The Winter Thief

47

Kamil, accompanied by Feride, carried Elif’s limp body into the infirmary and laid her on a bed. Her hair, face, and hands were crusted with dried blood and her clothes stiff with it. There were no other patients in the room, and Kamil told the hospital director to lock the door. Feride held Elif’s hand.

“Elif is a woman,” Kamil explained to the director. “I want no one but you to see to her.”

The director didn’t seem surprised. “I thought he seemed rather odd, not a boy, not a man. I wondered for a moment if he had been castrated. No matter. Let’s tend to her.”

He called for hot water, bandages, salve, and a tisane to be made from some herbs from his garden. While Kamil waited by the door for the supplies, the director pulled over a mangal to heat the area by the bed. When the hot water arrived, Feride washed Elif’s face and hands, which were covered with cuts. The deep ones began to bleed again. The director smoothed on a salve, then wrapped Elif’s hands in bandages. He examined her face, but when the blood and filth had been washed off, it appeared as pale and unmarred and distant as the moon.

Gently, Feride peeled off Elif’s shirt and trousers, exposing her fragile, birdlike chest, her small, pointed breasts, and hips slender as a boy’s. On the inside of her thighs, Feride saw two ragged scars in the shape of carnations, as if the skin had been scraped or burned away and had regrown pale and puckered. She wondered what could have caused them. There were no recent wounds that she could see, so she tucked a quilt around her.

Kamil sat beside Elif’s unmoving body and found that his mind had gone entirely blank. He had been too busy with work to protect the two people he loved most in the world. Now that it was too late, he understood that none of his work counted for even a kurush against their lives.

“Why isn’t she awake?” Feride asked the director.

“I don’t know,” the surgeon admitted. “Did she fall or bump her head?”

“She walked here with me, but she hasn’t spoken in some time-since we were in the vineyards. It’s as if her body was there but she wasn’t in it.”

“What happened in the vineyards?” Kamil asked. “Why was she so covered in blood?”

Feride told them of the attack and what she thought she had seen in the vineyard.

“She couldn’t have killed three men by herself,” Kamil said, his speech slow and thick.

“Maybe I just saw her standing over the bodies,” Feride admitted. “I’m not sure now. It was dark and I was frightened.”

“I’ve seen the bodies,” the director said. “The police brought them here. A woman of her size would have been no match for them. Likely they were killed by your men and Elif Hanoum witnessed it.”

“Nissim was the Camondo family’s boatman. Someone should let them know,” Feride suggested, her voice flat.

“I’ll take care of that, chère hanoum.” The director gently raised one of Elif’s eyelids to examine her pupil. He slapped her lightly on the cheek, but there was no response. “It’s shock. I’ve seen it happen to men after battle.”

“How long does it last?”

“Sometimes they wake up and it’s over. Sometimes it’s a lifetime.”

Kamil bowed his head until it rested on the quilt beside Elif’s matted hair.