“You were imprisoned?”
“I was, in my lord of Agenois’ deepest dungeon.” Alaric grinned, his face bleached of color in the light of the moon. “For one night. I had a sister, a sister who rivaled Agalia for beauty, no less, and she—convinced the guard to allow her in to see me. He didn’t even search her. She brought me two blades strapped beneath her skirts, and I fought my way out and ran for it.”
Jaufre wondered what had happened to the sister, but thought on the whole it was better not to ask. “And returned to the East?”
“Yes.” Alaric made a show of dusting off his knees. “And took up my present occupation.” He hesitated, and looked at Jaufre. “I did ask after your father, and heard word now and then. I sent it back, as I could. But I never saw him, or Agalia again. I had no idea they had had a son.” He paused. “But the moment I saw you, I knew. You are his image.”
A prickle on the back of Jaufre’s neck told him that there was more to tell of this tale, or at least of Alaric’s part of the story, but he sensed that now was not the time to press for it. “Robert of Beauville,” he said instead. “Is Beauville a place, then?”
“No,” Alaric said. “Your father’s father is or was a landless knight. He married disadvantageously—”
Jaufre translated that as his grandmother having no dowry.
“—and he pledged his sword first to Henry and then to Edward, mostly in France, as I understood Robert to say. France, you will come to understand, has been passed back and forth between the kings of England and the kings of France for a hundred years, and it’s like to be a hundred more before they finally settle who has title to it.”
“Edward I?”
“Yes.” Alaric gave Jaufre a curious look. “Why?”
“He was—he came to the East, didn’t he? In, what was it, 1270?”
“He was only a prince then, but yes,” Alaric said. “Why?”
Jaufre shrugged. “No matter,” he said, but he was remembering the history of Marco Polo as it had filtered down to him and Johanna all through their childhood. Marco Polo claimed to have met a Prince Edward of England in Acre on his way to Cambaluc. It was dizzying to think that it might possibly have been true. And if that was true, how much more might be? He thought of the book in his saddlebag. Not the dog-face men.
Alaric yawned, jaw cracking. “Me for my bedroll, young Jaufre.” He pulled himself to his feet, moving lightly and surely while balanced on the edge of a wall quite a thousand hands in height, which argued just how drunk was he. Had he wanted Jaufre to ask him about Robert? If so, why?
Jaufre sat looking out over the silver fields and the winding river for a while longer, and then followed Alaric’s example.
Neither man noticed the figure that detached itself from a dark corner and followed Jaufre back to his yurt.
They were attacked twice more before Damascus, and both times Jaufre blooded his sword. He wasn’t sick again either time. He was glad he acquitted himself well, and knew a growing confidence in his ability to do so in future, but he had also learned that a life by the sword was not the life he would choose. Trading, buying and selling, the exchange of goods to the profit of both sides of the bargain, that was work for a man. And he didn’t feel like a piece of him had died when he sold a copper pan to a cook or a Homeric scroll to a scholar studying the classics.
He wondered how long the attacks would continue before one of the lords and masters of the East would see fit to put the bands of raiders down once and for all. He wondered how trade could continue if they did not.
Of course if Ogodei, or some other powerful lord bent on conquest appeared on the horizon, the matter of itinerant raiders would be moot.
Damascus was a once-great capital of an independent empire that had dwindled into a regional capital ruled from Egypt by the Mamluks. It didn’t look particularly downtrodden and it had a thriving marketplace, with an entire section of the city devoted to the blacksmiths and their forges. Damascus steel was a legend over the known world. A blade forged from Damascus steel was said to be able to cut a single hair dropped across it, and to be able to cut straight through other blades of lesser make.
