Amy frowned at her own perversity and decided to unpack her trunks. It would give her something to do.
* * *
In the month that followed, Beatrice made sure that Amy had plenty to do. The British and American embassies, oases of familiar culture to the European population, each had several functions a week, and Amy attended all of them. She sat through luncheons with embassy wives, attended charity planning meetings, dressed up for tea dances and dressed formally for evening affairs. Once the locals got over her exotic adventure in the hills, which Amy downplayed by acting sprightly and discussing it dismissively, they began to treat her as the eligible young heiress she actually was. And it quickly became clear to Amy that the routine Beatrice had ostensibly designed to keep her busy was in reality designed to get her married.
Amy had never thought there were so many Western men in Turkey; she had never thought there were so many men anywhere. James was known to be wealthy and successful, so his pretty niece brought them all out of the woodwork. She met junior officers from both garrisons, the sons of James’ colleagues, the scions of industrial families taking the grand tour, and even the nephew of an Italian count. Anyone watching her interact with these young men would not have suspected anything was wrong with her, unless they noticed the blue shadows under her eyes which she had covered up with alum or the continual narrowing of her waist. She took her clothes in herself to avoid comment from Beatrice but nothing could disguise the new prominence of Amy’s cheekbones or her total disinterest in meals. Beatrice varied the menus and ordered new desserts. Deceived by Amy’s apparent gaiety at social functions, Bea ascribed her niece’s lack of appetite to the heat, from which she also suffered.
If she had known her niece better, she would have been able to tell that Amy was unhappy. And Amy, trapped in her role of carefree young miss, vented her true feelings in letters to Sarah, who understood the younger woman’s emotions only too well. Her responses calmed Amy somewhat, but in her darkest moments Amy actually considered marrying one of her eager suitors, since Malik appeared lost to her anyway. She would forget, she told herself, she would adjust, she would do what other people did when they abandoned hope of gaining their heart’s desire but kept on living.
But somehow she wasn’t ready to make that final break. As summer turned into fall and the days became less infernal, the nights even colder, and the rains came, she kept the flame alive, waiting, watching, for what she wasn’t sure.
She waited, just the same.
* * *
Malik tossed a heavy burlap bag of corn meal into the waiting wagon and looked around him, judging how much longer it would take to fill all eight wagons with the grain. He had picked a night with no moon to disguise their operation, but that meant his men were working by the light of oil lamps and had to move quickly. The soldiers who had been guarding the granary were dead, victims of a sneak attack, and the two night watchmen inside the building were bound and gagged. As he watched the wagons fill up with the food that the Sultan hoarded for export while his own subjects were starving, Malik calculated how long it would take to finish the job and get away. The corn meal was destined for drop off points around the country, where it would then be distributed to the people. Malik smiled slightly when he thought about the Sultan’s reaction to this latest piece of larceny; he would just have to do without the revenue from the foreign sales. What a shame.
Dawn was just breaking over the Syrian hills across the border when the last bag was loaded. As the caravan headed out through the alley behind the granary, an old woman answering a call of nature in a nearby field was startled to see the wagons rolling past her. She quickly rearranged her clothes and then stood in silence, watching what was obviously a covert mission. Her somber expression changed when she saw the young man standing at the back of the last wagon holding his finger to his lips. She grinned, then made a reciprocal gesture, waving with her other hand.
The Sultan was no friend of hers. What did she care if some bandits were robbing his storehouse? Good for them!
The young man bent and two bags of corn meal went sailing through the air to land at her feet. She seized them and then blew him a kiss as the wagon reached a turn and hove out of sight.
There would be fresh pida bread for dinner that night, she thought, hurrying back to her house with her prize.
“You’re a soft touch,” Anwar said to Malik as the wagon carrying them rumbled along the dirt road, lurching heavily each time it hit a rut cut into the dust by the recent rain.
“Why shouldn’t she have some?” Malik answered. “She’s one of the people the Sultan has been raping for years.”
“Nothing like leaving your calling card.”
“She’ll keep her mouth shut,” Malik said, as they turned off the road and into a narrow lane leading to a series of caves, where they planned to store the haul until it could be moved.
“You trust them all too much,” Anwar said. “She’s poor, but that doesn’t mean she’s an angel, or your supporter.”
“And being rich doesn’t make a woman my enemy, eh?” Malik countered.
Anwar grabbed a bag as it lurched forward when the wagon’s rear wheel hit a rock. “You’re still thinking about her, aren’t you?” he asked.
“I haven’t stopped.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re planning to go on like this?”
“Like what?”
“Driving yourself every minute to forget her. It isn’t working, my friend.”
“How do you know?”
“I know,” Anwar answered in a tone which brooked no argument.
“So what do you suggest?” Malik asked.
“I have no ideas, it’s your decision. I’m just telling you that brooding by night and pretending that everything is fine by day isn’t fooling anybody, least of all yourself.”
Malik was silent as the wagon creaked to a stop. He and Anwar jumped down and got in line to hand the bags inside the cave. There were men already assembled in there to stack them.
