Flora lay huddled in her bed; it seemed vast now when it was half-empty. On the divan, she could hear Siran's even breathing.

"Are you sleeping," she whispered.

"No."

"It's time."

Siran lit a gas lamp and opened the window drapes, the light of the sick moon spilt onto the floor. "There's too much light," she said.

Flora hurriedly dressed. The night before, she had prepared the few things she would take with her: a few pieces of bread and dried fruit slipped into a handkerchief at dinner, a purse with gold coins which Hamid had left for her, and a shawl to wrap it all in.

Hifsi tore the sheets off the bed and tied them into a long rope, which he attached to the terrace railing. Flora looked to the flat sea. Siran was right, too much light and too little wind. They would have to be extremely quiet. She tried not to think of the eunuch who turned up at the yali the morning after Hamid's departure, a man with grotesquely scared cheeks and - Flora had almost fainted to discover - no tongue. Hifsi told her it was Mustafa, Peresto's trusted helper. Don't cross him, he said. It was easy to heed his advice: since Hamid's departure she had not been allowed out of the harem.

The day after Hamid's departure, she wandered restlessly from room to room, agitated by a surge of violent emotions that prevented her from thinking clearly. The anger at being locked up in the harem. And the fear. Was she safe? From what dangers? Wherever she turned, she had the impression she could hear doors shut behind her. But there was no banging of doors, just the terrifying silence in which Hamid had abandoned her, beneath the hushed whispers of her eunuch guards.

There were moments when she thought that she would never see him again, and was plunged into deep despair. He had never loved her, she thought. He was relieved to return to the palace, he had never been serious about building a future with her. Inside her head she got angry, accused him of abandoning her in this dreadful place, of forgetting about her, about their child. 

At the thought of the child, her emotions became lighter and filled with hope. How could she doubt him? How could she doubt their love? He was doing what was best for them, for their future, for the future of their child.

But the emotional turbulence exasperated her, it depressed her, and her agitation increased until she was so tense, she was in danger of snapping. Everything around her seemed hostile, she saw enemies everywhere. Panic mounted. She had to get out, she had to breathe fresh air.

Several times that day, she approached the eunuch who guarded the entrance to the selamlik.

"Why am I here," she asked. "Tell me, why won't you let me out?"

The eunuch pressed his lips together and did not move from his post at the door.

"Do you understand what I am saying?"

The eunuch responded with a blank stare.

In the evening, she held secret council with Hifsi and Siran. Something was very wrong. For some reason, she was held captive. Mustafa's arrival at the yali suggested to her that it was on Peresto's orders. Did Peresto know about their plans to leave for America? Would Reshid have betrayed them? It was, of course, impossible to know.

In her mind, she had gone over every detail of her meeting with Peresto, and always, she arrived at the same question: if Peresto was certain that Hamid was destined to become Sultan, then why had she gone out of her way to tell Flora this? As if Peresto, herself, doubted. With hindsight, it felt more and more like Peresto had tried to persuade Flora to give up on Hamid. Then why would she keep her captive?

"There might be an explanation," Hifsi said. "The baby, does Peresto know?"

Flora remembered the unease she had felt when Peresto had complimented her on her healthy complexion, and her heart sank. "What if she does," she asked in a whisper. "What does it change?"

"All Osman children belong to the dynasty," Hifsi said. "If it's a boy, it's an heir to the throne."

Flora suddenly felt faint and was covered in cold sweat. Keep your head clear, she told herself, but more than ever before, it felt like Hamid had walked into a trap. They both had. Peresto had separated them, now she would use her and the baby to bargain with Hamid, to force him to choose.

Or, perhaps she would simply claim the child and take it away from her. She shuddered. Could Peresto do that? Would Hamid let her? She felt a flicker of a doubt, which she extinguished. It's how Peresto operated, sowing distrust and fear to tear them apart. Hamid knew it better than anyone; he had asked Flora to trust him and sworn they would meet on the steamer. He would do everything in his power to save them, to save their baby, and she would too. Two more days before steamer sailed; she would stay strong, and she would get out of there.

That same night, Hifsi threw the make-shift rope over the balcony and pulled hard on it to ensure that he had secured it well. The plan was simple, but no less dangerous: they would escape the yali through the window, steal horses and ride off into the night. There were ten eunuchs and six kalfa in the house, about half of them would be on guard through the night, mostly outdoors but also by the door to the selamlik and to the harem gardens. The others would be sleeping on the ground floor of the harem.

