“No, indeed,” she said. “Why waste your energy jumping about like a squirrel when there is a way to better entice the customer to your stall?”
“And what way would this be, young miss?”
She raised her brows and looked around, as several interested parties were loitering within earshot. Mesut followed her gaze, and said smoothly, “But we should step inside, out of the sun, young miss. I will send my daughter for tea.”
“That would be most welcome, effendi.”
She followed him inside to take a cushion next to the low table that occupied the back of his shop. After the tea came and they had refreshed themselves, Johanna cleared the table and produced the length of silk and the spool of cord. With her belt knife she sliced the silk into small squares and pooled strings from Mesut’s stock of semi-precious stones, pearls and trade beads in the centers of them. These she folded over and tied with one of the elaborate knots she had learned from Halim the dyer in Talikan, what seemed now like a lifetime before. Baghdad’s sophisticated marketplace required something grander than Halim’s bright scraps of cotton, and so the silk. Halim was not here to hand-dye lengths of jute, and so the gilt cord. Halim the dyer, almost certainly dead, along with all of his family, and friends, and the entire population of his city with him.
With steady hands, she pulled the triple bow into equal loops, and presented it to Mesut cradled in both hands.
He examined the bright, sparkling little package and cocked an eyebrow. “But how are my customers to see what is in the package?”
“Two ways, effendi,” she said, “that choice being yours, of course. The first is that you, or perhaps your daughter”—this earned her a smile from the girl with the flashing eyes who had watched all this very intently from her father’s side—“could learn this style of wrapping and wrap each sale as it is made.”
“And the other?”
“Have the merchandise wrapped in individual packages before it is sold, but leave one string out for people to examine.”
“Why should anyone assume that each package contains what is on display?”
“Why the name of Mesut, surely, effendi,” she said demurely
He laughed outright. “And so they should, young miss.” He looked at his daughter. “What do you say, Rashidah? Are you willing to learn to tie string?” His belly shook as he laughed.
Johanna spent the rest of the afternoon teaching an eager Rashidah various ties and bows, and inventing a few on the spot. Rashidah came up with a design of her own that vaguely resembled the openwork crown on a minaret, and had the inspiration to thread one of the stones on the gilt thread so that it not only decorated the package, it alerted the interested as to what was inside.
After the heat of the day had passed, they brought out a few of the packages and placed them on display. If a crowd did not immediately gather, the gaily wrapped packages did disappear in gratifyingly rapid fashion, and before very long Hafizah effendi was seen to be loitering in the background. He wasn’t quite gnashing his teeth but he was chewing on his beard, which Mesut said was a sure sign of agitation, and which Mesut seemed to find vastly entertaining.
Mesut was suitably grateful, discounting the price of Johanna’s beads and accepting florins instead of bezants. He sent for more tea and cakes this time to cement the deal, and Rashidah joined them. Father and daughter were obviously fond of one another and Mesut treated Rashidah very much as an equal partner in the business. Again, Johanna missed Wu Li with a ferocity that almost occluded their next comments, but she surfaced in time to hear Rashidah’s teasing remark about Mesut backing as good a horse in the next race. Miraculously, Johanna’s vision cleared, and she cleared her throat. “Race?” she said delicately, fixing Mesut with what she hoped was merely a polite and not very interested eye.
Rashidah rolled her eyes. “Oh please, young miss, don’t encourage him,” she said, but she was smiling. “Sometimes I think he should have been a horse trader.” She laughed. “There was news recently of some big white bruiser of a stallion new come to the city, and there was nothing for it but for Father to ferret out its provenance.”
Johanna looked at Mesut, who returned a glance limpid with innocence.
Rashidah looked from one to the other. “Father, didn’t you say that the white stallion was ridden by a woman?”
Mesut sipped tea.
Johanna put her head back and laughed out loud.
