The Journeyer

by Gary Jennings

  I was surprised that a typically brisk and brusque Mongol should begin stammering like a schoolboy. I looked up at him, and saw that his formerly brown face had flushed red. He avoided my eye and clumsily fumbled to turn our conversation to something else. Then I remembered who he was, so I—probably also reddening in sympathy—made some excuse to terminate the interview, and I withdrew. I had totally forgotten, you see, that that Minister Amursama was the lord who, after his lady was taken in adultery, had been ordered to strangle her with her own sphincter. Actually, a great many of the palace residents were curious to know the grisly details of Amursama’s compliance with that order, but were shy of bringing up the matter in his presence. However, they said, he himself seemed somehow always to be stumbling onto reminders of the subject, and then getting tongue-tied and uncomfortable, and making everybody around him just as uncomfortable.

  Well, I could understand that. But I could not understand why another minister, likewise discoursing on a prosaic subject, should have seemed equally distraught and evasive. He was Pao Nei-ho and he was the Minister of Lesser Races. (As I have told, the Han people are everywhere in the majority, but in Kithai and in the southerly lands which were then the Sung Empire, there are some sixty other nationalities.) Minister Pao told me, at tedious length, how it was his responsibility to ensure that all of Kithai’s minority peoples enjoyed the same rights as the Han majority. It was one of the duller disquisitions I had so far endured, but Minister Pao told it in Farsi—in his position, he had to be multilingual—and I could not see why the telling of it made him so nervously falter and fidget and sprinkle his speech with er and uh and ahem.

  “Even the er conqueror Mongols are uh few compared to us Han,” he said. “The ahem lesser nationalities are fewer still. In the er western regions, for example, the uh so-called Uighur and the ahem Uzbek, Kirghiz, Kazhak and er Tazhik. Here in the uh north we find also the ahem Manchu, the Tungus, the Hezhe. And when the er Khan Kubilai completes his uh conquest of the ahem Sung Empire, we will absorb all the other er nationalities down there. The uh Naxi and the Miao, the Puyi, the Chuang. Also ahem the obstreperous Yi people who populate the er entire province of Yun-nan in the uh far southwest …”

  He went on and on like that, and I might have dozed, except that my mind was busy sieving out the ers and uhs and ahems. But even when I had done that, I found the speech still a dry one. It seemed to contain nothing shameful or sinister that would require concealment in a lot of vocal weeds. I did not know why Minister Pao should be speaking so haltingly. Neither did I know why I was being suspicious of that fractured oratory. But I was. He was saying something that I was not supposed to grasp. I was sure of it. And, as it turned out, I was right.

  When I finally got loose of him that day, I went to my own rooms and to the closet which I let Nostril use for his pallet chamber. He was sleeping at that moment, though it was only midafternoon. I shook him and said:

  “You have not enough work to do, slovenly slave, so I have thought of a job for you.”

  In truth, the slave was lately having quite an indolent life. My father and uncle, having no need for him, had relinquished his services entirely to me. But I was so well served by the maids Buyantu and Biliktu that I employed Nostril only for such things as buying me a wardrobe of suitable Kithai-style clothing, and keeping it well stocked and in good order, and occasionally to groom and saddle a horse for me. Between times, Nostril did not do much roaming about or mischief making. He seemed to have subdued his former nasty habits and natural inquisitiveness. He spent most of his time in his closet, except when he ventured as far as the palace kitchens to seek a meal, or, when I invited him, to dine with me in my chambers. I did not allow that often, for the girls were clearly repelled by his appearance and uncomfortable in the role of Mongols waiting upon a mere slave.

  Now he came awake, grumbling, “Bismillah, master,” and yawning so that even his dreadful nose hole seemed to gape wider.

  I said sternly, “Here am I, busy all the day, while my slave slumbers. I am supposed to be evaluating the Khakhan’s courtiers by talking to them face to face, but you could do even better behind their backs.”

  He mumbled, “I gather, master, that you wish me to snoop about among their servants and attendants. But how? I am an outlander and a newcomer, and my grasp of the Mongol tongue is still imperfect.”

