fill it for him. 'The Crescent Guard was kept so well a secret that even the other Janissaries did not know that some of their ranks belonged to such a group. Our beloved fatih died in 1481, but his Guard continued. The Janissaries rose to great power sometimes, under weaker sultans, but we kept our secret. When the Empire finally vanished even from Istanbul, no one knew about us and we remained. Our charter was kept safe by Selim Aksoy's father during the first Great War, and by Selim during the last one. He retains it now, in a secret place that is our tradition.' Turgut drew a breath and took a grateful gulp of his coffee.
"'I thought,' Helen put in a little suspiciously, 'that you said your father was Italian. How did he come to be in the Crescent Guard?'
"'Yes, madam.' Turgut nodded over his cup. 'My maternal grandfather, actually, was a very active member of the Guard and he could not endure for the line to die with him, but he had only a daughter. When he saw that the Empire would end forever in his lifetime - '
"'Your mother!' Helen exclaimed.
"'Yes, my dear.' Turgut's smile was wistful. 'You are not the only one here who can claim a remarkable mother. As I think I told you, she was one of the best-educated women of her time in our country - one of the only splendidly educated ones, actually - and my grandfather spared nothing to pour into her all his knowledge and ambition, and to prepare her for service in the Guard. She became interested in engineering when that was still a new science here, and after her induction to the Guard, he allowed her to go to Rome to study - he had friends there. She was proficient in very advanced mathematics and could read in four languages, including Greek and Arabic.' He said something in Turkish to his wife and Selim, and they both nodded agreement. "She could ride as well as any cavalryman of the sultans' and - although very few people knew this - shoot like one, also.' He almost winked at Helen, and I remembered her little gun - where did she keep it, anyway? 'She learned from my grandfather a great deal about the lore of the vampire and how to protect the living from his evil strategies. Her picture is there, if you would like to see her.'
"He got up and brought it to us from a carved table in the corner, putting it very gently into Helen's hand. It was a striking image, with that marvelous delicate clarity of photographic portraits from early in the century. The lady sitting for her lengthy exposure in an Istanbul studio looked patient and composed, but her photographer, under his great black cloth, had captured something like amusement in her eyes. The sepia of her skin was flawless above her dark dress. Her face was Turgut's, but fine of nose and chin where his was heavy, opening like a crisp flower on the stem of her slender throat - the visage of an Ottoman princess. Her hair, under an elaborate plumed hat, was piled up in dark clouds. Her eyes met mine with that glint of humor, and I regretted suddenly the years that separated us.
"Turgut took the little frame fondly into his own hand again. 'My grandfather chose with wisdom when he broke the tradition and made her a member of the Guard. It was she who found some scattered pieces of our archive in other libraries and brought them back to the collection. When I was five she killed a wolf at our summer cottage, and when I was eleven she taught me to ride and shoot. My father was devoted to her, although she frightened him with her fearlessness - he always said he had followed her back to Turkey from Rome to talk her out of too much bravery. Like the most trustworthy wives of the members of our Guard, my father knew about her membership and he worried constantly about her safety. He is over there - ' He pointed to a portrait in oils that I had noticed earlier, where it hung by the windows. The man looking out of it was a solid, comfortable, quaint person in a dark suit, with black eyes and hair and a soft expression; Turgut had told us that his father had been a historian of the Italian Renaissance, but