Jason Goodwin: An Evil eye

“Tulin?”

“Yes, valide. Yes, I’ll send for the Kislar aga, right away. Just let me light the lamps before I go.”

The outing had made everyone slightly hysterical. Many of the girls had seen more in one afternoon than they could quite take in. Crowds of men, for a start.

“Did you see the dragoon, by the bridge?”

“The man lolling in the window, showing his private parts!”

“Go on!”

“Never!”

“I told you to look, but by then he’d disappeared.”

“I only saw the sultan. So handsome, in the landau.”

“Oh, yes!” Their voices were shrill with agreement: everyone wished that they’d said it first.

“So handsome!”

“So imperial!”

Ibou, the Kislar aga, moved uneasily among the chatter. “Has anyone seen Roxelana?”

“The little girl?”

“She’s upstairs asleep, with all the kiddies.”

“Somebody pushed her over the side.”

“Watch what you say-young men dangling all over you, under the bridge! Whoo!”

“I told you, aga-somebody lifted her off the caique.”

“What?”

“I didn’t really see. It was all dark under the bridge, after the sunshine.”

“That’s right, aga. There was something funny under the bridge.”

“And Roxelana was gone?”

“How could I tell? She wasn’t with us when we got into the carriages. Maybe she’d run on ahead. Children! In the carriage, I peeped!”

“You didn’t!”

“You would!”

Ibou gave up, in despair. Everyone had their version. No one had been remotely interested in the child.

And yet no one had seen her all afternoon.

He was worrying about nothing, he thought to himself.

Yashim stood listening to the sound of the muezzin calling the Friday prayer.

Only a fortnight, he thought, since he had gone to Friday mosque at Topkapi, to escape his awkwardness with the valide’s handmaiden. The day, of course, that Hyacinth had died.

He remembered the sound of the muezzin rising and falling as Melda told him that Elif had been pregnant.

That, too, had been Friday.

Hyacinth and Elif had died a week apart. Hyacinth had been trying to talk to him, the old eunuchs had said.

Hyacinth had died in Topkapi; Elif in Besiktas.

Yashim leaped, as if he had been stung.

“Hats!” he exclaimed. “Roxelana never liked the hats!”

The Grande Rue was still full of people, many of them in a holiday mood after the ceremony of the bridge; many of them from Istanbul, visiting the European quarter for the first time. Loafers sizing up the opportunities; knots of veiled ladies peering into the unfamiliar vitrines of the European shops, with their regimented displays of hats or pastries or upholstered chairs; dignified gentlemen astonished by the height, and apparent solidity, of the stuccoed buildings.

The crowd moved like treacle: Yashim dodged and weaved, veering around the groups of visitors and diving between startled families. The road seemed longer than it had ever been, but eventually it began to slope downhill. He raced, panting, past the base of the Galata Tower, and flung himself down the long flights of steps leading to the waterfront.

He had saved Roxelana, for the moment.

But with Roxelana gone, everything was changed.

He heard pounding footsteps behind him, and glanced back.

One of Fevzi’s caiquejees was vaulting the steps three at a time.

At the bottom of the stairs Yashim skidded out onto the icy thoroughfare. The caiquejee behind him gave a piercing whistle, and suddenly the roadway ahead was full of men, bare-fisted and bowlegged, stringing themselves out across the way that led to the bridge.

Their caiques rocked unattended at the stage.

Without a second glance, Yashim dashed to the stage and flipped the painter on the leading caique. He snatched up an oar and drove it against the wooden jetty. With a heave he shot the fragile craft out into the Golden Horn.

The caique gave a lurch. Water splashed over the gunwale, and Yashim very nearly overbalanced: his arms flailed and he sat down abruptly in the stern. He fitted the oars to the rowlocks, and pulled-almost tumbling over again as the fine-keeled caique, improbably light, began to twist through the water. He drew it in line with the central arch of the bridge, dipping his oars too deep; at the next stroke his blades scudded over the surface like lifting teal.

But he had it now: two firm bites of the blades, and the caique was skimming toward the bridge.

He glanced up. Some of the caiquejees were racing to the bridge, others piling into caiques waiting at the stage. One, two, then three shot forward, and slipped into his wake.

Yashim battled against the nervous movements of the boat. The shallow gunwale dipped and the caique shipped water again. With an effort he steadied his stroke, forcing himself to slow down. He glanced up: the caiquejees were gaining on him now.

As he slid into the shadow of the bridge he began drawing firmly to the right, zigzagging so that the men above would misjudge the point where he emerged. As he shot out on the other side he looked up-his maneuver had not been wasted. A man on the bridge dashed to catch up with him, and seemed ready to jump; but it was too late. Yashim had cleared the bridge by a boat’s length.

He leaned to the oars, and felt the current of the Bosphorus take him as he moved out of the Golden Horn. It was sweeping him slowly toward the opposite shore, toward Seraglio Point, where the very tip of Istanbul jutted into the strait, and he bent with it, willing it to whirl him toward the little jetty that stuck out beneath the walls of the seraglio.

For a few moments, with the help of the current, he left his pursuers trailing; but once they emerged into the stream they began to advance rapidly. One hundred and fifty yards. One hundred and twenty. One hundred.

One of the pursuing caiques began to pull in toward the shore. There were riptides and eddies all along the shores of the Bosphorus, and no doubt the caiquejee knew exactly where to find one that would speed his pursuit.

Yashim could only keep rowing, grimly, back cracking, hands raw against the wooden sculls.

“ I — don’t-think I-can take much-more-of this,” the young man gasped. A wavelet slapped his face and he swallowed another spoonful of the Bosphorus.

“Think of Byron-Compston-old man.”

“Byron did it-in summer.” The acting third secretary at the British embassy kicked out with both legs; but his energy was waning. His lips were blue. Compston could hardly remember why he was here, slowly freezing to death in the gelid waters of the Bosphorus.

“Damn-that wretched-Esterhazy.”

Compston could not have believed he could ever be so cold. Before they waded into the water, he and Fizerly had smeared themselves in a liberal coating of mutton fat until Fizerly said they looked like prize porkers from his father’s model farm. For the first hundred yards or so, the fat had done the trick.

“Damn-that-blasted bridge!” Fizerly glanced around. In the dusk, he could see only the glowing disk of Compston’s face in the water. “Keep-going, Compston. Old man? Compston?”

“It’s late, Tulin. I feel tired, I want to sleep.”

Tulin hovered. “Yes, valide.”

The valide turned her head. “You can go now. Leave a lamp.”

She gestured to the lights.

“The Kislar aga did not come?”

“No, valide. I sent the message.”

“Well, well. No doubt he is busy.”

“No doubt, valide. Perhaps you should tell me what you wished to talk about, and then-”