Flora emerged from the roses, her cheeks flushed. She took off her hat and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand.

"Why don't we do something different today. Wouldn't you rather walk in the hills?"

Hamid shook his head. "I'm happy here, watching you prune."

He could tell she didn't believe him, and felt ashamed. All he wanted was to shut out the haunting news from the city and spend carefree days with Flora at the yali. The harder he tried, the more obsessed he became with checking the daily paper in Therapia.

She gave a barely noticeable shrug. It was just before lunch and they were in the rose garden, hedged rooms enclosed by low trimmed, box-edged beds, which were filled with lavender and flowering pale pink roses.

Since their meeting with MacGahn, Flora had developed a passion for gardening, an activity which, she said, could lighten Hamid's mood too if only he would try it. Though this was more, he suspected, to resist any further excursions into Therapia. In the afternoons, she would challenge him to a game of croquet. Every day, she tried to talk him into launching an outrageous transformation of the lawn into what she called a tennis court. "Let's enjoy the simple pleasures of summer," she said.

He tried. Every day, he strained all the forces of his mind not to think of Abdulaziz's bloody death.

They had brought out a chair into the garden for him, and he would sit in it like he did now, unmoving, watching Flora tend the roses and listening to her voice, soft, gentle and calm. She had put on her large-brimmed hat again, and worked with secateurs in one hand and a cushion under her knees.

He could hear her words, he could understand them, but like so often these days, he failed to make sense out of them. His mind wandered. The murder of his uncle had been a wake-up call, like a warning, and he was grateful. He had foolishly let his guard down in this beautiful place. If only he could figure out what to do. And why had Peresto not informed him of this death immediately, to alert him to the danger? Was she not to be trusted either?

A dark mood seized him, which he could not control. It had seemed like a gift from heaven to spend time in the yali with Flora. Now he realised it had been a terrible mistake.

Hifsi had returned to the yali with a handful of Peresto's loyal men who now guarded the estate day and night. Still, Hamid did not feel reassured. A fear which he couldn't adequately describe consumed him. It seemed to grow from within, like a creeping weed, dark, vicious, and repulsive.

At night, his dreams had changed to those of monstrous horror. In the nightmares, he visualised Murad's man coming for them, for Flora, then the murderer's face morphed into his own, unrecognisably loathsome and grotesque, and he realised it was he who was coming for her. It was he who listened to her breathing quietly, asleep, and spread his darkness, like a smothering blanket, over her body and face. Every time he would wake in a cold sweat.

His sleep grew restless; at all hours of the night, he would find himself wrapped in blankets on the terrace, smoking and brooding. And he prayed again. For her. As an alternate source of protection. There was no attenuating his fear, he was doomed, and because of him, she could die.

He now moved in his garden chair, picked up a book, put it down again. He noticed Flora had stopped talking. Even as she cut the roses and put them in the basket next to her, she seemed not to be watching what she did, but looking inwards, into herself. Was she afraid too? Probably. In tacit agreement, they kept the fear to themselves, like thorny walls between them.

A chilling sound caught his attention, his nerves tightened and something inside him stopped his breath. His mother's broken voice? He listened, stood abruptly, and covered his ears. Recently, in the most unexpected places, harrowing words emerged out of nowhere. He would suddenly see them written in the sparkling sunlight on a window, in the fluttering leaves of a tree, or discern them in the sound of the surf coming onto the shore. From the branch above Flora's head, small, round eyes embedded in black-and-white plumage peered curiously at him – a crooning bird. He relaxed, feeling ridiculous

Flora watched him from under her brimmed hat. "Is something the matter?" she asked anxiously. Her face had lost all its serenity, as if the sun had gone behind a cloud. It made his heart ache. He quickly recomposed his own face to reassure her and managed a thin smile.

"I thought I heard Hifsi call us to lunch."

"That would be a little early," she said bewildered, and returned her attention to the roses.

After a silence, they conversed about unimportant things. Neither spoke their heart, both said what they didn't think, so their words came out false. Both noticed, and were pained by it.

"I should go to Therapia, just a short visit," he said abruptly.

With a gentle smile, she said, "I'll stay here and work in the garden." She had changed, become hard to read, keeping her expressions sealed inside a blank face or neutral smile. As did he. His heart sank. His fear exasperated her, he knew. Her love for me is fading, he thought. He felt her slipping through his fingers and blinked hard.

