Constantinople

The platform at Sirkeci Station, in the heart of Constantinople, overlooking the gleaming waters of the Golden Horn, bustled with exotic Oriental sights and sounds. Rug merchants in fezzes bickered with coffee traders toting burnished copper pots. Escaped monkeys stole fruit from the barrows of watermelon sellers. Veiled figures, escorted by burly guards with scimitars, glided mysteriously through the shadows on errands unknown.

The Orient Express clattered into the station precisely on schedule, attracting little to no attention. A few minutes later, however, it occurred to one unusually inquisitive Turkish errand boy (he was nineteen) that none of the doors had opened, and nobody had come out. Strange. He walked over to the Orient Express, hopped up onto the side of the train, and peered in through the closest window.

His dark eyes went very wide.

He went to look through the next window, and the next, as if to confirm that what he was seeing inside was real. Some vision of Paradise from the Arabian Nights, perhaps, conjured up by a djinn? Or could it really be that the carriages of the Orient Express were full of what he thought they were full of?

“Go away,” snapped Fiona, wishing she had something to throw at the window. The Balkan bandits had gone over every inch of the train, systematically denuding it of every last scrap of women’s clothing, as well as anything else that could possibly serve in any way to cover up a woman’s naked body. Sheets, pillowcases, towels, even books and plates had all been stolen! So the hundred lady passengers, filing back aboard the train in the early hours of the morning after their shameful night-long ravishing at the bandits’ hands, had swiftly found themselves confronted by the unfortunate fact that they would be travelling the rest of the way to Constantinople in the nude.

To make matters worse, the conductor had realised all of a sudden that they were terribly behind schedule, due to all the prolonged sight-seeing stops in Switzerland and Italy, and made the decision that the train would run express from here on out. This made sense. It was, after all, the Orient Express. But it did mean the girls couldn’t stop to buy any more clothes.

“Oh, where is that conductor?” wailed Miss Strappe, sitting next to Fiona. The railway carriage held dozens of nude women, all huddled together on the polished wood floor (the carpets having been stolen). “He said he would buy us all new silk robes as soon as we arrived in Constantinople!”

“He may be in the bazaar right now. Let us wait a little longer.”

“But there are boys watching us! Through the windows!”

“We shall pull the curtains down,” declared Fiona, reaching for the cord, and finding that the curtains had been stolen as well. “Shoo, boys! This isn’t a peepshow!” From the banging on the windows, and the eager faces pressed against the glass, she could tell they disagreed.

“Should we run?”

“Where to?”

“Hey,” barked another voice, as a burly man in an apron holding a broom strode in through the carriage doors. All the girls squealed in terror, though he didn’t seem to notice their nudity at all. “Who are you? You’re not supposed to be here!”

“We’re the passengers!”

“When the train gets into the station,” said the burly man, rolling his eyes, “the passengers are supposed to leave. That’s normally how it works.”

“But… but…”

“What?”

“We’ve no clothes on!”

“Well, you foreigners have strange customs, but it’s none of my business. Out you go!”

And, shooing the girls towards the door, grumbling all the while about this inconvenience to his daily schedule, he managed to drive every last one of the hundred or so blushing naked ladies out of the Orient Express and onto the busy main platform of Sirkeci Station. They were immediately surrounded by a crowd of laughing errand boys, curious rug merchants, escaped monkeys and mysterious veiled figures, all eager to see what they would do next. Even in Constantinople, this kind of thing didn’t happen every day.