The Light of the Day - Eric Ambler [48]
I drove her to the Seraglio and parked in what used to be the Courtyard of the Janissaries, just outside the Ortakapi Gate by the executioner’s block. As it was so early, there were only two or three other cars besides the Lincoln. I was glad of that because I was able to get off my piece about the gate without being overheard by official guides with other parties. The last thing I wanted at that moment was to have my guide’s license asked for and challenged.
The Ortakapi Gate is a good introduction to the “feel” of the Seraglio. “It was here at this gate that the Sultans used to stand to watch the weekly executions. The Sultan stood just there. You see the block where the beheading was done. Now, see that little fountain built in the wall there? That was for the executioner to wash the blood off himself when he had finished. He was also the Chief Gardener. By the way, this was known as the Gate of Salvation. Rather ironic, don’t you think? Of course, only high palace dignitaries who had offended the Sultan were beheaded here. When princes of the royal house were executed—for instance, when a new Sultan had all his younger brothers killed off to prevent arguments about the succession—their blood could not be shed, so they were strangled with a silk cord. Women who had offended were treated in a different way. They were tied up in weighted sacks and dropped into the Bosphorus. Shall we go inside now?”
Until Miss Lipp, I had never known it to fail.
She gave me a blank stare. “Is any of that true, Arthur?”
“Every word of it.” It is true, too.
“How do you know?”
“Those are historic facts, Miss Lipp.” I had another go. “In fact, one of the Sultans got bored with his whole harem and had them all dumped into the Bosphorus. There was a shipwreck off Seraglio Point soon after, and a diver was sent down. What he saw there almost scared him to death. There were all those weighted sacks standing in a row on the bottom and swaying to and fro with the current.”
“Which Sultan?”
Naturally, I thought it was safe to guess. “It was Murad the Second.”
“It was Sultan Ibrahim,” she said. “No offense, Arthur, but I think we’d better hire a guide.”
“Whatever you say, Miss Lipp.”
I tried to look as if I thought it a good idea, but I was really quite angry. If she had asked me right out whether I was a historical expert on the Seraglio, I would have told her, quite frankly, that I was not. It was the underhand way in which she had set out to trap me that I didn’t like.
We went through the gate, and I paid for our admissions and selected an English-speaking guide. He was solemn and pedantic, of course, and told her all the things I had already explained all over again; but she did not seem to mind. From the way she bombarded him with questions you would have thought she was going to write a book about the place. Of course, that flattered him. He had a grin like an ape.
Personally, I find the Seraglio rather depressing. In Greece, the old buildings, even when they are in ruins and nothing much has been done in the way of restoration, always seem to have a clean, washed look about them. The Seraglio is stained, greasy, and dilapidated. Even the trees and shrubs in the main courtyards are neglected, and the so-called Tulip Garden is nothing but a scrubby patch of dirt.
As far as Miss Lipp was concerned though, the place might have been Versailles. She went everywhere, through the kitchens, through the museum rooms, the exhibition of saddles, this kiosk, that pavilion, laughing at the guide’s standard jokes and scuffing her shoes on the broken paving stones. If I had known what was going on in her mind, of course, I would have felt differently; but as it was, I became