“One day,” she went on, “you will marry a man of your own blood. Then it would be wrong, very wrong for you to know the tricks, the wiles, the enticements that the Orientals expect as a matter of course from their women.”

“Would it really matter?” Yamina asked.

“I know that a Circassian would think it wrong and perhaps disgusting,” Mihri said, “and to a Russian it would be the same.”

“But I must do as I am told,” Yamina protested.

“Perhaps eventually there will be no escape,” Mihri replied, “but at the moment we can play for time. When your lesson is due you will be ill. If you do not think you can pretend well enough to deceive the Haremlik, then I will give you a little opium, enough to make you sleepy.”

“No, no, I am sure I can pretend,” Yamina said, “but eventually it will be impossible for them not to realise I am playing truant.”

“We cannot think too far ahead,” Mihri answered. “Tonight when I am with the Sultan I will find out who he is granting an audience to. I have an idea of how I can help you to escape, but at the moment it is very vague.”

“Tell me,” Yamina pleaded, but Mihri shook her head.

“It is always unlucky to talk of a wish until you know it can be fulfilled.”

Yamina smiled.

Everyone in the harem was extremely superstitious.

What the women enjoyed more than anything else was having their fortunes told. Occasionally a fortune-teller would be smuggled in with the contrivance of the Black Eunuchs who would expect to be paid for their trouble in jewels and other valuables.

Even the enticement of diamonds paled beside the thrill brought by the fortune-teller, reading the lines of their hands or shuffling the cards.

For an odalisque to be told that sooner or later she would catch the eye of the Sultan and that she would become a Kadin was to keep her happy for weeks. Only time could dim the glow of hope that such prophecies engendered.

The women were always relating stories of prophecies that came true.

The beautiful Aimée Dubacq de Rivery was told by an old witch in Martinique that the ship on which she travelled to France would be seized by corsairs and she would be captured and placed in a Seraglio.

“There,” the old woman went on, “you will give birth to a son, who will reign gloriously, but the steps of his throne will be dyed with the blood of his predecessor.”

It had all come true.

Because Aimée was so beautiful, the Algerian corsairs reserved her for Baba Mohammed Ben Osman of Algiers. He realised the moment he saw her that she would be a worthy offering to the Sultan himself.