Yosef frowned, turning on his side, trying to read her features in the darkness. “Why do you ask?”
She was quiet for a time, her hand on his thigh stroking lightly, meditatively. When she finally spoke, she did not answer Yosef’s question directly.
“When I was a child,” she said slowly, “I lived with my father in Chang’an, near the Daming Palace. My father was a merchant of silk; his family, my grandfather Jiahao, were well-known and respected Daoist silk gatherers. They lived up here, in the Wudang Mountains, near a Daoist temple of which my uncle was the daoshi, the head priest. For centuries, we had studied the ways of the silkworm, learning their rhythms, cultivating their silk. Our product was one of the most highly prized and sought after by merchants, used to make the royal robes, and my father was a well-respected merchant and visitor to the court of Emperor Gaozong and Empress Wu.
“It was in the last days of Emperor Gaozong’s reign that your father arrived at the Daming Palace and was given to our family’s care.” Yosef froze. “I remember him,” said Fei Hong softly. Yosef could feel his heart beating, heavy and painful, in his chest. “He arrived with the Sogdians, just as you yourself did. He was older than you are now, but he was also broken, just as you were when you arrived. His father had died on the road to Serica, and Arun mourned him deeply. He may never have received a welcome to the palace had it not been for the horoscope he cast for a certain Buddhist monk by the name of Huaiyi.”
“He stayed with you?” Yosef’s voice rasped, and he cleared his throat. “You knew him, then?”
“I was a child,” said Fei Hong, “no more than ten years old. But, yes, I knew him. He was kind to me. It is because of him I speak Greek. He taught me my first words.”
“Then, if he stayed with you, why did he not learn as I am learning now? My father knew nothing of how silk is made. I know this.”
“To understand the answer to this, you must first understand Serica,” said Fei Hong. “We are a people who do not share our secrets. Your father was a foreigner, an outsider. He did not understand our ways and did not speak our language. He would never have been allowed to stay as long as he did had it not been for the monk, Huaiyi, and the favour Arun found by casting his horoscope. Huaiyi, you must understand, was a favourite of Empress Wu.”
A note of bitterness entered her voice.
“This friendship – it did not last?” Yosef guessed.
“No,” said Fei Hong softly. “It did not.”
“After the death of Emperor Gaozong, Huaiyi gained immense power at the court of Empress Wu. It was a tumultuous period, one when many competing factions sought power. But Huaiyi, it was rumoured, had the ultimate bargaining piece – the ear of Empress Wu herself, listening to his whispers from the comfort of her own pillows.” Fei Hong glanced at Yosef. “They were lovers,” she said bluntly. “All knew of it, and all feared the power such alliance would give Huaiyi, for he was not a humble monk.
“At this time, Buddhism had not the influence in Serica that Daoism did. Huaiyi resented this. He also resented the wealth controlled by the silk monasteries in the Wudang Mountains, which grew and traded not only the rich cloth but teas that are prized throughout the East.
“So Huaiyi asked your father, Arun, to study his horoscope to determine if his religion would, one day, supersede that of the Dao.”
“But that is impossible,” said Yosef, shaking his head. “No horoscope could determine such a thing.”
“Your father told him as much,” said Fei Hong. “Huaiyi flew into a rage, claiming your father lied to protect his Daoist masters, that he was no more than a foreign tool of insurrection employed by traitors to Empress Wu’s court. He denounced my father, and my uncles, as traitors to the throne and enemies of Empress Wu herself.
“You must understand that, at this time, the Daming Palace was awash with rumour and counter-rumour. A foreigner at such a time was naturally suspicious, and the wealthy Daoist monks who profited from their seemingly arcane knowledge of silk making – well, the combination proved an irresistible target for the empress’s counsellors.”
“What happened?” Yosef could not imagine his own father in such an environment. To think that he had lived amongst the same people Yosef now found himself, had struggled in isolation and fear just as Yosef had, seemed incomprehensible.
