The Snake Stone (16 page)

T
HE
curtains of muslin and silk brushed together, stirred like a breath by the night air. Sometimes he could see a tiny diadem of stars through a chink close up by the rail, and it came and went, came and went, the way people did when you were dying, looking in to observe the progress of death, to render a report on the invisible struggle; all that was left. The sultan wondered if this was the way all men died, alone, in doubt, troubled by memories.

He listened to the breath in the room, the woman’s breathing, the
shush
of the muslin against the silk. This would, of course, go on: the world would breathe without him. His own breath was less; it made no sound; he barely moved. Now that a great sleep was drawing close, he no longer needed sleep. The rehearsals were over.

Out on the water, something splashed. The Bosphorus was full of fish. He imagined himself gliding with them, their cool, metallic bodies holding level, the moonlight refracted through the surface of the water, cold and silvery, and the fish glinting like the stars.

He swam with them easily, borne along by the current and an effort that was minute, imperceptible. Hadn’t they always been there, too? Waiting for him—or perhaps not him, especially: for anyone who was ready to come, that night, any night.

He looked ahead; it seemed that his eye skimmed like a shearwater across the dark ripples, zigzagging between the headlands where the hill ridges dropped to the water’s edge.

On to where the straits opened out into the restless sea.

M
ARTA
half turned with the tray in her hands and nudged the door open with a sway of her hip. Inside, the room was almost dark, and only a thin crack of light between the shutters showed that the morning was well advanced. Palewski’s room smelled strongly of candle wax and brandy, a smell that Marta associated with her employer and which she had never learned to properly dislike. The table, she knew, would be piled with books and glasses, so she set the tray down on the floorboards and went to open the shutters she had closed on Palewski and his studies the night before.

Daylight poured into the room, and the bedclothes stirred and groaned.

Marta tugged at the window frame and succeeded in opening it about two inches at the top. For a few moments she stood looking out into the yard. Suela, the Xanis’ daughter, was sweeping the ground with a little besom broom; Shpëtin, her brother, played silently in the dirt, rolling a ball to and fro. Marta sighed.

She cleared a space on the chair by the bed, moved the tray to it, and set about collecting the bottles and glasses, returning the candlesticks to the mantelpiece. She was very careful not to disturb any of the books scattered around the bed. The ambassador was a magnificent scholar, after all. Night after night he wearied himself looking into those books of his, and she knew better than to let her carelessness spoil his work. What made his work all the harder was that he possessed so many books, more than anyone had ever seen in their life, so that finding the thing he needed was a real chore.

“A Greek came round earlier,” she said, passing a cup of tea to the hand which had emerged from beneath the bedclothes. Marta, who was Greek herself, invested the word with powerful contempt. “I told him that you did not admit callers, but he could write and make an appointment.”

Palewski swam up from the duvet and sipped weakly on his tea. “Very good,” he mumbled. “Probably some sort of swindle.”

Marta nodded. That was it, exactly. The man had looked like a swindler.

“The water is weak again today,” she said.

“Tea’s all right, though.” Palewski put out his cup, and she filled it from the pot. “Thank you, Marta. I can manage now.”

Marta curtsied. Inwardly, she could not resist a smile. The ambassador was a clever man, to be sure; but to manage—no. Beyond his books he was simply a big child.

“Thank you, sir,” she said.

“Thank you, Marta.”

When Marta had gone, Palewski leaned from the bed and groped around on the floor. One of Lefèvre’s handwritten notes had fluttered out of the book as he lay reading the night before. He had read it twice before he understood what it was; then he had very quickly snuffed out the candles and rolled up in bed.

Now he opened the book again, and in the cooler light of day he reread the paper.

The word
serpents
was underlined.

Palewski’s legs stirred uneasily beneath the featherbed.

“P
ERMISSION
to enter?” Yashim stood at the gates, peering around at the children in the yard. The little girl—what was her name?—looked up and gave him a brief smile, but Shpëtin tucked his chin into his chest and stared sullenly at the ground.

“Don’t shoot—it’s only me,” Yashim said brightly as he crossed the yard.

He found Palewski in bed, balancing a cup of tea on his knees.

“I see your sentry’s been withdrawn,” he said.

“What? You mean the little boy. Well, I don’t know. His father’s gone off somewhere without telling and everyone’s feeling the pinch. Mrs. Xani is gloomy enough at the best of times, but it’s Marta I worry about. Again. She’s quite upset for the little boy.”

Yashim nodded. “Children like a routine,” he said.

“Hmmm. They’d been going out together recently, Xani and his boy. A sort of apprenticeship. Then the boy came back rather late one evening, on his own.”

Yashim nodded. Marta, the little boy: it was obviously a difficult morning for Palewski. He wanted to talk about Lefèvre’s book.

“I was attacked last night,” he said.

“My dear fellow!” The ambassador looked shocked. “The whole place is going to the dogs.”

Yashim told him about the caïques and his unexpected dip. “They wanted that book.”

“My God! You were lucky. Have a look at this.”

He passed across the copy of Gyllius. On the back page, stamped in green ink, was an oval containing the words in Greek: “Dmitri Goulandris, Bookseller.”

Yashim gave a dismal snort. “But Goulandris could barely read himself. He wouldn’t have understood anything in the book.”

