Silk and Song

by Dana Stabenow

  The Honorable Wu Li had been among the proponents of this cooperative, and Edyk the Portuguese had been among the first to join. Young, only five years older than Jaufre and Johanna, intelligent, talented and ambitious, he was quick to see the benefits of Wu Li’s proposal, and a caravan traveling under Wu Li’s direction hadn’t left Cathay in the last three years in which Edyk the Portuguese had not been a full partner, carrying silk west and driving a carefully selected group of purebred horses east. He favored Arabians, but when available he did not turn up his nose at draft horses like the Ardennais, mules, and the occasional zebra, which could be bred with horses to make a hardy pony good for narrow trails at high elevations, a breed championed by a certain faction of Mongol nobles who were willing to pay any amount to acquire better transportation for their troops.

  He’d met Johanna during the Cambaluc merchants’ first communal caravan, early one morning when he’d come down to inspect his father’s picket line and had found her galloping up on his most obstreperous stallion. “His front right shoe is a little loose, I think,” she had said without introduction, and slid from the stallion’s back to pick up his right front foot, beckoning Edyk closer for an inspection of the offending shoe. She had been right.

  Edyk’s father had been a rogue Cistercian monk, born in Portugal, who had abandoned a life of contemplation and cloister for one of travel and adventure. Like Johanna’s grandfather, upon reaching the East he had offered his services to the court of the Great Khan. Those services had been able enough to achieve recognition and reward, again like Johanna’s grandfather, in the form of Edyk the Portuguese’s mother, the daughter of a Chinese concubine. Again, like Johanna and Jaufre, by virtue of his foreign blood he was shunned by Cambaluc society, and not much more welcomed by the ruling class.

  Foreign traders, the proximate cause of so much Mongol wealth, were regarded as somewhere in between, and their children, especially the children of favorite foreigners and ex-Mongol concubines, were even then regarded as a breed apart, not quite other but not quite equal, either. Like Johanna and Jaufre and lacking an alternative, Edyk was drawn to others of his kind.

  Where Johanna went Jaufre followed and the three of them had become nearly inseparable over the years, but recently Jaufre had noticed a change in Edyk’s manner toward Johanna, less brotherly and more, well, affectionate, was the only word for it. It set Jaufre’s teeth on edge.

  “North Star’s foal was born last night,” Edyk said.

  In spite of himself, Jaufre brightened. “All well?”

  Edyk grinned. “He was running before he could walk. A winner, I’ll wager.”

  And he would, Jaufre thought, and Edyk the Portuguese would win, too. Upon succeeding to his father’s business three years before, Edyk had shifted emphasis from general goods to livestock, in particular racing stock, and had made a name for himself in buying and backing winners.

  “And North Star?” Johanna said.

  “Well, though I think this is the last time I will breed her. She has done enough for my stables.”

  “What are you calling him?”

  Edyk smiled at her. She was taller than he was but it didn’t seem to bother him. “What would you like me to call her, Golden Flower?”

  Jaufre didn’t like the caressing tone in his voice, and still less did he like Edyk’s employment of Johanna’s Cambaluc name. “What color is his coat?”

  Edyk’s smile lessened. “He is pure white, nose to tail.”

  A short silence fell. They all knew that white was the color of death. Johanna and Jaufre were still wearing white in honor of Shu Ming’s death, although they would be putting it off when the month of official mourning had passed. “Will Chinese gamblers bet on a white horse?” Jaufre said.

  “They will on this one,” Edyk said with more assurance. “And Mongol gamblers certainly will. We’re just lucky it’s a colt and not a filly.”

  Johanna and even Jaufre in spite of himself nodded emphatic agreement. A vast herd of white mares was maintained by the Mongol emperor for the production and fermenting of their milk. If North Star had born a female, Edyk would have been expected to gift it to the Mongol court, no matter how fast a foal out of North Star might be expected to run. Koumiss was more of a staple in the Mongolian diet than bread or meat.

