s harem with a little girl.”

Fevzi Pasha whistled into the dark, and two men entered the room: caiquejees both, to judge by their swinging gait.

“These men are going to take you to your cellar, ambassador. Marta-is it? — will accompany you. I’m afraid it won’t be very comfortable, but it depends on your friend how long you will remain there. Tie them.”

The last words were spoken to the caiquejees. They lifted Palewski’s hands and bound them behind his back.

Palewski kept his eyes on Marta, and she on his, even when they tied her hands behind her back. Neither of them spoke.

The door closed behind them. “I don’t know how you plan to get away with it,” Yashim said.

“Interesting, isn’t it? Neither of us can tell how the other will lay his plans. I only hope, for your sake, that yours will be as effective as my own.”

“I’m afraid you overestimate my talents,” Yashim said. “I didn’t know you had a daughter.”

“So you say. It doesn’t matter, does it? You know now-and your friends downstairs.” He stood up. “You will bring her here. If not I will kill the ambassador, and his woman. And I will kill you, too.” He paused, and flung back his head. “For you, however, I actually have a little gift. An incentive, if you like.”

Kadri saw the drawing room door open, and the two caiquejees go in.

He was about to go down and find out what was going on when the door opened again, and the men came out holding candlesticks. Between them came Marta and Palewski. Kadri could see that something was wrong; he checked his impulse to call out, but moved noiselessly down the stairs to the half-landing.

He heard the cellar door open, and close.

Frowning with anxiety, he darted down the second flight of steps and listened by the door.

He recognized Yashim’s voice, and another one he didn’t know.

“ There’s nothing I could possibly want that you could ever give me, Fevzi Ahmet.”

The pasha smiled. “No? Think of your father, Yashim. The governor. Poor old man. He died, I’m told, still trying to find out who brought such dishonor on his family.”

A stubborn look came into Yashim’s eyes. “What do you mean?”

“Well, well. His wife-the lovely Greek girl? Manhandled, shall we say, before they slit her throat? At least she got to see who gelded her only son, before she died. I’m told she was allowed to watch.”

Yashim’s lip peeled back.

“The governor’s son,” Fevzi Ahmet went on, in the same musing tone. “Not quite a son, anymore. Very sad, for everyone. And embarrassing for the old man, wasn’t it? With all his power, not knowing who. Not knowing why. His wife dishonored and dead, and his son castrated. Who did it? He never found out. Too much grief. Some people said it pushed him into an early grave.”

Yashim closed his eyes. “I don’t care, anymore.”

“If I thought about the wife I never had, the children… I think I would still dream about that cave. My mother’s screams.”

“My mother’s screams?” It took Yashim a violent effort to control his voice. She hadn’t screamed, the woman with the laughing eyes. But he had been forced to watch her die.

“I find things out, Yashim. I knew years ago.” He stepped closer: just not quite close enough-he had measured the distance carefully. “So if you can rescue my daughter-and help me get away-I’ll tell you.”

He opened the door. “I hope you can find your own way out, Yashim. I’d give you a candle, but in the circumstances it would be foolish, don’t you think?”

“What do you mean?” Yashim had hardly spoken when the stench rolling up the stairs answered his question.

Paraffin oil.

On the landing he could hear one of Fevzi Pasha’s men, sloshing fuel across the floorboards below.

“Just in case you thought of mounting a daring rescue,” Fevzi Ahmet said. “A fire is very effective, and leaves nothing behind-as I well know. It took the yali ten minutes to burn to the ground. The bodies went up in smoke. My wife’s coffin, as it happens, contained a quantity of ash and a piece of bone. Her silver bangles had fused to it. That’s how I knew.”

Kadri had just time to backup the stairs when Yashim and the stranger came out onto the landing.

He heard them talk, and then they went downstairs.

For some reason he could not understand, Palewski and Marta were imprisoned in the cellar; only Yashim had been allowed to go.

He heard the front door close, and a breeze laden with paraffin wafted up the stairs.

It would take only a spark, and the whole place would go up in flames-just as the stranger had said.

Kadri knew he did not dare go down. If he met the man with the spark…

He thought of trying the empty drawing room, but the windows would be closed, and he would make too much noise opening them.

Very quietly he went back to his room and eased the window open.

It was a long way down to the yard.

“ Marta?”

“I am here, kyrie.” Her voice came out of the darkness behind him.

“Can you move?”

“Not very well, kyrie. I can move a little-but it is cold.”

“Yes.” Palewski tried to remember how Marta had been dressed, but after a while he gave up. All he could remember was the trusting look she had fixed on him earlier, in the drawing room.

He shifted slightly on his knees, to ease the discomfort; his kneecaps crackled against the damp stone. Already his knees hurt; in an hour, they would be worse. He imagined the cold, and the cramps shooting up his thighs.

“Marta, have they made you kneel on the floor?”

“To kneel, kyrie? I am sitting down, but I cannot move my arms. They have tied my arms behind my back.”

“You can move your legs?”

He heard the sound of her skirts rustling against the stone floor. “Yes, kyrie.”

“Could you-stand up?”

“I–I think so.” He heard her move again. “I can push myself up against the pillar.”

“Reach out with your foot, Marta. As far as you can, but gently. Perhaps you can reach the wine racks, with your foot?”

“Just, kyrie. I think I brushed it with my shoe.”

“That’s good. That’s very good.”

“Kyrie?”

The sweat beaded on his forehead. “I’m thinking, Marta, that we need a knife.”

In the next ten minutes, too, he thought: I don’t think I can stand this, on my knees, much longer.

Kadri landed safely on the cobbles, and at once drew back into the shadow of the wall.

He needed to find Yashim. If Yashim had gone home…

He bit his lip. Yashim lived far away, in Balat, across the Golden Horn.

He crept to the front of the residency and looked around. He could not quite see the front door. If someone was watching…

He doubled back, and left the compound through the courtyard at the back, making no noise.

Out on the street he ran, weaving from doorway to doorway, keeping to the darkest shadows.

He did not want to run into the stranger he had heard on the stairs.

“ Yashim!” Preen put a hand to her mouth. “You look terrible, darling-what happened?”

Yashim shook his head.

“Fevzi Pasha came back,” Yashim said heavily.