Yashim left the palace gate and crossed to the fountain of Sultan Ahmed. In spite of himself he veered left, passing the domed baths that the great architect Sinan had built for Roxelana, the wife of Suleyman the Magnificent. One of the baths was being used as a store. Weeds, even a little crooked tree, sprouted from the cracked lead roofs.
He went out into the Hippodrome.
There was nothing overbearing in the Serpent Column’s height, nothing to draw the eye, but once your eye was drawn, Yashim had found, it was always hard to look away again. Its very littleness mocked the pretensions of the greater monuments. Denuded of their plaques, speaking a lost language, they only gestured helplessly at vanished glory.
Three snakes, symmetrically entwined, raised themselves high above the ground. Simple yet intricate. Yashim wondered what Lefevre’s little book had to say about it: The Edifices and Antiquities of Constantinople. It would say, presumably, that it had come from the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, the seat of oracular wisdom in the ancient world. But what of the author himself? Would the author have been frightened by those glaring heads?
He would have stood where Yashim was standing now: a scholar, no doubt, learned and dispassionate. He would have gazed on that column, as a marvel from the ancient world; the same way that Yashim looked back across the years to the age of Suleyman-where among the Janissaries and tents, the standards of defeated armies, and the milling crowds, he saw the author carefully taking notes.
He shrugged and turned away. He walked back to the Fener and took a seat outside the cafe he liked on the Kara Davut, where he slowly turned the pages of Lefevre’s book, looking for pictures.
When he next glanced up, Preen was coming down the street; he recognized her walk, although her head, he noticed with amusement, was covered by a modest charshaf.
She caught sight of him and waggled her fingers; then she strode up, sat down, and flung back her scarf. A number of old men nearby creaked on their chairs, and stared. Yashim smiled. He signaled to the proprietor, who nodded and shrugged.
“The Academy boy,” Yashim prompted.
“Alexander. The picnic set, of course. Caiques up the Golden Horn to the Sweet Waters. Music, wine, and an interest in the Ypsilanti girl, I gather.”
“Decorous,” Yashim murmured.
“So far.” Preen nodded. “But he enjoys a night life, too.”
“Not so decorous?”
“It’s hard for me to say. He’s known at various taverns on the waterfront. Kumkapi, a bit, but mostly on the Pera side. Tophane, for instance. Some of those places are pretty low, Yashim.”
Yashim nodded. Tophane, the cannon foundry, had a rough reputation.
“He hasn’t been seen much recently, apparently. Someone said he might be smoking.”
“You mean opium?”
“It could happen.”
“It was liquor I smelled on his breath the other day.”
“Opium would explain why he hasn’t been seen around too much, though. The dens of Tophane.”
“Do you know them?”
Preen arched an eyebrow. “What do you take me for, Yashim?”
“I’d like to go down to Tophane. There’s a piece of information I’d like to have.”
“People go to Tophane to forget, Yashim. They don’t like questions.”
But Yashim wasn’t listening.
“We can go tonight,” he said.