  “There are many outlanders among the domestic staff. Prisoners taken from every land. The servants’ talk belowstairs must be a Babel of languages. And I know very well that your one nostril is adept at sniffing out gossip and scandal.”

  “I am honored that you ask me, master, but—”

  “I am not asking. I am commanding. You are henceforth to spend all your spare time, of which you have an ample measure, mingling with the servants and your fellow slaves.”

  “Master, to be honest, I am fearful of wandering about these halls. I might blunder into the Fondler’s precincts.”

  “Do not talk back or I will take you there myself. Hear me. Every evening from now on, you and I will sit down and you will repeat to me every least morsel of tattle and tale you have heard.”

  “About anything? Everything? Most of the talk is trivial.”

  “Everything. But right now I am interested to know all I can find out about the Minister of Lesser Races, the Han lord named Pao Nei-ho. Whenever you can subtly turn the conversation to that subject, do so. But subtly. Meanwhile, I shall want everything else you hear, as well. There is no foretelling what tidbit may be of value to me.”

  “Master Marco, I must make some respectful demur in advance. I am not so handsome now as I once was, when I could beguile even princesses to blurt their innermost—”

  “Oh, that imbecilic old lie again! Nostril, you and all the world know that you have always been damnably ugly, and you never once so much as touched the hem of a princess’s gown!”

  Undeterred, he persisted, “On the other hand, you have at your command two pretty maids who could easily employ their comeliness for come-hitherness. They are far better fitted for wheedling secrets out of—”

  “Nostril,” I said patiently. “You will spy for me because I tell you to, and I need give no other reason. However, I will mention just this. It apparently has not occurred to you, but it has to me, that those two maids are very likely spying on my doings. Watching my every move and reporting it. Remember, it was the son of the Khakhan, on the orders of the Khakhan, who gave me the girls.”

  I always spoke of them as “the girls” when speaking to others, because to use both their names every time would have been unwieldy, and I did not speak of them as “the servants” because they were rather more than that to me, but I would not speak of them as “the concubines” because that seemed to me a slightly derogatory term. In private, however, I addressed them separately as Buyantu and Biliktu, for I had early learned to tell them apart. Although when dressed they were identical, I now knew their individualities of expression and gesture. Undressed, although still identical even to the dimples in their cheeks, the dimples at their elbows and those especially winsome dimples on either side of the base of their spines, the twins were more easily identifiable. Biliktu had a sprinkle of freckles on the underswell of her left breast, and Buyantu had a tiny scar on her upper right thigh from some childhood mishap.

  I had taken note of those things on our very first night together, and of some other things as well. The girls were both nicely shaped and, not being Muslims, were complete in all their private parts. In general, they were built like other mature females I had known, except that they were a trifle shorter in the leg and a trifle less indented at the waistline than, say, Venetian and Persian women are. But their one most intriguing difference from women of other races was the matter of their inguinal hair. They had the usual dark triangle in the usual place—the han-mao, they called it, their “little warmer”—but it was not a curly or bushy tuft. Through some quirk of nature, Mongol women—at least those I have known—have an ex
ceptionally smooth escutcheon; the hair lies as flat and neat there as on the pelt of a cat. When earlier lying with a woman, I had sometimes amused myself (and her) by twining and twiddling my fingers in her little warmer; with Buyantu or Biliktu, I stroked and petted it as I would a kitten (and made her purr like one).

  On my first night in my private apartments, the twins had made it plain that they expected me to take one of them to bed with me. When they bathed me, they also stripped and bathed themselves, and most fastidiously washed my and their dan-tian, our “pink places,” our private parts. When they had dusted me and themselves with fragrant powders, they slipped into dressing gowns of silk so sheer that their little warmers were still quite visible, and the girl I would come to recognize as Buyantu asked me, straight out:

  “Will you be desiring children of us, Master Marco?”

