The Sultan’S Woman: A Novella

By Melody M. Suppes

In Victorian England, on the last day of his long life, Richard Sutcliffe tells of his passionate affair with "The Sultan's Woman". When he traveled to a provincial village as a young painter on his first commission, he is fascinated by a beautiful woman who gallops a giant black horse in and out of the sea. Why do villagers call her "The Sultan's Woman" as if it were a curse? Curiosity, pity become a secret love affair that results in murder and obsession. "We had no peace. Only the brutal desire for more and more and more. And again, more

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493148936

Melody M. Suppes

Melody M. Suppes is a screenwriter, script doctor, and novelist who lives in Southern California. After attending the American Academy of Dramatic Art in New York City, she began her writing career as an advertising copywriter for various ad agencies. Film and television screenwriting followed her move to the Los Angeles area. THE SULTAN'S WOMAN is adapted from her original screenplay, and is Melody's first romance novel. Her debut as a novelist was the detective mystery, WOMAN, DIVIDED, starring LAPD Homicide Detective Herman ("Hermie") Grabfelder. Grabfelder will appear in the sequel, BANANA BUBBLEGUM.

Book preview

The Sultan’s Woman

Melody M. Suppes

Copyright © 2014 by Melody M. Suppes.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2013922039

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-4931-4892-9

                Softcover        978-1-4931-4891-2

                eBook             978-1-4931-4893-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 01/24/2014

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

541914

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter One

How long has Junior Trowbridge been looking at me like that? So concerned, so kind. With his russet whiskers and those berry-brown, sad eyes behind his spectacles, so like his father’s. Long, long ago.

What did you say, Junior Trowbridge?

I merely remarked how good it is to see you out and about, Sir. You’re looking very well today.

I knew your father, didn’t I?

Why, yes, Sir. He was the agent who sold all your paintings. At his gallery in Mayfair? In London? I own it now. Do you remember?

Are you still selling my paintings? Why does he look so startled at that question?

Well, no. That is… not for some time.

Ah, I’ve been here that long, then.

You have been very ill, Sir. Remember?

"I have been very old, Junior Trowbridge. And I remember everything."

Today, to my astonishment, I realized I’ve been alive for eighty-two Springs. It was these daffodils that reminded me. They shook their golden crowns in my hand as though trembling from the winds of a sudden Spring storm. But it wasn’t the wind. It was my hand trembling.

This trembling, waxy claw is the only hand I can use now. My left one. My right, which held my brushes so securely for so many years, how did it come to look like this curled, pale leaf resting on my lap? Its sense of touch has gone. How can this be? For this was the hand that felt the cool silk of her hair. The warm bloom of her skin. How can this hand go numb after feeling, remembering such splendor?

And then it occurs to me the numbness in my heart has finally crept down my arm and taken hold of that hand. Not unexpected. Not to me. Even now I feel the cold tide of that numbness flowing again, seeking the harbors of my other limbs.

A disturbance in the brain the physician said the day my brushes fell from my grasp and one eye saw night while the other knew it was still a bright winter’s afternoon. The night lifted after a time, but my hand remained an alien thing. Useless. And alone. I am my hand.

Is there anything I can do for you, Sir?

Ah, there’s that look again, so dear, so kind. I miss your father. He was the one who told me my work was ‘not quite wonderful’. When was that?

Father’s been dead these ten years, Sir. Don’t you remember?

Yes. That’s right. The daffodils are here. They remind me…

Of what?

Did your father ever tell you?

Tell me what, in particular?

"About her?"

‘Her’?

No, he didn’t. If he had, a sudden light would come into your eyes. "No, he wouldn’t, would he? Loyal and kind to the end, your father. I am ending, too, Junior Trowbridge."

Yes, I am ending at last. The Greenmore Sanitarium will give up another ghost. Look at them all, out there on the lawns. All the ancient bones, bleaching in the sunlight. Sagging in their chairs, wrapped in colorful robes—shrouds in rainbow stripes—being fussed over by the pale-lipped Sisters in their blue-wings-capes.

The Sisters are kind, of course, they brought me paints in the old days. The last time—last year? And they didn’t turn a hair when I painted the nude on the walls of my room, just before I was struck down by that disturbance in the brain.

Did I somehow know the disturbance was nigh? Is that why I was so desperate to see her body once more—to outline every curve, every line, every plane with my hand once more, as I did so long ago—that I painted her nude for the first time? And the last.

She shocked the Sisters. They thought she was the idealized fantasy of an old man’s delusions. ‘Richard Sutcliffe is—was—a famous painter, my dears, well known for his flights of fancy. Remember how he painted the prostitutes strolling Hyde Park? Made them look like fallen angels. Didn’t that cause a dither before it fetched an outlandish price! Well, now he’s up to painting nudes on his walls in the old gentlemen’s convalescent hospital, and frankly I never put it past him. That old stoat had the look in his eye from the day he arrived. Nice old chap, really, but balmy. Like all artists, my dears.’

