The Tournament (33 page)

My teacher looked seriously at me. ‘You are not to venture alone into the palace grounds at night again, young lady.’

‘But you did the very same thing—’

‘I am a full-grown man! You are a thirteen-year-old girl! Imagine if you had come to harm in those cisterns. You may never have been found.’ He said this last statement with genuine concern.

He softened. ‘Bess, I know Elsie takes off on nocturnal adventures, but Elsie is older than you are. She is also a sprite and a fool who does not fully understand the implications of giving her body to every man under the sun. Yes, I am aware of her predilections—both at home and here—and I suppose I could stop her, but she is a young woman who can make her own decisions. I also see her as an example to
you
, an example that you may choose to follow or to ignore. In my opinion, Elsie is almost certainly going to get herself into trouble one day. You, however, are not, at least not while you are in my charge.’

I bowed my head. ‘I am very sorry, sir. I won’t do it again.’ I was also somewhat startled by his knowledge of Elsie’s promiscuity. Until that moment, I had thought that Elsie barely registered on Mr Ascham’s consciousness at all, but he was obviously aware of far more than I gave him credit for.

‘Thank you, Bess,’ he said, visibly deflating. ‘I must add that I am also just rather fond of you. I would be devastated if something were to happen to you.’

I smiled at that.

He straightened in his chair. ‘That said, with your discovery of Pietro, you have provided us with a very helpful new piece in this jigsaw puzzle of intrigue. So, Cardinal Cardoza refused to give Brunello’s younger boy a holy burial, thus angering the chef. But was such a slight enough to drive Brunello to poison the cardinal? Of that I am not sure.’

A cheer from the crowd made us turn. Ibrahim had just taken one of Mr Giles’s knights.

I took a greater interest in the match.

As it progressed, I noticed Mr Giles wiping his brow with his kerchief a lot. He seemed to be perspiring more than he usually did but I attributed this to the tension of being in a semi final against a talented player on such an historic stage.

Occasionally, however, he looked over at Mr Ascham and me and smiled weakly—something he had not done in any of his previous matches. It was most unusual.

Then I saw him make a mistake. A mistake he would never make.

He moved his queen to a square that would allow Ibrahim—on his next move—to fork Mr Giles’s queen and king with a knight.

Of course, Ibrahim took this gift and checked Mr Giles’s king with his knight. Mr Giles moved his king and—thump—a moment later, his queen was removed from the board and the crowd roared with delight.

From that moment on, the result of the first game was set. Deprived of his queen, Mr Giles could only battle on valiantly but in vain. Ibrahim gradually wore him down, slowly taking all of his major pieces, until Mr Giles—with only three pawns to protect his king, against Ibrahim’s queen and a rook—toppled his king and extended his hand in congratulations.

The crowd went into delirium. They cheered and clapped. Their man was up one game to nothing.

And Mr Giles just glanced again at Mr Ascham and me on the royal stage.

During the break between games, Mr Ascham and I went over to Mr Giles.

‘Giles, are you all right?’ my teacher asked. ‘You look pale. Are you unwell?’

Mr Giles blinked away his perspiration. ‘I’m . . . fine, thank you, Roger. Fine. Perfectly all right.’

But he did not play like a man who was fine.

He lost the next game in short time and only managed to win the third game when Ibrahim castled at a poor moment and Mr Giles sallied forth with his signature queen-and-bishop checkmate. Yet still he appeared greatly unnerved, perspiring and generally looking very uncomfortable.

He lost the fourth game in a tense endgame tussle.

He was now down three games to one.

Once again, in between games, my teacher and I met with him by the playing stage. My teacher handed him a cup of tea.

‘Giles, whatever is the matter?’ Mr Ascham whispered. ‘I doubt anyone in the crowd here can see it but I can. You are not yourself. You are not
playing
like yourself—’

‘I have been told they will kill you and Elizabeth if I win, Roger,’ Mr Giles said softly.

Mr Ascham stiffened. ‘What? Who said this?’