And so it was, ten days hence, that Johanna found herself on North Wind’s back as he ambled in his best unconcerned fashion onto the large oval racetrack outside the city walls. It was by far the most splendid track this side of Cambaluc Johanna had yet seen, laid with meticulously swept sand and lined with sturdy railings to keep the large and eager crowd from falling beneath the leaders’ hooves and interfering with the proper running of a race. Vendors hawked fruit juice and pastries, and touts on makeshift stands shouted the odds to long lines of bettors.
It was a glorious day, not a cloud in the sky, and the temperature was mild. There had been four races before North Wind’s, which was the last and evidently the biggest race of the day, and judging by the crowd’s reaction possibly the year. The shouting reached near hysteria and the wall of sound caused even North Wind’s ears to flick, one time.
Johanna took note of their competition. A fiery gelding on the inside nearly equaled North Wind in size, and judging from the crowd’s cheers was the clear favorite. There were three other geldings, two more stallions and a roan mare, very small and dainty, her tail held at a coquettish angle, who was bridling and stamping and tossing her head. North Wind was placed squarely in the middle and right next to the mare. Johanna wondered how close the mare was to coming into heat. She could tell by the alert look of North Wind’s ears that he was wondering the same thing.
There was no point in protesting to the race officials. Johanna was new to the racetrack and a woman beside. Mesut, their official sponsor, while a professional merchant of long standing and impeccable reputation, had no standing in Baghdad’s horse world. The best she could hope for was that the mare’s owner had misjudged the mare’s condition.
The mare’s rider looked at her and grinned. He didn’t think so. Johanna returned a look of bland indifference and the grin faded. The riders of the other two stallions wouldn’t meet her gaze. So. North Wind was meant to be distracted by the mare and by competing stallions while the favorite ran away with the race.
The gelding’s rider was necessarily focused on controlling his plunging, sidling, rolling-eyed mount, who apparently couldn’t wait to get out on the course. Johanna nudged North Wind with her knees and he clopped forward until his front hooves were planted precisely behind the starting rope and, as per usual, gave all the appearance of a horse who fallen completely and soundly asleep.
There was a wooden stand to their right, holding a gaggle of greater and lesser dignitaries. The one who looked like an imam was invoking the smile of Allah upon this race. At least he wasn’t calling down His wrath on Johanna’s unprotected and female head. Mesut stood to the right of the stand, with Radishah, Firas, Alma and Hayat. Radishah was incandescent, Mesut only slightly less so. Firas looked resigned, as if he’d done everything he could to stop Johanna drawing attention their way in this public and imprudent fashion, and was determined to take his failure with outward composure. Alma was looking around her with an inquiring air, as if she had never seen such a thing as a horse race before in her life, which she very probably hadn’t. Hayat had one hand on her dagger and her eye on a shifty-looking fellow who had insinuated himself next to them in the crowd. He saw Hayat looking at him, paled beneath his scruffy beard, and melted discreetly away. Hayat saw Johanna watching and dimpled delightfully.
The imam concluded his prayer. Everyone salaamed, and the imam gave way to the luminary Johanna presumed was the sheik of Baghdad, or whoever the sheik had delegated this chore to. He was a handsome elderly man in a resplendent turban accented by a magnificent sapphire the siz
e of which convinced Johanna that he might actually be the sheik himself after all. He, a consummate politician, welcomed the crowd, praised the horses and their riders, made a joke at which everyone laughed heartily, gave a benign smile and raised a white silk handkerchief. Johanna took another wind of North Wind’s reins around her hands and leaned forward, and at the motion felt him go absolutely still beneath her. She almost laughed.
The crowd went silent. There was no sound but the snapping of the decorative pennants in the wind. The white silk handkerchief dropped, and almost at the same moment the rope in front of the line of horses dropped to the track. Johanna kicked North Wind lightly in the ribs, and he exploded from a standing start that if she hadn’t been prepared for could have snapped her neck. Within five strides her eyes had teared up and within ten her hair had torn free of its braid. Within fifteen North Wind’s speed threatened to strip her from his back. She heard swearing, but only from a steadily increasing distance, until it was swallowed entirely by the thunder of North Wind’s hooves. She never heard the roar of the crowd, all her attention on the strip of track she could see between North Wind’s ears. The smoothness of his stride was such that he didn’t even seem to touch the ground, but that it seemed to pass beneath them while they merely hovered above it.
