The Panther and The Pearl

by Doreen Owens Malek

  He looked away from her.

  “Can you give me one reason why didn’t you tell me?” she persisted.

  “I thought if you assumed no one outside the palace was looking for you then you would be more likely to stay with me,” he said tonelessly.

  “In other words, you tried remove the element of choice,” she said.

  He did not deny it.

  “Kalid, maybe it’s too much to expect from someone who was raised to believe that he is superior to everyone else, but I should have a choice. What you want is not the only thing that matters. I matter too. Didn’t you ever consider the implications of your silence on me? I knew James had received a message that I was here, and I thought he didn’t care enough about me to pursue it!”

  “I care about you,” he said shortly. “That should be sufficient. And who sent your cousin James a message that you were here? Was it Kosem?”

  “Leave Kosem out of this, it’s between you and me. It’s about respecting me as a mature human being and not thinking of me as property to be managed or a child to be controlled. How can I marry someone who views me as an object?”

  For the first time he looked alarmed. “What are you saying?” he demanded, his eyes wary.

  “I’m saying that I can’t marry you,” Sarah replied, crying openly now, removing the tiara from her head and setting it on a table. “I’m leaving with my cousin James.”

  “What are you talking about?” Kalid said, seizing her arm in a viselike grip. “You love me, I know you do. You never would have slept with me if you didn’t. How can you even think of leaving?”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t love you, I said I’m not going to marry you. Now will you please let me go?”

  His hold on her arm tightened.

  “What are you going to do, Kalid?” Sarah asked wearily. “Throw me in the dungeon, threaten to whip me, or Memtaz, again? Tell me that you’ll line up a row of draftees and shoot them in the head if I don’t do as you say? No matter what you do, or claim you will do, you can’t force me into the mold of the compliant little sex toy you so obviously want.”

  “That’s not what I want,” he said bitterly, his fingers biting into her flesh.

  “Oh, no?”

  “No, Sarah. No man in his right mind would get involved with you just for sex, you are far too much trouble. I have a whole harem full of women willing and eager to warm my bed, but it is my sorry fate that I am besotted with you.”

  “Then that’s our shared misfortune.” She tugged, and he finally released her so suddenly that she stumbled. She took off the rest of the gold rings and bangles she was wearing and set them next to the tiara.

  “You are really going?” He seemed to be having some trouble absorbing it; after all of his time with Sarah, for it to come to this just when they were about to be married was an incomprehensible blow.

  “Yes. I’ll go back to the harem to change. And I hope you’re honorable enough not to punish Kosem or interfere with my cousin’s business in this country after I’m gone. They did what they thought was right, and I hope that when you calm down you will understand that.”

  He said nothing.

  “I’ll leave anything else I have in the ikbal’s suite,” Sarah said, depositing her earrings in the pile of jewelry. “I want to go just as I came, with nothing.”

  “Except memories,” he said.

  She started to walk away from him, barely able to see for the tears in her eyes.

  “I’ll haunt you,” he said, his voice breaking.

  Sarah turned to face him one last time, dressed in his wedding day finery, looking as handsome as he had on the first day that she saw him.

  “No, you won’t. You’ll miss me.”

  She ran out of the room and he stared after her, shaken to the roots of his soul.

  “So he wasn’t forcing you to marry him?” James asked incredulously.

  “No. I know this is difficult for you to understand, James, but I love him. I just can’t be the kind of wife he really wants. He doesn’t see that now, but maybe he will, in time.”

  James looked at this woman he had known all his life and felt as if he were staring at a stranger. They were waiting in the Carriage House for the escort to take them off the Orchid Palace grounds. Sarah had said painful goodbyes to Memtaz and Kosem and was now dressed in her split skirt and riding blouse, the only things she was taking with her. Her tear stained face was sad, but resolute.

  She had not seen Kalid again since she left him in the throne room.

  “But he kidnapped you, Sarah. He paid the Sultan for you and drugged you and spirited you away in the dark of night!”

  “That’s the way it began, yes. And I was as outraged as you are about it, at first. But after I got to know him... well, he can be quite different from what you saw today.”

  “He’s very handsome,” James said. “In the Western way, I mean. I was surprised when I saw him. I suppose that contributed to your feelings for him.”

  Sarah sighed. “The situation is...complex, James. I just know that preventing me from hearing that you were trying to find me was unforgivable.”

  “He did it because he wanted to keep you with him.”

  “His reasons don’t excuse his behavior. And it wasn’t just this incident, there’s a whole pattern that I thought he had abandoned where I was concerned, but I was wrong. He once threatened to whip a friend of mine, the servant assigned to me at the palace, when I wouldn’t do something he wanted.”

  “He threatened to whip a servant to get YOU to do what he wanted?”

  “Yes.”

  “He understood you very well.”

  Sarah nodded resignedly.

  “I just don’t see how you can go back to Boston and resume your old life after this... experience,” James said.

  “I probably can’t. I’ve changed too much.”

  “I don’t know if you’ll still have your job.”

