Caftans, however well embroidered, jewelled sword-hilts or gold brocades he already had in profusion and Lord Castleford sought something unique for the man whom he admired most amongst all others and who he frequently said had taught him all he knew of diplomacy.

On an impulse he decided to seek now, while he was out alone, some treasure hidden away in the shops of gold and silver work that the many ardent collectors who frequented Constantinople had not yet discovered.

He remembered one particular place where on a previous visit he had found mementos of the past when Greeks and Romans had left their imprint on what was now Turkey.

Many of their treasures had been secreted away or hidden in tombs until some thief or excavator had brought them into the light of day.

‘There must be something that Lord Stratford would really appreciate,’ Lord Castleford murmured to himself.

As he turned his horse away from the open country towards the loveliest Capital in the world, he could see many of its great monuments.

The vast oblong of the Hippodrome with its four rows of pavilions and galleries and the huge Basilica of Santa Sophia, drawing the eye of the faithful at all moments of the day.

Besides these there was a profusion of glittering minarets and domes all stirring the imagination, recorded in history, sung in verse, envied through the centuries by less opulent peoples.

Below him Lord Castleford could see the Top Kapi Serai or the Seraglio, which only the previous year had been forsaken by the Sultan for the Dolmabahçe Palace.

The cypress trees massed round it gave it a strangely evil appearance.

A place of redolent love, murder, beauty, ambition and torture through the ages, of dark deeds, and fretted fountains, of gilded kiosks and hideous deaf mutes.

Of unwanted women and dispensable Sultans being cast from its walls into the silent bosom of the Bosporus.

There death walked with life, beauty with decay, crude naked crime with the softness of young virgins, evil with the songs of birds.

The Seraglio once the heart of the City!

Lord Castleford soon found himself riding in the Bazaar where the Roman Emperor Justinian had once stabled two thousand horses, but where now there were open shops selling every kind of embroidery, goldwork, armour, cloth, provisions, all mingled with the colourful vegetables and fruit for which the Bosporus was famous.

In the narrow twisting alleyways of the Bazaar the people in themselves were a kaleidoscope of colour.

There were Armenians with coloured sashes, glaring out of rags and bearing heavy loads, veiled women with long mantles and yashmaks, blind beggars in threadbare turbans stretching out bony hands for baksheesh, fat Pashas under sunshades held by an attendant, Persians dyed by the Eastern sun in their sheepskin caps and fur pelisses.

Donkeys and lean horses staggered almost invisible under every sort of load.

It was all part of the East that Lord Castleford knew and loved.