The Journeyer

by Gary Jennings

  “Yes, Ali, we could make better time on our own,” I replied to his query. “But I think we ought not. For one reason, it would appear disrespectful of the Khakhan, and we may have need of his continued warm friendship. For another reason, if we stay with the train, anyone who has any news of Mar-Janah will have no trouble finding us to tell us.”

  That was quite true, though I did not confide to Ali all my reasoning in that regard. I had convinced myself that Mar-Janah had been abducted by my whisperer enemy. Since I knew not who that was, I saw no use in our riding furiously to the city just to cast about in desperation. It was more logical to assume that the whisperer would be keeping an eye out for me, and would the sooner see me if I arrived in conspicuous pomp, and could the sooner deliver his next message, or his ransom demand for Mar-Janah’s deliverance, or just another taunting threat. It was our best hope for making contact with him, or at least with his veiled woman courier, and eventually with Mar-Janah.

  My staying with the Khakhan’s entourage also enabled me to keep a protective watch over Hui-sheng, but that had no influence on my decision not to hurry ahead. Hui-sheng was still traveling in company with her Mongol mistresses, and had no knowledge of my interest in her or the arrangements I had made for her future. I did pay her some occasional little attentions, just so she would not forget me—helping her climb in or out of the concubines’ carriage when we stopped at a karwansarai or some provincial official’s country mansion, fetching her a dipper of water from an inn-yard well, gathering a posy of a village’s thrown flowers and presenting it to her with a gallant bow—trifles like that. I wished her to think well of me, but I had now more reason than before not to force my suit upon her.

  I had earlier decided to wait a decent interval; now I had to. It seemed to me that my whisperer enemy knew always where I was and what I was doing. I dared not risk that enemy’s learning that I had any special attachment to Hui-sheng. If he was malicious enough to strike at me through a dearly esteemed friend like Mar-Janah, God only knew what he might do to someone he thought really dear to me. It was hard for me to keep my gaze from lingering on her and to resist doing little services for the reward of her dimpled smile. I would have had an easier time of it if Ali and I had ridden on ahead, as he wanted to do. But, for his sake and Mar-Janah’s, I stayed with the train, trying not to stay always near Hui-sheng.

  KHANBALIK AGAIN

  1

  IN addition to the troop of horsemen staying a day ahead of us, there were other riders continually galloping off to Khanbalik or galloping up to us, ostensibly to keep the Khakhan informed of developments there. Ali Babar anxiously questioned each arriving courier, but none had any further word of his missing wife. In fact, the riders’ only function was to keep track of the train of the Dowager Empress of the Sung, which was also approaching the city. That enabled Kubilai to set our rate of march so that our procession finally swept down the great central avenue of Khanbalik on the same day—at the same hour—that hers entered from the south.

  The entire populace of the city, and probably of the whole province for hundreds of li around, was jammed along the sides of the avenue and clogging every fringe street and dangling from windows and clinging to roof eaves, to greet the triumphant Khakhan with roars of approval, with flapping banners and swirling pennants, with the booming and flaring overhead of the fiery trees and sparkling flowers, with a ceaseless and ear-thumping fanfare of trumpets and gongs and drums and bells. The people continued to carry on as the only slightly less splendiferous train of the Sung Empress came up the avenue and halted respectfully on meeting ours. The crowds muted their clamor a little when the Khakhan got chivalrously down from his throne-carriage and advanced to take the old Empress’s hand. He gently helped her down from her carriage to the street, and enfolded her in a brotherly embrace of welcome, at which the people bellowed and blared a really deafening uproar of noise and music.

  After the Khan and the Empress had both got into his throne-carriage, there was a period of confused milling, as the contingents of the two trains churned about to coalesce and march all together to the palace, where would begin the many days required for the ceremonies of formal surrender: the conferences and discussions, the drafting and inditing and signing of documents, the handing over to Kubilai of Sung’s great seal of state or Imperial Yin, the public readings of proclamations, the balls and banquets mingling celebration of victory and condolence of defeat. (So condolent was Kubilai’s chief wife, the Khatun Jamui, that she settled a generous pension on the deposed Empress and granted that she and her two grandsons be let to live out their lives in religious retirement, the old woman in a Buddhist nunnery, the boys in a lamasarai.)

  I held my horse back in the less congested rear of the procession as it moved toward the palace, and motioned for Ali to do the same. When I had the opportunity, I reined my mount alongside his and leaned close so he could hear me over the ambient tumult without my having to shout: “You see now why I wanted us to arrive with the Khakhan. Everybody in the city is congregated here today, including any who know where Mar-Janah is, and so now they know we are here, too.”

  “It would seem so,” he said. “But no one has plucked at my stirrup to volunteer any word.”

  “I think I know where the word will be volunteered,” I said. “Stay with me as far as the palace courtyard and then, when we dismount, let us seem to separate, for I am sure we are being watched. Then this is what we will do.” And I gave him certain instructions.

