The Blue Hour

Chapter 24: Reshid

Early May was one of Reshid's preferred months. Morning and evening, the air was crisp, but softly warm during the day, the trees blossomed in clouds of pink and white, and the sea was stirred by a gentle breeze.

The unpleasant feelings Sir Elliot's dinner had provoked in him a week ago, were buried and forgotten. He had worked hard before, and now he resolved to work even harder. At the end of the day after hours at his desk, he felt depleted, and his bones stiff. After three years of constant movement, he could not get used to being sedentary. Notes lay on the table before him, organised in piles. In the higher pile to the left, those he had already transcribed into his new manuscript, and to the right, those who had yet to be transcribed.

He picked up a note at random and smiled at the memory it evoked. He had written it in Samarkand when faced with a difficult decision. Journey on by land to Peking, across the lands of Tartars, Kirghis, Kalmuks, Mongols and Chinese. A dangerous route which no white man before him had ventured. Or content himself with the successes already achieved during three years of travels, the lands he had already crossed, also as the first white man to have done so. Return to Constantinople, publish his findings, and claim the rewards. He had made the more prudent choice thinking recognition would come easy. He sighed.

He missed adventure, he missed the stillness of the desert nights, the tickling camel bells, and the few, dear friends he had made on the way. The only friends he had ever had. The hardships of their travels had welded them together as family, and parting ways with them in Samarkand had broken his heart. Yet, not even to these friends, had he discarded his pilgrim disguise to reveal his true identity.

The voices of children playing in the street beneath his window reached his ears, and a feeling of anguish, of loneliness, of despair came over him. In a state of strange confusion, he rubbed his eyes.He hadn't noticed evening coming, it was late enough for candles to be lit. In the obscurity his sight failed him. His head ached. The scent of thyme and cinnamon wafted into the room. At any moment, his maid, Regina, would serve dinner.

His eye wandered to the wooden panel on the wall. He pushed back his chair, counted to three panes from the window and pressed his fingers against it. The pane opened. From the small cache, he brought out a miniature, nine-branched candelabrum. It had belonged to his mother. He rubbed the silver with his sleeve. Hidden and neglected, it had accumulated dust.

"Dinner is served, Efendi," Regina called through the closed door.

Quickly, he returned the candelabrum to the cache and closed the panel door.

After dinner he limped past merchant's stalls, storehouses, and taverns on his way to the coffee house where on most evenings, he played chess. On his arm he carried the borrowed suit he had worn to Sir Elliot's dinner, which he would return to his tailor friend. It was a pleasant spring evening and the narrow Galata streets were crowded. In the distance, beyond the quays along the waterfront, lay anchored ships, their lights illuminated the strait between Galata and Stamboul.

Out of nowhere, a man appeared before him, and before he could react, the towering man had him pressed against a stone wall. In the gloom his face was concealed by a black satin hood . Under the wide belt at the waist Reshid discerned the handle of a dagger. His heart sank like a rock. A palace eunuch? Why? Who had sent him?

People hurried past, paying them no attention. Reshid would have screamed, but was too terrified even to open his mouth. The eunuch's face broke into a grin which made Reshid gasp. The grinning mouth, tongueless. The fine features of the face - Reshid's panicked brain analysed - of Nubian origin, or Abyssinian, perhaps.

In a flash, he saw in the grown man the innocent boy he had once been. Chained to a table, probably by Coptic clergy men. One slicing off the boy's sexual organs, another sticking a piece of bamboo into the genital area. Submerging him neck-high in sand without food or drink for days. To heal. And to burn in the desert sun. How many survived? One in ten? This eunuch was one of them. A survivor. On the journey to slavery, someone had cut out his tongue. Reshid snuffed out the flare of sympathy; he's a deadly beast, he told himself. Don't be fooled.