Silk and Song

by Dana Stabenow

  “I found camels,” Jaufre said. “Six of them.”

  “Six,” Shasha said. “I did not think you would find half so many.”

  By her expression he could tell that she was mentally adding up all the goods she had found in the market that day and dividing them into seven loads. “I spoke with Rambahadur Raj, too. We leave in three days.”

  Félicien scratched with vigor. “Good. I don’t believe I have stayed in a more pest-ridden place in my life.”

  “Did you find your man of maps, Hari?”

  “I did, young sir, I did.” Hari hitched his yellow drapery about himself, one shoulder bare as always. He seemed impervious to cold and heat alike. “He lives in a small room he rents from the mullah’s sister. I went there, and what I found was curious, most curious indeed.”

  “He has maps?”

  “He does, and all manner of other curiosities. He showed me a very old memoir, almost assuredly a copy, of a treatise written by a Christian in Sinai. It is called The Geography of Christ, I believe he said, or something very like. It is written in a tongue foreign to me but he translated some of it. This writer claims there are only four seas: the Middle Sea, the Persian Sea, the Arabian Sea and the Caspian Sea. Even more strangely, he claims there are only four nations: the Indians in the east, the Celts in the west, the Scythians in the north and the Ethiops in the south.”

  Jaufre looked at Shasha. “He wasn’t a Christian, Hari, he was Muslim. His name was Cosmas, and he was of Alexandria.”

  Hari looked surprised. “You have heard of this man?”

  “We have. Our uncle told us of him, before we left Everything Under the Heavens. Cosmas constructed a box, he said, with a map of the world in it. His world. It evidently left out quite a bit. Or it was a very small box.”

  Hari meditated on this information for a moment. “The man of the many maps, his name is Ibn Shad, he says that the author of the book signs himself a Christian. And that he apparently was no scholar, as he has the shape of the world flat, longer by two than it is wide, and founded on their god. By which I took to mean held by him.”

  “Like Atlas,” Jaufre said.

  “Atlas?”

  “A Greek god of whom my mother told me. I can’t remembered the full tale, but he misbehaved somehow and was condemned to hold the entire world on his shoulders for all eternity.”

  “A round world or a flat world?” Shasha said.

  “Be cautious,” Félicien said unexpectedly. “Especially after we arrive in the West.”

  They looked at him. “Cautious?” Shasha said. “But why?”

  Félicien poked at the fire with a stick while they waited. “The god of the West, the god of my country, is a jealous god. Very jealous,” he said, emphasizing his point with a vicious jab that made the sparks fly upward. “Philosophy exists only as it relevant to faith. Therefore faith, in particular the Christian faith, dictates all philosophy, and only religious men can be scholars.” Another poke, more sparks. “Map-making, for example, is not respected, and any western map I have ever seen is dictated by the texts of the Christian Bible.”

  Hari looked intrigued. “The Bible?”

  “It is like the Koran, or the Upanishads, for Christians.” Félicien’s smile was crooked. “I believe I can even quote to you the exact verse that inspired Cosmas to his view of the world. ‘Thou shalt make a table also of setim wood: of two cubits in length, and a cubit in breadth, and cubit and a half in height.’ Exodus, chapter 25, verse 23.” He said the words first in Latin, and then translated for them, adding, “The church frowns upon travel, too.”

  “Travel?” Jaufre and Shasha spoke as a chorus of disbelief.

  Félicien’s smile was wry. The shadows cast by the flickering flames fined down his features, making them appear almost delicate. “I quote from the blessed St. Augustine himself, now. ‘And men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, yet pass over the mystery of themselves without a thought.’”

  “But—but—” Jaufre was spluttering.

  “We are meant to stay at home, then?” Shasha said skeptically.

  Félicien nodded. “So as to better contemplate the glory of god.”

  “Is god not in the mountains, and the waves, and the rivers, and the circuits of the stars, then?” Hari said.

  Félicien sighed. “So I thought, when I left home, Hari.”

  “Do you no longer think so, young scholar?” Hari said.