  The untidy procession went shouldering and elbowing and nudging its way through the pressing onlookers and well-wishers, so slowly that the day was ending when we finally reached the palace, and Ali and I entered the stable court as we had done on our very first arrival at Khanbalik, in a deepening twilight. The courtyard was a turmoil of people and animals and noise and confusion; if anyone was watching us, he could not have had a very clear view. Nevertheless, when we got down from our horses and handed them over to stable hands, we made a distinct show of waving farewells and going off in opposite directions.

  Walking as tall and visibly as I could, I went to a horse trough and splashed water at my dusty face. When I straightened up, I looked about and made faces expressive of distaste at the surrounding commotion. I started jostling through the mob toward the nearest palace portal, then stopped and made flagrant gestures of repugnance—not worth the effort —and plowed my way out of the crowd to where I was conspicuously alone and apart. Keeping my distance from everyone I met, I sauntered slowly across uncovered walks and through gardens and over streamlet bridges and along terraces until I came to the newer parkland on the other side of the palace. I stayed always in the open, out from under roofs or trees, so that anyone who wanted to could see me and follow me. On the farther side of the palace grounds, there were fewer people, but still there were people about—minor functionaries trotting here and there on court business, servants and slaves scurrying about at their chores—for the Khakhan’s arrival naturally caused a beehive stir.

  However, when I came to the Kara Hill and began idly to climb its path, as if I were only seeking to get away from the crush of people below, I really did. There was no one else in sight up there. So I strolled on uphill to the Echo Pavilion, and first walked around its entire outside perimeter, to give my putative pursuer a chance to dodge inside the wall. Finally, as if paying no least attention to where I was or what I was doing, I ambled through the Moon Gate in the wall and around the inside terrace. When I was at the farthest remove from the Moon Gate, the pavilion squarely between me and it, I leaned back against the ornamental wall and contemplated the stars coming out one by one in the plum-colored sky above the pavilion’s dragon-ridge roof. I had moved only leisurely the whole way from the entry courtyard to here, but my heart was beating as if I had run hard, and I feared that its thumping must be audible all around the pavilion precincts. But I had not long to worry about that. The voice came, as it had come before: a whisper in the Mongol tongue, low and sib
ilant and unidentifiable even as to gender, but as clearly as if the whisperer were right at my side, whispering the words I expected:

  “Expect me when you least expect me.”

  I immediately bellowed, “Now, Nostril”—in my excitement forgetting his new name and estate.

  So did he, for he bellowed back, “I have him, Master Marco!”

  And then I heard the grunts and gasps of a scuffle, as clearly as if it were being fought right at my feet, though I had to run all the way around the pavilion before I found the two rolling and struggling together on the very jamb of the Moon Gate. One of them was Ali Babar. The other I could not recognize; he appeared to be just a shapeless welter of robes and scarves. But that one I seized and tore away from Ali and held while Ali got to his feet. Panting, he pointed and said, “Master —it is no man—it is the veiled woman.”

  I realized then that I was clutching a not very big or muscular body, but I did not lessen my grip. I held on, and the body writhed fiercely, while Ali reached out and yanked the veils off her.

  “Well?” I snarled. “Who is the bitch?” All I could see was the back of her dark hair and, past that, Ali’s face, which got very round of eye and dilated of nostril and astonished and almost comically frightened.

  “Mashallah!” he gasped. “Master—it is the dead come alive! It is your onetime maidservant—Buyantu!”

  At that exclamation of her name she ceased to struggle and stood slumped in sullen resignation. So I eased my tight grasp of her, and turned her around to scrutinize her in what remained of the twilight. She did not look as if she had ever been dead, but her face was much harder and tight-skinned and colder than I remembered it, and her dark hair had much silver in it, and her eyes were defiant slits. Ali was still regarding her with wary consternation, and my voice was not entirely steady when I said:

  “Tell us everything, Buyantu. I am glad to see you still among the living, but by what miracle did you survive? Is it possible that Biliktu lives, too? Somebody died in that calamity in my chambers. And what do you here, whispering in the Echo Pavilion?”

  “Please, Marco,” said Ali, in an even more trembly voice. “First things first. Where is Mar-Janah?”

  Buyantu snapped, “I will not talk to a lowly slave!”

  “He is no longer a slave,” I said. “He is a freeman who has been bereft of his wife. She is a freewoman besides, so her abductor faces execution as a felon.”

  “I do not choose to believe a word you say. And I will not talk to a slave.”

  “Talk to me, then. You had best unburden yourself, Buyantu. I can promise no pardon for a felony but, if you tell us all—and if Mar-Janah is safely restored to us—the penalty may be something more lenient than execution.”

  “I spit on your pardon and leniency!” she said wildly. “The dead cannot be executed. I did die in that calamity!”

  Ali’s eyes and nostril widened again, and he took a step backward from her. I almost did, too, her words sounded so dreadfully sincere. But I stood my ground, and grasped her again and shook her and said menacingly, “Talk!”

  Still stubborn, she said only, “I will not talk before a slave.”

