Authors: Annmarie Banks
They kept her inside the next day, bringing food and water, fresh clothing and a comb and posting a changing guard outside the entrance to the little shelter. Elsa spent the time reading her file and combing her hair, which was suffering from the dry desert winds. She sat with her back against the cool bricks near the space where a rectangle of light shone through the edge of the hide door and landed on the floor. She could move the papers as the sun changed the angle, and keep reading as she carefully combed.
In the car with Farmadi, she had skimmed most of the material, looking for the most pertinent facts about Lord Sonnenby, and especially about his father and why this journey to the crumbled Ottoman Empire was necessary to the British government. Now she had the time to read even the more tedious reports about legal matters in the family and school records and mine the many papers looking for more personal insights into the man the government felt was so important to their cause.
As she had suspected from the first, Sonnenby’s relationship with his mother was the key. School records suggest that she championed her son in disagreements while the father stood with school administrators on heavy discipline. Elsa assumed that this tendency had applied at home as well and had possibly been a source of friction within the family beyond school matters. In a letter from a headmaster expelling young Henry, Elsa read a sentence that suggested the child’s mother had exasperated the school administration to the point of being the cause of the expulsion.
She tried not to smile, imagining that scene in the stuffy offices, Lady Sonnenby taking the child’s hand and marching him out of the school after a storm of words that the secretary suggested, “could not decently be recorded on paper”.
School expulsions are traumatic for a child, she reminded herself. It is a fierce rejection from authority and a terrible blow to the ego, whether the child welcomes the release or not. But Henry had seen his mother in action. He had seen the results of her temper. She could be a feisty ally, but was she cruel to him? Elsa looked for more mentions of his mother in letters where such a thing was most likely to be found, from when he was enrolled in another school.
And yet no mention of mental illness, only what might be considered an excess of youthful energy and a predisposition toward fist-fighting. Some colorful language perhaps. Nothing about melancholy or suicide or deviant cruelty to others. Certainly if anything like that had been evident it would have been recorded.
Later in the military section she found letters between commanding officers suggesting that Lord Sonnenby had been reprimanded for dueling. That was unusual in this day and age, but perhaps not unusual for him. She could imagine him challenging other officers for slights real and imagined.
Elsa was familiar with dueling scars on the left cheeks of young men she treated in Austria. The English preferred their fists to blades. If she had Lord Sonnenby with her she might check his knuckles for dueling scars.
She was brought out of her reverie by the shouts of the men in the village. Her guard moved back and forth across the entrance and blocked the light. Elsa closed up her files and put them near the wall and then placed her bundle of ruined clothing on top, hiding it. She stood and adjusted the simple wool dress and sash she had been given, and put the veil over her head and wrapped the ends around her shoulders. When her guard moved again, she leaned on the edge of the doorway and peeked through the gap.
Visitors were coming. Coming in trucks. The camp was in an uproar. Women and children fled to the shelters as the men congregated along the dirt track that served as a road. The trucks came from the north, raising clouds of dust that obscured their numbers. Elsa tried to determine if the vehicles were British or French or Turkish, but when her guard caught her with her head out the doorway he made a gesture with his palm, suggesting she remain hidden.
She glared at him in defiance and he widened his eyes and tilted his head, insisting without a word that she obey. Reluctantly she backed into the darkness. Her ears told her that the convoy was English. The wild shouting she heard was in Arabic, but the regulated voices were definitely English. She leaned as close to the flap over her doorway as possible, listening.
The rumble of the trucks’ engines faded as each vehicle became silent. There was still a great deal of shouting. She recognized a European voice speaking Arabic loudly and slowly, and imagined a series of announcements. The villagers calmed and soon this voice was the only one speaking.
Elsa’s guard was replaced by another who was more interested in what was going on closer to the river that to her. She was able to peer through the edge of the flap down into the village if she lay on the ground and lifted just the corner. Between his handmade leather boots she could barely see the edges of the troop transports below on the slope to the river bank. There were four of them parked in formation between the village and the river. Two of the vehicles were flatbeds armed with machine guns mounted in the back, the other two had canvas covered beds. The man doing the talking was in civilian clothing, but the others were all in uniform.