  Félicien raised his head, his eyes filled with fire. “Even more now than I did before, Hari. I left because what I wanted to study was forbidden me, and,” he laughed a little, “because I had seen a text even older than your Cosmas’ memoir, by a man called Solinus. He wrote two or three hundred years after Christ, and the text had these marvelous illustrations of all manner of creatures, the dog-men in Ethiopia, in Tartary dolphins that can leap the masts of ships, the dread Basilisk of the Syrtis whose breath is fatal.” He laughed again. “I found none of them, of course. But I found other things even more wonderful, built by the hand of god, and of man.” He looked around the circle. “And I found friends.”

  “But—but—travel?” Jaufre said. “How are goods moved, then? Do they make everything they need themselves?”

  “Oh, they trade,” Félicien said, “every chance they get, and traders, perforce, travel. They are not much respected. Of course many of them are Jews, which makes it easier for the Christians to despise the profession.”

  “I have heard of Jews,” Hari said, “but I have never met one. Tell me of them, young scholar.”

  “That,” Félicien said, “is a far too long an explanation to go into this evening. I will reserve it to while away the long hours on the Road between here and Gaza, good Hari.”

  “But—travel?” Jaufre said again.

  Shasha poked him in the side. “Remember what Uncle Cheng said,” she said. “We will do well to adopt the prevalent faith of whatever culture we happen to find ourselves in.”

  “Wise words,” Félicien said, nodding.

  “We don’t go to mosque,” Jaufre said. “And Hari says his prayers wherever we go.”

  “He says them in private,” Shasha said, “and we don’t shop on Fridays.” She changed the subject pointedly. “I found a merchant who deals exclusively in good quality lapis, if his samples are anything to go by. It was very expensive, until I mentioned Grigori the Tatar. He then cut his prices in half, but I think they are still too high. I found a trader who deals in gemstones, too, but he would not speak with a woman. I think we should employ Grigori in both of these negotiations.”

  “Copper?”

  She shook her head. “The prices are very high, I think because the mines close in the winter and the stocks are subsequently low in the spring.”

  “Well, we have seven camels. One is already loaded with spices—”

  “Not as loaded as it once was,” Shasha said. “I have traded perhaps half already.”

  “Why didn’t you—”

  She let her eyes flick down to their hems and back to his face. “I thought it would be best if it we were not known to have…special resources.”

  “We’ll have to use them sometime, Shasha.”

  “To pay for our passage across the Middle Sea,” Shasha said lightly. “We’ll let Johanna decide, when she deigns to rejoin us in Gaza.”

  “You seem very sure that she will,” Félicien said.

  Shasha looked at him in surprise, but he was looking at Jaufre.

  “Of course,” Jaufre said, and there was that simple certainty in his voice that stopped any further comment Félicien might have made. He bit his lip and looked away.

  Villagers began to appear in twos and threes, old women, young men, children up past their bedtime who had learned that song and story were to be found around the fire of the feranji. They brought naan fresh-baked that morning, and cool pomegranate juice in pails, and p
ieces of precious gaz, covered in spun sugar that whitened their fingers and mouths. Félicien got out his lute and struck up a lively tune that had evidently been acquired locally because everyone joined in on the chorus, and the rest of the evening was spent agreeably in song and story.

  The next day Jaufre took delivery of the camels. Two days later they loaded ten hundredweight of first quality rough cut, jewel grade lapis, five hundredweights of dried fruit, another of almonds in the shell, a quantity of well-made copper pots and pans that Shasha had found at a bargain price at the last minute, and a small bag of emeralds that no one knew about except for Shasha and Jaufre and which never left the pouch Shasha wore next to her skin beneath her tunic. She had wanted to buy some of the famous pomegranates of Kandahar but reluctantly agreed when Jaufre pointed out that they would only spoil. Their store of spices was augmented by mint (of course), saffron and cardamom.

