The day had been a cold one, and few ladies, bare-shouldered as she was herself, ventured into the sea-chilled darkness.
“Your husband had lodgings here in Stamboul,” the prince went on when they were out of earshot of the smokers. “Most Europeans prefer to stay in Pera, of course, particularly since the coup. There haven’t been riots among the Armenians in the past week or two, but fighting in the streets between the Greeks and the Turks can’t be stopped. Your husband…”
He gazed down at her for a moment from his great height, and Lydia could see him asking himself what he could, in discretion, ask her. The look in Lady Clapham’s eyes when she’d said, An acquaintance of your husband, had told her exactly what this “junior attache” did in the Czar’s service.
“I know that my husband came to Constantinople to ask the advice of… certain friends.” She laid the same emphasis on the last words and met his eyes. The corners of them crinkled in a little smile. Yes, I know my husband was a spy and you still are. Presumably, she thought, Lady Clapham wouldn’t have introduced them that way if Russia was an ally of Austria. Whose side was the Ottoman Empire on?
“Ah,” he said. “As you say, Madame Asher.” His smile widened. “Then you know that he probably had his reasons. You wouldn’t happen to know what those were?”
She shook her head. “I only knew that he might be in trouble. Sir Burnwell told me he arrived in Constantinople a week ago yesterday, and that nobody’s seen him since Wednesday afternoon.”
“And what sort of help did you believe you could be?” He spoke kindly, but she could see something else in his gaze. Just because we’re allies, Jamie often said, doesn’t mean we’re on the same side. She felt panicky again, as she had in Vienna, panicky and unable to make a correct choice.
Forcibly, she put the panic aside. “I thought I could recognize the man who might betray him,” Lydia lied, with what she hoped was calm. “I don’t know his name,” she added, and went on at once, “But what happened Wednesday afternoon?”
Razumovsky looked as if he might say something else, but changed his mind. Probably, thought Lydia, because he thought it likelier he’d get more information later if he gave a little himself. He might even actually like Jamie—he looked like the sort of person Jamie, and in fact she, would and could like.
“As I said, he had lodgings on the Stamboul side of the Horn.” The prince lowered his voice and glanced along the colonnade to the group of smokers again. None looked in their direction, but the prince guided her down the short flight of marble steps that led to an arched tunnel beneath the pavilion, and so through to the dark gardens beyond. “He told no one where they were, and when I saw him, he had the look of one watching over his shoulder. On Wednesday men from the palace intercepted him by the Grand Bazaar, sent by the High Chamberlain, they said—though anyone could have bribed him to do so.” He grinned reminiscently. “I’ve bribed him to do similar things myself.”
“And he sent to you for help?”
“We’ve been friends a good many years,” said the Russian. “Sir Burnwell would probably have complained to the army first, or the C.U.P., and been put off for God knows how long. Semibarbarity has its advantages. I came here—where the Chamberlain and in fact the Sultan still hold a good deal of power— and blustered and shook my fist. Shook my country’s fist, which frightened them even more. Already the Sultan is playing off the people against the army, trying to rouse them in a countercoup, for he wields power as the head of the Mohammedan faith, you know. If it comes to it, the Chamberlain and his master are going to need support.”
Lydia shivered, remembering a scene glimpsed from the window of the embassy carriage as they’d clattered along one of the few streets in the old city wide enough to admit such a vehicle: three men, dark-haired and hook-nosed, in the khaki uniforms of the new army, beating up an old man outside a half-closed shop. A muttering crowd had gathered, but no one had dared interfere; the old man had only put his hands over his head for protection, as if he knew perfectly well that begging for mercy or asking for help were equally out of court.
“They brought him out in a short time,” Razumovsky went on, stroking back the surge of his golden mustaches. “As I’d suspected, they were holding him in the guardhouse here, which means it was the Chamberlain who’d been bribed. He had been knocked about a little, nothing serious.”
