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“But as soon as the plague is gone, so too will be the blockade!” said the Queen. “I wonder what will happen then.” As if to avoid thinking of the answer to her own question, she then suggested the very thing she most wanted to do in that moment. “Let’s get in the ironclad and go on a trip to Dantela and Flizvos!”

Perhaps the Queen could sense that these were to be their last outings in the landau, for her letters from this period often spoke of the children playing hide-and-seek in the lush green gardens of Hora; of the delicate, lacelike streets of Germe; and of the drinking water in Tatlısu, sweeter than in the Beykoz and Çırçır springs near Istanbul. She wrote about the spectacular view from the meadow set aside in Turunçlar for the Commander’s mausoleum; the cats combing their fur for fleas as they sunbathed on the steep steps that led from the Kadirler neighborhood down to the sea; the vases of roses that adorned the colorful tables spilling out onto the pavements from the coffeehouses, restaurants, and pastry shops along Istanbul Avenue; and the mullet and mackerel they saw following their horses all along the harbor under the flat surface of the sea outside the landau, each charming scene lovingly described as if she wished to make sure she would never forget it.

On the fifteenth of November, the Arkata Times—controlled by the Minister of Scrutinia—reported to the public on the Queen and the Chief Minister’s landau trips in an article that took up half of the newspaper’s front page. The piece praised the courageous queen who was willing to go all the way to people’s doorsteps to bring them gifts and hear about their troubles and had even been prepared to brave the perils of the plague to do so. The tone of the article was admiring and respectful, but toward the end, it also betrayed a touch of disappointment: the Queen had been giving out gifts and parcels of salted fish and crackers during a stop in Arpara one day, but although the neighborhood children had desperately wanted to talk to her, they had not been able to do so, for she did not speak Mingherian. A woman had carried her blue-eyed daughter to her beloved queen’s lap so that she might stroke the child’s hair for a little while, and after tearfully explaining that she was still waiting for the compensation payment she had been promised for the damage that had been done to her home when her husband had died during the outbreak, that she was alone in the world, and that she had nobody else to turn to but her queen, the poor woman had been heartbroken to realize that because she had been talking in Mingherian, the Queen—who did not speak the language—hadn’t understood a word she’d said. The article also noted that the Queen had a heart of gold, that the public was understandably saddened when they realized that despite all the affection they had shown her, she did not speak the people’s language, and that this in turn explained why most of the Queen’s excursions over the past few weeks had been limited to streets and neighborhoods where people spoke Turkish, Greek, and even French—to those parts of the city, in other words, that were comparatively wealthier.

As he read the article out to his wife inside the Chief Minister’s office, Doctor Nuri did not hide his displeasure, and suggested that the Minister of Scrutinia must be behind this. But with her characteristic innocence and hopefulness, the Queen told her husband that the criticism was constructive and justified, and that from now on, it would be more appropriate for them to focus their visits to poorer neighborhoods where Mingherian was more widely spoken.

The next day, they changed their plans (informing guards and photographers accordingly) and went to the Kadirler neighborhood instead. This visit was a success, thanks to the Queen’s conscientious and convincing efforts to use the handful of old Mingherian words she had hurriedly learned, and to the antics of two lovable neighborhood boys who managed to make everybody laugh with their pitch-perfect imitations (down to the noises they made) of a nearby horse cart and its driver.

But the day after that, they had just stepped off their carriage in Turunçlar when two young men in their early twenties who had somehow found their way through the well-coached crowd came within earshot of the journalists, shouted “Mingheria belongs to the Mingherians!” twice, and ran away. Later, when they saw how forlorn the Queen looked as she listlessly handed out the gifts she’d brought, the women of the neighborhood tried to comfort the old sultan’s daughter by telling her not to mind those rascals, but even so the crestfallen queen couldn’t help taking the matter seriously and wrote a long passage to her sister Hatice in which she explained just how unfair the pair of youths had been: she had memorized twenty new Mingherian words a day ever since she’d become queen. She supported the Commander and Zeynep’s love and their exalted ideals. Moreover, the fact that she had been born in Istanbul and was not yet entirely acquainted with the island’s history, its culture, and the political dispositions and traits of its various tribes and populations was surely an element to be considered in Princess Pakize’s favor, not vice versa. Precisely because her ancestry was “different from everybody else’s,” she could maintain an equal distance from everyone around her and make the most “objective” (she used the French term here), most appropriate decisions for every circumstance. Her forefathers had turned the Ottoman Empire into the world’s greatest and most powerful empire thanks to how different they were from—not similar to!—the peoples and populations they ruled over.