"Are you sure you won't come? I won't be late," he promised, ashamed to know he would be, like the other times he'd kept her waiting. It was stronger than him, whatever drove him to Therapia. There was no help for it, or for him.

To get to Therapia, he no longer walked along the coastal path, he took a carriage with eunuchs coming along. He was in a vague, confused state. Along with needing to check the papers every day, he had taken to then discussing the news with MacGahn. Being with him was a torment – he didn't even like the man and the meetings with him were repulsive. Yet here he was on his way to the Café, with despair in his heart, and anger at all people, mostly at himself.

The day after their first meeting, he had returned to the Café, secretly relieved to meet with MacGahn alone. Flora would not understand and he didn't want to frighten her. Also, MacGahn made him uncomfortable.

At first, the journalist had been stupefied to learn he was having coffee with the Crown Prince, but, in the blink of an eye, he'd adapted and continued to interact in his casual, American manner, addressing Hamid by name, and speaking openly, as if with a colleague. It flattered Hamid's vanity to be included in MacGahn's group, the morally superior ones, and that the journalist should share his thoughts freely, with such confidence.

And yet MacGahn's contempt, not only for the dynasty, but for the Empire and all Muslims, offended him. When Hamid suggested Murad might be responsible for Abdulaziz's death, MacGahn said, "Of course he is! It's how the damned palace operates. Savages, all of them." Beneath Hamid's blank expression, anger turned in his gut. It was one thing for Hamid to think it, and quite another to hear the words spoken with such disdain by this man, who judged and criticised and felt superior, convinced he performed some heroic role in the world. Who was he to lecture Hamid on how the palace operated?

Despite himself, they met a second time, and a third, because MacGahn was the only person he could turn to for information. Withdrawn behind his impassive shield of dignity, Hamid listened. The empire's failure to modernise, their stifling, archaic traditions and beliefs, their out-of-control finances, the more he heard, the worse he felt.

He preferred it when MacGahn talked about himself, about his time as a foreign correspondent in St Petersburg, his daring travels covering conflicts in Central Asia, and about exploring the Arctic. His wife was Russian, and he spoke her language fluently.

Mostly, MacGahn returned to the political issue closest to his heart: the struggle for liberation of the Balkan provinces. He explained how brilliantly the Tsar had effectively introduced a wedge between the Sultan and his Christian subjects by proclaiming himself protector of all Christians wherever they might be. It gave him licence to act, hard to contest for the other European powers. Not only did the Tsar support the Christian rebellion in the Balkans, his secret agents had instigated it; they agitated, organised and funded the Christian rebels. Hamid found it incredible that MacGahn would be so candid with him about all this, now knowing who he was. But MacGahn's sense of rightness clearly drove him on, and he didn't hesitate.

"These Christians are betraying the empire," Hamid had said.

"They are Christians first," MacGahn replied.

Hamid had listened and couldn't think of anything to say.

In his excitement, MacGahn hadn't seemed to notice his embarrassment. "There will be war," he said. "The Tsar is just waiting for an excuse to bring his troops across the border. And when he does, I will be there. I'll be travelling with the Russian troops as a foreign correspondent."

War, just as Midhat had warned him in their meeting, Hamid had thought.

Those meetings ought to have estranged them. MacGahn was smug and inappropriately familiar; Hamid responded with icy aloofness, to which MacGahn was then contemptuously indifferent.

Still, instead of staying to tend the roses with Flora, Hamid returned to Therapia again, just as he had done on the previous days. Seeing him arrive, MacGahn greeted him with a smile, coffee, and troubling news. "There have been more deaths. Abdulaziz's favourite passed away in childbirth. The baby too."

Hamid watched the ashes of his burning cigarette. The young Circassian favourite, dead. What was her name? He couldn't remember. And the baby too.

MacGahn's drawling voice continued. "Following her death, her brother, an officer, then shot seven ministers. You know where? In the house of Midhat Pasha! The papers claim this officer did it to avenge his sister and the ex-Sultan, whom he apparently had a strong devotion to. Among the dead was the Minister of War, Huseyin Avni. And the only survivor: Midhat Pasha. Can you believe it?"