  Sarah looked at him in surprise. She hadn’t even thought about that.

  “I wrote the school board after you disappeared and said that you had been...unavoidably detained,” James said.

  “That’s one way of putting it.”

  “They wrote back and said if you returned by the spring semester they might still have a place for you.”

  Sarah put her hand on his shoulder. “James, thank you for everything that you have done for me.”

  He reached up and patted her hand. “Bea will be so glad to see you. She’s been very worried.”

  “James, maybe we’d better not tell her about the wedding or my relationship with Kalid. I don’t think she’ll understand and I don’t want to upset her.”

  James nodded.

  Turhan Aga appeared in the doorway. “The coach is waiting to take you to the train station, Miss Sarah. The next train for Constantinople is in two hours.”

  “Thank you, Turhan.” She and James both rose.

  “Say goodbye to the khislar for me,” she said to Turhan.

  “I will.” He took her hand and held it to his lips. “We will all miss you,” he added. “Many women come and go from the harem, but none as memorable as you.”

  Sarah smiled at him. “What a lovely thing to say.”

  He withdrew an object from his tunic pocket and handed it to her. “From Memtaz.”

  It was an icon of one of the Russian saints, intricately carved, the border inlaid with bits of colored glass. “For good luck, she said,” Turhan added.

  Sarah closed her fingers around it. “I will need it. And please say goodbye to Achmed for me.”

  Turhan nodded and opened the door to the coach lane. Sarah looked around the room briefly, trying to memorize it. She would never forget this place, or the people she had met here.

  “James, I’m ready to go,” she said finally, and he walked at her side through the door.

  “Would like a cup of tea, dear?” Beatrice said. “I’ll bring it over to you.”

  “I’m not an invalid, Bea, I c
an get it for myself.” Sarah rose, pouring from the pot on the trolley in the Woolcott sitting room, and then took the china cup back to her seat. It felt strange to be wearing her own clothes once more; she had never realized before how confining they were, the stays of her corset pinched and the high stuff collar of her dress almost immobilized her neck.

  Harem clothes were much looser, more sensual, and she found that she missed them.

  “What are you thinking, Sarah?” Beatrice said.

  Sarah shrugged.

  “Don’t dwell on that experience. Try to put it out of your mind,” Bea added.

  “I am trying.”

  Bea stirred sugar into her tea and asked quietly, “If there’s something you want to talk about, I’m here to listen.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Would you like to speak to our minister? There’s a Christian church here, founded for the European colonials, and I’m sure Dr. Hastings would be happy to give you some time.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  There was a long pause before Bea said, “You seem so sad, dear. I wish I could help you.”

  “You are helping, just by being here and giving me a place to stay until I can book passage back home.”

  “Was it awful?” Bea finally said, looking at her directly for the first time that day.

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  “But weren’t you...violated?”

  “I wasn’t raped, if that’s what you mean.”

  “But you were in the harem, weren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “But isn’t that the purpose of the harem, to provide bedmates for the pasha?”

  “Yes, but he didn’t force me.”

  “You mean he didn’t choose you?”

  “He chose me, but I was willing.” There, it was out.

  Bea colored slightly. “Oh. I see.”

  “James hasn’t told you very much about what happened to me there.”

  “No.”

  “I asked him not to, but it seems you want to know about it. I was about to marry the Pasha of Bursa when James was finally able to see me.”

  “Marry him!” Beatrice was stunned.

  “Yes.”

  “What, in some barbaric rite?”

  “In a wedding ceremony, the Ottoman version of one. But when I discovered that my intended husband had let me think that James wasn’t interested in finding me, I realized that there was no real future for us.”

  Beatrice was silent, unable to think of a reply.

  “I know you’re shocked, Beatrice. I wasn’t going to tell you any of this, as I said, but it’s obvious that you are curious and I would rather you know exactly what happened than imagine things far worse than the reality.”

  “Do you want to go back to him?” Bea finally said.

  “Every minute,” Sarah replied grimly.

  “Then why don’t you?” Bea asked, surprising Sarah.

  “Because nothing has changed. I thought it had, I thought I had helped him to see things differently, but I was wrong. I can’t spend my life with a man who views me as property, property to be hoarded, to be coveted and hidden lest someone take it away.”

  “That’s the way they all are here,” Bea said wearily. “Haven’t you learned that?”

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right. His upbringing was just too difficult for him to overcome.”

  “But you love him.”

  “Yes,” Sarah admitted. “I know you must find that shocking, but it’s the truth.”

  “I’m not in the judgement business,” Bea said briskly, rising. “It’s true that I’ve found the adjustment to living in the East difficult, but I don’t expect everyone to feel the same way. Now let me see how Listak is doing with dinner.”

  Beatrice had barely left the room to confer with the servant before James entered it, sweeping off his tie and heading for the sherry on the sideboard.

  “I’m afraid I have bad news,” he said, pouring some of the amber liquid into a glass.

  “What’s that?”

  “I can’t book you on the Orient Express to Paris for another month,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “There’s some kind of convocation in Paris on the twenty-ninth. All the seats on the train are reserved until then. You’ll just have to wait.”