‘The sadrazam, this morning, as I took my seat on the playing stage. Your new guards’—Mr Giles threw a look at our guards up on the royal stage—‘they are not here to protect you. They are assassins. They are here to kill you—and later, me—should I beat Ibrahim today.’

My teacher bit his lip in outright fury, looked back at the Sultan on his throne. ‘First the poison on our journey here, and now this. The scoundrel. The dirty scheming scoundrel.’

He turned back. ‘Does Ibrahim know of this?’

‘I do not think so. But he must suspect something. He knows he is winning too easily.’

Mr Ascham’s eyes narrowed in thought. ‘This has probably gone on in all of Ibrahim’s matches: his opponents have all had their companions’ lives threatened, so they have deliberately lost.’

‘Are you saying the Sultan
wants
Ibrahim to win?’ I interjected. ‘That doesn’t make sense. The Sultan wants his man Zaman to win.’

‘That is not entirely true,’ Mr Ascham said. ‘It would suit the Sultan if
either
Zaman or Ibrahim won this tournament: in both eventualities, a Moslem wins and the Ottoman Empire emerges as the home of the greatest player in the world. Remember this, Bess: all rulers act to please their subjects at home, not to impress other nations. If Zaman
or
Ibrahim wins, the Sultan’s subjects are thrilled, for the world will have been beaten. Thus if the Sultan can contrive an all-Moslem final, he cannot lose.

‘Having said that, I wouldn’t be surprised if he were to aid Zaman in that final, just to make sure that a Moslem of royal lineage wins.
This
was why he rigged the draw—to ensure that his two local players did not meet until the final. Then he helped Zaman win by cheating and he assisted the unknowing Ibrahim by extorting his opponents.’

‘What do I do, Roger?’ Mr Giles said desperately.

Mr Ascham bowed his head in thought for a very long time. Then he looked up at Mr Giles and me.

‘Whether it be in war or in a game,’ he said seriously, ‘the outcome actually does not matter. Winning or losing is incidental. The brilliant Greek general, Pyrrhus,
won
the Battle of Asculum, but at such a cost, he has gone down in history as a fool—while the three hundred Spartans who fought to their deaths against an impossibly large force of Persians at Thermopylae are still honoured two thousand years after the event. What matters both in war and in sport is that you
exhaust
yourself in the effort. That is all. You have done this, Gilbert, so you can hold your head high. But when you come up against an opponent who does not respect the game—an opponent who
only
desires to win and who will do any foul act to achieve victory—then the game loses any value it had and your efforts are wasted.

‘Gilbert, my good friend, you’ve played a marvellous tournament. You’ve beaten two genuinely talented opponents in two genuinely difficult matches. You have nothing more to prove—to me, to Elizabeth, to King Henry or to yourself. Let us not waste your efforts any further. Give the Sultan what he wants and let us be done with his doctored tournament.’

Mr Giles nodded silently.

I glanced at my teacher and I knew that he was right.

And so Mr Giles lost that last game and thus the match. The crowd was ecstatic. They rushed the stage and hoisted Ibrahim onto their shoulders. Their champion was in the final but they were acting as if he had won the whole tournament. And, lo and behold, our new bodyguards vanished as quickly as they had appeared.

A break was held during which the Sultan left the hall to take his lunch. Again, no-one in the crowd moved.

As our party was leaving the Hagia Sophia, a messenger from the Crown Prince—I believe it was his friend, Rahman—came over and asked Elsie if she would like to join the Crown Prince for lunch in the city.

Elsie, of course, was completely ignorant of the machinations behind Mr Giles’s loss and the danger that had been hanging over our heads. She threw Mr Ascham a beseeching look. He just nodded wearily: ‘Do as you wish, Elsie.’

With an excited squeal, Elsie dashed off and once again I was left to dine with my adult companions and not my friend.

After the lunch break, the playing stage was reset and the combatants in the second semi final, Zaman and Brother Raul, ascended the stage and took their places at the board. I returned with my teacher and Mr Giles. Mr Ascham was particularly keen to see if Zaman received help from on high again.

