The Great War of the Quartet (The Imperial Timeline Book 1) (49 page)

“I’m Meryem. I wish to see my father,” she said, perfectly politely and keeping her budding resentment towards the stupid girl from breaking through.

The maid didn’t look convinced, but she didn’t slam the door shut.

“You wait here, and I will ask the magistrate.”

When the maid gently closed the door and barred it, Meryem felt royally silly, standing about outside her own childhood home like some suspicious character waiting to be allowed inside. It was like some stupid scene from a stupid movie. She had decided that the maid had to be a new one; otherwise she shouldn’t have looked so skeptical when Meryem mentioned who she was. Although she had to be magnanimous, she began planning some kind of witty putdown for when the maid would apologize for not knowing her. Not to be vindictive, but just to make herself feel like she had avenged herself properly for the embarrassing treatment.

There were always young servants around looking for a place to work, so it was hardly surprising that there might be a bit of a rotation of the staff. After all, a servant had to learn the profession from the most menial tasks and up to becoming a close private servant like her father’s valet, and if a girl married she might leave the service and become a part-time maid in a small household. When Meryem had been a child, she had liked to look at the young servant girls who had been just out of school when they played badminton in the small yard just behind the servants’ quarters. They had as much formal education as Meryem, but obviously she had learned other things too, just as they had. She didn’t know anything about cooking or cleaning, but most of the servant girls were sure to be ignorant about other things. Like painting your face; Meryem had learned a little, although Momo had usually sat down with her to help make her pretty.

“New people,” she quietly scoffed to herself.

She didn’t like thinking bad thoughts about people—unless they were bad people like white devils—and she felt sorry for being angry with the ignorant maid girl. Far more disturbing to her than being annoyed with ignorant servant girls she admonished herself for this stupid habit she had picked up in the Russian city of talking to herself. Her parents might think she was crazy, and she worried that she might be. Surely it was antisocial to talk to yourself.

The street was fairly quiet, but while she waited a black car drove past slowly. She hadn’t missed seeing a poster with a funny drawing outside the train station with the slogan “
Save fuel for the Holy War! Follow the reduced speed limits and destroy the enemy! Waste is sinful treason!
” The driver seemed to follow the command compared to her vague memories of how fast cars could go. Her father had a big car like that, and it had to be terribly inconvenient not to have a car like most people. So few people had cars, despite how useful they were. Of course, she wasn’t stupid, she knew that cars were very expensive.

She frowned when she looked at the closed door in front of her, resisting the urge to kick it. How long was it going to take to fetch Father? She had to pee!

Her mind had become clouded by a daze of nostalgia, and the bad words her father had used the last time she had seen him were far back in her mind, buried by her imagination of how happy and proud her mother and father would be. Apart from the letter she had posted before she and Daryn had left where she had lied about where they were going, she had not shared a word with them after he said that she was dead to him after he had hit her a couple of time so her head was shaking really bad when she had insisted that she would marry Lieutenant Ibrahim. She knew that he hadn’t meant anything with his mean words. He just loved her and didn’t understand that she had been destined to be Daryn’s wife. It had hurt a great deal, and she had been stumbling all across the yard, bawling and nauseous from her spinning head. She didn’t want to think about it, because it had been so scary and confusing. Daddy had never hurt her before that, and he had made her left eye all red and blue for days, and she had thought Daryn was being a kind liar when he had said that her dark, almost black eye would disappear. It finally had, but she had never felt as ugly as when she had seen her ugly face after that, and the teeth never got any better, and she didn’t like the sharp edge of the broken front tooth—why didn’t teeth heal? She had been a monster when she had seen her bruises in the mirror. She wasn’t angry or sad about it anymore; she knew that Daddy had just been upset because she was so disobedient and willful, but now he would be happy. Happy and proud of Little Meryem. He wouldn’t ever think of hitting her again and make her ugly.

How long could it take to tell her father that she was home? Even if the maid didn’t know who Meryem was, her father did, and he would be excited and rush to open the door, probably shaming the maid by muttering how stupid she was for not immediately letting her in from the desolate street outside. She stepped about a little on the spot, eager to see her father’s face, and she was sure that he would be just as happy to see her as she would be to see him. Since she had lost her pocket watch when they were taken prisoner she had not replaced it, so she couldn’t tell how long she had waited, but finally she decided to ring the bell again. Maybe the stupid maid had been distracted by a shiny bead or something?

