Chapter Fifteen
“Not here?” Foye had no reason to think the pasha was lying, yet he so believed. Every rumor he’d heard about the pasha came back to him: that he’d held people for ransom; that he engaged in the selling of women into harems; his admiration of Sabine. The extravagant gifts to her were no rumor. The pasha’s interest in Sabine was another fact. “Forgive me, I’m not certain I understand what you mean when you say Miss Godard is not here.”
With a smile, the pasha bowed his head. “Allow me to restate, Marquis. Of course Miss Godard is here”—he gestured with a hand that took in the entirety of their surroundings—“but she has gone for a walk in one of my orchards. Oh, not alone, I assure you. She is accompanied by the servants I have put at her disposal during her stay here. You see, I have been looking after her comfort. My servants have been instructed to inform her of your arrival the very moment she returns.”
“Can you not send someone to fetch her?” He spoke casually, but his interior state was far from casual.
“But of course!” The pasha smiled. “I have done so already. She will return any moment, I am certain.” A servant came forward to refill and light the coal that would heat the tobacco in the bowl at the top of the narghile. The pasha gestured to the food set out. “While we wait, please, my lord, eat.”
“I’m sure you won’t object if, in the meantime, I arrange to have the Godards’ things prepared for removal. I don’t wish to put you to any trouble, so naturally, my servants will take care of everything.” Asif, Foye thought. He needed to find Asif. Godard’s servant would surely know what had happened here. “I should like us to leave at first light tomorrow.”
“So soon? But you have just arrived.” The pasha stroked his beard. “You English are always in such haste. Allow me to properly entertain you before you hurry off.”
“Nazim Pasha, as I am sure you can foresee, with the death of Miss Godard’s uncle there are formalities to be seen to. The consulate must be notified. The sooner Miss Godard and I are in Aleppo, the better.”
“All will be seen to in due time.” The pasha clapped again, and another servant came forward to receive instructions. He, too, hurried away as had the other. Foye itched to follow him. About now he’d lay odds that the servant was stopping out of sight and doing nothing but waiting where he would not be seen. Jesus, he was seeing treachery everywhere. It was quite possible that Sabine was indeed engaged at the moment and not available.
Foye’s stomach roiled with tension. No matter how reasonable he told himself it was for Sabine not to be immediately available simply because he wished her to be, he was convinced that every passing moment increased the likelihood that Sabine would be lost to him. The bloody orchard, if it even existed, couldn’t be so far away that she would be hours from the palace.
Just as he did not believe Sabine was walking in any orchard, he did not believe the pasha had directed his staff to cooperate in readying the Godards’ belongings for transport. Again the servant returned, and again there was a rapid exchange between the pasha and his servant.
Foye, in his turn, signaled for Nabil to join him. When the man was at his side, Foye spoke in a low voice. “Can you translate any of what they are saying?”
They are talking about Miss Godard,” he replied. There was concern in his eyes.
“And?” Foye did not need to tell Nabil to keep his voice low. The boy’s eyes were wide and frightened. Their lives might well depend on maintaining the fiction of the pasha’s excuses, and both he and Nabil knew it.
“Nazim Pasha has told his servant to post a guard at her door.”
Foye schooled himself. “I want you to find a man, a native, who worked for Sir Henry Godard. His name is Asif. Find him, tell him I am here. Find out whatever you can about what happened. Then find Barton and tell him we’re to leave at first light tomorrow with the Godards’ possessions.”
Nabil bowed and hurried away.
“Has Miss Godard returned from her walk?” Foye asked when the pasha’s servant had bowed his way back to a place on the floor of the irwan.
“Indeed, Marquis, she has. But I am informed now that she is sleeping.” He gestured. “Of course I am deeply concerned for her. My physician has been monitoring her for signs of the illness that took her uncle. She must not be disturbed. Be patient.” He drew deeply from the narghile. “There is time for all that and more. When we are certain her health is not at risk.”
“Has she been told I am here?”
The pasha lifted his hands. “That I do not know. You English wish the world to move so quickly.” He shook his head. “This evening, Marquis. You will certainly see her later this evening. In the meantime, please, enjoy yourself. There is much to see here in Kilis.”
“Respectfully, Pasha, Miss Godard is a British citizen and in need of assistance from her countrymen in her time of need. She is alone, without her uncle. There are a hundred details to be attended to in this matter. Surely she can be awakened and told I am here, willing and ready to assist her.”