The next thing she knew they were coming up on the first turn. North Wind moved steadily toward the inside. From the corner of her eye she saw the favorite, or rather the nostril closest to her, which she assumed belonged to the favorite. She was vaguely aware of his rider’s arm rising and falling, and she realized that he had to be beating his mount. She felt a moment’s brief pity. As if any horse could best North Wind, beaten or not.
North Wind slid in front of the gelding as if he were not even there, and by the second turn his tail was whipping just in front of the other horse’s nose. Johanna risked a look over her shoulder and saw that he was North Wind’s only real competition. The other three geldings had only reached the first turn. The mare had stopped dead in her tracks just before it, hind legs planted and splayed in traditional equine come-hither fashion. The two other stallions were fighting what looked like a duel to the death nearby, dangerously close to one of their riders, who appeared to have fallen from his saddle and hurt himself sufficiently that he couldn’t move out of the way. Johanna tsked reprovingly and faced forward again.
After that it was a glorious, stretched-out, full-throated, league-eating ride, and North Wind didn’t slow down when he crossed the finish line, either, but kept going. Johanna, who divined his intention, kicked her feet free of the stirrups in plenty of time and slipped from his back just before North Wind shouldered into the other two stallions, sending them staggering in opposite directions, and mounted the mare without further ado.
The mare braced herself against the onslaught and let out a loud, piercing whinny that sounded a little exasperated to Johanna, as if the mare was saying, “Well, and about time, too!”
Johanna was laughing before her feet hit the ground, and then she realized that everyone in the crowd was laughing, too, and the rest was madness.
Mesut laid on a celebration out of his shop in the souk that evening. The finest delicacies there were to eat and the finest juices and teas and coffees to drink. Everyone in Baghdad came, and Mesut welcomed them all beneath a new turban that grew increasingly askew. Rashidah was kept busy wrapping packages as her father’s stock marched out the door as if on legs. Johanna arrived late to the party, waiting patiently until North Wind completed his assignation before leading him off to the stables to feed him and groom him and otherwise settle him down from his various exertions. Johanna did not stint on praise, although he already bore a distinctly satisfied air.
Mesut greeted her with a great welcoming shout that was repeated throughout the crowd. There were immediately a dozen offers to buy North Wind, and later another offer to pay a stud fee, made by a sheepish man Mesut identified as the owner of the mare in that afternoon’s race. This offer she accepted.
Tumblers and dancers and singers, attracted by the noise and the prospect of donations to the cause, drifted in and launched into performances. Halfway through the evening a familiar song caught Johanna’s ear and on impulse she stepped up and joined in, her mellow soprano filling out the chorus. The bowl that went round after that was overflowing, and Johanna won the head musician’s heart when she refused a share. She took the loan of his gitar in payment instead, and sat herself on a stool beside the fire and sang a song about young love, a second about lost love, and a third about a man, his wife and a traveling tinker. She sang Félicien’s song about wandering clerks and everyone joined in on the chorus.
She ended with the song about the plum tree, translating the Mandarin to Persian on the fly, and such was the poignant longing in her voice that the crowd was silenced, many of them listening with their eyes closed and more than one hiding sudden, inexplicable tears.
White petals, soft scent
Friend of winter, summoner of spring
You leave us too soon.
She drew out the last note and let it fall, deep, down, into the well of memories that bubbled ever beneath the surface of her bright, impenetrable facade. In that instant she was ten again and back in the caravansary in Kashgar, singing along with Wu Li and Shu Ming and Deshi the Scout, all of them dead now, and Shasha, who lived, she hoped.
And Jaufre, also ten, newly orphaned, hearing the song for the first time, and her watching the expression on his face the moment when he realized that the song was not about a plum tree, not at all.
Alma and Hayat watched in wonder from the sidelines. When Johanna, flushed and smiling, took her bows to a long, sustained applause, Hayat said, “She never sang like that in the harem.”
