The Janissary Tree

[ 88 ]

Stanislaw Palewski opened his mouth to groan, as he did every morning when he woke up. But the groan did not come.

“Ha!”

The events of the night before had returned to him with unexpected clarity.

He wriggled his toes and they appeared obediently at the foot of the bed, poking out from beneath the duvet he had long ago adopted, in the Turkish fashion. His toes looked very dirty, until he remembered how he had blacked them with a brush.

He recalled the execrable champagne that he had been about to punish the previous evening. Doubtless some sharp French house had unloaded a bushel of the bad vintage on the unsuspecting Porte, charging top whack and confident that they would not be exposed. After all, who could complain? Not the Turks, who weren’t supposed to drink the stuff. And the guests were hardly likely to make a fuss.

All the same, Palewski thought, he didn’t get champagne every day, and he could have drunk rather more if that stiff-necked Russian hadn’t been so clumsy.

He grinned.

Tossing his drink over Prince Derentsov had been, he thought, a gifted manoeuvre. But swabbing it down afterwards, to ensure the maximum discomfort, was little short of inspiration.

What did it matter if afterwards he got a dressing-down from the sultan himself? The Russian had almost certainly fared worse—it was he who laid down the challenge, after all, and broke the sultan’s injunction. Palewski had merely responded as a man of honour must.

He and the sultan had had an interesting discussion, too. Surprisingly frank and friendly, and all because he had spilt his drink and wore a dastardly but inordinately well-contrived apology for the Sarmatian finery of his distant predecessors.

The sultan liked the coat. He had recalled, with Palewski, the old days which neither of them had ever known, but which both of them imagined tinged with a glamour and success that neither Poland nor the empire had ever rediscovered. And the sultan had said, in a voice that sounded suddenly weary and unsure, that all the world was changing very fast.

“Even this one.”

“Your Edict?”

The sultan had nodded. He described some of the pressures that now forced him to make changes in the running of his empire.

Military weakness. The growing spirit of rebellion, openly fostered by the Russians. The bad example of the Greeks, whose independence had been bought for them by European Powers.

“I believe we are taking the right steps,” he said. “I am very positive about the Edict. But I understand, also, that there will be enormous difficulties in persuading many people of the need for these changes. Sometimes, to tell you the truth, I see opposition everywhere—even in my own home.”

Palewski was rather touched. The sultan’s home, as they both knew, contained about 20,000 other people.

“Some will think that I am going too fast. Just a few may think that I have gone too slowly. And sometimes even I am afraid that what I am trying to do will be so misunderstood, so mangled and abused, that in the long run it will be the end of…all this.” And he gestured sadly at the decorations. “But you see, Excellency, there is no other way. There is nothing else we can do.”

They had sat in silence together for some moments.

“I believe,” Palewski said slowly, “that we must not fear change. The weight of the battle shifts here and there, but the hearts of the men who fight in it are not, I suppose, any weaker for that. I also believe, and hope, that you have acted in time.”

“Inshallah. Let us hope together that the next round of changes will be the better for us—and for you.”

And he had thanked the ambassador again for listening to him, and they shook hands.

As the sultan left to visit the Russian prince, he had turned at the door.

“Forget the incident this evening. I have forgotten it already. But not our talk.”

Unbelievable. Even Stratford Canning, the Great Elchi as the Turks liked to call him, who helped prop up the Porte against the pretensions of the Russians, would have swooned with pleasure if the sultan had spoken to him so sweetly.

Palewski—who normally took mornings one thing at a time -clasped his hands behind his head on the pillow, grinned, wriggled his toes, pulled the bell rope for tea, and decided that the first thing he would do today was pay a visit to the baths.

And later, it being a Thursday, he would dine with Yashim.