  I could have wrung her until she did, but it might have taken all night. I turned to Ali and suggested:

  “This may go more quickly if you absent yourself, and quickness may be vital.” Either he saw the sense of that or he was not unwilling to leave the vicinity of one apparently come alive from the dead. Anyway, he nodded, so I told him, “Wait for me in my chambers. You can make sure for me that I do have those chambers again, and that they are habitable. I will come for you as soon as I know anything useful. Trust me.”

  When he had gone down the hill, out of hearing, I said again to Buyantu, “Talk. Is the woman Mar-Janah safe? Is she alive?”

  “I do not know and I do not care. We dead care nothing. For the living or the dead.”

  “I have no time to hear your philosophies. Just tell me what happened.”

  She shrugged and said sullenly, “That day …” I did not have to inquire what day she meant. “On that day I first began to hate you, and I continued to hate you, and I hate you still. But on that day I also died. Dead bodies cool, and I suppose burning hatreds do, too. Anyway, I do not mind now, letting you know of my hatred and how I manifested it. That can make no difference now.”

  She paused, and I prodded, “I know you were spying on me for the Wali Achmad. Start with that.”

  “That day … you sent me to request audience for you with the Khakhan. When I returned, I found you and my—you and Biliktu in bed together. I was enraged, and I let you see some of how enraged I was. You left me and Biliktu to tend the brazier fire under a certain pot. You did not tell us it was dangerous, and I did not suspect. Being still in a rage and wishing you harm, I left Biliktu to watch the brazier, and I went to the Minister Achmad, who had long been paying me to inform him of your doings.”

  Even though I had known about that, I must have made a noise of displeasure, for she shrieked at me:

  “Do not sniff! Do not pretend it is a practice beneath your high principles. You used a spy, too. That slave yonder.” She waved in the direction Ali had gone. “And you paid him, too, by pimping for him! You paid him with the female slave Mar-Janah.”

  “Never mind that. Go on.”

  She paused to recollect her thoughts. “I went to the Minister Achmad, for I had much to tell him. I had, that very morning, overheard you and the slave talking of the Minister Pao, a Yi passing as a Han. It was that morning, too, that you promised the slave he would wed that woman Mar-Janah. I told those things to the Minister Achmad. I told him that you were at that moment impeaching the Minister Pao to the Khan Kubilai. The Minister Achmad immediately wrote a message and sent it by a servant to that Minister Pao.”

  “Aha,” I muttered. “And Pao made a timely escape.”

  “Then the Minister Achmad sent another steward to fetch you to him when you left the Khakhan. He bade me wait, meanwhile, and I did. When you came, I was hiding in his private quarters.”

  “And not alone,” I interrupted. “There was someone else in there that day. Who was she?”

  “She?” echoed Buyantu, as if puzzled. Then she gave me á calculating look from her slit eyes.

  “The large woman. I know she was there, for she almost came out into the room where the Arab and I were talking.”

  “Oh … yes … the large woman. That exceptionally large woman. We did not speak. I assumed that person to be merely some new fancy of the Minister Achmad. Perhaps you are aware that he has some eccentric fancies. If that person had a woman’s name, I did not ask it, and do not know it. We merely sat in each other’s company, looking sidelong at each other, until you departed again. Are you much interested in learning the identity of that large woman?”

  “Perhaps not. Surely not everyone in Khanbalik was involved in these devious plots. Go on, Buyantu.”

  “As soon as you left his chambers, the Minister Achmad came for me again and took me to the window. He showed me—you were wandering up the Kara Hill—up here, to this Echo Pavilion. He told me to run after you, but unseen, and whisper the words you heard. I was pleased to make secret threats against you, even though I did not know what was threatened, for I hated you. Hated you!”

  She choked on her rabid words, and stopped. I could not help feeling some compassion, so I said, “And a few minutes later, you had even more reason for hating me.”

  She nodded wretchedly, and swallowed, and got her voice working again. “I was returning to your chambers when they flew all apart, before my eyes, with that terrible noise and flame and smoke. Biliktu died then—and so did I, in everything but body. She had long been my sister, my twin, and we had long loved each other. I might have felt wrath enough if I had lost only my twin sister. But it was you who made us more than sisters. You made us lovers. And then you destroyed my loved one. You!”

  That last word burst out in a spray of spittle. I prudently s
aid nothing, and again it took her a moment before she could go on.

  “I would happily have killed you then. But too many things were happening, too many people about. And then you went suddenly away. I was left alone. I was as alone as a person can be. The only one I loved in the world was dead, and everyone else thought I was, too. I had no employment to occupy me, no one to answer to, no place I was expected to be. I felt quite thoroughly dead, myself. I still do.”

  She fell morosely silent again, so I prodded. “But the Arab found employment for you.”

  “He knew I had not been in the room with Biliktu. He was the only one who knew. No one else suspected my existence. He told me he might have use for such an invisible woman, but for a long time he did not. He paid me wages, and I lived alone in a room down in the city, and I sat and looked at the walls of it.” She sighed deeply. “How long has it been?”