Benedict Hall Read online

  It was after midnight, and there was no one in the operating theater but Margot, Whitely, and a night nurse. The observation level was empty, and their voices echoed under the high ceiling. Under normal circumstances, Margot would have been gratified to be here, allowed to assist the surgeon and gain some credits toward her own surgical privileges.

  But Dr. Whitely maintained a steady, irritating chatter throughout the procedure, making jokes and then laughing at them. Even through his mask she smelled brandy, so she kept a close eye on his hands as he prepared to separate the mesenteric attachment. It was a damned good thing, she thought now, breathing the predawn air, that she had. He had almost perforated the appendix with his scalpel. Only her snapped “Watch it, Doctor!” had caught his attention, and refocused him on his task.

  Whitely was angry with her, of course. Easier for an older doctor to be angry at a younger one, and a female at that, than to admit he had endangered a patient. She could complain to the board of the hospital, but that would draw negative attention, lodge a black mark against her name, and do little to chastise an established physician. It was more likely Whitely would complain about her, claim insubordination or something. She would have to let it go.

  When she had first come to this hospital as an intern, there had been two other women physicians, but they had both left to take up rural practices. In fact, the number of women physicians nationwide was diminishing rather than increasing. Margot worried over that.

  The click of a car door brought her back to herself. Blake was waiting for her at the curb, holding the door of the Essex open.

  “Blake, for heaven’s sake,” she said. “You haven’t waited here all night?”

  His teeth flashed white in his dark face. “Dr. Margot,” he said sleepily. “You know I couldn’t let you find your way home alone in the dark.”

  “You should be home in your bed.”

  She settled herself on the backseat. There was a pillow cast aside in the front. He had been dozing here, no doubt, but right in front of the entrance so he wouldn’t miss her when she came out. As he fired the ignition and turned on the headlamps, she said, “This is nice, Blake. It’s been a difficult night. Thank you for waiting.”

  He turned in his seat to smile at her. “It’s an honor.”

  Despite the hour, Blake insisted on dropping her in front of the house before he drove around back to garage the car. Margot let herself in through the front door. She hung her coat on the mahogany rack, and trudged up the stairs, suddenly so weary she could hardly keep her head up. She would give herself four hours to sleep before going to the office. If she was a few minutes late, Thea could manage.

  She had just slipped inside her bedroom, and was trying to close the door without making any noise, when she heard a sound from the hall. She paused. It could be someone on the way to the bathroom, but her parents had their own bath, as did Dick and Ramona. She and Preston shared the front bath. Her bedroom was on the north side, where the old camellia towered over the portico of the porch. When it was in bloom in the spring, it almost completely blocked her view of the brick water tower of Volunteer Park, just opposite. Preston’s room faced west, toward downtown, offering a nice view of the Olympics in good weather.

  The sound came again. Someone, Margot thought, was weeping in the hallway. Curious, she let her door swing open a few inches.

  Leona—or perhaps Loena—had just passed on her way to the back stairs. Her white shirtwaist was untucked, hanging outside her black skirt. Her arms were wrapped around her slight form, as if she were cold. She wore no shoes, and was creeping along the hall on her bare tiptoes. She sniffled, and released one hand to swipe at her nose.

  Margot stepped out into the hall. “Loena,” she whispered, hoping she had the right name. The girl seemed not to hear. Margot hurried to catch up with her. She put a hand on the girl’s shoulder, and Loena—or Leona—whirled. When she saw Margot, she covered her mouth with both hands. Her pupils dilated, nearly covering the pale blue of her irises. Her skin was dead white behind her freckles, and her lips looked swollen, even bruised. Her hair, usually pinned up in a roll, fell in reddish hanks to her shoulders.

  Margot said sharply, “Are you ill? What’s wrong?” She reached for the girl’s wrist, and wrapped her hand around it to feel her pulse.

