Black Amber

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  “I’ve just heard about your fall,” he said. “I hope the damage isn’t serious.”

  Was he too going to question her? Tracy noted again what a chill gray color his eyes were, how there was in him a lack of any light or human warmth except when he was angry.

  “Only a scraped shin,” she said. “I’ll be all right tomorrow. I really don’t know why I’ve been sent to bed.”

  “I suggest that you forget about work and rest tomorrow,” he told her. “I’m going to the city in the morning and I don’t expect to be at home at all. Take the day off and do as you like.”

  “What I’d like,” said Tracy, raising her chin obstinately, “is to get to work and finish the job I’ve come here to do.”

  “I prefer not to lock my study against you,” Radburn said. “Have I your promise that you will stay out of my rooms until I return?”

  Remembering the way he had caught her—an intruder staring at Anabel’s picture that afternoon—a flush swept into Tracy’s cheeks and her determination crumbled. She could see his plan clearly enough. He would keep her away from his work and he would find new excuses every day until her week was up. Then he would send her home. At the moment she did not in the least know how to oppose the pressure that was being put upon her on all sides.

  He seemed to gather agreement from her silence and gave her a stiff-necked nod. “Good night,” he said abruptly and went out of the room.

  Nursel made a rude face at the closing door. At least she had recovered from her upset emotions over the story she had told.

  “I know what we shall do,” she announced. “Since you are free tomorrow, you must come to Istanbul with me. I have an errand to perform for Sylvana, and there is a small jewelry shop I must visit for Murat. If your leg is well enough, perhaps you will wish to come with me to these places. There will be time to visit a mosque, perhaps. You must not leave Istanbul without seeing something of its wonders.”

  Since nothing could be accomplished here, Tracy accepted the invitation, but her sense of frustration increased. She was being forced to mark time on every hand. No door opened to answer the questions about Anabel which so troubled her. The few days granted for her stay already seemed to be slipping away with nothing achieved. At least time spent with Nursel need not be wholly wasted.

  “I will leave you now.” Nursel broke in upon her thoughts. “Sleep well, I am sorry that I burdened you with my unhappy memories. You must not give them a thought. It is all over now. Except for him.”

  This seemed an odd way to put it.

  “What do you mean—except for him?” Tracy asked cautiously.

  For a moment Nursel looked as though she would not answer. Her lips tightened and in her eyes Tracy had a disturbbing glimpse of an anger that seemed brightly corrosive.

  “I have not forgotten,” Nursel said. “I do not mean to forget. One day he will make a mistake—and I will be waiting.”

  She picked up the dinner tray with its half-eaten meal and bore it away. When the door closed after her, Tracy sank limply back against the hard pillows. She was fully awake now, her thoughts ready to skitter back and forth and around in circles. Nothing that she had seen since she arrived in this household formed a logical, discernible pattern. On every hand there were contradictions.

  Ahmet had been one of the three in the ruins of the old palace, but who were the others? Could the woman have been Nursel? Was that the reason for her interest in the scarf Tracy had found? As far as the two voices were concerned, there was no identifying them. They had been distorted in angry disagreement, and she could not guess whether the woman was someone she had met or a total stranger. It was the same with the second man. It might even have been Murat himself, pretending afterward to approach along the road, pretending to be surprised by the open gate. Since the language had been Turkish no accent had been identifiable.

  The scarf was perhaps the main clue. Tracy drew it from beneath her pillow and once more studied the plum-colored stripes. Without warning a memory of where she had seen such material returned to mind. There had been a cushion or two in Sylvana Erim’s salon made of this very stuff. But where that fact led, she had no sure idea.

  Wasn’t it probable that the roots of whatever was happening here now went back a few months ago to the time when Anabel had been alive? There was the dark hint of some desperate act behind her sister’s death. “I don’t want to die!” Anabel had cried—and gone almost directly to her death. If someone in this house was responsible, then reverberations of whatever had happened might continue for a long time after. Particularly if opposing forces of suspicion and concealment were still fighting some underground battle. If only she could know who concealed, and who suspected, so that she could safely choose sides. But friend, or foe, all wore masks, and with a wrong move on her part the ground could open under her feet with greater disaster promised than the physical fall she had taken through a rotted wooden floor that afternoon.

