The Janissary Tree

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There was a momentary silence before the court erupted in pandemonium. The eunuchs swarmed towards the doors in a frenzy to escape, anything to put some distance between them and their fallen chief. Men were slithering and scrambling over each other to reach the doors, some running into the Golden Road, others pouring below the colonnade where Yashim could no longer see them. Doubtless those clockwork halberdiers would stand immobile as dozens of men fled to the sanctuary of their own quarters. Tomorrow you would not find one, Yashim reflected, who would admit to having been there that night.

They’d accuse each other, though.

There was one, at least, he could vouch for personally. He was glad that Ibou had chosen the right course, sticking to his world of musty texts and tattered documents.

The eunuchs had all but cleared from the court, leaving jewels, slippers and even their batons strewn across the flagstones. A few men had attempted to stem the rout at the first panic, dragging at the crowd, shouting encouragement. “It is still the Hour!” But the eunuchs had run like chickens in a yard, and the words of encouragement had died away. Everyone had gone.

Still the women had not moved, waiting for their mistress’s signal. The chief eunuch and the dead girl still lay on the gleaming flagstones like pieces seized from a giant game of chess -white pawn sacrificed for the black castle. It was a self-sacrifice, though. It had been her ring, all along. A token she had asked her lover to wear, Yashim supposed. There were other forms of love inside these walls than the love of a woman for a man—if the performance of the act could be considered love. What had the dresser told them? That this ring turned up here and there, with its esoteric symbol, its concealed meaning. It was clear enough, now. An endless circuit, snake swallowing snake. Frustration and excitement and pleasure in equal measure—and without issue.

The valide had stepped down into the courtyard, and the women were crowding round the body of the girl, lifting her up, moving her beneath the colonnades.

Even now, Yashim felt a pang of pity for the man who had killed her, and her lover, too. Only a few hours earlier they had spoken together, just where he lay now, and he had reminded Yashim of the murder of the sultan’s father, Selim, as he played music on the ney for the entertainment of the palace girls. It was his own predecessor who carried out the killing. Was this one of the traditions he was seeking to uphold: the murder of sultans by their Kislar Aghas?

But why did he take the valide’s jewels? Perhaps, in some crazy way, he had explained it himself: in his narrow, cunning, superstitious old mind he had come to associate the jewels with power, and stole them as a talisman, a juju that would see him through the greatest crisis of his career.

The slave-girls had crept out already. Yashim followed them, making his way down the steps and through the guard room to the corridor.

He paused with his hand on the handle of the archive door. What should he tell the young man?

He pressed the door and it opened. Ibou was standing just inside, holding a lamp.

“What happened? I heard shouts.”

He held up the lamp higher, to cast a light behind Yashim, into the corridor.

“What’s the matter?” Yashim asked.

Ibou peered over his shoulder. He seemed to hesitate.

“Are you alone? Oh. I…I thought I heard someone.” He put up his arm and fanned his face with his hand. “Whooh, hot.”

Yashim smiled.

“It will be soon,” he said, “if we don’t get the fires put out.”

“That’s true,” Ibou said, with a weak smile.

Yashim put a hand against the door jamb and rested his weight against it, staring at the floor. He thought of Ibou working on all alone while the eunuchs bayed for their sultan in the valide’s court. He thought of the little back door he’d just come through so conveniently, and of the knot of men he’d seen beneath the Janissary Tree outside. The timing was tight, wasn’t it? The uprising in the city, and the persuasion of the sultan. The conspirators would need some way to communicate—to carry news of the sultan’s mystical apotheosis to the rebels outside.

A go-between. Someone who could bring word from the closed world of the harem to the men on the outside who threatened the city.

He felt a great weight in his throat.

“What fires, Ibou?” he asked quietly.

Yashim didn’t want to see Ibou’s face. He didn’t want to learn that he was right, that Ibou was the hinge on which the whole plot turned. But he knew from Ibou’s stuttering effort to reply. From the simple fact that no archivist, corralled within the high walls of his archives room, could have seen or heard the fires that Yashim had seen lighted only moments before he entered the half-deserted palace.

Ibou had already known what would happen.

Reluctantly his eyes travelled upwards to the young man’s face.

“It didn’t work, Ibou. The chief eunuch is dead. You needn’t expect anyone else.”

He looked past the archivist down the darkened stacks towards the door. The lamp ahead twinkled and glistened. Yashim squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. The light burned clear.

Ibou turned and carefully set the lamp down on the table. He kept his fingers on the base, as though it were an offering, as though he were praying, Yashim thought. Ibou stared into the little ring of flame, and something in the sadness of his expression reminded Yashim of the man whose corpse lay neglected in the rain-swept courtyard outside. Years ago, the Kislar Agha must have been a man like Ibou. Soft and slender. Charming. Time and experience had made him gross: but once he had been lovely too.

“It isn’t over, Ibou,” he said slowly. “You have to tell them. Stop what’s happening. The Hour isn’t come.”

Ibou was breathing rapidly. His nostrils flared.

Very gently he took his fingers from the lamp. Then he put up a hand and pulled at his earlobe.

Yashim’s eyes widened.

“Darfur?” He said.

The young man glanced at him, and shook his head.

“There is nothing there. Huts. Crocodiles in the river. Little bushpig in the road, dogs. He told me I should come. I wanted to.”

Yashim bit his lip.

“I’ve got four brothers, and six sisters,” Ibou continued. “What else could I do? He sent us a little money now and then. When he became chief, he sent for me.”

“I see.”

“He is my mother’s uncle,” Ibou said. Yashim nodded. “My grandfather’s brother. And I wanted to come. Even at the knife, I was glad. I was not afraid.”

No, thought Yashim: you survived. Whether it was anger or desperation, one or the other would help you survive. In his own case, anger. For Ibou? A village of mud and crocodiles, the knife wielded in the desert, the promise of escape.

“Listen to me, Ibou. What’s happened has happened. You have no protector any more, but I will vouch for you. You must come with me now, and tell the men outside that the game is finished. The Hour has passed. Do this, Ibou, before many people die.”

Ibou shivered and passed his hand across his face.

“You…you will protect me?”

“If you come with me now. It has to come from you. Where are they waiting—beneath the Tree?”

“By the Janissary Tree, yes,” Ibou almost whispered.

We must go now, Yashim thought, before he has time to grow afraid. Before we are too late.

He took Ibou’s arm. “Come,” he said.