Everything Under the Heavens (Silk and Song) (23 page)

Johanna waited. When Cheng said no more, she said, “But where was Everything Under the Heavens?”

Wu Cheng looked at her, his expression sober. “It wasn’t in the chest.”

Johanna sat up. “Not in the box? Why not?”

“I don’t know why not.”

Johanna was unbelieving. “Was this Cosmas unaware of the existence of Everything Under the Heavens?”

Wu Cheng considered. “He may have been. He may also have been ignoring it, deliberately so.”

“But how can this be?” Johanna said. “One cannot ignore Everything Under the Heavens. It just…is. Everything Under the Heavens, is, well, Everything Under the Heavens.”

“Not everything,” Cheng said. “Not even most.”

Johanna didn’t understand him, and didn’t understand Cosmas, either, for that matter. “And to make the earth a box when everyone knows it is a ball? This is nonsense, Uncle.”

“It is,” Cheng agreed. “And then it isn’t.”

She looked at him accusingly. “You’re as bad as Shasha, uncle.”

“I am wounded that you would say so,” he said gravely.

Shasha snorted.

“Johanna.” The serious note in Wu Cheng’s voice caused Johanna’s smile to fade. He looked stern, even a little harsh. “Jaufre, yes, even you, Shasha, listen to me. If the Celts and the Scythians and the Indians and the Ethiops think they share the whole world between them, and if they have thought that for five hundred years, and if for that long they have ignored the existence of Everything Under the Heavens…”

“Then,” Jaufre said, “they will not wish to hear of the power and the greatness that we have left behind.”

“No. They are also very jealous of their gods. You would do well to adopt, outwardly at least, whatever faith rules wherever you are.”

Johanna thought of Hari, the monk at present eating their food and sleeping in a bed they had provided him, enjoying a freedom purchased by them. She had been ready to leave Everything Under the Heavens since she was old enough to walk, but for the first time she began to realize the dangers of doing so.

“Have you given any thought to where you will go?” Uncle Cheng said. “Other than simply west. Baghdad and Hormuz are not what they once were. Tabriz, perhaps?”

Johanna, Jaufre and Shasha exchanged glances. Jaufre would have said, Anywhere I might find word of my mother. Shasha would have said, As far away from the fell hand of the Widow Wu as possible. Johanna said, “Tabriz, certainly. Wu Li said my grandfather called Tabriz a crossroads of commerce. Then Gaza, perhaps. From Gaza we could take ship to Venice.”

“You don’t want to stop in Byzantium?” Jaufre said.

“Most of what was worth seeing in Byzantium,” Uncle Cheng said, “is now in Venice.”

“KERMAN?” HARI REPEATED.
“In Kerman, unless the merchants be well armed they run the risk of being murdered, or at least robbed.”

“Have you been there, old man?” Jaufre said.

The monk shook his head. “I have not, master. But I have traveled the road from India, and I have heard this said of Kerman many times. And before Kerman,” he said dreamily, “I have heard of the plain of Pamir—so lofty and cold that you do not often see birds fly. Because of this great cold, fire does not burn so brightly, nor give out so much heat as usual, nor does it cook food so efficiently.”

“Are you sure you want to come with us?” Shasha said pointedly.

He smiled at her. “Of course. Let us follow the chariot of Arjuna, whose wheels are right effort and whose driver is truth. Thus shall we all come to the land which is free from fear.”

“Kerman, then,” Jaufre said, bringing them back to the point. “The carpets there are said to be very fine.”

“And Tabriz afterward,” Shasha said.

“And then Gaza,” Johanna said, and gave an impish smile. “And anything in between that looks interesting.”

Firas and Félicien were interested auditors but contributed no opinions.

“Johanna?”

Johanna looked up to see Fatima standing in the doorway, an even more joyous smile than usual on her face. “Azar is here.”

A slim young man in pants and tunic with a dark blue cheche wrapped about his head stood next to her, a shy smile on his face. He was older and taller than when they had seen him last, but then they all were, and they had no trouble recognizing her betrothed.

“Azar!” Jaufre leaped to his feet and they clasped hands warmly. Shasha pushed him to one side and took Azar by his shoulders. “You look well,” she said, and gave him a gentle shake. She was displaced in turn by Johanna, who gave him a hearty embrace. He colored slightly, but he was definitely pleased to see them.

“We are coming with you to Kerman!” Fatima said.

Johanna was startled. “We only just decided we were going there.”

Fatima gave that remark the back of her hand. “Father has heard of a new kind of grain available in the west, one that in the right climate can bear twice in the same season.”

“Has Ahmed the baker become a grain merchant, then?”

“Who cares, so long as our time together is not yet done? Although—” Fatima managed to assume a stern expression “—we are not pitching our yurt anywhere near yours again. I tremble to think what would happen the next time you called on the North Wind for aid.”

The four of them laughed.

Uncle Cheng had arranged for them to join a caravan headed for Kerman by way of Talikan, where they would trade for almonds and pistachios but mostly for salt. “It is said there are mountains of it,” Jaufre said.

“What’s so special about this particular salt?” Johanna said.

“It is said to be washed in the azure waves of the Gulf of Persia, and harvested by virgins at the dark of the moon.”

Johanna raised an eyebrow. “Hard on the feet, stumbling around all those rock pools at night.”

“Also said to be flavored with the blood of said virgins,” Jaufre said, inspired.

“Oh, well, we should definitely buy some, then.”

