Silk and Song

by Dana Stabenow

  Jaufre laughed. “Even the priest has succumbed to our wicked influence,” he said, winking at Félicien, who reddened again. “I would look at these maps, Hari. Maps, old and new, are always valuable to someone. And light in weight.” He paused, and exchanged a look with Shasha. “You are both continuing with us, then?”

  “I am,” Félicien said. “I have been five years in the East, and I would see the shores of the Middle Sea again.”

  “Hari?” Jaufre said.

  “By all means, young sir,” Hari said, bowing. “The Nestorian patriarch here in Kabul has told me that no seeker after truth can cease from looking until he sees Jerusalem.”

  “We’re only going to Gaza,” Jaufre said. “But Jerusalem, I’m told, isn’t even twenty leagues away.” He stood up, aware that Shasha’s healer’s eye was upon him and determined to betray by neither wince nor flinch that he was still very shaky on his feet. “Very well, then. I will go to the market and see what I can find in the way of a few decent camels.”

  Shasha rose, too. “I’ll come with you. I want to see what the current prices are for lapis.”

  He held up an admonitory finger. “Don’t buy until we know how many camels I can find. There could be nothing on the market but fifty-year old nags suffering from advanced blister.” He felt for the purse at his waist. It was plump enough. He patted it and raised an eyebrow in Shasha’s direction.

  “If I am forbidden to buy,” Shasha said tartly, “I have more than enough to see out our stay.”

  She’d been testy with him since he’d woken up that morning, and he had sense enough to realize that she was as worried about Johanna as he was, however determined they both were to keep it to themselves. Rambahadur Raj’s news that Ogodei was moving south in what might be first Johanna’s direction and then theirs was unwelcome and unsettling. “I have no right to forbid you to buy, Shasha,” he said mildly. “I advise only caution in what we spend of our available funds. We have a long way to go, and I prefer food in my belly at regular intervals.”

  Félicien and Hari pretended not to hear either their squabbling or the subject matter, Félicien because he paid his own way with songs and stories and Hari because Jaufre was convinced he had no notion of the concept of money. Still, he had the knack of making friends, a good asset anywhere on the Road. Jaufre thought of Hari enthroned on a pile of carpets, deep in philosophical discussion with Ogodei on the plateau of Terak, and quashed the memory immediately. Johanna had still been with them then, and the farther he kept Johanna from his thoughts the better off they would all be. He fixed his thoughts instead on Gaza where they would meet again. Admittedly his mental wanderings overlay the prospect with a golden haze involving the two of them alone and with most of their clothes off. It was a vision enticing enough to move him forward.

  But she would be there, with her clothes or without them. He would not, could not admit of any other possibility.

  “I’ll walk in with you as far as the storyteller’s café,” Félicien said, falling beside him. “There is a man from Turgesh who tells the most delightful tales of a Nasredden Hoja.”

  “Increasing your repertoire, young scholar?” Hari stood. “And I will return to the madrasa, to inquire after the man of maps. Young sir, is there a date for our departure?”

  “Rambahadur Raj gave me to understand that we will be off at the earliest possible moment,” Jaufre said. “There are…” He glanced at Shasha. “The times are unsettled,” he said. “Rambahadur Raj wishes to outpace them.”

  They departed for the city in a body, separating at the Grand Mosque. Out of sight of the others, Jaufre allowed his pace to slow and silently cursed again his physical inability to walk even a league without having to mop the sweat from his face. He wondered gloomily if he would have to be roped to his mount on the Road, and made a mental vow that he would do no such thing, if he slid from the back of his camel and was trampled beneath the hooves of the entire caravan for it.

  He sought out the camel yard and looked over the stock. The camel dealer singled him out as a young man of little experience and made his best effort to show him every sway-backed camel, horse and donkey with infected hooves and spavined knees he had in stock, most of which also exhibited bronchial coughs that splattered everything with yellow phlegm, including the dealer, whose robe showed signs of having endured the assault numerous times before.

