About the book: 2009 / A love story where the distant past and the present intertwine and find connection points. 16th century, Istanbul. The representative of the Levant Company, the secretary of the ambassador of the English Queen, Paul Pindar, lives in Istanbul, not imagining that nearby, in the harem of the great Sultan, his bride is languishing, whom everyone considers dead. Our time, Oxford, England. Elizabeth Staveley, searching in the archives for documents on the history of piracy in the Mediterranean, discovers an ancient parchment with a story about the Englishwoman Celia Lamprey captured by the Turks. Restoring the life story of Celia, Elizabeth finds strange intersections of destinies, her own and the kidnapped woman, and this discovery radically changes her fate.