After probably a minute or two she heard footsteps on the other side. The footsteps were different from a girl’s. Was it her father? Excitedly she combed her bangs to the side of her face with her hand as she waited for the gate to open. Rather than the maid or Daddy, it was her father’s valet who opened this time and peeked through the gap opened where the two large doors met. He wore a dark tunic suit, and he looked just like she remembered him. The good old geezer!

“Good evening,” she said, resisting her urge to be more familiar with her father’s servant, and she bowed politely and quite respectfully, as if he wasn’t one of her servants.

His old face didn’t seem quite as old as it had when she was younger. He was forty or so, so he wasn’t an old, old man. But he had been working for the family since long before she was born, and Meryem knew him almost as well—if not better—than she knew her father since she had hardly known her father’s face until she was maybe seven or eight.

“Evening,” he mumbled with an uneasy look on his face.

The man always looked a bit unhappy; he just had that sort of face, so she was hardly surprised that he didn’t smile when he saw her.

“Is something wrong? Is Daddy sick?” she asked, wondering why he looked so pale.

Shouldn’t he be happy to see his little mistress, one of his master’s little princesses?

“The master does not wish to be disturbed, young lady.”

Was he trying to be silly? She might have been amused if she had been younger, but right now she was not in the mood to play games with him.

“But I’m home,” she exclaimed. “I have a sad, wonderful story you must hear—”

“Forgive me, young lady, but you are dead to the master, and I suspect it would be best if you left now.”

What was he playing at? Was he trying to be funny?

“But I haven’t even come inside yet,” she snorted, reaching out with her arm to push the heavy door open.

She jumped when he slapped her arm, surprised that it actually hurt a little. Just what the hell was he doing? He had no right to hurt her! If anything, she should be hitting him for being stupid and not letting her inside.

“I will give you this piece of advice, young lady,” the man said, his face eerily stern. “You should depend on your
husband
or your father-in-law. Don’t come here and break your mother’s heart a second time. Whore.”

As bizarre as her homecoming was, she was quick enough to insist on being allowed to explain everything. She knew that as soon as they had the full story they would be so pleased that they would feel stupid for saying bad things like that to her face.

“I can really explain,” she said enthusiastically. “I’ve been to Russia and served His Majesty…”

The door was pushed closed and the bolt was locked again on the other side, forcing her to shout, too excited by the bizarre turn of events to stop herself.

“Hey, let me in and I’ll tell him everything! He’ll be happy!”

Despite the horrible feeling welling up in her belly and the mist over her eyes, she banged on the hard door a couple of times before it hurt her hand too much and she instead pressed the button for the bell a few times to make it ring. The bad feeling inside her belly could have made her think that the baby was yelling for the valet to open the door again too, but she hardly even noticed it.

“Stupid geezer, open the door,” she screamed.

She’d give him a piece of her mind, and she tried to calm herself when she heard the bolt being unlocked again.

“Look,” he sneered before she had time to open her mouth, “if you do not leave now, I will have to summon the police to take you away. Get away from the door!”

“Stupid geezer, I’m here to see Daddy,” she sobbed, diving to push through the gap between the heavy door that was open and the closed one.

He had surprisingly good reflexes, and she was barely glimpsing the garden on the other side when his open hand hit her on the side of her head. The unexpected pain made her wince, and her momentum petered out and she fell down, almost hitting her head on the door. When she sat up, she looked at him, hardly seeing him through the tears and wondering what Daddy would say if he saw how mean he was to her.

“Silly girl, stop pestering this household and crawl back whence you came,” he muttered, only looking at her to make sure she was clear of the door before he shut it and bolted it again.

Should he have told the girl that the master had had her painted out or cut out of the family paintings and pictures? The master had made it quite clear that his oldest girl had never existed to him, and her youngest siblings didn’t even know that she had ever been. He had thought that it would have been the end of the matter, but apparently the little slut was not done disturbing the family. Such a despicable and ungrateful child!

From her vantage point down right in front of the door it looked more like a wall than a big door. It didn’t look familiar at all. She could hardly remember seeing it closed from the outside. For most of the day the gate would be open, and when it was closed she would be in the house or in the courtyard. Never out here.