Besides the camels they had eight horses, one and a spare for each of them, and Félicien’s donkey. Hari, too, had insisted on a donkey, purchased in Kashgar.

Sheik Mohammed and his son were also traveling west. The sheik told Jaufre they were returning to their home near Talikan, and offered escort, for a price.

He also renewed his offer to buy North Wind. Eventually he and Jaufre concluded terms for their journey that did not include the stallion, and when they emerged from the tent the old sheik further irritated Johanna by patting her cheek and saying approvingly to Jaufre, “Skin as smooth as mare’s milk, my friend, and I have never seen such eyes, like the sky at sunrise. You should make your woman wear a veil, lest she tempt mens’ thoughts into covetousness.”

Jaufre smiled and bent his head without replying, and hoped he was going to survive the night, never mind the journey. Straightening, he saw the sheik’s son’s eyes drawn irresistibly to Johanna.

The old man was in love with the horse. The young man was in love with its rider. Jaufre squared his shoulders, feeling the reassuring weight of his father’s sword against his back. Neither man would achieve his heart’s desire on this trip.

They left Kashgar the next morning, since the heat of the day was easing as the year made its way toward fall. Uncle Cheng saw them off, tears unashamedly streaming down his cheeks. Johanna was the last of his family left to him. At the last moment, Johanna, similarly affected, said urgently, “Come with us, uncle!” She burrowed into his arms, her voice muffled against his tunic. “Who knows what wonders we shall find, far in the west! Come see them with us!”

He wiped his tears on his sleeve and patted her back before pushing her back. “I don’t deny that it is tempting, Johanna, but I have merchants expecting cargo in Chang’an. Still, who knows? One day, perhaps, I shall follow.”

With that Johanna had to be content. She mounted North Wind and kicked him into a gallop to catch up with her friends, where she reined in and stood in her stirrups to turn and look back for the last time. The large man in the sand-colored robes standing outside the great Kashgar gate raised his arms high above his head. She raised both of hers in return and cried out, something inarticulate, encompassing love, and loss, and farewell.

And then she faced west and nudged North Wind into motion again.

The white bulk of the Pamirs stood blunt and proud against the deep blue sky, on their left as they began to climb up. The way was all ridges and valleys and passes. The narrow trail was beaten down by hundreds of years of travelers’ feet but no smoother for that. Rocks rattled down from the hills above, evergreen branches scraped their heads, and in places the trail fell abruptly to the bottoms of distant canyons where the way narrowed to a strip of ground barely wide enough for a camel to pass. Jaufre hooked the lead camel to Hari’s donkey and let the sure-footed little beast lead the way. Hari walked behind, omming. He never seemed to be out of breath like the rest of them.

“Straight to heaven,” Johanna said, panting.

“How long before we get to the top?” Shasha said.

Johanna touched the purse at her waist. “Father says forty days to the plain.”

“Forty days!” It was only their third, and the path before them wound ever upward.

The people who lived between the ridges and in the valleys were few and secretive, and seen only in glimpses. They looked to be hunters, as they were dressed in skins. As the travelers soon found, if they did not mount a constant watch the mountain people were also expert thieves. Exhausted as they were at the end of each day, it was an additional hardship, to be always alert for theft.

When they met oncoming travelers, it was a mad, confused crush of swearing men and animals, jostling for place on the trail (no one wanted the outside edge if they were currently traversing a precipice, which they only too often were) and trying to avoid steaming piles of dung excreted by camels and horses and donkeys choosing to exercise their displeasure by the only means possible to them. There were no caravansaries along this stretch of the Road, and campsites were few, small and mean, lacking in fuel and often in water, which caused them to make camp earlier some evenings so that they could send out scouts to find the nearest stream. If another caravan was there before them, they slept between rocks and under trees at the nearly vertical sides of the trail, everyone out of sorts the next day from having spent the entire night trying not to slip down into whatever abyss they were camping next to. Arguments over who had laid claim to what campsite for the evening increased with altitude, and only Firas’ calm, authoritative manner averted some outright clashes.

“I’m glad we brought him,” Johanna said, when they were first into the next campsite that evening.

“Me, too,” Jaufre said.

Johanna looked at Shasha. “Are you glad we brought him, Shasha?”

Shasha said nothing, but the next time her camel was in reach he took a nip at Johanna’s knee.

There was none of the camaraderie that had existed on the crossing of the vast, flat plain they had left so far behind them. There was no singing around the campfire in the evening, as there wasn’t much of a campfire and no one had any breath to sing with anyway. There was not even the comfort of light, as the twisting trail, the overhanging bluffs and the narrow valleys cut off the most wayward rays of the sun during the day, and hid the stars at night.

“No wonder Yusuf the Levantine charged so much for his olive oil,” Johanna said one afternoon, toiling ever and ever upward. Like Jaufre and Shasha, she had donned her astrakhan coat very soon after they had begun to climb. She sweated beneath it as the trail rose, but if she took it off the sweat froze to her skin.

Félicien blew loudly into a large and filthy handkerchief. “I came by the northern way when I went first to Khuree. It was much easier.”

They all wished he hadn’t said that.

“We climb to the seat of heaven itself,” Hari said, face raised beatifically to the sky.

Firas, like Hari, seemed impervious to heat and cold alike.

Thirty days into their climb, water would not boil, and even if it would you could stick your finger in it and not be burned. Game thinned out and the birds vanished altogether. They subsisted on dried fruit and nuts, and unleavened bread made from grain they carried with them, when they could find enough water to spare from filling their water sacks. They went thirsty before the livestock did.