Silk and Song

by Dana Stabenow

  The lines around his eyes crinkled, but he said solemnly enough, “It would indeed. I’m obliged to you for your courtesy, Serra Johanna.”

  She watched long enough to see him gain a stair higher than North Wind could kick and hurried back to the stallion. Jaufre relinquished the reins, his face preternaturally sober, and didn’t need her nod to remove himself from the area forthwith.

  “Ser Piero,” she said. The young man looked fit enough beneath his pomaded locks, and she gave a mental shrug and handed over the reins.

  North Wind’s nearside ear flickered once. Other than that, he remained motionless.

  Piero eyed North Wind’s broad back. “It is a style of saddle with which I am unfamiliar.” He shrugged. “Ah well.” He grabbed a handful of North Wind’s mane and vaulted up onto the stallion’s back.

  Johanna took a few quick steps away. There was a still, silent moment when the world seemed to hold its breath, including North Wind. He remained motionless for just long enough for the young lord to gather in the reins and kick the stallion in the sides.

  It wasn’t a kick really, more of nudge, the merest hint even, perhaps, but North Wind had been confined for six months on a farmer’s paddock and he had not just regained his rightful rider and his rightful place on the Road to put up with this sort of nonsense. He reared on his hind legs, standing almost upright, and not bothering to break a sweat over it, either. Piero let out a startled yelp, almost lost the saddle but managed to hold on with his legs. North Wind came down on his front feet, hard. Piero managed not to be pitched over the stallion’s head, just. North Wind kicked up with his rear legs, so high that Johanna, alarmed, thought for a moment the stallion will allow himself to tumble over into a somersault. Piero held on through that, too, although he lost a stirrup.

  North Wind huffed out an impatient breath and without further ado lay down and rolled over. Amid a cloud of curses Piero got his leg up and out of the way just in time. Credit where credit was due, he tried to hang on to the reins but when the stallion began rubbing his back in the dirt like a dog, hooves in the air, he threw up his hands and retreated to a chorus of catcalls and jeers.

  Johanna looked around and found della Scala next to her, tears of laughter in his eyes. “Your North Wind has run some races, you say?”

  “A few,” Johanna said demurely.

  Jaufre, hearing this, said to Shasha, “So, not leaving tomorrow morning after all.”

  The lord arranged a race for two days later. North Wind looked over his competitors with manifest contempt and would have humiliated them all if Johanna hadn’t held him back a little. When they crossed the finish line to the roar of the crowd at a gait a little too close to a trot, she brought him to pass before the lord’s viewing stand, where she caught a satisfactorily heavy purse, and bowed her thanks.

  She raised her head to see him speak to Piero, standing at her elbow, and was ready when the young lord came to their lodgings that evening. They remained in Verona for another week while North Wind serviced two of the lord’s favorite mares at a fee which included board and room that even Jaufre said was handsome.

  From Verona they travelled to Brescia, still recovering from the siege of 1311 by Henry VII, now Holy Roman Emperor, and Bergamo, which city either was or was not currently under the jurisdiction of Milan, it was never made quite clear. They found nothing to delay them in either place and so pressed on to Milan. There, after fifty years of Visconti rule, the city seemed more stable than warlike Verona or subjugated Bergamo, and much more prosperous. The guilds were thriving, particularly the craft guilds. Of those, the weavers held sway, and Jaufre and Johanna spent as much time as they could observing the weavers at work, or such work as the proprietary guilds would allow. The first question they were asked everywhere was “Do you trade in wool?” When they were asked where they were going, the first comment was always, “Write to us if you get as far as England. I’m in the market for as much of the finest wool as I can get. The best prices, I promise you.”

  The seemingly endless dynastic struggles between France and England, Jaufre learned, had the wool trade in a constant state of flux, frustrating grangers in England as much as it did weavers in Milan, and putting a high demand—and a higher price—on fleeces of every grade. He began a running tally of names and places, just in case. No wonder Gradenigo was thinking of testing the wool trade by water.

