Chapter Seventeen
They froze, Foye with his hands on the top portion of the striped over garment where her breasts would have been obvious were she not tightly bound, her with her hands pulling the garment down from hip level. From outside her door came the sound of a violent argument in Arabic, muffled so Sabine could not immediately decipher what they were saying.
“Bugger,” Foye whispered. His hands gripped the fabric as they waited, not even breathing, either of them, while the shouting continued.
Cheating.
Sabine leaned her head against Foye’s chest. They were arguing about cheating. Foye, of course, did not know that.
“It’s nothing to do with me,” she whispered. She touched Foye’s arm even though what she wanted to do was throw her arms around him and hug him to her. She did not, of course. Her pulse slowed from a gallop to a trot. “One of the guards has accused the other of cheating at dice.”
Foye let out a breath, the only sign that he had been affected by the fright that had paralyzed her. Presently, the argument died away, and the palace fell back into silence. He retrieved another item from her mattress, a cloth sash to be wound several times around her waist.
“Here,” he said when the ends of the sash were secured. He took her pistol from his pocket and slipped it between me folds of the sash. “Next time, don’t hesitate to pull the trigger.”
“I won’t,” she said.
“Shoot anyone who gets even half that close to you,” Foye said.
She nodded. Over the outer garment and sash came a waist-length embroidered coat with sleeves that ended at the elbow. This, she knew, was left open. For her feet were a pair of red slippers to be worn inside a pair of sturdy boots. The boots were a very close fit, but she could walk in them, and that was all that mattered. Last was a brown traveling cloak.
Foye produced a knife from his satchel. “Can you pin your hair or must we cut it?”
There was no time for her to fumble in the dark for pins let alone fasten it securely enough. Nor could they risk her hair coming loose during whatever period of time she must spend dressed as a boy.
She turned her back to him. To her shame, her throat closed off at the thought of losing her hair. Her hair was one of her few vanities. It hung nearly to her waist in thick golden curls, and every night, she counted out one hundred strokes of her brush. By the time she retired, every strand was soft as silk. “Cut it,” she said.
Foye gripped her braid, and she winced even though he wasn’t hurting her. He cut in several passes, all very close to her neck. She felt the pull of his hand on her braid, the blade sawing through, and then, nothing. Weightlessness.
He dropped the severed plait, but she stooped and handed it back to him. Better no one knew for certain that she now had short hair.
“Burn it later or some such thing,” she said.
“Good man,” Foye said. He smiled when he said it, but even though Sabine knew he meant to ease the insult of what he had done to her, the loss of her hair nearly undid her. The direness of her situation came home in force. All she really wanted to do was climb back into bed and go to sleep in the hope that this entire episode turned out to be a misunderstanding. Nazim Pasha did not intend to establish her in his harem; the delays in arranging for her return to the consulate in Aleppo were due to his concern for her health.
No matter how badly she wanted that to be the truth, it wasn’t. She knew that in her heart. Sabine clamped down on her emotions. Better to be bald than trapped here. Her hair would grow back.
Foye held out the jar again, and she rubbed ointment through her hair until he was satisfied with the result. The guards outside cursed at each other again, in shouts that increased in heat until a sudden silence. Her heart pounded again. This was taking too long. They would be discovered, surely they would.
When she was done with her hair, she rubbed her hands together to even out the ointment left on them then scrubbed her hands through what was left of her hair to get it as dry as possible. There wasn’t time to wait. Foye laid a thick, dark scarf across her damp hair that fell down to her shoulders and secured that with a knotted head rope. He stuffed her shift into his satchel. They both knelt to attempt to shape the bedding so anyone who did not look closely might believe she was there.
Foye coiled her braid into his satchel, too, then sheathed his knife and shoved that into one of the outer folds of her sash.
“Tolerable,” he said, looking her up and down. “Keep your head down. You are to go by the name Pathros. You are a Christian of Syrian descent and my dragoman. I brought you with me from Aleppo. We are infidels, you and I. You are my servant, so for God’s sake, defer to me in everything. Do not question anything I tell you.”
“I understand.”
“You have consequence among the other servants on account of your working directly for me,” he said, “but never forget you are in my employ. Do as I say when I say and ask no questions. Defer to me in all things. Our lives depend upon you remembering that. Is that clear?”
“Very.”
He stooped for his lamp. They walked through the adjoining room to her uncle’s apartment. Nothing remained to prove Godard had ever been here but his trunks stacked by the door. Sabine Godard no longer existed, she told herself. She was Pathros, the English lord’s interpreter. Her unfamiliar clothes, she found, assisted in her attempt to leave Sabine Godard behind and become young Pathros.