  The maid whimpered some protest, and tore her hand away. She turned, and broke into an uneven run toward the back stairs. Margot didn’t want to shout, with everyone sleeping. She called in an urgent undertone, “Wait! I’m not angry with you—but it’s late, and—” She started down the corridor, but the girl reached the end of it before Margot finished her sentence. The door to the back stairs opened and shut with a hasty click, and she was gone.

  Margot stopped where she was, staring at the closed door. She could hardly chase the girl up into the servants’ quarters. Still, she felt she should have done something more. Her tired brain was barely functioning. Something—but what could it have been? She might have held on to the silly thing, ordered her to stop, but that seemed awfully harsh.

  Uneasy, frowning, Margot went into her own bedroom and closed the door. Obviously, the maid had come from Preston’s room. Was that any of her business? The twins weren’t children. She supposed she would just have to let it pass.

  Margot stripped off her blouse and skirt, and threw them over a chair to deal with in the morning. She drew on her nightdress, and fell into bed with a sigh of pure exhaustion. A moment later she got up again to draw the curtain against the rising morning light. She lay back down, and pulled a pillow over her face.

  She couldn’t help worrying about the weeping girl, about Preston, about what Father would say if he knew Preston was seducing the maids. And about what Dr. Whitely would say about her. It took a long time for her to push all of it out of her mind. Eventually, she slept, but it was the hot, restless sort of sleep that comes at the wrong time of day, and she found herself awake again no more than an hour later.

  She thrust the covers off and got up. She could get by one day with no sleep, she reminded herself. She had done it often enough in her internship.

  She dashed water on her face in the bathroom, then pulled on a dressing gown and woolen socks to protect her feet from the cold floors. She crept downstairs, trying not to wake anyone who had the good fortune to be still sleeping. She would have a cup of coffee, then dress for the office. Sometimes, she had learned, if she behaved as if she had actually slept, she could convince herself she felt rested.

  She turned on the lights in the kitchen and had to squint against their reflection in Hattie’s gleaming appliances. The enamel and nickel of the gas range had been polished till they sparkled. The Colonial Electric Percolator was filled and ready on the tile counter. Margot plugged it in, and leaned her hip against the counter as she waited for it to brew. It made a cheerful noise, the water bubbling up through the central tube to sing against the glass top. The kitchen filled with the aroma of fresh coffee. Margot let her head drop back against a cupboard, and her eyes drooped despite her best intentions.

  “Dr. Margot?”

  Margot’s eyes flew open, a little guiltily. “Oh! Blake! What are you doing up?”

  His face crinkled into a dozen lines as he smiled at her. “Me?”

  She managed to laugh. “I know, I know. Both of us. I couldn’t sleep, though. I hope you didn’t get up on my account.”

  “No, no. These old bones don’t take much to lying in bed.” He crossed to a cabinet and took down two pottery mugs. He held them up to show her. “You’d like a big cup, I imagine?”

  She grinned at him. At Edith’s breakfast table, the coffee cups were tiny china things with gold rims that had to be refilled a half-dozen times before the meal was over. “Yes, indeed,” she said. “I do want a big cup. Maybe two.”

  The percolator ceased its tune, and Blake brought the cups to the counter. Margot poured for them both as Blake went to the icebox for a bottle of cream. They sat opposite each other, and sipp
ed in friendly silence for a few moments.

  “Is your back bothering you again?” Margot asked after a while.

  Blake shook his head. “I’m just old,” he said. “Don’t you worry about me.”

  “Blake, of course I worry about you. You should let me have a look.”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “You have your own patients.”

  She put one hand over the top of her coffee mug, enjoying the warm steam on her palm. “I remember when you hurt it, you know, Blake.”

  “Now, how could you remember that? You were only three.”

  Margot pushed her hair back from her face with both hands, and yawned. “Still. I do.”

  He propped his elbows on the white enamel tabletop. “That was a bad horse.”

  “Daddy should have sold it before that. Before he kicked you.”

  “Probably. But he didn’t know, and neither did I.” Blake took a long drink of coffee, and rose to refill his mug. “I like driving the Essex a whole lot more than I did that buggy.”

