Everything Under the Heavens (Silk and Song) (17 page)

There were at last five men taking bets, by Jaufre’s count. The first race was a donkey race, their riders children waving colorful banners. At least half the children fell off at the start, one let his banner become tangled in his donkey’s hooves and the donkey fell and his rider with him, and the winner crossed the finish line going backwards. Most of the bettors were parents, and two over-excited fathers fell into an argument that deteriorated into fisticuffs and had to be separated before the next race, to the vociferous dismay of the bystanders who had been placing bets on the outcome.

The second race was between camels, long, lean racing beasts with light racing saddles and professional riders, small, wiry men who listened to their owners’ last-minute advice with impassive expressions before throwing a leg over their mounts and kicking them groaning and spitting to their feet. Ten of them lined up for the start and all ten disappeared around the first bend in the river, their progress reported on by shouting, red-faced men stationed above. Betting would continue until the halfway mark, when one of the men waved a black flag violently back and forth and the touts stepped down from their rocks. A few minutes later a roar began far off and increased as the racers drew nearer.

The camels burst round the last bend in the river, brown blurs with their noses stretched out in front of them and ungainly legs kicking sand up all the way back to Cambaluc. They had been slow off the mark but they more than made up for it now, and Jaufre found himself yelling along with everyone else as the two leading camels flashed across the finish line.

There was some considerable conversation between the racers, the owners and the spectators as to who had won. In the end it came down to an older gentleman of dignified mien and snow-white turban, who tucked his hands in his cuffs and delivered his verdict. Half the crowd groaned and the other half cheered and lined up for their winnings. The touts looked relieved, so the favorite must have won. Jaufre couldn’t tell one camel from another and he hadn’t placed any bets so the matter was less pressing to him.

The sun was overhead and the scene devolved into a talking, laughing, jostling crowd reliving the camel race second by second. The acrobats came back out, and the Kuche dance troupe, and men and women appeared bearing trays of pomegranate juice and rounds of bread and dried apricots and almonds roasted with salt. A puppet show told the story of a Mongol soldier who eloped with the sultan’s daughter, who then died of the smell of her affianced on the first night, eliciting gales of laughter and a respectable handful of coins. A tightrope walker stretched a rope between two trees and held a crowd of people breathless as he jumped, skipped, leaped and did handsprings twenty feet above the river bed. A very talented contortionist made everyone uncomfortable and three jugglers tossed flaming torches back and forth as if they were apples. The torches disappeared and were replaced by knives, which disappeared in their turn to be replaced by duck eggs. Each of the jugglers caught an egg in each hand and one in their mouths without breaking any, and bowed to much applause.

This seemed to be the signal to clear the course for the next race, and there was no mistaking the air of excitement that rippled over the crowd.

“A great event in these parts, evidently.”

Jaufre turned to see Sheik Mohammed standing next to him. Immaculate as ever in white robes, his jeweled knife tucked into his belt, his son Farhad standing next to him and the two omnipresent guards alert behind. He surveyed the crowd along the river bed with an aloof expression. He didn’t quite draw his skirts in so as not to be polluted by contact with common folk, but nevertheless managed to give the distinct impression that he was entitled to reascend to his own social level at any given moment, and would do so upon the least provocation.

“There is almost always a race in Kuche,” Jaufre said.

“So it seems. Do you have a horse in the race?”

“I don’t,” Jaufre said, and if the sheik noticed the emphasis Jaufre placed on the first word he took no notice. “Do you?”

“I do,” the sheik said. He grinned, and it was a surprisingly friendly grin, albeit with an edge to it. “And you would be advised to bet on it, Jaufre of Cambaluc.”

Jaufre felt a smile spread across his face. “Would I?” he said.

Soon afterward the contestants lined up, and Jaufre felt the sheik stiffen next to him. He turned his face away so that the sheik couldn’t see his grin.

North Wind was the only all-white horse among the racers, and Johanna the only female rider. There was some murmuring about this in the crowd, but Kuche was a caravan town and had seen many more odd things in its day. Then someone recognized her. “Wu Li’s daughter! Wu Li’s daughter! Wu Li’s daughter!” Her name was shouted in Persian and Mandarin, in Uigur and Mongol, in Armenian and what Jaufre thought might have been Hebrew, but it was a long time since he’d heard it. No matter. They remembered Johanna, and Wu Li, in Kuche.

