The Tournament (26 page)

‘Anyone but you,’ I said again.

‘Yes, anyone but me,’ Mr Ascham said.

‘So after all that, you are ultimately no closer to discovering Cardinal Farnese’s killer?’

Mr Ascham put the slip of paper into his satchel and then put the satchel inside his travelling trunk. ‘Oh, no, not at all. I am certainly closer.’

‘How do you reckon that?’ I asked.

‘Well, now I have two fewer suspects.’

There was one other thing to do that day, something unrelated to chess or to our investigation. In the afternoon, Mr Ascham, Elsie and I ventured across the city to check on the health of Mrs Ponsonby.

We found her and her husband at the same inn where we had left them outside the Golden Gate. The six soldiers who had escorted us across the Continent were also lodged there and happily passed the time playing card and dice games.

Mrs Ponsonby’s condition had not improved. She lay in bed, pale and perspiring, repeating the same prayer over and over in a low rapid voice: ‘
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee
. . .’

‘She is still unwell?’ Mr Ascham said to Mr Ponsonby. ‘She has not improved at all?’

‘No, sir,’ Mr Ponsonby said, ‘not a whit.’

‘. . .
blessed art thou among women
. . .’

Mr Ascham looked at her gravely. Then he stood. ‘Our prayers and thoughts are with you both. We shall return after the tournament is over.’

‘. . .
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus
. . .’

As we walked back in through the Golden Gate, my teacher said, ‘That is a strong woman.’

‘Mrs Ponsonby?’ I said a little incredulously. ‘Whatever do you mean?’

‘Whatever poison she was given, it was potent, and yet her body is fighting it with all her might. A lesser person would be dead by now,’ Mr Ascham said.

I had not considered it that way. I’d never thought I would find myself worrying for Primrose Ponsonby, or even respecting her strength, but right then I found myself doing both.

We returned to the palace, where the afternoon and evening passed quite peaceably.

At one point, Mr Ascham tried to seek out Darius the wrestler—to question him about his actions in Cardinal Cardoza’s embassy the previous night—but Darius could not be found anywhere inside the palace. My teacher was unperturbed. He resolved to find him the following day, hopefully around the time he managed to speak with the queen.

As for Elsie, to her great disappointment, the Crown Prince held no gathering that evening, so she stayed in our rooms with me. We spent the evening plaiting our hair while Mr Ascham and Mr Giles played chess. But they played by a strange rule whereby they each had to move their pieces immediately and without delay.

It was, above anything else, fun. And the two of them—perhaps releasing all the tensions of the tournament and of our grim investigation—seemed to delight in just having fun, laughing and teasing each other as they moved their pieces.

‘Oh, come on, Roger, stop playing like an old maid!’ Mr Giles said at one point. Or: ‘My dear Ascham, that was predictable. And I know you can’t stand being predictable!’

But my teacher gave as good as he got. ‘Really, Giles, I was told you once played for England, but I really can’t see it in the way you’re playing now.’

Pieces were taken with flourishes. Reckless moves were followed by sudden sighs of realisation. Mr Giles won every game except for one—and when my teacher won that game, he leapt to his feet, arms raised in triumph, and Mr Giles rolled his eyes. In the end, much enjoyment was had, and I was pleased to see it. When they finished, we all retired early.

Given what would happen the following day, I was glad we did.

THE FOLLOWING MORNING THE
Hagia Sophia was literally buzzing with excitement, for the four second-round matches were to be played that day. Two matches were scheduled for the morning, two for the afternoon, again to be played side by side.

An updated draw, written in the finest handwriting on the Sultan’s beautiful gilt-edged paper, had been slid under our door that morning. It read:

In the morning session, the Sultan’s man Zaman would play the formidable Muscovite, Vladimir, while the two Spaniards, Pablo Montoya and Brother Raul, would face off alongside them.

Mr Giles would have to wait till the afternoon to play the brutish but admittedly talented Dragan of Wallachia. Alongside that match would be played perhaps the most anticipated battle of the round: the people’s champion, Ibrahim, versus the handsome Moghul prince, Nasiruddin, who had become something of a favourite among the women of Byzantium.

Every match brought with it some kind of rivalry or drama. It was little wonder the citizens of Constantinople were excited.

I was excited, too.

We took our seats on the royal stage, looking out over the two playing stages and the sea of humanity packed into the hall. Bright sunlight shone in through the great dome’s high windows, bathing the space in an almost heavenly golden radiance.

The morning matches began.

The crowd sat in near perfect silence, hushed by the thrill of the occasion. The tournament had entered a new, more intense stage. You could hear the click of the pieces being moved from two hundred feet away.

At one point, my teacher went to sit with Ignatius. The learned Jesuit was watching the match between the two Catholic Spaniards anxiously (he was also, I concluded from the subtle but silent movements of his lips, offering the occasional prayer to the Lord to sway the outcome).

I remained with Elsie. In between watching the chess, I occasionally glanced over at the queen.

‘Elsie,’ I said, ‘apart from the liaison you witnessed on the night of the banquet, what other things have you heard about the queen?’