One after the other, they slid down the make-shift rope. As they slunk toward the garden, they kept close to the wall of the house. Under the windows, they crawled on all four so as not to be seen from inside.

By the stables, they found two eunuchs guarding the double doors; how naïve of them to think that Mustafa would leave the horses unattended. Flora had hoped to get to the steamer before daylight, before the eunuchs discovered their escape, but without horses, that would not be possible. On a good day, a carriage ride from the yali to the city centre would take about two hours, but the journey would be more arduous on foot and staying off the main road to avoid detection.

They took the path leading to the back of the garden. From there, they made their way through the high, damp grass, which brushed against their ankles, leaving cold dewdrops on their skin. The rough bark of the trees scraped against her palms as she steadied herself. The night air was thick with the scent of jasmine, and the distant hooting of an owl pierced the silence.

They stayed close, one after another, with Siran in the lead. The timid light of the crescent moon pierced the darkness just enough for them to avoid bumping into a tree or twisting an ankle in a hole in the ground.

When they found the road, Siran stopped and turned to Flora, her face undergoing a sudden nervous contraction. Hifsi took her hand, and Siran glanced at him before speaking. "Flora, I... We can't go to America. Please forgive me, but I must stay. When Anoush returns, I need to be here for her."

Flora stopped, startled and heartbroken by the abrupt announcement. The realisation that Siran and Hifsi were intimate, perhaps even lovers, threw her off guard. She had never guessed, yet now it seemed obvious – the wordless complicity, the furtive exchange of glances.

"What will you do?" she asked, barely suppressing a sob.

"We'll hide around here," Siran said. "Hifsi can't return to the city. He's a palace eunuch; there's nowhere for him to hide."

Flora nodded, understanding their decision. In Constantinople, it would only be a matter of time before someone denounced him. She took Siran in her arms, holding her close, unable to let go. Tears filled her eyes, and she tried in vain to push them back.

A brusque movement and the rattling of dry leaves, or grass perhaps, scared them. It must have been a fleeing animal, a bird or a rabbit, disturbed by them in its sleep, but it was enough to revive Flora. From her bundle, she brought out the purse with money which Hamid had left her, and gave it to Siran.

"Return to the monastery and tell them Hamid sent you," she said, handing the money to Siran. "Ismail and his brothers are tolerant and forgiving. They will accept you there. Build yourselves a house. There is enough money in the purse to pay for it."

Siran buried her nose in Flora's neck, and they wept silently. Flora pulled back, quickly drying her tears, and kissed both of Hifsi's cheeks. Through their tears, they smiled.

Hifsi pointed into the darkness. "Follow the road to the right until you reach the wider road to the city. Turn left, keeping the sea on your right and the hills on your left. When you're sure of the direction, find a parallel path. It'll make your journey longer, but safer."

They embraced one last time, weary of saying goodbye for fear it might mean forever. As Flora turned to look back, Siran and Hifsi had already melted into the darkness, leaving her alone with an aching heart.

The faint, silvery moonlight made it difficult to see where she was going, and Flora wished for a brighter moon. She followed Hifsi's directions but stayed at a distance from the road, navigating through fields and olive groves. Her sandals, ill-suited for the rough terrain, left her feet aching. The initial exhilaration of freedom was soon replaced by a nagging fear that she would arrive too late. For what, she didn't know, but the sense that Hamid was in danger, and that the eunuchs might already be pursuing her, pushed her onward.

As the sun rose, she realised she was fully visible from a small farm on the edge of a field, but also from the main road. Ill at ease, she pressed on, moving further inland into the scrubland at the foot of the hills. The rocky terrain provided better hiding places, and she found solace in the distant sea to her right and the rolling hills to her left.

In a field beneath her, she saw a horse pulling a plough; the working day had started. She saw a falcon dive for a mouse or a rabbit. She saw grazing sheep. In the distance, to the right, the blue sea traced the coastline and to the left, the green of the rolling hills merged with the sky. In between the two, the brown mud road winding its way as far as the eye could see, to the city.