Foye did not head for the door but for the opposite side of the room, along the wall where the high, narrow windows looked onto the courtyard. She followed to within a few feet of him. He reached up, so tall that he easily hooked a finger in one of the window frames and opened it wide. His point of ingress, and, she presumed, their egress. He turned to her and said, “Is Anthony Lucey right about your Arabic?” His gaze scoured her without any of the warmth she was so used to seeing. The sight made her wonder if she knew him at all. “Have you really no accent?”
“Very near,” she replied. “I’ve improved since we came north.”
The way he looked at her so intently, the crisp tone of voice, the tension in his body was new to her. He was not giving orders as Godard had so often done, but neither was there any doubt he was in command of this situation and expected her to fall in. She had no intention of disappointing that expectation just now. But she could not shake the feeling that she was seeing a different Foye, a man she didn’t know and hadn’t suspected existed.
“If we are stopped,” he said, “say nothing.” He took a step forward and grabbed her upper arms but immediately let her go. “If you do speak, do so in English. Not French. Do not let on you understand that language.”
“That seems a wise precaution.” She rubbed her arms. Her skin tingled from his touch. He had not held her tightly, but neither had his touch been gentle. “The pasha is not the only one here to speak French,” she said. “There are others;”
“If something important comes up in some language I do not speak, please, do translate,” he said. In the dimness, she saw him smile, and that comforted her, to see something familiar about him when everything else was so unfamiliar. “I should hate to miss something crucial because you followed my directions too literally.”
“I’m not a fool,” she said. “You may trust my judgment in the matter of when I ought to translate.”
“No doubt,” he said. “But best if I make myself clear given a misunderstanding between us might be fatal.”
“You are, of course, quite correct.” She plucked at her overcoat with brown hands that startled her. A rather pretty brown, she thought. “You are right to be cautious.” Her skin was not terribly dark, but she could—would, she hoped—pass for a youth who’d spent his life in the sun. Her clothes were a very good fit, but she felt awkward in them. Not herself. Unwomanly. Her bound bosom required that she breathe from the bottom of her lungs if she wanted to get enough air, and that was an adjustment to make. “If I do speak, I shall endeavor to limit myself to only a phrase or two.”
“Good.” Foye doused the lamp and stowed it in a cabinet. She waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. He’d planned this well and thoroughly. She was impressed. And relieved and grateful and any number of emotions she could not at present properly parse out. But then, she would never have expected less from Foye than this precise attention to detail.
He returned to her, his satchel slung across his body, and gestured. She approached. In the dark, he boosted her up, easily and without effort until she perched on the window ledge. Her stomach hollowed out when she looked out. How far away the ground seemed.
“Sabine?”
She twisted to look at him. “Pathros, my lord.”
“Jump,” he said. “It’s not far. I’ll be right behind you.”
Not far. Perhaps not for someone his size. Sabine swung her legs over the ledge. Her stomach took flight.
“Sabine,” Foye said, his voice low and urgent.
She held her breath and pushed off the window ledge into the air. The drop was far enough to make her legs feel like water. And mercifully short. She landed on her feet but not on balance. A lemon tree broke her sideways lurch. Fortunately, the branches did not scratch her badly, but her sleeve was caught in the broken twigs. By the time Foye landed on the ground next to her, she’d freed her clothes from the snags.
A perfectly balanced landing. He hauled himself up and pulled the window closed as best he could. When he faced her again, he handed her his satchel, and she slung it across her shoulders to rest on her left hip. Naturally, Lord Foye would not carry his own things, and she was no longer Sabine Godard, but Pathros, the Marquess of Foye’s dragoman.
They crossed the courtyard to walk openly through darkened corridors until they reached the wing in the palace where servants hurried back and forth. They’d not taken but ten steps before Foye grabbed her elbow and hauled her back to him. She lifted her head as he bent down to whisper violently into her ear, “For pity’s sake, Sabine, walk as if you have bollocks between your legs.”
Her cheeks burned hot. How on earth did one do that?
“Let’s not be discovered because someone notices that my dragoman walks like a woman.”
“I shall do my best,” she said.
He kept his grip on her elbow, and she saw a new fear in his eyes. What now? What new deficiency was there? “I presume you can ride?” he asked.
She took a breath, offended. How did he think she’d traveled through Egypt and Anatolia? She hadn’t walked, and she certainly hadn’t been carried. “Of course I can ride.”
“Astride,” he said. “You must ride astride, as a man would.”
She bowed her head respectfully as a servant passed by. One of Nazim Pasha’s men, she thought. The servant glanced at Foye as he passed, but that was all. If he noticed her, it was to recognize that she was of no importance. “A’yan,” she said. When the servant was past them, she said, “I can ride, my lord.”
“Astride?”
“Astride,” she said. Because she must. There was no alternative.
