Black Amber

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  “It surprises me that he has consented to have you remain. Perhaps, Miss Hubbard, there is something about this work of yours you have not wished to tell us?”

  Tracy had no idea what she meant, but she was on guard at once. “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “No matter.” Sylvana’s smile was enigmatic. “I must not keep you when you are so busy. Thank you for bringing me the samovar.”

  Thus dismissed, Tracy left her presence, newly concerned. She followed the covered passage back to the third floor of the yali. On the way she pulled off her coat and when she reached the upper salon she dropped it on a chair, drew off her beret to run her fingers through her hair. The earrings tapped her cheeks lightly and she pulled them off, tucked them into the beret. It wasn’t necessary to prove her independence by wearing them now.

  8

  As Tracy walked toward the door of Miles’s study she saw that he had left it open to the warmth of the springlike day, and through it she could see him working at his tilted drawing table. Again he seemed completely absorbed. He was working in black ink, as he converted the intricate details of a photograph into the large, decorative calligraphy.

  He glanced up and saw her in the doorway, caught the expression on her face.

  “You’re watching me the way you did in the mosque this morning. What does that look on your face imply?”

  “I’m sorry if I stared,” she said as she went into the room. “You were concentrating so hard that I didn’t want to interrupt you.”

  He made a sound of exasperation. “There’s more to it than that. What were you thinking just now?”

  His mood had changed completely from that of lunchtime. He was neither smiling nor darkly excited. Once more she felt uncertain, but at least she would not dissemble.

  “I was wondering how you can work at that sort of thing. It’s as though someone who has created cathedrals turned to copying a hedge maze.”

  For a moment she wasn’t sure whether he would fling his brush at her angrily and dismiss her from the room, or simply retire behind his granite barrier. He did neither. To her considerable astonishment he laughed out loud. The sound was not altogether cheerful, but it was better than his scowl.

  “Hornwright should know just how you’ve tackled this job. I’m not sure he understood what he was inflicting upon me, or the risk he was taking in sending you out here. At least you speak up, however foolish your conclusions may be. But I must ask you to remember that I am your problem only as far as this book is concerned.”

  Her own sense of humor revived with disconcerting unexpectedness and she found herself smiling at the picture he had evoked.

  “I’ll try to remember,” she told him cheerfully.

  “Good!” he said, sounding stiffer than before in the face of her good humor. “Now perhaps you can get on with your housekeeping. I can’t endure that disturbance under the table much longer. I prefer my own forms of disorder.”

  She knew he meant his words to sting and was all the more determined to remain unruffled. She went to the table where the morning’s mischief still awaited her, pulled up her skirt, and sat down cross-legged like the women in the mosques. She would not think of the spite behind this havoc for the moment. She would simply sort things back into their respective heaps and leave all other problems for later. The problem of Nursel, for instance, and the scarf that belonged to her.

  The room was quiet except for the faint rustle of papers. As she worked, Tracy found herself once more interested in the project itself. She dipped into manuscript pages concerning the work of the Seljuk Turks, and read a little here and there. Apparently the Seljuks had left behind tiles and mosaics of surprising beauty in their mosques and mausoleums. Coming before Islam, there were even occasional human representations and animal pictures in some of their work. In their pigments they had used a great deal of turquoise and white, dark blue and indigo and gilt. A pink shading seen in some of the mosaic panels, as Miles pointed out in his text, was due to an ingredient used to hold the tiles together. Several reproductions in color revealed the imaginative beauty of Seljuk work.

  So complete was her absorption in seeking out drawings which matched the text that she was startled when Miles spoke to her.

  “When I came into the house a while ago, I heard what sounded like a bang-up fight going on between Sylvana and Murat. Do you happen to know what was wrong?”

  She was surprised that he would question her on affairs of the household. “I’ve no idea what it was about,” she said. “Just as Nursel and I came upstairs, Dr. Erim burst out of Mrs. Erim’s salon and rushed off. Nursel went after him and I haven’t seen her since. Halide and I took the samovar to Mrs. Erim, and she seemed terribly upset over what had happened. Though of course she made no explanation to me.”

