Lost Love Found (40 page)

“My son, is that wise? Your brother, Devlet, the faithful Orda, Konchak, and I are the only ones who know you are alive. We have kept you safe for twenty-three years. Do not, I beg you, take any chances. Do not let that devil I spawned have the final victory! Think of our people! Devlet is capable enough to lead them in battle, but he does not have your administrative abilities. To all the world, Devlet Khan is a great ruler, but without your secret counsel he would be nothing, for it is you who are the true Great Khan.”

“There is no danger, Mother. The girl will leave in a day or two. I wish to know how the years have treated my precious jewel, and only she can tell me that. Humor me, Mother. There is no risk involved. Marjallah’s daughter would not betray me. It is so little I ask. To have word of my Marjallah after all these years.”

Suddenly the felt door was pushed aside and a Tatar of indeterminate years ran inside. “Temur Khan is within the camp, Borte Khatun! He has heard of the foreign girl.
He has heard that she is Javid Khan’s daughter!
Hurry! The girl is in danger!”

Borte Khatun paled, staggering just slightly. “Allah! Allah! Will it never end? Will his hate never be sated?”

“Not until he is dead, Mother,” was the quiet reply. “He has always been driven by a thousand devils, and none could help him. Go! Help Marjallah’s daughter!”

It had happened so suddenly that Valentina was not certain how it happened. She was exploring the camp, a place filled with friendly, smiling people who spoke to her rapidly. She could just barely understand what they said. They were curious about her and about England, interested in the country that produced such brave Tatarlike women. Were all Englishwomen so brave? Suddenly, without warning, thundering hoofbeats heralded the arrival of a large pack of horsemen. The women in the encampment shooed their children indoors, and everyone disappeared into their yurts. All of the men, save the very elderly, had gone off with the Great Khan, for it was unthinkable that anyone would attack his camp.

Finding herself suddenly alone, Valentina realized that she, too, should seek shelter. But it was too late.

She was surrounded by horsemen. A more scraggly, filthy bunch could hardly be imagined. Their tough little steppe ponies seemed to be no more than muscle and sinew, and she was frankly amazed that they could support the weight of their riders. The men wore baggy pants, shirts, and vests of an indeterminate color. All wore square fur hats, and all were mustachioed.

One of the men kicked his felt-booted heel into his pony’s side and moved directly in front of Valentina. He was no taller than she was and lean to the point of emaciation. His mustache was dark and graying and hung in two long, narrow strands. His narrow, slanted eyes were the most alive thing about him, for they blazed black and were filled with hate. He looked down at her from his mount’s back.

“You are the daughter of Javid Khan,” he said without preamble.

“I am not the daughter of Javid Khan, to my regret,” she replied.

“I am your uncle, Temur Khan, and you lie, you half-breed bitch!”

“I am Valentina St. Michael, Lady Barrows, an Englishwoman,” she told him. “It is not my habit to lie, Temur Khan. Now tell your men to get out of my way and allow me to pass!” A sudden trickle of perspiration slid down her back and her heart began to hammer wildly. She was amazed that she hadn’t soiled herself in her fright, that she could still stand, for her legs felt like jelly. Her bearing however, gave none of her fright.

Temur Khan glared fiercely. “I am going to kill you, bitch,” he announced coldly.

“Why would you kill me?” she demanded. “What have I done to you? Why would you murder a complete stranger?” In another minute she was going to collapse, Valentina felt certain of it, but she stood tall and proud. If she was to die, then it would be as a brave Englishwoman.

“You are the daughter of Javid Khan, and I can allow nothing of my brother to remain on this earth. I believed that I had wiped his memory from the world years ago! Nothing of Javid Khan may remain alive, for then he remains living, and I will not permit him immortality! Your father—may his soul be damned—took everything from me. He stole my birthright, my place in my parents’ hearts as their beloved eldest son! My position as the Great Khan of the Geray Tatars!”

“
I am not the daughter of Javid Khan!
” Valentina shouted at him.

“And I say you are!” he countered, and with that Temur Khan reached down and clamped a strong arm around Valentina’s waist, pulling her up and throwing her facedown across the front of his saddle. “I will destroy you, my beautiful niece, but first I will enjoy you. And when I have had my incestuous fill of your body, my men will have their pleasure of you.”