“The empress’s assassins came late at night with orders to kill all in our household and to ensure your father was amongst the dead.” Fei Hong spoke in a cold, clinical tone. But Yosef, who had experience of violent death, recognised the device as one covering deep trauma. He put a hand on her hip, stroking the skin there gently, and felt her tremble faintly beneath his touch.
“Your father died?” he guessed.
“Not then,” she said. “Not right away. But my mother, my brothers, all my uncles – they were killed instantly. My father had taken Arun and me into the gardens near the palace, where tea grows, to begin to teach Arun. He had an insatiable appetite for knowledge, and my father had begun teaching him the secrets of herbs and how to decoct them into potions that heal.”
“My father never forgot those lessons,” Yosef said. “He was the most renowned physician in our village.”
Fei Hong nodded. “He had a gift – and because he was fond of me, and I him, my father would take me, also, on these lessons. We returned to blood in the streets and the sounds of death.”
Her voice trembled, and Yosef could envisage the scene in his mind: the palace soldiers storming the low house, thrusting steel into every living being they found within.
“They saw us,” she said, “and my father made to fight; but Arun stepped in front of him, ordering him to take me, to run.” The words caught in her throat. Yosef remained silent, waiting, until her breathing returned to normal.
“An arrow caught my father in the chest as we ran,” she said, her voice low. “He never made it here to the mountains. Arun found me on the edge of the city, and somehow, using only the stars and what he knew from my father’s stories, he led us both into the mountains, travelling by night, until we came to the monastery of my family. My grandfather, who was also caught by the palace soldiers, eventually found us both. We left the monastery and came deeper into the mountains to here, where Grandfather knew of an old temple. We began again – with barely any silkworms, and with mulberry trees nearly dead in the soil, far away from the eyes of the court.”
“And what of my father?” Yosef asked. “What happened to him?”
“Your father returned to the Daming Palace,” said Fei Hong. “Against our wishes. We believed they would kill him, but your father wanted official sanction of his presence here, to negotiate on behalf of his people to buy silk. Huaiyi, I believe, would have killed him. But he was not at the palace when your father arrived, and Empress Wu was in a benign mood that day. She had also heard that Arun cast horoscopes. She asked him to draw hers and was gratified when he saw that she would rule, alone, for some years to come. She gave your father a letter that stated he could enter the city of Chang’an.”
“Then why did he not stay?” Yosef asked, confused.
“Because that same night,” said Fei Hong grimly, “Huaiyi returned, and he sent his men to where your father rested. Arun escaped only because there were those in the city who knew what he had done for us and sought to warn him. He left in the dead of night with barely the clothes on his back, escaping the city only by hiding in the baggage of Sogdian merchants. Had he dared return, or dallied at all, he would have been killed on sight.”
There was a silence during which he digested her words. “But why,” Yosef asked, “if my father knew only danger awaited us, did he not at least warn me?” He thought of his arrival at the Danfeng Gate. “Had you not met me that day,” he said, “I would have been killed.”
“No. Your father ensured his safe return – and yours.” Fei Hong turned to him in the darkness. “Three years after your father was here, a messenger came to our temple in the mountains. A messenger carry
ing more money than we had ever dared hope would find us again. Enough money to buy more silkworm eggs, and to plant tea.” Yosef felt her smile in the darkness. “Enough money to re-establish our family business, albeit in secret.” She turned to Yosef, putting a slender hand on his chest. “That money came from your father,” she said. “Sent via a hundred different hands until it reached ours. Money he could ill afford, I believe, but which he found, nonetheless. Not because he wanted anything. Because he was worried for a small girl, and her crippled grandfather, to whom, according to his writing, he felt he owed his life.”
A hard heat blocked Yosef’s throat.
“He told us he would return one day,” said Fei Hong softly. “That he hoped we lived still. And that his small offering could, perhaps in part, repay the debt he felt he owed us. We sent a reply.”
“I don’t think he received it,” Yosef said hoarsely. “He never spoke of it.”