“She never sang at all,” Alma said.
“Because she couldn’t?” Hayat said doubtfully.
“Because she wouldn’t,” Firas said, with a certainty that neither woman could gainsay.
The party broke up soon afterward, and no one noticed that the four of them were followed back to their inn by a man of determinedly nondescript appearance, who took up station in the doorway opposite for what remained of the night.
11
On the road to Damascus, late summer, 1323
TEN DAYS OUT OF KERMAN their caravan was hit by raiders, a group of some thirty or forty men, a number equal to or out-numbering their own troops of guards. They struck in the hour before dawn, just after Rambahadur Raj had sent out scouts to find them lodging or a campsite for the next day. Almost everyone was dozing in their saddles, not excluding Jaufre, but he woke in a hurry at the sounds of screams and the clash of arms.
He found himself standing on the ground beside his camel, sword in hand, and then running toward the cries of battle. There was no more than a thin band of light on the eastern horizon but his eyes were adjusted to the dark and he saw Alaric’s distinctive white tabard almost immediately, surrounded by three men he could smell well before he came into blade’s reach. Coming at a run from behind, he sliced into the back of one man’s knee and used the force of the upswing from that stroke to thrust into the second man’s shoulder. Alaric dispatched the third, who collapsed, screaming, as he tried frantically to stuff a rope of shining entrails back into his belly.
Jaufre saw Alaric’s teeth flash in a grin. “Well met, young Jaufre!” which was all they had time for before they were attacked by a new group of assailants.
Their attackers were professionals who lived off of the proceeds of passing caravans, but the disciplined guards led by Rambahadur Raj were their superior. The sun was well up by the time they were delivering killing blows to those wounded so badly there was no recovery for them, friend and foe alike. Afterward, Jaufre went a little way off the trail and was sick.
On his return Alaric handed him a flask without comment, for both of which Jaufre was most grateful. He rinsed his mouth and spat, and tried not to notice the severed fingers scattered in a little fan not an arm’s length fr
om his right foot.
The bodies of the raiders were thin, almost skeletal, and dressed in rags. Rambahadur Raj was directing his men to pile the bodies of the dead to the side of the trail, a ferocious scowl on his face. He stopped beside Jaufre and Alaric. “This is my fault,” he growled. “I wanted to cut our time to Baghdad, so I took a shortcut. It has much less traffic, and this is the result.”
Alaric shrugged. “Not the worst outcome, Ram,” he said.
“We lost two men,” the havildar said.
“They lost all of theirs,” Alaric said. He clapped a hand on Jaufre’s shoulder. “And our young friend here has been blooded.”
Rambahadur Raj looked at Jaufre. “Is that so, then? Did he give a good account of himself?”
“He earned his feed,” Alaric said, and both men laughed, heartlessly, it sounded like to Jaufre. He looked at the bodies being piled into an ever higher mound and thought he might be sick again.
Rambahadur Raj turned somber. “They were hungry.”
“Starving,” Alaric said, nodding. “Lucky for us. They had numbers, but in their weakened state they couldn’t give as good an account of themselves as they otherwise might have. These hill tribes can be fierce when they are well fed.”
The havildar said heavily, “I could wish they had chosen any other caravan but mine to ease their hunger.”
And Jaufre realized he was not the only one of them to be affected by the growing number of dead in the mound by the side of the trail. Later, he watched as Rambahadur Raj oversaw the construction of a pile of foodstuffs not too near the burning pyre of the dead.
Their women would come, Jaufre thought, and along with their dead men they would find food for their children. He was comforted, a little, but not so much that he did not relive the encounter in his dreams.
They pushed on through that day and the following night to arrive at a small oasis town in a well-tilled valley. There was no caravansary but there was a large campsite with a well, and the members of the caravan were made welcome in the town. When the tale of the raiders was told there was much shaking of heads and sidelong looks. One of them, an elder with wise eyes and a wispy white beard, said, “Ahmed ben Eliazar.”
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