A Tale of Two Sisters

by Merryn Allingham

  ‘Not that I might be smoked out of my room, no. But that you would suffer in some way. The rumours I spoke of – some of them told of reprisals against people who had displeased Monsieur Boucher. I think it’s safe to say we have displeased him. Thoroughly. We went to meet Ismet, a man he knows for his enemy. If you were to seek out his daughter-in-law, too, that could bring worse trouble.’

  She sprang to her feet, a decision made. ‘It might, but I cannot stop now. I appreciate your concern for me and I promise I’ll not involve you further. You have suffered enough and I cannot tell you how sorry I am. Whatever I do in future, I will do alone.’

  He jumped up to stand beside her. ‘Not so. If you must carry on, I will be with you.’

  She was amazed and felt her throat tighten. ‘But why?’

  ‘The stories about Boucher were only ever stories. Nothing was proved against him and I was able to discount them. To be honest, it was better for me that I turned a deaf ear. But now I know from personal experience that most must be true, I cannot stand by and do nothing.’

  ‘And that is enough for you to risk everything?’

  ‘Not nearly enough, but you are, Alice. I’ll not let you walk into danger alone.’ There was a pause and then, as though it were dragged out of him, he said gruffly, ‘I care what happens to you.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  She walked back along the familiar path to the harem, replaying his words in her mind. Harry cared for her – though unwillingly, it seemed. She’d heard the reluctance in his voice and sensed that if he could change or forget the way he felt, he would. No doubt he realised, as well as she, that there was no future for them. But still he cared enough to risk his job, his security, even his life, and that was something she had never imagined.

  But she would keep to her word. Whatever Harry’s wishes, she would not involve him any further in the perilous game she was playing. Instead, she would learn cunning. She had an enemy and she knew who he was. He had been Lydia’s enemy, too – a ruthless and violent man, and her only chance of winning against him was to walk softly. She would find Paul Boucher and, once he was alone, slip unseen into his office and question him. If he was in league with his father, he would tell her nothing and she would be facing whatever else Valentin Boucher chose to visit on her. But if he weren’t, if he were an honourable man, there was a chance she would learn the truth of Lydia’s disappearance. And that was worth any amount of reprisals.

  She did not return to her room immediately but repaired to the meeting chamber once more. The atmosphere had quietened a little, and though there was a buzz of chatter, the women had returned to their daily activities. A girl was arranging an armful of wildflowers in one of the huge antique containers that decorated the room. The red poppies were a slash of colour against the engraved silver of the vase. She had seen the girl before; she was someone who had entertained them one evening with a recitation of Persian poetry. It hadn’t mattered to Alice that she had understood not a word. The music in the language had spoken for itself.

  ‘I loved the recitation you gave the other evening,’ she began.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘We may need your beautiful verse again. To calm us. I hear there has been a fire in the palace.’

  ‘Very dreadful,’ the woman agreed.

  ‘I heard that one poor man lost his room. So sad.’

  ‘But he is safe.’

  Alice was relieved that the woman had understood her perfectly. ‘Was the fire near the beautiful new library?’ she asked. ‘I have visited there and loved the building.’

  ‘Not far. There are dormitories near.’

  ‘And offices I suppose.’

  Her companion looked nonplussed and Alice hastened to say, ‘The size of the palace always amazes me. I get lost all the time. I think I would need a hundred years to be sure I could find my way.’

  The woman smiled and nodded. It was now she needed to come to the point, but how to bring Boucher’s office into the conversation? She was still trying to work it out, when there was another small flurry among the women. Several were bowing, others clustering around a half-hidden figure, and she realised that a visitor had come to the haremlik.

  It was Elise Boucher herself. An indescribable piece of good fortune. Sevda had met her at the door and was guiding her guest through the chamber and on towards the Golden Road, a corridor that Alice knew led to the Valide Sultan’s quarters. Was Elise here to discuss the mischief that had been perpetrated, or worse, to plot new mischief with the Sultan’s mother? Was the whole Boucher family, the whole of the Sultan’s family, part of a plot Alice could only guess? It was a terrifying thought, but she could not allow this unlooked for opportunity pass through her hands. She settled back on the divan and waited for Elise’s return, all the time watching the doorway to the wide corridor beyond.