It was unbelievable. MacGahn had brought newspapers which they combed through for more information, and to which they added rumours and their own speculations to create a coherent, larger picture. Had the favourite really died in childbirth? Or had the baby – a potential future rival to the throne – been the actual target, and the girl merely collateral damage?

The rumour that Midhat Pasha might have ordered the killing of the ministers shocked Hamid. "Why would he do such a brutal thing?" he asked.

"Because Huseyin Avni opposed him."

Picking up on Hamid's blank expression, MacGahn explained. "Midhat Pasha tabled a proposal for a constitution. You know he was the author of the Manifesto of the Muslim Patriots?"

Hamid nodded.

"Well," MacGahn continued. "Most ministers, especially his main rival, Husein Avni, disagreed with him, and they rejected the proposed constitution. With Huseyin Avni eliminated, Midhat Pasha now controls government, and the constitution is back on the table."

Hamid didn't allow his face to betray his sense of hurt and shock. Midhat was stopping at nothing to push through this constitution. It felt like betrayal. It was betrayal. If it was true.

Peresto had feared that Midhat's infatuation with European ideas would make him lose his way. Hamid had always defended him, convinced that Midhat served the dynasty and the empire. Now as well, he shook his head. "Murder seven ministers. I find it hard to believe."

"You know him well?"

"I've met him a few times. My father trusted him."

He had pinned Midhat as intelligent, competent, a political animal as good as they come, and vain. To betray the dynasty, and have his rivals executed in cold blood in his own home – would Midhat have it in him? No, the murder was not Midhat's doing, he was sure of it.

His thoughts circled back to the dead favourite and her baby. Worry cancelled out all rational thought, and a powerful urge to return to the yali overcame him. He should not have left Flora alone.

MacGahn crossed and uncrossed his legs, pulled on his cigar, and in his American drawl, elaborated on the public debate in the city, for or against a constitution. Was a constitution what the empire needed? Was it in line with Islamic law? Was it what people wanted?

Hamid's preoccupied mind struggled to follow. Pushing his chair away from the table and standing abruptly, he said, "I had better get back to the yali."

MacGahan gave him a sharp look and spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "Personally, I think a constitution would only gloss over a rotten and archaic system. It's too little, too late."

From the inner pocket of his jacket, MacGahn brought out a document and pushed it across the table. "Based on my reporting in the Daily News."

Hamid dropped his eyes and read the title: 'Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East'.

He winced and sat down. The pamphlet evoked everything shameful he would rather forget. Reshid had told him the western powers referred to the empire as the 'the-sick-man-of-Europe'. It was a name that encompassed all the different interrelated problems the empire faced, and which would lead to its imminent dissolution: military defeats, institutional bankruptcy, nationalist religious conflicts. The anticipation of the impending end begged the Question of the East: who would get the spoils?

A gust of wind rustled through the leaves of the old plane tree.

"You wrote this?"

"On behalf of Mr Gladstone."

"Mr Gladstone?" He had never heard the name before.

"An honest Christian, and the man who is expected to win the next election in Britain. It's a draft, but Gladstone will publish it by the end of the summer." He toyed with the pamphlet. "I brought it here because I think it will interest you."

Hamid raised an eyebrow. MacGahn's familiarly liberal tone carried an underlying aggression. His expression, and especially his sanctimonious tone, suggested he blamed Hamid, and despised him. In order not to reveal himself, and above all, not to give in to his humiliating feelings of guilt, he looked away as MacGahn spoke.

"Hundreds of thousands of people around Europe will read this pamphlet. Mr Gladstone will use the massacres to galvanise British public opinion against the current government's pro-Ottoman policy. He demands that Britain stops supporting the empire until the Balkan states achieve independence."

He was glad to be sitting because he felt as if he might faint. "Get to the point, MacGahn," he whispered when he'd recovered himself.

With a voice like metal, MacGahn said, "All of Europe will support him. The age of dynasty and empire is over, that's why this pamphlet should interest you."

Damn you, Hamid thought. Damn them all: the Balkan traitors, the greedy Russian bastards, the forked-tongued British hypocrites. Yet, even more so, he cursed his own: the inept fools who were bringing down the empire from the inside. Fools, he wanted to cry out, you damned, wretched traitors.

He managed a thin smile. "I didn't ask you to read the future in your coffee grounds, MacGahn. I meant, why are you telling me this?"

"You are the Crown Prince."