  When they identified themselves as being from Cambaluc, there were similar questions about the availability of silk in commercial quantities, but none like so urgent as the inquiries over wool. “They get all the silk they need from Lucca and Florence,” Johanna said. “And Venice. Venice has been cultivating the worm for two centuries now.”

  Jaufre nodded. “The consensus seems to be that the finest wool comes from England.”

  She looked at him. “Are we specializing?”

  He shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind seeing where my father was born.”

  She smiled. “Then we should go there.”

  She turned on her heel and walked off down the street. He ran to catch up. “I didn’t mean this very minute.”

  She laughed over her shoulder. “No, this very minute I mean to see that all is well with North Wind.”

  He followed her to the stables of the large inn. North Wind had his head over his stall door, looking in her direction every bit as much as if he’d been expecting her, and not waiting too patiently, either. Johanna let herself in his stall and crooned to him, offering an apple in recompense for the horrors of solitude the great stallion had had to endure during their hours apart. She found his brush and began to curry his already perfect coat. He whickered out a long, pleased sigh.

  Jaufre hitched the door closed and leaned against the wall, arms folded. Johanna looked around and saw him watching. “What?” she said, smiling.

  Deliberately, he pushed himself off the wall and stepped forward to stand in front of her, keeping his gaze locked with hers. He heard her breath hitch and was glad of it. The horse was too close for her to back away and he was glad of that, too. “I was just thinking,” he said, raising a hand to brush back a curl that had escaped from her braid.

  “What? She sounded breathless. “What were you thinking?”

  Both hands came up to cup her face. “That I was jealous of the horse.” He lowered his face to hers.

  “Oh,” was all she had time to say before he kissed her.

  It was like this every time, he thought somewhere in the dim recesses of his mind where rational thought still held marginal sway. He touched her and it was as if he’d been enveloped in flame. One touch and he had to, he must fill his hands with every curve of her flesh, trace every hollow with his lips, sometimes he felt he would be satisfied by nothing less than eating her alive. All the finesse of North Wind at stud, that was as close as he could come to describing it.

  It wasn’t as if she was struggling, some part of his mind noted. Somehow they had found themselves up against the stall and her legs were wrapped around his waist and when he managed to pull enough of her tunic down to find her breast her back arched and she whimpered. Her hands raked at his back, one slipped between them. Her hand closed around him and he groaned and raised his head to kiss her again.

  They should do this someplace else, he thought as he reached for the drawstring of her trousers. She deserved better than being tumbled in the straw of a stall. Of North Wind’s stall.

  He raised his head. “If we do this is that bedamned horse going to take exception?”

  “I’ll risk it.”

  He gave a half laugh and then groaned again, but this time because they heard voices approaching the stable. A moment later they heard Shasha say, “The stallion is just down here, my lords.”

  When the group arrived at North Wind’s stall Johanna was currying him as if her life depended on it and Jaufre was raking straw in much the same manner. Shasha took one look at the both of them and turned to the half dozen nobles with an affable smile. “This, good gentl
es, is North Wind, of whom you have heard so much, and his owner, Johanna of Wu Company and Cambaluc.”

  Johanna paused long enough to give a slight bow in their direction.

  “North Wind can be, shall we say, a little temperamental—”

  Johanna nudged the stallion and he woke up enough from his pleasurable doze to whinny loudly and snap his teeth.

  “—so perhaps we could adjourn to the public room of the inn to discuss matters further? Thank you, thank you, yes, just across the courtyard, and his owner will join us there.”

  When the voices had faded they looked at each other. Jaufre thought Johanna looked most marvelously disheveled, and Johanna thought Jaufre looked seriously disgruntled. “I’m sorry,” she said helplessly, and then gulped, remembering the last time she apologized to him. They stared at each other for a long moment, and then Johanna couldn’t help it, a tiny giggle erupted, another, and then they were both laughing so hard they could only stand by leaning against the stall. North Wind, indignant at this lack of sangfroid, or perhaps hoping for another apple, gave Johanna a vigorous nudge with his nose, and she staggered forward into Jaufre’s arms again.