Jaufre didn’t know that he quite believed any of the legends, but as he made the rounds of the forges he had to admit he had seldom seen more beautiful blades. Some looked as though the makers had somehow replicated ripples of water on the surface of the steel. Others bore leaf-like striations that gave the impression they were about to sprout. The grips were made from every material, steel covered in sharkskin like his own but also made from antlers from oryx and ibex and one the dealer said was from a unicorn and told Jaufre with a wink that it wielding it was guaranteed to enhance one’s sexual prowess. There were handles made from every kind of hardwood that grew from Cambaluc to Eire, which Jaufre had never heard of, and even some from a kind of molded, hardened animal skin. There were blades with and without pommels and pommels with and without inlaid jewels. The hand guards of the swords were always of steel and as beautiful as they were useful. The daggers ranged from decorative to deadly and were always elegant, if you didn’t count the cheap knockoffs made from pig iron one found in the less prosperous sections of the souk.
He decided not bring out the knives he had acquired in Kerman. He had the feeling that the farther away he got from Damascus, the better chance he had of making a profit on them, or any profit at all. He did produce his sword in hopes of having its maker identified, but after much pursing of lips and shaking of heads, and not a few grudging compliments, no one recognized the smith’s handiwork.
None of the steel production was on view, of course, as the process was regarded as proprietary and each smith was very protective of his own techniques, but Jaufre did find one artisan in a tea shop who was willing to talk about it a little. Producing Damascus steel involved something called folding, unexplained, and even more necessary was a steady supply of raw material from the East, somewhere in the Indus, unidentified, and, more recently from Persia, unspecified. Jaufre’s new friend lamented the steady decline of said supply and prophesied the end of steel-making in Damascus, probably in their lifetimes, to the incipient beggaring of everyone in the trade and associated with it.
But blades of Damascus steel—knife, dagger, and sword—were still plentiful in the city’s marketplace, if prohibitively expensive, and Jaufre wondered if the rumor of short supply had more to do with keeping the price up than an actual lack of raw material.
He spent the next day making the rounds of the slave markets and the dealers in human flesh. Most of them had the courtesy not to laugh at him, but none of them remembered Agalia or the Lycian Lotus or anyone who sounded like his mother. Or would admit to it, because how could anyone trust anything a slaver said?
He lay wakeful in their yurt that night, listening to the others breathe. Seven, nearing eight years ago now, his mother might or might not have passed through these same streets. She could be living yet, caged in some harem, vying for the attention of her master. Bearing his children. He might have half-brothers and sisters. It was not a thought that had previously occurred to him.
After another five minutes Jaufre gave it up and slipped from the yurt. There were a few coals left in their fire pit. He coaxed them back to life with a few bits of kindling and stacked on the wood.
Overhead, a sliver of new moon rose steadily from the horizon, almost but not quite eclipsing the millions of glittering stars. It was a sight he had never taken for granted. He and Johanna both had always recognized the beauty of the world in which they lived, and acknowledged the good fortune that had made them children of that most tolerant and encouraging man, Wu Li of Cambaluc, and his most gracious and loving wife, Shu Ming. He missed them both, but he missed Johanna even more. Her absence from his side, laughing, fighting, trading. Surviving. It was an ache the proportions of which if he let it could subsume him completely. It was only at moments like these, when he was completely alone, that he allowed himself to conjure her face from
the darkness between the stars, when he wallowed in the memory of every word she had spoken to him, from that first time in the vast aridity of the Taklamakan when she had brought him all upstanding and indignant out of his own self-dug grave by peeing on him.
He smiled at the memory, but the smile didn’t last. Was she ahead of them on the Road, perhaps already in Gaza, or Jerusalem? Was she behind them, barely a day’s ride ahead of Ogodei and Gokudo?
Was she even alive?
He was well now, fit, and able once again with his father’s sword. And Johanna hadn’t been missing as long as his mother. Perhaps it was time to backtrack. She might have left word with one of Wu Li’s agents. And if North Wind were still with her, surely there would be tales to tell of a woman riding a white steed whose speed was only outpaced by the wind itself.
