The Sultan's Seal (7 page)

L
ight floods through the open doors onto the lawn of the British Residence. Orange paper lampions have been strung along the paths. Servants circulate with trays of savories and fruit and bottles of chilled French wine. Kamil is here in search of someone who knew Mary Dixon. He finds this the most difficult part of his work, interacting socially with strangers. As a young man during his father’s reign as governor, he had endured long hours of empty pleasantries at endless functions, each word inflicting a dull pain until he had to pull away. From a vantage point in the garden or a quiet room, he would watch as figures met and merged, then withdrew and rejoined others in a complicated board game. He could see patterns in these interactions: the wealthy, the powerful, and the beautiful, and those who vied to be in their presence; respect shown or withheld; the sheep cut from the fold by a predator; the individual of wit or erudition and an admiring but unstable crowd of consumers; too obviously averted glances; the interplay of men and women when the rules of engagement were unclear. It was endlessly fascinating. He still prefers to watch, unless he finds an engaging partner for conversation. Good conversation is becoming rarer, he muses, since the sultan increased the number of his spies and people no longer dare venture opinions on even the most mundane subjects in their own drawing rooms.

Stepping indoors, he sees the ambassador stoop to listen to a dignified man in a uniform with red piping and gold epaulets. Women in low-cut evening dresses stand in groups like bouquets of gaudy, overblown roses. None are veiled. It startles Kamil to see such expanses of gleaming hair and pale skin exposed to view. The orchestra plays a waltz. Women lean backward into men’s arms, their opposing forces channeled into a vortex of movement. The women’s wide skirts swing like bells, their jewels blaze in the lamplight. Men in dark suits and uniforms, their shadows. Kamil thinks of bright autumn leaves captured by the current.

He wanders back into the garden. Sybil came to him briefly after his arrival, a swirl of skirts and color, to take his hand and welcome him before she was swept away by newer guests. The pressure of her hand remains in his.

A middle-aged man with irregular features and carrot-colored hair corners him against the patio railing.

“So, you’re the pasha. Sybil said she had managed to browbeat you into coming to this shindig. It’s a rough game, ain’t it?” he says, shaking his head and sweeping a hand toward the buzzing crowd. “Nobody wants to talk about the really interesting stuff anymore.” He squints his small blue eyes at Kamil. “Glad you could make it, though. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. I’m Sybil’s cousin, Bernie Wilcott. From the U. S. of A., as I’m sure you’ve guessed.” His breath smells of mint. Serious eyes trapped in a taffy-pull face.

“Kamil. A pleasure to meet you.” Kamil extends his hand.

Bernie grasps it and pumps it, once. “Forgot. Sybil told me you learned your English in the Old Country.”

“Cambridge University. I studied there for a year. Before that, I learned English here, with tutors. How is it that Sybil Hanoum has an American cousin?”

“Sybil Hanoum? Has a nice ring to it.” Bernie chuckles. “Well, her uncle, that’s my father, was the younger brother. You know what that means. Eldest takes all, the whole farm. Or, in this case, the manor house. So he did what younger brothers have done since time immemorial, left the kingdom to seek his fortune. Found it in railroads, but his kids inherited a gawd-awful accent.” He bends over, chortling at his own wit.

Kamil can’t help but laugh along with him.

“You are visiting Istanbul?”

“Well, actually, I’m here for the year. Teaching at Robert College.”

“Ah, you’re a teacher.” Kamil thinks this unlikely, given the man’s eccentric nature, but he hasn’t met many Americans.

“Bernie Wilcott, itinerant scholar.” Bernie bows low and touches his hand to his brow and chest in a mock Ottoman greeting.

Kamil, disbelieving, asks, “What is your area of study?”

“Politics. East Asia, China, but I have a weakness for the Ottomans, and am mighty curious to know more.” He takes Kamil’s arm and steers him into the garden. “Maybe you could be my guide.”

