The Janissary Tree

[ 127 ]

I’m going down, now,” the seraskier said quietly. “And you -you’ll stay up here, I’m afraid. I thought you might come with me, but it doesn’t matter.”

He gestured with his gun, and Yashim stepped out of the archway onto the sloping roof.

“Shall we just change places, slowly?” The seraskier suggested. They circled each other for a few seconds, and then the seraskier was in the arch.

“You see, I’m not going to shoot you. I still think you might want to change your mind. When the troops fall back. When this place starts to burn.”

But Yashim wasn’t really listening. The seraskier had seen his eyes stray from his face, and then widen, almost involuntarily. But he mastered an impulse to turn around. Deflection tactics were no more than he expected.

Yashim’s surprise was not at all affected. Behind the seraskier, up the stairs, two extraordinary figures had made a silent appearance. One was dark, the other fair, and they were dressed like believers, but Yashim could have sworn that the last time he had clapped eyes on these two they had been wearing frock coats and cravats in the British embassy.

“Excusez-tnoi,” the fair one said. “Mais—parlayvoo fran$ais?”

The seraskier spun round as though he had been shot.

“What’s this?” he hissed, turning a wary look on Yashim.

Yashim smiled. The fair young man was glancing round the seraskier, putting up a hand to wave.

“Je vous connais, m’sieur -1 know you, don’t I? I’m Compston, this is Fizerly. You’re the historian, aren’t you?”

There was a tinge of desperation in his voice which, Yashim thought, was not misplaced.

“They are officials at the British embassy,” he told the seraskier. “Much more modern than they look, I imagine. And efficient, as you say.”

“I’ll kill them,” the seraskier snarled. He jabbed his gun at them, and they shrank back.

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Yashim said. “Your republican dawn could quickly turn into dusk if you bring British gunboats to our doorstep.”

“It’s of no consequence,” the seraskier said. He had regained his composure. “Tell them to get out.”

Yashim opened his mouth to speak but his first words were drowned by a muffled crump that sounded like a clap of thunder. The ground trembled beneath their feet.

As the sound of the explosion died away the seraskier jerked the watch from his pocket and bit his lip.

Too early, he thought. And then: it doesn’t matter. Let them begin the barrage.

He waited, staring at his watch.

Fifteen seconds. Twenty seconds. Let the guns fire.

The sweat had broken out on his forehead.

There was another bang, slightly fainter than the first.

The seraskier looked up and flashed a look of triumph at Yashim.

But Yashim had turned away. He was standing on the roof, hands held aloft, staring out over the city as the wind caught at his cloak.

Beyond him, the seraskier saw the burst of light. It glanced off the pillars of the dome, flinging Yashim into brilliant relief where he stood against the skyline. The seraskier heard the rumble of the guns which followed. There was another burst of light, as of an exploding shell, and another deep rumble, and the seraskier frowned. He knew what was puzzling him. The sound and light were the wrong way round.

He should have heard the guns roar, and then seen the light flash as the shell reached its target, The seraskier leaped from the archway and began to run, his feet making no sound on the thick lead sheets.

Yashim made a lunge for him, but the seraskier was too quick. In an instant he had seen what he had not expected to see, and with brilliant military intuition he had grasped precisely what it all meant to him. The guns were working the wrong end of the city, the shells exploding far away. He did not break stride. He shrank slightly as Yashim reached out, but a moment later he was over the gutters and half-running, half-sliding down the leaden roof of the supporting half dome.

He moved with a speed that was terrible to see. Yashim darted to the edge and began to lower himself down onto the conical roof, but the seraskier had already dropped from sight. Then he suddenly re-appeared, lower down, loping south across a cat-slide roof.

For a moment the whole city lay spread out beneath the seraskier’s feet. He saw again the dark mass of the seraglio. He saw the lights twinkling on the Bosphorus. He saw men and women streaming through the square beneath him, and in the distance the chutes of flame that peeled away from the sudden yawning gaps that the artillery was making in their path.

As for him, there was only one direction he could take.

For many years after that, an Armenian army contractor who married a rich widow who bore him six sons would tell the story of how he was almost crushed by an officer who fell on him from the sky.

“Not a common soldier, mind you,” he would end his story, with a smile. “God, in his Grace, sent me a general: and I’ve been dealing with them ever since.”