  Miles returned to his calligraphy and again there was quiet in the room. Tracy’s work went faster now as she reached material she had sorted before. When Miles spoke again it was in a milder, more reasonable tone, as if he wanted to persuade her of something.

  “I suppose that the recording of details about mosaics and their history may seem like mere copy work and note-taking, yet it’s a task that needs to be done. So much is falling to ruin and accounts ought to be preserved. Until a comparatively few years ago there was no written history in Turkey, you know, and there hasn’t been enough consultating of what archives exist. Few translations have been made. I’m not doing this alone. A number of people are helping me get this record together. When it’s finally in a book, the result will be worth accomplishing.”

  Tracy looked up. From her place on the floor she could see across the top of the intervening desk to where he sat on a stool, bent above his drawing board. Shadows emphasized the craggy features of his face and marked the unhappy slant of mouth corners, hiding the coldness that so often repelled her. An odd warming toward him stirred in her and she saw him as a man more dedicated than she had guessed. A man who worked with integrity at the assignment he had given himself.

  Hesitantly she ventured a question. “But couldn’t almost anyone do the actual copy work and free you to get on with the writing of the book?”

  “This particular work happens to interest me,” he said, his tone dry.

  She considered him more sympathetically than she had ever expected to, wondering how to probe and explore, how to discover the true identity of the man who had been Anabel’s husband. Perhaps a bold frankness was the only way to smoke him out from behind his wall.

  “Mrs. Erim thinks there will never be a completed book,” she said, “and that you don’t really want to write it. She wants me to go home and tell Mr. Hornwright that it will never be done—so that he will call the whole thing off.”

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “How can I tell? You sounded just now as though you believe in this work. But you don’t seem to move it ahead very quickly.”

  She wondered what he would say if she told him that Nursel believed the work was a hair-shirt process—a sort of punishing of himself for his treatment of Anabel in the past. But she had gone far enough for the moment and she did not dare put the thought into words. In an odd way she found that she was more reluctant than before to goad or bait him. She had begun to consider him not only as Anabel’s husband, but as a man in his own right.

  “Mrs. Erim may have her reasons for not wanting to see this book finished,” he remarked. “The same reasons, perhaps, that led to this quarrel with her brother-in-law. It’s possible that she’s right and you are wasting your time here, Tracy Hubbard.”

  She no longer believed that Mrs. Erim was right, but before she could say so, he glanced toward the door.

  “Listen!” he said.

  From the direction of the stairs came the sound of high heels clicking briskly along. Miles bent above his board again. Tracy caught the scent of Sylvana’s rose-drenched perfume as she came to the door of the room.

  “I may speak with you, Miles?” Mrs. Erim asked.
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  Tracy had never listened to her voice before as an entity in itself. She noted its faintly querulous note, and a slight stridency in the higher pitches. It did not seem as tranquil as her manner.

  “Of course—please come in,” Miles said.

  “There is a little trouble,” Sylvana murmured as she entered the room. Clearly she had not seen Tracy sitting on the floor watching her over the top of the desk. Her air of composure had returned. From her blond hair drawn into its neat, heavy coil on the nape of her neck, to the tips of her smart black pumps, she looked undisturbed. If one did not listen to the faintly importunate note in her voice, one would think her wholly poised.

  “First,” she went on as Miles waited, “I think this American young girl must go home at once. It surprises me that you have permitted her to remain, when—”

  “The American young girl is right over there,” Miles said, cocking an eyebrow at Tracy. “Perhaps you would like to tell her why you think she should go home?”

  Sylvana Erim was not in the least disconcerted. She glanced calmly across the desk at the top of Tracy’s head and gestured her toward the door.

  “If you please? I wish to speak to Mr. Radburn alone.”

  Tracy looked at Miles as she stood up. “I’d really like to know why Mrs. Erim doesn’t wish me to stay.”

