"What makes you think he uses his real name here? Matters are scarcely less difficult here than they are in Tuscany. Only I and my younger brother, John Karaja, who is a dragoman[4] to the Porte, know the real identity of the man who calls himself Turhan Bey."
"Turhan Bey?" Marianne said, stunned. "Do you mean to say that the Prince Sant'Anna has turned—Muslim!"
At that the old lady laughed heartily. Her laughter was frank and full-throated and its character so very individual that Marianne might have imagined herself in a dovecot full of cooing doves.
"By no means!" the princess cried at last, her laughter subsiding into a fit of cavernous coughing. "If that were so, your marriage would be invalid and I cannot see a prince of the Church lending himself to such a cruel jest. It was your godfather who arranged your marriage, was it not?"
"Yes," Marianne said, grasping at a new hope. "Do you know him as well?"
"No, but I know of him. To return to Turhan Bey: he owes his position here to the gratitude of Sultan Mahmoud for having saved his royal life from the attack of a pair of snakes while hunting in Cappadocia. His Highness honors with his friendship a man whose real name he does not know, whom he believes to be a rich foreign merchant attracted by the beauty of his imperial city and the life that men lead here."
Marianne bit back a sigh of disappointment. Obviously, it was impossible to persuade the old lady to divulge what she evidently regarded as another person's secret. And yet the more that she discovered about the strange man she had married, the more she wanted to know.
"Madame," she said at last, "I must beg you to say no more—or else to tell me everything. I can't bear to be obsessed by so many questions which no one will ever answer for me."
Princess Morousi placed both hands on the knob of her stick and got to her feet with a visible effort. At the same time she favored the younger woman with an utterly unexpected smile: unexpected because it was so wholly young and mischievous.
"No one? Not a bit of it! Someone is coming in a moment who will answer all your questions. And I mean all—every single one!"
"Someone? But who?"
"Why, your husband! What happened last night has forced him out of his silence at last. Besides, he wants to enlighten you a little and do away with some of the misapprehensions under which you have been laboring."
Marianne felt as if she had received an electric shock. She sat bolt upright in her unfamiliar bed and made as if to throw back the covers, which were, in any case, very much too hot.
"He is here?" she asked, lowering her voice instinctively.
"No. But he will be coming very soon, in an hour I expect. You will have time to prepare yourself to meet him. I will send a woman to you."
The old princess turned toward the door, walking with a step that was slow, almost pathetic, so earnestly did she strive to overcome her lameness. She grasped the long bellpull of lilac silk which hung on the wall and rang twice. She was already in the doorway when she swung around suddenly and Marianne, who was already half out of bed, stopped short, startled by the pain and grief imprinted on that face which, lined as it was, had not lost all its beauty.
"There is one more thing I should like to say." The old woman spoke in a hesitant tone which clearly did not come easily to her.
"Of course. What is it?"
"When you meet Corrado face to face, it will be something of a shock. You may feel some horror or revulsion. Oh, don't be afraid," she added quickly, seeing her involuntary guest's green eyes widen, "he is not a monster. But I do not know you well enough, indeed, I do not know you at all, and so I cannot tell how you may react to the sight of his face. I would beg you only to remember that he is first and foremost a victim, who has suffered long and deeply—and that you have the dangerous power to hurt him much more in the space of a few minutes than life, with its cruel ironies, has done already. Remember also that the outward form which you will see, although unusual for an Italian prince, conceals a heart which is noble and deeply generous and as free from all meanness as it is from malice. Remember, finally, that he gave you his name at a time when others might have scorned to do so."
"Madame!" protested Marianne, stung by this last reminder and the tone in which it was uttered. "Do you think it is wise to insult me when you seem to be anxious above all that I should do nothing to upset the prince?"
"I am not insulting you. The truth is never an insult and there are times when it should be spoken in full even though it may not be pleasant to hear. Don't you agree? I should be disappointed if you did not."
"Yes, I do," Marianne said, unpleasantly conscious of having lost once more. "But, please, won't you answer one more question, only one, and which concerns no one but yourself?"
"What is it?"
"You love the Prince Sant'Anna very much, don't you?"
The old woman stiffened and her free hand went to the great golden cross which she wore on her breast, as though to bear witness to the truth of her words.
"Yes," she said. "I love him very much. I love him—as I might have loved the son I never had. That is why I do not want you to hurt him."
She went out quickly, shutting the door sharply behind her.
Chapter 3
Turhan Bey
AN hour later Marianne was pacing up and down a vast room on the ground floor with a roof like a cathedral and big, arched windows opening on to a garden planted with cypress trees and huge banks of roses whose dying flowers made a brave pretense of spring.
Dominating this austere apartment and the stiff, thronelike ebony chairs with which it was furnished was a huge portrait of a splendidly mustachioed gentleman in a frogged hussar's jacket and a shako with an enormous plume like a firework display, with a jeweled dagger stuck in his silken sash. This was the late Hospodar Morousi, the princess's husband. But Marianne had barely glanced at him as she entered. The room seemed much too large for a private interview and she felt nervous and ill at ease.
The prospect of this meeting, coming so suddenly and unexpectedly after she had looked forward to it for so long and then put it out of her mind as a thing impossible, had left her thoughts in a turmoil.
From the day of their marriage she had regarded Corrado Sant'Anna as an enigma, half-irritating, half to be pitied. It had wounded her that he should not trust her enough to show her his face. At the same time, she had longed with all her generous heart to help him, to bring some comfort into what she guessed was a cruel lot, endured by a man of outstanding nobility and generosity of spirit, one who gave so much and asked so little.
She had been genuinely distressed to learn, as she thought, of his tragic death at the hands of a murderer in whom he had trusted too much. She had wanted to see the guilty man punished, and when Matteo Damiani had boasted of his crime before her face she had felt herself Princess Sant'Anna indeed and as much his wife as if they had lived together for many years.
And now, suddenly, here she was faced with one fantastic piece of news after another: the mysterious prince was not dead, he was coming to her here, and she was going to see, perhaps even to touch him, here within the four walls of this very room which, suddenly, for all its size, now seemed to her too small for such an event. The phantom horseman, the rider of Ilderim the Magnificent, the man who went out only at night and in a mask of white leather, was coming here… It was almost unbelievable.
Would he still be wearing the mask that she had glimpsed that one eventful night? Marianne wished that she had thought to ask her hostess. But it was too late now. Princess Morousi had vanished.