An Evil Eye

94

The man with the knife crossed the mountains in snow. He was used to the snow, to the cold, to picking his way along the mule tracks.

He did not consider the barking as he made his way down toward the valley. At this time of year dogs would be chained close to the sheep, to warn of the approach of wolves-or a stranger.

At last he lifted his head, and listened. The barking was growing closer. The man tightened his grip on his stick and loosened the knife in his belt.

With a strange dog you had to look big. Talk loud. Dogs understood firm signals. The man prepared by shifting his sheepskin coat onto his shoulders, just in case.

The Court of the Favorites, in the Topkapi Palace, was an open and airy space surrounded by a colonnade on three sides. It was the work of the great Ottoman architect Sinan, who created the sublime panorama of Istanbul’s domes, which move forward and retreat in dignified counterpoint as the traveler approaches the city by sea.

Sinan also worked on buildings that were to be seen by very few people. The fourth side of the Court of the Favorites was enclosed by a low balustrade, beneath which Sinan had constructed a delightful bathing pool as a grateful addition to the amenities of the harem. Stretched out in the sun below the balustrade, part of the pool filtered back through the old Byzantine arches into deep, almost subterranean shade.

As autumn came, and the days shortened and the air grew cool, the eunuch of the baths would test the water with his skinny elbow, until the sad day arrived when he pronounced the pool closed for the season. Then the pool was drained, to protect the tiling from frost and ice; because it stood on a hill, the draining was swift and effective. The entrances were locked, to await the return of summer, and the sultan’s girls.

The girls were warned not to approach the balustrade, which was quite low; in spite of salt and gravel, the surface of the courtyard in winter was sometimes slippery with ice. But in recent years the filling and the emptying of the pool had become no more than a formality. The girls had gone. The pool became a seasonal tradition that continued because it was seasonal, and no one had thought, or would ever think, to order it stopped.

Hyacinth did not find it necessary to repeat the warning to the older women who had returned to the palace from Besiktas: they knew the danger already, and they rarely ventured out now that the frosts had come. Instead they remained indoors, clustering around the barely adequate fireplaces that warmed their lodgings, and complaining incessantly about the cold. Palewski was right: the Ottomans seemed not to reckon with winter until it was already upon them.

Thus the Court of the Favorites was largely deserted, and only Melda, who had the heat of youth in her veins, sought it out as a quiet place to sit, under the colonnade.