Johanna laughed out loud and waved first to one side of the crowd and then the other. It was only the most curmudgeonly of watchers who did not recognize the joy and pride she took in her horse.

Not that he was hers, Jaufre thought, and scanned the crowd for an officer of the court, merely out of habit.

“A bet on the Honorable Wu Li’s daughter and her fine steed, young sir?”

Jaufre looked down to meet the bland eyes of Shasha, stick of charcoal poised over a rough wood tablet, her leather purse heavy at her waist, Félicien guarding her back, and stifled a laugh. Shasha gave an imperceptible shrug, as if to say, What else was I supposed to do?

“No?” she said. “And you, fine sir? A late entrant, to be sure, and untested this far west, but surely worthy of the wager?”

The sheik gave Shasha a sharp glance. “If I bet, I bet on my own horse, madam.”

Shasha bent her head. “My apologies, fine sir,” she said, and vanished discreetly into the crowd, Félicien a step behind her. A few moments later Jaufre heard her voice. “A bet on the white horse? Of course, my fine sirs, of course! The odds? Come, come, you have only to look at him! The sheik’s horse is known never to have a lost a race? Then it is time he did, and I say the white stallion is the one to do it! Ten to one? Eight to one? Very well, five to one, and welcome, fine sir!”

Jaufre very carefully did not look at the man next to him, but on the sheik’s other side his son choked and turned it quickly into a cough when his father glared at him.

The sheik’s horse was easy to spot, an Arab stallion with a gleaming mahogany coat clothing a fine collection of muscle and bone. He danced impatiently on small, neat hooves, ready to be off. His rider kept glancing at Johanna as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. Jaufre felt the sheik shift and still himself again with a palpable effort. Looking that impervious all the time must come with a price.

“How can you bear it?” the sheik’s son said to Jaufre in an undertone.

“Bear what?” Jaufre said, his eyes like the sheik’s son’s trained on the woman on the white stallion.

“Your woman’s face uncovered before so many men’s eyes,” Farhad, the sheik’s son, said.

“She’s not my woman,” Jaufre said. Not yet, he thought.

He didn’t notice the sheik’s son coming to attention next to him at his words.

The race official cried out and the crowd fell silent, all eyes on the starting line and the seven horses standing there in relative degrees of serenity. The sheik’s stallion looked ready to explode out of its skin, North Wind looked carved from marble, and the other five horses simply faded out of existence by comparison. Voices went up as last frantic bids were made. Jaufre didn’t see Uncle Cheng but he was sure he was in the crowd somewhere with silver coin running through his fingers like water.

The official, perched above the fray on the edge of the river’s bank, counted to three. At two the sheik’s mahogany stallion quivered all over and strained at the bit. North Wind looked bored. The official cried out “Go!” His arm dropped sharply.

And North Wind went from a period of calm repose, probably speculating on the content of his next meal, to a full-length extended gallop in one stride.

Jaufre had seen it before, many times, and it never failed to amaze him. Johanna lay flat on North Wind’s back, her face pressed against his neck, her hands buried in his mane. She rode him bareback—“North Wind would never allow me to fall”—with her knees drawn up and her heels pressed tightly against his sides. Her braid was blown free in three strides, on the fourth they were passing Jaufre’s position and on the seventh they had reached the first bend.

“Allah forfend!” the sheik said. “What a horse!”

But Jaufre had eyes only for Johanna. So did the sheik’s son, although Jaufre didn’t notice.

The ground shook beneath the thud of hooves striking sand and North Wind was a full length ahead of the sheik’s stallion as they went out of sight, and five lengths ahead of him when they thundered back across the finish line ten minutes later. Here, North Wind deigned to prance and preen, just a bit. The stallion snapped at him and North Wind moved neatly out of reach and nipped the stallion’s rider on the thigh, startling something very like a squeal out of him.

And quite right, too, Jaufre thought, shoving his way through the crowd. “Congratulations,” he said to Johanna, who brought her leg over North Wind’s neck and slid neatly to the ground.

