Traveling with the Dead (James Asher #2)

Traveling with the Dead (James Asher #2) Page 14

"I don't see why he can't come with us." Margaret Potton stepped down from the embassy carriage at Lydia's heels, and, trailed by a Greek footman, hurried in the wake of the formidable Lady Clapham, a tall, thin, horse-faced individual whom Lydia had guessed at once to be the headwoman of the British diplomatic community in Pera. "You could introduce him as your cousin. When you told Sir Burnwell that you had a cousin here in Constantinople, I thought it was a good idea."

"I told him that in case we have to produce Ysidro in an emergency," Lydia replied, patient and somewhat bemused, but without anger. "I don't think a diplomatic reception at the palace qualifies." Ahead of them, half glimpsed between strolling ladies in tulip-skirted ensembles and coal-scuttle hats that would not have been out of place in Paris or Vienna, Lady Clapham paused in the doorway of Mademoiselle Ursule's and looked back for her two charges. Lydia almost expected her to snap, Step along, girls, spit-spot...

"I don't know," Margaret said. "I think it would be nice for him."

Lydia shook her head but was spared further discussion by conjunction, in the doorway of the boutique, with her guide and hostess for the shopping trip and the modiste herself, a middle-aged and firmly corseted Belgian woman who apprehended instantly the difference between Lydia's two-hundred-guinea, Alice- blue raw silk and Margaret's outdated brown wool, but varied not a whit the warmth of her smiles of greeting to both. It did cross Lydia's mind, as Lady Clapham explained to Mile. Ursule what they'd come for, that Ysidro might have some difficulty these days in passing himself off as a living man.

Margaret was staggered at the news that it was for her benefit, not for Lydia's, that they had made the excursion to the fashionable European shopping quarter along the Grand Rue. "Silly goose," Lady Clapham declared, not unkindly, as the governess turned pink with pleasure. "Of course you'll accompany Mrs. Asher tonight, and you certainly can't wear what you have on."

Lydia felt slightly relieved at this confirmation that other people-older and in positions of social authority-were far more tactless than she.

Much as it annoyed Lydia to admit it, Ysidro had been quite right. In Constantinople as in Vienna, Margaret Potton was her mantle of respectability, her mere presence making it entirely unnecessary for Lydia to say to anyone, As you see, I am not a jauntering slut. Her presence had certainly worked its intended magic at the embassy yesterday afternoon. Without Margaret, Lydia guessed she would still have been admitted, would still have had her queries answered... would still have spoken to Sir Burnwell, stooped and gray and with the slightly puffy face of an intermittent sufferer of kidney problems...

But only the presence and respectability of a companion had brought Lady Clapham into the office, holding out her hands and saying, My dear, I'm so sorry...

So sorry.

Cold closed around her again, dimming the voices of Mile. Ursule, Lady Clapham, Miss Potton, as if the small, neat, and extremely Parisian room with its powder- blue satin wallpapers and gilt mirrors was at the end of a very long corridor.

Wednesday. James had been missing since Wednesday afternoon.

"Which one do you like, my dear?"

Lady Clapham's voice pulled her back to the present. The dressmaker had spread out on the table two gowns, one straw-yellow with an overgown of white georgette, the other fawn-and-white-striped mousselme de soie trimmed with pink silk. "I think that's up to Miss Potton," Lydia said, manufacturing a smile with an effort and stepping close to get some idea of how the dresses actually looked. Miss Potton turned red and pale and pink, and blotchy combinations of all three, and finally settled on the mousseline de soie, for which Lydia then bought a pair of white satin slippers, kid gloves, and a thin gold chain with a pendant of rose quartz and earrings to match.

"You really shouldn't have," Margaret said softly when, later in their bedroom, Stefama Potoneros was lacing her into the gown. "I mean I... it must be terribly expensive."

It hadn't been, in terms of higher fashion, reflected Lydia, putting on her spectacles to turn and look over her shoulder at the girl. Mile. Ursule had expertly graded ranks of gowns for all occasions, and the fawn and white silk, however pretty, was designed to be no competition whatsoever for Lydia's point lace and baby ribbons. But to a girl without a family, who had spent any number of

years in the dreary confines of the typical governess' quarters, it must seem like Cinderella's ball dress.

"I can't..." Margaret stammered. "I can't repay you..."

"Good heavens, no!" Lydia said. There was a silence, Margaret undoubtedly remembering-as Lydia remembered-the hysterics in Sofia, the furious outburst upon their arrival the night before last. A little awkwardly, she explained, "It's nothing, really. I mean... what's the point of being an heiress, and putting up with uncles and aunts telling you how to live and who you have to marry, if you can't... can't buy someone a present now and then? And I know it helps to have the right thing to wear."

