Princes and Princesses

by Cartland, Barbara

  “I thought when I saw a movement,” he said, “that she was taking one from the plate to take back to the Prince, but she may in fact have been concealing the second one she had taken for herself.”

  “You might have offered her the rest,” Harry suggested.

  The Duke shook his head.

  “No, I suspect she is an aristocrat and they are incredibly, unbelievably proud. I remember when I was in St. Petersburg thinking that they were the proudest people in the world. They would never become the sort of poverty-stricken beggars you can tip.”

  “The Prince is obviously prepared to accept your money,” Harry said.

  “Judging by this letter, he intends to sell me something, which is a very different matter,” the Duke retorted. “And I don’t mind betting you, Harry, however hard up he may be, if I offered him money for nothing he would not take it.”

  He thought that Harry was looking sceptical and added,

  “You don’t know the Russians as I do. They are a strange people and the sufferings of those who have not been killed by the Bolsheviks must be terrible in a world where nobody wants them.”

  Harry looked at him in surprise.

  It was unlike the Duke to be compassionate or even sympathetic with the underdog, but he said nothing and only hoped that this new diversion would be as interesting tomorrow as it appeared to be today.

  The bazaar was crowded, but it seemed that no one was buying from the stalls and small shops, which had pitifully little to offer.

  The Duke had noticed as they drove through the streets that the people moving slowly over the dirty broken pavements looked half-starved.

  There were children walking barefoot and now a woman came up to them, holding out a skeleton-like hand with hennaed nails, for alms while the baby she carried looked too frail to live more than a few hours.

  The Duke gave her some small coins and she hurried away as if he might repent his generosity and ask for them back.

  Dolly was still forging ahead, her rich fur coat looking very out of place amongst the rags and shapeless garments worn by other passers-by.

  Many of the Turkish women still wore veils and the enveloping black burnous and, despite its voluminous folds, they gave the impression of being slim and hungry beneath it.

  Dolly stopped when the guide brought her to a small shop where a few cheap watches were displayed and there was also a basin of small coins from foreign countries.

  Dolly looked at them with an expression of contempt and then went inside with the guide.

  He explained volubly and with extravagant gestures of his hands what the lady required and the shopkeeper, an old man who looked cold and miserable, only shrugged his shoulders.

  He gave a curt reply and the guide said to Dolly,

  “He say lady come too late. Two – three years ago good jewels very cheap. Now all gone!”

  “Where have they gone?” Dolly persisted.

  There was a long interchange of words from which transpired the information that jewel buyers from overseas had bought up everything that was available.

  The Duke listening in the doorway knew that this was what he had expected, but Dolly was not yet defeated.

  “What about furs?” she asked the guide. “Russian sables? Surely they are obtainable somewhere in Constantinople?”

  The guide replied that there was a place he knew where they might have some furs for sale, but he was not sure.

  “Take us there!” Dolly commanded.

  They walked back again towards the great door of the bazaar.

  “I want to see the Palace,” Nancy announced.

  She and her husband had been wandering around on their own, looking at the spices and at the other shops and stalls and now she came to the Duke’s side to say,

  “I think these people are terribly sad! They have nothing to sell and yet they must still eat. What will become of them?”

  “I imagine a more stable Government will do something about food eventually,” the Duke said in a not very hopeful tone.

  “In the meantime what about the children?” Nancy asked beneath her breath.

  Then, as there was nothing for them in the bazaar, they followed Dolly out into the sunshine.

  A clear sun glittered on the slender minarets and the great domes. The City was very beautiful, but it was difficult not to think how superficial it was, when there was so much ugliness and poverty in the streets.

  They drove a long way down narrow lanes that were still cobbled with houses on either side of them that were black with age and neglect.

  The guide stopped the carriage in a dirty yard and went inside a tall house that had most of the glass in its windows broken.

  He was away for some time and the Duke said,

  “I have a feeling that this is going to be a very cheap day as far as I am concerned.”

  “I am sure they really have endless treasures hidden away somewhere,” Dolly insisted, “if we could only find them.”

  She slipped her hand into the Duke’s.

  “Help me, Buck!” she pleaded. “You know how clever you are at finding things and I do so want a souvenir of Constantinople.”

  “I cannot buy you what is unobtainable,” he replied sardonically.

  “You speak to the man. Tell him that you can afford to pay a lot of money for something that is really valuable.”

  “If he had anything valuable,” the Duke said, “he would have produced it by now, you may be sure of that!”

  As he spoke, the guide returned to the side of the carriage bringing with him an aged hunchback, wearing an old shawl around his shoulders, to keep out the cold.

  “This man say,” the guide explained, “he find lady some furs by tonight. He get bear or goat, but nothing else.”

  “Of course I don’t want such rubbish!” Dolly said sharply. “There must be sables somewhere in the place when we are so near to Russia!”

  The guide translated this to the hunchback who merely repeated what the jeweller had said, that any sables there had been in Constantinople had been bought up several years ago.

  “You win!” Dolly said to the Duke, “but I cannot pretend I am not disappointed.”