She wondered if this was the meeting Mr. Marshall had planned. She could not see him, but that did not mean he wasn’t there. He almost certainly was. The speech ended and there was discussion among the village men. The British waited silently. It was late afternoon. If there was to be another meeting, it would be conducted over a meal, or after dark in one of the larger tents. None of the brick buildings were large enough to hold more than a handful of people at a time.
Her body felt an overwhelming desire to jump up and run out, but her mind held her back. She sat against the wall again and thought about her options. Revealing herself would only cause a change of jailers. That much she knew. And the British had ordered her to be taken out to the wilderness and knocked out with ether. But for what purpose? To kill her? Sell her to the villagers? No, certainly not that. The odds that she would walk back to Damascus were too much in her favor. Were they going to hand her off to another who would take her further away, or back to Europe? If she revealed herself now, she would not be able to count on Mr. Marshall coming to her defense. The sickening thought that he had been the one to give the order for her to be eliminated made her groan. No. Running to the convoy could be a fatal mistake.
But what did the villagers have planned? It occurred to her just then that no one had come to take her to the English. They were not planning on handing her over. That was a good sign. They did not trust the English either, or they had instructions to give her only to Lord Sonnenby.
A shout from somewhere to her right was echoed through the village. Her guard’s feet moved back and forth across the threshold of her hut and the flap swung in and out. More shouting. She lifted the edge of her flap and looked out.
Mr. Marshall and Lord Sonnenby had made an appearance in front of the transports. Her breath caught in her throat and told her how worried she had been. Her guard looked down at her and frowned. He waved her back in, but she defied him. He looked puzzled at first, and then said something unintelligible to her in an exasperated tone of voice. But she did not look at him.
Her eyes were on Lord Sonnenby now standing on the back of the flatbed truck with Marshall. He was a small figure, far enough away that she could not read any expression on his face, but his posture told her he was injured. He did not stand straight like a man at attention, or a man defiant. His shoulders were hunched just enough to indicate it hurt to stand, and rounded the way a man stands after being punched in the gut. She grit her teeth, thinking of it.
She would give Marshall such a tongue-lashing in his own language and then when she ran out of English words her German ones would strike at him. The English hated being cursed in German. Elsa had cursed plenty of them in the past. She felt her face get warm, remembering her own loss of temper on occasion in hospitals during prisoner exchanges. She had been marched away by the hospital matron once for causing a disturbance. Elsa rubbed her face to make that memory go away and focus on the drama before her.
Mr. Marshall now put a hand on Lord Sonnenby’s arm and pushed him forward. His other hand made an expansive gesture to the crowd. Everything got very quiet, and her guard stood straighter, leaning in to listen.
Sonnenby’s voice started out weak, and Elsa saw him nudged by Marshall until he increased the volume. Murmurs from the crowd suggested they did not like whatever the message was. She turned her eyes to the European man who had spoken Arabic when they arrived. His expression would tell her more about Sonnenby’s content. His face was turned away from her, however, so she had no idea what was being said.
Her guard made a few approving sounds in his throat, so she suspected the villagers were being praised for their courage or their loyalty. A more ominous silence followed, so she thought perhaps Sonnenby was getting to the real heart of the message.
The British soldiers looked uncomfortable, but she knew this was most likely because they could not understand what was being said. Lord Sonnenby was interrupted by one of the villagers. Elsa recognized him from his black turban as the leader of the group of men who had taken her from Farmadi. His voice was defiant and challenging. There was a long pause before Sonnenby answered. Again, an uncomfortable silence followed his words. Her guard grumbled something under his breath. He glanced down at her and she saw him thinking. His face registered an idea, his eyes flicked over her, then he turned back to the trucks before turning back again to her. He said something gentle and polite and pointed to the interior of her hut. Elsa backed her head in until she was out of sight, watching him. He then shouted something.