“One wonders,” the pasha said, reclining against his silk-covered divan while a servant—a slave?—slowly fanned him, “why you are here instead of the Consul in Aleppo. I have met Mr. John Barker. We have dined together from time to time. He is a most amiable and competent man.”
“No doubt he is,” Foye replied.
“How can all be taken care of as it should be without his authority?” He crossed an arm over his middle, one hand holding the water pipe. “You are surely aware that you are not in Britannia. There are legalities among the Turks, Marquis, that should be seen to as well.” He fingered the luxurious fabric of his kaftan. “Customs that should be observed.”
Foye tilted his head. “I am sure,” he said slowly, “there are ways to repay you for the trouble you’ve been to on behalf of your British guests.”
“I think,” the pasha said with thoughtfulness that was not the least genuine, “that it would not be right or proper for me to deal with anyone but the Consul himself where Miss Godard is concerned. I understand that now her uncle is dead there is no other male relative here to represent her interests.”
“You are correct, Pasha.”
“How can I release her to you when you are not her uncle or brother or a male relative who will protect her as a woman must be protected in these dangerous and uncertain times?” He shook his head mournfully. “Such things are not done here. It is not our way to entrust a woman to a man who is not her relative. Has she really no family who can come here and retrieve her?”
“I’m sure the Consul can assist in clarifying her status, Pasha.”
“You are doubtless correct in that.” The pasha exhaled a stream of smoke. “These things take time. A very long time.”
Foye knew what the pasha intended. He knew it in his soul. First, Foye would be required to pay a bribe that would be more than he could possibly have on hand. He would have to return to Aleppo to raise the money and convince the Consul to deal with the pasha. Nazim Pasha would either refuse the ransom, demand an even greater sum, or, more likely yet, arrange to have Foye robbed of it on his return to Kilis. And what would happen to Sabine in the meantime or afterward?
His chest turned cold with fear. A thousand unpleasant outcomes occurred to him, each worse than the one before. The pasha would establish her in his harem or sell her to someone else. One heard that the Turks prized European women in their harems. Was it not whispered that the sultan’s own mother had been a Frenchwoman? No mere rumor, alas. This was the nineteenth century, not the fifteenth, and yet so many old customs remained alive and vital.
“Certainly,” Foye said easily, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, “I insist on seeing you are compensated for your troubles on her behalf, Nazim Pasha.”
While Foye waited for a response, the pasha took up the narghile again. A cloud of bergamot-laced smoke floated in the air. He smiled broadly. “Compensation would be most generous of you. My good friend Mr. Julius Ghyoot was my guest here for half a year.” Unfortunately, Foye knew this to be fact. Ghyoot’s trials at the hands of Nazim Pasha were the stuff of legend among the diplomats in Buyukdere. “He will tell you himself he was entertained every day of his stay.”
“At no small expense to you.”
“Precisely.” He grinned. “How quick you are to understand. That is what I so like about you British. But I wonder. Surely, in six months, perhaps a little longer, some relative from England might bestir himself to come for her. That would resolve both difficulties: the expense of her stay here and the difficulty in putting her into the hands of a man who is not her relation.”
“I have five very fine horses with me,” he said “You may have your pick of them. For your trouble.”
“Only five?” Nazim Pasha laughed, one hand on his belly. “I have a dozen in my stable now! Do you value Miss Godard so little, Marquis? Five thousand Arabians would be a small price to pay for a woman such as she is.” He touched the ring on his index finger, twisting it around and around. “She is…a pearl without price, do you not agree?”
“Not without price,” Foye said.
“Agreed,” the pasha replied with a laugh. He lifted his hands. “You see I am a reasonable man. There is, indeed, always a price.”
“The question to be settled between us,” Foye said, “is what I will agree to pay you to put Miss Godard into my custody.”
The pasha’s smile sent a thread of ice straight to his heart. “There is the matter of the sultan as well.”
“The sultan?”
Nazim Pasha leaned back, stretching an arm along the top of the divan. “He would be pleased, I think, if I sent her to him. A gift to demonstrate my great esteem for him.”
Foye stared into his coffee until he was certain his face would not give away his emotions. Everything depended upon him remaining calm. “I assure you, the British government would not look kindly upon such an action.”
“And yet, I am moved to do so.” He held out one hand, palm up. “I spoke of customs. This is a custom among us. Not at all an uncommon transaction, Marquis. I am free to make a gift of any woman in my harem. Or to sell any concubine I wish.”
“Of course, but Miss Godard is not in your harem. She is a British citizen.”