It doesn’t take long for Kamil to feel at ease with Bernie and to recognize that what he had perceived as buffoonery was simply a lack of the formality that usually encases people like lacquer. Moving in society, people rub and clack their carapaces against one another like mating beetles. In contrast, Bernie seems immediately available. They sit on a bench, facing away from the crowd and chatting. Kamil is relieved and pleased to find an intelligent observer of the world. The embers of their cigarettes pulse alternately in the dark.

Later that evening, Bernie brings Sybil to the garden. She is breathless and appears tired, but her eyes are bright as they meet Kamil’s. Wisps of hair have come loose and are plastered to her forehead.

Kamil lowers his eyes and bows. “Madame Sybil.” It is rude to look at someone so directly, especially a woman. Nevertheless, he is smiling.

“I’m so glad you were able to come.”

Before long, Bernie excuses himself and disappears into the Residence. Kamil and Sybil sit on the bench facing the garden, their faces in shadow. Kamil is uncomfortably aware of the revealed expanse of neck and the plump mounds of Sybil’s breasts pushed upward by her décolleté gown. He imagines he feels the heat of her body radiating into his, even though they are sitting a discreet distance apart. It both pleases and disturbs him. He keeps his eyes focused on the shadowy blooms of a nearby oleander, the tree that the Quran says grows even in hell.

“Your cousin is an interesting man.”

“He’s always been like that, even as a child. Irrepressible, I think is the word.”

“I find him quite refreshing. Is the rest of your family like him?”

“No. He’s one of a kind. I do have a sister, though, Maitlin, whom I admire tremendously. She’s irrepressible in a different way—she never gives up pursuing what she truly believes in. So she’s led quite an adventuresome life.” She tells Kamil about Maitlin’s travels, and her long and ultimately unsuccessful struggle to become a physician.

“So now she volunteers at a clinic for the poor where they take advantage of her medical skills, but without giving her any formal recognition. She doesn’t seem to mind, although I mind for her.” Sybil’s voice becomes wistful. “Maitlin just takes the next step. She never lingers over setbacks.”

“And you, madame, if it isn’t impertinent to ask? Is this not an adventure?” He gestures with his hand toward the ancient city slumbering behind the garden wall.

Sybil doesn’t answer right away. She is strangely off guard with this man. She feels innocent, like a child, willing to confess, penitent.

“Yes, yes, it is. But it always seems out of reach, on the other side of that wall.”

Kamil looks at her curiously. He knows that she sometimes goes out escorted only by her driver. The police are aware of the movements of all embassy foreigners.

“Do you not go out?” he asks.

“Oh, of course I do. I’m quite active. I go on visits. Father has a busy schedule and I help him whenever I can.” Her voice is defensive.

“You are far from your family,” he suggests gently. “That is always difficult.”

It is too much for Sybil. She blinks angrily.

“Yes, I do miss my sister. I’ve never even met my nephews. I have no other family, except for my aunt and uncle in America and cousin Bernie. My mother, you see, passed away.” She pauses, balancing her head so the tear that has formed in the corner of her eye will not spill and betray her.

“Health to your head,” he says softly in Turkish.

The light from the party behind them reflects on her wet cheek.

“Thank you, teshekkur ederim,” she replies in kind, her tongue tripping over the many consonants.

Not wishing to draw attention to her distress, he waits silently for her to continue.

Frightened by her sudden weakness, Sybil straightens her back and continues in English. “That was five years ago. Father keeps her memory alive by staying on here, where she was by his side.”

“A mother’s memory is precious.”

“I think he simply finds it easier to bear Mother’s absence if he doesn’t break the rhythm of their life together. He keeps up an endless round of functions and formal visits. I think Father finds the routine soothing. It helps him forget. And this is where he was happy,” she explains.

“You are to be commended. Our society values a child that looks after his mother and father.”

“It isn’t difficult to direct the household, and Father doesn’t impose too many other duties on me.”