Another shout, and then another. Then silence. She could hear murmurs of the crowd now as the villagers discussed what had been said, but nothing more in English or French, and nothing that sounded like “Lord Sonnenby”. After a long while the flap in her doorway lifted up and her guard and the black-turbaned leader appeared framed by the light of the setting sun, bending down to look into the hut.
“Madam Sonnenby, please come with us.” The turbaned leader gave her a sly smile.
“Oh,” she breathed, “you speak English.”
He merely smiled again. She glanced at the file under her bundle. She did not want to leave her papers. She could not be seen to be carrying them around, either. “Give me a moment to arrange my clothing,” she said to him. The flap swung shut. Though it was darker now, she moved the bundle and took the file folder and placed it inside her dress and re-wrapped the sash so it would hold the papers firmly to her body. The nature of the veil made it easy to conceal the bulge in her middle, and allowed her to hold her forearm crossed in front as she kept everything together.
They led her across the village away from the trucks. She could see the vehicles in the murky twilight against the emerging stars. Small fires dotted the village here and there, casting moving shadows on tents and brick. Elsa followed closely, careful of the hem of her long dress, lest she drag it through one of the fires. They stopped before a large tent, big enough for ten people.
The flap parted and they were beckoned into a fragrant room filled with the soft glow of oil lamps and the rich red colors of fine rugs and the glint of brass water jars. Elsa looked around through her veil at the strong poles that held up the fabric of the tent. There was no one inside. She turned around expectantly.
“What is the nature of this visit?” she asked.
The black turbaned man made a gesture that sent the other man away. He answered her when he was gone, “Lady Sonnenby, I have made arrangements for you to meet with your husband, alone.”
“Ah,” she said. “Well.” She was grateful for the veil. “I thank you for that, sir.”
“I am Ozgur Mehmet, Lady.”
“I am, pleased to meet you, Mr. Mehmet.”
“The British think he is meeting with his uncle, and they will be watching this tent carefully.” He tilted his head meaningfully. “And listening.”
“I understand.”
“I have told Lord Sonnenby that you are here, though no one else knows.”
“Oh.” Elsa wondered how he reacted to that news. She imagined a range of possibilities.
“I have sent the others to bring him,
hanim
. He will be here shortly.” Mehmet ducked through the doorway and let the tent flap drop closed behind him.
Elsa tried to appreciate the beautiful patterns on the rich red rugs or the sweet smell of the incense that burned in the brass braziers while she waited. She fingered the tassels of a bridle that hung from the center tent pole, then moved to the side of the tent and peered inside an urn. She did not have to wait long before she heard the sound of voices greeting someone at the entrance.
Sonnenby came through the tent flap tentatively. His eyes widened when he saw her.
“Good God! Elsa. It’s you. They told me my wife was in this tent.” He offered her both hands as he took a step forward. “And all I could think was that my uncles had married me to one of my cousins while I was in England.”
She took his hands and squeezed them. She was surprised that she couldn’t speak. Her throat tightened and her nose stuffed so she couldn’t breathe. It must be the dust.
He looked her up and down. “Are you hurt? Did they hurt you? Is that why you are crying?”
She shook her head, seeing the bruises on his cheekbones over the thick stubble and how one eyelid did not open all the way.
She took one hand from his and rubbed her throat so she could talk. “
Mein Gott
,” she said, her voice thick. “What have they done to you?”
One corner of his mouth turned up. “They will not take
nein
for an answer,
Schatze
.” He leaned in close and put his lips on hers. She permitted it. The kiss was brief and chaste. She wondered if he kissed her for effect, as they were being watched. There were many breaks in the fabric of the tent, and some worn places that would make effective peep holes. He pulled back and asked, “Why are you here? Marshall told me you were safe on a ship to Istanbul with Davies.”
“I,” she started and then stood up straighter and composed her face to make it as professional as possible. “I have not determined that you are stable enough to discontinue treatment. And I have not completed my notes…”
He burst out laughing, then tempered the volume with a look at the walls of the tent. “Elsa, Miss Schluss, you are dressed like a blonde Bedouin in the wilds of the Syrian desert. You do not look like a psychotherapist.”