In the corner of her eye she could see a couple of women staring at her while they slowly walked along the other side of the street, perhaps too ashamed of their curiosity to stop completely and instead just slowed down and kept looking at the pitiful spectacle.

“Open the door, you stupid old geezer,” she sobbed, feebly hitting the door with her open hand until her palm was aching.

Her hand was throbbing with pain, like it did when she applauded too much and too hard, and she rubbed it with her other hand to try to ease the bad feeling in the hand. It hurt so badly, and she rubbed it against her shoulder to make it feel better.

“What are you doing there, girl?”

She looked up over her shoulder and saw a young man, probably a servant to one of the houses on the street. He was staring at her rather rudely.

“Daddy’s servant refuses to let me in,” she sobbed, not caring if she embarrassed herself in front of the man.

“You shouldn’t make so much noise,” he said. “Just ring the bell, but don’t be such a nuisance.”

She frowned after the man as he went on his merry way, wishing that God would strike him down as he went away down the street without a care in the world. However, his interruption did make her aware of the number of people looking at her, and she kept her face turned down when she pushed herself up off the ground. Their stares hurt, and she didn’t want them to see her. What were they all doing out this late anyway? Didn’t they have something important to do? She was too shy, too well-behaved to tell them to piss off and mind their own stupid business. They didn’t have anything to do with her, so why didn’t they all just go to hell?

Chapter 7
2

The palace park was green and had several neat flowerbeds as it spread out over one of the palace courtyards with wide lawns and trimmed and well-treated flowers that made it look like a big garden in the best of health. The huge complex was breathtakingly big, and Vera wasn’t sure why they had to live out in the stupid kremlin built as a temporary fort to the north of the city when this big palace had so much room in it. Most of the construction workers had probably gone home for the day, but she enjoyed trying to see if she could tell what had changed since she last saw the big place.

The old harem was one of the few complexes of the palace that had been put to residential use since the Turks had been evicted, and Count Makedonsky—Stasya’s father—was one of the men who had purchased an apartment there when Vera’s grandfather had first established the Imperial City Palace Topkapi as a purely civilian complex of residences to be rented out to people who enjoyed the seclusion from the city outside. Several important families from Russia and some from other countries had bought seasonal residences there, although Vera hardly ever saw all that many people out in the palace grounds. The big palace was actually sort of deserted, and it was very different from the palaces she had seen back home in Russia where servants and people were going places or doing things.

“Can’t we go inside?” Vera suggested as they looked at the big, alien building.

She had been inside the church in the harem, but she hadn’t seen the inside of this one. The Mohammedan temples obviously shouldn’t be used as pagan temples anymore, and the craftsmen were taking them down, tearing away plaster and stone to create something new and good out of them. Like the impressive former Mohammedan temple that served as Stasya’s neighborhood church within the palatial complex.

“I don’t think it’s safe,” Anastasia said with a smile.

She obviously wouldn’t let the princess run around inside one of the buildings being redecorated. Some of the old Mohammedan temples had been pretty roughed up, and plaster, stone, and God-knows-what was liable to fall from the ceiling. Just a few months ago she had heard about a ceiling collapsing and killing a worker in another part of the compound being worked on.

“But I want to see it,” Vera whined, pouting with an annoyed expression on her face.

“It’s dangerous,” Anastasia maintained.

Instead, she led the small group down past where a group of servants were playing boule and on through the section of the large palatial compound that had been mostly done. Anastasia had heard through her father about the arguments between the planning committee and the scholars, particularly when it came to the Mohammedan temples. The decision to tear down the Mohammedan towers at Saint Michael’s Basilica and the Hagia Sophia had been disliked by some people who weren’t even Ottoman, and she had seen the carriages being filled with shattered masonry and ceramic tiles that had once decorated the inside of what would become Saint Dmitriy’s Church in remembrance of his fighting against the Golden Horde—the ancestors of the Turkish enemy. She thought it was a pity that the workers were destroying so much of the Mohammedan art, and she wondered if their unreadable doodles should really have to go. Some of the Ottoman artwork was so pretty to look at, and seeing it broken into rubble and hauled away made her aesthetic heart ache. There were many Mohammedan arches and doorways that had been spared, but the architects and their host of workmen had done their utmost to purge the alien architecture and particularly targeted the most oriental and Mohammedan things they could find with sledgehammers, pickaxes, and in some cases gentle handwork with hammers and chisels that would remove the offending Ottoman distinctions.