“Not many people would. But perhaps the killer didn’t know that. Didn’t know Goulandris, except that he sold books. Including this one.”

Yashim stared at the book in his hands. “You told me it’s not even all that rare.”

“Hmmm.” Palewski was enjoying himself. “An original copy of Gyllius? I’ve never come across one. But you’re right. Nonetheless,” he added, pointing, “that copy is quite unique. It’s a matter of provenance.”

Palewski put his hands behind his head and lay back against the cushions. “Take an old book or an old painting. In fact, let’s take one of Lefèvre’s favorites, say a Bible. Illuminated. Thirteenth century. It’s Byzantine. Probably done in Georgia. All well and good—but what would its story be? How would it come to be sitting in the window of a shop in Saint Germain six hundred years later?”

“Lefèvre would have stolen it, I suppose.”

“Of course he’d have stolen it, but that’s immaterial,” Palewski said. “What matters to him—and his clients—is that this book has spent the last six hundred years, let’s say, in a scriptorium in Georgia. Better still: it formed part of the last Byzantine emperor’s own personal collection in Istanbul, and then was rescued by the Georgians after the Ottoman Conquest in 1453.”

“Giving it a history.”

“It is called provenance. Tells people it’s the genuine article. I mean, if the monks liked it, and hung on to it, it must be the real stuff. But also, of course, it’s the story of the piece. I wager that Lefèvre knew how to tell a story.”

“It is the same with the House of Osman. Anyone could rule the empire—even I. But only the sultan has—this provenance.”

“In a manner of speaking, yes, you’re right.” Palewski frowned. “I suppose when we—the Poles—began to elect our kings, we lost track of the story. Then we lost our country, too,” he added dejectedly.

“You said this book was unique,” Yashim said quickly.

Palewski rallied himself. “From what I’ve seen, I would say that it belonged to Delmonico.”

Yashim shook his head.

“About forty years after Gyllius came to Istanbul,” the ambassador explained, “an Italian called Delmonico wrote an account of the city himself. He’d been a page in the household of the sultan—the Grand Signor. Knew what he was talking about. But forty years later, Yashim. He was interested by Gyllius, because Gyllius saw the city as it had been.”

“And what was that?”

“Byzantine Constantinople.” Palewski frowned. “No, that’s not quite right. Gyllius is really writing about three cities, one above the other. The first—it’s classical Constantinople. Fifth century. Gyllius has got an old book, a description of the city as it stood in Justinian’s day. With this in his hand, he goes about trying to identify the old monuments, the old palaces—ruins, most of them. Interesting stuff.

“But there’s another Constantinople he’s describing, too—the one he’s walking around in. It’s the city that rose up in the intervening centuries—during a thousand years of Greek religion, Roman law, Greek language. Of course it’s changing again, in front of his very eyes. The Ottomans have taken charge. So Gyllius collars old Greeks who can still remember how it was before the Conquest—the name of an old church, for instance, which has been demolished or turned into a mosque. He’s not so interested in all that himself—but we are.”

“I see what you mean,” Yashim agreed. “And the third city?”

Palewski clasped his hands together. “The third city, Yashim, is being built around him. Ottoman Istanbul.”

Yashim took the book from the bed and turned it over in his hands.

“It was a time of change, Yashim. Like today, I suppose. You and I watch Istanbul being made more Western every day. Gyllius recorded the opposite: the remaking of Istanbul along Muslim lines. By the time Delmonico, the Italian, arrived, the process was to all intents complete. The city we have today.”

“And this man—Delmonico—examined Gyllius’s book.”

“Of course. To learn what had changed.”

“How do you know?”

“I didn’t notice it until I started reading—he writes in the margin of the text. He used brown ink. I’ve got Delmonico’s own book, and there are pieces I recognize. General observations. No one else was so close to Istanbul, writing in Italian, at the right period. It has to be Delmonico. And that, Yashim, is provenance.”

“You think Lefèvre would have spotted it?” But Yashim knew the answer already. Lefèvre would have known immediately, the moment he found the book in Goulandris’s little store. Goulandris would have had no idea.

“I expect he bought it cheap,” Palewski said.

Yashim nodded slowly. “Somebody writes a book—Gyllius. Another man comes along and scribbles a few thoughts in the margin. Delmonico. Why does Lefèvre think it’s so important?”

Palewski threw up his hands. “As to that, Yashim, I’ve no idea. He could have sold it for a little more, I suppose, by playing up the Delmonico angle. But it wasn’t going to make him rich.”

Yashim thought of the Frenchman, with his neat hands and veiled threats. “I’m quite sure that Lefèvre smelled money in that book. Did you say you had a French translation?”

“I found it last night.”

Yashim stared down at the book in his hands. “Lefèvre died because he acted on something he believed in,” he said. “You reminded me that he believed everything he read in books.”

He stood up. “Whatever it was, maybe Gyllius believed it, too.” Yashim scratched his head. “Didn’t you say that there was something odd about Gyllius? His going to war?”

“He went east with Suleyman, to fight the Persians. It does seem an odd thing to do, for an antiquarian.”

“Why would Suleyman want him along, anyway?”

“Oh, as to that, I think Suleyman had no objection to foreigners witnessing his triumphs. Let me fetch you the French edition.”