  “Then call him North Wind,” Johanna said. “Let him be named for how fast he will run.”

  A slow smile spread across Edyk’s face. “Perfect,” he said, and swung Johanna up into his arms and whirled her around.

  Jaufre, watching, schooled his expression to something that felt a little less like murder.

  On the other side of Cambaluc, where families who could trace their ancestries back to the Shang dynasty lived closely together in a section renowned for its insularity, xenophobia and self-regard, another meeting was taking place, with consequences reaching much farther than the selection of a lucky name for a winning horse.

  The house was every bit as large as its neighbors, but its appearance had declined with the fortunes of its owners. Luck had not followed the Dai family for three generations. Once one of the richest trading concerns in Everything Under the Heavens, the hopes of everyone under the Dai roof were now vested in the person of Dai Fang, an exquisite beauty of twenty years. Like Johanna, she was the only child of her house. Her mother was an invalid, her father inconstant, and when one day at the age of fifteen Dai Fang discovered that the only food in the house was two eggs laid by a stringy hen who had then immediately died, she had shut her father in a room with the cheapest bottle of rice wine she could find and had stepped forward to take the reins of the family business into her own hands.

  Over the past five years, those hands had proved to be capable. Intelligent and ruthless, with an invaluable talent for identifying well in advance of demand that one luxury item that the wives and concubines of Cambaluc simply could not do without that year. Allied with a charm of manner that had seduced many an older trader with more experience and a much harder head, Dai Fang made agreements and partnerships profitable enough to draw the Dai fortunes back up over the edge of disaster. When she had balanced the books at the end of the previous year, for the first time in four years the knot in her belly eased a little. They would not starve. The house would not have to be sold to pay their debts. Her mother could have the services of a decent nurse, who could also provide herbal remedies for Dai Yu’s own needs. If disaster in the form of sandstorm or flood or raiders did not descend upon next year’s caravan, the house of Dai might even see a profit. A modest one, to be sure, but encouraging after so many years of loss.

  It was at this inopportune moment that her father sobered up enough to notice that his daughter had reached the venerable age of twenty without being married. Unable to bear the shame, he entered into an arrangement with a matchmaker and began interviewing prospective sons-in-law. This was not to Dai Fang’s taste at all, not least because of Gokudo, her father’s Nippon sergeant of the guard, hired for a pittance a year before.

  “He will never allow you to marry me,” Gokudo said. Twenty-six, a hard-muscled man of middle height, his hands were rough and calloused from work with the spear with the curved blade he called the naginata, the weapon he only put down when he joined Dai Fang in her bed. Even now, it leaned against the wall within easy reach.

  “No,” she said. “The honorable Dai Fu would be horrified at the very thought of joining the revered house of Dai with a man not born in Everything Under the Heavens.”

  He looked down at her, his amusement showing in his face.

  “What?”

  He shook his head. Far be it from him to draw her attention to the fact that the honorable Dai Fu’s daughter shared her bed, enthusiastically and without inhibition, with a man not himself born in Everything Under the Heavens. A warrior nobleman exiled from his own country, he was still a foreigner here, forced to sell his services as a lowly bodyguard to a failed merchant, a man whom he would never even have met, let alone associated wi
th were he still heir to those rights, privileges and duties conferred by five hundred generations of birth, influence and favor.

  But then taking a lover was of much less importance than taking a husband.

  He took a deep, steadying breath, calming yet again the shame and the fury that burned always in his breast. His father had picked the losing side in a struggle for power and their family was no more. It was futile to dwell on the past, although the day would come when…Again he forced away thoughts of vengeance and retribution. They were a waste of energy best spent elsewhere.

