Jenny White - The Sultan's seal

Violet put a glass of tea beside Mary and handed another to me, then withdrew into the shadows of her cubicle. I could see only the red eyes of the charcoal peering out of the brazier below the steaming pots.

Sybil sits shivering on the platform, holding the lamp. Her clothing is disheveled, hastily thrown over her wet body. Her throat is hoarse from shouting. Her eyes keep scanning the walls.

Sybil looks up at the eunuch. He is sitting just outside the circle of light, eyes closed. She wonders what kind of life eunuchs live. It is said they are powerful, but this man’s shoulders are thin, his face a grim mask. His large hands are laced together in front of his knees.

“Arif Agha,” she calls, thinking he might respond to his name.

He doesn’t answer, but she sees a flicker of white under his lids.

“I do wish you’d say something. I think you can understand my Turkish. Can you speak English?” Exasperated, she adds, “Look, we have to get out of here. Parlez vous Français?”

Speaking in French reminds her of her visit to Shukriye Hanoum. She had found her story appalling but somehow fantastic, as though Shukriye were a character in an Oriental opera. She thinks wryly that she too is now an actor in a potentially tragic play, an Englishwoman and a eunuch trapped on a floating stage. She finds herself laughing. The eunuch’s now-open eyes register surprise and, she fears, disapproval.

I’m being hysterical, she thinks, and forces herself to stop. Another look she has seen in the eunuch’s eyes-malevolence-puts her on guard. She moves closer to the boat.

Suddenly she remembers where she has heard Arif Agha’s name before.

“You’re the one who told the police about the British woman Hannah, about the carriage that picked her up.”

She isn’t sure in the dim light, but thinks the eunuch grimaces.

When he doesn’t answer, Sybil murmurs, “They never found who murdered her.”

She peers at him suspiciously through the deepening gloom. It occurs to her that Mary worked for Perihan, and that Arif Agha had probably encountered her as well. Sybil wonders where retired eunuchs go. Arif Agha seems to have retired in plain sight.

“Another young woman was killed recently, Mary Dixon. Did you know her too?”

When the eunuch still doesn’t answer, Sybil forces herself to stand and walk toward him, her hands held out before her in a conciliatory gesture.

“Look, Arif Agha, I don’t care what happened. All I care about now is getting out of here. We have to help each other or we’ll rot in here.” She stumbles over the Turkish word for rot. “No one will find us here. We’ll starve.”

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.

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.

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.”