The Fragment, page 7
He undid the velvet ribbon and opened the top. The first images were the best of those from the church. Muriel had already supplied him with copies. Even so, he went through them slowly. He had experience in handling a professional’s work, touching only the edge of each picture, lifting them by a fingernail and setting them carefully to one side. When he arrived at her portraits, he slowed further. Several times, he paused in utter stillness, his hand hovering to the side of the photograph. He did not speak until the final picture had been examined. He turned it facedown and rested his fingers upon the back. When he looked up, his eyes were wet. “Is that all?”
“All that I am satisfied with.”
“My dear, these are…magnificent. You have a gift.”
Only then did Muriel realize she had been holding her breath. “Thank you.”
“Do you know why the premier was willing to help you? It was because of your compassionate heart and your ability to perceive what most people miss. These same attributes are what make your photographs unique. You must be careful with this gift, my dear. The world is often unkind to the openhearted among us.”
“I-I don’t understand. Is that a warning?”
He gathered up the photographs, tapped them into order, and settled them back into the folder. His movements were measured, as cautious as his words. “I suspect you are growing fond of Charles Fouchet.”
She watched his hands and searched for some response. But none came to mind.
“You know of his loss, the wife and child?”
“I…Yes. He told me.”
“If I were your father, which I am not, but if I were, I would warn you that some men cannot be healed by a good woman’s love. No matter how much you might wish things to be otherwise.”
She forced herself to reply, “With God all things are possible.”
“True.” The smile he offered her was infinitely sad. “But for that to happen, the individual must himself pray for the miracle. Some men fear that such a healing will mean losing the final fragment of their former love. I know this must be hard for you to understand. You are fresh and young and filled with the promise of unseen days.”
He turned to the window, and Muriel realized he was lost to her now. His gaze held the light of both sorrow and yearning as he looked beyond the morning to a time that was no more. He said softly, “God may heal, and yet he may also offer an alternative. One that is difficult to fathom, but real nonetheless. To walk alone, and yet comforted by the knowledge that another waits patiently, beyond the final door.”
He glanced over and seemed to find it difficult to place her. He blinked once, again, and forced himself to smile. “If Charles is such a man, my dear, his choices may take him in directions that you would be well advised not to follow.”
: CHAPTER 14 ::
They arrived in Venice at mid-morning, where they had a seven-hour stop. The train station was on the mainland, directly opposite the water-bound city. The three of them took a gondola to the Grand Canal. The senator was polished and polite to Charles, who responded with the easy charm of a professional diplomat. But Muriel sensed an edge to their conversation and wondered if it had been there all along. Or if perhaps it was the journey itself that caused a new boundary. Or, worse still, if she caused this herself.
They dined at the Danieli, the city’s oldest hotel, in a restaurant fashioned from a floating veranda as large as a ballroom. The strong Mediterranean sunlight was filtered through a striped canopy. The waters lapped on the stone landing below their table. A pair of gondoliers rowed past, singing in harmony as they plied the waters. Three swans swooped in for a landing beyond the docks, their wings making sweet music in the still air. It was as beautiful a setting as Muriel had ever imagined, and she wished for the ability to shut out her unwelcome thoughts and give herself fully to the day.
After lunch, Charles offered to take her to Saint Mark’s Square. The senator declined their invitation to join them. They strolled down one idyllic lane after another, with sunlight and pigeons and tourists and locals for companions. Finally, Charles asked, “Will you tell me what is troubling you?”
Muriel decided she could not share the senator’s comments. Not directly. Not without confessing her own feelings. Which she most definitely was not willing to do. “What causes the tension between you and the senator?”
“It is not between us, but rather our governments.” He formed two fists and planted them before his face. “South of Constantinople is one of the world’s busiest waterways. It is the only link between the Black Sea and Europe. This controls Russia’s only access to the Mediterranean and her only ports that do not ice over in winter. Whoever controls the Dardanelles Strait controls Asia.”
“But France and America are allies.”
“Not when it comes to the strait.” Charles dropped his hands. “France has been ally of the Ottoman caliphs for three hundred years. America calls them corrupt and decadent, which they most certainly are. France has helped prop up the empire; America wants them replaced by a democracy.”
She felt the chill dread of past hardships rise up with his words. “Will there be war?”
He frowned at the sky above the cathedral’s dome. “I pray not.”
“But you fear yes?”
“Many of France’s strongest remaining industries rely on trade with the Ottoman Empire. If it falls, they fall. Or so they claim. France resents America’s meddling in what she considers her own back yard.”
“Why are you here?”
“Two reasons. First, to assess the situation. I know war. The minister is fed up with the reports the embassy is sending and wants a fresh perspective from a man with military training.”
“And second?” When he did not respond, she pressed, “To spy on us?”
“So long as the senator does what he says, which is find his artifact and study the situation as I will, we have no conflict.”
“But your superiors think otherwise?”
“They do.” He looked at her, his expression grave. “I hope and pray they are wrong.”