“
No!
” Borte Khatun approached the ring of horsemen and they let her through. “Put the woman down. She speaks the truth. I have personally examined her for the birthmark, and she does not bear it. Your informant did not wait long enough to learn the
whole
truth.”

“Of course you would protect the child of Javid Khan, would you not, my mother?” Temur Khan spoke scornfully, bitterly. “What a pity you did not protect
my
children as well. Do their innocent little ghosts not haunt you at all?”

“Oh, you have not changed, have you?” she said fiercely. “You were never, even as a child, able to accept responsibility for your own actions. It was always someone else’s fault, wasn’t it? Your children are dead these many years because of your actions, not because of anyone else’s.”

“
No!
” He howled the word as if in pain.

“Yes!” countered his mother angrily. “You have never listened to the truth, for you are a coward! Stand and hear me now, if you dare! Neither your father nor I ever showed any preference between you and your twin. We saw the devils that tormented you from your birth and, if anything, we made allowances for your cruel and rash behavior. All of us did! Javid, your younger brothers and sisters,
all of us
! When you so wantonly destroyed Javid’s home and family, your father wanted to take revenge on your family, but Javid prevented it.”

“Because he was weak,” sneered Temur Khan.

“Because he had compassion,” Borte Khatun shouted at her son. “Because he did not believe your family should suffer the consequences of your brutal actions! He left the Crimea hoping it would ease your torment, but you could not be satisfied. You sought him out and destroyed once again! I will never forgive you for that!

“The young woman you have flung across your saddle is not your brother’s daughter. But she is a friend of the sultan’s mother. She is a widow. She came to Kaffa on her family’s ship in the company of her cousins in an effort to assuage the grief of her mourning. The Valide Safiye entrusted her with a message for me, and that is why she sought me out.”

“Yet,” replied Temur Khan, “she was overheard to say that she believed herself to be a daughter of Javid Khan. Why would she say such a thing, my mother, if it were not so?”

“Her mother was your brother’s wife in Istanbul. The woman’s name was Marjallah. She was in the city the morning you attacked your brother’s palace. Afterward, she returned home to England. Because she bore her English husband a child within a year of her return to her homeland, the woman Marjallah was uncertain as to that child’s paternity. That is why this young woman came to me, but I have most carefully examined her for the birthmark of my family and she does not bear it. She cannot be Javid Khan’s daughter. You know that. Each of your own daughters bore the birthmark, as do all my female descendants, yet none of your father’s children by his other wives bore that birthmark. Without it, there is no possibility of her being my grandchild. Release her at once!”

“No, I will take her to my own encampment and examine her myself. I believe that you lie, my mother, in order to protect the half-breed bitch! I have heard of her journey from Kaffa with the Ottoman governor’s soldiers. No foreign woman would be capable of such a feat unless she had Tatar blood in her veins. Such an exploit exhibits the daring of a Tatar woman!”

“She is an Englishwoman!” Borte Khatun said, and there was now a desperate note in her voice.

He heard it and smiled cruelly, enjoying his triumph.

Borte Khatun saw the pleasure in her eldest son’s eyes and she steeled herself once again against hurt. How could this creature hate her so? “Release the woman. We will take her to my yurt where you may examine her for the mark yourself,” she urged him.

“No,” he said emphatically. “But perhaps I will return her to you after I have taken her to my camp and sought the mark you claim is not upon her skin. Tell Devlet not to approach my encampment unless he first sends a messenger to request my permission. Otherwise I will kill the woman without another thought, even if she is not Javid’s daughter. Do you understand me, my mother?”

Borte Khatun nodded. Turning away, she passed through the circle of horsemen and, shoulders straight, walked back to her own dwelling. She never once looked back.

Valentina, lying stunned and frightened across Temur Khan’s saddle, the blood rushing to her head, began to lose consciousness. She struggled to rise. A brutal hand shoved her back down.

“Lie still, bitch. Save your strength! I’ll want you fierce and defiant later on when you pleasure me. I don’t like a woman who just lies there like a docile animal, but you won’t, will you?” He chuckled. “You’ll be full of fight till the very end, I can see that!” He kicked his pony into a gallop, and Valentina lost her battle, her body relaxing completely as she fainted.