  There was also a pack of twenty-five old and new maps rolled into a calfskin, as well as half a dozen bound manuscripts folded between sheets of parchment scraps, including Cosmas of Alexandria’s Topographia Christiana, and that geographical flight of fancy by one Gaius Julius Solinus called Collecteana rerum memorabilia, which Félicien had mentioned and upon which the old man had assured Jaufre most of Cosmas’ even more fanciful account was based. They were both copies, of course, and both in Latin. While Jaufre remembered very little of that language as laboriously schooled into him by Father John so many years before, since they were headed for a land of Latin speakers he was determined to learn it again so as not to be at a disadvantage when he got there.

  He had exited the old man of the maps’ lodging only to encounter Ibn Battuta on his way in. The slave trader regarded Jaufre’s full arms with a sour expression Jaufre recognized as part envy and part annoyance. He brushed by Jaufre without a greeting, and Jaufre walked home with a step made lighter by having beaten the slave trader to the preferred pieces of the old scholar’s stock.

  The afternoon before they would depart they moved down to the caravansary, accompanied by a gratifyingly universal bewailing on the part of their neighborhood. They pitched a new yurt near Rambahadur Raj’s and settled in. Félicien, with his unquenchable curiosity, struck out immediately to see who would be traveling with them. Hari went with him to see who worshipped at which altar.

  No sooner had they left than a voice called from the other side of the flap, and Jaufre stepped outside to find Alaric the Templar waiting for him. “Well met, Jaufre of Cambaluc,” he said.

  “Well met,” Jaufre said, unsure of how to address the man, since he had protested at Rambahadur Raj’s introduction. Jaufre was wearing his father’s sword, being able to bear its weight again, barely, and Alaric’s eyes went to it immediately.

  “A fine sword,” he said.

  “My father’s,” Jaufre said.

  “Do you mind?”

  Jaufre drew it forth and presented it, hilt first.

  Alaric, like Firas, handled the sword as if it were an extension of his arm, but he studied it with an intensity that seemed out of proportion to its existence.

  “It is a style very like your own,” Jaufre said.

  Alaric glanced down at the sword at his side. “It is.” He made a few passes with it before handing it back. “Are you a soldier?”

  “I’m a trader,” Jaufre said. “It is, alas, a profession that requires the occasional fight. I was studying with a sword master on the Road, before we became separated.”

  Alaric smiled, an expression that momentarily changed his long, sad face into something charming and attractive. “We practice, the men and I, at sunrise each day.”

  Jaufre wondered if all masters of the sword considered getting up before dawn as a requirement for a successful training program. “I would join you,” he said. He hesitated. He didn’t want to make excuses, but he didn’t want Alaric and his men to think they would be seeing Jaufre’s best effort on the morrow. Indeed, he knew a lively hope that raising his sword in a beginning parry would not leave him flat on his face. “I have been ill,” he said at last, “and I am not yet entirely recovered. I’m afraid I won’t provide much competition for you or any of your men.”

  “We’ll take it easy on you at first.” Alaric said. “But only at first.”

  Jaufre laughed, and other man smiled again and then grew serious. “We will need every sword, Jaufre of Cambaluc,” he said. “The mountain tribes that live along the pass between Kabul and Faryab are fierce and predatory. We fought off three attacks by bandits on our way here.”

  “And the times are unsettled,” Jaufre said, “with the Mongols abroad again. Every strong man in every community is out to acquire as much as he can before the Mongols come take it all away.”

  “So young and yet so wise,” Alaric said dryly.

  “It is only common sense,” Jaufre said, “and besides, haven’t we all seen it before?”

  Alaric’s face resettled itself into its customary melancholic lines. “Indeed we have.”

  He paused for a moment to look long into Jaufre’s face, long enough for the younger man to become restive beneath his gaze, and then abruptly bid him goodnight and strode off into the twilight.

  Jaufre looked after him with a thoughtful gaze. There had been a certain pained recognition in Alaric’s eyes when he looked at Jaufre’s sword, and even more so when he looked into Jaufre’s face, though Jaufre was certain that he had never met the other man in his life.

  Had he seen Robert de Beauville in Jaufre’s face, and Robert de Beauville’s sword hanging at Jaufre’s side?