  Jaufre’s acerbic comments on the kind and condition of what was on offer cast the situation in a different light, and the dealer led him round the back where animals in better condition waited in varying degrees of patience for purchase by their new owners. Jaufre found six camels whose teeth were not yet yellow with age, whose coats were thick enough to withstand both heat and cold, and who moved as if all their feet and the legs attached to them were healthy enough to last the distance to Gaza, or at least to the next city large enough to support a camel yard, where the sick, lame and lazy could be replaced.

  They adjourned to the dealer’s office and bargained over mint tea. An hour later Jaufre emerged feeling better than he had since he woke up, weak and enfeebled and bedridden. With the single camel Firas and Shasha had managed to liberate from the sheik’s men, that meant they had seven head of freight stock, capable of transporting forty-two hundredweight of goods.

  He next sought out the offices of Grigori the Tatar, who was a swarthy, stocky, taciturn man who said very little but whose sharp eyes saw everything. “Young sir,” he said, rising to his feet. “The foster son of Wu Li honors me again with his presence.”

  “I thank you, Grigori the Tatar,” Jaufre said, and tried not to fall onto the carpet-covered bench Wu Li’s agent waved him to. Grigori sent for the inevitable mint tea and cakes, and Jaufre regained his composure and commanded himself not to think of his trembling legs.

  Grigori offered brief commiseration again over the death of Wu Li, which Jaufre accepted with what he hoped was dignity, and wondered how to ask his next question. “Have you,” he said, “had any messages from any other members of the house of Wu since last we spoke?” The thought of Wu Li’s widow extending her clawed reach this far was unlikely but not impossible. It was lucky for them that she had not had time before Wu Li’s death to gather all the reins of Wu Li’s business into her hands. He thought of the tiny woman with the painted face and the gilded fingernails as long as her forearms, a being of infinite forethought and malice, brooding in Cambaluc on the wrongs she had suffered at Johanna’s hands, and had to repress a sudden smile. And it had been lucky for them, too, that Johanna was such an accomplished thief.

  “None,” Grigori said. “Only yourself and Wu Li’s foster daughter, young sir.”

  Jaufre nodded in acknowledgement, hoping his relief didn’t show. “I went to the camel dealer you recommended,” he said after the refreshments had been delivered. “When the camels are delivered and accepted, he will bring you a piece of paper with Wu Li’s bao and an amount inscribed upon it.” He handed over a pouch. “Of your kindness, please give him this as payment in full, less your commission, of course.”

  Grigori accepted the pouch and caused it to disappear somewhere about his person. “Young sir,” he said. “You are lately come from the east. Is the news true? Are the Mongols once again on the march?”

  “I believe it to be true, Grigori,” Jaufre said. He hesitated. “If a much younger and less worldly man may presume to advise his elder in years and experience…” A minute nod gave him permission. “I know that the mountain passes between here and Persia are filled with fierce tribes who gave pause to Alexander and even Genghis Khan himself. And perhaps, even if Ogodei does make it this far, your city leaders will be wise enough to yield to him.”

  Not a muscle moved in Grigori’s face but Jaufre got the distinct impression that his host had little faith in the wisdom of Kabul’s leaders.

  “My advice to my elder would be to look to his own,” Jaufre said. “And to do so sooner, rather than later.” He paused, and stretched his back. The wound
ached much less now, more of a phantom pain than a real one. As with Rambahadur Raj, he was not about to admit that he himself knew Ogodei. Absent proof, there was no reason for the Tatar to take his words as other than youthful braggadocio, and even if he was believed, he had no wish to become known as an authority. However, as a member of the family of Wu Li, he owed a duty to a retainer in that family’s service. “The havildar of the caravan recently arrived in Kabul?”

  “Rambahadur Raj,” Grigori said. “He is well known as an able and prudent man.”

  “He is determined to leave Kabul at his earliest opportunity.”

  Grigori said nothing for a moment, and when he did speak again it was to talk of lesser things.