  “I didn’t mean I was sorry,” she said, when she could speak again. “Then or now.”

  “I know,” he said, resting his forehead against hers. “I was feeling—interrupted.”

  “So was I, and that was what I was sorry for,” Johanna said, with feeling.

  He raised his head. Blue eyes met hazel. “I can wait.”

  “I can’t,” she said.

  In an heroic act of self-sacrifice, he pushed her a little away. “Go talk to the lords.”

  She took a step away and then as if in the grip of some irresistible force stepped back. A little shyly she laid her hands on his chest and looked at him. “This thing, it is going to happen between us.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, it is. Thank all the gods.”

  “This is what you’ve always wanted? Even so long ago as Cambaluc?”

  “Yes.”

  She looked at her hands, flat against his tunic, and looked up again. “I didn’t know. Until that time in the yurt, after Kuche, I didn’t even—how could I not have known.”

  It wasn’t a question so he didn’t attempt to answer it, but in truth he had no idea how she could not have known. He had known, almost from the moment that he had fallen asleep behind her on her camel, his arms around her waist, his head on her shoulder. Well, perhaps not that soon, she was only ten years old at the time, but it was difficult now to remember a time when he did not love her.

  She could not sustain the intensity of his gaze for any longer and dropped her eyes again to his tunic. “Could we—I don’t—it’s not that—” She huffed out a laugh. “I seem to have lost my ability to put words together and have them make sense.” She met his eyes, if fleetingly. “With Edyk, I was saying goodbye. I knew—well, I thought I would never see him again. I’d known him my whole life, longer even than you. I loved him, and I wanted him, and I couldn’t leave him without—without—”

  “I understand,” he said, not without effort.

  “Do you?” Another fleeting glance. “With you, it’s different, it’s less—less—” She cast about for the right word. “Friendly.”

  Unbelievably, he found the ability to laugh. “Good.”

  “Truly? Because we are friends, too, Jaufre. Wu Li took you in and made you my foster brother. I have always loved you that way. Friends, and, and…comrades.” She was silent for a moment, and then said with difficulty, “This—what I feel now is different.”

  “Friendship is how it begins, sometimes,” he said. He cupped her face in his hands. “We’ll take this however you want to, Johanna, but understand me now. I love you, and I want you in all the ways a man wants a woman.”

  She flushed. “I want you in all those ways, too.”

  His heart thudded in his ears. “Good,” he heard someone say hoarsely, and swallowed hard. “Good.” With every ounce of self-control he possessed, he dropped his hands and stepped back. “The gentlemen are waiting. You had better go talk to them before Shasha comes looking for you.”

  She looked the same way he felt, hungry and impatient, but she knew he was right. “Later, then,” she said around the lump in her throat.

  He smiled. “Later.”

  The Milanese nobles found North Wind’s owner a little distracted, and later they congratulated each other on the very favorable stud fee they had been able to negotiate. That was not North Wind’s owner’s reputation. Shasha, when she heard of it, was less than complimentary.

  Alaric was waiting for Jaufre when he returned from the stables to their rooms on the first floor, intent on seeking out the landlord to see if there was an additional room available. If there wasn’t he would find one in another inn, and he was dwelling on the possible and protracted activity to take place within when Alaric, annoyed, spoke his name in a louder voice. “What?” he said. “Oh. Alaric. I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “You certainly weren’t,” Alaric said severely. “I must speak with you.”

  “Is it important? I—”

  “It is very important,” Alaric said, and waved him into their private common room, small but comfortably appointed. “Sit down.”

  Alaric himself did not sit, taking up a stance in front of the fireplace, hands clasped behind his back. Coming out of his romantically-inspired fugue state, Jaufre noticed that the Templar looked remarkably sober. Thinking back, he realized that Alaric had been so since their last days in Venice.

  “There is someone I want you to meet,” Alaric said.