  Margot accepted a refill in her own cup, and smiled at Blake as he sat down again. “Some changes are good, then.”

  He lifted his gray eyebrows. “Lots of changes are good, Dr. Margot. Automobiles.” He nodded toward the percolator. “Electric coffeemakers.” And with a wink, “Lady doctors.”

  “Lady doctors aren’t so new, you know.”

  “New enough to this old man,” he said. “Especially the little lady I’ve known since she was born.”

  Impulsively, though she knew it made him uncomfortable, Margot reached across the table to cover his cold dark hand with her warm one. “What would I have done without you, Blake?”

  He gently slipped his hand from beneath hers. “Why, you had your mama and your daddy.”

  Her smile faded. “But it was you who saved me, Blake. Over and over.”

  He pursed his lips, and sipped his coffee without answering.

  In fact, she reflected, as she went upstairs to shower and dress, they never spoke of it. They never had. Not even when it was all going on, when she and Dick were fighting the battle every day, did any of them talk about it. Edith wouldn’t listen. Dickson was never at home. But Blake—steady, faithful Blake—was always there, a tall dark figure to intervene, to pick up the fallen, to repair the broken.

  She might have survived in any case, Margot thought. But it had been bad. She might not have.

  CHAPTER 3

  Preston came into the Beaux Arts building of the Seattle Carnegie Library from the paved courtyard on Fifth Avenue. He had never been a library patron in his youth, but he supposed, as a new employee of the Daily Times, he could be expected to spend time there. He strolled past the bindery and the mendery, on into the vaulted lobby. A skylight far above his head shed winter sunlight on the marble floor. Steel and chrome and stone glittered with it, dazzling his eyes, matching his mood.

  He would start at the Times on Monday. He would be a surprise to the managing editor, of course, but the man could hardly object to someone hired by C. B. Blethen himself. It had been easy. The Benedict name wielded a lot of influence. And with the stone caressing his chest, the talisman that had so changed his life, Preston had felt relaxed and confident. He had never spoken so persuasively, he thought, or exerted his charm more effectively. Securing a position had required almost no effort.

  He spied a woman with an old-fashioned, high-piled hairstyle and pince-nez hanging from a cord around her neck. He had no doubt she was a librarian, indeed almost a caricature of one. He asked her for the classics, and she led him to a cavernous space where long tables stretched between the stacks. “Can I help you find something?” she asked in disinterested fashion.

  “I don’t want to trouble you,” he said. He flashed her his best smile, but she only nodded, and started to turn away.

  Her remote demeanor challenged him. He touched the sapphire beneath his shirtfront, and leaned a little forward, to make her look into his face. “If you could,” he said, affecting a diffident air, “just point me toward Near Eastern history.”

  This caught her attention. She pinched the pince-nez and placed them on her nose before she turned, with a brush of long skirts against a pair of high-buttoned boots, and led the way to a bookcase with deep shelves. Thick tomes leaned this way and that, looking as if they had not been disturbed for years. “These,” the librarian said, in a voice now vibrating slightly with interest, “have been here since the building was dedicated.” She peered at Preston through the pince-nez. “Mr. Carnegie himself sent them after our old building—you’ll remember, of course, the Yesler mansion—burned down.”

  “Ah,” Preston said in noncommittal fashion. He had been six at the time.

  “A wonderful gift. The bequest was the grand thing, but these books are priceless.”

  “Ah,” he said again.

  “Something in particular?” She looked at him more closely, and a light of understanding came into her eyes. Her voice warmed a little. “Were you over there, sir?”

  He dropped his gaze, implying the experience was too painful to talk about. “I was.”

  “I see. Piqued your curiosity about its history, no doubt.”

  “A bit. Thanks.” Preston could see she was more interested in books than people. He released his hold on the stone. Why waste his energies on this dried-up old maid? There were more tasty tidbits, and very near at hand. Under his nose, as it were.