With their pale lips and bloodless limbs, how could they know? She was not of my fancy. Look at her, on that wall, Her eyes were indeed like that—purple, the purple of kings. Her hair, also, black as midnight. And I knew that body, Sisters. Knew it! See how a dream looks when made real? You will never have such dreams, Sisters. If a hot oaf ever attempted to get past your starched blouses when his blood was up, he’d find you all too dismally dreamless.

I wish I could show you.

Show me what, Sir?

It really is Junior Trowbridge standing there. How long has he been—? Oh, yes. Of course. This must be the day. Yes, I can feel it. That numbness creeping into my limbs. It’s had my heart for so long, today it will finish off the rest of me. I haven’t much time…

I must tell you. Today!

Tell me? What do you wish to tell me?

"I must tell you about her. How I wish she had loved me, Junior Trowbridge. If she had only loved me, we’d still be together. Safe. But she didn’t. Not really. It was always him she loved."

Mr. Sutcliffe, you mustn’t excite yourself. I simply don’t understand…

I’ll explain it to you. Tell you everything. I need someone to remember. Someone to see to it that they lay me down beside her, when I die. I haven’t told anyone since your father. Would you do that for me, Junior Trowbridge?

My father made me promise I’d look after you. You may rely on me, Mr. Sutcliffe.

Your father left you his kind heart. How should I begin? Of course, with the daffodils. You see these daffodils, Junior Trowbridge?

Yes. It’s Spring in England.

Spring. Yes. It was in the Spring that I met the Sultan’s Woman.

"‘The Sultan’s—! Who did you say?"

I’ve shocked him. Good. He’ll listen to everything now, and carefully. Don’t interrupt, Junior Trowbridge. For I haven’t much time. Where was I? Did I just begin?

The daffodils—

Yes. The daffodils… in the Spring. Long, long ago… It was in the Spring that I met the Sultan’s Woman…

Chapter Two

Fifty years ago, in the smokey London of the Year of Our Lord 1839, I was a miserable twenty-two-year old clerk at a bank in Knightsbridge. The bank had been there since the early kings, so you can well imagine with what reverence it held itself. One spoke in whispers. One did not engage in unnecessary or hasty body movements that might perchance stir the sacred air. Indeed, I was more than once called to account over the loud scratching of my pen.

I spent my days on a high, wooden seat that made my posterior throb from the unyielding pressure of solid wood on tender flesh, and my feet hung limply in mid-air, longing for the reassurance of the carpeted floor. And I filled endless ivory pages of countless account books with precisely inked figures in unwavering columns. I was hired principally because of my neat handwriting. I was also suspect because of it, since it betrayed my artistic leanings. I wanted to be a painter. An inclination, in Head Clerk Basil Higgins’ mind, something akin to the disposition of a highwayman.

Basil Higgins had always worked in this bank and would probably die within its hushed walls. At his desk, no doubt. That is, if on the day his tiny, cold heart ceased to beat, anyone noticed that he was truly dead. For even now it was rather hard to tell. He hardly ever spoke—a scowl was sufficient. He hardly ever moved, except for the slight waving of the top of his pen that indicated ink was flowing at his bony fingertips. When I arrived in the mornings, he was already at his post, scowl in place, pen top circling, wearing the same black frock coat and black wire pince nez. All through the day, whenever I looked up, the apparition was still in place, unmoved. And unchanged as I left in the evenings.

Rolly and I had a wager between us about the lack of attending to the calls of Nature. Rolly insisted a chamber pot was secreted beneath Basil’s chair, or perhaps between his knees. While I conjured that the creature had no bowels or bladder at all. Unfortunately, since he never moved, we were unable to peer under his desk to ascertain the truth of the matter.

Rolly Norman’s desk was next to mine. He was already apple-cheeked and dumpling-waisted at the young age of twenty. Crullers and pasties were his passion, and he was an unchallenged master at sneaking bites of these hidden treasures all through our dull working days. Fortunately, the vivid floral pattern of the carpeting beneath us served to obscure the litter of crumbs Rolly left daily. However, one day a large, grey rat—no doubt impatient at having to wait until the bank was closed before scarfing up Rolly’s fallen booty—nipped past our dangling feet, grabbed some crumbs, and sent several other clerks hooting with shock as he scampered away past them, heading for a lair that would later be searched for, but unfound. I truly thought Rolly and I would strangle on our suppressed laughter. It was one of the few bright moments in my entire banking career.

Until the daffodils.

It was a Spring like London had never known. Smoke suddenly parted from the air, air as soft as a baby’s breath, sunlight warm with ease. The grasses in parks were already emerald beneath the last few patches of melting, dirty gray snow. The trees were explosions of tiny, lime leaves or tenderly pink flowers. And everywhere there were daffodils, waving crowns of bright butter yellow.

My dear parents were long dead, but daffodils brought them back to me. My mother planted dozens of bulbs in window boxes and in rows along the walk to our door. And when they came up in green stalks through the snow, my father would wink at her and say, "Them daffies is ahead of themselves, Mary my