Lady Emily's Exotic Journey

by Lillian Marek

  Then came her parents. They brought up the rear not, she knew, through weariness, but simply so Papa could keep an eye on everyone. And they were not really the rear. Behind them were half a dozen more troopers and a string of mules carrying their luggage.

  They looked a sorry lot. All of them were wrapped in dark cloaks, masking any hint of fashion. Even the troopers had gray capes with hoods covering those odd red hats they wore that looked like inverted flowerpots. Could anything be further from a carriage ride in a London park or a railway journey from Victoria Station? It was strange and foreign and so very different.

  Precisely what she had wished for. Well, an adventurer’s friendship was more than she had dared hope for, but as for the rest? She must remember to be a bit more careful with her wishes. A slightly higher level of comfort would be nice. That thought made her laugh at herself. In a few months, she would be back home, safe in her little cocoon, with all the comforts possible. This was her chance—probably her only chance—to see a bit of the world outside the confines of proper English society, to have a bit of adventure, to discover what she was capable of. She was determined to enjoy it, discomforts and all.

  *

  Two weeks later, her feelings about this adventure had encountered a few ups and downs. That, it occurred to her, was a suitable phrase for this trip across the mountains. Twists and turns would do as well. Or highs and lows. What it had not been was boring, and she was rather pleased with herself. Throughout, she had behaved sensibly. Not only had she not complained, but she had coped. She had not humiliated herself by being a burden for the others and requiring assistance. She had been equal to every challenge the trip presented.

  There had been times when they rode through sheets of blinding rain, with howling winds trying to hurl them to the ground. Then they would round a bend in the road—or trail—and find themselves in bright sunshine, so warm—no, so hot—that their cloaks dried in minutes. They traveled over barren sheets of rock, where a few tiny sprigs of green clung to life. They crossed a ridge and saw spread below them a broad cultivated valley, green with new crops in fields and orchards bright with blossoms. Through the valley ran a river with the town spread out on either side.

  The contrasts along the route had been fascinating, but Emily could not deny that she was grateful for the power of the firman. Wherever they stopped, Irmak presented it to the mayor or governor or whoever was in charge, and they were immediately welcomed as guests into the best house in town. Everyone was bowing to her father and calling him effendi. She and, she suspected, all the others were especially grateful for this after the night when there was no town and they had been forced to take shelter in a deserted village. A blanket strung up between crumbled walls provided some privacy for the women, but they still had to sleep on the ground, wrapped in blankets that smelled of horses, using their saddles for pillows. And if the ground hadn’t been hard enough in the first place, pebbles seemed to creep along and lodge themselves under her hips.

  It had not been a bed she would ever choose, but she could not deny that the absence of a roof meant that the stars had been spectacular. Also, it was pleasant not to be shut away for a change. That was beginning to be tiresome.

  In every town or village where they stayed, Emily, her mother, and Julia, along with their maids, Nuran and Safiye, were hustled into the women’s quarters as soon as they entered the house where they were staying. It was disconcerting, and the first time it happened she had opened her mouth to protest. Lucien frowned at her, and she realized later that this was precisely what he had meant by his little lecture. Mama and Julia had obviously been given the same lecture, because they offered no objection. She fumed in silence, but saw the sense of it. As a guest in someone’s house, it would be the height of rudeness to flout their customs. But it was frustrating.

  Mama noted her annoyance at being shut away, and she pointed out that they could console themselves that they were being given a glimpse of Ottoman society that the men would never see. That was probably true, but an even greater consolation was the comfort of the women’s quarters.

  It wasn’t just the comfort of soft cushions and warm braziers, welcome though those were after a day atop a horse. The rooms were fascinating. The first night they stopped in the village of Kavak and stayed in the house of someone who seemed to be the mayor or some such. It was a small village, and it was a small house. The mayor looked extremely nervous, but to be fair, she had seen that most people looked nervous when Irmak began barking orders at them. Especially when Irmak was backed by a troop of armed horsemen.

  They entered a paved courtyard, and the women were immediately ushered up a staircase to a balcony looking down on the courtyard. A door opened for them, and a curtain was drawn aside so they could enter.

  Emily had never seen a room like this. She gaped—she was sure of it. Julia, who could maintain perfect, impenetrable poise under all circumstances, sucked in an audible breath. Even Mama stumbled slightly.

  In one sense the room was bare. There were no chairs or tables placed around. The whole center of the room was bare. The far side of the room was a large bay window, but shuttered with a sort of carved lattice, letting in the last of the daylight but making it impossible to look out unless you were right up against it. And making it impossible for anyone to look in, as well. That was probably the point of it.

  But the room was filled with color. Around three walls there was a sort of deep bench, covered with rugs and heaps of cushions—brightly patterned cushions in a rainbow of colors. Strong colors—deep reds, blues, greens. No delicate pastels here. A pair of brass lamps with panels of red glass hung from brackets on the walls, though they had not been lit yet, and an ornate brazier warmed the room.

  Three women stood there, all dressed in loose tunics and wide trousers. The one in the middle seemed to be the lady of the house, since her blue tunic was elaborately embroidered in arabesques of green and yellow, and she wore a headdress from which gold coins dangled. The other two women were more simply dressed, also in tunics over loose trousers gathered at the ankles, but without embroidery and without jewelry.

