“A memento from another time when I was quite a different fellow. It was also the impetus behind a notorious escapade.
Salime grinned. “I must hear this tale.”
He shook his head. “It is nothing. Just foolish antics, best forgotten.”
She leaned eagerly toward him. “Was it the prank involving the lion? I wish very much to hear this tale.”
“I doubt it’s half as amusing in the retelling.”
“Please,” she cajoled. “Will you not recount this story for me?”
Simon conceded with a reluctant sigh. Settling deeper into the cushions, he let his mind drift back almost twenty years. “It was our last year at Westminster School where Ned, DeVere, and I had suffered under a Latin master named Trasker. He was a sadistic ass who despised the three of us but seemed to take particular delight in singling out DeVere. In all truth, we probably deserved most of our lashings, but DeVere was the most frequent recipient of that honor.”
Salime looked appalled. “Such treatment of young noblemen is permitted in your country?”
“Yes,” Simon replied. “And disciplinary measures do not preclude beating. The birch rod was our dear Trasker’s most cherished tool.”
Her brows furrowed. “What is this birch rod, Efendi?”
“It is an instrument designed for corporal punishment. It’s made of small branches or twigs taken from a birch tree and tethered together. The effect is much like a cat-o-nine tails.”
“This lowly schoolmaster was permitted to beat you with it? In my country to lay a hand on one of noble birth without permission would incur a penalty of death.”
Simon chuckled. “Englishmen are a peculiar breed, Salime. We are expected to bear physical discipline as stoutly as the Spartans and sometimes torture ourselves deliberately just to prove our mettle. Such was the circumstance I speak of.”
“How do you mean?”
“DeVere intentionally took my punishment for this bit of lewd verse. When Trasker caught us in the act of passing it, DeVere claimed authorship before I could confess.”
“He took your punishment? Why would he do such a thing?”
“I don’t truly know,” Simon responded, genuinely befuddled. “DeVere has always been a capricious creature but he took great delight in taunting Trasker. It was all a game to him. In this instance, he managed to curtail the birching. Trasker then penalized him by demanding that DeVere memorize ten pages of Latin poetry. This was the book he selected for his penance.”
“My lord does not strike one as a bookish man,” Salime observed dryly.
“Indeed, he is not.” Simon laughed outright. “Though he is quite fond of his erotology collection, I doubt he’s ever read a single volume in his library. But I digress. DeVere was not about to let the humiliation of the birching go unanswered. He swore to serve up some revenge on Trasker.”
She leaned forward, rapt with interest. “I am much intrigued. Tell me of this vengeance on the petty schoolmaster.”
“It began as a harmless prank. Since Trasker was once a tutor to a young peer, a position we mock as a ‘bear-leader’, DeVere was inspired to abduct a bear from the Royal Menagerie and smuggle it into Trasker’s rooms. The plan involved laudanum and a sedan chair, but it went afoul when we discovered there were no bears in the menagerie. Refusing to concede defeat, DeVere took the king’s Asiatic lion instead.”
“You abducted the king’s lion?”
“Yes. Unfortunately, we were found out. The king was enraged, of course, and DeVere was expelled from Westminster and sent abroad.”
“What of you?” she asked.
“As accomplices, Ned and I were both rusticated from school. Ned went home to Yorkshire. Left to my own devices, I only found more mischief—which led to my commission in the army.”
“It was not by your choice, this commission?”
“No,” he replied grimly. “I can’t imagine anyone less suited for the military than I was.”
Reclining on her pile of cushions, Salime drew on the hookah. Although she still wore the veil, most of her hair was loose, forming a cloud of dark silk about her head. Her gold-flecked eyes were heavy lidded in repose, invoking a picture of a well-sated lover. He shook his head to clear thoughts that threatened an embarrassing erection.
“What happened in this army?” she asked.