  And there were compensations to his present occupation, to be sure. Slowly he drew back the coverlet and let himself enjoy the sight of her smooth, unblemished skin, the small, ruby-crowned breasts, the mystery between her lissome legs concealed by a tight weave of black hair. He had trimmed that cap of hair himself, with a sharp knife and infinite care. As he watched, she stretched, opening her legs, legs that ended in tiny, folded-back feet that had been bound since birth, a grotesquerie that had charmed him at first sight.

  A delicate film of moisture made her skin glow in the moonlight. He felt his body respond, and he smiled. After all, what need had Dai Fang of sure feet? It was off them that he liked her best. And if she married judiciously…

  He looked up to meet her eyes as his hand traveled up the inside of her thigh. “Then we must select the proper husband for you.”

  She sighed, arching her back. “And you have some suggestions along those lines, I suspect.”

  He was on her and in her, ferocious, sudden, his hand clapping brutally over her mouth as she cried out in surprise. “As it happens.”

  Servicing his mistress required only the attention of his body, and left his mind free to plot the various ways he could bring Dai Fang’s attention to the newly bereaved state of that most prosperous Cambaluc merchant, the honorable Wu Li.

  In the end the choice was obvious, and Dai Fu required very little persuading to open negotiations. The honorable Wu Li was of impeccable lineage with extensive holdings who had recently lost his wife and who had no son. There was of course the matter of having looked outside his race for his first wife, but that could be excused on the grounds of his father’s misplaced loyalty to an absent associate, an honorable if foolish act. Dai Fang was a young woman of excellent family and considerable beauty. It took very little encouragement for Dai Fang to arrange a meeting between her father and the honorable Wu Li, a meeting at which she contrived to be present. He wasn’t interested until she allowed herself to display some knowledge of trade. Further questions, delicately put beneath Dai Fu’s benevolent if slightly drunken eye, revealed a shrewd mind, wrapped in a traditional and delightfully feminine package.

  In appearance she was as unlike Shu Ming as she could be, and so Wu Li overlooked her bound feet, and the calculating look in her eyes.

  The matter was arranged in a week. The sensation this caused in Wu Li’s household lasted longer than that, but by not so much as the lift on an eyebrow did Dai Fang reveal any knowledge of the information the spies in the honorable Wu Li’s house reported daily to Gokudo. Her plans were laid and Wu Li so completely in her thrall that she felt confident that she would be able to see them through.

  The marriage took place a month later. Dai Fang’s mother’s nurse, an invaluable consultant, was able to supply her with an effective means of convincing Wu Li of her innocence. He was entirely beguiled, displaying a tenderness for her that first night that was as touching as it was tedious.

  She left the nurse with her mother, but she took Gokudo with her as her personal bodyguard when she moved into Wu Li’s house.

  And so infatuated with his new wife was Wu Li that he did not recognize Gokudo as the guard he had hired in Edo at the end of his last voyage to Cipangu.

  6

  1322, Cambaluc

  “MY HUSBAND IS DEAD,” the widow said.

  Not “Your father.” Not the more formal “The head of the house of Wu.” Just the exclusive, proprietary “My husband.” The widow was selfish even in her alleged grief.

  There was also a hard glitter of triumph in her dark eyes, for those with the wit to see it.

  “I know,” the girl said. The words were calm, devoid of grief or sorrow, devoid, indeed, of any expression at all.

  The widow’s mouth tightened into a lacquered red line. “How?” She had forbidden any communication between the mongrel’s servants and her own, on pain of severe punishment.

  The girl shrugged without answering. Her eyes met the widow’s without expression, without humility and, most inexcusably, without fear.

  The widow felt the familiar rage well up in her breast. Her hands trembled with it, curling into claws, the resemblance enhanced by the long, enameled fingernails. She saw the little mongrel looking at them, still with no expression on her alien face, and inhaled slowly, straightening her fingers from claws into hands once more.

  Behind her Gokudo stirred, a brief movement, a rustle of clothing, but it was enough to remind her of what was at stake. The little mongrel still had friends at court, associates of Wu Li who remembered him with respect and fondness and who might be persuaded to listen to any grievances Wu Li’s daughter might have with her father’s second wife.

