A Tale of Two Sisters

by Merryn Allingham

  They were at the palace gates now and he stopped walking and looked hard at her. ‘We will both go,’ he decided. ‘We will find a carriage and go. Whether she is at home and will see us is another matter.’

  The carriage swept around the circular driveway, crunching the gravel beneath its wheels, and coming to a halt before one of the beautiful houses they had seen that morning. Its façade was as imposing as its magnificent garden, the one she had glimpsed through the iron railings, and for an instant her resolve faltered. These people had wealth beyond her understanding and with wealth came power. Power that had hurt Lydia, she was sure, and was likely to hurt her, too. But she had to go on. She walked towards the front entrance while Harry was paying the driver. The door was large, forest green in colour, and cast in wrought iron set in a fluted arch of stone. A heavy, ponderous door, but its lace-like decoration was intricate and fragile. She wondered if Elise had chosen its pattern.

  She was about to raise the iron knocker when a woman emerged from the side of the house, holding an enormous bunch of flowers. It was Elise. And right behind her was Yusuf, her constant shadow.

  ‘Miss Verinder – and Harry?’ She sounded flustered.

  ‘Good afternoon, Elise.’ Harry’s unfailing courtesy made Alice smile despite the dangers of their situation. His smooth tones managed to suggest they were welcome visitors, their call nothing out of the ordinary. ‘We were in the district,’ he went on, ‘and Miss Verinder said how much she would like to say a personal goodbye. She leaves this evening.’ He placed particular emphasis on ‘this evening’ – for Yusuf’s benefit, Alice thought. She looked at Harry admiringly. The unassuming man he showed the world hid a talent for diplomacy and quick thinking.

  Elise’s eyes roved anxiously between them, clearly trying to resolve just why they had come. ‘Yusuf, take these please.’ She thrust the flowers into the man’s hands. ‘Take them to the kitchen and get Pembe to put them in water. And ask her to make lemonade for my friends. I would like to show them the garden before Miss Alice leaves for England.’

  He was reluctant to go, but after a tense few seconds, turned and walked back into the house.

  ‘Come quickly,’ she said. ‘I have a small hideaway in the garden. Yusuf has not yet found it.’

  She led them to the far side of the house and to a path that skirted the walls and travelled deep into acres of greenery. The house was set at the top of a gentle hill and the quiet waters of the Bosphorus stretched below them. Was it only this morning they had walked by the shore, unaware of this new, deadly twist to Lydia’s story?

  The hideaway proved to be no more than a rough wooden bench in a small glade, but a refuge invisible from the rest of the garden. Harry sat himself down cross-legged on the grass while the two women perched side by side on the bench.

  ‘What is it you have come for?’ Elise’s voice trembled. ‘You need to speak quickly. Yusuf will be looking for me.’

  Poor woman, Alice thought, the man was her gaoler. Aloud she said, ‘We will be brief, Madame Boucher. Last time we met, you convinced me that Lydia would come back.’ Elise sighed. The old subject had raised its head yet again. ‘I have come to say that I believe you mistaken. I ask you again to tell me all that occurred between you and my sister.’

  ‘Why do you question me in this way?’

  Alice looked at Harry, seeking confirmation. He nodded and she plunged in. ‘There is a bloodstain in my room. In Lydia’s room. It is a very large stain and could only have been made by a terrible accident or a brutal attack, and there is no mention in the palace of an accident. My sister has not gone away of her own free will. She has been kidnapped and badly hurt. Where is she, Elise? And where is her baby? I think you know the answer to both of those questions.’

  Elise’s face crumpled like a sheet of ancient parchment. ‘I can answer only one.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The baby. I know where he is.’ Alice had to lean so far across to hear the words that she was bent nearly double.

  ‘Where? How?’

  ‘He is with an old friend in the city – with her daughter, in fact – waiting for Lydia to return. I took him there for his safety.’

  ‘Why did you not tell me of him?’

  ‘He was your sister’s secret, not mine to reveal. And I have been hoping every day that Lydia would come back.’

  ‘And Lydia…?’

