Everything Under the Heavens (Silk and Song) (5 page)

His brow knotted. “I can’t come with you, Johanna,” he said.

“Why not?” she said, dismayed.

“I have to find my mother,” he said.

When called before Wu Li that evening after dinner, he repeated himself. “I have to find my mother.”

Wu Li looked at the small, militant figure planted in front of him, and knew respect, even an odd sense of pride in this foundling. Still, he could not allow the boy to go haring off into the blue. Chances were he would only end up in a slave market, too. But it would be much better if the boy came to that realization on his own. “Do you know where she has been taken?”

The boy hesitated, and then gave his head a reluctant shake.

“Do you have a plan as to where to begin to look?”

A longer pause. Another shake of the head.

Wu Li sat back, scratching his chin in a thoughtful manner. “I see. Well, I can put some inquiries to people I know here in Kashgar. We will need a description. Did you look like her?”

“No. She had dark hair and eyes. I look like my father.” The firm chin gave just a suspicion of a quiver before his face resumed its determined cast.

“Was she Persian?”

“Greek,” the boy said. “My father was from Britannia.”

“A Crusader?” Wu Li said. Or the son of one, perhaps, as the last Christian outpost in the Levant had fallen to the Mamluks over twenty years before.

“A Templar.”

“Ah.” A lapsed one, then, as Templars were supposed to be celibate. It happened. Wu Li’s agent in Antioch was a former Templar who had renounced Christianity for Islam and embraced the notion of multiple wives and unlimited concubines with tireless enthusiasm. “About your mother,” he said. “The slave market in Kashgar is the largest between here and Kabul. It is possible she and the others captured from your caravan will be brought here to be sold.” He reflected briefly on how much such a sale might bring. Generally speaking, a woman who had had a child would not fetch the highest price, which was reserved for virgins. But Jaufre was a handsome lad and had probably had equally handsome parents. Wu Li could only hope that if his mother was found that the price would not be beyond the reach of his purse, as he well knew that he would be expected to meet it by wife and daughter both. “What is your mother’s name?”

“Agalia,” the boy said. “It means joy in Greek.”

“Pretty,” Wu Li said, keeping his inevitable reflections to himself.

The boy left, step light with hope.

“Do you really think it is possible we may find her here?” Shu Ming said later.

Wu Li shrugged. “It is possible. But not likely. And we must be very careful. Slavery is not illegal in Kashgar.”

She was combing her damp hair with the intricately carved sandalwood comb he had brought her from Mysore the year Johanna was born, the only year she had not traveled with him. Yet again he was conscious of the gratitude due his father, who had chosen so well for his son’s bride. The condemning looks that her obvious foreign blood drew in Cambaluc, the shunning by the Chinese community there, it was all worth it for a life spent with a woman like this at his side. Beautiful, intelligent, adventurous. What more could one want in a mate?

And they weren’t in Cambaluc now. He stretched out on the bed and put his hands behind his back to watch her as she bent over, her hair hanging almost to the floor, and began with short, patient strokes to disentangle first the very ends of the thick mane, working slowly up to her scalp. When she was finished she stood up straight and tossed her hair back, where it fell in a flyaway cloud of shining brown curls, with the most intriguing streaks of gold and bronze and cinnamon. She was flushed and smiling, having felt his eyes on her all the while, knowing how much he enjoyed watching her at this particular task.

The first night at their destination was always a special night, no matter how tired or travelworn they were. The first night was a celebration of the return of privacy after weeks and sometimes months spent sleeping in tents in the open or in caravansary rooms shared with ten others. The ritual included bathing, clean clothes, a meal of local delicacies they could eat sitting on clean mats, a long, delicious night in a clean, comfortable bed, and no need to set a guard or to rise too early the following morning.

She was wrapped in the Robe of a Thousand Larks, a garment of gold silk elaborately embroidered in silk thread with the brilliant colors of many larks in many attitudes, yellow throats arched, plump orange chests puffed out, black and yellow banded wings spread in flight, green heads cocked to one side, red beaks open in song. Bordered with brilliant flowers and green leaves and black branches, bound closely to the waist with a matching sash, it seemed to Wu Li that the robe made all the light in the world gather in this one room solely to illuminate Shu Ming’s slender, elegant figure.

And it made his hands itch to loosen the knot of that sash.

She set the comb carefully to one side and walked to him, and the whereabouts of Jaufre’s mother and indeed everything else were forgotten for the rest of the evening.

The next morning he presented himself at the magistrate’s office as requested and saw with pleasure and not a little relief that the magistrate was not alone. “Ogodei!”

He stepped forward and the two men exchanged a hearty embrace. From a corner of his eye he took note of the magistrate’s visible relaxation, and he hid a smile. Having a captain of a Mongol ten thousand in one’s backyard was never a cause for joy unconfined.

“Wu Li, my good friend.” A man of ability, vigor and stamina, the Mongol chief was dressed in soldier’s robes, his long black mustaches rivaling Bayan’s own. He looked fit and bronzed from long days spent in the saddle, patrolling the western borders of the Khan’s vast empire. “I find you, as always, far from home.”

Wu Li laughed. “The last time was, when? Khuree, at the summer court, at the ceremony of the gifts?”

“Worse!” Ogodei covered his eyes and gave a dramatic shudder. “In Kinsai last fall. You had just returned from Cipangu, that far and obstinate country, laden with fine pearls and full of plans as to where and to whom to sell them.” He laughed, throwing back his head. “As I recall, you sold some to me.”

“But then,” Wu Li said, a glint in his eye and a manifestly false tone of apology in his voice, “there are so many likely recipients for them.”