“Just do something, “Anwar added, closing the subject. “You’ll feel better.”
“You’re the one who told me to let her go, Anwar. Several times, you told me that, with lots of reasons why it was the right thing to do.”
“So I know everything?” Anwar said, grinning. “When did that happen?”
Malik shot him a disgusted glance and handed him a bag.
But once his friend looked away Malik’s expression became thoughtful.
* * *
It was a gloomy afternoon, threatening more rain, when Kalid knocked on the door of Sarah’s schoolroom and then stood back to let her come into the hall.
“What is it?” Sarah asked.
“We have a visitor, and he wants to see you.”
Sarah looked at him inquiringly.
“Malik Bey. I’ve just been with him for the last hour in the selamlik.”
The selamlik was a restricted area of the palace reserved just for men. Sarah put her hand on her husband’s arm, alarmed.
“Kalid, he’s a wanted man, what if someone saw him come here?” Sarah said.
“No one saw him, he came to the kitchens disguised as a beggar. He knows one of the skivvies, she’s an old flame of Osman’s. She smuggled him inside and then went to Achmed to say that Malik was here.”
“And Achmed brought him to see you?” Sarah asked incredulously, wondering if her husband’s aging khislar was getting sloppy.
“Achmed asked me first if I wanted to admit Malik for an interview,” Kalid replied, smiling.
“And you, of course, couldn’t resist the idea of having the Sultan’s most notorious criminal under your roof,” Sarah observed dryly.
“I was curious to find out what he wanted,” Kalid said, his smile widening.
“All right, my darling husband, I’ll bite. What exactly does he want?”
“Well, he said he wanted to ask me if I had accompli
shed anything at my district meeting with the Sultan, but I suspect he really came to talk to you.”
“Why?”
“He knows I got nowhere with the Sultan, Bey reads the newspapers avidly. All the English language dailies reported that the Sultan refused any concessions to the rebels, that he won’t consider a parliament or a shared government with elected representatives. So it’s my guess that Bey came here on that pretext to get news of Amelia Ryder from you.”
“Did he mention her?”
“Of course not. But I don’t think he wants to see you to get the latest fashion news, do you?”
Sarah considered that in silence for a few moments and then said, “Did you tell him I would see him?”
“I told him I’d ask you if you would grant him an audience,” Kalid replied.
Sarah nodded. “Give me ten minutes to get the children settled with Memtaz, and then have Achmed bring him to the audience room,” Sarah said.
“Are you sure? It’s your decision.”
“I’m sure.”
Kalid turned to go. “I’ll have Achmed post guards outside the door,” he said.
“I’m certain I’ll be quite safe. Bey would be an idiot to try anything here, and I think we both know he’s not an idiot.”
Kalid looked over his shoulder at her. “I’ll post the guards anyway.”
Sarah went back inside and got the children organized with their tasks, then hurried along the corridor and through an outside courtyard, glad of the freedom to move about alone. Kosem still thought it unseemly that Sarah ran around the palace without an escort, though Sarah was happy she was now able to find her way through its labyrinthine passages on her own. It was a feat of navigation which had seemed beyond the talents of Dr. Livingstone when she first came to Bursa.
Achmed was waiting for her when she arrived at the audience room, wearing the sour look he always assumed when he disapproved of something. Sarah ignored it, and gestured for him to bring in the visitor. He went to a side door and admitted Bey, who came into the chamber flanked by two halberdiers, each of whom had a Bey arm clamped in a huge fist.
“You may release him,” Sarah said.
The guards let Malik go and stepped back.
“You may go,” Sarah said to the guards.
They looked at Achmed.
“My husband said you would remain outside the door,” Sarah said to him firmly.
Achmed bowed. “But certainly my master has no wish to endanger his wife...” Achmed began.
“Out,” Sarah said. “I’ll call if I need you.”
The three men marched from the room and Sarah turned to her guest.
“It seems my husband’s khislar thinks you are a dangerous character, Mr. Bey,” Sarah said.
Malik said nothing.
“Is this your latest disguise?” she asked, gesturing to his rags, as well as the enveloping cloak he wore, its hood hanging part way down his back.
“I find that these days I must employ a variety of disguises,” he replied.
His voice was low and resonant, his English almost as good as Kalid’s. Sarah thought that he was about as tall as her husband, but slimmer of build, with duskier skin and eyes as black as Jerusalem olives. Even with the wild hair and three day stubble of the mendicant he was pretending to be, he was a romantic enough figure for Sarah to imagine his intoxicating effect on an inexperienced, seventeen year old girl.
“Why did you want to see me, Mr. Bey?” Sarah asked, sitting in Kalid’s chair.
“I want to know if Amelia is all right,” he said stiffly.
“Why should you ask about her? She was your victim and glad to escape you.”
Malik’s mouth tightened but he made no reply.
“Was she not?” Sarah asked innocently.
“You know she was crying when she left me,” he said darkly, gazing at the floor.
“And why was that?”
“You’d have to ask Amelia.”
“She isn’t here, so I’m asking you.”