At last, Foye released her arm. She resisted the urge to rub the spot he’d gripped. Her skin tingled at the contact. They continued along the corridor with Sabine following. He walked quickly, with that sense of barely leashed physicality that had so struck her about him from the first. He kept walking, she following, taking two steps to every one of his, until they reached the main palace courtyard.
Pack animals, horses, and at least thirty armed men crowded one side of the flagstone courtyard. She recognized some of Nazim Pasha’s staff among the men. A high, arched gateway led outside. To freedom. Would they ever ride through that gate, she wondered?
They hadn’t been there long before she saw another Englishman supervising two native men carrying one of Godard’s trunks between them. Asif was here, too, tall and somber, working with the others to prepare for Foye’s departure.
The noise was considerable. No one bothered her, and yet with every minute that passed, she expected someone to point her out as an imposter. The servants were busy with their own affairs; packing trunks onto one of the braying mules; bringing out another of Godard’s trunks; arguing; dealing with recalcitrant pack animals. She could see none of her trunks. Of course not. Everything she had brought with her to Kilis was going to be lost: her clothes, her slippers, stockings, books, her personal notes on their travels, and every sketch of Foye she’d attempted and abandoned since leaving Buyukdere. How odd that she would most regret those sketches of everything she was leaving behind.
Even when she and Foye walked into the thick of it, no one looked askance at her. In the hubbub around her, she was invisible. They saw what they expected to see: the English nobleman Foye with a native boy at his side.
The sky was still dark, but that would not last much longer. Already the stars were fading, and to the east, there was a faint graying glow at the horizon. She did not wish to be here when the sun was high enough for anyone to get a close look at her, and she believed herself correct in thinking Foye did not feel any differently.
He led her to a side of the courtyard where there were shadows aplenty. There, she saw the other Englishman again, holding the heads of two Arabians, a dark stallion and a lighter-colored mare. Foye’s servant, obviously.
The mare was saddled in the native style, with a high-backed saddle and short stirrups. Saddlebags hung off the sides, and there was a rolled-up rug fastened behind the saddle. The sound of the hooves on the cobbles told Sabine the two animals were also shod in the native manner, with a plate that covered the whole underside of the hoof. The stallion’s saddle was English. Foye’s horse.
Ten Janissaries detached themselves from the main group and joined Foye as he headed in their direction. The Janissaries were already mounted, weapons stuck in the sashes around their waists, long-muzzled muskets slung across their backs. Several wore swords and knives, and three or four carried pikes.
With an unpleasant start, Sabine saw the pasha’s white-bearded servant keeping a close eye on Foye. He stood at the edge of the courtyard, near the inner palace, arms crossed over his chest. She put her back to the man and ended up facing Foye’s servant. Had Foye told him what he planned? Did he know who she was? She saw no sign of that. The stallion he held tossed its head, and the servant leaned in to whisper to the animal, stroking the animal’s nose.
“Are we ready, Barton?” Foye said to his servant.
“Aye, milord.”
Foye put a hand to the stallion whose head Barton held, preparing to mount. His body moved with a grace that made her breath hitch as he mounted effortlessly. Why had she ever thought he was an ungainly man? He wasn’t. Not in any respect. The mare Barton also held sidestepped, hooves ringing out on the stone courtyard.
While she waited for someone—Foye, anyone—to tell her what was expected of her, a young man came forward to address Foye in tolerable if heavily accented English. “My lord, am I not to accompany you?” He saw Sabine, in her guise as Pathros, of course, and his eyes widened in what looked very much like injured pride.
Foye leaned down, one hand on the pommel of his saddle. He looked at the young man and said, very pleasantly, “Nabil, you’re to accompany Barton. He will be in need of your services.”
Nabil scowled. “My lord—”
Sabine understood his displeasure. Being shifted to interpret for a servant was a demotion, a loss of status that must sting. Asif stepped between Foye and Nabil, and facing Nabil with a hand to the other man’s chest said, in Arabic, “Do as your master bids or you will be left behind.” He straightened his arm, pushing the boy away. “Go. Go!”
She knew she didn’t imagine Foye relaxed when Nabil did as he was told. Or that Asif had recognized her. She held her breath, but Asif merely bowed to Foye and calmly reached for the reins of her mare. Barton did not mind in the least.
“Pathros,” Foye said, declining to call her by the Anglicized version of the name, “Peter.” He raised his voice and looked back at the Janissaries. “Let us go now.”
Asif reached back and brought around the mare. She could ride. Of course she could. But on her own English sidesaddle onto which she was always assisted. Never on an unfamiliar horse with a wholly unfamiliar style of saddle. She hesitated and her chest contracted. She understood the mechanics of how one mounted astride, but she’d never done so on her own. She was going to fail her first test.
