The Janissary Tree

The
Janissary Tree

Jason Goodwin

CONTENTS:

1
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2
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3
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4
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5
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6
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7
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8
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9
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10

11
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12
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13
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14
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15
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16
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17
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18
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19
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20

21
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22
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23
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24
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25
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26
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27
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28
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29
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30

31
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32
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33
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34
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35
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36
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37
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38
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39
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40

41
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42
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43
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44
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45
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46
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47
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48
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49
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50

51
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52
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53
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54
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55
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56
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57
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58
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59
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60

61
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62
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63
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64
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65
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66
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67
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68
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69
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70

71
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72
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73
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74
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75
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76
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77
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78
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79
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80

81
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82
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83
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84
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85
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86
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87
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88
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89
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90

91
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92
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93
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94
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95
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96
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97
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98
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99
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100

101
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102
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103
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104
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105
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106
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107
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108
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109
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110

111
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112
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113
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114
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115
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116
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117
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118
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119
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120

121
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122
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123
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124
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125
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126
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127
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128
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129
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130

131
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132

1

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

Yashim
flicked at a speck of dust on his cuff.

"One
other thing, Marquise," he murmured.

She
gazed at him levelly.

"The
papers."

The
Marquise de Merteuil gave a little laugh.

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

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

The
marquise had fished out a paper from her decolletage and was tapping it on the
table like a little hammer. He took a closer look. It
was
a little
hammer.

Tap tap tap
.

He
opened his eyes and stared around. The Chateau de Merteuil dissolved in the
candlelight. Shadows leered from under the book-lined shelves, and from the
corners of the room--a room and a half, you might say, where Yashim lived alone
in a tenement in Istanbul. The leather-bound edition of
Les Liaisons
Dangereuses
had slipped onto his lap.

Tap tap tap
.

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

"Page
boy."

Hardly
a 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 around
the walls, boxing with one another before the page's shadow stabbed Yashim's
with a flickering dagger. Yashim took the paper scroll and glanced at the seal.
Yellow wax.

He
rubbed his finger and thumb across his eyes. Just hours ago he'd been scanning
a dark horizon, peering through the drizzle for lights and the sight of land. The
lurching candlelight took his mind back to another lamp that had swayed in a
cabin far out at sea, riding the winter storms. The captain was a
barrel-chested Greek with one white eye and the air of a pirate, and the Black
Sea was treacherous at this time of year. But he'd been lucky to find a ship at
all. Even at the worst moments of the voyage, when the wind screamed in the
rigging, waves pounded on the foredeck, and Yashim tossed and vomited in his
narrow bunk, he had told himself that anything was better than seeing out the
winter in that shattered palace in the Crimea, surrounded by the ghosts of
fearless riders, eaten away by the cold and the gloom. He had needed to come
home.

With
a flick of his thumb he broke the seal.

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

He
sighed and laid the paper aside. There was a lamp screwed to the wall and he
lit it with the candle. The blue flames trickled slowly round the charred
cloth. Yashim replaced the glass and trimmed the wick until the fitful light
turned yellow and firm. Gradually the lamplight filled the room.

He
picked 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 commander
of 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?"

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

Yashim
knew that it hardly mattered what he wore. He was a tall, well-built man in his
late 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 the
slanting gray eyes of a people who had lived on the great Eurasian steppe for
thousands of years. In European trousers, perhaps, he would be noticeable, but
in 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 was
a condition of mind. A condition of the body.