The sultan gave a high-pitched sneeze and patted his face with a silk handkerchief.
“The Queen of England has one,” he said petulantly.
Resid Pasha bowed his head. King William was dead, like Sultan Mahmut. Now, he thought, England and the Ottoman Empire were being ruled by little girls.
“As the sultan says, may his days be lengthened.”
“The Habsburgs have several galleries, I understand. In their dominions in Italy, whole palaces are stuffed with pictures.” The sultan dabbed at his nose. “The Emperor of Austria knows what his grandfather’s grandfather was like by looking at his picture, Resid Pasha.”
The young pasha folded his slender hands in front of him. What the sultan said was true but perfectly ridiculous: the Habsburgs were notoriously ugly, notoriously alike. They married their close relations, and the chins got bigger every generation. Whereas an Ottoman prince had none but lovely and accomplished women to share his bed.
Resid Pasha tensed his shoulders. “The Austrian dogs always piss on the same spot,” he said with a jocular grunt. “Who would want to see that?”
Even as he spoke, he knew he had made a mistake. Sultan Mahmut would have grinned at the remark, but Mahmut was dead.
The sultan frowned. “We are not speaking of dogs now.”
“You are right, my padishah.” Resid Pasha hung his head.
“I speak of the Conqueror,” Abdulmecid said loftily. “Of the blood in these veins.” He held out his wrists, and the young counselor bowed, abashed.
“If the picture exists, I wish for it,” the sultan continued. “I want to see it. Do you desire, Resid Pasha, that the likeness of the Conqueror should be exposed to the infidel gaze, or that an unbeliever should possess it?”
Resid Pasha sighed. “And yet, my sultan, we do not know where the painting might be. If, indeed, it exists at all.”
The young padishah sneezed again. While he examined his handkerchief, the pasha pressed on: “For more than three centuries, nobody ever saw or heard about this-picture. Today we have a rumor, nothing more. Let us be cautious, my padishah. What does it matter if we wait another month? Another year? Truth is like musk, whose grateful odor can never be concealed.”
The sultan nodded, but not in agreement. “There is a faster way,” he said, in a voice treacled with mucus.
“Send for Yashim.”