Temur Khan laughed to himself. “Niece or no, I mean to have you, bitch,” he growled. “What sons I could get on a strong woman like you! Without sons, my existence will be as meaningless as my brother’s was. There will be nothing of me left behind, no sons to make me immortal.”

Temur Khan’s encampment, which consisted of ten yurts, was only five miles from the camp of the Great Khan. He lived on the steppes the year round, scorning the civilized, city life that the other Geray Tatars embraced for half the year.

He defied his immediate family and clan by deliberately camping near them in the warm months. The Great Khan, on the advice of his mother, ignored him. The outcast found being ignored far more irritating than warfare would have been.

On rare occasions, Temur Khan raided an outlying camp belonging to his clan, but swift retaliation from Devlet Khan kept his misbehavior toward his own people at a minimum. He usually concentrated on less troublesome victims, ones with little ability to retaliate.

Only his deep and abiding hatred of Javid Khan, his twin brother, had brought Temur Khan to the camp of the Great Khan today. Javid, dead these many years … yet now possibly alive in a daughter. Temur Khan’s informant in the Great Khan’s camp was a misshapen, ugly girl whose squinting left eye was generally considered an evil eye. Consequently, no one would have anything to do with the creature, and she remained in her father’s yurt, little more than a servant to her aging and querulous grandparents, who had been cousins of Temur Khan’s father. Temur Khan had caught her alone on the steppes one day two years ago, and it had amused him to rape her with particular violence. Having taken the maidenhead of her vagina, he forced the girl onto her hands and knees and sodomized her sadistically, but, to his amazement, her screams were cries of joy instead of the pain he had meant to inflict. Afterward, she clung to his legs and begged to be his slave. Her name was Oelun.

Temur Khan had never met a woman like Oelun. At first she frightened him, for her capacity for depravity seemed as great as his. Then he had realized that it was just her loneliness that made her seem to enjoy the pain he inflicted. In reality, Oelun only desired to please him so that he would fuck her again. He realized the treasure he had in her: she would be his eyes and ears within the camp of the Great Khan.

He supplied Oelun with two pigeons that, when released, returned to him with the message she had scrawled in a cramped hand and stuffed into a message capsule on the bird’s leg. He was amazed that the creature could write. She had, it seemed, taught herself one winter in Kaffa, out of boredom. In return for her spying, he met her occasionally and used her eager cunt to relieve himself. Sometimes it amused him to give Oelun to other men and watch. She complied, for she loved him, and desired nothing more than to please him. He suspected that Oelun secretly believed he might one day make her his wife. He did not discourage her dream, for it kept her willing and obedient. One day, of course, he would have to kill her.

Reaching his camp, he dismounted and pulled his captive off the pony. Carrying her into his yurt, he commanded the woman within, “Bring water, Esugen! I want this bitch awake!”

The woman, her long hair lank, her face worn with years of hardship, shot him a bleak look but hurried to obey.

Valentina’s first realization of returning consciousness was the awareness that her head was no longer swimming. Still, she kept her eyes closed. She struggled to remember what had happened, and the dawning knowledge brought a groan. Her eyes flew open. She found herself staring directly into the face of Temur Khan. She shuddered. He was the most evil-looking man she had ever seen. From his shaven head hung a braid, and his long French nose was somehow at odds with his yellowed skin, high cheekbones, and fathomless, slanted dark eyes.

The narrow mouth stretched itself into a slash of a grin, showing sharp, ivory-colored teeth. “You’re very beautiful,” he said. “I am sorry you are not a virgin, but I will enjoy bending you to my will anyhow. By nightfall I will have you as cowed as any well-trained bitch, and by tomorrow’s dawn, I will have you begging for my cock!” He ground his mouth cruelly onto hers.

Not quite as helpless as he had anticipated, Valentina was able to turn away, and she bit his lower lip with all her might, relishing the taste of his blood in her mouth and his howl of pain. “Never!” she said, her voice no more than a fierce whisper.

Temur Khan’s eyes glittered with fury. Pinning Valentina down with his hard body, he slapped her viciously several times, causing her head to snap back and forth.