“Does this make you happy as well?” he ventures.

“Of course!” She turns to him indignantly. She sees mild green eyes, full of concern.

She turns her face from the light. Several moments pass before she speaks again.

Kamil feels an urge to take her hand, to confide his own father’s seemingly inconsolable grief, his unraveling ties first to work, now to his family, and, Kamil fears, eventually to life. He would like her advice on how to help his father. The death of his wife had catapulted Kamil’s father into training for his own oblivion. After her body was taken to the mosque, washed, wrapped in white linen, and consigned to the tomb under a hail of prayer, Alp Pasha never again stepped foot in a mosque or in the house where she had lived. Instead, he devoted more and more time to smoking opium in a darkened room, eventually giving up any pretense of governing.

When the grand vizier reluctantly took the office from him, Alp Pasha moved into his daughter Feride’s home. He refuses to visit Kamil in the villa where his mother had lived, preferring the opium-induced vision to the real thing. When he prepares himself with a pipe, Alp Pasha told Kamil once, he can smell the roses in the garden and feel the breeze in his hair. Kamil worries that he hasn’t done enough, that he is not a dutiful son, leaving the entire burden to his sister. He ponders how to bring up such a personal subject, then wonders if it is appropriate. The opportunity passes.

“I’ve never thought about it, to be honest. I suppose keeping Father happy keeps me happy as well,” Sybil answers finally. She sounds unsure. “I do have other interests,” she continues in a stronger voice, “that keep me amused.” She tells Kamil about the tutor who comes twice a week to teach her Turkish.

“It’s infuriating when someone speaks at length and then the terjuman translates it with only three words, so I determined to learn it myself.”

She admits to Kamil that she occasionally slips out on her own, concealed under a feradje cloak and dark yashmak veil, and walks around the city, wanting to try out her Turkish without a retinue of servants, guards, and official translators.

“They’re probably spies! So how much will anyone really tell me in their presence?”

Animated now, she shares with Kamil her interest in religion. They discuss Islam, not simply as a revealed book, but as a way of life. He finds that she knows a great deal about the present political debates and intrigues. After all, she has hosted many of the participants in her own home.

Sybil suggests that she practice her Turkish, and they end the evening laughing over mistranslated witticisms and slips of the tongue. Nevertheless, Kamil thinks her command of the language remarkable. She has none of the finesse of those raised at court or schooled in the byzantine labyrinths of bureaucratic politesse, but can converse quite freely and understand much of what she hears. He compliments her sincerely and, for the first time in a long while, is sorry to see a social evening end. On his way to the door, Bernie catches up with him, pats him on the back, and winks.

“Fancy a game of billiards sometime?”

As his horse negotiates the steep paths on the way home, Kamil wonders at the sudden flashes of companionship and trust that sometimes kindle between total strangers. Can he trust his new friendship with Bernie or is real friendship something that emerges only over years of shared history and challenges faced together, like the bond that has developed between him and Michel? In his experience, the initial bridge of trust and comradeship too easily splinters under the pressure of personal ambition or rots through as proximity leads to a greater understanding of the other’s flaws. Before long, a promotion or a move to a different province sends the last planks sweeping down the river.

He realizes there had been no opportune moment to ask Sybil about Mary Dixon.

T
his is Kamil’s third visit to the British Embassy and he is still not inured to the paintings on the reception room wall. He has elected not to bother the ambassador with any further questions; it is Sybil who generally answers them in any case. He wishes to ask her about women’s activities, he tells himself. The door opens and he rises, expecting the butler to lead him to another area of the cavernous embassy.

Instead, it is Sybil herself, in a gown embroidered with blue flowers. Emerging from the lace collar, her throat has the same round solidity of the woman in the painting behind him.

“Hello, Kamil Pasha. What a pleasure to see you again so soon.”

“It was a lovely evening, Sybil Hanoum. Thank you.” Kamil tries but fails to stop himself from looking into her eyes. “It’s good of you to see me again.”