  “I am sure you know my reason very well,” Sylvana said.

  Miles nodded toward the door. “Suppose I call you when we’re through.”

  Mrs. Erim came at once to stand beside the drawing board, paying no further attention to Tracy. As she went out of the room, Tracy heard her exclamation of pleasure.

  “This is beautiful work! The best you have done, my friend. The buyer in New York will be enormously pleased. There seems to be a sudden demand for Turkish calligraphy to use as decoration.”

  Tracy closed the door softly and sped across the salon to her own room. She had endured enough for one day. Somehow she must draw into the open at least one of these currents that flowed beneath the surface of life in this house. Sylvana, she knew, would tell her nothing. Dr. Erim appeared to be angry with her for some reason. But there was still Nursel, and it was time for the Turkish girl to be brought into the open.

  In her room Tracy unlocked the drawer and took out the scarf she had found last evening in the palace ruins. With it folded into her purse, she went in search of the girl who had been Anabel’s friend.

  Nursel was not in her own room, but when Tracy questioned Halide on the lower stairs the maid gestured in the direction of the laboratory in the kiosk.

  Tracy had not been in this lower section of the hillside house before, except to climb the stairs. The area seemed to be made up of a large main room, brightly lighted, with two or three smaller rooms opening along one side. The big room was rimmed with cabinets, and there were tables of equipment and shelves on which labeled cages of mice and guinea pigs were kept, lending a slightly zooey smell that was lessened by the hovering aura of perfume. At the far end Dr. Erim worked with two young assistants and he did not look up as she came in.

  A light burned in one of the small cubicles and Tracy heard someone humming a plaintive Turkish tune. Tracy looked in and found Nursel, dressed in a white lab jacket, working intently with a glass measuring phial. She glanced up and smiled at Tracy.

  “You have come to visit me? Good. Please come in.”

  Tracy stepped into the small room, where a strong odor of sandalwood for the moment dominated weaker scents. On wall shelves were innumerable glass bottles, labeled and grouped in perfume families—the animal, the flower scents, the plant perfumes.

  “Do you distill the oils yourselves?” she asked.

  “Sometimes in spring and summer Mrs. Erim does this,” Nursel said. “But it is a difficult process and it is simpler to work with essential oils and extracts already prepared. For me, it is the blending, the combining of scents that is interesting. Tell me what you think of this.”

  She unstoppered a small flask and put a dab of scent on the pulse place on Tracy’s wrist. It was necessary to leave the atmosphere of sandalwood and step outside in order to catch the delicacy of lilac, very light and fresh.

  “Lovely,” Tracy said as she returned to Nursel. But she had not come here to talk about perfume. “Are you very busy? I’d like to have a talk with you, if it’s possible.”

  “I thought you had returned to your sorting,” Nursel said. “Has Mr. Radburn grown restless again?”

  “Mrs. Erim wanted to see him alone. I think she wants to convince him that I should be sent home at once. Do you know why she feels this way about my being here? After all, it was she who invited me out in the first place.”

  Nursel bent above a glass tube, pouring carefully. “Perhaps I can guess. But I do not think she will give Mr. Radburn her true reason for wishing you to go home.”

  Over her shoulder Tracy glanced toward the end of the long room. Dr. Erim seemed wholly concentrated on his work and betrayed no evidence of noticing her at all.

  “Could we go somewhere else to talk?” she asked Nursel.

  “But of course.” The other girl finished her immediate measuring and put a stopper in the glass tube. “This will wait.” She sniffed at her fingers and wrinkled her nose. “These essences which Sylvana prefers are too heavy for me. Wait—I will cleanse my hands and we will go where no one will be near.”

  She washed her hands in a basin and then reached for a sweater from a rack, handing it to Tracy.

  “Put this on—it is a little cool outside. I have my coat near the door. Come—I will show you something.”

  She did not speak to her brother as they left the building, and he paid no attention to their going. Outside they followed an uphill path through the woods until they reached the summit of a small hillock, still on Erim property. Here a little summerhouse had been built, with arched doorways and open latticework walls. During warm weather it would make a charming haven of cool shade. Nursel stood outside its door and directed Tracy’s attention to the view.