"I thought if you were an heiress, it meant you could do what you wanted," said Margaret as Lydia barely touched the eiderdown puff to her cheeks, then leaned forward until her nose nearly touched the glass to inspect the results in the mirror.

Lydia shook her head. "Well, I don't know about other heiresses. My father and his two sisters had a terror of fortune hunters, and my life was... rather restricted at times."

I'll not have you turning my money over to a scoundrel, had been her father's exact- and oft-repeated-words.

Not, A man who only marries you for money will make you wretched.

Not, How do you expect such a man to fit into the life you want to make for yourself?

I'll not have you turning my money over to a scoundrel.

His money, even should he die.

She rubbed the rouge on her fingertips, smoothed the tiniest hint of a blush along cheekbones and temples, seeking the perfection that had been her only protection against everything they could do.

"It couldn't have been that restricted, if they let you go to Oxford," said Margaret. She picked up the powder puff, turned it cautiously over in one square, disapproving hand. "Do all heiresses learn to use cosmetics like this?" "Only if they have a nose like mine." Lydia squinted at the effect of the rouge, then licked the end of her eye pencil and began careful shading along the upper lashes. "James-he was a friend of my uncle Ambrose, the dean of All Souls- arranged with one of the pathology professors to help me borrow money under another name. I begged Uncle Ambrose not to tell Father, and I'm not sure he would have agreed if he'd known I was studying medicine. It was exhausting, going back and forth by train and concealing sessions when my tutor came down to town. Fortunately, our place was near Oxford-Willoughby Close-and Father spent weeks at a time down in London. If my mother had been alive, I could never have done it."

"What did they do when they found out?" Margaret asked, blue eyes wide with alarm.

"There was a row," Lydia said evasively. Why, after eight years, did her father's cold fury still hurt? "Would you like to try this?" she added, seeing the other woman's hand stray to touch the rouge pot, the lip rouge, the several types of powder and skin food indispensable to the artifice that Lydia regarded as her armor against the world.

"C- could I?" Margaret stammered, turning pink again. "I know I shouldn't-the sisters at the orphanage all said that ladies don't use such things..."

"Well, I never met a lady who didn't," Lydia said with a smile. "It's just that there's a trick to doing it so that nobody notices. Here."

The transformation was not a startling one, but having spent years compensating for what she considered her own shortcomings-a slightly aquiline nose, too-thin cheeks, and unfashionably shaped lips, to say nothing of a preference for knowledge above society gossip-Lydia knew how to apply rouge and powder to reduce the impact of the other woman's shallow chin and snub nose, and to give her better cheekbones than she'd been born with. At the end, staring mto the lamplit glass, Margaret breathed, "Oh..." in a kind of wonderment, the blue eyes widened and deepened, the pale, pretty face surrounded by raven masses of curls as it had been, Lydia knew well, in her dreams. "Oh, thank you!"

She fumbled for her eyeglasses.

Lydia laughed. "You aren't going to wear them to the reception, are you?" "Of course." Margaret settled them firmly on her nose, even as Lydia was removing her own to be helped into her gown by the maid. "If people don't like me in my eyeglasses, that's just too bad." She blinked mildly at Lydia as the Greek maid laced her expertly up the back. "Thank you," Margaret said simply.

"Thank you so much for doing this for me. I've never been beautiful before."

Lydia smiled a little and shook her head. "I'll teach you how to do it, if you'd like," she said, stowing her spectacles in a silver-mounted leather case and making a final inspection of herself in the mirror. Stefame's sister Helena had come to the door twenty minutes ago with word that Sir Burnwell and Lady Clapham were waiting downstairs with the carriage; they should, Lydia guessed, arrive at the palace in fashionable good time.

She worked her tight kid gloves onto her hands and surveyed Margaret once more, pleased with the results in spite of the glasses. She had done her best-the fact that Miss Potton was her companion was no reason not to make her as beautiful as she could be, though she knew girls of her own year as a debutante who would dispute that-and she suspected that her companion's raven hair and tourmaline eyes made her prettier than herself.

"Margaret," she asked, as they collected reticules, fans, shawls and keys, "what are you going to do when you return? To London, I mean? I could help you..." "Oh, I'll leave that to Don Simon," Margaret said. "My fate is in his hands." She smiled happily and followed Lydia down the stairs.

The reception was held in a medium-sized pavilion in the inner garden court of the old palace of the sultans, flanked by plane trees and surrounded by a colonnade of shallow, green-tiled domes. The Sultan himself had not occupied the Topkapi Palace for a good fifty years, but the new government-the Committee of Union and Progress-used it for state functions, and this three-room suite, though a little small for a reception and rather stuffy with its low, coffered ceilings and Western-style crystal chandeliers, was at least unhallowed by any sort of Imperial tradition.