Sybil lowers her lashes, although Kamil can still feel the weight of her gaze. She holds out her hand toward a comfortable chair near the fire. “Please sit.”

Kamil realizes with some distaste that they are to remain in this most inappropriate room.

He sits, his back to the painting, but remains distracted by the thought that Sybil, who has settled herself in the chair opposite him, will have to look directly at it while they speak.

She doesn’t seem to notice the painting, but sits smiling, her eyes on his face. Her face is slightly flushed. “Can I offer you some tea?”

“Yes, that would be most agreeable. Thank you.”

Neither looks directly at the other.

She stands and tugs at the bellpull on the wall behind the settee. Above the lace collar, the back of her neck rises white and smooth until it is lost in a widening arrow of brown hair. Her hips swell beneath the gown. Kamil looks at his hands and forces himself to think of Mary Dixon, dead, a body, a cipher. That is what he has come for—an answer.

Sybil settles herself back into her chair.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of your call, Kamil Pasha? I imagine it must be something quite urgent.”

“I wanted to speak with you about my investigation into Mary Dixon’s death. Perhaps you have some insight where I have none.”

Pleased, Sybil leans imperceptibly forward. “Whatever I can do to help.”

The lack of demurral and false modesty pleases Kamil. The maid pushes in a trolley of tea and ginger cakes. She pours the tea and leaves.

It soon emerges that Sybil has little to add to what is already known about Mary Dixon. She had been in Istanbul for just over a year. Her position had been arranged by a member of the board of trustees of Robert College in response to a letter from her minister attesting to her good character. She traveled to Paris and was given instructions and papers by someone attached to the Ottoman Embassy there. A week later, she took a coach to Venice and a steamer from there to Stamboul. She had complained to Sybil about having to share a compartment with three other women for the fourday trip. She was met at the landing by a closed coach that took her directly to the women’s quarters in Dolmabahche Palace.

“She came here several times to deal with visa matters. At first she was quite mocking of her new environment and so put out about her accommodations, one would think she was coming as a guest rather than as a governess. She said the girl who showed her to her room…” Sybil hesitates, but decides that in a murder investigation, she has no right to let modesty censor her account. “She said the girl was dressed in nothing more than, as she put it, knickers and a wrap.” Kamil swallows a laugh. Sybil blushes, then hurries on. “And she complained that her room was completely unfurnished. She was horrified when she realized they expected her to sleep on a mattress that they brought out of the cupboards at night and to eat, as she put it, on the floor.”

“It must be a great change for someone used to beds and tables and chairs.”

“I thought it a bit unreasonable in someone coming out here to work. Surely she should have expected the experience to be different. Or else, why would she have come?”

“I’m sure she was paid well.”

“I suppose she must have been, although, of course, we never spoke of that sort of thing.”

“How did she get on with her employer?”

“Perihan Hanoum? Mary didn’t seem to like her. She said she was haughty and unreasonable.”

“You know Perihan Hanoum?”

“No, but I met her mother, Asma Sultan, many years ago.”

“The wife of Ali Arslan Pasha, the grand vizier?”

Sybil nods. “It was the winter of 1878. I remember because it was snowing. A young Englishwoman, Hannah Simmons, had been killed that summer. She was employed as a governess and Mother was visiting the royal harems to see if she could find out anything. The police seemed to have thrown up their hands.” She looks up at Kamil, smiling sadly. “You didn’t know my mother. She was very determined.” She pauses. “It’s such a sad story, but, you know, what I remember best is that we rode there on a sleigh. Isn’t that awful of me?”

“You were very young then.”

“Fifteen.” Sybil smiles shyly.

An image of Sybil in the snow comes unbidden to Kamil’s mind. “It’s commendable of you and your mother to do so much.”

Brushing off the praise, Sybil responds, “It’s not right to be nostalgic when another young woman has been killed.