  Jaufre made his farewells and went next to the caravansary on the outskirts of the city, where he found Rambahadur Raj overseeing the beating of an unfortunate man who, Rambahadur Raj said, had had the temerity to try to steal a horse that belonged to one of the merchants. His back was bloody when he was finally released, but he could stagger off under his own power and at least he still had both of his hands. Commonly the sentence for thievery had the right one lopped off. “But have you seen how many one-handed men there are in this city, Jaufre of Cambaluc?” said Rambahadur Raj. “I would not add to the city’s burden of men who cannot work for their living. Not that this one did, but perhaps his sore back will remind him that there are less painful ways to earn one’s keep.” The havildar waved Jaufre to a seat before his yurt and sent for refreshments.

  When they came, mint tea of course, Rambahadur Raj cocked an eyebrow. “You have news, young sir?”

  “I do, havildar. My party will join you with three donkeys, six horses, and seven camels. If we can find reliable help, we will bring two and possibly three men to help with the livestock.”

  “A cook?”

  “We have our own.” At another quirk of an eyebrow, Jaufre added, “The healer, of whom I spoke before.”

  Both of Rambahadur Raj’s eyebrows went up. “A healer and a cook,” he said. “I would meet this paragon.”

  “You will, havildar. When do we leave?”

  “In three days’ time,” the havildar said promptly. “Is that agreeable to you?”

  “It is,” Jaufre said. He hesitated. “I noticed when I was last with you,” he said finally, “that you had a slaver in your train.”

  “I did.”

  “Will he be traveling with us?”

  “No. He passes south, on through the mountains to Punjab.” The havildar raised an eyebrow. “Do I understand you to have some objection to traveling with slavers, young sir?”

  “My mother was captured and sold into slavery,” Jaufre said bluntly, too exhausted to dissemble. “I would speak with him to see if he has heard of her.”

  “I see,” the havildar said. “My sympathies, Jaufre of Cambaluc.”

  “I thank you, Rambahadur Raj. May I have the slaver’s name and direction?”

  “Ibn Battuta is his name. He is a Berber from Maroc, and a very young man to be such a successful trader, in my estimation. He had fully three hundred in stock when he joined us in Balkh.”

  “Three hundred!”

  “As many,” Rambahadur Raj said, nodding. “Although he did suffer some attrition through the mountain passes. Those Afghans.” He shook his head, and observed Jaufre with a sapient eye. “You are prepared to defend yourselves, Jaufre of Cambaluc?”

  “We are, havildar.”

  “Well, well, I doubt it will come to that.” The havildar grinned. “Or what are you paying me for?”

  Jaufre followed the havildar’s directions and found Ibn Battuta established in a large house with an enclosed courtyard near the slave market. He begged an audience of the doorman, an enormous Nubian who looked as if he could pick Jaufre up and break him in half with very little effort. Jaufre tried not to be envious of the man’s obvious strength and excellent health.

  He had used the name of Rambahadur Raj to gain entrance and so was not very surprised to be granted an audience. Ibn Battuta was indeed a young man, not very much older than Jaufre himself. Tall, slim, richly dressed, his manner was grave and somewhat avuncular, as if he feared his youthful appearance would cause people to take him less seriously and so was determined to make up the difference by assuming the manner of a man three times his age.

  He was surrounded by pen and ink and pieces of parchment, but he set these to one side upon Jaufre’s entrance and sent for refreshments. Jaufre already felt awash in mint tea, but he minded his manners and made no demur. Presently it was delivered by a slender girl dressed in the briefest of clothing, who fluttered her eyelashes at Jaufre.

  “You like?” Ibn Battuta said, noting his interest. “A good price can be arranged.”

  Jaufre had a sudden vision of his mother in just such a situation and knew an instantaneous, consuming fury. It took him a moment to muster up a civil tone. “I am not in the market for a slave at present, effendi,” he said, and waited until the girl had left the room to come to the point. “Effendi, my mother had the misfortune to be traveling in a caravan that was attacked by bandits. She was captured and sold into slavery.”

  “Unfortunate,” Ibn Battuta said. As an owner and a seller of slaves and a successful one if these surroundings were any indication, he could hardly offer his condolences.

  “Yes,” said Jaufre. “She was Greek, with dark hair and eyes. Her name was Agalia. It may be that she was given the name of the Lycian Lotus when she was sold.”

