The Janissary Tree

[ 97 ]

Yashim could hear voices. A tiny sliver of light cut into the darkness as he raised his eyelids a fraction of an inch. Something that soothed him pressed for a moment against his body, and was gone. Dim shapes moved in the light. Dreadful accident…stroke of

luck…Then someone was wiping his face with a cool wet cloth and Palewski’s own face swam into view.

“Yash? Yashim? Can you hear me?”

He tried to nod.

Palewski put a hand under his head and tilted him forwards.

“Drink this,” he said. Yashim felt the rim of a glass against his lips, but his lips felt huge. His fingers seemed to be in gloves, they were so hard to bend.

“Can he speak?”

It was the seraskier’s voice.

I am dreaming, Yashim thought.

Hands picked him up and moved him through the air. Then he was lying back again, covered with a blanket.

Palewski saw his friend settled on the litter and motioned to the bearers. To the seraskier he said: “I’ll take him to the embassy. He’ll be safe there.”

The seraskier nodded. “Please let me know how he is doing later.”

The litter-bearers shouldered their poles and followed the ambassador out into the night.

Yashim was aware of the jouncing of the litter as they threaded through the dark streets. He heard the slap-slap of the bearers’ feet and the jingle of little bells, and wondered how badly he was hurt. Sometimes the fabric of the litter rasped against his skin and he almost shouted out.

A runner had gone on ahead to give Palewski’s maid time to make up a bed and lay a fire; when they arrived she was already on the stairs with a wedge of fresh linen. Palewski took candles off a table in the hall to light the bearers’ way, and so expertly did they carry him that Yashim only knew they were going upstairs by the slope of the ceiling.

They transferred him to the bed. Palewski settled a fire in the stove that stood in one corner of the room, tiled with a design of twining blue flowers, while Marta appeared with a basin of cold water and a sponge, turning down the sheet so that she could dab delicately at Yashim’s inflamed skin.

Yashim felt nothing, only a wave of nausea that now and then clutched at his belly and made him retch. When he did, Marta cleaned him up without a word. He slept for a while, and when he woke she was there again, with a spoonful of liquid so bitter it made his mouth ache; but he swallowed and the nausea slowly dissolved.

Marta brought up a basin of warm water that smelled of lavender and honey. Yashim was breathing steadily now. By the light of the candles he watched the silent Greek girl with her straight brow and olive skin, standing over the basin, absorbed in her task. She took a pile of big linen napkins and one by one she soaked them in the basin, wrung them out, and spread them on a clothes rack to cool. Her straight black hair was gathered in two plaits, pinned to the side of her head; when she bent forwards he could see the little hairs on the nape of her neck as they caught the light.

When she was ready she took the first honey-scented napkin and folded it.

“Please close your eyes,” she said, in a voice as soft as a dove’s. She laid the napkin firmly over his forehead, and he felt her fingers smooth the damp cloth over his eyelids, and mould it across his nose and cheekbones.

“Can you roll onto your side? Here, let me help you.”

A moment later he felt another cool cloth pressed around his chin and neck and shoulder. His left arm was lifted, and Marta’s fingers smoothed another napkin over the side of his chest and his back.

“Try not to move,” she said. As she worked her way down his body Yashim began to find his sensations returning. He felt her palms on his buttocks and thighs, through the cool cloth. At length she reached his feet, and helped him roll onto his back to finish wrapping his right side.

“I feel like an Egyptian mummy,” Yashim croaked. She put a finger to his lips. His voice had sounded weak and strained: he even wondered if she had heard what he said.

He must have dozed, because suddenly he was afraid he was being smothered, unable to open his eyes, crushed by a fearful pressure on his chest and limbs. He gave a cry, and tried to struggle free, but two small hands pressed him back by the shoulders and a voice whispered softly: “I am here, don’t worry. It’s all right. It’s better now.”

For a moment he felt her breath on his lips, and then she had removed the bandage over his eyes and he opened them to see her standing over him with the napkin in one hand and a shy smile on her face.

He smiled back. For the first time since she had touched him, he was conscious of his nakedness; conscious that he was, once again, alone with a woman. He raised himself gingerly on one elbow, and she seemed to feel it, too, because she turned to the candle and said: “If you feel better, you should wash. The honey will be sticky. I will fetch what you need.”

She was gone for a minute. When she returned she carried a basin of warm water and a robe draped over her arm. She set the basin down by the bed and laid the robe near his feet.

“There is a sponge in the basin,” she explained.

As she turned to go, Yashim said: “My arm is still very stiff.”

She shot him a smile and for the first time he saw her serious dark eyes twinkle.

“Then you will have to wash slowly,” she said, sweetly. And was gone.

Yashim sighed, and heaved his legs off the bed in a rustling cascade of napkins.

He washed himself, as the girl had said, slowly.

Aware that there was little time. Wondering what had become of Murad Eslek. Wondering what Marta meant to his friend Palewski—and he to her.