“Everything the army does best,” he murmured. “Destruction…devastation…death… I abhorred the military and all it stood for, yet, endeavored to conduct myself with honor. I never shirked a charge, but I was reckless. I should have died a dozen times, but I lived while others fell. Instead of death, I was captured.” His voice trailed off, his gaze focused far away. “Six bloody years spent caged like an animal.”
He finished with a bitter laugh. “You see, my dear? My tales are not so amusing after all.”
“Nevertheless, Efendi, I am exceedingly glad for the telling. There are many kinds of prisons, Efendi. Although my cage was a gilded one, I have also known what it is to be a captive. To be helpless. Maimed in body and spirit. To live or die solely at another’s whim.”
His throat tightened at her words, at the sudden pain in her beautiful eyes.
How he burned for her—desperately yearned to run his fingers through her hair, to stroke the satin skin of her cheek, to feather kisses all over her. The old Simon would have already had her writhing in rapture beneath him.
“Where did you come from, Salime? How did you come here? What is your history with DeVere?” His gaze bore deeply into hers.
She shifted as if suddenly self-conscious under his stare. “So many questions? Why are you so eager to know about me?”
“Because you fascinate me.” It was true. She enthralled him. Though she claimed to be his servant, Simon feared he was destined to become her slave. She was the most intoxicating concoction of substance and secrets he’d ever met. He yearned to know her. Deeply. Intimately.
She shook her head. “I am nothing extraordinary, merely different from your English women. It has been the greatest source of my appeal in this country and served to my advantage …until now.”
“Until now? What do you mean by that?”
“My past is of no consequence.” She dismissed the question with a wave and relit the pipe she’d neglected.
“If you won’t speak of yourself, tell me more about your poets.”
“Would it surprise you to know there are several women among them? Of them all, Mihri Khatun is my favorite. She has been called the Turkish Sappho. Shall I recite a verse for you?”
With his head propped on his fist, Simon lay on his side watching her. It was pure torture knowing he could never have her. And every moment only increased his desire. He felt like the mythical Tantalus, whom the gods placed within arms’ reach of fruit that would forever be beyond his grasp and in a pool of water that would recede any time he desired a drink.
Without breaking his gaze, Salime drew once more upon the hookah, exhaling a slow series of purple smoke rings. “‘My heart burns in flames of sorrow. Sparks and smoke rise turning to the sky. Within me, the heart has taken fire like a candle. My body, whirling, is a lighthouse illuminated by your image’.”
“Why that poem, Salime?” he rasped, a feeling of agony washing over him. “Do you take pleasure in taunting me with words of love?”
“I don’t know, Efendi,” she whispered. “The verse came to me unbidden, but love itself is often cruel, is it not? It is so often beyond our reach—unrequited or forbidden. For most it is but a dream, a foolish fancy.”
“Do you really believe that?” He wondered how she could have become so cynical about love.
“It is truth,” she insisted. “Shall I recount to you such a tale of ill-fated love? Will you indulge me, Efendi?”
“Yes, Salime. I would hear any story from your lips.”
“Very well.” She smiled. “Long ago, in a land far away, across oceans and vast stretches of desert, lived a beautiful young woman named Rabee. He
r father Kaab was a governor who was universally loved and respected, although thought by many to be too indulgent of his daughter.
Rabee was a young woman of many accomplishments but took the greatest delight in riding. She was given access to her father’s prized stables but always under the protection of Baktash, Kaab’s most-trusted slave. In time, Rabee fell deeply in love with this big, handsome, and quiet slave who protected her.” She paused, staring into his eyes.
“They kept the affair secret in hope that one day Rabee might find a favorable time to petition her father for her lover’s manumission, but this was not to be. Kaab died unexpectedly, and his son Haares took his place as governor. Unlike his father, Haares was an arrogant and cruel man. Sadly for the lovers, Haares learned of their secret from some of Rabee’s verses. ‘At one glance I love you with a thousand hearts…Let the zealots think loving is sinful…Never mind, let me burn in the hellfire of that sin.’