  Elise hung her head, fixing her eyes on the hands she could not stop from a violent twisting. It took several minutes before she could speak. ‘What you have said is new to me – this bloodstain. I do not know what to think.’

  ‘What did my sister do when you took her baby?’ Alice pursued, ruthless in her determination to extract this last secret.

  ‘I sent a guide,’ Elise mumbled. ‘She was supposed to meet him outside the palace walls at dawn. He would take her to the baby and then to new lodgings I had found just outside the city. But she never came. The man waited an hour and then left.’

  ‘And when she did not come, you did not think to look for her?’

  ‘You can see how I am situated.’ Her shoulders drooped helplessly. ‘There was no possibility I could search for her. I thought that maybe she had become scared and decided to leave the palace before the time we agreed.’

  ‘So, if she left the palace early, why did she not meet the guide?’

  ‘All I could think was that she had hidden away, and then something had prevented her from getting to the meeting place on time. Maybe she got there too late and the guide had left. Without him, she had no way of knowing where to go. No way of knowing where her baby was.’

  ‘She could have come here,’ Alice objected.

  ‘I thought she would, eventually, try to get a message to me – my address is well known. But it is almost impossible to send a message here without being discovered and that would have worried her. I hoped that when time passed, things would calm. My father-in-law would forget about the baby and no longer search for him. Then Lydia would make contact with me. But then you arrived, Miss Verinder, and there was more trouble. This is why I begged you to stop asking questions.’

  Alice was stung. She wanted to demand what Elise would have done if she had lost a sister, but instead she pressed on.

  ‘Why is your father-in-law so interested in my sister’s baby?’

  ‘He is my husband’s baby, too,’ Elise reminded her gently. ‘There will be no children for us, and for Valentin Boucher this is an insult and a tragedy. He considered the baby his to take.’

  Alice could feel her body tense. Her feelings for the child had been uncertain, his birth a cause of shame and humiliation. But how could Boucher possibly think he had the right to take a child that was not his. And just what had he intended by this little boy? But now was not the time to ask. For the moment, Charlie was safe – it was Lydia she must find. She turned to Elise again.

  ‘Do you still believe that… that Lydia is out there somewhere, waiting for your father-in-law to grow tired of his search?’

  ‘Je suis tellement désolée.’ The woman hung her head. ‘You have brought me dreadful news today.’ For a long while she continued to stare at her feet, but then burst out, ‘It makes sense of something I did not understand.’

  ‘What is that, Elise?’ Harry prompted her gently.

  ‘There was trouble – the day after Lydia disappeared. Paul’s father came here and there was a fight. I could not hear what they said, but Paul has never fought his father, never in all the years I have known him. It had to be something bad, very bad, to make Paul so angry.’

  Alice braced herself for the question she must ask. ‘Do you think now that Valentin Boucher came here to say that Lydia was… dead?’

  ‘I think it is possible.’

  Alice could not speak. Her throat had closed and she was finding it difficult even to breathe.

  ‘If so, where would she have been laid to rest?’

  Dear Harry, trying to make terrible things sound a little
less terrible. Alice slipped from the bench and knelt beside him. His arms enfolded her and cradled her tight.

  She looked up and saw Elise’s face, her eyes full of unwept tears. ‘If she has been… if she is dead,’ the woman stumbled, ‘it will be because Valentin’s men got to her before she could escape. My father-in-law wanted the baby for himself and he is a man who gets what he wants. He is wicked, he has many crimes to his name, but none that can be proved. And many victims – a young man whose land he took is one. His sister tried to speak to me, but I could do nothing for her. She said she had found her brother’s grave at the edge of the Eyoub Cemetery, though it was unmarked. The graves Valentin fills are all unmarked.’

  ‘Does the Court know of these graves?’ Harry said. He means the Sultan and his mother, Alice thought, remembering her suspicions that the emerald bracelet had been a gift to silence her.

  ‘I think not, but perhaps it suits the Sultan to look away.’

  ‘We must go to this cemetery. I have to know.’ She had suddenly to be moving. She jumped to her feet and pulled Harry up beside her. Elise rose quickly, too. ‘You travel tonight?’