The arches visible all over the buildings of the old harem complex were proof that the architects had given up trying to either Byzantinize or Russify everything—the architects and administration of the palace complex apparently disagreed profusely about the desire and aim of the reconstruction. Just like her own father and grandfather came from a place of Philhellenic idealism, there were some men—quite learned and Christian—who wanted to preserve the oriental style of the city rather than try to purge it and turn it to either a Greek or a Russian Rome. The Slavophilic establishment wasn’t completely supreme, and the more Greek and Orientalist crowds had a bit of a voice when it came to the architecture of parts of Topkapi, but there was no mercy on the Mohammedan temples, they were being turned into anything but heathen places of worship or glorification of alien cultism.

Although Anastasia was not all that interested in churches, the conflict between the Greek and Slavonic clergy and traditions had been one of the main points of contention more generally between the wise men involved in reworking the former Ottoman palaces into proper Byzantine palaces. Despite her name, Anastasia Makedonskaya, was not the slightest Greek and had only been taught Modern and Ancient Greek as academic topics of study. Before her great-grandfather had petitioned the Tsar with his claim that they were descendant from the Macedonian dynasty of old Byzantine Rome her family’s name had been Wrangel-Konstantinsky, and her great-grandfather had decided to use the old family legend about their Macedonian ancestry to ask the Tsar to permit him to use the name Makedonsky with his title. Thus Anastasia’s father was Count Makedonsky rather than Wrangel-Konstantinsky, despite only becoming a “Macedonian” after Russia claimed Byzantium as its protectorate from the defeated Ottomans when she was a young girl.

The four great courtyards of the Topkapi palatial complex had been taken over by the Military Administration following the war. All the major palaces of Constantinople had been ceded to the Administration under the London Treaty, but the big palace overlooking the Bosporus had been given to the established city council—a bunch of Greeks who nominally answered to the Great Despot, the civilian governor appointed by the Tsar as the head of the civilian government appointed by the Roman Council—the body representing Constantinople’s “Roman” population. “Roman” was just used in lieu of Christian by the governments of the city and the autonomous province, whether the people were Greek or Russian—Armenians were sometimes Romans and sometimes “miscellaneous” like Jews and Mohammedan Kurds.

Anna walked in silence, trailing behind Miss Makedonskaya and Vera while holding Maya’s hand. The short girl was quiet, not displaying as much clear disappointment as she had when her big sister had persuaded their mother to take them along to the city. Maya hated going away from home, and she seemed to think of everything outside of the nursery as outer space and noxious to her constitution.

“My little feet are hurting,” Maya mumbled, hoping in vain to get her governess to make this endless walking stop.

It wasn’t fair that she had to walk around just because stupid Vera wanted to spend time with stupid Anastasia. Maya had looked forward to spending the evening reading the Slavonic hagiography for the day with Anka rather than walking aimlessly through the ugly courtyard. It was fun to read to Anka, and obviously it was much more fun than to walk like a thousand miles on the hard surface of the stupid palace in stupid Constantinople. She didn’t like walking, and she didn’t like big buildings that needed a lot of walking between them. She couldn’t remember much from before she moved to Little Constantinople since she had been less than two when the family moved there, and her home nursery was pretty much the only home she ever knew, and leaving it was no fun at all.

Anna sympathized with the little girl. She had been with the family since before Maya was born, and she imagined that she was probably the person in the whole world that loved her the most since she was obviously not loved like her big sister. She was the ugly, imbecile little Armenian child compared to her beautiful and intelligent older sister who could remember everything she was told. Anna was a little ashamed to favor the little girl over her older sister since she had enjoyed helping Darya Feodorovna teach Vera Slavonic before Darya Feodorovna had chosen to stay in Moscow when the family moved to Constantinople.