• • •
The next two days rattled and hummed along. They gathered for meals. Mornings, Muriel joined the senator for a time of quiet study. They rarely spoke in these periods, and if they did, it was of her family. Their destination was left for a future that was comfortably beyond the next sunset and the next dawn.
Occasionally, Muriel found the two men seated together, talking in grave tones that left her feeling excluded. She retreated unseen.
She spent many hours alone, either in her cabin or in the carriage fitted out as a formal parlor. She found herself reveling in such periods. The vistas outside her windows were ever changing, great flat fields beneath gray skies, tilled by people and oxen and donkeys in a fashion that looked unchanged for centuries beyond count. Mountains drifted in the distance, the color of slate, uninviting and grim. Then the sun reappeared, and the world was transformed to a place of hope and promise. Water sparkled in the distance, rivers and tributaries that flowed into the unseen Mediterranean. Sails drifted down broad rivers, fishing nets flashed, and Muriel wished the journey would never end.
They arrived in Constantinople at daybreak. The city bustled and beckoned. Minarets rose like a man-made forest, steep pinnacles that pierced the new day. The city was one great, confusing roar. Donkeys brayed, hawkers yelled, people rushed. The senator and Muriel stood by their luggage while Charles went in search of a carriage. Passersby cast Muriel dark, unreadable glances and moved on. Beggars clustered and pleaded.
Charles returned with a carriage and two porters, who waved away the screeching beggars and loaded their luggage in a rush of strong arms and calls in a foreign tongue. The beggars wailed as she climbed into the carriage, but none dared touch the foreign lady. Muriel pushed down the sliding window and leaned out. The alienness of Constantinople surrounded her on all sides. Beyond the crowded avenue rose a humpbacked bridge where men fished with long poles. Their catches sparkled and danced in the sunlight. On the bridge’s other side rose another forest of minarets. Muriel took a deep breath and felt her heart surge with the excitement of being here, of being alive.
The city was both crumbling and full of life, as though the people thrived on the decay and the tumult and the din. The journey to the American embassy took over an hour. Soon as the carriage halted, another herd of beggars rushed up. The driver and his young assistant shouted and drove them back with staves and were soon joined by two soldiers in khaki uniforms and puttees. Muriel was ushered through rusting gates and entered another world.
Charles came up to stand beside her. “This is how life is throughout the Orient. Chaos outside the walls, wonder within.”
“You have traveled here often?”
“Once only to Constantinople. The last journey my father took before the war. But I have lived all over. My family was always on the move…”
He stopped because a man in the formal striped trousers and cutaway coat of the diplomatic service rushed forward. “Senator Bryan, forgive me, your cable arrived only this morning. I sent my own carriage, but I see it did not arrive in time.”
“Think nothing of it.” He ushered Muriel forward. “May I have the pleasure of introducing my associate from the Smithsonian, Muriel Ross. My dear, this is Ambassador Eveland Holland, legate to the Ottoman court.”
He was a slender man in his sixties, with an angular nose over a salt-and-pepper moustache. Two unruly wisps of silver hair clung to either side of an utterly bald head. He looked to Muriel like a worried stork. The hand he offered her was moist and limp. She resisted the urge to wipe her fingers on her skirt. “I am honored, sir.”
“I wish I could say the same.” The ambassador scarcely glanced her way. “Senator—”
“And this is Charles Fouchet, personal attaché to Minister Maunoury.”
The ambassador looked askance. “You are traveling with a member of the French government?”
“I am, and I would be grateful if you would find accommodation for him as well.”
The ambassador’s mouth opened several times before he said, “Sir, forgive me, but surely the gentleman would be more comfortable at his own legation.”
“No doubt. But I wish for him to remain here.” Senator Bryan’s smile turned steely. “With us.”
“Very well, Senator. But I must tell you, if I had known you were even considering such a journey, I would have protested in the strongest possible terms.”
“The president himself approved my voyage. He requested it, in fact.”
“Then, Sir, I would have protested to him as well. With respect, there is no way anyone in Washington could possibly understand what is happening here.” The ambassador waved a hand at the gates, where the two soldiers were once again standing guard. “Outside these walls is a city waiting to ignite. I cannot stress too highly the danger we face. Tonight could very well be our last.”
: CHAPTER 15 ::
Muriel’s bedchamber was on the legation’s top floor, in what had once been the servant’s lodgings. The room was long and narrow and had three cat’s-eye windows that extended over the eaves. The scarred floor held shadows where once six beds and tables had stood. But it was all hers, and the view was stupendous. She hung up her clothes in the wardrobe, bathed, and dressed in one of the more modest dresses she had brought from home. She spent the hour before lunch seated by the central window, staring out over the city, yearning to go out and look and absorb and experience.
At midday, a man in a fez and white apron walked through the central courtyard below, striking a xylophone he held in one arm. Muriel descended the stairs and joined the chattering flow into the main dining room. The ground-floor rooms were very grand, with frescoed ceilings and gilded bas-relief pillars. Muriel was stared at, but no one spoke to her. She had known such treatment from her early days at the Smithsonian, when the other researchers had taken acidic pleasure in pretending she was invisible. She was too young, she was too inexperienced, and she was too eager to learn and grow and move on. Muriel had remained determined to never become mummified like them.
