The Janissary Tree

[ 26 ]

The gigantic records of the Ottoman administration were housed in a large pavilion that formed part of the division between the second and third, or more inward, court of the palace at Topkapi. It was entered from the second court, through a low doorway protected by a deep porch guarded by black eunuchs day and night. An archivist was always in attendance, for it had long ago been observed that although most of the sultans avoided much strenuous work after hours, their viziers could demand papers at any time. Even now, as Yashim approached, two torches blazed at the entrance to the Archive Chambers. The light revealed four muffled shapes crouching in the doorway, the eunuch guard.

The night was cold and the men, drawing their heavy burnouses closely round their heads, were either fast asleep or wishing to be so. Yashim stepped lightly over them, and the door yielded soundlessly to his fingertips. He closed it behind him without a sound. He was standing in a small vestibule, with an intricately modelled ceiling and a beautiful swirl of Kufic letters incised around the walls. Candles burned in glimmering niches. He tried the door ahead, and to his surprise he found it opened.

In the dark it looked even bigger than the book-barn he remembered: the stacks which took up space in the centre of the room were invisible in the gloom. Down one side of the room ran a low bench, or reading table, with a line of cushions; and far away, almost lost in the echoing darkness, was a very small point of light that seemed to draw the darkness closer in upon it. As he watched, the light snapped off, then leaped out again.

“An intruder,” a voice announced, pleasantly. “How nice.”

The librarian was coming down the room. It was the exagger—ated sway of his walk, Yashim realised, that had blocked the candlelight for a moment.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

The librarian stepped up to a lamp by the door and gently trimmed the wick until the light was bright enough for them to look at one another. Yashim bowed, and introduced himself.

“Charmed. My name’s Ibou,” the other said simply, with a slight bob of his head. He had a light and almost girlish voice. “From Sudan.”

“Of course,” said Yashim. The most sought-after eunuchs at the palace came from the Sudan and the Upper Nile, lithe, hairless boys whose femininity belied their enormous strength and even more colossal powers of survival. Hundreds of boys, he knew, were taken every year from the Upper Nile and marched across the deserts to the sea. Only a few actually arrived. Somewhere in the desert, the operation was performed; the boy was plunged into the hot sand to keep him clean, and kept from drinking for three days. If, at the end of those three days, he was not mad, and could pass water, his chances were very good. He would be the lucky one.

The price, in Cairo, was correspondingly high.

“Perhaps you can help me, Ibou.” Somehow Yashim doubted it: most probably the delicious young man was in the library as a favour to some infatuated older eunuch. He scarcely looked old enough to know what a Janissary was, let alone to have mastered the system in the archives.

Ibou had put on a serious, solemn expression, his lips pursed. He really was very pretty.

“What I’m looking for,” Yashim explained, “is a muster roll for all the Janissary regiments in the empire prior to the Auspicious Event.” The Auspicious Event—the safe, stock phrase had tripped out by force of habit. He’d have to be more explicit. “The Auspicious Event—”, he began. Ibou cut him off.

“Shh!” He raised one hand to his lips, and fanned the air with the other. His eyes rolled from side to side, pantomiming caution. Yashim grinned. At least he knew something about the Auspicious Event.

“Do you want names? Or only numbers?”

Yashim was surprised.

“Numbers.”

“You’ll want the digest, then. Don’t go away.”

He turned and teetered away into the darkness. At length, Yashim saw the distant candle begin to move, swaying a little until it disappeared. Behind the stacks, he supposed.

Yashim did not know the archive well, just well enough to understand that its organisation was comprehensive and inspired. If a vizier at the divan, or council meeting, needed a document or reference, be it ever so remote in time, or obscure by nature, the archivists would be able to locate it in a matter of minutes. Four or five centuries of Ottoman history were preserved in here: orders, letters, census returns, tax liabilities, proclamations from the throne and petitions running the other way, details of employment, promotion—and demotion, biographies of the more exalted officials, details of expenses, campaign maps, governor’s reports—all going back to the fourteenth century, when the Ottomans first expanded out of Anatolia across the Dardanelles, into Europe.