"Ambassador Lowther hardly knows whom to speak to these days," Sir Burnwell confided to Lydia as gorgeously caparisoned palace servants divested them of coats and cloaks in the doorway of the kiosk's small service room. "It's like the old story about the seer who was right half the time, but one never knew which half. The C.U.P. holds power in patches, but nobody knows which patches they are."

"At least under the old Sultan one knew whom to bribe." Lady Clapham brushed straight the folds of her periwinkle and gold chiffon dress, and nodded approvingly at both the younger members of the party. "Don't worry, my dear," she added more quietly to Lydia. "If there's anything to be found about your husband, we'll find it here. I know at least someone who saw him Wednesday afternoon. I hope he's here... Russians have such an Oriental idea of time." She led the way into the main hall, where the reception line moved slowly past the bearlike Talaat Bey, the new lord of this place where the sultans had reigned for five centuries, and the Romeo of the new army, the beautiful Enver Bey. The room was crowded with men and women dressed in the height of European fashion-most of them fair-skinned and all of them speaking French-and servants in old-fashioned turbans, slippers, and pantaloons bearing silver trays of refreshments. Lydia noticed Miss Potton craning her neck, looking around her, presumably in the hopes that Ysidro would have followed them here after all. "Andrei!" Lady Clapham called out and moved into the crowd, returning a moment later with a hunter-green colossus on her arm. "Prmce Andrei Illlyich Razumovsky, of the Russian Embassy; Mrs. James Asher. His Highness is an acquaintance of your husband, my dear. He was the last one to see him after that affair with the Sultan's guards Wednesday, weren't you, Andrei?"

"The Sultan's guards?" Lydia raised her eyes to the man who towered over her, the impressionistic glitter of bullion, buttons, epaulets, fringe, and a beard of still- brighter gold resolving themselves into a good-humored, handsome face and bright blue eyes as the prince bent to kiss her hand. Slavic facial angle, Lydia thought automatically. Brachycephalic. Cranial index about 82. I %. I really must stop seeing people in terms of their internal structure...

"There was little harm done," the prince said in beautiful Oxonian English and offered her his arm. Lydia followed him back out into the colonnade, where electric lights had been incongruously strung from pillar to pillar. A few men stood at one end of the arcade smoking-Lydia caught the acrid whiff of tobacco, but at that distance they were little more than a clump of black forms spatchcocked with the white of shirtfronts.

The day had been a cold one, and few ladies, bare-shouldered as she was herself, ventured into the sea-chilled darkness.

"Your husband had lodgings here in Stamboul," the prince went on when they were out of earshot of the smokers. "Most Europeans prefer to stay in Pera, of course, particularly since the coup. There haven't been riots among the Armenians in the past week or two, but fighting in the streets between the Greeks and the Turks can't be stopped. Your husband..."

He gazed down at her for a moment from his great height, and Lydia could see him asking himself what he could, in discretion, ask her. The look in Lady Clapham's eyes when she'd said, An acquaintance of your husband, had told her exactly what this "junior attache" did in the Czar's service.

"I know that my husband came to Constantinople to ask the advice of... certain friends." She laid the same emphasis on the last words and met his eyes. The corners of them crinkled in a little smile. Yes, I know my husband was a spy and you still are. Presumably, she thought, Lady Clapham wouldn't have introduced them that way if Russia was an ally of Austria. Whose side was the Ottoman Empire on?

"Ah," he said. "As you say, Madame Asher." His smile widened. "Then you know that he probably had his reasons. You wouldn't happen to know what those were?" She shook her head. "I only knew that he might be in trouble. Sir Burnwell told me he arrived in Constantinople a week ago yesterday, and that nobody's seen him since Wednesday afternoon."

"And what sort of help did you believe you could be?" He spoke kindly, but she could see something else in his gaze. Just because we're allies, Jamie often said, doesn't mean we're on the same side. She felt panicky again, as she had in Vienna, panicky and unable to make a correct choice.

Forcibly, she put the panic aside. "I thought I could recognize the man who might betray him," Lydia lied, with what she hoped was calm. "I don't know his name," she added, and went on at once, "But what happened Wednesday afternoon?" Razumovsky looked as if he might say something else, but changed his mind. Probably, thought Lydia, because he thought it likelier he'd get more information later if he gave a little himself. He might even actually like Jamie- he looked like the sort of person Jamie, and in fact she, would and could like.

"As I said, he had lodgings on the Stamboul side of the Horn." The prince lowered his voice and glanced along the colonnade to the group of smokers again. None looked in their direction, but the prince guided her down the short flight of marble steps that led to an arched tunnel beneath the pavilion, and so through to the dark gardens beyond. "He told no one where they were, and when I saw him, he had the look of one watching over his shoulder. On Wednesday men from the palace intercepted him by the Grand Bazaar, sent by the High Chamberlain, they said-though anyone could have bribed him to do so." He grinned reminiscently. "I've bribed him to do similar things myself."

