Isle of Woman (Geodyssey)

by Piers Anthony

  “Oh, no, I must serve you!” Lotus cried, jumping up.

  “As you wish. Perhaps that is best.” The Lady now seemed completely composed; there was no sign of alarm or anger, only sympathy.

  “My Lady, may I speak?” Lotus asked, suddenly hesitant.

  Zhao sat on the bed and gave Lotus her whole attention. “Of course, my friend.”

  “I love you.” That was all, but Lotus meant it. There were good things and bad things throughout the world, but the Lady Zhao was the best.

  “And I love you, Lotus. I mean to protect you better than I have before. Come.” She opened her arms again.

  Lotus hugged her, feeling wonderful. Nothing more needed to be said.

  Then they went together to the Son of Heaven’s quarters, carrying their chins high, as if nothing had happened.

  The eunuch Old Coal was there, as usual. As usual they played go. And as usual they talked with seeming casualness while they pondered their moves.

  “It is said that the servant of a prominent Lady was molested today,” the eunuch remarked.

  How could he know so quickly? “Almost,” Lotus agreed. “She managed to escape.”

  “It is said that the Lady is angry.”

  “Perhaps she was, but no longer.”

  He lifted his eyes to give her a straight look. “It is too soon to say that. It is said that a search was made for a man with a bitten hand, and that there will be blood across the sand before her anger abates.”

  “Oh, my Lady wouldn’t—” But his gaze held, and she felt a chill. Old Coal had served in this palace for decades, and knew the way of things.

  “It is said that perhaps even now there is the sound of a man howling under the torture.”

  “Torture!”

  “It is said that they wish to know who sent him, and he does not wish to tell. But he will tell.” Old Coal set down his stone with a certain force.

  Lotus shuddered. She almost thought she could hear faint screams of agony.

  Next day the Lady Zhao was summoned again, at noon. Lotus went with her—and discovered that it was actually Lotus they wanted. For they had the man who had accosted her, bound, his head hanging. He was alive, but no longer seemed to care whether he remained so.

  “Is this the man?” an officer brusquely inquired.

  Lotus forced herself to look more closely. “Yes,” she agreed faintly.

  The officer raised his huge bright sword. “Now witness the fate of all enemies of the Son of Heaven.”

  Lotus screamed and turned away. The Lady Zhao caught her. “Not before ladies,” she said sharply to the officer. She guided Lotus away.

  Behind them there was a sound, possibly like the splitting of wood or the cleaving of tough meat. Then a thunk, as of something striking the ground. Lotus buried her head in Zhao’s robe.

  Then she realized what another consequence might be. “Lady—did he tell—?”

  “Of course. We know who sent him.”

  “Will she—?”

  “Of course.”

  “Oh, please, Lady, no!” Lotus begged tearfully.

  Zhao squeezed her shoulders. “You ask this?”

  “Please, please, no more blood! No more torture!”

  “Of course, dear.”

  That was all. But by the time they returned to the concubine quarters, the Lady Liang and her servant were gone. It seemed that she had been abruptly dismissed and sent away in disgrace. No one spoke of her thereafter.

  Lotus loved the Lady Zhao. But now she also feared her. She was chagrined to have been the cause of this horror, though she knew that the same thing would have happened if any other girl had served Zhao. All she could do was try to blot the whole episode from her mind.

  That was not difficult to do. Life at the court was far from unpleasant. The Lady Zhao attended the Son of Heaven increasingly in the day as well as the night, seeming much like an empress. Often she arranged to let Lotus have nice things, such as a serving of wine-soaked fish which the Lady deemed to be too much for her delicate stomach, or a sherbet made of iced milk and rice. Lotus ate like an empress—in the guise of protecting her mistress’s faint appetite. The Son of Heaven allowed it, and even on occasion passed along some of his own supposedly imperfect food. He seemed pleasantly amused by the closeness of the Lady and the servant girl.

