The journey is long and tedious. After two weeks – and there will be at least two weeks more before they reach Warsaw – she is no longer drawn to the sight of scraggy oxen (eighteen) dragging a broken-down Viennese carriage; or a whole line of mules tied one to the other and decorated with small bells; or a group of travelling Tartars, their women wrapped in yashmaks so that all that is left visible are their eyes and the heels of their shoes. She no longer hears the howling and barking of dogs or jackals. The carriage jolts and shakes her body until she is sore and nauseous by the end of the day. Every time the horses neigh their displeasure, she shudders at the grating noise.
Carlo and Monsieur Karwoski do not allow her to leave her bedroom when they stop for the night. They lock her door every evening after bringing her supper. The men play cards, drink wine, and talk to other travellers. She can hear Carlo’s voice from downstairs, his loud laughter. In the flea-ridden rooms, no matter how much perfume she pours on herself, she can still smell the chamber pot. She hasn’t been to the
hammam
since the day she left Istanbul, and her body itches at the memory of the soaping, the rubbing of the skin until the blood flows faster. Is there a
hammam
in Warsaw? The King has one, this she knows already, but would the King let anyone there?
Your position in my households would be of the same nature as it was in Istanbul. You are not to expect anything more.
Why worry about the future, a voice whispers in her head. Ahead of her are still many days of travelling, of bone-shaking carriage rides, broken axles, mud getting inside no matter how tight she locks the carriage door.
More grimy inns, more lonely nights in a locked room, watched by the two men who should be her servants. Unless …
‘The master,’ she says with the faintest of smiles, ‘intends to marry me.’
Carlo is listening, made uneasy by the conviction in her voice. This uneasiness tells her that his instructions must have been vague, and that he too wonders about their future in Warsaw. ‘My fiancé,’ she continues, ‘listens to me. His love for me is such that he’ll do everything I wish. I
might
wish your advancement, but why should I? Why should I think of your future when you treat me like a prisoner?’
She places the corner of her handkerchief to her eye, wiping away an imaginary tear. Carlo is not saying anything, but her words have had their effect. His sideways glances confirm it. What if this girl is right, he must be thinking. Surely her beauty and charm are hard to miss. Why would the internuncio not want to spend the rest of his days with her? What is so unusual about an aging man wishing for the warmth of youth to sweeten his last years?
That evening the door to her room is not locked and a jug of red wine makes its way onto her meal tray. After supper, she ventures out of her prison, a few steps along the corridor. The company downstairs is playing cards. The men are coarse-looking and loud. She opens the small window at the end of the corridor and watches the sky. The stars are glittering. The light of the full moon gives a leaden hue to the clouds. One seems to her like a crown.
You make me laugh, her internuncio used to say to her.
Funny how little she remembers of him: the feel of his hands; the smell of his body; the pressure of his loins on her belly; the powdery dryness of his skin. If she were never to set her eyes on him again, it would not hurt.
And yet she does miss him; misses the way she feels in his company; misses his voice that makes him owner of everything he speaks about.
When Prince Ypsilanti, the
hospodar
, the governor of Wallachia, sends servants to inquire of the identity of the travellers, she instructs Carlo to say that Lady Sophie Glavani from Istanbul is on her way to Warsaw to join the widowed Monsieur Charles Boscamp. The word fiancé is never pronounced, but there is enough doubt in the
hospodar
’s mind to err on the side of caution.
‘Dear Monsieur internuncio is a friend,’ Prince Ypsilanti says as he welcomes Lady Sophie of Istanbul at his Bucharest court. ‘A benefactor whose favours are well-remembered in Wallachia.’
She turns her head a little to give him a view of her profile. His eyes do not leave her delicate nose, her full lips, her small round chin. He tells her that her beauty alone is reason enough for his dear friend to want her company in his widowed state.
‘For eternity, if I could assure that,’ she whispers, blushing. Her best satin dress with a lace collar got torn at the sleeve, and she has mended it too quickly. The tear shows, but only if one knows where to look.
Prince Ypsilanti won’t hear of Lady Sophie staying at the inn. He calls the accommodation vile and the tavern-keeper a thief who adds copper to the water in which he boils cucumbers so they look green even if no longer fresh. She must accept his hospitality, the honours he reserves for his most illustrious guests.