He looked up then, and turned on her a gaze so blazingly defiant, yet so full of pain, that Sarah could no longer maintain her schoolmarm pose.
“Look here,” she said briskly, rising, “I don’t know you, although I knew your brother Osman and can only hope that you have some of his fine qualities. I do know that you have habitually engaged in criminal behavior.”
“That’s easy for you to say, living surrounded by luxury in a palace full of servants,” he snapped, his eyes narrowing. “You’d resort to criminal behavior too if you had to exist the way most of your husband’s subjects do.”
“Mr. Bey, my husband has done more for his subjects than any pasha in the last three hundred years, and if you want me to help you I would advise you not to take that tone with me,” Sarah fired back at him.
“All right,” he said quickly, holding up his hand, obviously afraid that she was about to have him removed. Or arrested. “It’s true that I have broken the law for my cause, but so have many others like me throughout history, including the founding fathers of your own country.”
“You don’t have to make a speech, Mr. Bey, as a Bostonian I am well aware of the anti-government activities of the colonists who established the United States,” Sarah said crisply. “That doesn’t mean I want to discuss my cousin’s ward, or her state of mind, with a wanted man.”
“I was just trying to find out if she is happy,” he said dully.
“Are you? Are you happy with your doings?”
He glared at her. “What does that mean?”
“If you have a shred of Osman’s decency in you I don’t know how you could seduce that child and then send her back to us as if nothing had happened!” Sarah burst out, losing her temper.
Malik stared at her stonily as the back of his neck flushed brick red, then he said carefully, as if trying to maintain his own control, “I did not seduce her. She made the first move, if you must know, and I stopped it before...” He broke off abruptly.
“Before the result could be pregnancy?” Sarah said dryly, realizing that she had misunderstood Amelia.
He nodded curtly.
Sarah waited, sensing that he wished to say more.
“And now I’ve lost the chance to be with her forever,” he blurted.
Whatever doubts Sarah may have harbored about his character were dispelled by the look of anguished frustration on his face. She could only guess what it had cost him to come to her and ask about Amelia, to admit that he felt the girl’s loss as deeply as he obviously did. What a great leveler love was, Sarah thought. The hero of the Ottoman revolution had been reduced to this abject state by his passion for a slip of a girl.
“You want to see her again, don’t you? That’s why you really came here,” Sarah said quietly.
He hesitated, then nodded. “I told myself she would be better off if I just let her go, but...”
“But you’re miserable. I can tell you for a fact so is she,” Sarah said.
He looked at her sharply, hope dawning in his eyes.
“I’ve had four letters from her in the month since she left us here in Bursa, and her heart has not changed. She’s observing the routine her aunt has scheduled for her, but all she thinks about is you,” Sarah said.
“Truly?” he said softly.
“Yes.”
“But you know my situation, my life. Do I have the right?” he asked.
“You have any rights she gives you. Don’t make the decision for her. If you go to her and she doesn’t want to see you, she has a tongue to say so.”
He smiled slightly. “Yes, she does.” He thought a long moment and then said, “Where is she?”
“It will be dangerous for you to go there.”
“It’s dangerous for me to go anywhere,” he said simply.
Sarah told him where the Woolcott home was in Pera, giving him the address. She described the street and the house, then said, “The rest is up to you.”
He came forward and knelt at
her feet, taking her hand and kissing it. Sarah, always a little startled by the dramatic gestures of the Turks, withdrew her fingers from his and watched him as he stood up again.
“Mashallah, haseki pashana,” he said, and backed away from her until he was at the door.
Sarah called for the guards and the door opened.
She hoped that God would protect her, as Bey had said. She hoped that God would protect all of them.
Seconds after Bey had disappeared between the two halberdiers Kalid came into the room.
“Well?” he said.
“He’s handsome, he has the requisite mixture of arrogance and charm, he’s dedicated to a noble cause. I can easily see why Amy fell for him.”
“I wasn’t asking for a commentary on his allure, Sarah. What did he want?”
“He wanted to know where Amy was, just as you said.”
“And?”
“I told him.”
“Was that wise?”
“He would have found out anyway, James is a prominent businessman who’s easy to locate and Malik is persistent. I just saved him the trouble of tracking Amy down and assured him that he would be welcome.”
“How do you know that?”
“Kalid, I showed you Amy’s last letter. What do you think her feelings are about Malik?”
“But considering his situation, shouldn’t you have tried to dissuade him?”
“Would you have been dissuaded ten years ago?” Sarah asked rhetorically.
“Malik is not the type for half measures,” Kalid said warningly. “He’ll carry her off, you know.”
“If she wants to be carried off, so be it,” Sarah replied.
“Spoken like a true American, for whom all things are resolved by love,” Kalid said.
“Don’t give me your ‘American’ speech again, Kalid, if we’re such a bunch of fools why did you marry me?”
He put his arms around her from behind and kissed the side of her neck. “I just love to tease you about your nationality, you always rise to the bait. But you are well aware of the perilous situation Amelia will be facing. The consort of Malik Bey will have a dangerous career.”
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