  Since the answers were not easily to be found, she must stay out the week and longer. She must find the courage not to be bullied by either Miles or the dominating Sylvana. Nor must she be lulled into too-ready confidences with Nursel. Or flattered by the attractive Dr. Erim’s suave, sympathetic attention. She must remain aloof from them all and in possession of her own will until she knew enough to take necessary action—if action of any sort was still possible.

  Across the room the forgotten Yasemin settled more deeply into her chair, purring contentedly. The white cat had once more made Anabel’s room her own.

  6

  In the morning when Tracy wakened she found her leg somewhat sore and stiff. But Nursel’s bandage was still neatly in place and the discomfort would be minor. She was already looking forward to a trip to Istanbul and a space of time away from this house with its uneasy secrets.

  When she was dressed and ready for breakfast, she started toward the stairs, noting on the way that the door of Miles Radburn’s study was ajar. She thought of speaking to him before he left and went to the door. But the study was empty. Balcony doors stood open and a cool morning breeze played through the unheated room. As she looked about, the wind caught a sheet of paper and drifted it across the floor.

  Tracy went to pick it up and then stood still in shocking surprise, staring at the space beneath the long table where she had left her stacks of sorted papers. The area was in complete confusion. Not a pile remained intact. Papers and drawings had been whirled helter-skelter, some thrown face down, some face up—all mixed together hopelessly.

  The wind had done this, she thought, and went to close the doors. But when they were shut and the room empty of sound, she stood beside the tumbled papers and drawings and knew that no breeze could have created such disorder as this, and in only one part of the room. It was not the normal, heaped-high disorder of the table top. None of those papers had been touched, nor had those on Miles’s desk.

  Could he have done this in a moment of angry impatience? she wondered—to discourage her, to make her want to leave? But the act did not seem in character with what little she knew of Miles Radburn. He would surely be open in his opposition. He would not resort to anonymous trickery like this. There was something spiteful about the act. But who was she to suspect? Not the shy and timid Halide. Not Nursel, who was beginning to seem a friend. Though at times the girl appeared capable of spite. And surely this was not the sort of thing Sylvana Erim would stoop to. Who then?

  Ahmet, perhaps? Moving softly, secretly, aware that she knew of his secret watching in the palace ruins, taking this small revenge? But the act seemed less like an intent to pay her back than like a deliberate threat, a warning. It was as if someone said to her quite clearly, “Stop this pretense of work and go home. We do not want you here.”

  Tracy hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her skirt, turned her back on the scene, and went downstairs. In bright morning sunlight she felt more angry than fearful. She had been pleased with her small sorting task, and it was thoroughly aggravati
ng to have hours of careful work go for nothing. She would not be stopped as easily as this. When she came home from the trip with Nursel, she would go straight to work and sort everything all over again. What had been done was not serious—just annoying.

  As she reached the second floor she heard the sound of voices from the dining area and she went abruptly into the room, driven by the strength of her own indignation. She hoped to find Miles Radburn at breakfast, but he was not at the table. Only Nursel and her brother were there, discussing some matter earnestly in Turkish. When she walked in they both looked up with a surprise that told her the expression she wore might be on the combative side.

  “I’ve just been in Mr. Radburn’s study,” she told them. “I found all the sorting work I did yesterday thrown into disorder. Have you seen Mr. Radburn? I’d like to hear whether he knows about this. Who would do such a thing?”

  Nursel and her brother exchanged a quick look in which there was some meaning Tracy could not catch.

  “Mr. Radburn left early for Istanbul,” Nursel said. “We know nothing of this.”

  Dr. Erim rose to seat Tracy at the table, but he did not speak. In spite of his formal courtesy there was a change in him and he did not seem at all like the sympathetic man who had brought her home last evening after her fall. There was a smoldering in his dark eyes and he looked at her with an uncomfortable intensity. Something was very wrong. Tracy sat down feeling suddenly shaken.