  ‘I was supposed to, but now I am unsure.’

  ‘You must go. Go tonight and take the child with you.’ Elise walked over to her, standing so close she could feel the woman’s breath on her cheek. ‘Take the child,’ she repeated. ‘Keep him safe for ever.’

  ‘But how do we find him?’ Harry asked.

  ‘I will bring him to you after dark.’

  ‘You are watched – Yusuf…’

  ‘I will ask Pembe to cook Yusuf a large meal and Melek to serve it. She is his favourite slave and she loves me. She will keep him busy long enough for me to fetch the child from the family who cares for him and bring him to you. As soon as it is dark, you must leave the palace.’

  Alice’s hands went to the sapphire pendant at her neck and fingered it anxiously. ‘I am watched. How am I to meet you without anyone knowing?’ She thought for a moment. ‘Can I escape the way Lydia intended?’

  ‘Not any more. The crack in the wall has gone. I have driven past in the hope that Lydia might be near – tellement stupide, but what else could I do? – and I saw weeds have been cleared and the wall mended.’

  ‘So, what do we do?’

  ‘We go for a walk,’ Harry put in.

  Elise nodded agreement. ‘You must take a stroll and then disappear,’ she said.

  ‘I can distract the guard while Alice slips through the gates.’ Harry was warming to his theme. ‘I will say I need to stretch my legs before bedtime. They will let me do that as long as they expect me back, and expect you, Alice, to be in the carriage that leaves at nine o’clock.’

  ‘But my suitcase?’

  ‘You must leave it,’ Elise said. ‘Walk out with nothing. It is the only way. When you are through the gates, follow the wall to the right and when you reach the point at which it turns, look across at the street opposite. There is a small mosque on the corner, behind a tall tree. It is not remarkable, but it has a shelter in front of the entrance and I will wait there.’

  ‘I suppose it will be no great sorrow to leave my dresses behind.’ Then as she thought of the evening to come, she stopped speaking. A lightness was in her chest, a flutter in her stomach. The unwanted child had suddenly come alive to her. ‘Will I really see my nephew tonight?’

  Elise managed a half smile. ‘You will, and so shall I. I have not seen him since the day I took him to my friend’s house. He was two weeks old, and beautiful.’

  ‘I am so sorry we have brought this trouble upon you.’ Alice bent to kiss the woman’s pale cheek. ‘I pray you will be safe.’

  ‘What happens to me does not matter. It is the little one who is important.’

  There was a rustle in the grass nearby, then the sound of footsteps coming closer. The three of them froze as though figures in a tableau. Elise whispered, ‘Go quickly. Keep to the wall on your right. It is far enough from the main path that Yusuf will not to see you.’

  ‘And you,’ Alice asked in a troubled voice, ‘what will happen when he finds you here and us gone?’

  ‘We will play cat and mouse again, Yusuf and I.’

  Chapter Thirty Two

  Harry held her hand all the way to the cemetery, though they hardly spoke. Her mind was splintered – fragments – words, sounds, images, rising and falling, circling in a dance of madness – too much with which to grapple. It was not Lydia’s political engagement that had decided her fate after all, but a very personal one. Boucher had brushed aside her sister’s paltry attempts to incriminate him; it had been her child he had wanted. A child he considered his own. Elise had done her best to save the baby, but why Valentin Boucher wanted him so badly was a puzzle. She thought she could make a good guess. Elise was childless and would remain so, her father-in-law was enormously wealthy and, according to Ismet and now Elise, ran an empire of criminal activity. He would want an heir beyond the son he already had, a son that from Lydia’s musings in her journal must be a disappointment to a ruthless man.

  She was still groping her way towards some kind of understanding when she realised they had reached the Eyoub cemetery. Now she must face the moment when the true extent of Boucher’s savagery could be revealed. The carriage dropped them at the entrance and, hand in hand, they began the walk along a pathway that was almost a small road. It meandered a route up the hillside, cypress trees shading the way, while far below the waters of the Golden Horn curled back on themselves to meld with those of the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara. They were walking among gravestones, legions of them on either side. Most were very old, some leaning drunkenly towards each other, some mingling with fallen masonry that had been abandoned to the long grass. Carved on each stone were lines of Arabic or Turkish and at their pinnacle, sculpted headwear – a turban or fez or tarboosh.

