An Evil Eye Part 10

Talfa opened her eyes.

"What's the matter now?"

The dresser let the pot slip from her fingers and brought her hand to her mouth.

Talfa's hand flew to her chin. "What is it?"

"I-I don't know, hanum efendi. There was something in the pot."

"In the pot?" A look of annoyance clouded the princess's face. "Well, pick it up."

The girl gingerly picked up the pot, and turned it so that Talfa could look inside.

She peered in, then dabbed at it with a finger.

Something black and long sprang out, and they both started. The dresser let the pot fall.

On the carpet between them lay the thick, ribbed tail of a rat.

Talfa's face slowly crumpled as she squeezed her eyes shut and opened her mouth. Then she screamed, and screamed, and screamed.

33.

THE boys' dormitory in a long, narrow room high up under the eaves contained twelve cots and a table with a washbasin. On a stand lay a copy of the Koran, transcribed by gifted boys over the years; Yashim thought he recognized his own hand in the pages, but he could not be sure. It was a long time ago.

The fire in the grate was cold.

A barred window at the end of the room looked out over the many-domed roof of the refectory. Beyond it, across a narrow lane, he could see the leaded dome of a small mosque.

"Took him from Anatolia," the tutor said. "He'd been living wild."

"Wild?"

"In a cave, apparently. One of the clansmen found him. Sent him on."

Yashim nodded. It wasn't unusual for boys to be sponsored to the school. No doubt one of the clan chiefs of Anatolia had recognized Kadri's talents and sent him to Istanbul in the hope that one day he would be in a position to repay the favor.

The tutor shrugged. "Long time ago, Yashim efendi. For Kadri, I mean. He was only seven or eight-half a lifetime ago, in fact. Been in training ever since."

"He left from here?"

The tutor made a gesture of bewilderment. "Must be so. We do a roll call every night. Kadri was marked in."

Yashim squatted in the fireplace and looked up the chimney. "Maybe another boy answered for him?"

The tutor shook his head. "Kadri took the roll himself. I could show you the register. The boys agree that Kadri was there when they turned in."

"After the register, the doors are locked?" Yashim stood up, rubbing his hands. The chimney was narrow and capped with a cowl. "And in the morning, someone beats the gong."

The tutor nodded. "Older boys bring tapers to the dormitories. That's when they found Kadri missing."

"But he'd slept in his bed."

"Yes."

"And then?"

"The boys looked around, then came down to the mosque and told me what had happened. I came up and searched, too."

"Let's go downstairs," Yashim said.

It was a stone staircase, with a landing between the floors. Yashim stopped to contemplate the landing window, high in the wall. Then he moved on downstairs and into the courtyard, to study the dormitory block from the outside. It was just as he remembered, built in the spare cla.s.sical Ottoman style, with deeply inset windows and dressed stone walls.

Beyond these walls so much had changed in the years since Yashim was there. Laws had been changed, the Janissaries suppressed. Egypt, the ancient grain store of the empire, had slipped from the sultan's grasp under its charismatic Albanian overlord, Mehmet Ali Pasha; Russia had moved closer.

"Fazil!"

One of the boys coming out of the gymnasium broke away from his companions and salaamed.

"Fazil shares the dormitory with Kadri. Tell the efendi what happened this morning."

Fazil gave his account. Kadri hadn't been in his bed when the gong went.

"Did you look under all the beds?" Yashim asked the boy again.

Fazil scratched one leg against the other and admitted that he couldn't be sure.

"How about your own bed?"

"I-I think so, efendi. Or one of the boys would have looked."

"And the chimney?"

"I can't remember, efendi. Later, I looked for sure. I am sorry."

"It doesn't matter," Yashim a.s.sured him. "Thank you for telling me." He was surprised how little seemed to have changed since his day. The boys, it was true, were dressed differently, in Frankish uniforms-but they were the same boys as before, lanky, handsome, darting from one cla.s.sroom to the next holding their books.

He half smiled to himself as he caught sight of an imam in his white cap and long brown robes, treading solemnly along the cobbled path. That element of the curriculum, at least, was unchanged.

"Either Kadri is still here, tutor, or-" Yashim squinted up at the side of the building. "Is the catch on that landing window fastened?"

The tutor heaved a sigh of impatience. "Anyone who jumped from that window, Yashim efendi, would be dead at the foot of the wall."

Yashim nodded. "Let's find someone with a ladder."

34.

DONIZETTI Pasha, the instructor general, cracked his white baton down on the lectern.

"Ladies, ladies, please." He leaned forward on his toes and blew out his cheeks so that his mustaches tickled his nose. "I hope you are not too stiff?"

He placed the baton down and laced his fingers together, arching them over his little bald head, leaning this way and that. "You must do the same. Stretch your fingers!"

