The Snake Stone

81

Amelie felt the crowd around her, dense and hostile, and the old man’s grip on her arm. He had been angry, but now he seemed only afraid. She bowed her head and tried to avoid the blows she could almost sense were about to rain down on her head.

She had no time to think that she had been a fool.

Someone touched her shoulder, and she wriggled forward, propelled by the weight of the crowd at her back and the old man’s insistent tugs. There was the gate, crammed with men; the sound of voices she couldn’t understand filled her ears. She lowered her head and saw blood on her bare foot. She didn’t remember cutting herself. She had left her shoes at the fountain.

They neared the gate. Whether the angry crowd behind her couldn’t make itself understood over the muezzin’s chant, or whether people were simply too astonished by the spectacle of the gatekeeper half dragging a foreign woman from the precincts of the mosque, the churning flow through the gate seemed to stop and for a moment there was a way through. The old man plunged in.

They surged through the gate; the men coming in met the following crowd like two waves, and for a moment each checked the force of the other. It was just enough time.

The gatekeeper dragged her forward.

A carriage was rattling down the slope from Topkapi Palace, pulled by two grays; the coachman stood on the box and someone was leaning from the window.

Amelie made a sudden wrench, and the gatekeeper’s hold on her arm was lost. Without a thought she flung herself toward the horses.

One of the horses flung back its head. The driver lunged on the reins.

Amelie closed her eyes and turned her head away.

From far away she heard a voice saying, in French: “ Vite, madame, vite! Jump in.”

Another hand was beneath her elbow, tugging her upward.

She half fell, half leaped through the carriage door.

“Quick, Hasan! Drive on!”

The jolt threw her back into a seat. She opened her eyes.

There was a man in front of her, kneeling up on the opposite seat and giving orders to the driver through the hatch.

He turned to her with a worried expression.

“I have no idea, madame, what brings you here, but I believe we have been of some service.”

He glanced through the window.

“We’ll beat them yet,” he said darkly. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Dr. Millingen, the sultan’s physician.”