“But they were not put to death, then?” she said. “I am glad to hear it; I will be able to reassure the women of the harem; it was all they were talking of, and they indeed hoped the boys would not suffer too greatly.”

“Do they go out into society so often, then?” Laurence had always imagined the harem very much in the nature of a prison, and no communication with the outer world permitted.

“Oh, I am kira, business agent, for one of the kadin,” Sara said. “Although they do leave the harem on excursions, it is only with a great deal of trouble; no one is allowed to see them, so they must be shut up in coaches, and take many guards, and they must have the Sultan’s permission. But being a woman, I can come in to them and go out again freely myself.”

“Then I hope I may beg you also to pass on to them my apologies for the intrusion, and those of the young men,” Laurence said.

“They would indeed have been better satisfied with a more successful one, of longer duration,” she said, with a ghost of amusement, and smiled at Laurence’s tinge of embarrassment. “Oh, I do not mean any indiscretion; only they suffer from a great deal of boredom, being permitted little but indolence, and the Sultan is more interested in his reforms than in his favorites.”

The meal being done, she rose with her mother and they left the table; she did not look round, but went out of the room tall and straight-shouldered, and Tharkay went to look silently out of the windows, into the garden behind the house.

Maden sighed, soundlessly, and poured more of the strong red wine into Laurence’s glass. Sweets were carried in, a platter of marchpane. “I understand you have questions for me, Captain,” he said.

He had served Mr. Arbuthnot not only by arranging for Tharkay to carry the message, but also as banker, and, it transpired, had been the foremost agent of the transaction. “You can conceive of the precautions which we arranged,” he said. “The gold was not conveyed all at once, but on several heavily escorted vessels, at various intervals, all in chests marked as iron ingots; and brought directly to my vaults until the whole was assembled.”

“Sir, to your knowledge were the agreements already signed, before the payment was brought hither?” Laurence asked.

Maden offered his upturned hands, without commitment. “What worth is a contract between monarchs? What judge will rule in such a dispute? But Mr. Arbuthnot thought all was settled. Otherwise, would he have taken risks so great, brought such a sum here? All seemed well, all seemed in order.”

“Yet if the sum were never handed over—” Laurence said.

Yarmouth had come with written instructions from the ambassador to arrange the delivery, a few days before the latter’s death and the former’s disappearance. “I did not for a moment doubt the message, and I knew the ambassador’s hand most well; his confidence in Mr. Yarmouth was complete,” Maden said. “A fine young man, and soon to be married; always steady. I would not believe any underhanded behavior of him, Captain.” But he spoke a little doubtfully, and he did not sound so certain as his words.

Laurence was silent. “And you conveyed the money to him as he asked?”

“To the ambassador’s residence,” Maden confirmed. “As I understood, it was thence to be delivered directly to the treasury; but the ambassador was killed the following day.”

He had receipts, signed; in Yarmouth’s hand and not the ambassador’s, however. He presented these to Laurence with some discomfort, and after leaving him to look at them a while, said abruptly, “Captain, you have been courteous; but let us speak plainly. This is all the proof which I have: the men who carried the gold are mine, of many years’ service, and only Yarmouth received it. A smaller sum, lost in these circumstances, I would return to you out of my own funds rather than lose my reputation.”

Laurence had been looking at the receipts under the lamp, closely; indeed in some corner of his mind such doubts might have been blooming. He let the papers fall to the table and walked to the window, angry at himself and all the world. “Good God,” he said, low, “what a hellish state to be looking in every direction with suspicion. No.” He turned around. “Sir, I beg you not repine on it. I dare say you are a man of parts, but that you should have orchestrated the murder of the British ambassador and the embarrassment of your own nation, I do not believe. And for the rest, Mr. Arbuthnot and not you was responsible for safeguarding our interests in the matter; if he trusted too much to Yarmouth, and was mistaken in his man—” He stopped and shook his head. “Sir, if my question is offensive to you, I beg you say so and I will at once withdraw it; but—Hasan Mustafa, if you know him; is it possible he is involved? Either himself the guilty party, or in—in collusion, if I must contemplate it, with Yarmouth? I am certain he has deliberately lied at least so far as claiming the agreements were not concluded.”

“Possible? Anything is possible, Captain; one man dead, another gone, thousands upon thousands of pounds of gold vanished? What is not possible?” Maden passed a hand over his brow tiredly, calming himself, and answered after a moment, “Forgive me. No. No, Captain, I cannot believe it. He and his family are in passionate support of the Sultan’s reforms, and the cleansing of the Janissary Corps—his cousin is married to the Sultan’s sister, his brother is head of the Sultan’s new army. I cannot say he is a man of stainless honor; can any man be so, who is deep in politics? But that he should betray all his own work, and the work of his house? A man may lie a little to save face, or be pleased to snatch at an excuse for escaping a regretted agreement, without being a traitor.”

“Yet why ought they regret it? Napoleon is if anything a greater threat to them now than ever he was, and we all the more necessary allies,” Laurence said. “The strengthening of our forces over the Channel must be of native value to them, as drawing more of Napoleon’s strength away westward.”

Maden looked vaguely discomfited, and at Laurence’s urging to speak frankly said, “Captain, there is a popular opinion, since Austerlitz, that Napoleon is not to be defeated, and foolish the nation which chooses to be his enemy. I am sorry,” he added, seeing Laurence’s grim look, “but so it is said in the streets and the coffeehouses; and by the ulema and the vezirs also, I imagine. The Emperor of Austria now sits his throne by Napoleon’s sufferance, and all the world knows it. Better never to have fought him at all.”

Tharkay bowed to Maden deeply as they were leaving. “Will you be in Istanbul long?” Maden asked him.

“No,” Tharkay answered, “I will not come back again.”

Maden nodded. “God be with you,” he said gently, and stood watching them go.

Laurence was weary, with a more than physical fatigue, and Tharkay utterly withdrawn. They had to wait a while, upon the riverbank, for another ferryman; the wind off the Bosphorus was enough to bring a chill to the air, though the summer weather was yet holding. Laurence roused under the bite of the sea-wind and looked at Tharkay: the man’s expression unmoved and unmoving, settled into calm lines and giving no sign of any strong emotion, save perhaps something of a tightness around the mouth, difficult to make out in the lantern-light.

A ferryman at last brought his boat up to the dock; the crossing they accomplished in silence, only the wood-creak and the dipping oars to break it, lopsided and unsteady strokes, the ferryman wheezing, and the water rippling up against the side of the boat; on the far bank the mosques shone from within, candle-light through the stained-glass windows: all the smooth domes together like an archipelago in the dark, and the monumental glory of the Haghia Sophia above them. The ferryman leapt from the boat and held it for them; they climbed up onto the banks into the glimmer of yet another mosque, small only by virtue of comparison; there were gulls flying wildly around the dome, calling in their raucous voices, bellies lit yellow with reflected light.