“Well, yes. There is that,” she said and allowed herself to smile back.
He took her in his arms then and kissed her firmly. When he came up for a breath he whispered, “For show. They are watching us.” But his lips were warm and Elsa, who had not been kissed so well before, had trouble believing him. His prickly beard scratched her and he was not as clean as she would like, but he smelled very masculine. His shoulders were hard and his arms strong and firm. It felt good in a comforting way.
She said softly, aware of the listeners, “I am glad to see you, too. You were in terrible shape two days ago. They dragged you away in a straightjacket.”
“Did they? Please let us sit down. I have had a rough day.” He still held one of her hands and pulled her down to the carpet and sat with folded legs and a soft groan. “I don’t remember.”
She sat across from him near the flickering lamp. “Let me look at you,” she murmured. He let her take his left arm and turn the wrist up so she could look at the underside. Her stitches were still firm on his left forearm, and there was no sign of serious infection, though the deepest part of the cut near the inside of his elbow was puffier than she would have liked to see. She wanted tincture of iodine for it. The bruises on his face were fresh and she remembered how he stood on the truck bed and the tentative way he sank to the carpet. He may have broken ribs. His words were sometimes accompanied by a wince when he inhaled.
Her hand went for his collar to take a look at his chest.
“Oh, don’t be the surgical nurse, now,” he said as he caught her hand and held it. “I have been beaten before. It is standard operating procedure. Nothing is broken, just bruised. They know what they are doing in the Foreign Service.”
“Mr. Marshall did this?” She freed a captured hand and moved it toward his cheekbone where the purple bruise swelled.
“Oh, no. Archie doesn’t have anything to do with this kind of hands-on work.” He waylaid her probing hand to his lips instead of his cheek.
“Good,” She said firmly.
He raised an eyebrow as he kissed her fingers. She made herself clear, “He is tasked with your care, he shouldn’t permit rough handling of your person.”
“Never. Not even when I called the colonel a sadistic son-of-a-bitch.” Her fingers were touched lightly with his lips, one then the other then the other. He closed his eyes and his dark lashes rested on the lower lids as he kissed her palms. She was aware it was more difficult to speak because something was wrong with the air in the room.
When he opened his eyes they were very dark. Dilated. She wondered if he had been given opium. Opium made one’s eyes dark and glistening like that. She had administered enough to know it when she saw it.
“Why did they tell me my
wife
was in this tent?” His voice was soft, but she could see he wanted a hard answer.
“I didn’t know they told you that,” she answered truthfully. She leaned closer to him so they could speak confidentially. The cold desert night air was creeping in through the seams where the wool met the sand and from the flap at the front. It was dark enough that the feeble lamp cast only a small circle of its golden glow around them. He was warm, and it was cold in the spaces that were not him.
“Why would they think you were my wife?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t tell them I was.”
“What did you tell them?” He brought his face even closer to hers. She could smell him again. Gunpowder. A metallic tang like the steel of oiled guns. Unwashed man and cigar smoke. Leather. Horse. Petrol.
“Elsa.”
She snapped back. “What?”
“What did you tell them?”
“They thought I was your…” She tried to remember what Farmadi had called her. “Your ‘moll’. I assumed that meant ‘acquaintance’. I told them I was your therapist.”
He gave a short chuckle. “And you are, you are.”
She frowned. “Of course I am your therapist,” she told him. “It is their error if they think I am your wife.”
“They will expect us to behave as husband and wife.”
“
Gott im Himmel
, Mr. Sinclair, do they expect some kind of peep show?” She turned her head to look closer at the walls of the tent. It was too dark to see beyond the circle glow of the little lamp. She stilled her breathing to better hear any men outside.
“Probably not,” he mumbled. “Either way we sleep together tonight,
Schatze.”
“So be it,” she answered him, looking around. “Here or in that mud hut. I must sleep somewhere and so must you.”
“So be it,” he echoed, though his voice sounded less sure. “I am still a prisoner.” He lay himself down on the thick rugs and reached for a folded blanket near the tent pole. “Come, wife.”
