Chapter 4
Along with the rest of the ship’s passengers, Saffron and Alexander stood at the rails on deck to watch the approach into the city of Smyrna. Saffron shaded her eyes against the sun, so hot and bright it overwhelmed the shelter of her hat’s brim, and so weary were her eyes.
Three hours of Martin Neill feverishly coaching her on the rules and strategy of poker had not been enough to teach her all she needed to know to beat anyone, let alone Clark with half the crew looking on eagerly.
She’d played for nearly three hours and lost so much money that whenever she thought of her IOU in Clark’s pocket, her stomach went sour.
It had been dreadful, but she had stood up to Clark, and that made it worth it.
The shadows on the horizon steadily resolved into shapes, and then shapes into buildings.
The glaring sun carved the shoreline into sharp relief.
She had familiarized herself with the story of the Smyrna Catastrophe that decimated the city two years previous, but she hadn’t been prepared for the reality of the destruction.
It drove from her mind any lingering ghosts from the previous night.
The city must have looked idyllic before the fire.
Sweeping arcs of dusty green-and-gold mountains served as a backdrop for a brilliant blue bay lapping against a seafront street.
Skeletal remains lined the coast, strangely solemn in the bright sun.
Two years of rain might have washed away much of the soot and smoke, but heaps of rubble and broken buildings remained.
In places great piles had been assembled, in others the buildings remained as they must have fallen.
All but a few seemed significantly damaged if not destroyed.
Next to her, Alexander’s mouth was set in a grim line and his eyes were soft, almost wistful.
“I didn’t realize …” She trailed away.
“Me neither.”
She drew closer, so their shoulders pressed together.
“Was … was any of your family here?” She knew it was a foolish question; surely if any of his family been present when the fires ravaged the city in 1922 or when Greeks were exiled from Turkey in the aftermath of the Turkish-Greek conflict, he would have said so before.
“No,” he said, eyes on the line of destroyed buildings.
“None of my family were here. My uncles were outraged when it happened, of course. You know they weren’t fans of Venizelos, and it was his government that decided to claim this bit of the Ottoman Empire for Greece.
The war and the exodus of Greeks from Turkey wasn’t popular, even though Greece exiled their Turks in return.
But I needn’t have had family involved in the conflict to be upset by such violence and destruction. ”
Saffron turned back to the approaching shoreline, eyes catching on shells of buildings. “To have the city burn so soon after two wars … I can’t imagine what it must have been like for the people here.”
“I suppose that’s why we are here,” he said.
“Smyrna was once a great port city. Hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of goods passed through this place every year. The government is keen to bring the city back to life with business and tourism. We were invited, in part, to demonstrate that Turkey is a stable place, suitable for foreigners to travel to and work within.”
Something about the way he said it, so carefully neutral despite the privacy of their conversation, signaled to her that Alexander was worried this would not be the case. The wreckage seemed less sad and much more ominous.
She shook away her feeling of unease. She was on an expedition. She would be exploring ruins and taking samples from vessels not opened since antiquity. And best of all, she was here with her fiancé. The trip would be a success. She was determined to make it so.
Disembarkation and customs took up a good part of the afternoon, even with a bevy of men from the Turkish government assisting their party, and Saffron was starving by the time they were invited into a small cavalcade of motorcars.
She was pressed into the side of one of the topless cars next to Alexander, who was squashed next to Banks and one of the assistants.
Saffron was keen to get her first glimpses of the streets of Smyrna and found the area immediately surrounding the quay was really quite European.
Pale, angular buildings with trim and wrought iron fences lined the street.
The pedestrians were almost entirely dressed in the style of Europe, too, with only a few men and women in billowing garments.
She might have been driving through a slightly out-of-the-way town in France or England.
How silly to have expected something so very different!
It would have been easy to blame Elizabeth and her insistence on romantic visions of jasmine-perfumed gardens populated by women in gauzy veils, but it was Saffron who’d allowed herself to expect stepping off the ship would mean stepping into an exotic world entirely different from her own.