  “What is it?” she said. “What’s the matter?”

  Nursel recovered herself first. “You have taken us by surprise, Miss Hubbard. You are angry. It is distressing that your work has been disturbed. We are shocked, of course.”

  Murat Erim took no placating cue from his sister. Though he had not finished breakfast, he did not seat himself again.

  “Perhaps it is better if you go home at once, Miss Hubbard,” he told her shortly. “It seems that only trouble awaits you here in Turkey.”

  “But why should I go home?” Tracy asked, dismayed by this unexpected attack. “It’s true that what I found just now upset me and made me angry. But I can straighten out the mess with a little more work. It doesn’t make me want to give up and go home—if that’s what was intended.”

  Dr. Erim put his napkin down with careful restraint, bowed to her without replying, and went out of the room.

  Tracy turned blankly to Nursel. “What have I done? Why is he so upset? I should think he would want to know who has played this mischievous trick.”

  The Turkish girl did not answer at once. She gave her attention to breaking a roll, to buttering it delicately. Halide came with Tracy’s breakfast and she waited until the girl had gone away. A notion was beginning to turn itself over in her mind.

  “Did you tell your brother what really happened in that ruined place last evening?” she asked Nursel. “Did you tell him that I heard voices there? That I heard someone speak my name?”

  Nursel seemed alarmed. “No—no, I have said nothing. It is another thing than this that disturbs him. Please—you must pay no attention. My brother has moods. Sometimes he is angry with me, sometimes with Sylvana, or with the servants. It means nothing. As you can see, he is not a happy man. Unfortunate circumstances have come upon us since the death of our older brother.”

  She paused as if uncertain of how much she might say, then came to a decision and threw reticence aside.

  “According to our Turkish law what a man leaves when he dies must be divided equally between members of his immediate family. Thus Sylvana, Murat, and I share equally in ownership of the yali. However, Sylvana prevailed upon our brother to circumvent the law during his lifetime by building the kiosk in her name, by turning much of his personal fortune which he amassed, not by inheritance but in his own exporting business, into outright gifts of money and jewelry to her. There was little left for Murat and me besides this house. We are dependent on Sylvana for most of what we have. And she holds the purse strings tightly. My brother is not one to live happily accepting what should rightfully be his from the hands of this Frenchwoman. Thus you will see that he may be easily upset.”

  “I can understand how he must feel,” Tracy said. “But I still don’t see why he should be angry with me.”

  Nursel sighed. “He does not mean to be inhospitable, Miss Hubbard. Please forgive us and enjoy your breakfast.”

  Tracy ate her rolls and coffee in silence and Nursel sat with her, making no further attempt at talk. She seemed pensive and subdued this morning. Perhaps she was already regretting her outspoken confidences to Tracy last night.

  “Will you tell your brother,” Tracy said, “that I have no interest in anything except the purpose for which I have come here.” That was true enough. She needn’t elaborate.

  “And what purpose is that?” Nursel asked gently.

  “Why—my work for Mr. Radburn, of course,” said Tracy, but a faint prickling ran along the skin of her arms as if something had brushed her lightly in warning.

  Nursel nodded. “Of course. I am sorry there has been this little upset. I will of course speak to the servants and see if I can find out who has played this unkind trick. The young girls who work for us are sometimes like merry children.”

  Tracy said nothing. She did not think this was the prank of a merry child.

  “In any case,” Nursel went on, almost in pleading, “let us forget the matter now and use our day pleasantly. Let us enjoy ourselves on our trip to Istanbul. Let us be happy this morning. This morning I wish to be like—like Anabel, with only the desire to be gay.”

  The coaxing words were hard to resist and Tracy’s annoyance began to fade. “I agree,” she said. “Let’s not spoil the day.”

  Nursel cheered up with startling suddenness. Perhaps her air of meekness was something she used to keep out of trouble and to hide her own feelings. A girl who could be devoured by bitter anger at one moment, and in the next be close to sentimental tears, offered a riddle that was not to be easily solved.

