A Court at Constantinople by Anthony Earth

Author:Anthony Earth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: court room fiction, historical fiction Constantinople, historical fiction Victorian, strong female novel, law and justice novel, historical fiction British, love law power fiction
Publisher: Eorthe Books, LLC
Published: 2023-03-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

Stone Turbans

She should leave. Lingering served no purpose. She lived close by—proximity that made this place so advantageous. Still, she hesitated and looked about. Her eyes fell upon what, in nervously executing her task, she had not taken in—the cypress trees populating the cemetery.

She entered the shade of a fine specimen, retrieved a handkerchief, and—in a manner as ladylike as she could manage—swabbed an unladylike amount of perspiration from her forehead. The cool of the shade enabled some physical and mental easing, but she did not want the frisson of the deed to dissipate entirely. “When are you going to start living?” Maggie had incessantly asked her. Well, perhaps today.

In the cypress shadow, Rosamund thought about Maggie. As girls, they had been inseparable. As young women, they had drifted apart. Maggie had navigated society’s expectations of a marriageable virgin without hesitation or illusions, never playing the victim of patriarchal conspiracy. Once old enough to marry, Maggie patrolled the soirées of Constantinople like a privateer empowered with a letter of marque from Her Majesty to chase down bachelors and sink, burn, or take a prize. Maggie mocked the priggish advice in the marriage guidebook maternally placed in her bedroom. Margaret Elizabeth Hancock had a sense of herself, possessed, in her own words, of “a woman’s desires and a lady’s common sense.” She wanted “a man in my bed, a husband in my house, and children in my life.” Maggie was nearly there—several months wed to a strapping Royal Navy lieutenant and already with child.

She, in contrast, had refused to conform. Maggie grew exasperated and angry with her “holier-than-thou disdain” for society and how women lived. She demanded answers to questions that Maggie and others did not want to ask, let alone answer. Why, with transformation everywhere—sail giving way to steam, post to telegraph, local bazaars to free trade, landed gentry to professional men, dogma to science, uncivilised to civilised—did one thing remain unchanged and seemingly immutable? Why was a woman without a husband, family, or money made a wretched thing? But the longer her questions were ignored, the louder Maggie’s admonition became: “A woman can live and love without answers.”

She looked across the cemetery at various headstones topped with stone turbans. She left the shade, walked a few yards, and paused before a turban so finely chiselled that it seemed composed of swathes of silk. She traced a finger along its surface.

She stopped and withdrew her hand. The feel of the stone brought back a childhood memory—a picnic with Maggie and her parents somewhere near the Black Sea. While Mrs. Hancock prepared the meal, she and Maggie, followed by Mr. Hancock, had explored the environs. Over a ridge, they stumbled upon a graveyard. Almost to a headstone, the stone turbans had been bludgeoned off. Decapitated turbans lay scattered here and shattered there.

She and Maggie knelt to touch a lichen-covered, partially buried turban. Maggie asked, “Father, what happened?”

Mr. Hancock replied, “Hatred that would not let the dead rest in peace.”

In that childhood moment, Rosamund did not understand.

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