  A few minutes later, Sevda walked back into the room, but without Elise. Alice rose to meet her. ‘Was that Madame Boucher?’ she asked, thinking that by now she must have perfected the face of innocence.

  ‘You have met the lady?’ Sevda smiled. ‘She is very elegant, I think. And Sultan Rahîme considers her so.’ Alice hoped the girl would go on and her hope was rewarded. ‘Madame Boucher has brought journals, copies of La Mode, that show drawings from the fashion houses of Paris. The Valide Sultan intends to order from a coutourier there. The very best coutourier.’

  It would have to be, Alice thought. ‘Madame Boucher will know the best, I’m sure.’

  The girl looked earnest. ‘Sultan Rahîme does not want Western dress, you understand, but from the illustrations she will be able to judge – the cut, the material, the finish – and then decide who will most please her.’

  ‘She is fortunate to have such an elegant woman to consult.’

  ‘You, too, are very well dressed, Miss Alice.’

  Sevda was lying but doing so graciously, and Alice did not mind. For the time being, her suspicions were laid to rest. Elise Boucher’s visit to the harem appeared entirely virtuous.

  She touched Sevda lightly on the arm, wanting to detain her. ‘I fear I don’t myself follow fashion. Lydia was very interested though. Do you know if my sister ever consulted Madame Boucher?’

  Sevda flushed and her hands fidgeted with the wide sash she wore. ‘I’m sorry but I do not understand.’

  ‘I wondered if Lydia spoke of clothes with the lady. How well my sister knew Madame Boucher. She met her on the train, on the journey here, did you know? And she seems to have liked her.’ Alice was stretching the truth, but it hardly mattered.

  ‘I am always in the harem, Miss Alice, and do not know what happens in other places.’ The girl flicked her veil a little further over her face.

  ‘But I imagine Madame Boucher came to the harem while Lydia was here?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. I don’t know. Now if you will excuse me.’

  Elise’s visit had been short as well as innocent and she had reappeared in the meeting chamber within half an hour. Judging by Alice’s own experience, thirty minutes appeared to be the most the Valide Sultan was prepared to offer her visitors. Sevda hurried over to the doorway to greet their guest effusively; she was delighted, Alice could see, to have evaded further questions. The girl knew something and that was sad – she had hoped the young woman would not be implicated in whatever wickedness had occurred. She had been Lydia’s friend, whatever she said to the contrary, and Alice liked her.

  Elise was shaking her head at Sevda’s offer to escort her to the courtyard. ‘Non, mon amie. I have a carriage waiting. Please do not disturb yourself. Here – this is a journal Sultan Rahîme does not want. It is a collection of plates from Paquin. Perhaps you might like to see it?’

  Sevda took the proferred volume, her face shining with anticipation, and began straight away to turn the pages. The visitor waved vaguely at the gathering of women, then drifted towards the passageway that led to the harem entrance. Alice had deliberately shifted her position so that she would no
t be recognised, but as soon as Elise left the room, she followed, reaching the Square of Justice a step or two behind her quarry.

  ‘Madame Boucher,’ she said. ‘How delightful to meet you again.’

  Elise did not look delighted. ‘Mees Verinder.’ She had acquired a deliberately thick accent, as if to emphasise her inability to hold any prolonged conversation with an Englishwoman.

  ‘I caught sight of the volume you gave to Sevda. They are beautiful clothes.’

  ‘I think so.’

  Madame Boucher smiled faintly and moved towards the waiting carriage. As she did so, the man Alice had seen in the library appeared from behind the vehicle and took up position beside Elise, his muscular form towering over the woman’s frail figure. She had assumed earlier that he was a bodyguard, but why Elise should need one had been puzzling. Now, though, she began to wonder what his true role might be. Whatever it was, he was not going to prevent her speaking.