  “When was this?” the slave trader asked.

  Jaufre swallowed. “Seven years ago.”

  Ibn Battuta stared at him, startled out of his assumed stolidity. “Seven years! My dear young sir!” He strove to regain his composure. “I sympathize with your loss, but the thing is impossible. Surely you see that.” He gestured with a hand that had never seen labor. “Do you have the name of the buyer?”

  Jaufre shook his head. “I know only that he was a sheik out of the west.”

  “There are many such sheiks,” Ibn Battuta said, not unkindly.

  “I know,” Jaufre said. “No such woman has passed through your hands, effendi? Or been offered you for sale? Dark, slender but well-formed. She would now be forty-one years of age. Agalia, or the Lycian Lotus.”

  Ibn Battuta shook his head. “I am very sorry, young sir.”

  Jaufre stayed just long enough not to be rude, and left.

  He was exhausted by the time he got home. He stopped at the fountain to wash and drink long of the cool, refreshing water, and sat for a time on the edge of the fountain, gazing unseeingly into the water.

  He had been asking after his mother in every slave market between here and Cambaluc, and the answer had always been the same. Seven years ago, the Road had swallowed his mother up and left nothing of her behind for him to find. She was lost to him.

  Oh, he would keep asking as they traveled farther into the west. He didn’t think he could stop himself, but he had to begin to accept the possibility that he would never find her. He hoped with all his heart that the man she had been sold to in the Kashgar slave market was a good master, and kind to her. She had been fortunate in her beauty and her intelligence. Certainly the price she had reportedly brought meant that she would be highly valued by whomever paid it.

  He closed his eyes and let himself remember the sound of her voice in his ears, the feel of her arms around him, the laughter of his parents together.

  He opened his eyes and blinked away tears. What was the name of Rambahadur Raj’s second in command? Alaric? Alaric the Templar, the havildar had called him, seemingly in jest and definitely to the other man’s displeasure.

  Jaufre’s father had been a Templar. And he had had a sword like Alaric’s, the one now hanging from the wall inside.

  He got up and went to stand before it, looking at it as if for the first time. He knew the names of the various parts of it now, as he had not as a child when it was all he had managed to save from the men who killed his father th
ree days from Kashgar. A large pommel, set with precious stones. A metal grip covered in sharkskin, much less ornamental. An abbreviated guard. The blade itself, made of something very near but not quite Damascus steel, or so he’d been told by every smith he’d taken it to. The edge kept sharp for longer than any other blade he’d ever owned. He’d cut himself on it enough times.

  Yes, Alaric’s sword was very like this one.

  And if his employer was to be believed, he was or had been a Templar. Jaufre did not know exactly what a Templar was, but he did know from his childhood memories that his father had been one too, before he had met and married his mother. Perhaps Alaric had known of him.

  Perhaps he had known him.

  If he had lost his mother, perhaps he could at least find out more about his father. Perhaps he had other family to be found, somewhere in the West.

  Suddenly and thoroughly exhausted, he stretched out on his cot. He was instantly asleep.

  Muted voices and the smell of roasting meat woke him at twilight. He blinked his eyes and found Félicien stirring something in a copper pan under Shasha’s direction, and Hari in a corner with his legs folded beneath him, chanting his oms.

  Jaufre pushed himself to a sitting position. Shasha looked over her shoulder. “Ah. You wake, just in time for dinner. Well timed.”

  He rose to his feet, yawning hugely, and stumbled outside to use the necessary. Dinner was being served on his return, browned root vegetables baked in cabbage leaves and a skewer of goat’s meat, this latter for all but Hari, who ate no meat. More of last year’s apples followed.

  It might have been the best meal Jaufre had ever eaten. It was amazing what a little forward motion did to improve one’s appetite. He cleaned their few dishes and tidied their cooking utensils away and they gathered outside their door around a ring of small rocks in which a fire had been kindled. Smoke rose from similar fires in the little enclave of mud-brick buildings that constituted their neighborhood. The stars were winking into existence overhead and a three-quarter moon was cresting the peak of an eastern mountain.