The orchestra obeyed. There was the sound of instruments being laid aside, and a few suppressed giggles, because Donizetti Pasha was a man and his talk sounded intimate: stiff, fingers. To have these parts, these feelings, referred to by a strange man-well!

Elif, smiling, caught Donizetti's glance and blushed.

The maestro was no stranger to the palace himself. In his twelve years at the Porte he had written marches for the new army bands, airs for sultans, and innumerable studies and scherzos for the more musical members of the imperial family, including the rousing march unofficially considered the Ottoman imperial anthem, with its swelling bra.s.s and occasional daring swoops into a minor, Oriental key.

Donizetti Pasha nodded. "Good, good. Now, like this."

He waggled his fingers beside his cheeks. The ladies of the harem orchestra followed suit.

"Ciao, ciao, ciao, ciao!" Donizetti hunched his shoulders and his eyes twinkled.

"Ciao, ciao, ciao, ciao!" trilled the harem ladies. They looked about them and laughed.

"Va bene!" the maestro cried jovially. "Now your fingers are relaxed, and you can play like angels! Violins, especially."

He cast a meaningful glance toward the violins, and picked up the baton. "When you are ready. One, two, three. And-" He flicked the tip of his baton through the air, and the violins picked up the beat.

Giuseppe Donizetti smiled, and gave the violins a deep nod. Really, they were not too bad. Not bad at all! What a sensation they would make in Milan-the loveliest orchestra in the world, belli di Bosforo! Each a flower, plucked from the waysides of the Caucasus-Ah, Giuseppe, Giuseppe! Lower your eyes, man! Concentrate on the score. For your own good health.

He had tutored the young prince Abdulmecid, now the sultan, on pianoforte and violin-the youth lacked attack, perhaps, but he was competent and some of his compositions showed promise-but when the young sultan had first suggested that Donizetti Pasha should lead the ladies' orchestra every week, the Paduan maestro had found his heart beating like a drum.

"No man other than the sultan has ever stepped into his harem," he had confided in a letter to his little brother. "I am to make history! Not only shall I meet the sultan's ladies, but I am to direct them with my baton, every week!"

To which his brother had replied with a dry warning. "I advise you, my dear brother, to read the contract carefully before you commit yourself. As I understand the harem rules, your baton may be the first thing to go if you accept such a position."

Donizetti Pasha had chuckled a little uneasily at the gibe. His brother, of course, took his own baton to the ladies of Paris and Naples without stint: it had been that way ever since his Lucia di Lammermoor had made him the darling of Italian opera. Giuseppe did not begrudge his younger brother his good fortune, either with the ladies or the stage: they had been born poor, and Giuseppe remained grateful for the attainments that had led him to a position of trust and honor within the Ottoman Empire. It was a snug billet, as a soldier might say; and he was a married man.

In the event, his anxiety-and his brother's warning-had proved unfounded. The sultan was as good as his word. Every Thursday, the girls of the orchestra a.s.sembled in the Grand Salon under the direction of the amiable Italian. They played minuets for him; they galloped into rondos; they beat the drum and sc.r.a.ped the string and blew the reed and fingered the stops for him; and if some of them believed themselves in love, why, Donizetti Pasha was far too short, and round, and twinkling on his toes to suspect such a thing.

He was the only man, beyond family, that many of them had ever seen before. Portly and innocent; but a man.

35.

YASHIM took his leave of the tutor at the gate.

"Our best hope is that Kadri makes up his own mind to come back."

"I still don't think it's possible-"

Yashim held up a hand. "Nor do I. Not really. But the window was unlocked. There's a chance that he's still here, of course. We may simply have to wait for our young friend to make himself known. Eventually, at least, he has to get hungry."

The tutor snorted. "He disgraces himself, and us. n.o.body runs away from the palace school. It has simply never happened before. d.a.m.n Kadri!" And he stuffed his beard into his mouth and chewed on it, angrily.

Yashim opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again.

36.

ELIF and Melda burst into their room, giggling.

"Ciao! Ciao! Ciao!" Elif waggled her fingertips and Melda laughed again.

She reached up to remove the pin that fixed the shako to her glossy black hair and caught sight of the little girl crouched on the divan with her hands to her head, staring at them both with big, frightened eyes.

"Hey, princess!" Melda laughed. "It's only us."

Elif lunged forward, still waggling her fingers. "Boo!"

Roxelana scrambled backward, with a look of unfiltered horror. "No! Go away!"

"Oh, grow up, Roxelana," Elif said irritably.

Melda took off her hat and shook her head, and her long hair spilled down across her shoulders. She crossed to the divan and put her arms around the little girl, feeling her stiff bones.