“But my lady,” her husband the Chief Minister had said one day, “perhaps it is also down to that same reason—to the fact that your ancestors were so unlike the populations they governed, and belonged to a different nation from all the people who lived under their rule—that the Ottoman Empire is now losing all its nations and islands one after the other.”

Two days later, another article authored by the journalist Manolis and published this time in the Greek-language daily Neo Nisi picked up in a more critical tone on the points which had been made toward the end of the piece in the Arkata Times four days before: “As the Great Commander had already proven,” the article argued, “the people of Mingheria are more than capable of governing themselves, and unlike those tiny, pitiful colonies in Asia or the Far East, they have no need for overlords who do not even speak their people’s language, nor for any ‘sultan’s daughters’—especially not one whose father takes his orders from the international cabal of the Freemasons.” Manolis’s article also alluded to the Queen’s popularity, but argued that the locals’ fascination with her need not be given undue consideration, for “a sultan’s daughter who has lived for years like a captive slave” would have been a topic of interest in any part of the world. The other thing to remember was this: “The Ottoman world, where women are confined to harems like caged birds and treated as slaves to their men or at best as graceful ornaments, and where everyone is subject to the will of Abdul Hamid, can never serve as a model for the Mingherian nation’s shining future, for at long last, the people of Mingheria and the women of Mingheria are free!”

“This Manolis insults both me and my darling father!” said Princess Pakize. “You must please put a stop to it. I am neither a bird in a harem, nor a slave in a cage, but a queen. I will not allow for even one more person to see this article.”

“Believe me, my princess, if I were to have this newspaper nobody reads confiscated from those three sellers who happen to stock it, it would only draw more attention to the matter, and soon people would be talking of nothing else. This must clearly have been written on Mazhar Effendi’s behest, and nobody would be happier than he.”

“I am the Queen of this country, and I have been granted that title by its people!” said Princess Pakize. “But if my orders are not to be heeded, then I shall not hold this position for a moment longer.”

“Your foremost duty is to follow your husband’s orders and defer to his will, as the rules of Islam dictate!” said Doctor Nuri, smiling at her.

Princess Pakize was incensed by her husband’s toothy smirk, making light of the situation when his own wife was being slandered. But what she really couldn’t abide was the realization that she couldn’t even get her husband to follow her instructions. They had a long argument, after which they refused to speak to each other for a while and didn’t go anywhere for two days. The Minister of Scrutinia had been handling most government business anyway. On the third day, the Queen—who had always relished their excursions in the landau—suggested they plan a trip to the most charming little seafront street in the calm, safe, and serene neighborhood of Dantela. Clerks, government officials, guards, and journalists were duly informed.

But just as they were about to get into the armored landau the next day, they were stopped by the Minister of Scrutinia Mazhar Effendi, who told them that there had been a report of a potential assassination attempt involving explosives. It would be best if they put their trips on hold for a time—no matter which neighborhood they’d decided to visit.

After Mazhar Effendi had left, the Queen told her husband that she did not believe this man—whose sole concern was the advancement of his political career—and that they had no obligation to do as he said.

“I have thought about this question at great length, my lady,” said Doctor Nuri. “Should we ever be faced—God forbid—with a situation of danger or urgent need, we would be able to count on at least part of the civilian population to stand with us, but in terms of armed troops, we would probably have to rely on the heroic efforts of forty to fifty men at most. But one word from Mazhar Effendi and he would have a whole army at his disposal—the Quarantine Regiment, the municipal guards, the soldiers in the garrison, their reserves, and all the new recruits they’ve signed up.”

“So are you saying that we are back to living as prisoners?” said Princess Pakize.