  Involuntarily I blurted, “Dio me varda, no!” She could not have understood the words, but evidently could not mistake the meaning, for she nodded and went on:

  “We have procured fern seed, which is the best preventive of conception. Now, as you know, master, we are both of twenty-two-karat quality, and of course are virgins. So we have been speculating all afternoon as to which of us will have the honor of being first qing-du chu-kai—awakened to womanhood—by our handsome new master.”

  Well, I was pleased that they were not, like so many virgins, dreading the event. Indeed, they seemed to have been, in a sisterly way, contending for precedence, for Buyantu added, “As it happens, master, I am the elder of the two.”

  Biliktu laughed and told me, “By a matter of minutes only, according to our mother. But all our lives, Elder Sister has been claiming privilege on that account.”

  Buyantu shrugged and said, “One of us must have the first night, and the other wait for the second. If you would prefer not to make the choice yourself, master, we could draw straws.”

  I said airily, “Far be it from me to leave delight to chance. Or to discriminate between two such compelling attractions. You will both be first.”

  Buyantu said chidingly, “We are virgins, but we are not ignorant.”

  “We helped raise our two younger brothers,” said Biliktu.

  “So, while bathing you, we saw that you are normally equipped in your dan-tian,” said Buyantu. “Bigger than boys in that respect, of course, but not multiplied.”

  “Therefore,” said Biliktu, “you can be in only one place at a time. How can you pretend that we both could be first?”

  “The bed is beautifully commodious,” I said. “We will all three lie together and—”

  “That would be indecent!”

  They both looked so shocked that I smiled. “Come, come. It is well-known that men sometimes disport themselves with more than one woman at a time.”

  “But—but those are concubines of long experience, long past modesty, and of no embarrassing relation. Master Marco, we are sisters, and this is our first jiao-gou, and we will … that is to say, we cannot … in each other’s presence …

  “I promise,” I said, “you will find it no less sisterly than bathing in each other’s presence. Also, that you will soon cease to fret about proprieties. Also, that you will both so enjoy the jiao-gou that you will not notice which of you was first. Or ever care.”

  They hesitated. Buyantu frowned prettily in contemplation. Biliktu meditatively bit her lower lip. Then they looked shyly sideways at each other from the corners of their eyes. When their glances met, they blushed—so extensively that their sheer gowns turned pink all down the breast. Then they laughed, a little shakily, but they made no further objection. Buyantu got from a drawer a phial of fern seed, and she and Biliktu turned their backs on me while each of them took a pinch of that fine, almost powdery seed and, with a finger, inserted it deep inside themselves. Then they let me take them each by a hand and let me lead them to the inviting bed, and let me go on leading from there.

  Harking back to my youthful experience in Venice, I put to use the modes of music making I had learned from the Lady Ilaria and then had refined by practicing on the little maiden Doris. Thus I was able to make the initiation of these virgins, too, an occasion for them to remember, not just without wincing, but with genuine joy. At first, as I turned or moved from Buyantu to Biliktu and back again, they kept their eyes not on me but sideways on each other, and were obviously trying not to make any visible or audible responses to my ministrations, lest the other consider her immodest. But as I worked delicately with fingers and lips and tongue and even my eyelashes, they eventually closed their own eyes and ignored each other and gave themselves up to their own feelings.

  I might remark that that night’s jiao-gou, my first such activity in Kithai, was endowed with a special piquancy, just because of the fanciful Han terms which were employed there for all parts of the human body. As I had already learned, the name “red jewel” can mean either the male or female parts in general. But it is usually reserved for the male’s organ, while the female’s is the “lotus” and its lips are its “petals” and what I had formerly called the lumaghèta or zambur is the “butterfly between the petals of the lotus.” The female posterior is her “calm moon” and its dainty valley is the “rift in the moon.” Her breasts are her “flawless jade viands” and her nipples are her “small stars.”