This time Ogodei’s crack of laughter was so loud it made the magistrate jump, although for the sake of his dignity he did his best to conceal it. “True enough, Wu Li, my old friend. I am rich in wives and in concubines.” He cocked an eyebrow. “And the beautiful Shu Ming?”

“Flourishing.”

“And your daughter?”

“Healthy, shooting up like a weed in springtime.” Wu Li exchanged a bow with the magistrate. “What brings you to the edge of the world, O great captain of the Khan?”

The three men settled into chairs and leaned forward to discuss the state of their mutual world.

Later, Wu Li gave Shu Ming the gist of it. “Jaufre’s caravan was not the only one attacked this season. Reports have been coming in from as far as Kabul, and even beyond. The Persian tribes are becoming ever more bold in their incursions. The Khan has placed several of his ten thousands to patrol the Road this season and deal with any trouble.”

“He’s missed some,” Shu Ming said.

He shot her a warning glance. It took only one informer to turn criticism to treason.

“You will still look for Jaufre’s mother?” Shu Ming said.

“I gave the boy my word,” Wu Li said, and Shu Ming said no more.

Wu Li was as good as his word. He had been closely questioned by Ogodei and the magistrate on the remains of Jaufre’s caravan, and had used the interview to pose cautious questions of his own. He omitted any mention of Jaufre, and he had laid the most strict prohibition on all his people from making any public reference as to how the boy had come to be among them. Since Kashgar was the nearest available market for stolen goods, it stood to reason someone affiliated with the thieves would be in the city, very much alive to the news of an eyewitness and bound to pass it on. Ogodei was a vigorous and capable captain and Wu Li had no doubt his progress up the ranks would be steady and possibly even legendary, but even he could not guarantee the safety of one small boy in a city the size and duplicity of Kashgar. Anonymity was a much more sensible solution.

Wu Li bought a cap for the boy to cover hair that, when washed, proved to be the color of gold, a distinctive, memorable and in these parts unusual shade, and told him to wear it every moment he was outside their rooms in the caravansary.

Over the next week as Wu Li met with his agent in Kashgar, his fellow merchants and prospective buyers, he let fall the judicious word here and there that he was looking for a Greek woman answering to the name of Agalia. A free woman, recently widowed, who might through a series of unfortunate circumstances have had the additional misfortune of falling prey to slavers. He wasn’t asking for himself, but family in Antioch had contacted Basil the Frank, his agent in Baghdad, and as a favor to Basil…Yes, yes, of course, the utmost discretion…

The Honorable Wu Li of Cambaluc, following in the footsteps of his father, the Honorable Wu Hai, had taken great care over many visits to maintain good relations with the city of Kashgar, paying into the city’s treasury with every appearance of good will his tithe of monies earned through sales of his goods. He had even taken on a local orphanage as a personal concern, in donations of cash, food and goods. Neither was he a stranger to the local mosque, Buddhist monastery, or Nestorian church. He had no intention of embarrassing any good citizen of Kashgar for legally acquiring property in the form of a slave. But if such a slave had been purchased, it was just possible that she could be sold again, immediately, and at a modest profit. The Honorable Wu Li would be very grateful, and as every citizen of Kashgar knew, such gratitude had a way of manifesting itself in very real terms, if not immediately then at some time in the future. The citizens of Kashgar, traders to the bone, took always the long view.

In the meantime, Jaufre and Johanna, shadowed at a discreet distance by Deshi the Scout, sallied forth into the great bazaar, where a surgeon pulled a rotten molar from the mouth of a groaning patient with his wailing wife at his side. Next to the surgeon’s shop a blacksmith replaced a cast shoe on a braying donkey. Another stall featured an endless array of brilliant silks, presided over by a black-veiled woman who, when the imam issued the call to prayer, excused herself from her customers, produced a small rug, and knelt to prostrate herself toward the east.

There were tents filled with nothing but soaps, powders to clean one’s hair, picks to clean one’s fingernails, pumice to smooth one’s callouses, creams and lotions to soften one’s skin, perfumes to make one irresistible to the opposite sex. There was cotton by the bale and by the ell, and tailors to make it up into any garment one wished. Carpenters made chair legs and rolling pins and carts. Herbalists made up mixtures of spices to season lamb, ease a head cold, hasten a birth. A tinsmith cut rolled sheets of tin into pieces for buckets, tubs, pots and pans. An ironworker fashioned chisels and hammers. Potters sat behind rows of bowls, pitchers and urns glazed in golden brown and cool green.

One huge tent was filled with coarse sacks with the tops open and the sides partly rolled down to display a vast selection of dried fruits and nuts, apricots from Armenia, olives from Iberia, almonds and dates from Jordan, pistachios from Balkh. There were carts piled high with sheep’s lungs dyed pink and green and yellow and stuffed with spiced meats and cooked grains. One sweating man rendered a pile of pomegranates as tall as he was into cups of cool, tart, ruby-red juice, unperturbed by the dozens of wasps and flies buzzing around him. “Hah, daughter of the honorable Wu Li! You have returned to Kashgar!”

Johanna beamed at him. “Well met, Ahmed! Yes, we have returned, and we are here to trade.”

He refilled their cups without charge, trading Kashgar gossip for the gossip of the Road, and Jaufre was impressed by Johanna’s knowledge and confidence, and the ease with which she slipped from Mandarin, the language spoken among members of the caravan, and Persian, the lingua franca of Kashgar. He was even more impressed by the respect Ahmed accorded Johanna, and the gravity with which he listened to her replies to his questions. Fifty years Ahmed’s junior, she barely came up to his waist, and yet he attended her conversation with a serious frown that didn’t look as if he were indulging a child.