He had asked, of course. He and Shasha and Félicien and Hari, they had all asked, all along the Road, from Kabul to Kerman to Bastak to Damascus. There was still no word of woman or horse. But then, if they had escaped Talikan with North Wind, it was reasonable to suppose that the sheik would have been hot on their trail. Perhaps Firas was taking care to travel only along secondary routes, ones less traveled by those who would carry news of seeing them. That made sense to Jaufre and would explain the absence of news.
He felt comforted by the thought, at any rate. There was a rustle and he looked up to see Hari emerge from behind the yurt flap. The chughi shook his saffron robes in order, smoothed back his last wisp of hair, and assembled himself next to Jaufre in a complicated knot of knees and ankles. “Young sir,” he said in a low voice. “It is a soft night.” He looked up. “Such wonders we may see, if only we had the wit to look for them.”
“You think people don’t?” Jaufre said.
“‘Make happy those who are near, and those who are far will come,’” Hari said.
“Buddha?” Jaufre said.
Hari smiled serenely. “That is a saying that comes out of your own adopted country, young Jaufre.”
“I don’t feel so young anymore, Hari,” Jaufre said, and was horrified to feel tears pressing at the backs of his eyes. He restrained them by sheer force of will, and became aware that Hari had let his hand rest lightly on Jaufre’s shoulder. As soon as Jaufre became aware of it, it was gone.
“Youth to adult is always a difficult transition,” Hari said.
Jaufre gulped and tried to change the subject. “Was yours?”
Hari surprised him by laughing. “Oh, my very dear young sir! Difficult hardly describes it.” He looked at Jaufre, still chuckling. “I was the only son. My duty was to marry and have many children and eventually take over the farm from my father, and see him and my mother safely into old age. When I was called, they were accepting, but they were never happy about it.”
“Have you ever been back?”
Hari shook his head. “I am meant to go forward.”
So far as Jaufre could see, Hari seemed at peace with his calling. Thinking of Johanna and where she might be and how he could find her, he said urgently, “How do you know, Hari? How do you know you are meant to go forward?”
“You desire to attain enlightenment, young Jaufre?”
Jaufre thought about it. “Insofar as I can come to understand myself,” he said, “I believe so.”
“Ah.” Hari rearranged a fold of his robe. “Buddha said that you should steadily walk in your Way, with a resolute heart, with courage, and should be fearless in whatever environment you may happen to be, and destroy every evil influence that you may cross, for thus you shall reach the goal.”
An answer, if not the definitive one he wanted, Jaufre thought. Destroy every evil influence that you may come across. He thought of Wu Li, who had taken Jaufre, an abandoned waif with no paternal or social claim, into his household without hesitation or reservation. Of Shu Ming, his wife, who had raised him like a son. He knew the face of goodness.
He thought of Gokudo, a mercenary, and of Dai Fang, a murderer. He knew the face of evil, too.
“You should be aware, young sir,” Hari said, “that at this same time, the young miss walks her own Way as well.”
Jaufre sat back, arrested. Hari watched him with a steady gaze, the flames of the fire flickering over his features, casting them now into shadow, now into light. “She won’t be the same person I knew, you mean,” he said.
“Nor will you be the same person she knew,” Hari said.
Shasha, Hari and Félicien left Damascus for Jerusalem two days later.
Jaufre was with them.
12
October, 1324, the Holy Land
The convulsing woman screamed again. She had a painfully loud and piercing scream which the rock walls of the cave only enhanced. Everyone in earshot cringed. Some cursed. And there were those who looked as if they would as soon murder the woman out of hand than endure another episode of her fits.
“This,” said their guide, in full voice which was still amazingly although barely audible over the screams, “is the Mount of Temptation, where our lord Jesus Christ fasted for forty days, and was tempted by the Devil to throw himself over the cliff.”
It wasn’t the oddest thing Jaufre had heard during the last two weeks.
They had gone to Gaza first, arriving there six weeks before, taking their leave of Rambahadur Raj. The havildar ignored Jaufre’s attempts to express his gratitude, instead to congratulate him on Jaufre’s rebirth as a full fighting man. “Not quite a Gurkha, no,” he said jovially, clapping Jaufre on the back with a blow that would have knocked him to his knees were he still in his weakened state in Kabul. “But I believe you could hold your own with a Gurkha if it came to that, young sir!”