  Once, Lotus was left holding the dog again, as the Son of Heaven and Lady Zhao played the board game of backgammon. The Lady was good at it, as she was in all intellectual matters, but somehow arranged to misplay when she threatened to win. The Son of Heaven glanced at Lotus. “This time you won’t need to loose the dog; she does the job herself.” Lotus tried to look blank, pretending not to understand the allusion, but the humor boiled up and forced her to avert her face for a moment. The Son of Heaven merely smiled. It was evident that he enjoyed teasing her.

  “If you come to like my girl any better,” Zhao murmured to him, “I will be in fear for my position.”

  Lotus, appalled at such an implication, blushed so deeply that the Son of Heaven laughed. Yet this banter covered the fact that even as the Lady Zhao’s natural hair slowly grew back, so was Lotus’s young body developing. Within a year she would be a woman. That would spell the end of her service at the court.

  Once Lotus got to go on a cruise along the Grand Canal. This waterway had been dug forty years before, and periodically the Son of Heaven cruised it in his barge, leading an entourage of boats stretching back farther than the eye could see. This time the Lady Zhao accompanied him in his lead barge, and Lotus attended her.

  Zhao was splendidly dressed for the occasion. She wore a headdress of iridescent peacock feathers so elaborate that she was able to forgo the wig. A comb of jade fastened it in place, and a pin in the shape of a kingfisher. Her sash was sewn with pearls, and fitted her waist so closely that Lotus knew she dared take no deep breath. Her silken gown was embroidered with silver and gold, and even her slippers were separate works of art. She seemed almost to shine like the moon, her beauty radiating and reflecting from her surroundings. Perhaps she drew more attention than the Son of Heaven himself, but he was oblivious; it was evident that he was so completely taken with her that he cared about little else. The empress was not present; Lotus wondered whether this was significant. It seemed that Zhao was succeeding in her mission almost too well.

  The boat was magnificent. It was twenty times the length of a man and fashioned in the form of a ferocious dragon, with the giant head high in front and the tail curling up behind. The dragon’s mouth was so big it could readily have swallowed a man, with teeth as long as a man’s forearm, and it was colored with bright red, gold, and blue. There were four deck levels, with the lowest for the oarsmen and the highest, within a square pavilion, for the royal party. They stood and looked out across the green rice fields of the empire, where the workers had been given leave to line the banks of the river and cheer the royal party on.

  Taken as a whole, it was a glorious experience for Lotus. But she could not help noticing that both the Son of Heaven and Zhao looked bored. It seemed that this was a show for the masses. Lotus, of course, was one of the masses; she knew the glorious memory of this excursion would remain for the rest of her life.

  In such manner, Lotus’s year of service progressed. By this time the Lady Zhao’s hair was long enough to serve as a base for considerable decorations, and the wig was no longer used. She was seldom in the concubines’ quarters. Increasingly she was served by the Son of Heaven’s staff. The Son of Heaven drew upon the concubines only when Zhao was indisposed, and sometimes it was Zhao who selected his company for the night. She had come a long way from the nunnery.

  Meanwhile Lotus learned from her mother’s occasional visits that the printing business of their family prospered as never before. Ember had to hire and train new staff to keep up. Zhao’s favor carried as far as her disfavor.

  At last it was time. The arrangements were made, and a carriage came to convey the damsel Lotus to her
home. The Lady Zhao came to bid her farewell. They embraced; then the Lady proffered a package. “It is the wig,” she explained. “I thank you for its use; now it is yours. I hope you will remember me when you use it.”

  “But I don’t need to use—” Lotus caught herself. “I will always think of you, great Lady,” she said formally. “You have given me the most wonderful year of my life.”

  “It has been good for me too, perhaps for not quite the same reasons,” Zhao said. “But I always trusted you, Lotus, and valued your friendship. Perhaps you will come with your father, on occasion, when he does further business with the court, and we can see each other in passing.”

  “Oh, yes, Lady!” Lotus exclaimed. Then, tearfully, she got into the carriage and waved parting.

  Yet it was also good to get home. Lotus had missed her mother and father, and especially her grandmother Ember, who had had much of the burden of her care. Now she would be with them again, no longer as a child, but as a young lady. She had learned much of Lady protocol during her service at court.

