“We should go now,” Nissim urged.
Feride went to fetch Elif and Doctor Moreno, who was still arguing with the director.
“If you don’t remain,” he was saying, “you will place yourself under suspicion.”
“I doubt that.” Struggling to keep her voice steady, Feride said in as haughty a voice as she could muster, “I am the wife of Huseyin Bey, and Doctor Moreno is employed at the palace. We are easily found, and should the police wish to speak with us, I’m sure we would be happy to accommodate them. Isn’t that so, Doctor? My brother is the magistrate of Beyoglu, and naturally I would like to consult with him before I answer any questions.”
“It wouldn’t do, sir, for a lady to be interrogated like a criminal,” Doctor Moreno added. “Surely you see that.”
When the director nodded uncertainly, Feride indicated to the others to follow her. Nissim was waiting by the gate. They heard a carriage clattering toward them at great speed.
Nissim stepped off the road into a vineyard. “Hurry.”
Doctor Moreno and Elif took Feride’s arms and pulled her into the shadows just as the carriage rounded the corner into the square.
34
Vera ran downhill through the forest until she came to a high wall. She followed it and found a gate. There was no guard, at least on her side, but it was locked. She looked behind her and listened, but couldn’t hear Sosi, only the baying of dogs. Breathless, she burrowed into a pile of leaves and pine needles behind a large boulder where she couldn’t be seen. It hadn’t occurred to her that they would send dogs. Dogs noticed movement, she remembered from home, though they also had an excellent sense of smell. She looked around wildly. Where was Sosi? She didn’t dare call out to her.
The gate in the palace wall opened and two guards rushed in. They stopped at the edge of the forest and listened intently, then had a hurried conversation.
Vera didn’t understand what they said, but while they were distracted, she scrambled up and, keeping her body low, ran through the gate as fast as she could, expecting at any moment to be cut down.
35
“I want to check the other infirmaries,” Feride insisted. “We came all this way. I’m not going back to the city without finding him. He must be here somewhere.” She didn’t care anymore that he had a mistress. She just wanted him alive and home. Someone was trying to kill him, and it made her furious.
They were crowded into a farmer’s single-room house. Silver coins had persuaded him to host them. Feride, Elif, and Doctor Moreno sat on stools before a brazier, drinking the hot water with lemon juice the farmer’s wife had served them before withdrawing with her family into the attached stable. She had left them yoghurt and honey and some flat bread. A brindled cat wound itself around Feride’s feet. Vali and Nissim took turns standing guard outside the door.
Doctor Moreno agreed. “If Huseyin is suffering from burns, we must find him as soon as possible. Every minute is crucial.”
“Who knows what those small infirmaries are like? They probably don’t even have a doctor,” Elif added, coughing. The air was thick with fumes from the burning charcoal.
Feride thought Elif looked thin and unwell. Deep shadows circled her eyes. When Elif arrived at their home from Macedonia, she had been gaunt, a ghost evading every human contact. But her work at the Art Institute seemed to have revived a spark in her. Feride could see that spark dying. It had been a mistake to bring Elif on this quest. She should have seen that her friend wasn’t strong enough yet.
Üsküdar was a center of shipping and trade. The farmer had given them directions to three infirmaries, all attached to mosques. They were often full, he told them. The previous year, he had brought his son to one after he had broken a leg, but the crew of a ship had fallen ill and taken up every bed. The local bonesetter had gone home to his village to help with the harvest, so the boy wasn’t treated and now walked with a limp. Feride flinched at the pain he must have endured. She could understand that there was no free bed, but surely someone could have set the boy’s leg or stilled his pain with laudanum.
They filed out of the cottage. Vali carried a lamp. The sky was dark, but with that deep fragility that preceded dawn.
“I still say we should wait until it’s light,” Nissim growled.
Doctor Moreno put his head close to the burly boatman’s ear, but Feride heard him say, “The hanoum is worried, and so am I,” before they disappeared over the crest of the hill.
Feride put her hand on Elif’s arm and held her back. “Are you well, my sister? You look very tired.”
Elif smiled. “Of course, my dear. We’re all tired. But we’ll find Huseyin. Don’t worry.”
“If you’d rather…?”
“No,” Elif said hurriedly. Her voice was strained. “I’m fine. Really. Let’s go on.”
Vali returned, holding the light.
“We’re coming,” Elif said, and followed him down the hill into the vineyards. The light went with them.
Feride stopped for a moment and looked up at the fading stars, tiny specks of ice in an infinite sky that cared nothing about a small boy’s pain. She turned around, startled by the sound of a twig breaking. She opened her mouth to shout and began to run down the hill after the others, but could no longer see Vali’s light.
36
Vera woke shivering so hard she thought her bones would break. She was curled up in a coil of netting under a tarpaulin that had kept out the wind but not the cold. The movement of the boat and the sound of water slapping against the sides had awakened her. Pangs of hunger and thirst made her sit up and cautiously peek out from under the canvas. It was still dark, but a silver sheen meant dawn wasn’t far away. The walls of Yildiz Palace gleamed on the hill above her, enclosing the woods through which she had run. Below the wall, small cottages tumbled to the shore along wooded lanes. Was Sosi hiding in one of those cottages? She hadn’t had a chance to ask her about Gabriel.
Her throat ached for water. She pushed the tarp aside and stumbled out. She had to get off the boat before anyone saw her. To her dismay, she saw that the boat was no longer docked. They were in the middle of the Bosphorus. She looked up into the startled eyes of a young fisherman.
37
Kamil wanted the element of surprise, so he used Huseyin’s name to gain admission to Yildiz Palace instead of announcing his business to the gatekeeper. He drove through the gates in a closed carriage.
He had learned that the Akrep headquarters were in an isolated section of the palace grounds that backed onto the forest. When they were nearby, but not yet in sight of the building, Kamil ordered the driver to head onto a path behind a stand of rhododendrons. He surveyed the building through the spear-shaped leaves. Unlike the ornate wooden confections of the other imperial villas, this was a squat stone cube, two stories high and unadorned except for a marble stairway leading up to the front door. Its windows were flanked by heavy black shutters. The small guardhouse with a peaked roof at the end of the drive seemed almost frivolous in comparison. He heard men shouting but could make out only that someone had escaped. Dogs barked wildly in the forest.
Kamil then drove up to the front of the building and got out. A guard in black uniform carrying a rifle challenged him. Kamil noted the insignia on his collar-a stylized scorpion stitched in gold.
While a second guard went into the headquarters for instructions regarding the visitor, Kamil continued his examination of the house. Hedges obscured the sides of the building, but he saw an opening where a rounded trellis held the remains of last year’s roses. He wandered over, ignoring the guard who followed behind him, and bent over one of the dried yellow blooms, letting his eyes roam into the courtyard beyond. A gravel path led to an open door, and as he watched, three men in civilian clothes emerged, the one in front hurling abuse at the others. When he saw Kamil, he stopped, the curse dying on his lips. He turned on his heel, and after a low, muttered conversation with the other men, they went back inside, slamming the door shut behind them.