She removed the veil and wadded it up to use as a pillow. She arranged her dress before lying down next to him. They faced each other on the ground.
“It is cold,” she said.
“Not really,” he answered, he lifted the edge of the blanket and settled it on her.
They stared at each other. She tried to see his mind in the cast of his face, and could only see distrust and defeat. She sighed. “What happens tomorrow?”
“I sell my soul to the highest bidder.”
“No,” she breathed. “You do not have to sell your soul.”
“They will drag it from my body and hold it up and take bids.” He moved closer and put an arm over her shoulders. He must have thought it was the cold that caused her to shiver.
“I will not permit it.”
She heard that low chuckle he often made in his throat. It was not humor, but more like resignation and there was always this little catch at the end that sounded like a sob or a groan, like he laughed and cried at the same time
She listened for any sounds from outside the tent that might indicate someone was listening. She spoke softly just in case. “After they dragged you away, they put me in a car. They said they were taking me back to the hotel. But they didn’t. They took me out to the country. They tried to knock me out with ether.” She looked at him seriously.
He frowned. “Ether?”
“Yes. One of the men put it in a handkerchief. He was going to put it on my nose and mouth.”
“How did you escape?”
She told him.
His face changed as he digested her words. “I heard that three ministry men were murdered by the locals. France controls that village, and the ministry sent people to the French to complain. Things were done.”
She waited for him to say more, but he did not. She asked him, “What things?”
“Things.” He turned to lie on his back. “What did you do after you got out of the car?”
She told him about walking until her shoes fell apart, and then about Farmadi.
“I see.”
“What did they tell you?”
“They didn’t tell me anything,
Schatze
. They said you had left for Istanbul. The story I heard about the three headless men in Ad Dumayr I heard through Ozgur just today. I had no idea you were involved.”
“Tell me what happened to you. You woke up,” she prompted.
“I woke up and asked about you and Marshall. I was told not to bother myself about you and to focus on the task at hand.”
“What made them think I needed to be dismissed?” This had been bothering her since the general had given the orders to take Sonnenby away. Marshall went to a lot of trouble to get psychological treatment for him prior to his travel to El Zor. It seemed the Foreign Office dismissed her rather perfunctorily without a debriefing or her opinion of Sonnenby’s mental competency.
He turned his head to the side and his hair fell in his eyes. He brushed it back and said, “They wanted nothing to do with a German woman. You are still the enemy. Marshall has been severely chastised for bringing you along. The idea that I needed a therapist was ridiculed. Marshall has a formal reprimand in his file now.”
“I see.”
“Right,” he said. He squeezed her hand. “You see what I mean, now? How it doesn’t matter? I need to get you home again, Elsa. You shouldn’t be here. I still am
non compos mentis
. If I survive this, I will be returned to the hospital. Everything I own is in trust to the crown. Marshall promised to get me out and to a doctor.”
“
Mein Gott
,” she said.
“Yes. I feel like that, too. I want a long bath and a short whiskey.”
“Exactly what I would prescribe,” She stood up and adjusted herself because the files were digging into her middle and making it impossible to get comfortable enough to sleep.
“What’s that crinkling noise?”
“My work. Your military files.”
He shook his head. “I shouldn’t be surprised by anything you do anymore.” He pushed back the blankets and got to his feet. He moved silently along the edges of the tent, bending his neck, listening.
“I couldn’t let them be lost,” she said softly.
He seemed satisfied that if there were listeners, they were not close. “You should lose them. They don’t mean anything anymore.” He went to the tent’s opening and stood by the flap.
“Of course they do. They are the key to your therapy.”
“You may look at those files all you want, but what good is a man’s life on paper when his body is in a shallow grave?”
She stared at him.
He said, “Close your mouth, Elsa. You can’t possibly be that shocked. What did you think was going to happen? Do you remember the Turk on the train? The car in Istanbul? I will not survive this adventure. They brought me out here to parade me before my relations and remind them of a pact made between two men thirty years ago. Both of whom are dead. I am just the invitation to this ball, but I won’t be dancing.”