  Gokudo was of course quite correct. The Khan’s attention must be avoided, and it required only her own self-control. The widow caused her rage to abate by sheer willpower, until she was able to look on her husband’s daughter and only child with at least the appearance of indifference. Soon the little mongrel would be out of the house and out of her life.

  The mongrel wasn’t little, being indecently tall, towering over everyone in the house and over most of the citizens of Cambaluc for that matter, but the widow never thought of her any other way. The little mongrel was nothing but a blight on the honored ancestors of the house of Wu, upon the sacred ancestors of Everything Under the Heavens itself, and what was worse, the little mongrel cost more than any two other members of the household to feed and clothe. Since the widow had cajoled her honorable husband Wu Li into letting her take over his accounts after his accident, she knew just how much extra silk it took to keep the length of the little mongrel’s legs and arms decently covered, and how many bowls of noodles it took to fill her apparently bottomless belly.

  If the little mongrel’s size had not damned her beyond redemption, her features surely would have. Her eyes were not a decent, modest brown or culturally acceptable black but instead a blue so light the irises were almost gray, with no hint of fold in the eyelid. The little mongrel lacked even the common courtesy to drop her gaze out of respect in the presence of her elders, and especially her betters.

  And as tightly confined as fashion and tradition decreed in a single braid that reached her waist, the little mongrel’s hair was still as unruly and unmanageable as the little mongrel herself, escaping a wisp at a time to curl round the pale face with its odd cheekbones, enormous nose and grossly oversized mouth. The hair had not even the saving grace of color, that thick rich black fall of hair one might expect of the honorable Wu Li’s daughter, but instead a brown streaked with bronze, acquired during the improperly hatless and shockingly astride daily rides with her father and that foreign stableboy the honorable Wu Li had so carelessly chosen first as his daughter’s playmate and later as her personal guard. Perhaps Wu Li had felt that the essential outlandishness in each made them fit only for their own company. Certainly they were inseparable.

  Wu Li’s widow was pleased enough with this reasoning to ignore the presence of Gokudo at her shoulder. He was the noble warrior of an honorable race strong enough to defeat two invasions by Kublai Khan himself, not to be compared to the descendant of a race of men who could not hold a land they had conquered for even fifty years.

  The little mongrel’s stepmother averted her eyes before her inventory could take in the abomination of close-cut fingernails and unbound feet, but she was shocked to her very soul at such an unfeminine disregard for the proprieties.
That the little mongrel herself was without sense or shame was expected but that Wu Li would have allowed either was unbelievable. Foreign, the widow thought with an inward shudder, the most insulting epithet in her language.

  Yes, in birth, appearance and demeanor, altogether an unsatisfactory little mongrel to dispose of, but disposed of she must be if the widow wished to gather the reins of her husband’s importing business into her own supremely competent hands, and that she most certainly wished to do.

  All that remained was the safe disposition of the sole heir of Wu Li’s body.

  Fortunately a solution to the problem was ready to hand. The widow smiled to herself, and said, “Ceremonies for your father will take place three days from now.” She paused, and added with a bow that was as patronizing as it was slight, “You may attend.”

  The little mongrel displayed no proper gratitude for the magnanimity thus offered. There was no bow of acknowledgement, no polite murmur of appreciation. Her blue-gray eyes remained steady on the widow’s face. Truth be told, that unflinching gaze was a little unnerving.

  Again, Gokudo shifted behind the widow. Her eyes moved to the marble-topped table reposing in isolated splendor against one wall. On its carved and polished top rested two items, carefully centered. One was the jade box that held Wu Li’s bao. The other was the fat leather-bound journal that held the names of all of Wu Li’s agents in cities far and near, and his annotated maps of trading routes as far as the Middle Sea. The power these two items represented was enough to soothe her irritation.