When she is an arm’s length away from Arif Agha, she stops.
“If you’re worried about getting in trouble, I can help you. When we get out of here, I’ll take you to the magistrate of Beyoglu and you can talk to him, tell him what you saw. The police will be grateful if you help them. They won’t hurt you. I promise.” Sybil is aware of the duplicity of such a promise, which she has no way of keeping, but she needs Arif Agha’s cooperation or, at least, his goodwill. She wonders anxiously whether the danger from the eunuch isn’t as great as being trapped in this underground chamber.
She decides to make small talk, both to keep his attention and to keep her rising fear under control. “Have you been in Asma Sultan’s service a long time?”
With a strangely distorted, high-pitched squeal, the eunuch scuttles backward like a crab and crouches at the far end of the platform.
“I can see why you’d be afraid of her.” She looks upward at the now-dark sky. Suddenly animated, she moves closer to the eunuch and says, “I have an idea. I think I can protect you against Asma Sultan. I’m a friend of her daughter and other important people. I can make sure someone takes care of you.” Smiling, Sybil spreads her hands. “I’ll tell them you saved my life.”
The eunuch uncoils himself in a sudden violent movement and leaps at Sybil. His mouth is stretched wide but emits only a strangled sound. With her arms, she wards off his hands groping for her neck. As they struggle, the lamp illuminates their faces. At the back of the pink cavern of his mouth is a lump of scar tissue. His tongue has been cut out.
The lamp rolls into the water. Sybil screams into the darkness.
50
When Mary next looked at me, her eyes were like coals. She blinked and shifted her gaze around the platform.
“It’s so dark. It’s hard to see.” She pushed herself laboriously up to a sitting position, then to her feet. “I’d like to go home. I don’t feel well.”
I got to my feet and took her elbow. “What’s the matter?” I peered into her face.
“I don’t know. I can’t see.” She shook my hand away.
“You’re getting a chill. Have some more tea.” I signaled to Violet that she should refill our glasses.
“I can’t move my arm.” Mary’s speech had become slurred, with a hysterical undertone.
She staggered away from me, her foot knocking over her tea glass. The moonlight caught the edge of Violet’s kaftan.
“Violet, come and help me. Mary Hanoum is ill.” I realized suddenly that the carriage wasn’t due to return for us for at least another hour and the village was half an hour’s walk away.
I heard a splash behind me and swung around. Mary was gone. I raced to the pool, knelt on the boards, and looked over the edge. The obsidian water reflected rocking shards of moon.
“Bring the lamp,” I shouted. I turned and climbed into the water. The light of the lamp made the surface more brilliant, but revealed nothing beneath it. I struggled through the pool, fighting my billowing clothing, my face against the water, feeling beneath the surface with both hands.
“I’ll find her.”
I looked up. Violet’s lean brown body trailed a black shadow across the walls. She slid beneath the surface with barely a sound.
51
Bernie pulls on the reins.
“Why are you slowing down?”
“I thought I heard something.”
The night is alive with animal sounds, sudden trills, fish falling into the water just beyond the road. An owl hoots from the forest.
“There it is again,” Bernie whispers. An odd cry, faint as if muffled.
“It must be coming from Asma Sultan’s villa,” cries Kamil. “There’s no other house near here.”
Bernie swings the phaeton around, whips the horses, and thundering back down the road, they halt at the gate and jump out.
“Let’s get the lamps lit so we can see better.”
“The gate is locked.” Kamil clambers up the ilex that covers the wall like a green mantle. He reappears on the other side of the wrought-iron gate and unlatches it.
The iron creaks as they push the heavy doors open.
They move quickly down the carriageway toward the house. Kamil pushes open the unlocked front door. Washes of light dart across the walls as they move through the entry hall and down a corridor. They emerge in a room so vast that their lamps pick out only patches of parquet floor and the bases of man-width marble pillars.
“This must be the reception room,” Kamil notes.
Bernie’s lamp moves off and is soon lost in the gloom. Kamil hears a crash of crockery. Suddenly the air jumps with shadows as Bernie lights a gas lamp on the wall.
“Holy Mother of Jesus!” Bernie stares at the shattered object on the floor.
“What is it?”
“A Ming vase. I’ve never seen one that big before. It’s priceless.”
They look around. The room is hung with enormous gilded mirrors that multiply the illumination. Swags of colored glass chandeliers hang from the ceiling.
They pause, listening carefully.
“Nothing,” Bernie says finally.
“She must be in this house somewhere. We should be quiet, in case the others are still here. We’ll have the advantage of surprise.”
“The hell with that,” Bernie says, and shouts, “Sybil.”
52
I was in waist-deep water tearing at my clothes when Violet’s head emerged beneath my legs.
“Where is she?” I cried. “Why haven’t you found her?”
Violet lifted herself onto the platform with her muscular arms, her body streaming with water. “She’s stuck in the net.”
“Allah save us! Can’t you get her out?” I scrambled onto the platform to better take off the ballooning trousers that hindered me from submerging enough to join the search.
She moved rapidly to the pile of her clothing and returned with a short knife. Her body sliced into the black skin of water.
I removed the last of my clothing, held my breath, and flung myself in after her. My hands scrabbled about in the darkness like crabs. Handfuls of sand. Under the floorboards, even the moonlight disappeared. The slimy rope scraped my palm. I held fast and, tucking my foot into the net behind me, began to crawl sideways along it. When my breath gave out, I pushed off to the surface to get air. My foot twisted in the rope and I struggled to free it. Suddenly, powerful arms wrapped themselves around my chest and pulled me loose.
“Get out of the water and watch for her from up there,” Violet demanded, thrusting me toward the steps. When I tried to return to the water, she warned, “If she dies, it’ll be your fault. I can’t take care of you both at once. You’ll do more good up there. Hurry up.”
Shaking, I climbed onto the platform. I hunched tensely by the side of the water, scanning the surface for signs of movement. Violet was gone a long time, and I began to worry that she too was caught in the net. I rocked back and forth, naked in the lamplight, uncertain what to do. I heard my voice, keening a prayer between chattering teeth. At last Violet’s head appeared.
“She’s gone. I don’t think it’s a good idea to bring her body up here.”
I began to climb into the water again. “She must still be alive.”
Violet blocked my way. “I’ve seen her. It’s too late. She wrapped herself up in the net. I wasn’t able to cut her loose.”
“Allah protect us,” I cried, struggling to get past her. I had seen the dead, but this was a death that I fully possessed. Violet’s arm circled my waist and anchored my flesh to the wooden boards. When I had exhausted myself with struggling, she let me go.