“I hope he put proper antiseptic on it,” Lydia said, and was startled when the prince burst into laughter. “I mean,” she added hastily, realizing how that had sounded, “I’m quite shocked, of course, that he was hurt, but if he will get into danger… What had he been doing?”
“Apparently—he did not tell me this, but I found it out through palace contacts of my own—questioning storytellers in the markets. That was how they knew where he would be.”
“Storytellers.” Old man who lived to be a thousand… The wandering script of Fairport’s notebook sprang immediately to her mind. Woman who lived to be five hundred (wove moonlight).
“You tell me why,” said the prince.
Lydia only shook her head, though a numbness started behind her breastbone and seemed to spread to fingers, lips, toes. Stress on top of hypothermia, she thought. And then, a small inner voice like a child’s, Jamie, no…
“You’re cold, madame.” The prince put a warm hand to the small of her back and led her up the steps again, toward the brighter lights at the other end of the arcade. “We were walking back to his rooms in the Bajazid when an Armenian boy came up to him. I didn’t hear all the boy said, but I know he said, ‘My master told me to show you the place.’ Jamie took his leave of me…” He shook his head.
Did he look well? she wanted to ask. Did they take his knife when he was arrested, and did he get it back? Did you see if he still had the silver around his neck, on his wrists?
It was conceivable, she thought, that the Sultan’s guards had stolen it. The ones she’d seen at the palace’s outer gates looked capable of relieving a dying man of his shoes.
Under her corsets her heart seemed to be pounding uncomfortably fast.
“Your palace contact didn’t happen to say which storytellers, did he?”
Razumovsky stopped, gazing down at her again. Men had appeared in the colonnade, Europeans in bright colors that had to be uniforms. By the way they were looking around, Lydia guessed they were the prince’s own attaches.
“Mrs. Asher,” he said quietly, “Constantinople is not a good city. It is not a safe city, especially now, with the army in power and turning things upside down, and it has never been a good city in which to be a woman. I have been making inquiries of my own about James. When I hear anything, even of the smallest, I will send to you at once.”
“Thank you.” Lydia clasped the broad, kid-gloved hand. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that. I can’t… there are reasons I can’t tell you how I know… what I know. But any help you can give me…”
“On this condition.” Razumovsky brushed at his mustaches again. His glove buttons had diamonds in them that twinkled like tiny stars. “Something tells me I do not need to tell this to you, but I will anyway. Do not investigate anything alone. Not anything. Call on me for help at whatever hour. Is there a telephone where you’re staying?” She shook her head. “Then send a page. Do you understand? If I can’t come, I’ll send a servant. You don’t need to tell me or him or anyone where you’re going, but don’t go alone.
“Sir Burnwell and the embassy staff are good men, but they haven’t been here as long as I. Moreover, they are perceived as being on the side of the C.U.P., and against the old powers. In any case the German businessmen who’ve advanced money to both sides hold more power here than either my embassy or yours. When you go about the city, take someone with you— someone besides that silly girl of yours, I mean—and don’t assume that you can get away with anything safely. This isn’t England. There,” he said, and led her back toward the lights, the smokers, the door with its tall guards in their billowy pantaloons and turbans of orange and red. Not until they were inside and he had fetched her champagne and a cracker of sour cream and Russian caviar did he excuse himself, and two minutes later she saw him—or at any rate someone his height with a gold beard and a uniform of hunter-green—deep in conversation with Enver Bey himself.
Chapter Fourteen
The room was more crowded than before. During her conversation with the prince, Lydia had been dimly aware of lights passing among the trees and hedges as servants conducted newcomers along the paths from the enormous outer court. Scanning backs, Lydia identified the asymmetrical mauve volutes of her patroness’ gown in the midst of a dark cluster of male suiting. As she approached, she heard the guttural babble of German and made out references to track miles, rolling stock, gauge widths, and Krupps that told her that Lady Clapham had fallen among the businessmen, but in any case Lady Clapham held out her hand to her with the air of a somewhat long-toothed Andromeda greeting a schoolgirl Perseus in ecru lace and pink ribbons.