By the time play commenced, Elsie had not returned from her lunch with the Crown Prince.

As the first game between Zaman and Raul entered a tense middle period, I again found myself watching my teacher rather than the chess.

Whenever it was Zaman’s move, Mr Ascham would gaze closely at Zaman and then look up at the Sultan’s private balcony. I myself saw shadows moving up there.

On other occasions, my teacher would look down the length of our stage at Cardinal Cardoza. The burly cardinal seemed bored. His loyal manservant, Sinon, stood alertly behind him, also careless of the chess but watchful of everything else. Even though the Church’s representative was playing, it was as if the cardinal was watching the match out of duty, not interest, as if it were keeping him from other matters. From time to time, he would lash his face lightly with his little horsehair whip.

‘That whip . . .’ my teacher whispered.

I alone heard him and looked over at it, too. I saw its multicoloured strands: brown, black, blond . . .

Mr Ascham was staring at it intently when it dawned on him. ‘The chef’s younger son, Benicio, had blond hair. Snow-white blond hair. Oh, God. That’s not horsehair. That’s
human
hair. Cardoza keeps a lock of hair from every boy he violates.’

I now saw the little whip in a horrifying new light. My eyes narrowed on the section of snow-white hair among the many other different colours.

‘Cardoza, you monstrous bastard . . .’ my teacher said, his mind clearly moving very fast now.

Just then, however, a palace guard appeared at the cardinal’s side and whispered something in his ear and the cardinal quickly left the Hagia Sophia, followed by Sinon, all the while observed by my teacher and me.

This sent Mr Ascham into a trance of even more intense thought. He stared blankly into the near distance, ignoring the match, his face set in a frown of concentration.

Then abruptly he stood. ‘Come, Bess. This match has some time to run. There is still a mystery to solve, and the broad interest in this match will give us an opportunity to visit your underworld unnoticed and seek out the elusive Pietro.’

‘Pietro?’

‘Yes. I want to ask him one question, a single question that will end this matter once and for all.’

THUS WHILE NEARLY THE entire citizenry of Constantinople was massed in and around the Hagia Sophia to watch Zaman do battle with Brother Raul, my teacher and I returned to the deserted palace, shadowed as ever by our eunuch, Latif. Not far ahead of us, we saw Cardinal Cardoza and Sinon, guided by the guard who had fetched them, pass through the Gate of Felicity and head in the direction of their embassy.

‘Latif,’ my teacher said. ‘I need you to keep watch over the cardinal for me whilst I visit a secret place.’

‘My orders are to accompany you at all times,’ Latif said, ‘
especially
to secret places.’

‘If you want to help me solve this riddle, you will watch over the cardinal now. If I’m right, everything that has happened here has happened because of Cardinal Cardoza, and he himself has blood on his hands. I believe this matter is about to come to a head and we will need to know his whereabouts when it does.’

Latif hesitated. ‘But—’

‘Good God, man, let me solve this thing!
Help me
solve this thing! Surely you realise by now that I seek only the truth! I do not wish to embarrass your master or his tournament. I seek only the truth! Please, just help me!’

Latif seemed to soften at that. He nodded slowly.

Mr Ascham said, ‘Keep track of the cardinal. If he goes to his embassy, go to our observation balcony from the other night and make sure he stays there. If he ventures elsewhere, follow him. Bess, where is the entrance to your underworld?’

‘It’s in the rose garden in the Fourth Courtyard.’

‘Latif, meet us there in half an hour,’ my teacher said. Latif nodded and then, still somewhat hesitantly, left us.

Mr Ascham and I found Zubaida lounging beside a fountain with some of the younger harem girls and, after a little exhortation on the part of Mr Ascham (and his threat to inform the Sultan if she refused to assist us), she agreed to guide us through the labyrinth and take us to Pietro.

After a brief stop in the kitchens—at my suggestion—we made our way to the rose garden where we would begin our descent, my second, into the underworld of Topkapi Palace.