Tasha Alexander - Tears of Pearl

“Unless she was planning to escape.”

“Escape? When she was doing everything she could to gain the sultan’s favor?”

“I admit freely there are holes in the hypothesis. However...” I stepped towards him and rested my hand on the cool marble post that held a tall candelabra above the rail. “What if she knew something about the sultan himself? Suppose she was blackmailing him, and suppose he was tired of it and had someone kill her?”

“He’s the sultan—she’s essentially his slave,” he said. “She’d have nothing on him worthy of blackmail.”

“Had I even an inkling of the deficits in your imagination, I would never have married you. I feel entirely misled.”

“My deepest apologies. How awful for you.”

“I shan’t ever recover,” I said.

“I would hope not.” His eyes danced. “I expect you to be despondent for at least six months.”

“If you weren’t such a beast, you’d have the decency to make a vain attempt at consolation,” I said.

He lifted my chin and kissed me, one hand around my waist, the other on my face.

“We are in a church!” I said.

“A mosque. Was my effort not enough? Are you not consoled?”

I studied his face and suppressed a smile. “It was admirable, I suppose.”

“Admirable?”

I shrugged. “I was trying to be generous. Given our surroundings, I can only assume you are operating with great restraint.”

“You’re kindness itself.” He stepped back, warmth radiating from his smile. “So, blackmailing the sultan?”

“I convinced Perestu to let me take the book of poetry from Ceyden’s desk and am hoping the marginalia turns out to be more than an analysis of the poems.”

“Blackmail records? Unlikely that she’d leave something so sensitive out in the open.”

“They may have been coded somehow. At any rate, they appeared to be written in Greek.” I watched a group of men, bent over in prayer, kneel on the floor below us.

He smiled at me. “Anything else to report?”

“At the moment, I find myself suddenly more interested in telling you about the hamam .”

“Perhaps you made me wait too long,” he said. “I might have other plans.”

“Unlikely in the extreme,” I said, meeting his eyes and pulling him towards me. “And at any rate, I’m confident I can convince you there’s nowhere you’d rather be.”

“I can be awfully stubborn.”

“Not as stubborn as I am,” I said.

He tipped his head back and laughter spilled out of him. “Truer words I have never heard.”

I am pleased to report that when we did at last return home, he did not prove stubborn in the least.

The next morning, I headed across the Bosphorus to Stamboul—the old section of the city, a peninsula jutting into the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus—hoping to see Bezime at Topkapı. Meg had sliced a piece of gingerroot for me, expressing veiled concern at having seen me return home ill day after day and telling me that chewing it would prevent seasickness. Lovely though the gesture was, it had little effect on the overwhelming nausea that hit the moment I stepped into the boat and felt the waves churning beneath me. By the time the crossing was over, I was sweating and cold at the same time, my stomach lurching every time I drew breath.

“My dear Lady Emily, please let me assist you!” Mr. Sutcliffe called to me from the far end of the palace dock. He reached the boat in a few short strides and gripped my arm, steadying me as I rose to my feet. “Are you quite all right?”

I doubled over and was sick all over the wooden planks, then sank to my knees, tears stinging my eyes as mortification burned my cheeks.

“Do you need a doctor?”

“No, I’m—it’s just seasickness. I can’t believe it’s affecting me so severely.”

He passed me a handkerchief. “Come. Let’s get you inside.”

“I did not expect to see you here,” I said, accepting his arm to help me up.

“I was calling on an old friend.” We’d reached the gates of the palace, where Mr. Sutcliffe explained to the guard that I was ill and expected by Bezime. The sentry admitted us at once, shouting to a colleague to alert the former valide sultan before taking us to a place I could rest.

We crossed the marble pavement of a terrace surrounding a large rectangular pool, in whose center stood a square fountain, its tiered stone sides cut in a lacy pattern. In front of us was open space with sweeping views of the Golden Horn, broken only by a small pavilion with a golden peaked roof, a single bench under it, perpendicular to the Baghdad Pavilion, which Mr. Sutcliffe informed me had, in the past, served as a library. After passing under a series of tall arches, decorated with blue and burgundy paint that complemented the colored stone, we entered the Revan Kiosk, a small and utterly charming building. Blue floral tiles lined the walls to the ceiling at least twenty feet above, light streaming through stained-glass windows at the halfway point as well as from openings in the domed roof. I dropped onto the usual low red divan tucked under windows, these shuttered with wood panels inlaid with mother-of-pearl and tortoiseshell.

“Shall I send for your husband?” Mr. Sutcliffe asked.

“No, thank you, I’ll be fine. I’m already better just from being on steady ground.” A servant appeared with apple tea, but its sweetness made me cringe and I abandoned it on the table in front of me. I inhaled until my lungs hurt, blew the breath out slowly. “I’d no idea how I would suffer for insisting on taking a house across the Bosphorus. I had such romantic visions of crossing the water every day.”

“You’re not the first to have been defeated by its currents.” He sat at the opposite end of the sofa, brushing its bright silk with his hands. “Are you quite sure you don’t want me to send for your husband? I know what a comfort family can be in times of difficulty.”

“You’re very kind, thank you, and right as well,” I said.

“Nothing more important than taking care of those you love. It’s something I’m afraid I was never able to do well enough.”

“I’ve no doubt you did as much as any man could.”

“I could not live with myself if I did not agree.” His eyes glinted as if he might cry, but instead he smiled. “The color’s come back to your face, so it seems the worst is over. We shan’t need to disturb Hargreaves.”

“No, that won’t be necessary. I wouldn’t want to alarm him.”

“Very good. You look much better now,” he said. “I’m glad to have run into you. I was planning to call on you later today, and this saves me the trip. I have something I’m afraid may prove to be evidence in Ceyden’s murder.”

“ Afraid is a strange choice of word.”

“It points in a most unwelcome direction, which is why I didn’t bring it up earlier. But I kept thinking of what Hargreaves said about physical evidence, and, well...” His voice trailed off, and he looked at the ground. “I don’t like to cause unnecessary trouble.”

“Justice sometimes requires trouble,” I said. “But it’s important to uncover the truth.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a glittering object. “I found this that night after the opera in the courtyard where Ceyden was killed.”

“It’s beautiful.” I fingered the object he’d handed me, a golden Byzantine cross, three inches long, hanging from a broken gold chain.

“It belongs to Benjamin St. Clare. I was with him the day he bought it.”

“Why didn’t you give this to the guards?” I asked.

“I—I suppose I should have, but I was scared.”

“It’s surely not the only cross of its kind in Constantinople, and even if it does belong to Benjamin, it’s entirely possible he lost it weeks before the murder. He could have been invited to the opera on a different night and dropped it then. After all, it’s not as if we’ve a witness who saw him at the palace.”