  ‘What a strange sight,’ Alice said quietly, as more and more gravestones rose into view. ‘Each stone has some kind of head covering.’

  ‘They distinguish who the person was in life. What their profession was or their social standing.’

  Alice hardly heard him. She was looking ahead at the hundreds of gravestones they had yet to pass. ‘The cemetery seems to stretch for miles.’ Her voice had begun to shake a little. ‘Now that we’re here, I doubt we’ll find anything.’

  ‘Elise said the men her father-in-law killed or had killed are buried at the very edge of the cemetery. We should take a narrower path and head towards the boundary wall.’

  Harry’s words steadied her and she allowed him to tighten his hold on her arm and guide her from the main walk onto a smaller track, and from there to an even smaller one. The forest of gravestones began to thin until finally they petered out and she was left looking at a wasteland.

  ‘Come,’ he urged. ‘We must walk a little further.’ In the distance, a low stone wall marked the extent of the graveyard and they walked towards it.

  They had gone some way when he stopped and pointed. The earth here had been disturbed, not heaped as was usual for burial, but chafed and disordered. It was plain that someone had been digging. They drew closer, staring at the clumps of earth scattered roughly across the ground’s surface, neither of them knowing what to do or what to say. There was a shout behind them and a figure erupted from between a group of trees. The man waved excitedly at them. One of Boucher’s henchmen come to make sure we go no further, was Alice’s first thought. But when the man drew nearer, she saw he wore workman’s clothes and carried a shovel, and on his fez was a badge that looked official. He spoke in Turkish.

  ‘He wants us to follow him.’

  She did not argue and, still holding tight to Harry, followed after the man. The custodian – as she imagined him to be – jabbered a few more words at Harry and waved his hand.

  ‘There. He says the grave we seek is there.’

  ‘How does he know what we seek?’ It was a cruel confidence trick, she was sure. It would be nothing more than a wa
y of extorting money from them.

  ‘This is how he knows,’ Harry said gently. And led her to a patch of earth marked only by a wooden cross, one made from twigs and bound with twine.

  She stood and looked down at it, unable to say the words. Then a whisper was jerked out of her, ‘Do you think…?’

  ‘Almost certainly, Alice. Look around you. How many crosses do you see?’

  The man was talking again and Harry nodded and translated but held her even more tightly. ‘He says it was a young woman, a girl. It was night time and he had been working late. He hid when the men came, but he saw everything. He watched them bury her and felt sad. He realised she was a foreigner and far from home. He thought she must be Christian, so he made her the cross.’

  The howl when it came was not from Alice, but from a tormented creature plunged headlong into darkness without end. The sound echoed through the tombstones, over the bushes, in and out of trees, and across the stretch of calm water flowing below. She threw herself onto the ground, her arms outstretched as though she would cradle her lost sister in her arms. Harry allowed her time to sob, then raised her gently to her feet and wrapped his arms around her, rocking her to and fro as a parent would a small child. It was minutes before she recovered any semblance of calm, but eventually took the square of white linen that Harry offered and dabbed her face.

  ‘Tell him thank you from my heart,’ she said in a voice that was not hers.

  ‘I will.’

  He pulled his wallet from an inside pocket and spoke to the custodian in rapid Turkish. The man nodded and his hand closed over the notes. Harry took her arm once more and in sad procession they made their way back to the main entrance.

  ‘We may have to walk a little, Alice, before we find a carriage. Can you do that?’ She nodded dumbly. ‘And I think it wise if we walk singly here – there is no pavement to speak of.’

  They had gone only a few paces, Harry in the lead, when they heard carriage wheels. He turned ready to hail it, but it was driving fast, much too fast. As it drew alongside, the driver deliberately swerved inwards, the horse rearing as it saw the stone wall of the cemetery rise before it. Then its hooves came crashing down, the nearest catching Harry on the shoulder and throwing him to the ground. Alice was tumbled to one side by the force of the carriage as it passed.