  ‘We talked before about my sister.’

  Elise turned. ‘I hardly knew your sister, Miss Verinder. This I have already said.’

  ‘But you see, madame, I have a problem with what you have told me.’ The woman’s face slid beneath a sheet of ice. ‘I believe you knew her better than you say. And if you did not, your husband did.’

  Elise gave a small gasp. ‘I must go. I have things to attend to at home.’ The bearded man took a step forward as if to push Alice away, but she reached out and grasped Elise by the hand. ‘Please, tell me what you know,’ she pleaded.

  ‘I know nothing.’ The woman’s face had frozen hard.

  ‘But you must. Your husband, my sister, were – friends,’ she finished desperately. ‘He must have spoken of her to you. Perhaps she visited you at home?’

  ‘She did not. And no, he never spoke of her.’

  ‘Madame Boucher, Elise, I have been driven half mad by her disappearance. If there is anything you can say that will help me find my sister, I beg you to tell me.’

  The woman’s face changed. The sheet of ice slid away and the eyes were filled with such sadness they seemed to contain the pain of the world. ‘Dear lady, I am so sorry for you.’

  ‘Then tell me where she is.’

  ‘I cannot. I do not know. That is the truth.’

  ‘And your husband?’

  ‘He does not know. You must believe me.’

  ‘Then who does?’

  The woman did not answer. This had been a last throw of the dice. There was no one else to ask, nothing more to find. Lydia was lost, and tears flowed unheeded down Alice’s face.

  It was Elise’s turn now to clutch her arm, though the man tried to block her. ‘Do not cry, Miss Verinder. She will come back.’

  Alice shook her head, but Elise said again, ‘She will come back, I know it.’

  ‘How can you know that?’ she asked hopelessly.

  ‘She will come back. But for your own sake, you must stop asking questions.’

  And before Alice could say more, the woman had been helped unresistingly into the carriage. The driver cracked the whip and the vehicle rolled away.

  * * *

  There was such trouble in her heart that Alice could not return to the gossip of the women’s room, could not walk in the garden even though the sun shone, could not go to the library and tell Harry what had transpired. Instead, she scuttled to her room, avoiding the surprised looks of the women she encountered. There she pulled the drapes across the window and lay down on the divan, grateful for the shadows.

  Once again, she wondered just how close Lydia had been to Paul Boucher. Had he suspected what she was doing at Ismet’s behest? And what had Elise Boucher meant by saying her sister would come back? Three times the woman had said it, but why was she so certain? Was Lydia to come back for Paul? Surely not, yet Alice was more convinced than ever that he or someone in his family was responsible for Lydia’s disappearance. She had blamed her sister’s friendship with Ismet and thought her involvement in political intrigue had led to this abduction. But what if it were something more personal? Elise’s manner, her words, suggested that it might be.

  She sat upright. Did her sister’s letters hold the answer? She had read them so many times, but if she were to look at them again with new eyes… She pulled her suitcase from under the divan and rifled through the few of Lydia’s belongings returned to her. The letters were at the very bottom. Painstakingly, she read through them once more. Read and re-read to no avail. She noticed again how much shorter the letters had become, how much less open, and now that she knew what Lydia had been engaged in, she could see why. But apart from the initial mention of meeting Paul and his wife on the train, her sister had written nothing about the Bouchers. There was not even a comment on the party the Sultan had thrown for his European guests, though Alice knew for a fact that Elise Boucher had talked to Lydia at the event.

  She bound up the letters once more, tying the ribbon tight, and this time packed them into the locked compartment of her case. Then gathered together the few possessions Lydia had left: pens and paper on one side of the suitcase with watercolours on the other. There was a view of Hagia Sophia, a vivid sketch of the local market, and a cemetery of some kind, water in the background and tall gravestones that stared out at her from the page, fierce and uncompromising. It was unsettling but it told her nothing. All that was left was the book her sister had been reading – Constantine the Great by one J. B. Firth. She picked it up, then buckled slightly under its weight. That made her smile. It was just the kind of forbidding tome Lydia would take on a journey; the serious student of history was as much part of her sister as the mad girl who launched bricks through windows or sang music hall songs at the top of her voice.