The motorcar’s driver, a round fellow with a jaunty red cap—some expectations were fulfilled, after all—gestured to the right, and Saffron followed his pointing finger to a short tower just next to the street.
The bone-white stone was tessellated with intricate patterns that were unmistakably Eastern in their design.
It was topped with a copper dome, and Saffron only realized it was a clock tower when she glimpsed the small white face as they sped past.
The hotel they were to stay was in the Bornova district, to the northeast of the city proper. After a few minutes of driving, Saffron realized they were going in quite the wrong direction. The driver took them to the south through narrow, crooked streets.
Saffron was saved from being thrown forward into the driver’s seat by Alexander’s arm, thrown out across her chest; only her head snapped forward as the driver slammed on the brakes.
He gestured to the left and spoke animatedly. Though she understood not a word, Saffron could see what he was so keen to show.
A field lay to the left, bordered by scruffy red-topped buildings and hemmed in by a fence built of fresh timber. A trio of white pyramids just visible over the fence indicated tents had been erected within.
“This is the agora,” Banks said excitedly. Saffron glanced over her shoulder to see her three companions were peering around each other to get a look at the field. Alexander caught her eye and grinned.
She turned back to get a better look, but the driver zipped away, throwing her head back once again.
There were more rough stops and starts, not unlike when London traffic was at its worst and Saffron had found herself passenger to an impatient driver.
At times, buildings and people flashed by, nothing more than fleeting impressions.
At others, she found herself staring at a scene while the street was occupied by a slow-moving cart, giving her the chance to absorb the facades of dull white buildings with colorful awnings and clotheslines stretched over the heads of people milling about at a neighborhood market, picking out produce from merchants’ neat stacks.
The cramped city streets gradually broadened as they pressed further and further away from what Saffron presumed was the city center.
They zipped past a long stone building with dozens of windows and a peaked red roof, which Banks translated from their driver’s shouts was a train station, and then they were passing by what Saffron knew to be a mosque, an elegant building with a domed top and a delicate tower next to it.
She had to quash her frustration at not getting a more thorough look at the building before they’d passed by it.
She would be in the city for six whole weeks, she reminded herself.
She would get the chance to see that mosque and any other fascinating site.
Soon they wound their way up a hillock rippling with short golden grass. At the top stood a massive house, and they pulled to a stop in front of it alongside the rest of the party’s vehicles.
The sheer size of the building relative to the others they’d driven past was shocking.
It was only slightly smaller than Ellington Manor, her grandfather’s estate where she’d grown up.
The house itself was rusty red, brightened by a lacy white pediment shading the elaborate doorway.
Spires of lavender gamboling in the shadows of deep green cypress trees promised a garden on one side of the house.
“Welcome!” called a portly man who came striding out of the hotel. He raised both hands, a huge smile on his round, mustachioed face. “Welcome to Turkey, and welcome to the Bornova Hotel. I am the proprietor and your humble servant, Namik Koray. Please, come inside and take some refreshment.”
Aromatic tea served in small glasses alongside tiny sweets awaited them in a large parlor. Saffron perched on a divan alongside Alexander and sampled a walnut covered in a tacky sweetness that perfectly complemented the strong black tea.
When the enjoyment of the refreshments had dampened conversation, Mr. Koray stepped to the center of the room, where he looked from one side of the parlor to the other.
The space was painted light green, and the sun from the numerous windows reflected off it to make everyone’s face a slightly sickly hue.
The furniture was a little older, again like something she might find in the lesser-used rooms of Ellington Manor.
“Dear friends,” Mr. Koray began with a smile that lifted the curled ends of his waxed mustache, “I am very pleased to welcome you again. You are among our first guests to stay in this magnificent home in its new purpose of hotel. The Bornova Hotel was once called Barudi House. It is a home of much history and importance in our community.”
“That’s one way to describe it,” muttered Banks from his seat in the chair next to her.