‘The queen?’ Elsie glanced across at Queen Roxelana and lowered her voice to a respectful whisper. ‘This I can say with confidence: she is not to be trifled with. It was she who through intrigue, insinuation and outright murder engineered the rise of her son, Selim, to the rank of Crown Prince.’

‘Tell me more.’

‘Like every Ottoman ruler before him, this sultan has fathered many children with his concubines and prior to marrying Roxelana, he had already sired several sons. But only one of them can succeed him. Selim faced several challengers but his cunning mother managed to have them all dispatched to administrative positions in the outer provinces, strangled in their sleep or tossed into a dungeon, never to emerge.

‘For, you see, in addition to holding the Sultan’s ear, it is said that the queen commands the loyalty of a small group of palace guards—notably those who control the dungeons. Apparently, she supplies these guards with gold, whores and liquor. Thus if the queen can convince her husband to send a rival of hers to the dungeon, that rival will most assuredly meet with a fatal accident in their cell soon after. She is most cunning and rightly feared.’

I gazed over at the queen, sitting stoically at her husband’s right hand. She was beautiful and poised, the picture of regal sophistication; but now that I looked at her more closely, I saw that her eyes were hard and cold.

Elsie concluded, ‘The young folk of the palace fear Roxelana greatly. They treat her with almost obsequious flattery, for to cross her is to take your life into your hands.’

‘I see,’ I said. Looking at the queen—at her cool stillness—I wondered what she thought about. Did she enjoy inspiring dread in others? Indeed, in a man’s world, was it good for a queen to be feared? More than that, was it necessary?

I shook the thoughts away. Maybe Elsie was right: maybe I did think overmuch. I turned back to observe the chess matches once again.

At that moment, Mr Ascham returned to my side and I was about to tell him what Elsie had said when suddenly the sadrazam appeared behind our seats.

‘Mr Ascham, Princess Elizabeth. His Majesty the Sultan requests your presence at his side.’

WITH SOME TREPIDATION
, I followed Mr Ascham over to the two vacant seats to the left of the Sultan’s throne.

The queen sat stiffly on the other side of the Sultan, staring resolutely forward. As far as I could tell, she was not looking at either chess match or at any actual object, for that matter. She did not acknowledge our arrival at the Sultan’s side.

‘Mr Roger Ascham, Princess Elizabeth,’ the Sultan said. ‘Please sit down. My, the chess is tense this morning, isn’t it?’

‘It certainly is,’ my teacher said as we sat. From these more elevated and centrally located seats, we had an unsurpassed view of both boards. Being Sultan had its advantages.

The Sultan said, ‘I believe your man will be facing the Wallachian, Dragan, in the afternoon. First Talib, now Dragan. He has had a difficult draw.’

‘It is the nature of random draws, isn’t it? No-one could have known how those stones were going to come out of that jar,’ my teacher replied smoothly.

I am convinced that I saw a momentary grin flash across the Sultan’s face then. He said, ‘My people are thrilled by this tournament. Look at them: they come in droves, mass on the streets outside. Some, I am told, camp out overnight by the doors of the Ayasofya to get places nearest to the tables. I am pleased.’

‘Your Majesty should be,’ Mr Ascham said. ‘It is a most remarkable event and it will be the talk of every kingdom in Europe for decades, even centuries, to come.’

‘You Europeans are impressed with my tournament?’

It was the classic King’s Question, because it could only be answered one way, in the affirmative. To answer any other way would be a profound insult.

My teacher, however, managed to find another way. ‘I myself am even more impressed that Your Majesty prefers to engage with other great kingdoms in a display of simulated warfare rather than actual warfare. I find this most enlightened and wish some European kings would act in similar fashion.’

‘You are most kind.’

‘Elizabeth,’ Mr Ascham turned to me, ‘you may not be aware but the West owes nearly all of its recent advancements to the Islamic world.’

‘Is that so?’ I said.

‘In the dark centuries after the fall of Rome, Europe became a wasteland. After the twin illuminations of the Greek and Roman civilisations met their ends, Europe regressed into crude tribalism and rule by force. And while Europe was wallowing in this filth of an existence, the Abassid caliphs were rescuing the great works of the Greeks—Aristotle, Xenocrates, Strato, Theophrastus—and translating them into Arabic so they could be widely studied.’

The Sultan nodded. ‘Your man’s opponent yesterday, Talib of Baghdad, is the librarian at what was perhaps our greatest centre of translation: the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. Is it not strange that your Bible, originally written in Greek, should return to Christianity after having first been translated into Arabic? Who knows, maybe a crafty Islamic translator inserted a few Koranic wisdoms into the Bible before sending it back to Europe.’

But then the Sultan’s smile faded.

‘Alas,’ he said, ‘those were the great days of Islam.’

My teacher frowned. ‘But Your Majesty, under your leadership, the Islamic world is as powerful and influential as it has ever been. Based on my observations here in Constantinople, your society—your
ummah
as it is called—could rise to heights reached by no empire before it, not even Rome. In five hundred years, I foresee a vast Moslem hegemony of the greatest technological and military pre-eminence, one that may subsume all of Europe.’