Kamil ponders a moment. “Do you know anything specific that Mary Dixon disliked about her employer? Did they ever argue?”

“She never mentioned anything specific. I wonder, in retrospect, whether Mary liked anyone. It’s improper to speak ill of the dead, I know, but she seemed so disaffected. The only time I saw her happy—although I suppose animated is a better word—was at the soirees she attended at the Residence. She attracted quite a bit of attention with her short hair and bold manner.”

“What kind of attention?”

“Men. Men seemed to be drawn to her.”

Kamil smiles. “Anyone in particular?”

“Not that I know of. Well, she did have a rather lively discussion with a young Turkish journalist, Hamza Efendi, not long before she…passed away. But I don’t think it meant anything,” she added briskly. “Just a conversation. I only mention it because other people noticed.”

“She seems to have taken you into her confidence.”

“Oh, no. Not at all. I think she needed someone to complain to, but we never had a real conversation. We spoke only a handful of times and I remember feeling quite put off by her reticence. That is, well, I shouldn’t think such black thoughts, but it did occur to me at the time that perhaps she sought me out simply to gain invitations to the Residence.”

“Do you know if she had any friends?”

“I didn’t see her very often.” Sybil pauses. “But I do remember that one evening last autumn she spent quite some time chatting with a young Turkish woman. I wondered about it at the time. It seemed as if they knew each other well.”

“Do you remember the young lady’s name?”

“I think it was Jaanan Hanoum, the daughter of an official, I believe, at the Foreign Ministry.”

“The niece of the scholar Ismail Hodja?”

“Yes, that sounds right. I believe someone mentioned that he was a relation. I suppose it’s possible that Mary met her before at one of our soirees. Jaanan Hanoum sometimes came with her father. I just never noticed them together before.”

Kamil leans forward, pondering this further link to Chamyeri.

Sybil looks down, her fingers entwined in her lap. “Oh, dear, you must think me quite wicked for being so critical, when the poor woman is no longer here to defend herself.”

“Not at all, Sybil Hanoum. You’ve been extremely helpful.”

She doesn’t look up.

“Please don’t worry yourself. You’re mistaken to think you are somehow unjust to Miss Dixon’s memory by telling me what you know of her. On the contrary, you are helping me sort out what I believe you English call a ‘fine kettle of fish.’”

Sybil laughs. “Your English really is remarkable.” Then, turning serious violet eyes on Kamil, still sitting with his back to the offending paintings, she ventures, “Could I entice you to stay for lunch?”

“I would be honored.”

Sybil calls the maid to give instructions, then, to Kamil’s great relief, leads the way out of the reception room.

“F
ROM WHOM DID
you inherit your discerning palate, then?”

A servant in a pressed black suit stands just inside the French doors, far enough away that he cannot hear their conversation, although Kamil sees the young man’s head straining their way. They sit on the patio, cooled by breezes from the Golden Horn.

“From my grandmother. Since my parents were abroad so much, my sister, Maitlin, and I lived with my grandmother in Essex. Nana was quite a bon vivant. She had the most fabulous dinner parties with coq au vin, flans, these delicate almond fingers…I can almost taste them now. You know, she hired a French cook for her kitchen. It was quite a radical thing to do, since the French were—and still are—quite unpopular. In fact, some of her kitchen staff quit because they refused to work under a “Frenchie.” But the cook, Monsieur Menard, was such an unassuming person that the staff eventually accepted him. His passion was cooking and he produced the most remarkable meals. Other people served stodgy English fare, but Nana’s dinners were always interesting. Not all of her guests approved, of course.” She laughs, exposing tiny round teeth. “I remember one particular lamb chop that was so tender that I can still, to this day, taste the bubble of flavor that burst in my mouth when I took the first bite.”

Sybil stops abruptly and leans forward, embarrassed. “You must think me trivial to be obsessing over a lamb chop when you are here on a matter of murder.”