  “Fine,” Jaufre said. “Invite him to dinner. Shasha always cooks enough for—”

  “—for a cohort,” Alaric said. “Yes, yes, I know. We must go to him.”

  “Why?”

  “He is cloistered.”

  “A monk? Where?”

  “In Butrio.”

  “And Butrio is—?”

  “About seventy leagues south of Milan.”

  “Seventy leagues,” Jaufre said. He only hoped it hadn’t come out as a scream. “That’s three or four days travel. Each way.”

  “This from the man who came all the way from Cambaluc.”

  Jaufre reddened beneath Alaric’s disbelieving eye. It wasn’t the distance, it was that he’d had other plans for how he would be spending the next four nights and they hadn’t involved sleeping rough with Alaric.

  “He knew your father,” Alaric said.

  That, unfortunately, did get his attention. “This monk?”

  “He was a Templar, in our company. When we were disbanded, he took his vows and retired to the monastery in Butrio.” Alaric stared off into the distance.

  “Was he with you at the fall of Ruad?” Jaufre said.

  To his surprise, Alaric’s expression darkened. “Yes,” he said, and stood abruptly. “North Wind will be busy in Milan for the next week, which will give us time to get there and back again before Wu Company departs for Susa. Will you come or not?”

  Every part and fiber of his being was screaming no. “I’ll be ready in an hour,” he said, and sought out Johanna and lay the matter before her.

  “No,” she said instantly, brow darkening, and then she said, “This monk knew your father?”

  “Alaric says so.”

  “And he brings this to you only now?”

  He reached for her hands and pulled her close, some part of him marveling that he finally, at long last, after what felt like forever, had the right to do so. “It’s only a week.”

  “But—”

  He kissed her. “You could spend the time finding a yurt,” he said. “One just big enough for the both of us. For when we’re between inns.”

  She relented a little. “I suppose I could do that.”

  He kissed her then, and she kissed him, and neither of them gave a thought to holding anything back. When they finally broke apart they were both trembling. “Does Alaric know if this
monk is even still alive?” she said, her voice so rough he hardly recognized it.

  He hadn’t asked. “He seemed certain.”

  She took a deep, shaky breath. “Go, then,” she said. She even laughed.

  “What?”

  “Just that I find it extremely annoying that North Wind’s love life is better than my own.”

  His response to that left her certain that he’d broken at least two of her ribs. “Go,” she said, breathless, half laughing, half crying. “And Jaufre?”

  “What?”

  “Ride fast.”

  Jaufre forced himself to let go of her. In the courtyard he said to Alaric, “Let’s get out of here before Hari finds out we’re going to a monastery.”

  For speed, they took two of the Arabians that Firas and Johanna had liberated from Sheik Mohammed’s stables during her escape from Talikan. Jaufre pushed the horses hard enough that Alaric complained. Jaufre’s only response was to press on even harder.

  Félicien complained, too, but he was uninvited and so ignored by both Jaufre and Alaric. He’d returned to the inn in time to see them saddling the horses, inquired as to why, and volunteered himself as the third member of their party. Jaufre didn’t care, all his intent focussed on getting there and back again as quickly as possible, and though Alaric huffed and puffed he made no serious objection. Félicien dashed into the inn for his kit and into the stable for a mount and was now riding in their train on a rented nag, gitar slung over his shoulder. Whenever a hill slowed down their passage he brought out a wooden flute he had acquired in Venice and practiced. It’s plaintive wail did seem to calm the horses.

  They passed through a fertile plain where flourishing farms and manors jostled for place with dense alders and tall elms, an occasional poplar and willow, grove after grove of olive trees, and a deciduous tree with a straight trunk and dark green leaves that Jaufre recognized as an ironwood tree, common in Everything Under the Heavens. Alaric called it a hornbeam and dismissed it as of no consequence. They splashed through innumerable rills, streams and rivers, all of them seeming to flow south and east. “They flow to the Po,” Alaric said. “All the water here does.”