She shook her head, hands busily reassembling her braid. “It wasn’t fair, really. No other horse here had a chance against North Wind.”

The rider of the mahogany stallion overheard her and reddened.

“No,” another voice said. “They didn’t.”

The stallion’s rider paled, and Jaufre turned to see that Sheik Mohammed had followed him through the crowd. The sheik’s son was next to him and this time Jaufre saw him look at Johanna, his admiration evident.

“Surely he is a descendant of Bucephalus himself,” the sheik said to Jaufre. “I will buy him from you.”

“He’s not mine,” Jaufre said shortly.

The sheik gave him an incredulous look, and turned to Johanna.

He’s not hers, either, Jaufre thought.

“I will buy your horse, then,” the sheik said to Johanna, reluctantly and somewhat uncomfortably, as if he was unaccustomed to speaking directly to women.

“Certainly,” Johanna said with a glittering smile.

“Name your price,” the sheik said.

North Wind poked his nose over Johanna’s shoulder and blew in her ear. “All the gold in Byzantium, all the pearls in Cipangu, and all the rubies in Mien,” she said, with a grin at Jaufre, and at Shasha and Félicien as they arrived, out of breath. Shasha was carrying a noticeably heavier purse. “There is no price too high for North Wind. Besides, I can’t sell him.”

The sheik reached out a hand and North Wind’s teeth snapped again, short of their target only because Johanna said in firm voice, “No.” She patted his neck. “I would be cheating you, sheik. He wouldn’t go with you if I did sell him. There is no rope strong enough to tie him to you while I am still in the world. He would savage every other horse and trample every guard and break down every door in your stables, to make his way back to me. He’s done it before. And he would certainly never allow your man on his back.”

“That,” Jaufre said reluctantly, “is really true.” He reflected on Edyk’s troubles with riders, or more specifically on North Wind’s troubles with riders. Any races he had run were won in spite of them, and Edyk had forfeited more than one race because North Wind had dumped his rider before the finish line. No rider had ever volunteered for a second race on North Wind’s broad back.

Jaufre looked at Johanna in sudden realization. She met his eyes, a smile in her own.

“He followed you down from the summerhouse,” Jaufre said later.

She nodded. “I tried to leave him in his stall at Edyk’s, but he kicked it down and came after me. I think, somehow, he knew, and he would not be left behind.”

She was grooming North Wind, who had been fed and watered and who was now picketed and drowsing with his weight on three legs. He was almost purring beneath the rhythmic stroke of the bristles.

“And I didn’t want to miss the ceremony for Father,” Johanna said, “and by then it was too late.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

“If you could have seen your expressions when I rode up! I couldn’t resist, Jaufre.”

Her grin was impish, her eyes twinkling, her voice on the edge of laughter. He knew no other woman who would be so unconcerned that he had thought her guilty of such an enormous theft. His hand went out but she had turned back to North Wind and didn’t see it.

She smoothed out a nonexistent tangle and stepped back, North Wind gleaming in the evening light. They were staying another night in Kuche on the strength of Wu Cheng’s winnings. Uncle Cheng even now was hosting an uproarious party for the city’s dignitaries behind city walls, catered by every food vendor and wine merchant within a day’s ride. It would very likely continue until they were ready to depart the following evening.

“Sheik Mohammed is serious about buying him,” Jaufre said.

“North Wind is just as serious about not being bought,” Johanna said, and took her leave of her equine familiar with a last, loving stroke. “There are new baths in the city,” she said. “Shasha went ahead. Shall we?”

The water was hot and the attendants scrubbed hard. As they emerged again into the street an hour later, not far away they could hear the sounds of people still enjoying their wine at Uncle Cheng’s expense. “Should we join them?” Jaufre said.

Johanna yawned hugely. “I’m for bed.” She smiled at him, her face still flushed from her bath.

Without knowing he did it, Jaufre raised a hand and brushed back a wayward bronze curl that had escaped from her damp braid to tangle in her eyelashes.

Johanna’s smile faded and they stood staring at each other.

Shasha cleared her throat. “Bed, yes, indeed,” she said. “It’s been a long day.”

They both jumped. Jaufre shook his head as if trying to clear it and without a word turned on his heel.