“Although Rabee refused to reveal her lover’s name, Haares discovered it and imprisoned Baktash in a well. Poor Rabee fared even worse. Haares sliced her throat and locked her away in a room where the blood slowly drained from her body. She composed her final poem on the wall in her own blood. ‘Your love caused me to be imprisoned again. My effort to keep this love as a secret was in vain.’
“Although Baktash managed to escape the well, he was too late to save Rabee. Stricken by the news of her death, he burst into the governor’s office and killed Haares with the very same blade that was used upon poor Rabee. Once vengeance was his, Baktash took his own life by embedding the dagger in his breast.”
“Ah, a tragic tale indeed,” Simon remarked, “not unlike our English bard’s tale of Romeo and Juliet.”
“Your Shakespeare was little better than a plagiarist.” A sniff followed her retort, which drew Simon’s attention to the tears streaming down her cheeks. The shimmer of wetness on her face was like a dagger in his heart.
“My dear Salime,” Simon asked gently, “why do you weep?”
Averting her head, she wiped her face with the back of her hand, sniffing softly again. “Because this is a true story and always moves my heart this way.”
He longed to comfort her, to hold her in his arms. He reached for her without thought. His fingers were mere inches from her face before snatching his hand back. “You believe love is always so tragic?”
“It has been my experience.” Her expression returned to normal. “It is often best to have no heart at all… like the princess Sarita.”
“Do you mean she was a cruel beauty?”
“No, Efendi. She was merely empty.”
“I am intrigued to hear this one.”
“As you wish, Efendi.” She stood, this time making a slow and casual survey of the room. “Sarita was her name. She was the only child of a rich king of a Moorish land. Her parents had wed for love, but her mother died shortly after her birth. Her father grieved the loss greatly and never re-wed. He cherished his only child, but he was often taken away, as his country was at war with the Turks.
“Sarita was adored by all and grew lovelier each passing year. As she grew, so did the king’s fear that one day she would be seduced for her riches as well as her great beauty. He counseled her from an early age that her heart was her most-valued possession and that she must guard it at all costs. When she approached the cusp of womanhood, he sent her to a convent until he could arrange a suitable marriage.
“One day the unthinkable occurred. The king was killed in a great battle and his entire army defeated. With no defense, the city was soon raided by Barbary pirates who slaughtered what few soldiers remained. Conquering the city, they swiftly stormed the convent, killing the old women and abducting the girls. With her capture imminent and the barbarians beating at her door, Sarita was mindful of only protecting her most valued possession. Secreting it behind a stone in the convent wall, she hid her heart in the wooden box where the nuns kept the rosaries.
Salime shut her eyes for a moment, fingering her bare throat, and then her hand fell away.
“Although the nuns maintained Sarita’s anonymity in hope of preventing her from being taken for ransom, her beauty alone made her valuable as a slave. The pirates took her far away to the land of the Turks where she was sold.”
“And after that?”
“There is no more to the story,” she said.
“Another tragic tale,” he remarked dryly. “Do you know any other kind, Salime?”
“It was not tragic, Efendi. Sarita did not die, and you may be rest assured, no real harm ever came upon her because she had safely locked away her heart.”
“Which was it, Salime?” he prompted after a time. “Unrequited? Or forbidden? Or maybe both?”
Her gaze narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“Although you veil all brilliantly in allegory, your stories speak of your past.”
“Secrets of the heart are not meant to be shared, Efendi.” She gestured to the window with a yawn. “Behold it is first light. I am weary now and wish to sleep.”
Morning already? Good God!
Simon could scarce believe he’d passed the entire night with her. Her calm presence and soothing voice had been a panacea to his aching soul, but recognizing he’d overstayed his welcome, he reluctantly heaved to his feet.
“My apologies for imposing on you for so long, Salime.”
“You misunderstand. You need not depart.” She laid her hand on his sleeve. He stared at it, fighting the powerful urge to recoil. She must have read his face. Her hand dropped away.