Anna’s resentment towards Vera—as objectively analyzed as it could be by herself—stemmed in part out of her sympathy for little Maya who was so unfavorably compared by her mother to Vera, and in part from Vera’s smug attitude towards Anna that had emerged as she became older and began to take after Miss Makedonskaya and her arrogance. The girl wouldn’t say that she thought Anna was stupid to her face, but she had a feeling that Vera—much like her idol Miss Makedonskaya—had a pre-Nicholas I attitude towards her traditional curriculum. Anna had been taught through reading innumerable both Slavonic and Russian language hagiographies rather than foreign and modern novels. Both the little girls were too young to read and think like adults, and they should work on their fundamentals so they could appreciate things more intelligently as women as they became older. Vera’s rush to become an adult and Anastasia’s intellectualism was completely opposed to Anna’s approach of focusing on the groundwork of religion, ethics, and to prepare the ground for the tutors who were instructing them more seriously in subjects Anna did not have the competency to teach. Girls needed their basic vocabulary and reference index! Not just steam on and study poetry and literature they didn’t really understand.

The more time she spent with the girls, the more Maya was becoming a favorite, especially since her mother interpreted her silence and reluctance to speak other than to voice discomfort—to whine—as a sign that she was some kind of an idiot, a drooling little imbecile with a bad brain. She was writing well and enjoyed drawing simple little figures, but she was impatient and didn’t like details—something that could be interpreted as a lack of Vera’s perceived precociousness. Perhaps Maya was disinterested in things she didn’t like, but she wasn’t stupid. The girl was very logical and—in a simple and childish way—intelligent as far as Anna could see.

“Um, excuse me, Anastasia Petrovna?”

Vera was annoyed by the interruption of the walk by Anna Vladimirovna. Stasya was a good guide, but Vera wasn’t sure why Anna Vladimirovna and Maya came along to sulk while Stasya showed her around the palace complex. Stasya was beautiful and refined, and any girl would be lucky to look like her. The governess was pudgy and if she would just put on a sarafan peasant dress and a headscarf she would look like an ugly peasant whose intelligence was limited to being able to read and write.

“Would it be better if Maya Pavlovna and I rested?” Anna asked. “She would rather not continue walking on the hard ground. She could do well with a little rest.”

Indeed, the hard ground might be the reason why Anna was starting to feel like sitting down too. The stone was exhausting on the feet, and just walking along and looking at the same buildings she had seen before while Anastasia was telling Vera stories about Orthodox Rome and gossip about what was going on in the little community of rich aristocrats. If Anna had to hear another story about this or that American, English, or whatever character she felt like she would punch Miss Makedonskaya in the head… Well, she obviously could only punch her in her fantasies, but that was quite enough for her. Anna wasn’t violent at all, but it annoyed her to have to deal with arrogant women like Miss Makedonskaya.

It was decided that Anna and Maya would go back to the pavilion overlooking the park where people enjoyed the spring while Vera and Anastasia could continue their walking around. Maya was clearly happy about the result of the brief discussion, and her upbeat, sunny demeanor made it clear that “the Little Armenian” was not as unappreciative of her surroundings as her mother seemed to think.

The harem park was awfully empty, a testament to the few people who had decided to come and stay at this time of year. Anna remembered one of her most exciting moments alive to be her short meeting with a young nobleman from Kharkov whose father had bought an apartment in the palace. He hadn’t been to Constantinople since then, and that visit had been all the way before the war began which seemed like ages now. It wasn’t the same to keep in touch with letters, and she had been jealous when he mentioned his engagement, and she had not felt like writing him more than she absolutely felt like she had to. Somehow, she had hoped that her prayers would have been effective and that he would have asked her. Since then, she had thought that she would never marry or leave Maya, and she worried what would happen to the girl if no one was there to keep her company. A girl needed someone, and Anna would like to be there for Maya since there was no telling if anybody else would notice what a delightful child she could be if only people actually bothered to get to know her. She could be ever so fun when they read their hagiographies and she wondered about things the saints did and asked about God.

“Can I have an ice cream?” Maya mumbled, looking over at a couple of children walking from the small pavilion that was home to a café, holding little hard waffles with soft, melting ice cream.

The most distinctive group of people present in the park was the group of women who were chattering around a few tables while being waited on by a uniformed young man at a small café. Anna didn’t like rich people, and she could tell that the women were rich. Her own parents were not peasants or destitute, but their name had infinitely greater prospects than the family bankbook. Her father had had to take a job at a bank, and the country home where she had earned some of her most treasured summer memories had been sold. Her service for the princess to educate Vera and Maya was thanks to a maternal aunt who was an acquaintance of the grand duke’s family, and it was a good way for a woman like her to earn her keep.