‘I hope, my dear lady, that you have not had anything to eat there.’
‘No cucumbers,’ she smiles at him with all the sweetness she can gather, thinking of a feather mattress and supper with oysters and roasted pheasants: a perfect gift
from Lady Fate. A wave of bliss rushes over her. If she could, she would cry out at the top of her voice with joy.
When she leaves for Moldavia a few days later, yet another of the Ottoman vassal states, she is escorted by Prince Ypsilanti’s guards, a lady travelling with two servants to join her fiancé. In Fokshany her arrival is greeted with a flurry of gossip and guessing. Monsieur Charles Boscamp is well known here. Visitors come to pay their respects, to catch a glimpse of her. She receives them all graciously, casting her eyes down. She lets their questions linger. ‘Please, do not make me say things that should not cross my lips,’ she begs. ‘How unfortunate that what should remain secret is being dragged into the open before its time. The period of mourning must be observed. Madame Boscamp was an angel.’
How dare you
, her internuncio writes in a letter that reaches her,
spread such brazen lies about my intentions toward you. Daily I am exposed to questions why, I, a man of my pedigree and position, even consider joining my life with a woman of such base connections, a daughter of such a Mother and a niece of such an Aunt? What have I done to raise your expectations such? Have I not always been clear and straightforward about my intentions?
Eh bien
, she thinks as his anger chafes her. He won’t make me cry. He has his own sins to consider. In Fokshany, being Monsieur Boscamp’s fiancée elicits angry remarks of unpaid debts, of a business deal that went awry – a shipment of Persian carpets claimed lost but later seen in Warsaw by three independent witnesses ready to swear to what they have seen. Besides, in Fokshany there is someone else she would rather think about.
That someone is Prince Lysander bej Zadi. She was playing with puppies in the courtyard of an inn where she has found passable lodgings, kneeling on the flagstones, holding two
of them in her arms, their pink tongues tickling her chin. He stopped his horse, and stared at her for a long time. Seeing him she put the puppies down and stood up.
‘Are you a Goddess,’ he asked, his eyes twinkling with amusement.
‘A lady in distress,’ she said, ‘a traveller stranded in the quagmire of bureaucracy.’
‘Stranded?’
‘The
hospodar
of Fokshany is not helpful. He swears that Monsieur Boscamp’s fiancée will not continue on her journey.’
‘How is that possible?’
In Istanbul, she has been given a wrong passport,
yolferman
, useless for travelling outside the Ottoman Empire. She didn’t know any better, then, having no one to advise her. She has been tricked. She knows who is responsible. Pangali, a translator for the Polish mission with too much influence at the Ottoman court, the fat fool who panted after her and whom she rebuked for his advances. A big, fat fool with foul breath. Punishing her in this underhanded way for she had laughed at him in public, sent him back to his boys he always preferred anyway.
Prince Lysander laughed. ‘Do you always turn your admirers away?’
‘Often enough.’
‘What will you do now?’
Her servants, she has told Prince Lysander, have already dispatched word to Istanbul, and a proper passport is on its way. In the meantime, her predicament has attracted attention. Bread is three times more expensive for her than on the open market. The innkeeper demands one ducat per day for his flea-ridden hole, thrice his usual rate.
‘Fokshany is a backwater,’ Prince Lysander said. ‘They do not know how to treat a woman of quality.’
She has only known him for a few days, and she is already filled with memories of him. Their eyes seek each other across the room. And even when they have to look elsewhere, each is constantly aware of the other’s presence. He makes her think fondly of ordinary things – a pitcher of water; a quince on an earthenware plate; the bleating of a goat in the distance; being yanked from sleep before dawn by the prayers from the minaret; the smell of hemp and charcoal. She wakes up to the memory of his face, his eyes perhaps a bit too wide (but only perhaps), the long, narrow nose she thinks exquisite (the word has a taste to it, pungent and rich), the black tangle of his hair. She falls asleep recalling the sound of his voice. In her dreams she runs with him through the fields and he pulls her toward him and presses his lips on hers.