And now here she was again. She had traveled halfway around the world to experience the same petty spite. She sat alone at a table by the far wall, eating food she did not taste, surrounded by other people who had developed the professional ability to exclude, to ignore.
“May I join you?”
She greeted Charles Fouchet with a smile from the heart. “I have been trying to tell myself that I do not mind being alone.”
“The ambassador has protested to the senator over your presence. These embassy officials are professionals at reading the political winds.” He nodded his thanks as a waiter placed a plate down in front of him. “What are we eating?”
“Boiled beef. At least, I think it’s beef.”
“That is the problem with the Orient. When Westerners insist upon being served food they find familiar, the local cooks are both baffled and insulted.” He took a bite and grimaced. “This is dreadful.”
“I agree.”
“This will not do.” He set his napkin to one side and rose from the table. “Excuse me.”
Muriel watched him cross the room, a leopard drifting through a crowd of mice. Charles Fouchet was not handsome in any conventional sense. His features were too severe, and the scar that ran down the left side of his face was a jarring reminder of whatever had shattered his dark gaze. But his was a commanding presence, and Muriel liked him. Then she recalled the senator’s warning, and her insides went cold with a sudden wash of fear. Even so, her feelings could not be denied. Her affections for Charles grew with each meeting.
He returned from the kitchen, followed by two beaming waiters. They swept up the two plates and deposited new ones in their place. The food was very odd-looking, particularly the meat, which was ground and then shaped like a cigar. The smell was spectacular. “What is this?”
One of the waiters replied, “Döner kebab, honored Mistress. Named for my city. Very good. Turkish food. You try.”
She took a bite and proclaimed, “Marvelous!”
Both waiters smiled broadly. “Turkish food, it is best in world, you see.”
Charles said, “I asked for plates of whatever they were having.”
The rice was unlike any she had ever seen, colored like dirty dishwater and filled with what appeared to be chopped leaves. But the flavor was exquisite. Midway through the meal, Muriel was suddenly caught by an urge to share her secret with Charles. Perhaps it was the way the rest of the room pointedly ignored them. Maybe it was the easy silence, or the way he had transformed the meal from an ordeal into a delight. Whatever the reason, as soon as she started speaking, she knew it was the right thing to do.
She told him about the dream and the sense of coming close to the center of salvation. The weeping, and the hours she spent on her knees afterward. Midway through the description, Charles pushed his plate to one side and leaned his chin against his fists. He watched her in brooding silence, his gaze as open and dark as a tomb.
When she was done, he took a long time responding. “I once knew such a faith. A confidence that the day would be fine and the Lord of all was with me.”
“He was, and he is,” she said softly.
Charles breathed in and out, great heaves of his chest that left her feeling as though inside where no one could see, the man wept. “It is nice that you still think so. But this world has shown me such things…”
“I cannot imagine what you have endured,” she said. “But I do know that God is still there for you. Waiting. Ready to heal. And offer you a tomorrow.”
“I have a tomorrow, thanks to Minister Maunoury.”
Muriel did not respond.
“Yes, yes, he can be difficult at times. But most men of power develop such sharp edges. It is the price they pay for holding the lives of others in their grasp.”
“That is not what we are speaking of, and you know it.”
“Perhaps not.” He rose from the table with the slow, deliberate motions of an old man. “I must pay my respects to the French legate.”
“Could I come with you?”
He hesitated, then decided, “No.”
“I don’t need to go in. I won’t speak. I just want—”
“You want to escape. You want to explore. Alas, I cannot help you.” His gaze carried the brooding depths of a man whose wounds had been exposed. “Your ambassador would not hear of it. And my own superiors would wonder what I am doing, escorting an American civilian through a civil war.”
“Turkey is not at war.”
“Not yet, no. But your ambassador is correct. The place is a tinderbox. I can already smell the city burning.”
“I don’t smell anything.”
“You have not known war. I hope you never do.”
“How long must I remain here?”
“Until the senator is invited to meet with the caliph. Days, perhaps. Longer. Perhaps never.”
“What?”
“The ambassador has been seeking an audience for three weeks.”
She waited until he was out of hearing range to protest, “I did not travel six thousand miles to be trapped inside a gilded cage.”
: CHAPTER 16 ::
Muriel spent the afternoon in the library. The embassy was housed in a palace which had once belonged to an Ottoman prince. A century earlier, the sultan had given it to the American government after they had assisted Turkey in a dispute with Russia. The embassy library was housed in what had formerly been the harem, a series of seven adjoining rooms. The largest chamber was adjacent to the main audience hall. The other six formed an L that extended over the stable block. The former baths had been turned into a reading room. The walls and ceiling were adorned with hand-painted ceramic tiles. Muriel read the documents related to the embassy’s foundation and wondered about the women who had once dwelled here.
