Alexander Sarcophagus, the stunning and enormous object that had inspired the building’s architecture. It had not belonged to the great king, but its white stone showcased his strengths. On one side, he sat, wearing a lion’s head for a helmet, astride his horse, Bucephalas, fighting the Persian army, his enemy near defeat. The opposite panel showed him hunting lions. I leaned close, irritated at finding myself so distracted when before such a significant piece, but wholly unable to concentrate.
“Don’t be outraged,” Colin said. “I would have said the same thing to a man.”
“And I hope that he would... would...” I was losing my temper, and fast, despite the fact that I knew he was not being wholly unreasonable. I should have discussed Roxelana’s situation with him before I broached the topic with the sultan. I wondered if she had taken it upon herself to speak to Abdül Hamit. I looked at my perfectly handsome husband and felt nothing but anger. My tenuous grip on control was slipping fast; it was taking all my focus to keep from stomping my foot in petulant indignation and storming across the gallery. This, coupled with unwanted tears filling my eyes, was too much to be borne. It was as if I were no longer myself.
“You hope he would call me out.” He smiled. “Pistols at dawn? Or do you prefer swords?”
“I’d never be so dramatic,” I said, pretending to be fascinated with the detail on the face of a lion, Alexander’s prey.
“I imagine not.” He pressed his lips together, pushing them to one side, what he always did when he was trying not to laugh. Much though I hated to admit it at the moment, it was an irresistible maneuver.
“If I must, though, I’d pick swords,” I said. “More elegant.”
“Is that so? Rather messy in the end, don’t you think?” He walked back to me.
“You’ve been very firm about denying me my Derringer until I learn to shoot, so I assumed it would not be a wise move at this juncture to choose pistols.”
Now he did laugh. “I apologize if my frank manner of speech was too much. I should have couched my criticism in softer terms.”
This was not at all what I wanted. “No, no, you shouldn’t have. I don’t want to be coddled. I’m sorry if my actions have made things more difficult.”
He touched my face, his rough hand cool on my cheek. “I shan’t coddle you. Not now, at any rate. But there may come a day—a happy day—on which you require an extended period of coddling. Beyond that, however, I shall be as hard on you as I am on anyone.”
I did not like this talk of extended coddling, particularly as I had a strong suspicion he was referring to the probable cause of my would-be seasickness. Every dreaded emotion swirled through me, but I forced them away. “I want that treatment—that respect from you always. Regardless of whatever happy day we may reach.”
“Some circumstances—”
“Please.” I had to interrupt. “Not now. Let’s discuss the matter at hand.”
“Of course.” He paused, just for an instant, flashing my favorite smile. “We’re in a tricky situation. Tell me about your afternoon.”
“There’s so much, I hardly know where to start.” I took Benjamin’s cross out of my reticule and recounted Mr. Sutcliffe’s story.
Colin frowned. “It shall be easy enough to confirm whether it does belong to him. We are, however, going to need to get back into the harem. Do you think you can work your charms on the sultan and regain your access?”
“I shall have to find a way. We got along famously at first. I may have overstepped my bounds speaking to him about Roxelana, but that doesn’t seem enough—particularly as it’s not connected to the murder—to cause our expulsion. Something else had to be a contributing factor, and I’m convinced it has to do with Ceyden’s collection of ill-gotten jewels.”
“I’ve no doubt you can ferret out the truth. I’ll see where this leads us.” He took the chain from me and stopped in front of a small, glass-fronted case.
“Is this all that remains of Troy?” I frowned at the uninspiring grouping of broken pottery. “There must be more—all that gold. I’ve read about it.”
“Schliemann took it all to Berlin.” Heinrich Schliemann, the German archaeologist who’d found and excavated the site, had published pictures of his wife draped in the gold he called the Treasure of Priam. “Smuggled it.”
“We must go to the site of the excavation before we leave Turkey,” I said. “I will not sleep well again until I’ve seen the ground upon which Hector’s blood spilled.”
He pressed my hand to his lips. “You’re so dramatic.”
I smiled, but my thoughts had already returned to our purpose. “Do you think there’s a chance Benjamin killed his sister?”
“There’s always a chance, Emily.”
“I don’t even want to imagine what that would do to Sir Richard.”
“Or to Benjamin,” he said. “If he did it, did he know who she was?”
“Could he have killed her to save her from the shame of being in the harem?”
Colin laughed. “You and your fiction. When we’re old and gray and full of sleep, I’d like nothing more than to see you turn your talents to writing the worst sort of sensational novels.”
“ ‘Old and gray and full of sleep.’ What a lovely phrase. Poem?”
“Yeats. It’s to be in his next collection. He showed it to me last time I was in Dublin.”
“Well, I’ve no intention of ever being full of sleep. Old and gray, however, is unavoidable.”
Colin had gone in search of Sir Richard, leaving me to wait for his return at a tiny tea shop, where over perfectly crispy baklava I repeated again and again in my mind what Bezime had told me. Her words had sliced through me, ripping bright holes in the shaded hollows of my soul from which I’d been hiding since my marriage. The prospect of having a child terrified me. I’d never been able to shake from my memory the sound of screams echoing through the halls of my parents’ estate when I was eleven years old. The noise had wakened me, and I’d slipped out of the nursery, my bare feet cold on the marble floor as I sought the source of the disturbance, more than a little confident I had at last found a ghost, something my cousin James had tried and failed to do every time his family visited us. But as the cries grew louder, I recognized the voice. It was James’s mother, my aunt Clarabelle. We’d been told there would be a new baby in time for Christmas; instead there was a funeral.
Death was something to which we were all accustomed. My older brothers, twins, had both fallen to the influenza when they were thirteen years old, and James had lost a sister to rheumatic fever. Until that December, however, I’d viewed death as something that, while sad, was peaceful. Those ragged cries changed my opinion forever. My mother, tears streaming from eyes I’d never before seen cry, found me in the hallway, shivering on the floor. She marched me back to my room, told me not to be confused by what I’d heard, that this was commonplace, that it couldn’t always be avoided, that childbirth was a dangerous thing.
I don’t know that I’ve better remembered any of her words. And in the years that followed, I saw their truth borne out, most recently when an acquaintance from my school years died fewer than two years after her marriage, leaving behind a grieving husband and a sickly infant.
I disliked weakness, and my fear of so natural a process could be described as nothing else. This revelation disturbed me. The procreation of children, after all, was intended to be a primary purpose of marriage, and for every woman who died in the process, hundreds succeeded. Could it be a thousand? Or more? I wondered if knowing the true odds would offer me consolation. I placed my palm flat on my abdomen and wondered if Bezime’s words had contained any bits of truth. When we returned to England at the end of the following month, I would see my physician. If he confirmed what I suspected, I would share the news with Colin and let him coddle me, if only for the period of my confinement.
An intense sensation of heat rushed through me, followed by a wave of dizziness and a wash of fear, each of which dissipated as the call to prayer started, drowning out all my thoughts. I closed my eyes, let the sound vibrate through me, and found my head much more clear when it stopped. Relieved, I turned my attention to Ceyden’s book of poems. A quick glance told me they’d be best read at home, not because of nefarious undertones, but because I feared them likely to throw me too much into the honeymoon spirit. I was not at the
“Satisfactory reading?” Colin asked, slipping into the chair across from me. I’d no idea how much time had passed since he’d left me. Poetry, it seemed, was an undeniable distraction.