“Do you not wish to stay with me?” she asked. “There is a bed in the next chamber.”
He ground his teeth. “You know I cannot.”
“Then let us remain as we are. I will stay by your side, Efendi. As long as you are in this house, you shall not pass another night alone—unless by your choosing. If you wish to be alone again, you must send me away.”
“I have no wish to send you away, Salime.” Ever.
“Then we have made great progress in this one night, have we not, Efendi?” Her lips curved into a satisfied smile. Then with a big yawn, she curled up on the floor.
“Damn it,” Simon protested. “I cannot let you sleep on the floor! You shall take the couch.”
She chuckled. “How ludicrous is this argument when there is no lack of beds!”
She was right. The entire arrangement was absurd. If he were still a man, he would carry her off to his bed. Indeed, he would take her in every bed in the bloody house. He imagined all the ways he wished to make love to her…but he was only half a man.
“I’ll return to my own rooms.” Yet his gaze lingered on her still. He wondered if Salime was the one woman he’d looked for all his life, the one he wanted above all others.
Yes, Sin, he mocked himself, you have finally found your chimera—a woman you can never hold. At last he made her a flourishing bow. “Sleep well, sweet Salime…my own Princess Scheherazade.”
The real beloved is that one who is unique,
who is your beginning and your end.
When you find that one,
you’ll no longer expect anything else:
that is both the manifest and the mystery.
-Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi
Chapter Seven
Simon awoke once more to the tantalizing aroma of Turkish coffee.
“Good morning, Efendi, or perhaps I should say good afternoon?” Salime set a tray on the bedside table.
“Is it really that late?” He sat up, rubbing his eyes and then squinting into the bright sunlight that streamed into the room.
“Almost two of the clock. I trust you are well rested?”
“Two o’clock in the afternoon?” He was incredulous. It had been years since he had slept an entire night. Now over half the day was gone?
“Do you care to partake of my coffee?” she asked.
“Yes, I enjoyed it very much yesterday as I recall…that is until…”
“There w
ill be no more fortune-telling,” Salime reassured with a subtle smile.
“Salime, I owe you an apology for yesterday, I didn’t mean to mock you—”
“Let us speak no more of it, Efendi.” She poured the coffee and extended the cup to him with an expectant look. His gaze flickered to the table. “Will you still not take it from my hands?” she asked him directly.
Last night had changed many things. It seemed a small challenge to accept a cup from her. Yet, his hands trembled as they wrapped around the porcelain. The liquid sloshed. Her fingers closed over his to steady his hold.
He flinched, spilling steaming coffee on himself. “Bugger! You see how it is? I cringe on instinct. Now will you recognize how hopeless I am?” He flung the cup, smashing it against the wall.
“You are wrong, Efendi,” she replied. “You have merely lost hope. It is not the same.”
“What the devil difference does it make?”
She dropped her gaze. “I am sorry to have distressed you. Forgive me.”
There was a moment of silence, then Simon sighed in defeat and sank back onto the pillows, the weight of despair descending on him once again. “There is nothing to forgive.” He waved his hand wearily. “Please leave me now, Salime.”
“You are sending me away?”
“Not away. I just need to be alone for a while.”
Her eyes grew solemn. She licked her lips in hesitation. “You do not intend to…”
“To what?” he snapped.
“To harm yourself?”
He looked away, shame and humiliation washing over him. She’d known all along, but had the grace not to mention it until now. “Why do you care, Salime? Is it just for DeVere’s sake?” An irrational twinge of jealousy once more reared its ugly head.
“No, Efendi. I have come also to care for you. Do you promise me you will not?”
“Yes, Salime. That urge has passed.”
The frown instantly smoothed from her brow. She offered a soft smile. “I am glad. You must not give up.” She collected the coffee tray but paused at the door, one slender hand resting on the latch. “Will you come to me again tonight, Efendi?”
Romantic Legends Page 89