Bezime laughed. “Well, perhaps they didn’t speak.” The scent of her tobacco filled the room. “But they did spend a night together.”

I picked up the bowstring from the low table before us, fingering the soft cords. “If Perestu knows that, would it spur her to exact revenge on you?”

“If she’s bored enough,” Bezime said. “There’s no better distraction from ennui than eliminating one’s former rivals.”

“I’m getting no candor from the concubines at Yıldız. What must I do to change this? How can I make them trust me?”

“It’s impossible to force trust. There is, however, something you could try to earn it, but it may scare you too much.”

“I never back down from a challenge.”

She laughed. “Then tell Perestu you want to go to the hamam at Yıldız. You will find the women more likely to trust you if you bathe with them.”

“Bathe with them?”

“It is our tradition. Everyone goes to the baths at least once a week—I told you I worked in one before the sultan found me. There is no better place to find out all the gossip, all the truth. Perestu will allow it because she will believe the experience will do nothing but horrify you.”

“Horrify me?” She couldn’t have been more right, but I had grown almost fond of bluffing people. “It sounds perfectly pleasant. I shall arrange to go as soon as possible.”


The moment I left Topkapı, I directed my boatman to take me up the Bosphorus past Dolmabahçe to the dock closest to Yıldız, my stomach turning itself over and into knots. I clutched the side of the boat, the rough wood pressing hard against the bones in my hands, the faint fishy smell coming from the water tormenting me. Looking at the horizon, which Colin had insisted would help ward off seasickness, had the effect only of making me long to stand on the land at which I gazed. A man at the quay steadied me with a strong hand as I stepped off the rocking vessel, and I sat on a nearby bench, too queasy to walk to the palace. An obliging tree shaded me, and I stared across at the houses lining the Asian shore.

I was alarmed in no small way. I’d always considered myself of hearty constitution—seasickness was not something from which I’d previously suffered, although I’d not before been on small boats in such rough waters. More concerning—terrifying, in fact—was the thought that it might not be seasickness at all. Could I have already entered that phase of married life in which a lady’s existence was forever altered in the most dramatic fashion? I bit my lip too hard and tasted salt on my tongue. Not that it would be a bad thing. It was inevitable, after all, and the inconvenience wouldn’t be interminable. Nonetheless, I was filled with ambivalence and something darker, a thing I was not yet willing to face. I pulled myself up from the bench and started up the hill towards Yıldız, not wanting to be late for the appointment I’d scheduled to see the sultan.

The palace was not like most traditional royal houses. Instead of one massive building, it was formed by groupings of pavilions and kiosks overlooking a lake, all surrounded by high walls. Green lawns and well-tended gardens shared the grounds with more rugged wooded patches, and the scent of orange blossoms greeted me as I reached the gate.

The guards recognized me from my previous visit, and I was led into a formal reception room in the center of which stood a table big enough to seat twenty in comfort. It drew me in at once, and I reached out to touch the smooth, inlaid surface, feeling the thread-thin grooves between tortoiseshell and oak, mother-of-pearl and ebony. I had traced the entire circumference of the piece and still no one had come to me. I crossed to a window and pulled open the shutter, looking at the woods that stretched below me, dark evergreens blocking all but lacy cutouts of light.

“Lady Emily?” A eunuch poked his head around the open door. “His Imperial Majesty will see you.”

He took me through corridor after corridor until we were outside, standing before a small building in which we found Abdül Hamit II, bent over a bench, rubbing a piece of sandpaper on a chair that lay on its back before him. He was not tall, though not strikingly short, but slim. Piercing dark eyes and a large, aquiline nose stood out from his black hair and neatly trimmed beard. His face was heavy with fatigue.

“It is my greatest pleasure to see you, Lady Emily,” he said, bursting with youthful energy that I’d not expected from a man his age. His voice, however, was quiet in its exuberance, low, almost like a song. “My thanks to you for coming all this way.” He swept his hand in front of his chest, gesturing to the space around him. “What do you think of my work?”

