The Snake Stone by Jason Goodwin

wildly until he caught sight of Yashim, watching him in astonishment from beside the opened door. For a second he seemed to cringe.
    “Monsieur Yashim!” he breathed. “Shut the door, I beg you.”
    As Yashim closed the door, the man clawed at the air and stumbled backward onto the divan, where he sat twitching and running his hand through his hair. Had it not been for the hair, Yashim would have found it hard to recognize Lefèvre: he seemed shrunken and incredibly aged, his black eyes darting nervously from side to side, his face the color of a peeled almond under a new growth of beard.
    Yashim laid the dagger aside. Lefèvre trembled on the divan; every now and then he was racked by a convulsion, his teeth chattering. He hardly seemed to know where he was.
    Yashim poured him a glass of cold water, as a remedy for shock, and Lefèvre seized it in both hands, hugging it to his chest as if it might stop his trembling. He drank it down, his teeth chattering against the rim.
    “Ils me connaissent,” he muttered. “They know me. They know me. I have nowhere else to go.”
    Yashim glanced at the satchel. It might contain anything—food, clothes, a reliquary, a woven rug. He wondered what books were in it—whether, in fact, it contained nothing but ancient Bibles, illuminated tracts, commentaries written on vellum filched from ignorant monks, venal priests, the greedy and the gullible.
    “You are quite safe here,” Yashim said quietly. “Quite safe.”
    Lefèvre glanced up and swung his head around the room like a frightened animal.
    “Are you ill?”
    The word seemed to strike Lefèvre to the quick. He froze, staring into space. Then he was staring at Yashim.
    “To get out. Get away. You’ll help me? A foreign ship—not Greek.” He shuddered and groaned and pressed his hand to his face. “No one to trust. I trust you! But they’re watching. They know me. It’s so dark. And wet. Nobody knows them. Please, you must help me!”
    He slid from the divan and stretched out his hands. Yashim raised his chin: it was horrible to see the man groveling, feverish, prey to his terrors. “Who are they? Who do you mean?”
    Lefèvre squeezed his hands together, and his mouth became a rictus of despair.
    “What have you done?”
    Lefèvre’s eyes flickered toward the satchel, then back at Yashim’s face. “You think—? My God, no. No. No.”
    He shuffled on his knees toward the satchel and tore at its straps with shaking hands. Out spilled a collection of old clothes, a leather flask, a few printed books. Lefèvre picked at them, spreading them around. “No, monsieur. You will trust me. Help me, yes. I have nothing. No one.”
    Yashim turned his head away. After what Malakian had told him about Lefèvre’s methods, he was not ashamed of his suspicions. But he was ashamed for this man who now knelt muttering among his meager belongings strewn across the floor.
    “Please,” he began awkwardly. “Please don’t think that I accuse you of anything. I will help you, of course. You are my guest.”
    He surprised himself with his own assurance. But as he later reminded himself, there was something rather terrible about being a stranger in a city where even the dead belonged. Perhaps they were not quite so different, he and this Frenchman he didn’t like.
    Lefèvre clutched at his words with weary gratitude. “I don’t know what to say. They know who I am, you see, but you—you can find me the ship?”
    “Of course. You must stay here, and in the morning I shall find you a way out.” There was a bond between them now. It couldn’t be helped. He must act with grace. “You must eat first, and sleep. Then all things will seem better.”
    Yashim turned to his little kitchen and with rice, saffron and butter created a pilaf in bianco, as the Italians would say; a soothing pilaf.
    Later, Lefèvre dropped off to sleep cross-legged. Yashim eased him into a recumbent position and then, for want of anywhere better, lay down on