  When Grandmother Ember opened the package, after the tearful reunions, there lay the wig—wrapped around a dozen gleaming gold coins. There was enough wealth there to ensure that even if the family business faded, it would be long before they were in financial difficulty. The Lady Wu Zhao had indeed been generous in her friendship.

  Wu Zhao’s rise continued. Three years later she displaced the Empress Wang herself as principal consort. The Son of Heaven had a stroke in 660, and Zhao became the virtual ruler of China. In 690, following the emperor’s death and the forced abdication of her two sons, Zhao ruled outright in her own name, becoming the only female Son of Heaven in the history of China. She was highly competent, and the T’ang dynasty prospered. She was finally deposed in 705 at age eighty, when ill, and the dynasty faltered until her grandson Hsuan Tsung came to power in 712. Some consider her to have been a scheming, perhaps brutal woman, but the evidence is mixed, and she was loyal to her precepts and her friends. She did much good for Buddhism in China. No following ruler possessed her level of competence. The dynasty itself endured until the year 906, followed later by the Sung dynasty. But the T’ang dynasty was arguably the greatest age of China. Thanks, perhaps, to a woman.

  CHAPTER 17

  * * *

  LITHUANIA

  In 1207 Genghis Khan (variously spelled; one variant is Jenghiz Qan) assumed power over the Mongol horde and began the expansion of his steppe dominion, which was by the end of the century perhaps the largest unified land empire of mankind’s history. (The later British Empire was scattered around the globe.) China fell, and Europe was saved from similar conquest only by chance: the Great Khan Ogadai died as the Mongols, having defeated the powers of eastern Europe, were about to move west. Thereafter, the Khanate of the Golden Horde retained power in what is now Russia, and to the immediate west assorted principalities developed along the coast of the Baltic Sea. Among these were the Teutonic Knights and Lithuania.

  The Teutonic Knights, also known as the Knights of the Cross, or colloquially as the Whitecapes, were as Crusaders determined to convert the pagan Lithuanians, whom they called the Saracens of the North, to Christianity. In the process they seemed to be equally determined to carve out and settle a territory for themselves. The Lithuanians objected to both aspects. Consequently there were some battles, one of which occurred on the Gulf of Riga in 1270, between the Teutonic Knights and a faction of the Lithuanians called the Samogitians. It was not considered to be historically significant, but it does show the nature of the rivalry.

  TREE saw them coming: mounted knights whose white capes were emblazoned by crosses, and whose helmets were adorned by peacock feathers. Whitecapes, marching north!

  This was the force he had been sent to locate. He lingered only long enough to get a fair notion of the size of the dread force that Master Otto had raised. Tree had taken refuge in the thatched-roof wooden house of a sympathetic family, pretending to be a lowly serf. In fact he was the son of the Lithuanian metalworker Stone, and grandson of the patriarch blacksmith Blaze. Their homestead was threatened by the encroachment of the warlike Christians, so they supported the action against them. The plan had been to advance into the Teutonic territory of Livonia at the same time that Master Otto’s army was moving south into Lithuania, cutting him off from behind. Otto had learned of this—he had spies too—and turned to intercept the Lithuanians. But they had crossed the frozen Gulf of Riga to take plunder and camped on the island of Oesel. They would strike out from there wherever Otto’s army wasn’t, wreaking havoc before moving back south to Lithuania with their plunder. But they needed to keep track of the location of Otto’s army.

  Now it was evident that Otto had gathered reinforcements, and was about to pursue the Lithuanians across the ice. This was an unexpected move, and Tree had to hurry to notify his countrymen lest they be caught at a disadvantage. On such information the fortunes of nations could hinge.

  But as Tree set out across the snow, a Whitecape knight spied him. “Ho, varlet!” the man cried. Actually Tree didn’t know the Crusader’s language, but knew that this was the sort of thing they cried.