“Yes,” said Fei Hong, “he did receive it. Last year – barely six months before I found you at the gate of the Daming Palace – we received a letter from him.”
“He must have written it before he died,” said Yosef, feeling again the stab of grief in his chest.
“I know only that he was alive when he wrote the letter,” said Fei Hong. “It came by sea. In it, Yosef, Arun wrote that you would be coming – and that we must teach you what you need to know. I have met every caravan since.”
Yosef felt a roaring in his ears. The sound of the silkworms feeding was so loud, it felt as if they were about to consume his own flesh. “It is impossible,” he said, his voice seeming to come from a long distance. “It must have been someone impersonating him – or writing in his stead.”
“No.” Fei Hong’s tone was definite. “The hand was different, but I know the letter came from him. That is why I waited beyond the gates, day after day, through the coldest months of the year, for you.” She withdrew a small piece of cloth from the robes by their bed. “When I was a child, I gave your father a gift. He said he would cherish it always, even though it was no more than a childish trinket, a fancy of mine. When the letter came, my gift was wrapped inside it. No other would have known what it meant to me but Arun.”
Opening the material in her hand, Fei Hong held it up to the moonlight, so the thick, black strokes in a childish hand were clearly visible.
Instantly, Yosef was transported back to the night in the cave, the last night he had shared alone with his father: That was a gift from a dear friend. If her gods and ours will it, one day you will meet her.
“My name,” said Fei Hong softly, touching the black ink, tracing the childish strokes. “These were first characters I ever wrote – and I gifted them to your father.”
Yosef lived through the cocoon phase of the silkworms feeling as if he, too, were shrouded in a silken haze.
In the early-morning mist, he moved through the sequences he had learned, feeling his own body as if it belonged to a stranger. A new awareness seemed to live in his veins. He moved like water, flowing with his breath, his mind seemingly cast adrift on the wispy cloud that floated below.
Odd fragments of memory passed across his mind as he moved: the night in the caves, where he had held in his own hands the piece of cloth that held Fei Hong’s name.
His father, screaming in agony.
Is it possible?
Yosef felt his body tremble, his balance falter. Do not think. If you think, you cannot be as water must be. He inhaled, exhaled. Felt his mind clear. Spun on one foot, his other striking high; then again, changing feet. Felt the sinuous strength of his body moving before he willed it, the delicate push of air on his skin as he slipped through it. He ended in a crouch and put his hands together, bowing to the three Pure Ones and the Way within himself.
When he rose, his mind was still, and he pondered the questions from a steadier distance.
I must return, he thought. If there is even a chance my father lives, I cannot ignore it. I must do all that I promised. There was a strange relief in his mind. For now, at least, his course seemed clear.
“If you are to leave us, you must do so before the summer comes.” Yosef swung around to find Fei Hong standing behind him. Her eyes glittered, but her chin was strong, her expression clear. “The eggs will travel if you carry them through the cold months. But when late spring arrives and the weather warms, they must be stable in order to hatch. You cannot travel with them through the heat – or if you do, it must be done with great care, and only for a short time.”
“Fei Hong –” he began, reaching out to touch her. Fei Hong stepped neatly out of his reach. The half smile she gave him was genuine, but it did not mask the pain in her eyes. “We owe your father our lives,” she said quietly. “I have always known how the debt was to be paid; when you leave here, and take the silkworms with you, a piece of me will live forever in your world.”
Yosef cast about for a response, but he could find none. Any words he found seemed inadequate, unworthy of the honour she had shown him. The half smile twisted her face again, and this time, her eyes softened as she saw his struggle. “I know you dream of her,” said Fei Hong softly. “Sometimes, in the night, you say her name: Sarah.”
Her pronunciation tinged the name, so it sounded to Yosef’s ears like “Salah”.
“Even if she lives still, I do not know if she would want to see me,” he said quietly. “We were children when I knew her. She endured… terrible things.”
