The Kadin - Bertrice Small [167]
“Madame!”
She started.
“Madame, you will catch your death out in this damp air. Come inside at once!”
“Marian, you frightened me.”
“I shouldn’t wonder, madame, standing out here all alone in the cold and dark. Come inside now!”
Putting an arm around Janet, Marian drew her into the warm, lighted cabin.
“Shame on you,” she scolded. That damp air could give you a chill. Do you want to be sick for your reunion with Prince Karim?”
“Charles,” corrected Janet “Prince Karim no longer exists.”
“Yes, m’lady. Now give me that cloak and come lie down. We will not dock at Leith for several hours yet”
Taking the cape she folded it lovingly and laid it on the trunk by the floor. “That Esther Kira,” she chuckled. “Imagine her having two trunkfuls of lovely new clothes in the latest French fashions made up for you. And then secretly sending them aboard before we left Istanbul! She must have had a dozen seamstresses working round the clock. And clothing for Ruth and me, also! Now at least we’ll not arrive at Glenkirk looking like beggars.” She tucked a blanket about Janet’s legs and propped pillows at her back. “There now, m’lady. Try to rest”
Janet nodded absently, then spoke. “Marian, are you sure you don’t want to go back to England? You don’t have to share my exile. You may still have family alive, and Ruth is entitled to know her people. You will never want for anything. I’ll see you have a generous yearly pension.”
Marian sniffed. “Now listen to me, madame. If I still have a family, they would not rejoice to see me. My parents would long be gone, and those of my brothers and sisters left alive have long thought of me as dead. I should have some explaining to do. You have been my family since I was seventeen. I will not leave you! My daughter,” she glanced at the sleeping Ruth, “is more than old enough to marry, but what chance would she have in England? She could not keep her entire past life a secret and people here have small minds. With you she retains her respectability and her virtue.”
“I had not thought about it” said Janet.
“No, you did not” replied her tart-tongued servant “Since we left the Eski Serai you have been sunk in self pity. The valideh Cyra Hafise is no more, but you are alive, madame, and you have not changed. Only our situation and circumstances have changed. In a few hours we will arrive in Leith; and after your brother has reported the success of his mission to the king of Edinburgh, we will be on our way to Glenkirk. In just a few days’ time you will see your son again. Will you break his heart with the sight of a pitiful, broken woman, or will you greet him happily with the knowledge that you are here by your own choice?”
“I am afraid, Marian. More afraid than I have ever been in my whole life. I do not know this world to which I am returning. I have no place in it”
“What nonsense you speak, madame! You spent the first years of your life in this world; and as for a place in it, are you not the sister of the earl of Glenkirk, the mother of Sir Charles Leslie?”
“It is not enough, Marian! I must have more! I cannot spend the rest of my days being nothing more than a doting grandmother sewing tapestries!”
“Then you must make it more, my lady. Did you not make our lord Selim love you above all women? Did you not direct Sultan Suleiman’s future? And save the life of Prince Karim so he might grow to manhood in this land? I have never known any such as you. You have the power to make things happen. My old granny came from Ireland, and she often spoke the Gaelic tongue. She had a word she used for a woman she admired. She would say that she was fit to be a ‘ban-righ.’ I never knew what it meant, but you, madame, are surely a ban-righ!”
For the first time since they had left Istanbul Janet Leslie laughed. “Ban-righ is the Gaelic for queen, dear Marian—and I thank you. You are right. No one placed me on the heights which I attained. I did it myself. I shall do it again