  They all smiled at each other uncertainly. Emily was feeling rather grubby after a day on horseback and felt as if she looked a lot worse than the servant girls. Their hostess seemed to be trying to assess the status of her visitors.

  Safiye, as maid to Lady Penworth, took charge of communications. She was an older woman, of an age with Lady Penworth, with a small but round body. Her lack of height in no way detracted from her sense of importance as maid to the wife of an English pasha. None of them were quite sure what she said, but the word pasha appeared quite often in her introductory speech, and their hostess seemed to be suitably impressed.

  Once they were out of their cloaks and scarves and boots, their hostess led Lady Penworth to the corner of the room and gestured for her to be seated on the bench. The other two women, who seemed to be servants, brought basins and pitchers of hot water that was poured over their hands. Small tables were set beside them, and coffee was brought in tiny cups.

  Since Safiye and Nuran spoke very little English, and the English women had no language in common with their hostess, communications were limited to smiles and gestures. These were, on the whole, sufficient to create an atmosphere of friendly comfort, especially since Lady Penworth had taken care to include in her baggage small gifts for the women—lace scarves and mitts, tins of biscuits, and bars of Pears soap in tissue wrappings.

  But it was frustrating, this inability to speak directly to anyone.

  *

  Lucien checked the girth on his saddle as he did every morning before they rode out. It was the sort of precaution he was accustomed to take, living among strangers in strange lands. He had become accustomed to doing the same with Emily’s saddle, though he did not care to examine his reasons for doing so too closely. She was, after all, a friend, and she probably would not have known to check the girth herself. It was not that he was mistrustful o
f their Turkish escort, but the servants had no particular reason to feel protective of the foreign women.

  With a private smile, he noticed that Oliphant also checked his own and Lady Julia’s saddles.

  This morning, before even the troopers had mounted, Emily appeared, pulling Julia along with her to join Lucien and Oliphant. “Mr. Oliphant,” she said then paused. “Really, this formality seems excessive on a journey like this one. Please allow us to address you as David, and in return you may call us Emily and Julia.” Lucien stifled a smile. He could see Julia dart her friend a shocked look, but Emily looked as if such informality were entirely ordinary.

  “I would be honored,” the invariably punctilious Oliphant managed to say in a somewhat strangled voice, carefully not looking at Julia. Those two avoided each other’s eyes so carefully that the attraction between them could not be more obvious. From the sparkle in Emily’s eyes, she too knew which way the wind was blowing.

  But she was as careful as he was not to comment. Instead, she said, “Now, we have a request to make of you gentlemen. We have found it somewhat embarrassing to be unable to converse with our hostesses, and, as I understand it, this situation is likely to continue. Could you teach us enough Turkish phrases so that we will be able to at least greet the people whose guests we are? And to thank them?”

  He and Oliphant exchanged startled looks. Oliphant said carefully, “You wish to learn Turkish?”

  “We will probably need Arabic as well, won’t we?” Julia added. “That is what will be spoken once we reach Mosul. Or am I mistaken?”

  “No, you are not mistaken.” Oliphant looked at Julia with an odd expression. “But you do realize that Arabic and Turkish—these are not precisely fashionable. Most ladies do not learn such languages.”

  “Nor are they easy languages to master,” added Lucien. “Most Europeans, not just ladies, do not see the need.”

  “We are not such fools that we think we can master the languages in a few short weeks,” said Emily, frowning in irritation. “But surely it would be courteous of us to at least make an effort.”

  Irmak had come out and was frowning and moving about in an effort to get everyone mounted and on their way, rather like a particularly fierce sheepdog. Obediently, they all mounted up and followed where he led on a road, or rather a path, that led out of the riverside village before winding up another mountain.

  When the path widened sufficiently to ride two abreast, Lucien joined Emily. “Your maman, she approves of this?”

  “This? This trip, you mean?”

  “No, no. That you should speak with the women of the house where you stay. That you should learn their language.”

  “Of course she approves.” Emily looked at him in surprise. “Why would she not? It was her suggestion that we try to learn enough of their language to at least thank them for their hospitality.”

  Lucien shook his head in bemusement. These English ladies were a constant surprise. Had the world changed so much in the years he had been away? Or was England so different from France? Perhaps it was his grandfather who was so different. “You know, do you not, that these women are not of your class? That they are peasants, or at best a step up from that?”

  “All the more reason for courtesy,” she said firmly. “We are being foisted on them willy-nilly. I doubt they would choose to have us for guests, but when Irmak rides in, waving the firman, would they dare refuse?”

  That picture was worth a smile—anyone daring to ignore Irmak, but Lucien still felt uncertain. They rode in silence for a while before he said, “You are of the English nobility. My grandfather would say that these villagers—peasants, he would say—should be grateful for the opportunity to serve you.”

  “And my father would say that our wealth and position mean that we should never take advantage of those less fortunate,” she snapped. “I do not wish to speak ill of your family, but I do not care for your grandfather’s attitude.”