He heard footsteps returning. The candle and its willowy bearer appeared out of the darkness. Apart from the candle, Ibou’s hands were empty.

“No luck?” Yashim could not keep a trace of condescension out of his voice.

“Mmm-mmm,” the young man hummed. “Let’s just take a look.”

He turned up a series of wall lights above the reading bench, and knelt on a cushion. Above the bench itself ran a shelf containing nothing but tall, chunky ledgers with green spines, one of which the boy pulled down with a thud and opened on the bench. The thick pages crackled as he turned them over, humming quietly to himself. Eventually he ran his finger down a column on the page and stopped.

“Got it now?”

“We’ll get there eventually,” Ibou said. He closed the ledger with a heavy whump! and lifted it lightly back into place. Then he sauntered over to a set of drawers built into the wall near the door, and pulled one out. From it, he selected a card.

“Oh.” He looked at Yashim: it was a look of sadness. “Out,” he said. “Not you. You’re nice. I mean the records you wanted.”

“Out? To whom?”

“Tsk, tsk. That’s not for me to say.”

Ibou waved the little card in front of his face as if he were opening and shutting a fan, with a flick of the wrist.

“No. No, of course not.” Yashim frowned. “I was hoping though—”

“Yes?”

“I wondered if you could possibly tell me what revenue the beyerlik of Varna derived from…from mining rights in the 16703.”

Ibou put his lips together and blew. He looked, thought Yashim, as if he were about to give the figures from memory.

“Any particular year? Or just the whole decade?”

“1677—”

“One moment please.”

He popped the card face down on the open drawer, picked up the candle, and in a moment had vanished behind the stacks. Yashim stepped forward, picked up the card and read:

Janissary rolls; 7-3-8-114; digest:fig., 1825.

By command.

He put back the card, puzzled.

A minute later, as he and Ibou pored over a thick roll of yellowing parchment which smelt powerfully of sheepskin and on which, to his infinite lack of interest, various sums and comments were recorded relative to the Varna beyerlik for the year 1677, he popped the question.

“What does ‘By command’ mean, Ibou? The sultan?”

Ibou frowned.

“Have you been peeping?”

Yashim grinned. “It’s just a phrase I’ve heard, somewhere.”

“I see.” Ibou’s eyes narrowed for a moment. “Don’t touch the scroll, please. Well, it could mean the sultan. But it probably doesn’t. It certainly won’t mean, for instance, the Halberdiers of the Tresses, or the gardeners, or any of the cooks. Obviously we’d put them in, by their rank and place.”

“Then who?”

Ibou gestured slyly to the parchment roll. “Are you interested in this, or is it just an excuse to come and chat?”

“It’s just an excuse. Who?”

The archivist carefully rolled the parchment up. He tied it again with a length of purple ribbon and picked it up.

“Just let me set everything in order.”

Yashim chuckled to himself as he watched the boy prowling, loose-limbed and insufferably fluid, over to the drawers. He tucked the card back into its place, ran the drawer shut with his long fingers, and disappeared into the stacks with the candle. God help the older men! He’d never known such coquetterie. But he was also impressed. Ibou looked and sounded like a bit of African fluff but he certainly knew his way around. And not just among the dusty records, either, as he could see.

He came back very quickly.

“By command,” Yashim prompted.

“The imperial household. The sultan, his family, his chief officers.”

“The imperial women?”

“Of course. All the sultan’s family. Not their slaves, mind you.”

“By command.” Yashim mused. “Ibou, who do you think wanted the book?”

“I don’t know.” He frowned. “Could it be—”

He shrugged, gave up.

“Who? Who are you thinking of?”

The archivist flipped his hand dismissively.

“No one. Nothing. I didn’t know what I was going to say.”

Yashim decided to let it pass.

“I wonder, though, where I could find out what I want to know?”

Ibou cocked his head and gazed at one of the lamps on the wall.

“Ask one of the foreign embassies. I shouldn’t be surprised.”

Yashim began to smile at the sally. But why not? he wondered. It was exactly the sort of information they would be likely to have.

He looked curiously at Ibou. But Ibou had raised the back of his hand to his chin and was gazing, innocently, at the lamp.