"And he sent to you for help?"

"We've been friends a good many years," said the Russian. "Sir Burnwell would probably have complained to the army first, or the C.U.P., and been put off for God knows how long. Semibarbarity has its advantages. I came here-where the Chamberlain and in fact the Sultan still hold a good deal of power- and blustered and shook my fist. Shook my country's fist, which frightened them even more. Already the Sultan is playing off the people against the army, trying to rouse them in a countercoup, for he wields power as the head of the Mohammedan faith, you know. If it comes to it, the Chamberlain and his master are going to need support."

Lydia shivered, remembering a scene glimpsed from the window of the embassy carriage as they'd clattered along one of the few streets in the old city wide enough to admit such a vehicle: three men, dark-haired and hook-nosed, in the khaki uniforms of the new army, beating up an old man outside a half-closed shop. A muttering crowd had gathered, but no one had dared interfere; the old man had only put his hands over his head for protection, as if he knew perfectly well that begging for mercy or asking for help were equally out of court. "They brought him out in a short time," Razumovsky went on, stroking back the surge of his golden mustaches. "As I'd suspected, they were holding him in the guardhouse here, which means it was the Chamberlain who'd been bribed. He had been knocked about a little, nothing serious."

"I hope he put proper antiseptic on it," Lydia said, and was startled when the prince burst into laughter. "I mean," she added hastily, realizing how that had sounded, "I'm quite shocked, of course, that he was hurt, but if he will get into danger... What had he been doing?"

"Apparently-he did not tell me this, but I found it out through palace contacts of my own-questioning storytellers in the markets. That was how they knew where he would be."

"Storytellers." Old man who lived to be a thousand... The wandering script of Fairport's notebook sprang immediately to her mind. Woman who lived to be five hundred (wove moonlight).

"You tell me why," said the prince.

Lydia only shook her head, though a numbness started behind her breastbone and seemed to spread to fingers, lips, toes. Stress on top of hypothermia, she thought. And then, a small inner voice like a child's, Jamie, no...

"You're cold, madame." The prince put a warm hand to the small of her back and led her up the steps again, toward the brighter lights at the other end of the arcade. "We were walking back to his rooms in the Bajazid when an Armenian boy came up to him. I didn't hear all the boy said, but I know he said, 'My master told me to show you the place.' Jamie took his leave of me..." He shook his head. Did he look well? she wanted to ask. Did they take his knife when he was arrested, and did he get it back? Did you see if he still had the silver around his neck, on his wrists?

It was conceivable, she thought, that the Sultan's guards had stolen it. The ones she'd seen at the palace's outer gates looked capable of relieving a dying man of his shoes.

Under her corsets her heart seemed to be pounding uncomfortably fast.

"Your palace contact didn't happen to say which storytellers, did he?" Razumovsky stopped, gazing down at her again. Men had appeared in the colonnade, Europeans in bright colors that had to be uniforms. By the way they were looking around, Lydia guessed they were the prince's own attaches.

"Mrs. Asher," he said quietly, "Constantinople is not a good city. It is not a safe city, especially now, with the army in power and turning things upside down, and it has never been a good city in which to be a woman. I have been making inquiries of my own about James. When I hear anything, even of the smallest, I will send to you at once."

"Thank you." Lydia clasped the broad, kid-gloved hand. "I can't tell you how much I appreciate that. I can't... there are reasons I can't tell you how I know... what I know. But any help you can give me..."

"On this condition." Razumovsky brushed at his mustaches again. His glove buttons had diamonds in them that twinkled like tiny stars. "Something tells me I do not need to tell this to you, but I will anyway. Do not investigate anything alone. Not anything. Call on me for help at whatever hour. Is there a telephone where you're staying?" She shook her head. "Then send a page. Do you understand? If I can't come, I'll send a servant. You don't need to tell me or him or anyone where you're going, but don't go alone.

"Sir Burnwell and the embassy staff are good men, but they haven't been here as long as I. Moreover, they are perceived as being on the side of the C.U.P., and against the old powers. In any case the German businessmen who've advanced money to both sides hold more power here than either my embassy or yours. When you go about the city, take someone with you- someone besides that silly girl of yours, I mean- and don't assume that you can get away with anything safely. This isn't England. There," he said, and led her back toward the lights, the smokers, the door with its tall guards in their billowy pantaloons and turbans of orange and red. Not until they were inside and he had fetched her champagne and a cracker of sour cream and Russian caviar did he excuse himself, and two minutes later she saw him-or at any rate someone his height with a gold beard and a uniform of hunter- green-deep in conversation with Enver Bey himself.