With a cool, careful look at MacGahn, Hamid picked up the pamphlet. "If this is important, you had better pass it to someone relevant. To Midhat Pasha or some other minister, or to the Sultan himself."

"Oh, Midhat Pasha already knows about it, and trust me, he understands its relevance. Although he believes that the empire can still be salvaged, that a constitution can subdue the demands of the Balkan peoples for independence."

"You disagree, I'm sure."

"A constitution is too little too late, as I said before. Midhat grossly underestimates peoples' hunger for freedom and self-determination. And as for Sultan Murad..." MacGahan shook his head and smiled. "Rumours have it he is ill. That he is mentally unstable."

After some silence, Hamid said dismissively, "Rumours."

"Four weeks have passed since the coup, and they still haven't invested Murad with the sword of Osman," MacGahn said.

The delayed investiture had not escaped Hamid. With all other worries, he had chosen not to think about it. Now, for a moment, he forgot about his concerns for Flora's safety. He knew better than anyone that Murad was unstable, and he knew the reasons for it. Murad would do anything to keep the throne, including wean himself off alcohol and morphine, but how long would it take him?

But maybe Murad was not the only cause. There was also the death of Abdulaziz and his young favourite, and the murder of seven ministers. Such unsettling events could push the investiture back a day or two. But weeks? Anxiety gnawed at his belly.

"If Murad is unfit to rule...." Hideous screams cut MacGahn off mid-sentence. A school of screeching birds abruptly took flight, and two braying donkeys that had torn themselves loose, charged across the sleepy square.

Beneath the clamour, a slow rumbling sound emerged from the belly of the earth. The cigar between MacGahn's teeth trembled, half-empty water glasses danced to the edge of the table and crashed to the ground, chairs and tables fell over. Hamid felt himself shaking uncontrollably, or was it the ground under his feet that vibrated?

The waiter floundered and dropped to the ground. The building trembled, and shouting, gesticulating habitués scrambled to safety. MacGahn's chair suddenly lurched and tipped over, launching him from his seat. In icy terror, Hamid gripped the armrest as he watched MacGahn's cigar fly off.

The rumbling sound tapered off, but then, seconds later, it returned even more furiously. The glass of a window shattered, then another and another, as if the entire universe was crumbling.

As unexpectedly as it had started, the earth abruptly stopped moving, and all was silent as the grave.

A bird sailed in over the square, settled in a treetop and called faintly, a quick, sharp trill. Another bird answered, then a third and a fourth.

"We've found Mlle Flora, my Lord."

At the sound of Hifsi's voice, Hamid reined up his excited horse. His heart pounded. "Is she alright?"

"No harm has come to her. She had wandered off into the hills. She fell and hurt her knee, and we found her resting by a brook, then brought her back to the yali."

The sharp light of the setting sun burnt his eyes. "Thank God!"

They had been searching for Flora since his return from Therapia. When the earthquake happened, Siran and Hifsi had been busy in the house, but afterwards, when things had calmed down, Flora was nowhere to be found. They had looked for her in the house and the garden, both of which had miraculously escaped any damage. Nothing. They speculated that she might have disappeared before the tremor, or be lying buried somewhere under a fallen tree or rock; there was no way of knowing. Siran was inconsolable, she felt responsible. Wasting no time, Hamid had divided the guards into groups and sent them ransacking the surroundings beyond the estate. He took the lead of one group to comb the path they took when hiking in the hills. Now, joy overwhelmed him: They had found Flora and she was unharmed, thank God. He wheeled his horse around and tried to calm his thumping heart. He hadn't lost her.

__________________________

Author's note

Historically, the relationship between Russia and the Ottoman Empire had been characterised by a complex interplay of rivalry, conflict, and occasional cooperation. One of the most significant aspects of their relationship was the struggle for control over the Black Sea and the strategic Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits, which connected the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. Russia sought to gain access to these warm-water ports and establish itself as a naval power, while the Ottoman Empire aimed to maintain its control over this crucial trade route.

Another characteristic of their relationship was the role of religion. Russia, as a predominantly Orthodox Christian nation, positioned itself as the protector of Christian minorities wherever they may be - including within the Muslim-ruled Ottoman Empire. Russia used the plight of these minorities as a pretext for intervention in Ottoman affairs.

The embedded image is a monument of MacGahn from 2022, which can be found in Elena, Bulgaria.