  From this height a great stretch of the Bosporus could be seen in the sunny afternoon—a winding strip of navy-blue ribbon separating Europe from Asia. In the direction of Istanbul a filmy haze hung low like the concealing veil of a harem beauty. Nearer at hand across the strait the stones of Rumeli Hisar shone golden in the light, unlike the black aspect the fortress took on after the sun had set.

  “It is beautiful—our Bosporus, is it not?” Nursel said. “But how strange the currents are down there. The Black Sea is not very salt and it causes a cold surface current to flow down the strait toward the Sea of Marmara. From the Marmara a warmer, more salty undercurrent flows in the opposite direction toward Russia. Different kinds of fish are caught in these two bands. If you look from your window at night, you will see boats with bright gasoline lamps being held over the sides to attract fish into the nets. But enough of such matters—you have not asked to speak with me because you wish to know about fish. Come, here is a rock where we may sit in the sun and talk.”

  The rough stone surface had been warmed and dried during the bright afternoon. The two girls sat upon the boulder and were quiet for a little while. There seemed no way to go about this delicately, Tracy thought. She drew the silk scarf from her handbag and held it out.

  “I’ll return your scarf to you now. I know from Mrs. Erim that it is yours.”

  The other girl hesitated for just an instant. Then she took the scarf and opened the striped length. The plum- and cream-colored folds ran like liquid through her fingers, dropped into a pool of warm color in her lap.

  “You were the woman in the ruined palace yesterday, weren’t you?” Tracy said.

  The girl’s dark head bent over the scarf and she did not look up. At last, when Tracy thought she might not answer, she said softly, “Yes, it was I.”

  “Ahmet was there,” Tracy said. “He was watching you. And there was a second man. All rather secret.”

  Nursel’s head came up and she loo
ked at Tracy with her bright, dark gaze. A gaze less gentle now, a look in which there was no meekness.

  “Secret—yes. But not the affair of anyone else.”

  “Except that you were talking about me,” Tracy said. “I’ve been wondering why ever since. Whoever spoke my name was angry at the time.”

  “And you do not know why?” Nursel asked.

  “How could I know why? Was it perhaps Mr. Radburn who was with you? Or your brother?”

  Nursel sighed and began to ripple the scarf through her fingers as though she needed to keep her hands busy, as men did with their tespihler.

  “If I tell you something, will you keep my secret? Though because of Ahmet Effendi, perhaps it is a secret no longer. He does not approve. If I tell you this, I put myself in your hands. Give me your promise that you will say nothing.”

  “I’m not likely to run to Mrs. Erim, or to your brother, or Mr. Radburn with confidences,” Tracy said.

  For a moment longer Nursel studied her, as if probing for an answer as to whether or not Tracy could be trusted. Then she nodded.

  “An American promise is better sometimes than a European promise. Perhaps you will be my friend, as Anabel was my friend. The man who came to meet me in that place last evening was Hasan.”

  Tracy repeated the name blankly. “Hasan?”

  “You do not remember? In the Covered Bazaar today—the small shop where I bought the jade tespih for Murat. Hasan is Ahmet Effendi’s son.”

  Tracy recalled the young man at once, remembering the distrust she had felt as she had listened to the harsh note in his voice as he spoke to Nursel. She remembered too that there had been what she recognized now as a certain familiarity between him and Nursel.

  “I wish to marry Hasan,” Nursel confessed. “But his father is old-fashioned and does not think such a thing suitable. My brother would be furious. He does not know. He has a great sense of position and he would oppose my marriage and I could do nothing unless I ran away. But Hasan is in no position now to afford a wife. Later, perhaps. Waiting is hard, but I must wait and let no one know until the proper time comes. Then I will laugh at anyone who tries to interfere. I do not like this—that Ahmet Effendi was watching. Soon I must speak to him. I must persuade him that we will wait.”