“Indeed, but you must not forget that you are still the Queen of Mingheria, and as long as that remains the case, the world shall gradually come to recognize you as the head of this sovereign state, and kneel before you. Already you have taken your place in history as the Queen who was able to stop Mingheria’s fearsome plague before it could spread to Europe. In truth, Europe should be grateful to you.”

Princess Pakize understood that those days of freedom during which she had been able to leave her room at will, walk around the city as she wished, and travel in her carriage to any neighborhood, observing the people, the houses, and everything else there was to see, had sadly come to an end. Soon there were guards at the guesthouse door again, just like under Sheikh Hamdullah’s rule. This time there were always six or seven of them stationed there. Unlike their predecessors, these sentries did not nervously raise their rifles whenever the Queen and the Chief Minister tried to leave the room; they simply stood to attention and blocked their passage with their bodies. It seemed clear now that the island was effectively being ruled by Mazhar Effendi and the other ministers.

In the twelve days that followed, they never left their rooms. As the Queen did not see anything new during this period, she rarely wrote to her sister. But her mind and her soul were with the island’s people and its far-flung neighborhoods. In a letter she took a whole five days to finish, she wrote to Hatice that she had suddenly become very curious about the murder mysteries their uncle Abdul Hamid had been reading for years. Might Hatice’s husband, who used to stand behind a folding screen and read out novels to the Sultan, now make a list of those novels and their titles for Pakize’s perusal?

As they sat in their rooms, they kept talking about how they might someday return to Istanbul, but could think of no other solution except to wait for Princess Pakize’s uncle to forgive them. In the meantime, Mingherian newspapers continued to publish scornful, derogatory articles about the couple. (Some of the words and phrases more frequently used in these pieces included “courtier,” “Ottoman,” “harem dweller,” “cage,” “prisoner,” “Turk,” “colony,” and “Freemason’s daughter.”)

On the fifth of December, one and a half months after the waning of the outbreak, Minister of Scrutinia Mazhar Effendi came into the guesthouse in the late afternoon to apprise them of what he deemed to be an “emergency”: it seemed that the Great Powers, determined to lift the blockade, had come to an agreement with Abdul Hamid … There was a possibility that British and French ships might land in Arkaz that same evening, and that a battle might ensue. Of course nobody at the Ministerial Headquarters wished to see their esteemed guests fall victim to this sort of international skirmish. Accordingly, as soon as darkness began to fall, they would be taken to a secret location—whose whereabouts even they would not be told—north of Arkaz, unknown to any foreign powers and impossible for them to find.

First the armored landau and its retinue of guards would take them to Andin, and here they would be put on a boat which would carry them to their new home on the island. They must gather their belongings and be waiting at the entrance to the Ministerial Headquarters within two hours.

Princess Pakize would later write to her sister that it had taken them only an hour to get ready. They had been terrified. Their initial worry had been that they might be captured by the British (or the French), but when they saw no signs of unusual activity or any additional military presence in the Ministerial Headquarters and out on the streets of Arkaz, they realized that the threat must have been exaggerated. The landau, guided at a leisurely pace by Coachman Zekeriya, passed Pebble Cove and drove north in the night all along the eastern shore of the island.

The bumpy road rose and fell over the hills, curved toward sandy beaches, and looped between orchards. Through the windows of the carriage, they heard the thrumming of the trees, the ripple of a fountain, the patter of a hedgehog’s paws. Then a full, silver moon appeared between the clouds, and they felt as if they were no longer in this world at all, but in some other, mysterious realm up above the black clouds.

A small cove appeared before them. The moon was reflected in silver shimmers over the calm surface of the sea. The carriage stopped, and for a moment, its passengers felt the boundless silence of the world.

A few sentries and boatmen and the guards in the carriage behind the landau emerged from the night to assist them. The Queen and the Chief Minister climbed down a narrow ledge to board a little rowboat that had been readied for them by the rocks at the edge of the seashell-and-kelp-scented cove, and after sailing out into the low waves for a short while, they were moved onto another, slightly larger vessel which had been waiting for them with their luggage on board. In this second rowboat, they noticed in the dark the figure of the Minister of Scrutinia Mazhar Effendi’s secretary, sitting behind the oarsmen as he awaited their arrival.