The room swam with the clean smell of fresh wood. Along the walls stood cabinets, tables, chairs, and chests piled one in front of the other, all, I assumed, made by the sultan’s own hands. “It’s exquisite,” I said, forgetting myself and walking away from him to inspect a tall bookcase fashioned from golden-stained cherry.

“I’m pleased you like it. There’s little more satisfying than working with one’s hands, yes?”

“I can imagine.” Careful sanding had given the wood a smoothness that was at once firm and soft.

“Do you read?” he asked. “Anyone with such an appreciation for bookshelves must.”

“Constantly,” I said, not able to stop running my hands over the perfectly finished wood. “Sensational fiction. I’ve a terrible habit of reading the most lowbrow things you can imagine.”

“Do you like detective novels?”

“Conan Doyle stuns me every time.”

He nodded. “You are someone I could like very much. I have his novels translated into Turkish as soon as they are published. The chief of my wardrobe reads them to me, and I do not let him stop until the book is done.”

“An admirable devotion to the written word.”

“I would like very much to have the bookcases sent to your house in England. A gift for you.”

“That’s generous of you,” I said. “Thank you. They will be adored.”

“I would not give them to you otherwise. What else do you read?”

“I study Greek, so lots of Homer.”

“Will you visit Troy while you are in my country?”

“I want to more than anything, if only to lie on the fields and weep for poor, slain Hector.”

This drew a smile. “I will have the trip arranged for you when this ugly business in the harem is finished.” He turned away from the piece on which he’d been working and walked to a pile of long boards, picking up one after another, running his fingertips along the length of each before selecting one to bring back to his bench.

“You’re very kind,” I said.

He pushed a yardstick against the board and began marking measurements with a chewed-up pencil. “I have a deep sympathy for Ceyden’s father. I lost my first child, a daughter, when she was very young. She was burned after playing with matches. Her mother and I suffered immeasurably at the loss. She would be your age now.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“This is not, I think, the way you’d hoped to spend your wedding trip,” he said.

“No one would anticipate such a thing, but I would never walk away from the opportunity to seek justice.”

“Justice, Lady Emily, is not always so clear.”

“Did you know Ceyden?”

“To a degree.”

“Will you not tell me more?” I watched his face, searching for evidence that he was withholding something, but his countenance was calm, focused.

“You question the sultan?” He placed his palms flat against the board in front of him, and I expected anger to cloud his eyes. Instead, I saw laughter.

“Bad form?” I smiled at him.

“Terribly.”

“It’s not that I don’t believe you,” I said. “I’m merely trying to form as accurate a summation of the girl’s life as I can.”

“You’ll find all you need to know in the harem.”

“Your concubines have been less than forthcoming. It’s almost as if their words are chosen for them.”

“And this surprises you?”

“Yes, because I’d been led to believe you support my investigation. A word from you would surely—”

“It is not I you must convince, but my mother,” he said.

“Does she not listen to you?”

“Does your mother listen to you?”

Laughter escaped my lips, and I felt my cheeks flushing hot. “Never.”

“We are of one mind, then, at least in this regard. And if your mother is like mine”—he leaned closer to me—“the less said about it the better. Her spies are everywhere.”

“But surely your own spies hold them at bay?”

“One can only hope.”

He was warming to me. I felt we were on a course to getting along famously, and this brought me no small measure of pride. To have so quickly made an ally of the sultan himself! A slight tug of conscience made me almost wish Colin were standing behind me, reminding me of what, exactly, goes before a fall, but I dismissed the notion and beamed, ready to forward the rest of my agenda.

“There is something else I would like to discuss with you,” I said. “I spoke with the young woman who found Ceyden’s body. She’s terribly upset.”

“Understandable. Roxelana is a sensitive girl.”

“I have heard that, on occasion, concubines are released from the harem and allowed to marry. Would you consider allowing her to do that?” It was not a perfectly satisfactory solution to Roxelana’s plight, but better, I hoped, than nothing. I would much prefer to find a way to fully free her of her bonds, to let her rejoice in independence as I did, but fear of Colin’s disapproval—particularly if my scheme was revealed to the British government—kept me from taking a more creative approach to her predicament. And this was something of which I was not proud in the least.