  “Me, I do not greatly care for it myself.” In fact, he disliked it very much, and so had his father. It had been the cause of much stress in the house when he was young. “To be polite, I must remind myself that my grandfather is very old. He remembers the ancien régime. He is a boy still when the Revolution arrives, but old enough to see friends and family go to the guillotine during the Terror, and he does not forget. He does not forgive. But that was long ago, and the world has changed. He finds it hard to accept this.”

  He had not intended to talk about his family. He had not done so in years, but he felt a need to tell Emily about them. At least a small bit about them. So he said, “He and my father fought often. After my father died, I was not comfortable living in my grandfather’s house.”

  “And your mother?”

  He shrugged. “She died when I was young, ten years of age. That was not many years after we went to live with grandpère.”

  “Are you the only child?” She sounded surprised.

  He felt surprised at the question. “Yes. You think that unusual?”

  “Well, I suppose it seems so to me because there are six of us. I have two sisters and three brothers, and we did seem to fill up the house when we were children. It must be lonely to be the only one. Have you no other family?”

  He did not want her pity, so he employed that useful shrug again. But he did answer. “There are cousins, a few aunts, an uncle. Unlike my father, they are all obedient to grandpère’s wishes and, like him, they see me as disobedient, lacking in respect.” He could remember those dinners, those interminable dinners, with all the family sitting stiffly at the long table, grandpère at the head of it, and all of them, even his little cousin Annette, staring at him in silent disapproval. Though grandpère’s disapproval rarely remained silent for long. “The final explosion came when grandpère announced that he had arranged a marriage for me with Mademoiselle Fournier, the daughter of a neighboring family.”

  “You did not care for her?” Emily asked cautiously.

  “There was nothing about her to care for or not care for.” He shook his head. “She was…she was docility personified. If her papa said, ‘Stand up,’ she stood up. If he said, ‘Sit down,’ she sat down. Just like a dog, no? If I claimed that the sky was green, she would agree. If I said that the sun rose in the west, she would agree. She had no thoughts of her own. She simply embodied what was expected. It was as if she did not really exist.

  “In short, she was precisely what my grandfather thought a wife should be, exactly like my grandmother and my aunts. They do what is proper and fashionable, they say what is proper and fashionable, and it is as if they have no desires or opinions of their own.” He looked at Emily, riding beside him on a small mare, a sure-footed mount, yes, but not a beautiful one, not elegant. A sensible horse in these mountains, but not the sort of horse one would ride on parade in Paris. And Emily herself, sensibly bundled up in a shapeless cloak as cheerfully as if such a thing as fashion did not exist. He could not imagine Mlle. Fournier in such a situation. Or his aunts or cousins. The mere suggestion would doubtless have them in a swoon.

  He offered a prayer of thanksgiving that he was here with Emily beside him and not at La Boulaye, where everything was dedicated to enhancing the importance of grandpère, and every penny that did not provide splendor for him went to restoring the chateau to its former glory.

  Emily’s voice broke in on his thoughts. “Were they unhappy marriages, your parents’ and your grandparents’?”

  Unhappy? He had never truly thought about it. But now that he looked back… “Not unhappy, no. No one complained, they did not fight, there was no shouting. But there was no happiness either. The husband was always polite to the wife, and the wife was always obedient to the husband. It was not like the marriage of your parents, but it was what they seemed to expect. It is what was planned for me.”

  “But it was not what you wanted for yourself, and so you refused the marriage. What about Mlle. Fournier? Was she dreadfully upset?”

  Had she been u
pset? He had never given that aspect of the matter any thought. But no, she could not have been. Why would she be upset? She might not even have known about the plan. “Such a marriage would have been as cruel to her as it would have been to me,” he said. “I would have been constantly demanding of her what she could not give, and I could never be the kind of husband she expected. That grandpère does not understand this, that goes without saying. He cares only that she brought a rich dowry. When I refuse, he says things, we both say things that should not have been said. Since my parents were both dead by then, there was nothing to hold me. And so, I departed.”

  “Goodness.” She looked at him with sympathy.

  “That was five years ago,” he continued.

  “Five years!” She sounded shocked now. “Five years without seeing your family?”

  “To not see my family, this is no penance. They carry with them heavy chains, demands and obligations, nothing more.” He looked at her, so sad and solemn. Her family seemed to be a very different proposition. Could she even imagine what it was like to live with all that fear and seething resentment as they all trembled before his grandfather?

  “Do you not grow homesick?”

  He gave an insouciant shrug. Did he? Perhaps. But only a little. “Not for my grandfather’s house, not for La Boulaye. But sometimes when the desert is so very hot and dry and everything is brown, I think about the days when I was a small child, when we lived at Varennes, in the house of my mother. Or even later, when she would take me back there on visits from time to time. I remember sitting on the riverbank, under the shade of an oak tree, holding a fishing rod while she sat and watched me. But then I think to myself of all the places I have not yet seen. Samarkand. Is that not a wondrous name? It conjures up mystery and adventure, an unknown world. I think I must see Samarkand. And follow the ancient Silk Road to China through the Gates of Jade. Another wondrous name, is it not?”