  He did the expedient thing: he immediately fled into the forest. The great oaks and beech trees had always been a comfort to him; he had been named after them, and wood was his destiny. The branches interlocked overhead, forming a natural canopy, and thickets filled the spaces below. In summer ivy grew everywhere, making it impenetrable to those not versed in its ways. In summer Tree would have disappeared in an instant, feasting on berries, mushrooms, apples and pears while the pursuers floundered hopelessly. But this was winter, so that the forest was somewhat gaunt, and the snow made tracking all too easy.

  But winter had its tricks, too. The snow had fallen several days ago, so there were a number of trails left by animals and hunters and firewood gatherers. Tree ran to one of these, then ran back along it, toward the main road. He touched his bracelet charm for luck and ducked behind a large beech as the horseman galloped into sight. Sure enough, the knight followed the trail forward, pursuing a spot quest just about as pointless as his crusade. Christians were not the smartest of creatures.

  Tree returned to the road, drew his gray sheepskin coat more closely about him, and continued toward the coast. He passed a young woman in a brilliantly woven shawl and skirt. She turned her head and smiled at him, her face framed within her kerchief. She was about his age, and pretty.

  Oh, how he wished he could stay and talk with her. His contacts with girls had been limited. In fact, his main emotional experience was the crush he had had on the pretty slave girl who had cared for him and his brother when he was young. But she had in due course earned her freedom, and had married and moved away, leaving him desolate for a time. How nice it would be to get to know a real girl! But his mission was too important to allow for dalliance. So he smiled back and went on without pausing. Probably it had been an idle flirtation on her part anyway.

  Then he heard the sound of horse hooves behind. The knight was returning. Tree ducked back into the forest before the man could spy him again. The Christian was suspicious, justifiably; the natives would not be avoiding them. Tree would have to stay off the road, and that would slow him, but it was the safest course. The Crusader might be dull, but not so dull as to let Tree give him the slip again after being spied.

  Fortunately he did not have far to go before the terrain changed, and the day was fading. In the darkness he would be free to travel as rapidly as he could.

  Tree came at dusk to the verge of the Gulf of Riga. Now it was time for his secret weapon. He opened his knapsack and brought out his skates. These were ox shins cut down to size, with leather thongs, and metal rims. He used the thongs to tie these firmly to his shoes. Then he got to his feet and stepped out onto the frozen sea.

  He took a moment to get his balance and start his motion. He had converted his shoes to skates, and the property of skates was that they were more effective on ice t
han were shoes. Ordinary skates were made of animal ribs or shinbones, as his were, but his canny grandfather Blaze had added a unique touch by binding sharp iron rims to them. This made it possible for Tree to skate harder and faster, for the iron bit into the hard ice better than bone did. He could move far more rapidly on the ice than a man afoot. Not only that; it was easier, because he could slide between pushes. Now if a Christian saw him, it would hardly matter, provided the man were beyond bow range. Not even a metal-shod horse could catch him, because the horse would still have to run, not skate.

  However, Tree had a fair distance to go, and the ice was not perfectly smooth. He could afford to skate no faster than he could see, lest he run afoul of a broken hump or even a break in the ice. Fortunately it was a clear night and there was a bit of moonlight.

  Tree skated north into the night. He steered by the stars, orienting on the Great Bear. Even so, his navigation was not perfect, and it was dawn by the time he reached the isle of Oesel and saw the tents of the Lithuanian camp near the houses of the town. That was a relief, because he was now so tired he didn't know how much farther he could go.

  He located the section of his feudal chief and skated there. The archers, not recognizing him, aimed their crossbows at him. “Hold!” he cried. “I am Tree, the scout, and I have important news for the chief!”

  The chief appeared. “What did you learn, Tree, that brings you here beforetime?”

  “Master Otto has gotten reinforcements and is coming after you!” Tree said. “He may start crossing the ice today!”

  “Come with me,” the chief said gruffly. He led Tree to the tent of the commander of the Samogitian force.

  Tree made his full report, including his estimate of the origin and number of Otto's reinforcements, and their likely schedule of advance. The commander shook his head gravely. “They've got us trapped,” he said. “They'll have forces guarding the east and south shores of the gulf, to ambush us if we try to flee there. They'll overwhelm us here if we stay on land. We'll have to fight them on the ice.”