“One’s past is never trivial. Your description made me think of the house I grew up in, my mother’s house in Bahchekoy. I still live there.” Sybil’s vivid account of her grandmother’s house has pulled him into a conspiracy of memories from which he doesn’t have the will or the desire to disentangle himself.

“My father was governor of Istanbul, and he was also responsible for the police and the gendarmes, so he was busy much of the time. Even when he was at home, we rarely saw him. The governor’s palace was enormous, with so many rooms always crowded with servants and guests and people coming to petition my father or pay social visits to my mother as the governor’s wife. I think it was all a bit too much for her. So when we were still quite young, she moved my sister and me to her childhood home. It’s a lovely villa, surrounded by gardens. You can see the Bosphorus from the gardens. And instead of your Monsieur Menard, we have Fatma and Karanfil,” he adds with a smile.

“Are they your relations?”

“No, they’re local women who cook for the household. Fatma lived in the cook’s quarters that were behind the house then, at the back of the yard. She never married. Her sister Karanfil came in the morning and then returned to her own home. Her husband was a water carrier.”

He remembers them as they appeared in his childhood, two short, round women, their baggy, brightly flowered shalwar trousers expanding upward to meet layers of brightly patterned sweaters and cardigans. Their faces are full moons, but set with disconcertingly delicate features, as if the women have different, slender selves that somehow have been mistakenly absorbed by their heavy bodies.

A powerful, sensual memory of the kitchen of his childhood floods him as he waits for Sybil to refill his water glass. He toys with the fried mullet on his plate.

The women were in continual motion, cooking and cleaning. In summer they brought their work into the yard. He has an image of Fatma, squatting beside a basin of soapy water, her powerful arms twisting a rope of wet laundry. In winter the blue-washed kitchen walls were festooned with ears of corn and strings of red peppers, pulsating with color. A ceramic water urn stood just inside the door, a tinned copper plate across the top to keep out dust. A copper mug rested on the plate. Kamil remembers lifting the plate and looking into the urn, which stood almost to his chest, the hollow quality of the air and the loamy smell of wet clay, the resistance of metal against the skin of water and the satisfying whirlpool entering his mug. Water directly from this urn always tasted like an entirely different substance than water drunk from a glass. To this day, he keeps a clay jar of water and a tinned mug on the dressing table in his bedroom. He drinks from it to clear his mind and calm his senses.

He sips from his glass. Sybil waits expectantly for him to continue, unwilling to break his reverie by prompting him.

He tries to describe the garden, the kitchen, the fresh, lightly spiced cuisine: roasted aubergines, chicken pounded with walnuts and sesame oil, tart grape leaves stuffed with savory rice mixed with currants. Fatma and Karanfil called him their little lamb and plied him with flaky cheese-filled pastries and sweet cakes, washed down with glasses of diluted sugary black tea. Through the crackle of fire and the slap of dough against wood, Fatma’s husky voice wove Turkish fables and legends and cautionary tales of djinns and demons.

“What happened to them?”

“Karanfil’s husband died in a fire and now she, her son Yakup, and Fatma live in an extension I had built onto the kitchen house after my mother died. With the help of a few other servants, they keep house. They cook for me and tend the garden and my plants.”

“You live there alone, then, with your servants.” A statement.

“Yes.”

This time, the silence is awkward. One word carries an insupportable burden, where an hour-long conversation has flown by with unguarded wings.

Sybil’s face and neck flush red. She motions brusquely to the servant waiting by the door and asks for tea to be served in the garden. She stands and leads Kamil to a table set beneath an incongruous palm tree.

“Tell me about your plants,” Sybil suggests in a voice too charged with interest.

“I have a small winter garden, I believe you call it. I collect orchids.”

“Orchids? How delightful! But how do you get them here? Aren’t they from South America? I’ve heard they’re quite delicate.”

“Not just from South America, Sybil Hanoum. There are many varieties of orchids all around us.”