He brings her gifts and flowers. A jewel box of encrusted wood inlaid with mother of pearl. A branch broken off a flowering almond tree (spring comes later here, he tells her when she marvels). His eyes soften at the sight of her; his hands reach out to touch her. More than by her beauty, he tells her, he is stricken by the joy in her. He delights in her, walking briskly, impatient with time. Sometimes she is still like a child, sometimes she is a woman. A miracle he has stopped expecting.
‘With women like you,’ he tells her, ‘the Greeks have nothing to mourn.’
She marvels at his olive skin. The smoothness of it. His way of waving his hand, impatiently, as if he were warding off a fly. Why shouldn’t she believe love so sudden? When they are together, everything seems sparkling with possibilities, making it easier to ignore the sour faces of Carlo and the Danzig engineer. Their poisonous whispers, their warnings. Their attempt to close the door to her room and hide the key.
Her prince has another key, from the innkeeper. ‘The power of
bakshish
,’ he says laughing.
He asks her what she likes best in the whole world. Jonquils, the roasted skin of a lamb, still steaming from the fire. Singing at the top of her voice. Running fast through the garden, in the morning, when the dew is still on the leaves. The feeling that lives in her, the conviction that life is unstoppable, that miracles happen.
What he likes best are horses. Arabian, with their undulating necks. The dancers of the desert, able to last when other breeds fail.
He comes to see her every day. The very circumstances of their encounter conspire to join them together. Her forced stay in Fokshany is nothing less than a gift from fate, a gift he will not turn down.
‘May the courier with your new passport take his good time,’ he prays loudly, kneeling at her feet. ‘May the deep waters open on his path and deep chasms slow him to a crawl.’
Even that would be too fast.
‘Poor courier,’ she says. ‘How can my Prince be so cruel.’
‘It’s love that is cruel, not your Prince. Love that knows no pity but its own force.’
He has bewitched her. There is nothing he had to do to accomplish this, but just be with her, look into her eyes. Tell her that the black in them is softened with the languor of blue. She has not resisted. She doesn’t want to. She gives herself up to love the way she gives herself to fate.
Watch out girl, Mana would have said. Don’t be foolish.
But she is foolish. Foolish and very wise at the same time for she can tell that her infatuation spawns the passion he has for her. They are like twins, she thinks. What
she wants he wants. What she wishes to be, he wishes too.
‘How lovely you are,’ he gasps.
He promises her the world. She will be his wife, cherished until death closes his eyes. If he could, he would pierce the heart of that man who calls himself her fiancé. That old goat who thinks he has bought this beautiful Greek girl with his gold, like a slave. Of whom it is said that he has lost his influence with the King and is now desperate for any position, begging for a few ducats on the account of past services. How could such a man make her happy in the way she deserves to be?
Words like these make her bold. Words like these erase the bitterness of memories she has kept locked away for months.
On sight of hereof admit the Bearer to the sweet pleasures of Mon Plaisir, as well as the exploration of other Territories, including the Hills, Forests, and Forts, especially in the lower part of the Continent. As to Canals, let him have Ingress, Egress and Regress, in such manner as pleases Him, for the period of two Hours, and no longer, and place it to the Account of Your Kind and Constant Keeper.
How could I even think I might go back to that man, she thinks. What is it that he has given me?
Outside the carriage window two crows landed on the freshly ploughed and harrowed field. In the distance, the elm trees hidden in the morning mist seemed to stand still. After four days they were but halfway there.
Please, Sophie, my dearest daughter, hurry. I want to
bless you and my first grandson before I die
. For months her mother’s letters had been more and more alarming, but none had been that frightening. Why was it in Rosalia’s hand? Shouldn’t Olga have written to her own sister? Was she cross at her perhaps? Did she think Sophie should have guessed the truth? Refused to be comforted by her mother’s lies? Know better? Feel the truth in her blood, in her heart?
Could her own sister have grown so bitter?
Monsieur Talski will tell you more when he brings you this letter to Odessa
. But Monsieur Talski – her mother’s steward – avoided her eyes, and said that Madame la Comtesse suffered a great deal. ‘Everything in God’s hands,’ he said.
I wanted to send you your pearls, but M. Talski refused to write me a receipt for them saying that we are all mortal. I can’t trust anyone with them without a receipt
. With the letter came a bank order for 50,000 roubles for the trip. There were assurances, too, for Pavel.