  So, by variously and adroitly touching, caressing, teasing, tasting, fondling, tickling, nibbling jade viands and flowers and petals and moons and stars and butterflies, I succeeded marvelously in making both the twins achieve their first peak of jiao-gou simultaneously. Then, before they could realize how much unabashed singing and thrashing they had done on the way there, and perhaps get mutually embarrassed, I did other things to urge them up again to the peaks. They were quick learners and eager to partake again of those heights, so I kept my mind off my own urgent yearnings and devoted myself entirely to their enjoyments. At times, one girl would be up among the peaks by herself, and her sister would regard her—and my ministrations to her—with a wondering and marveling smile. Then it would be her turn, while the other watched and approved. Not until both the girls were dazed and delighted with their new-discovered sensations, and well moistened by their own secretions, did I play them both at once to a veritable frenzy. While both were oblivious to everything but their ecstasy, I penetrated first one, then the other—easily and pleasurably for me and them, too—and continued giving myself into one and the other, so that even I do not remember in which order, or in which twin I first made spruzzo.

  After that first and musically perfect triad, I let the girls rest and pant and perspire happily for a while, and smile at me and each other, until, when they had regained their breath, Biliktu and Buyantu were joking aloud and laughing at their earlier silliness about modesty and decorum. So then, free of restraints, we did many other things, and more leisurely, so that when one girl was not actively participating she could get a vicarious enjoyment by watching and assisting the other two of us. But I did not neglect either of them for very long. I had, after all, learned from the Persian Princesses Moth and Shams how two females could be thoroughly pleasured at once, and myself with them. The doing of that was of course far nicer with these Mongol twins, since neither of them had to remain invisible during the proceedings. Indeed, before the night was over, they had shed all vestiges of prudery, and were quite ready for their innermost dan-tian to be seen by me or each other, and for their and my pink places to do or be done to, in every variation I and they could think of.

  So our first night together was an unqualified success, and the precursor of many other such nights, during which we became ever more inventive and acrobatic. It surprised even me: how many more combinations can be made of three than of two. But we did not always frolic in a threesome. The twins, otherwise so identical, were dissimilar in one physiological respect: they got their jing-gi, their monthly affliction, in a tidy alternation. Hence, for a few days every two weeks or so, I enjoyed an ordinary coupling with just a single female, while th
e other slept apart and jealously sulked.

  However, young and lusty as I was, I did have some physical limits, and I also had other occupations that required my strength and stamina and alertness. After a couple of months, I began to find rather debilitating what the twins called their xing-yu or “sweet desires”—and what I called their insatiable appetites. So I suggested to them that my participation was not always necessary, and I told them about the “hymn of the convent,” as the Lady Ilaria had named it. At the notion of a woman’s manipulating her own petals and stars and so on, Buyantu and Biliktu looked as shocked as they had on our first night of acquaintance. When I went on to tell them what the Princess Moth had once confided to me—how she relieved and gratified the neglected women of the Shah Zaman’s anderun, the twins looked even more shocked, and Buyantu exclaimed:

  “That would be indecent!”

  I said mildly, “You complained about indecency once before, and I think I proved you mistaken.”

  “But—a woman doing to another woman! An act of gua-li! That would be indecent!”

  “I daresay it would, if one or both of you were old or ugly. But you are both beautiful and desirable women. I see no reason why you could not find as much pleasure in each other as I find in you.”

  Again the girls looked askance at each other, and again that caused them to blush, and that made them giggle—a trifle naughtily, a trifle guiltily. Still, it took some persuasion on my part before they would lie down naked together, without me between them, and let me remain fully clothed while I instructed and guided their movements. They were tense and reticent to do to each other what they let me do with no reticence whatever. But as I took them through the nuns’ hymn, note by note, so to speak—gently moving Buyantu’s fingertip to caress Biliktu here, gently moving Biliktu’s head so that her lips pressed Buyantu there—I could see them get aroused in spite of themselves. And after some time of play under my guidance, they began to forget about me. When their small stars twinkled erect, the girls did not need me to show them how they could employ those darling protrusions to good effect on each other. When first Biliktu’s lotus began to unfold its petals, Buyantu needed no one to show her how to gather its dew. And when both their butterflies were aroused and fluttering, the girls twined together as naturally and passionately as if they had been born to be lovers instead of sisters.