  Jaufre slipped from the tent before sunrise the next morning, moving stealthily so as not to wake Shasha, who would have woken the entire caravan with her protests. He found the practice yard. Of course there was a wooden post. Firas’ practice field had had one just like it. He sighed, and waited for Alaric and the rest to arrive. One of them was sure to have a practice sword.

  An hour later, on legs that would barely hold him up, he returned to the site of their yurt to find it, mercifully, struck and packed away, along with their bedrolls. Shasha eyed him smolderingly but said nothing, while Félicien slipped him some naan and dried fruit. Hari was omming from his usual cross-legged position facing the rising sun. His eyes were closed but one of them opened to give Jaufre a quick head-to-toe survey before closing again. “Life is suffering,” he intoned. “Blessed be the way.”

  Jaufre measured the distance between the tip of his boot and Hari’s behind, but he didn’t have the requisite energy.

  All around the caravansary, men were shouting and camels were groaning as the caravan came slowly to life. Rambahadur Raj was everywhere, checking a girth, smacking the behind of a boy who wasn’t moving fast enough with a pack, consulting with first one traveler and then another. He strode up to Jaufre and ran an approving eye over their livestock, their packs, and them. “Yes!” he said. “Someone who knows how to balance a load so it won’t slip and pull the cursed camel off the trail!”

  Jaufre gave a tired grin. “I was well trained.”

  “You were indeed, young sir,” the havildar said. “Ready?” His quick eye had noticed the sweat drying on Jaufre’s brow. He probably already knew the reason for it. There were no secrets in a caravan.

  “Ready, havildar,” Jaufre said. No excuses, for whatever reason, for this man.

  “Good!” Rambahadur Raj said again, and turned to bellow, “Mount up! Mount up! Mount up!”

  Jaufre swung his leg over the saddle and settled himself down. His camel was a male, about fifteen, with a thick coat that would do much to keep Jaufre warm on the trail, at least through the mountains. When they reached the desert, that would be another matter, but that was for tomorrow. Today, if felt good to be on the move at last.

  Shasha was astride and her camel already on his feet, and as he watched she turned her head and looked toward the north.

  Johanna, he thought with a pang. His camel came to its feet and he nudged it next to Shasha’s.
“Gaza,” he said. “We will all meet again in Gaza.”

  “All of us?” she said.

  He didn’t know what she meant. “Yes, you, me and Johanna. All of us.”

  She shot him a glare that took him aback. “That isn’t all of us, Jaufre,” she said, and kicked her camel into a walk.

  He stared after her, agape. Félicien came up beside him on his donkey, looking up into his face. “She sent Firas after Johanna, Jaufre,” he said. “He may not have survived the attempt.”

  “Firas?” he said. “And Shasha?” His head swiveled around and he stared at the back of Shasha’s unyielding head.

  Félicien sighed and kicked his donkey into motion.

  The camels picked up stride and became a long, undulating line that snaked slowly out of the city and up into the foothills. He looked at the line of mountains, crowned with the remnants of a hard winter’s snow and ice. Johanna was somewhere on the other side of them.

  It wasn’t the first time Jaufre had been on the back of a camel, going in the opposite direction of a woman he loved. Then he had been ten years old. Now he was recovering from wound and illness and evidently even more helpless than he had been then. His heart in his breast ached as much as his whole body.

  Hari rose to his feet in a single fluid movement, shook the dust from his yellow robes, and mounted his donkey. “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future,” he said. “Concentrate the mind on the present moment, young Jaufre.”

  Jaufre would have glared at him, but he didn’t have the energy for that, either.

  7

  Balkh, summer, 1323

  THREE DAYS AND FIFTY hard leagues later, the refugees camped near a city mostly in ruins called Balkh—yet another city leveled by Mongols—and Firas prepared to go inside the city walls, such as they were, to find food and clothing for Hayat and Alma.

  “You’ll need money,” Johanna said, and sat down on a tree stump and prepared to draw upon the Bank of Lundi for the first time.