  But what use was it? In a fit of impatience, Alice cast the book to one side and a bookmark fell to the ground. It was a sheet of paper, folded lengthwise in four, but when Alice unrolled it, she realised it was a page of a journal. A page that had been deliberately removed with a sharp, clean cut. And where was the journal itself? She felt her heart thump a little louder. She smoothed the page out, unable to rid it of all its creases, but well enough to read the words Lydia had written.

  She scanned down the page. Nothing. At least nothing that would explain why it had been excised. There were several observations on the Court, the harem, the furnishings, the clothes and jewellery. A small pencil drawing of Hagia Sophia in the corner of the page made Alice smile. Beside it in characters so small she had to peer to decipher them, she read PB took me here. She was getting close, she thought, and her heart beat a little faster still. She turned the page over – and there it was. What she had been looking for. And reading it now, she understood more fully why Lydia’s letters had made only the barest mention of Paul Boucher.

  My ‘romance’ with Paul is going well. He is vastly attracted which is a help, but I’m also doing a little flattering here and there. He’s quite a simple soul, I think, and laps it up unquestioningly. He took me to the Dolmabahçe Palace yesterday. Sevda tried to dissuade me from going. He is a married man, she said, quite shocked that I spend so much time with him. And his father will not like it. The Bouchers are powerful people – it is best not to cross them. I’ve no intention of crossing them, just holding on to this sweet little man long enough to get what Ismet wants.

  So far, I’ve been unable to stay in the office without him. I’ve noticed he is very particular about locking everything away and he doesn’t like to entertain me there. He is always wanting to usher me out to go and look at some monument or other. I wonder sometimes why I’m doing this. I find the women in the harem so much more interesting. But Paul is beginning to trust me. He has started to talk about Elise. It seems she is unable to have children, which I’d worked out on the train, but I can see now that it’s a problem between them.

  I feel quite sorry for her. She has a boring husband, a bully of a father-in-law – I reckon Valentin Boucher has already warned his son not to get involved with the English governess – and she has no
children to keep her company. Poor Elise. I asked Paul if I could meet her, take tea with her, but he wasn’t at all keen. He wants to keep me to himself, obviously. What it is to be adored!

  Chapter Nineteen

  LYDIA

  Constantinople, October 1905

  Lydia dressed carefully, choosing the prettiest wrap she possessed to wear over a cashmere frock of plain grey. The weather had become chilly and she’d needed to delve into the back of her wardrobe for the several winter dresses Alice had thought to pack. Sweet, thoughtful Alice, so well-organised. And so in command – sometimes a little too much.

  Like when she had run away from school. She would never had done it if Alice had listened to her. She was being bullied, she had told her sister, not by her fellow pupils but by some of the teachers. Alice had been shocked but certain it was Lydia’s fault – her sister was imagining things or trying to be in some way special. But she hadn’t made it up and she didn’t feel that special. The Latin teacher in particular had been horrible, punishing her severely for the smallest of crimes, and holding her up to ridicule in the classroom if she answered wrongly. She had begged Alice to let her come home, but her sister had refused, refused even to mention it to their parents. It’s a good school, Lydia, she’d said, and Papa pays large fees for you to attend. The answer lies with you – you must change your attitude and things will improve.

  But they didn’t, and when a group of actors came to the local town and the girls were permitted to see a performance of Macbeth, what else was there to do but join the company when it left? She had travelled with them for several weeks before she was found, listening nightly to a different play, making the performers tea in the interval and, afterwards, tidying up props and costumes. She had found a joy in the life she hadn’t expected, and that was part of the fun of living, wasn’t it? Taking a chance, taking a risk, but that was something Alice would never understand.