Alaric, too, took his leave of the havildar and seemed to consider himself a member of Jaufre’s party thenceforward. He said airily that he’d had enough of the high desert and, besides, he had a hankering to see Venice again. Jaufre thought with inward amusement that Johanna’s habit of picking up strays seemed to have lingered on even when she was not with them.
Because, to his severe disappointment, they did not find Johanna waiting for them in Gaza. However, one of the first stories they heard in the taproom of their inn was of a great race in Baghdad, won by a white horse with a woman rider who flaunted her hair uncovered like a bronze banner.
There were other interested auditors of that news in the taproom that evening, among them two of Rambahadur Raj’s muleteers. They had also left the havildar’s employ at Gaza, and one or the other of which had kept Jaufre in sight ever since, while taking care to remain unseen themselves.
Jaufre barely managed to contain himself until they were safely behind the door of their room. “It was her! It has to be!”
Shasha, too, looked lit from within, although she said, “I wish there was some mention of who else was with her.”
“Firas will be with her, of course he will be,” Félicien said, who seemed surprisingly glum at the news
Jaufre, unheeding, fought to control the sense of relief that nearly swept his legs out from under him. He found himself seated next to Shasha, with a cup of spiced fruit juice being pressed into his hands. Shasha put a finger beneath it and pushed it towards his mouth. He drank, and then drank again, deeply, and felt the better for it. He looked at Shasha and saw that she had tears in her eyes, and for a terrible moment felt a little shaky himself, big strong warrior that he was.
To have no news for so long, and then this. Johanna could so easily have been dead. What would have been even worse, they could so easily have never known what had happened to her.
Like his mother.
“Good news indeed, young Jaufre,” Hari said, assembling himself into one of his complicated seated positions on the rug Shasha had spread out over the floor of their room. It had no beds, but she had decreed it to be the least vermin-ridden of the six inns they had investigated.
Jaufre looked at Shasha. “We wait, then. She will come here.”
She nodded. “She will.” She smiled. “
It was always the plan.”
He smiled, and then he laughed, and drank off the rest of the juice. All would not be entirely well in his world until Johanna was within arm’s reach, but the sun was going down on a day infinitely preferably to the day before, and all the days preceding it since the attack on the trail down from the Terak.
“It’s a fine port city,” Shasha said, “with good markets. We should turn over what we can of our own stock and lay in new supplies. When she gets here, she will want to get on the first available ship for Venice.”
This brought an abrupt silence.
“Venice,” Jaufre said. In the trauma of attack and separation and injury and recovery, he had almost forgotten the impetus for their journey, of much more importance for Johanna than for him. He and Shasha’s prime motivation was to get themselves and Johanna out of the reach of Dai Fang, Wu Li’s murderously ambitious second wife, as soon as humanly possible. Johanna, after growing up in a place that had vilified her all her life for her height, her coloring, her hair, her odd eyes, her very foreignness, had only wanted to find her grandfather, and acceptance.
Jaufre thought of the book he had found in Kerman, and of Alaric’s familiarity with it. Of Alaric’s disdain for it, and for its author. How many Marco Polos were there, who had traveled to Cambaluc and seen twenty years’ service to Kublai Khan? If he was the same man, how kindly would he look upon the unexpected appearance of an unknown grandchild? It was one thing to celebrate great adventures thousands of leagues away, and another thing entirely to have one of those adventure’s land on one’s doorstep.
He thought again of Dai Fang, of her inflexible determination to gather up the reins of Wu Li’s trading empire into her own lacquered claws, no matter what it took, up to and including the premeditated, cold-blooded killing of her own husband. He could only hope that Marco Polo, also a merchant and as such someone who would value practicality and pragmatism above all other qualities, was not equally efficient in ridding himself of what could be a large personal embarrassment in the shape of his granddaughter.
Silk and Song Page 37