“Pathros,” Foye said, “Nazim Pasha’s servant is headed this way. Mount up. Now.” He sat his horse, face mostly in shadows that emphasized the sharp angles of his cheekbones. Everything depended upon her. Anything she did that led to their being discovered would result in Foye’s death. Nazim Pasha would not willingly let her go, and Foye would not let her be retaken.
Heart in her throat, she walked to the mare, and, thank God, Asif was large enough to block her from view because she was not at all adept at mounting this way. He grabbed her arm as she emulated what Foye had done so effortlessly. She gave an ungainly hop, and her mare skittered sideways. Asif’s hand tightened on her arm. He pulled the mare back and kept her body in a forward tip as he boosted her upward.
She was on. Astride the mare and accepting the reins with heat flashing into her cheeks because the sensation was so utterly, horribly improper and unfamiliar. She discovered, too, that the manner of controlling her horse was a subtly different thing. She understood at once how it must be accomplished, with the use of her thighs and shifts in her weight, the pressure of hands on the reins at a different angle than she was accustomed to, but that insight did not transfer to muscles that had never been so tasked.
Her breath caught in her chest. This couldn’t work. She would be recognized by her awkwardness if nothing else. Her eyes met Foye’s, and he gave her a curt nod. Sabine’s heart lurched. They were all of them, every soul in the courtyard, in danger because of her. If she were missed or recognized, they might all be killed.
Barton had already moved away to the portion of the courtyard where pack mules continued to be laden with her uncle’s possessions. Asif rested a hand on her mare’s neck and said, in Turkish, “Allah be with you,” before he strode away.
The mass of activity and shouting increased. Someone dropped one of the trunks, and the uproar was deafening as everyone in the vicinity began shouting and cursing. In the middle of this chaos, Foye gave the ready sign and their party was off. Sabine froze momentarily and watched Foye’s retreating back. The Janissaries started off, riding so quickly that Foye was soon hidden from sight. Barton, Asif, and Nabil would follow later. She inhaled as deeply as she could and urged her mare forward, toward the gate and freedom.
They headed out the arched gateway under the piercing eye of Nazim Pasha’s majordomo. Sabine’s heart hammered against her ribs as she adjusted to riding astride. She was so distracted by the experience she could think of nothing else until they’d passed through the high, arched gate and onto the road that led to Kilis. The commotion in the palace courtyard receded. Overhead, stars shone in a still dark sky. The moon hung low in the horizon. That she could even see the sky seemed a miracle. And one she hoped would continue.
Foye set a brutal pace south, around Kilis to the road to Aleppo all while the sun was still rising. When Kilis was behind them, too, Foye signaled for her to join him.
“Pathros,” Foye said, speaking just loudly enough to be heard over the noise of the other riders, “before much longer the pasha will discover you’re gone, if he hasn’t already.”
“Understood.”
“With luck, Barton will delay them coming after us, but it’s inevitable that we shall be pursued.” She nodded. Nazim Pasha would not be pleased to learn she’d escaped. “If for some reason we must separate, I want you and as many of these men”—he gestured at the mercenaries riding with them—“as you can take with you to head for Iskenderun. Inform the captain of our Janissaries, if you will. Tell them you have a vital letter that must be delivered to Iskenderun. Clear?”
“Yes, Foye.”
He frowned. “Even in English, to you I am my lord or Lord Foye, understood?”
She nodded. There were too many ways she could reveal herself. Too many.
“When you reach Iskenderun, ask for Mr. Hugh Eglender at the British Consulate. He’s a personal friend of mine and will assist you in private, if need be. If he’s not there, then find him at home, Bayt Salem, in the hills above Iskenderun. Tell him everything that’s happened. Leave nothing out.”
“My lord.”
Foye leaned toward her, adjusting effortlessly in his saddle. “Take this.” He folded the fingers of her extended hand over a small purse he drew from his pocket. “There’s enough in there to purchase your passage to England if it comes to that. Not just money, but gemstones. Eglender will assist you in that as well.”
“My lord.” She took the purse and tucked it into her sash. With a bow of her head, she rode to the Druze captain of Foye’s hired soldiers. Her first official task as Pathros. She relayed the relevant parts of what Foye had told her. The captain listened attentively, nodding when she’d finished, seeing not a woman disguised as a boy, but Pathros, the infidel dragoman employed by Lord Foye.
How strange it was to be Sabine Godard no longer. What sort of person would Pathros be during this journey? What behavior was most likely to keep the others from looking past the surface? Not craven, she decided. Pathros would be as much like Foye as was possible. Outwardly calm. Dependable. Aloof from her countrymen, an attitude easily explained by their different religions. Brave. Decisive.
What other qualities did Foye possess that she had not yet guessed?
She was quite certain she would learn the answers in the hours and days to come.