  She spoke as if it was his fault and Harry wondered if she might not have a surprise later if Prince Ivan could produce a treasure that was really worth buying.

  Thinking that Dolly was likely to make everybody depressed because she had not got what she wanted, he suggested they should go and find a place where they could have something to drink.

  “We mustn’t eat anything,” he said, “but there must be a restaurant where we can have some coffee or perhaps even a bottle of Turkish wine.”

  “Oh, please let’s see the Seraglio first!” Nancy begged. “It cannot be far from here.”

  They found the Topkapi Saray was in fact only five minutes’ drive away and set off, the guide rattling information at them parrot-fashion.

  Dolly cheered up when she saw the huge wall of the Palace, its towers and impressive entrance.

  “Now we shall see the harem,” she said.

  The guide sitting on the box above their heads heard what she said and bent backwards to say,

  “Lady see Sultan’s jewels.”

  Dolly’s eyes glittered.

  “That’s what I want!” she exclaimed.

  They alighted from the carriage and walked towards the great gate.

  “Now for ghosts of eunuchs, odalisques, catamite pages, drunken Viziers and depraved Sultans,” Harry teased.

  The Duke was not listening.

  He was thinking that the Palace built by Sultan Mehmet had been like a town whose inhabitants at one time had numbered five thousand people. It had been not only the official residence of the Sultan, but also the seat of Government of the Turkish Empire.

  The guide took them into a courtyard.

  He informed them that the first gate was called, ‘Bab-I-Humayun’, the Gate of Felicity, on which had been exhibited the heads of decapi
tated officials.

  The next gate he said with glee was the Gate of Peace and beside it was the executioner’s block and the tap where he afterwards washed his hands. To pass through the Gate of Happiness, he continued, meant instant death!

  Everything was empty, dusty and depressing until, on Dolly’s insistence, the guide took them to a third courtyard where the treasures left behind by the Sultan were being assembled to form a museum.

  This was what Dolly had been wanting to see and she stood staring open-mouthed at the eighty-six carat Spoon Diamond, the rubies, pearls, the diamond-studded coffee cups and emeralds four inches square.

  The emeralds were certainly fantastic, but the Duke with Harry was looking at one of the most notable relics of Constantinople, which was reputed to be the right arm of St. John the Baptist.

  Dolly slipped her arm through the Duke’s.

  “Come and look at these emeralds, Buck,” she begged. “They are what I hoped to find. This is what I want.”

  “I doubt if they would entertain an offer however large for the Sultan’s sword or for the emeralds he wore in his turban,” the Duke replied dryly.

  “But what is the use of them just stuck here with no one to look at them? Sighed Dolly”

  “They will attract tourists,” Harry said, “and I am quite certain that Mustafa Kemal has already thought that they will bring in the foreign currency, which he certainly needs at the moment.”

  Dolly was not listening and only took a perfunctory look at the other parts of the Palace.

  However, she was soon amenable to Harry’s suggestion that they should now go and find something to drink.

  The guide took them to a restaurant that was poor and obviously in need of decoration, but he informed them that it was the best available.

  They sat down and the Duke was instantly aware that the waiters were not Turkish and were obviously a very different class from the customers.

  They hurried to and fro laden with trays of food, while the people they served kept complaining about both the service and what they ate.

  Nancy was watching them too and she said in a low voice to the Duke,

  “I feel it is life and death for them to keep their jobs.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” he replied.

  As he spoke, a young waiter dropped a banana from a bowl of fruit.

  A look of absolute terror came over his face and quickly another waiter covered the banana with a napkin and carried it out of sight, just as round a large screen that shut off the kitchen from the restaurant came the proprietor.

  He was a huge heavy-bellied Turk with a sharpness in his dark eyes that boded ill for anyone who offended him.

  The Duke had ordered some coffee and a bottle of wine and, when they came, they were both undrinkable.

  Harry, looking at what the other people in the restaurant were having said,

  “You know what we ought to have ordered?”

  “What is that?” Nancy enquired.

  “It’s a sherbet which is, I read somewhere, a peculiar drink made by the Turks.”

  “What does it contain?” Nancy asked.

  “Lemon, sugar, amber and a number of other ingredients, but I doubt if we would find it very palatable.”

  “I personally have no intention of trying it,” the Duke said firmly. “Let’s go back to the yacht. We were warned not to eat and drink in Constantinople, so we will have no excuse if we make ourselves ill.”

  As he spoke, his eyes met Harry’s and they were both thinking that it was essential they should be well for tonight.

  There were no protests about leaving from either Dolly or Nancy and, as they drove back, there was a general silence as if all they had seen had dispirited them.

  Yet, as they drove beside the glittering water of the Golden Horn and saw everywhere the thin elegant minarets silhouetted against the blue sky, it seemed wrong there should be such a contrast between the beauty of the ‘Pearl of the East’ and the human beings who had to live in it.

  “Perhaps things will get better in the future,” Nancy said hopefully as they went aboard the yacht.