“A small detail. Marquis.” Nazim Pasha slowly stroked his beard. “It means nothing to me and is, in any case, easily remedied.”
Foye had learned at least something of the art of bargaining from watching Sabine. “If not five horses, then perhaps a hundred pounds?”
“A hundred pounds?” The pasha laughed, hands on his belly. “You insult me. A hundred pounds. Five thousand pounds sterling would be a pittance for what you ask me to give up. A woman such as her?”
“It’s wartime. Pasha. I doubt very much I could get my hands on any significant amount of specie. I might be able to manage two hundred pounds.”
“I have many expenses, Marquis, and you are a nobleman in your own country. Can five thousand be beyond your ability to gather?”
Their negotiations carried on for the next hour, punctuated by coffee and the nearly constant use of the narghile. Eventually, they settled on the sum of nine hundred fifty pounds. A ruinous sum Foye agreed to deliver in specie and any other combination of coin or gems that Foye could amass in Aleppo or Constantinople.
He returned to his room before eleven that night, having politely declined the company of one of the pasha’s dancing girls. He spent an hour with Barton and Nabil relating a less than complete version of his bargain and what he intended to do about it. At this point, Foye did not trust anyone. He barely trusted Barton, and he was an Englishman. When he’d sent them away, each with his own set of instructions to follow, all he could do was wait for them to be carried out and count the minutes ticking away.
When Nabil returned, Foye gathered what he needed and left his room.
In the courtyard that shared a wall with the wing in which he’d learned the Godards had been housed, Foye stood motionless, a light but bulging satchel slung across his body as he listened for sounds that indicated he should continue to wait. He listened to the noises of the palace. Distant conversation. The sound of night birds. The faint scent of smoke in the air. Nothing out of place or unsettling. Well, then. It was time to act.
He adjusted the satchel so that the bag hung from his back. With his height and strength, he had no difficulty pulling himself up and through an open window. He’d been prepared to break one open if need be, but that proved unnecessary. His heart nearly hammered out of his chest at the noise from him opening the window wide enough to admit him. He pushed through and landed hard.
Foye crouched until he was certain the guards Nabil had warned him of had heard nothing. From his satchel, he removed a small lamp and the implements required to light it. In the ensuing faint light, he could see the Godards’ trunks stacked in the center of the room awaiting removal to Aleppo in a few short hours. That, at least, was not something the pasha had seen fit to prevent.
At the interior door that connected Sir Henry’s room to Sabine’s, he paused and steeled himself against the thud of his pulse. Beyond a preference that he not die, he didn’t care so much for his fate. If this was the night when the Marrack line came to an end, it would at least end in an honorable cause. But it wouldn’t be only his life that ended. Any mistake or misfortune now would consign Sabine to whatever fate the pasha had in mind for her. Nothing very pleasant he was sure, whether it was confinement to Nazim Pasha’s harem or the Seraglio in Constantinople.
If he was overheard, and provided he wasn’t shot dead soon after, he wasn’t sure if he could subdue both the guards on her door. On a purely physical level, yes, he didn’t doubt he could eliminate the men if it came to that. Whether he could do so without rousing more of the pasha’s men was a question he preferred he not be forced to answer. The fact was, he was prepared to die or commit murder on Sabine’s behalf. In either case, he would stand at the gates of heaven sure that he had done what honor required.
He kept the lamp shielded behind his hand and opened the door to Sabine’s room. The native custom was to sleep on mattresses laid on the floor at night and put away during the day. Thus, he could make out Sabine’s sleeping form at the far side of the room. Her mattress had been laid out next to the carved cabinets that held the bedding during the day. He moved as silently as he could through the darkened room. Thick rugs covered the marble floor and muffled the sound of his shoes. A few feet from the mattress, he stopped. She slept soundly, unaware of his presence in her private chamber.
The quilt that covered her was a thin, striped gold silk. One bare foot poked out, as did one of her slender, pale arms. He felt like some vile seducer who, having obtained the key to an innocent’s bedchamber, had now crept in to have his wicked way with her person. He was aware that awakening her was likely to frighten her, and he could not afford to have her make any noise that would inadvertently alert the guards.
In her sleep, she turned over so that she ended up facing him, a slender, feminine shape under the covering quilt. One hand disappeared under her covers. In the flickering light of his lamp, her golden hair gleamed softly.
She looked so very young and innocent.
And here he was, in a way, as intent on her seduction as the pasha himself.