Free The Aviary Gate by Katie Hickman

again.’
    She could sense Eve trying to gauge the temperature from the other end of the telephone. But when she spoke, the relief in her voice was palpable.
    â€˜You’ve dumped him? Oh, well done. Well
done
, Lizzie.’ And then: ‘For good this time?’
    â€˜Oh yes, this time for good.’
    â€˜So, where are you anyway? Your hotel, I mean. I presume you are staying in a hotel?’
    â€˜Well actually …’ Elizabeth looked round her. The truth was that she had no idea what the hotel was called. A taxi had brought her here late last night. There was a bed; it was clean. She had been beyond asking questions. ‘I’m in room 312.’ The number was on the base of an old-fashioned Bakelite telephone by her bed. ‘And here’s the number.’ She read it out.
    Eve seemed satisfied. ‘How long are you going to stay?’
    â€˜Not sure.’ Elizabeth shrugged. ‘As long as it takes.’
    â€˜To delete Marius?’
    â€˜Yes.’ Elizabeth laughed. ‘But I’m going to do some work too. When I told my supervisor about the fragment she suggested I apply to look in the archives here, so I thought I might as well get on with it.’ Anything not to be in Oxford, not to be tempted into forgiveness. ‘Dr Alis agrees with me that the other half of Celia Lamprey’s narrative must be somewhere, and I’ve a hunch it might be here. Do you remember Berin Metin?’
    â€˜From the exchange programme?’
    â€˜Yes. Well, I called her after … yesterday afternoon, and she’s said she can fix me with a reader’s ticket at the Bosphorous University here. They have an English library, so I can get onwith my research while I wait for permission to come through to look in the archives.’
    After she had put down the phone to Eve, Elizabeth lay back down on the bed. It was still early: seven o’clock in the morning Istanbul time, only five o’clock English time, she realised. Poor Eve.
    Her room was large, but very plain. Twin beds with wrought iron bedsteads. An old-fashioned wardrobe. In the window there was a recessed area, like a little alcove, in which stood a plain deal table and chair. The floorboards, which listed slightly towards the front of the room, had been stained dark brown and were unadorned by rugs or kelims, even of the cheapest cotton kind. There was nothing whatever in the room to suggest that she was in Istanbul, or anywhere else for that matter.
    Cautiously Elizabeth put her hand up to the wall. She shut her eyes and ran her fingers lightly along the plasterwork. But nothing. The place had the chaste, unadorned air of a convent dormitory. Or a ship.
    Tomorrow I’ll move, she thought to herself.
    Elizabeth lay down on the bed again. From her shoulder bag she took out the notes she had made in the Oriental Reading Room:
    â€¦ his daughter, for all that the nuns entreated her nay, swiftly unbarred the Cabbin doore and ran out from her hiding place and cried out stop stop take me but spare my poor father I beseech you, and seeing that her father had six or seven bleeding wounds upon him she fell down on her knees, her face white as death, and did entreate the Turkes again that they would take her but save his life. Whereupon the Captayn of the Turkes did straight away pinyon her, and in the heat of bloud in front of her verie eyes did runne her father in the side with a Culaxee, and bore him up against the Steerage doore, cutting him cleane through his body—
    Celia. Poor Celia.
    Still holding the paper to her breast, Elizabeth fell into a dreamless sleep.

Chapter 7
Constantinople: 1 September 1599
Morning
    Ayshe, the Valide’s handmaid, found Kaya beside the fountain in the Courtyard of the Favourites.
    â€˜She wants to see you.’
    In the House of Felicity, no one, not even the newest recruits, needed to be told who ‘she’ was.
    â€˜Now?’
    â€˜Yes, come with me. Quickly