Marta 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; Shpetin, 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 Lefevre’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. Serp. Column. Mehmet II hurled mace-broke off one jaw. Patriarch of H.S. aghast. “This ancient and illustrious talisman was erected here for the purpose of driving serpents from Constantinople and, in the event of its destruction, it is most probable that the city will be destroyed by an invasion of serpents.” Sultan desists. Heads broken off c. 1700; Polish noble.??? query. The word serpents was underlined. Palewski’s legs stirred uneasily beneath the featherbed.