Desert Rake. Louise Allen

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СКАЧАТЬ to visit first, when the Secretary reappeared, an expression of mixed alarm and satisfaction on his face.

      ‘The most extraordinary thing, Lady Morvall. A message from the Topkapi Sarayi: the Sultan will receive you personally in audience.’

      ‘The Sultan? But I did not ask for an audience! How has he even heard of me?’

      ‘Possibly officials dealing with your application for a firman were intrigued by the fact that a titled English lady is asking for such a thing. Lady Hester Stanhope caused no little stir, you know—she still does, for all that she is now in Syria.’

      ‘Well, I am no Lady Hester.’

      ‘Indeed not, I am glad to say,’ Mr Hamilton pronounced, reminding her forcefully of Hubert for a moment.

      ‘I presume declining is out of the question?’

      ‘Most certainly. I beg you would do nothing so deleterious to British interests, ma’am. This is a great honour.’

      ‘But what should I wear? How should I behave?’

      ‘Dress and behave as though you were summoned to a daytime audience with the Prince Regent, Lady Morvall.’

      ‘Should I wear a veil?’

      ‘No—His Majesty will want to meet an English lady in her native habit, as it were. His Majesty the Sultan Mahmud has a French mother, you know. She is a great influence upon him.’

      ‘His father married a Frenchwoman? I had no idea.’

      Mr Hamilton coughed discreetly. ‘Not… er… married as such. Aimée Dubucq de Rivery, the Queen Mother, was captured by slavers and sold into the harem. She is the cousin of the late Empress Josephine.’

      ‘My goodness.’ Caroline was virtually speechless. It was like a sensational novel. But this was real. ‘When must I go?’

      ‘Tomorrow, after morning prayer. I will send a guide with you who can then take you on a tour of the old city, if you wish. Or you can return here if the visit has wearied you.’

      ‘Thank you.’ Just getting through an audience in a palace where the Queen Mother was a captured French slave was as far ahead as she could think. ‘I must go and tell my maid, and decide what we are to wear.’

      ‘Your maid is not included, Lady Morvall. To take her would imply a lack of faith in the protection His Majesty is able to extend to a visitor.’

      ‘Oh.’ One could only hope that in 1817 keeping female visitors was not considered an acceptable way of filling vacancies in the harem. ‘Well, I had better choose a gown and practise my court curtsey, Mr Hamilton.’

      CHAPTER THREE

      BUMPING down the hill to the dockside, taking the Embassy caique to the far shore and then climbing into the Embassy’s best coach, which had been sent over the night before, Caroline tried to recall if she had felt this nervous before being presented at court in London. She rather thought not.

      There had been the towering and hideously expensive ostrich plumes in her coiffure to manage, and the long-outdated hooped skirts to worry about, so, really, making her curtsey and dealing with the Prince Regent’s rather broad compliments had seemed a positive anticlimax.

      Now she had neither hoops nor feathers to distract her—simply her very best half-dress gown and a bonnet which she could remove to display an elaborate coiffure suitable for Charlton House in the afternoon, if not the Topkapi Palace in the morning. She had been far too nervous to eat any breakfast, or do more than sip distractedly at a cup of coffee. If she made a poor impression, and the firman was refused, she would have made this journey for nothing, and her gesture towards William’s memory and his dream would end unfulfilled.

      Opposite her sat the translator and guide the Secretary had given her, introducing him simply as Ismael. He was tight-lipped with nerves, obviously wondering what he had done to deserve having to guide a mad Englishwoman to the very steps of the Sultan’s throne.

      ‘We arrive, my lady,’ he said, twitching the lowered blinds back for a moment. ‘As part of the Ambassador’s household we may drive through the gate into the first court: it is a great honour.’

      Caroline removed her bonnet and patted her hair into place. The carriage stopped, the door was opened and the steps let down. Hardly knowing what to expect, she stepped down into a large courtyard, bustling with people. All were men; she felt as conspicuous as if she was wearing a placard.

      ‘The Court of the Janissaries,’ Ismael whispered. ‘See?’ She followed the direction of his gaze and saw the groups of tall men in belted robes, their strange headdresses falling in long flaps of cloth behind. She noted the swords pushed through their belts and averted her eyes.

      An official, his head swathed in a white turban of infinitely intricate folds, approached, spoke to Ismael and gestured for them to follow, barely sparing her a glance. It occurred to Caroline that, although she was the only woman in the courtyard, anyone could be behind the myriad of shuttered windows, watching.

      ‘The Ortakapi—now we enter the Second Court.’

      Caroline tried to move with dignity across the seemingly endless space, managing her skirts, attempting not to start in surprise as a gazelle bounded out from behind a bed of roses, chased by a scolding peacock.

      ‘The Gate of Felicity and the Third Court.’ Ismael seemed steadier now he was working. ‘The Audience Chamber is before us.’

      Caroline knew she should be making mental notes, that she should fix all this in her memory so that she could write it up as soon as she got back to the Embassy, but it was rapidly becoming a blur. The Prince Regent would faint with excitement at what she was seeing: the Pavilion at Brighton was a pale shadow of this confident sophistication.

      They moved through a great portal, heavy brocade curtains were opened, and she was in a lofty square chamber, every surface decorated in marbles, vivid blue tile, ornate carving. And in the centre at the back stood a wide golden throne, half-chair, half-bed, covered in massed cushions.

      An attendant in a sweeping fur-trimmed caftan thundered some announcement she could not understand. On the throne the man sitting cross-legged lifted his head from the document he was perusing, and at her side Ismael fell to his knees and prostrated himself.

      Control, Caroline murmured, sinking as slowly as her shaky knees would allow into a deep curtsey. She held it for a long moment, then rose again, took six steps forward, sank again, rose and took a final six steps, sinking into the deepest curtsey yet, holding it until her thigh muscles screamed. She rose to stand before the Sultan.

      The man regarding her with piercing black eyes was broad-shouldered in his purple brocade robes, black-bearded, and gave the impression of holding himself in stillness by sheer will-power. He was younger than she had expected, handsome. And he exuded a kind of virile, ruthless power that did not have to be expressed to be perfectly understood.

      He spoke, a rich rumble of words, and the man standing to his side translated. ‘His Majesty the Sultan Mahmud, Commander of the Faithful, Lord of the Golden Horn, bids you welcome.’

      ‘I am deeply honoured by His Majesty’s gracious condescension СКАЧАТЬ