Then there was the matter of her clothing. They’d expected her to need help in dressing, but Sophia had packed neither gowns nor walking-suits, only simple wool dresses that she might button herself, even when her hands shook. These she topped with her ever-present shawls, which swamped her slight frame. And rather than putting up her hair in a fashionable knot or pompadour, she plaited it herself into a single tight braid, which she then wrapped about her head and fastened with an abundance of hairpins. She wore it this way even when she slept, which to them seemed an uncomfortable prospect at best.
“She’s deliberately giving us nothing to do,” the footman muttered one night, once they were reasonably certain their charge was asleep. “Are we minding her, or is it the other way around?”
“I’m as lost as you are,” the maid replied. “The way her mother went on about strange men, I thought we’d have to tie her to a chair.”
“Maybe that Ahmad fellow’s waiting for her in India.”
“I suppose we’ll find out.”
The Campania arrived at Liverpool amid a miserable downpour. The train to Southampton was damp and drafty, and the coal stove in their carriage refused to stay lit, no matter how the footman fiddled with it. Sophia made no word of complaint, but her dismay was obvious, and her tremor grew with each passing mile. By the time they arrived at Southampton, she was deathly pale and could barely stand upright. They bundled her into an inn, and heaped her bed with blankets and hot-water bottles. Eventually her tremors lessened and her color improved, and she drifted into uneasy sleep.
“Well,” the maid murmured, unnerved, “we’re needed after all.”
The next day, they boarded the S.S. Hindostan, where Sophia took to her bed at once and slept until they were nearly at the Strait of Gibraltar. The Hindostan was a fast ship, and the waters of the Mediterranean were calm and obliging, and before long they’d sighted the quay at Constantinople, their first stop on the way to Calcutta. They disembarked, and settled into a suite at the Pera Palace Hotel—all carved and gilded opulence, with velvet draperies and hot running water—and were about to ring the front desk to inquire about supper when Miss Winston announced that she had an errand she must run first.
The couple exchanged a glance. The footman said, “If you need the concierge to fetch you something—”
“No, I’ll go myself, thank you. But you’re welcome to accompany me.”
Warily they trailed her to a nearby telegram office, where she wrote lengthy messages to half a dozen outposts throughout Asia Minor, many of them remote stations that the clerk had to peer for on his maps. She thanked the clerk in Turkish, and paid him in coins they hadn’t known she’d been carrying.
“And now,” Sophia said when they emerged from the office, “shall we take a tour?” And without waiting for an answer, she hailed a carriage and told the driver to take them across the river, to the Hagia Sophia.
“Like your own name, miss?” asked the maid, feeling more uneasy by the minute.
“Yes,” Sophia replied with a half smile. “Except Hagia Sophia means ‘holy wisdom,’ and I’m only named after an aunt.” She brightened. “Look—there it is.”
An ancient-looking basilica was rising into view, its massive central dome surrounded by smaller copies arranged in rough symmetry, with minarets at the distant corners. The carriage stopped, and Miss Winston paid the driver and descended with a new and noticeable eagerness. They walked the basilica’s perimeter, the maid and footman now struggling to keep up as Sophia pointed out the different domes and buttresses, listing the centuries in which they’d been added and whose rule the city had been under at the time. The basilica was a mosque now, she told them—but it once had been a Roman Catholic church, and before that a Greek Orthodox cathedral, a stronghold sacked by Crusaders and Ottomans alike. At the entrance they surrendered their shoes and went inside, treading carefully around the columns and prayer rugs, admiring the carvings and calligraphy. One of the columns bore a small depression near its base; this, Sophia informed them, was the famous Weeping Column. As legend held it, any supplicant who placed their hand in the depression and felt the tears of the Virgin Mary would be cured of all sickness. Sophia reached a hand toward it as she spoke—but then hesitated. They watched her war with herself for a moment. At last a finger was extended, and just as quickly withdrawn. “You see?” she said with a smile, and then turned away. They didn’t ask what she’d felt; nor did they try the trick themselves.
They left soon after and returned to the hotel, and had barely settled into the room again when the concierge arrived, bearing a stack of telegrams. Sophia opened them one by one, frowning, until she reached one that made her brighten and sit straighter in the chair. She tapped its edge on the writing-desk, thinking—and then said, “We must speak frankly.”
The maid had been in the process of turning down Sophia’s bed; the footman was polishing his boots. The two blinked up at her. “Yes, miss?” said the maid.
“I assume,” Sophia said, “that your loyalties lie with my mother, and not myself.”
A pause. “Not sure what you mean, miss,” the footman said.
“Forgive me, but—you’re Pinkerton detectives, aren’t you?”
The couple glanced at each other. The footman sighed and put down the boots; the maid straightened, her air of deference falling away. “Retired, miss,” she said, her voice newly crisp. “And we’re the Williamses, if you please. I’m Lucy, and that’s Patrick.”
Sophia smiled. “My mother agreed to all of this far too easily. May I ask what, specifically, she hired you to do?”
“We’re to make you comfortable,” Patrick said, “and keep you