“We are none of us children any longer,” said Fei Hong. “And terrible things are what birth our souls. Lao Tze, the great master, said: Difficulty and ease produce the one, the idea of the other. You have not become who you are through ease, Yosef ben Arun, and nor has she.”
She looked at Yosef, and in her eyes he saw both bravery and sacrifice, and he knew that if they both lived a hundred years more, the ravine between them opened by awareness could never be truly spanned again.
“Go home, Yosef,” she said softly. “Take your silkworms to the Jews in Constantinople as your father wished; then go home, to your Salah.”
36
Theo
January, AD 692
Sebastopolis, Anatolia
Elauissa Sebaste, Cilicia, Turkey
When finally Theo received a reply from Apsimar, it was both too late and not encouraging.
Leontios had grown increasingly paranoid. Men and coin were disappearing with worrying frequency. Leontios believed the Slavs were stealing part of what they collected on his behalf. And now that payments were made in the new Arab currency rather than that of Constantinople, Leontios began to suspect that in addition the Arabs themselves were cheating on their payments. In retribution for this suspected treachery, and goaded by his emperor’s own ill judgement, he had recently mounted an expedition to take the province of Cyprus, in direct breach of the emperor’s treaty with the caliph, under which the Cypriot taxes were to be divided equally. Apsimar could do little other than caution the emperor against such action. Theo, facing increasing resentment amongst his men, unable to tell anyone of his communication with his old commander, was left in the unenviable position of defending actions he privately believed reprehensible, to men of whose loyalty he was uncertain.
And worse, the only person he felt he might possibly speak to was the one he trusted least of all.
Now Theo stood amongst his men on the Slavic drill ground and watched Oppa, dark eyed and inscrutable, standing just behind Leontios. He was ever present at Leontios’s side, and he was trusted, Theo suspected, more than the strategos’s closest advisers. And yet, Theo thought, his eyes narrowing, still Leontios invaded Cyprus. If Oppa was as opposed to breaking the treaty as he claimed to be, why had he not strongly counselled the strategos against doing exactly that? Why ask Theo to enlist Apsimar’s support when he, Oppa, was right beside the man making such decisions? Surely, Theo thought, he must know there was little Apsimar could do to influence a superior’s command and tactics.
As he watched Oppa, his
thoughts churning, an incensed, manic Leontios stalked in front of the Slavic ranks, his face ruddy with rage. He had gathered them to address the matter of the missing coin, convinced the thieves would be found amongst the Slavic forces he did not trust.
“One of you will die every minute until I have names!” Spittle flew from the corners of his mouth as he glared at the men.
“If you allow me time,” said Neboulos calmly, “I will find those responsible and bring them to you.”
“You have had time enough!” One fat finger jabbed the air, and Leontios turned menacing eyes on the Slavs who sweated beneath a hot sun, eyeing him sullenly. “Kill another one!” Leontios ordered his guard. The man raised a curved sword in the air and brought it down with violent precision. A Slavic head rolled forward, blood spurting from the stump before the body toppled with mundane finality to lie beside four similar corpses.
“Five turns of the sand – five dead!” Leontios raised the minute glass and turned it again. “Before the sand runs a sixth time, who will stand forward and tell me of the coin stolen from our ranks? Or are all of you traitors to your emperor?”
“He is not our emperor!” a Slavic voice called from the rear, and an answering rumble of assent joined him. “Why should we fight for you?” came another voice. “We have no lands to defend. And we owe no allegiance to Constantinople.”
Leontios glared at the sea of faces. “You take the emperor’s coin. You eat his grain and ride his horses. You live because the emperor deigns to have it so – and, by God, you will fight with him, or be cut down as I did your own barbarian masters!” He turned to the guard. “Kill another one!” The sword swung again, and this time, a roar of protest rose from the ground.
“This is folly,” muttered Silas to Theo, glancing at Leofric’s red, furious face on Theo’s other side. “These men will turn on Leontios any moment now, and all will be lost. Is the man insane?”
The King's Coin: Ambition is the only faith (Visigoths of Spain Book 2) Page 28