  Sarah was silent.

  “I’m sorry, Sarah,” James said in a defeated tone. “I know that sitting around here with nothing to do but think about Orchid Palace and listen to Bea complain won’t be much fun for you.”

  “It’s all right. I’m sure that Boston will still be there when I get back.”

  “And we’re heading into the bad weather, too, I’m afraid,” James added. “It rains all the time in the late fall. You won’t be able to take many walks or get out much.”

  “I’ll catch up on my reading,” Sarah said lightly.

  James sat heavily in one of Bea’s overstuffed chairs. “I guess that your vacation in the Orient didn’t turn out exactly as you’d planned.”

  “No.”

  “If I haven’t said so already, let me say it now. I’m so sorry, Sarah. It was my bright idea to get you into the harem in the first place. I feel responsible for everything that happened to you afterward.”

  “I’m a grown woman, James. I made my own decisions and must face the consequences.”

  “Do you have regrets now?”

  “No. I don’t think you should ever regret loving somebody. It didn’t work out because we were just too different, but I’ll probably love Kalid until I die.”

  “He meant that much to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then how could you leave him?”

  “I don’t know. The strength came from somewhere. He’s very intelligent, he had me fooled, had me believing what he wanted me to believe, but when you arrived I suddenly saw what a sham it had all been. He can’t change, and I can’t stay with someone who thinks of me as an accessory.”

  “Were you afraid he would discard you? They often do, that’s why the harem exists, for variety.”

  “I wasn’t afraid of that, not really. In his own way he was very... devoted.”

  “Then what? Was the cultural gap too wide? I know Bea has never been able to bridge it.”

  “I guess that was part of it. After all, his culture made him what he is.”

  Beatrice appeared in the doorway and said, “Oh, hello, James. I didn’t realize you were home. Listak will be serving dinner in ten minutes.”

  Sarah and James rose to follow her into the dining room.

  “Get out of my sight, old woman, before I have you drawn and quartered and served up to the janissaries in their soup,” Kalid said darkly, not looking at Kosem.

  “I have to talk to you,” his grandmother replied stoically, disregarding the halberdiers who stood ready to throw her out of the pasha’s suite if Kalid inclined his head.

  “I think you’ve already said enough.”

  Kosem sat next to him and patted his hand. “All is not lost,” she said.

  Kalid muttered something in Turkish under his breath and snatched his hand away.

  Kosem surveyed him, shaking her head. He had three days’ growth of beard, his shirt was open to the waist revealing that two buttons were missing, and his eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep. He looked dissolute, disagreeable, and dangerous.

  “Leave us alone,” Kalid barked to the guards.

  They disappeared.

  “I know where she is,” Kosem said.

  “I know where she is too. She’s at her cousin’s house in Constantinople. I have four of Turhan’s men watching the place at all times. That doesn’t mean she is coming back to me.”

  “I can help.”

  “Oh, really? The way you ‘helped’ Sarah to take off with her cousin? I don’t understand you, donme pashana, you must be losing your mind. Before Sarah came here you could talk of nothing, nothing, but my getting married and presenting you with an heir. Then the per
fect opportunity to achieve both those goals presents itself and what do you do? You tell James Woolcott where Sarah is so he can come and take her away. I don’t know why you’re still alive. Why haven’t I executed you?”

  “Perhaps because you’ve been too preoccupied with getting Sarah back to do anything else,” Kosem said primly. “The chief of your mint has been waiting two days to see you.”

  “If you even attempt to lecture me now I’ll have you thrown into the dungeon,” he snapped.

  Kosem said nothing.

  He turned to look at her fully for the first time. She saw that his expression was more bleak than even she had imagined.

  He was taking Sarah’s departure very hard.

  “Why did you tell her cousin that she was here?” he asked softly, his gaze narrow and hard.

  “She deserved to know that her family was looking for her. Did you really want her to stay with you because she thought she had no alternative?”

  “I just wanted her to stay!” he exploded. “You knew she would be angry when she discovered my deception, what did you think would happen then?”

  “I didn’t think she would leave you,” Kosem said quietly. “Honestly, Kalid, I didn’t. I knew it was possible, but I really thought she would just be reunited with her cousin and relieved that he knew she was all right. I thought that her strong feelings for you would keep her here.”

  “I guess we both underestimated her, didn’t we?” he said bitterly, saluting his grandmother with two fingers held together and a sarcastic nod.

  “So are you just going to sit here? Aren’t you going to do anything about it?”

  “I am formulating a plan.”

  “And what is that?”

  “I haven’t finalized it yet.”

  “Kalid, this inactivity is not like you at all. When Sarah was taken by the bedouins you were on your horse in ten minutes to go after her.”

  “When she was taken by the bedouins I was worried for her safety and I was certain she would be glad to see me. This situation is very different.”

  “You are in power here, you are the pasha. You can do anything you want!”

  “And where have all of my high handed tactics gotten me so far? Sitting here in deep despair, having this miserable conversation with you!”