Jenny White - The Sultan's seal

“Your father will do what is in his best interest.”

“His best interest,” I repeated blankly. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve watched you since you came back to live at your father’s house and I’ve decided that you are exactly what I want, beautiful, smart, but with spirit. You don’t want me. That much is clear. But that will keep things interesting. I’ll make you into the perfect wife. It will be my great pleasure to instruct and form you, and you will eventually be grateful that I did so.”

I backed up until stopped by the trunk of a pine tree. I was so angry, I could only repeat his words. “Instruct me? Form me?” He made it easy to speak my intentions. “I will not marry you.”

One step brought him in front of me. “Yes, you will.” He gripped my wrists and pushed me against the tree. The scent of roses was overpowering.

“You’re hurting me. Stop it! Now!”

I could feel the entire length of his body pushing against me through the layers of my skirts. He placed a thick, hard object into my hand, like an eel, but warmly alive and with the silkiness of skin. I recoiled and tried to throw the object from my hand. Amin Efendi uttered an epithet that was as shocking to me as if he had slapped me. Using my wrists, he pushed me down onto the red earth. I struggled against his grip but my wrists were as delicate in his grasp as the pine needles on the ground around my head.

With sudden clarity, I remembered stories told by the women in their summer villas about young women compromised who were unable to marry or whose families or husbands rejected them. Stories spun in the minds of little listening girls who later weave lives from them. Or deaths.

He lifted my skirts over my face and trapped my arms in them. His sharp knees dug into my thighs, pressing them apart. Then my body was cut by a knife of pain that pierced even my brain. I was certain that I screamed, but I heard nothing except the grunting of an animal nearby. The sounds took on the same rhythm as my pain and I realized it was Amin Efendi. I could not see what he was doing. I saw only the red inside my head.

He shouted a blessing, a sacrilege, and my thighs were flooded with hot liquid. Suddenly the knife-edge dulled, and I could hear myself moaning. I opened my eyes and saw light through the cotton gauze. My arms and legs ached and something had opened a wound in my very center. The sky was a hostile witness.

The light blinded me as he pulled the skirts away from my head and disentangled my arms.

“Here.” He pushed a towel into my hands. I realized with a start that he had planned this. I had not opened my eyes. They were still innocent.

I could feel his presence astride me, the toe of his boot pressing my knee outward. His gaze seared my wound, and I struggled to cover myself. I heard him chuckling.

“Now you will have to marry me, my lady. No one else will.”

I opened my eyes. He looked exactly the same. His suit was immaculate. His fez rode his head like a demon.

“I will never marry you,” I spit. “You can kill me first.”

He chuckled. “I won’t have to. Your father will insist, if he doesn’t wish his honor to be stained. A daughter who gives herself like a common woman of the street. Imagine what that would do to his career.”

“You did this to me against my will. He will believe me.”

“If word gets out, that will make no difference. And whether anyone finds out…well, my silence will be my bride payment.”

I thought of Hamza and Ismail Dayi. They would not accept this as a stain on me. They would avenge me. I was certain of it. Society’s demands that a woman remain innocent of such cruelty clearly could not always be met. Nor should society’s angry expectations always be honored that a wronged woman cleanse her sins- her sins? — by death or exile. I realized this in a momentous rush of clarity that was to change my life forever.

I sat up and gasped at the pain and the sight of blood on my dress.

“I’ll take you somewhere nearby where you can clean yourself up. Then you can get back in the coach and go to the picnic or you can plead illness and the driver will take you home. No one will know what happened except your father, and he’ll want to keep it that way. Come. The coach is waiting by the gate.”

He reached his hand down for me, but I struggled to my feet unaided. My stomach heaved at the thought of his touch. My parasol was covered with pine needles. When I lifted it, the needles showered my hand in a caress. The forest forgives me, I thought.

I straightened myself to face Amin Efendi. His hands were clasped behind his back, eyes unfocused, lips parted slightly, as if reliving a pleasurable moment. I cast the tip of my parasol deep into his right eye.

“Yes, this might belong…have belonged to Mary. I think I saw her wear one like it.” Sybil holds up the soiled blouse. They are sitting at the broad kitchen table, its rough wood worn concave by decades of scrubbing. Sybil led him here without thinking when he said he had something to show her, then asked the servants to leave and close the door. It seemed somehow appropriate that the kitchen be the scene of revelations.

Her voice cracks just enough for Kamil to see that, beneath her calm manner, she is aware that it is death she is touching, the last moments of Mary Dixon. He fights his desire to hold her in his arms as he has done Feride. She has much in common with her, he thinks. A kind, dutiful daughter dealing alone with a difficult father absent in mind and feeling. Spirited and intelligent. A modern woman with Ottoman virtues. A good wife for the right man. It is permissible for a Muslim man to marry a giavour woman, but he does not care about such rules anyway. He will marry or not as he pleases, and marry whom he pleases. He takes a deep breath, pushing his hands into his jacket pockets, and leans back in his chair. The fingers of his right hand tangle in the chain of amber beads, while his other hand closes around the cool metal of his pocket watch. In any case, he thinks with guilty relief, her family would never approve. He is aware that Europeans distrust a Muslim man, no matter whether he wears a fez or a top hat.

Sybil lets the blouse drop to the table. It is not ripped or soiled, but badly crumpled, as if it had been wadded up wet and dried inside the rocky niche. Its pearl buttons are intact. Life, Kamil thinks, clings desperately to everything, against all odds. He lets go of the watch and reaches for Sybil’s hand. Sybil’s eyes meet his. They sit unmoving, each unwilling to risk losing the other’s touch by changing anything. Every word, every movement constitutes a risk.

A knock on the door startles them and their hands fly apart.

“Miss Sybil, should I make the tea now?”

“Not now, Maisie.” She struggles to put a cheery tone in her voice, but it comes out hoarse with nervousness. “Later. I’ll ring for you.”

“Yes, Miss Sybil.” The maid’s footsteps recede down the hall.

Sybil smiles shyly, no longer willing to meet Kamil’s eyes. Kamil too is smiling, his cup sunk deep in the jar of well-being. One sip, he thinks. Is that enough?

Suddenly aware of what might now be expected of him, Kamil rises abruptly to his feet.

“I apologize, Sybil Hanoum. I should go.” He begins gathering up the objects on the table and wraps them in the oiled cloth.

“No, please don’t go yet.” His abruptness has soured her pleasure. Exasperated that suddenly it is she who is pleading, Sybil points to the table. “We haven’t finished looking at these things.” There is an edge to her voice that halts Kamil’s hands in their frenzied activity.