  The librarian hesitated, her curiosity engaged now. “You’re sure I can’t—”

  A rush of impatience sharpened his tongue. “Excuse me,” he said, and liked the pink of embarrassment that touched her sallow cheeks. She removed her pince-nez, glanced around the room as if looking for someone to scold, then tripped away, her archaic boots tapping angrily on the bare oak floor.

  Preston soon remembered why he had so rarely frequented libraries. There were so many books, all seeming to say the same thing in the same way, drowning the reader in torrents of words, making him wade through dull pages and obfuscating chapters in search of what he wanted. Only his real interest in learning about the woman who had first owned his talisman kept him working.

  He flipped pages, tossed books aside, picked up others to scan them and then reject them. Obviously, most historians were more interested in Suleiman than in his bride. In some sources, the remarkable woman who had bent a sultan to her will merited no more than a paragraph. In others, the writers dismissed her as little more than a romantic fable. In his irritation, Preston ripped a page, then glanced over his shoulder. That ice witch of a librarian could probably hear a torn page from three rooms away.

  He tried more of the histories, but each was more tedious than the last. They utterly misunderstood the glory of Roxelana’s power. Their ponderous voices drowned her drama in floods of facts and citations only the most dedicated academic could care about.

  He found one letter, in a volume of a compilation immodestly called The World’s Story, that purported to be an eyewitness account, written by someone who claimed to have met the sultana. Preston didn’t believe a word of it. The writer described her as “stout,” but that was preposterous. The Roxelana he saw in his dreams, the enchanting creature known as Khourrem Sultan, the Laughing One, had won a crown with only her wits and beauty. She could not have been stout. It was not possible. He wished he could punish the writer for daring to say such a thing—but of course, the offender was long dead and gone.

  So was Roxelana, for that matter, but she had left her secret behind.

  Preston shoved the book away. He propped his chin on his fist, and closed his eyes to see her in his mind, to savor the image he had held of her since he first heard her story in his dusty billet in Jerusalem. She had been lean, he was sure, with slanting dark eyes and a slender bosom. Her fingers were long, the nails filed to curving points. Her hair would have been her glory, dark and Slavic, curling around a pronounced jaw, a sign of her strength.

  He opened his eyes, and leaned back in th
e hard wooden chair. Why could these fools, these pretenders to wisdom, not see what he did? Roxelana, the slave bride of Suleiman the Magnificent, had been a diamond of a woman, hard and brilliant and many-faceted.

  He left the pile of books where they were, and walked out of the classics room, through the foyer, now gloomy with sudden rain, to the double glass doors. He adjusted his fedora to a jaunty angle as he trotted down the grand staircase to Fourth Avenue. He was about to become a man of letters. If he cared to, he could write her story properly, with all its intrigue and excitement.

  He wouldn’t do it, though. Her secret was his. It had come into his possession when he—let us say, acquired—the sapphire. As he turned west on Madison to wander toward the water, he wished he could bury his face in that thick black hair, trail his fingertips across her lean shoulders. Roxelana had been a woman worthy of him. Probably the only woman worthy of him. She could have matched his determination, his clarity of purpose—and his ruthlessness. The world demanded ruthlessness. How else could a man—or a woman—achieve his or her rightful place?

  Preston found himself in the Public Market, his swift steps ringing hollowly on the wooden walkway. He smiled at a Chinese vendor hawking some sort of silk slippers, and grinned at the fish vendors in the high stalls, who offered shining silver salmon and baskets of oysters dripping salt water. He bought a paper from a newsboy, and tucked it under his arm. He walked past the day stalls to climb the narrow stair to the café. He took one of the metal tables in the window and ordered coffee.

  With a mug of coffee in his hand, he opened the paper, but he didn’t read it. His eye was caught by the gleam of rain-blurred light on gray water, the slant of a fishing boat’s sails silhouetted against the cloudbank. Everything in Seattle was cool, with muted colors and soft sounds. Jerusalem had been very different. And Jerusalem had changed everything.