  The two set off soon after breakfast. Though it was late March, the day was a gift from spring—brightly warm and sunny. Budding promise showed along every tree branch, and overnight the grass had gained a fresh patina of green. Nursel drove as though she liked the feeling of the wheel in her hands and there was a new eagerness about her once they were away from the house, as if she too delighted in flinging off the shackles of its secretive atmosphere.

  As Tracy stole a look at her, it was hard to believe that this poised and fashionable young woman was the same emotion-driven girl who had told her so much last night. She looked very beautiful today. Not a wisp of her smoothly lacquered hair stirred in the breeze from open windows, though Tracy’s brown bangs were ruffled beneath the curve of her blue suede beret. The dangling earrings Nursel wore caught glints of sunlight and danced with every movement of her head, giving her an air of careless lightheartedness. The clips at her earlobes were circled by tiny blue stones, and the lower teardrops of silver framed larger stones of the same flawless blue.

  “How pretty your earrings are,” Tracy said.

  Nursel smiled at the compliment and, when she slowed the car for the next turn, she reached up to pull the trinkets off and held them out to Tracy.

  “Please—they are yours. Wear them in happiness.”

  “Oh, but I couldn’t take them!” Tracy said in dismay. “I didn’t mean—”

  Nursel dropped them into her lap. “It is a Turkish custom. You cannot refuse or you will offend me. If I did not like you, I would not give them. May I call you by your first name, please? As you will call me Nursel.”

  “Of course,” Tracy said, touched by the friendly gesture.

  “You know, do you not, that we Turks have possessed last names for only a handful of years? Before that there was great confusion. Now we are westernized and we have chosen last names for ourselves. But we still cling to the use of first names. It is more comfortable.”

  “Thank you, Nursel,” Tracy said and clipped the pretty things
to her own ears. She loved the dancing feel of the earrings against her cheeks. Anabel had worn earrings like this, and never the dull button variety Tracy permitted herself. For a moment Tracy felt almost as elegant as Nursel, as glamourous as Anabel.

  With a graceful gesture, the Turkish girl had endeared herself. Nevertheless, Tracy wished that a faint reservation did not mar her feeling toward the other girl. Earrings or no, Tracy could not be wholly comfortable with Nursel Erim. She had the feeling quite often that the Turkish girl was hiding something.

  Nursel gave her an approving look as she clipped on the earrings. “They become you,” she said. “And of course the blue color will keep you from harm. Or so the ancient Turkish belief tells us.”

  In Turkey, Tracy recalled, blue was the color used to ward off the effects of the evil eye. She had already seen babies and small children with blue beads woven into their hair or worn as necklaces. Car radiators sometimes wore a string of such beads, and donkeys often wore them around their necks.

  The car had left the ferry and was following a main thoroughfare of modern Istanbul. A long strip of plane trees, still bare of leaves, divided the two lanes of traffic, and great concrete government buildings flying the Turkish Crescent and Star rimmed one side of the avenue. As the road dipped toward old Istanbul across the Golden Horn, Tracy sat up eagerly to watch for the famous skyline.

  The Golden Horn was that curving, narrow strip of waterway that opened from the Bosporus and bisected Istanbul, separating the old from the new. There were two bridges across it—one the newer Atatürk Bridge, the other the ancient Galata, which they were now approaching. Across Galata Bridge had traveled the caravans of the ancient world. Today the horses and camels had given way to motor vehicles of every description, packed in close formation as they streamed back and forth across the water.

  As they drove toward the beginning of the bridge, the skyline came into sight and Tracy drew in her breath. With rain and fog banished, it was a magical thing—a great pyramidal mound of solidly packed buildings from which rose the domes and minarets of a myriad of mosques. There was little color, Tracy saw. Istanbul was a gray city, even in the sunlight. But the grace of its minarets, the perfected architecture of dome rising upon dome, gave the whole an almost ethereal grace.