  “They can hardly be worse!” the Duke remarked.

  They had luncheon late and there seemed to be no point in doing any further sightseeing.

  They played cards for a short while and after tea the Duke said that he had some work to do and did not wish to be disturbed.

  “Do I disturb you?” Dolly asked with a caressing note in her voice. “That is what I want to do!”

  The Duke did not answer and she went on,

  “If you want to be alone, I will go and lie down and read a book. I have an exciting new novel by Michael Arlen that I brought with me.”

  “Lend it to me after you have finished with it,” Nancy said. “I adore the way he writes!”

  They went to their cabins and, as George followed his wife, the Duke was left alone with Harry.

  “What is the time?” he asked. “We don’t wish to leave too soon and make ourselves conspicuous.”

  “It is a quarter to six,” Harry replied, “and if you don’t want to be noticed, I think you should wear a dark overcoat.”

  He looked down at the Duke’s white yachting trousers as he spoke.

  “I have every intention of doing that,” he replied, “and we shall certainly need overcoats. When the sun goes down, it is going to be very cold, if it does not snow.”

  He spoke conventionally enough, but Harry knew from the note in his voice that he was anticipating an adventure and was therefore no longer bored as he had been yesterday before he had received the letter from the Prince.

  “I hope we are not going to be disappointed,” Harry said, “and find that this is just a trick to extract money from you for some jewellery that is not worth sixpence.”

  “I shall be surprised if Prince Ivan does not give us value for our money,” the Duke answered. “Incidentally, in case we are being taken for a ride, I do not intent to carry too much money on me.”

  “That is certainly a wise precaution,” Harry approved.

  They waited until it was about three minutes to six and then wearing their overcoats they sauntered on deck.

  There was one of the Duke’s crew on duty near the gangway and, as they passed the man, the Duke said,

  “Sir Harold and I are going for a walk. If anybody asks for me, say I shall be back in an hour.”

  “Very good, Your Grace,” the man replied.

  They stepped on to the quay, which appeared to be deserted.

  As they walked over the slush-covered cobbles, Harry wondered if in fact, someone was watching and that they were being spied on.

  They reached the end of the quay and for a moment the Duke thought that there was no carriage there to meet them and the woman had not kept her word.

  Then he saw a vehicle on the other side of the road. Harry saw it at the same time and without speaking they moved towards it.

  It was a very ancient covered carriage drawn by a thin horse with its bones showing. The coachman was crouched on the box as if he was half asleep and not particularly interested whether he had a fare or not.

  Then, as they reached the side of the carriage, the door opened although there was no sign of anyone.

  The Duke stepped forward to look into the darkness inside and as he did so a voice said sharply,

  “Quickly! Get in quickly!”

  It was a command. The Duke obeyed, followed by Harry who shut the carriage door behind him.

  Immediately the horse moved off.

  “Were you followed?”

  The woman asked the question in a low voice as if she was afraid that she might be overheard.

  “I don’t think so,” the Duke replied. “There appeared to be no one about.”

  The woman turned round to kneel on the seat and look out of the small window in the back of the hood.

  The glass in it was cracked in several places, but she could still see through it and a few seconds passed b
efore she gave what sounded like a sigh of relief and sat down again.

  As she did so, the Duke said,

  “I think I should introduce my friend, Sir Harold Nuneaton. I realised yesterday after you had left that you had not told me your name.”

  “It is not important at the moment,” the woman said in the same cold impersonal voice he remembered.

  “Would you care to tell me where we are going,” the Duke asked.

  “That too is unnecessary,” she replied. “If Your Grace will wait patiently, everything will be explained to you later.”

  The way she spoke, even more than what she said, told the Duke that she had no wish to talk to him and he therefore made himself as comfortable as he could in the corner of the badly upholstered, inadequately sprung carriage and lapsed into silence.

  He wondered what Harry who was sitting opposite him on the small seat was thinking.

  He was quite certain that he was trying to peer through the darkness inside the carriage to see what their companion was like.

  The lights in the streets they passed through were very inadequate and, although they drove over the Galata Bridge, the Duke was not able to identify any other landmarks outside or to see their companion inside.

  Although she did not speak, he was vividly conscious of her in a way that surprised him.

  It was almost as if he could feel vibrations coming from her and he knew, with a perception that was unusual, that they were hostile to him personally.

  It was all very strange.

  At the same time, he felt for the moment as if he was back in the war fighting against an enemy in a superior position and knowing that every moment might be his last on earth.

  They drove for perhaps twenty-five minutes and then, as the carriage began to slow down, the woman spoke.

  “If you will stay here for a moment,” she said, “I will get out and see if there is anyone about. If there is not, I will go ahead and open the door of the house for you. Move as swiftly as you can down the short path. It would be a mistake to linger or look around you.”

  She did not wait for a reply, for at that moment the carriage came to a halt. She opened the door and climbed out.

  Through the dirty window they could see her glance right and left, then walk straight ahead.

  “Follow her!” the Duke whispered. “God knows what we are letting ourselves in for!”