By a brook, she stopped to drink and eat the bread from her parcel. The air smelled of mint and wildflowers. She noticed her bleeding feet and washed away the blood. With her back against a tree, she shut her eyes. When she opened them, she was staring into the velvety eyes of a little girl with tousled black hair and a walking stick in her hand. Still groggy with sleep, Flora jumped to her feet, and the girl fled with a troop of sheep at her heels. A shepherd. Her heart raced. She must have fallen asleep for not too long, judging by the position of the sun, which had still not reached its zenith, but long enough to make her insides ache with worry. She put on the sandals, grabbed her parcel and hurried on, and whenever the uneven terrain permitted it, she ran.

The city skyline with its minarets came into view, still far away but instilling hope. Flora stumbled, crying out in pain instead as she fell and scraped her knee. Tears welled up. She stymied the bleeding with some leaves and was about to get up when she spotted a lone rider on the road, black on a silver horse with a bridle which shone in the sun. Mustafa. She threw herself flat out in the high grass, praying that he had not lifted his gaze towards the hills and seen her.

After a while, she found the courage to raise her head just enough to get a view of the road. It was empty. Where was he? She looked left and right, horrified that he might appear behind her, but there was no one there. She rose to her full length, looked up and down the road and there he was, way past her, with his back to her now, galloping towards Constantinople.

It was a relief and deeply unsettling, all at once. She no longer had to look over her shoulder for fear of being caught up, but what would Peresto do when she learnt of her escape?

To advance at a faster pace, she decided to risk using the road.

As soon as she distinguished her shop, it was clear to her that something was not right. She slowed her steps to process what she was seeing. The large display window was shattered, the storefront sign torn down, and the door which stood half open was smeared in red paint. Even at a distance, she could read: Turkish whore. The violence of it. Who could do such a thing? She became aware of her Ottoman clothing, torn and dirty from the journey, of her bleeding feet. She felt all eyes on her, people hiding behind their curtains in the apartments across the street, the neighbouring shop owners who stopped what they were doing to watch. She blushed, stood up tall, and pushed the door open.

Everything was trashed. The overturned counter chopped to pieces. The chairs cleaved with an ax. Splinters everywhere. The rolls of silk fabric had been torn from the shelves, unrolled and randomly cut or ripped. The glove drawers were overturned and smashed, and on the floor, mixed with the shattered glass from the window, lay countless gloves in a soiled mess. She bent to pick up a glove but immediately recoiled: it smelled of urine. In the backroom, the windows were broken too, glasses and plates smashed to pieces and Anoush's and Siran's bedding lay in a heap on the floor.

In her apartment upstairs, the floor was littered with her belongings, hairpins, dresses, undergarments. Her chest of drawers was smashed to pieces, the mattress had been gutted with a knife, and the curtains torn down. The windows stood wide open. On the wall above her bed, the same red painted letters as on the front door read: Turkish whore.

The black book which contained her accounting had slipped under the dressing table. The pages she had filled so diligently had been torn out, crumbled into little balls and scattered around the room. She bent to pick one up, and carefully flattened it out in her palm. All her hard work, in ruins.

_________________________

Author's note

Unrelated to this chapter, but an important element of the Ottoman Empire, was the devşirme system. It was a method of recruitment used by the Ottoman Empire from the 14th to the early 18th century to fill the ranks of the Janissaries, the Sultan's elite military corps, and to staff the empire's administrative positions.

Under this system, young Christian boys, primarily from the Balkans and Anatolia, were taken from their families, converted to Islam, and subjected to a rigorous education and training regimen. The boys were usually between the ages of 8 and 20, and were selected based on their physical attributes, intelligence, and potential for loyalty to the Sultan.

The system was a form of conscription, but it also provided opportunities for social mobility, as the recruited boys could rise through the ranks of the military or bureaucracy based on their abilities and loyalty to the Sultan. It aimed to create a loyal and dedicated class of servants for the Ottoman state, free from the influence of powerful aristocratic families.

While the devşirme system contributed to the Ottoman Empire's military and administrative success, it was also a source of resentment among the Christian populations subjected to it, as it involved the forced removal of children from their families and communities.

The decline of the practice in the 17th century and its ultimate abolition in the early 18th century resulted from a combination of factors, including the empire's changing military needs, growing opposition to the practice, and the increasing influence of Turkish-Muslim elites who preferred to recruit from within their own communities.