“A soundless Echo,” I said, and smiled. “An unfitting name, perhaps, but a pleasing paradox. Hui-sheng. Hui-sheng … .”
To Ayuka, the seventh or eighth of the Mongol maidens, I said, “Tell me, does your Lady Matron deliberately seek deaf-mute slaves for the duty of overseeing the nuptial nights?”
“She does not seek them. She makes them so from childhood. Incapable either of eavesdropping or of gossiping. They cannot gasp in surprise or disapproval if they see strange sights in the bedchamber, or afterward prattle of perverse things they have witnessed. If they do ever misbehave and must be beaten, they cannot scream.”
“Bruto barabào! Makes them so? How?”
“Actually, the Lady Matron has a shaman physician do the silencing operation,” said Merghus, who was the eighth or ninth of the Mongol maidens. “He puts a red-hot skewer down each ear and through the neck into the gullet. I cannot tell you exactly what is done, but look at Hui-sheng—you can see the tiny scar on her throat.”
I looked, and it was so. But I saw more than that when I gazed upon Hui-sheng, for Kubilai had spoken truly when he said that the girls of the Min were unsurpassably beautiful. At least this one was. Being a slave, she wore not the blank white-powdered face of the other women native to these lands, nor the elaborate stiff hairdos of her Mongol mistresses. Her pale-peach skin was her own, and her hair was but simply piled in soft billows on her head. Except for the little crescent scar on her throat, she bore not a blemish, which was not true of the noble maidens she attended. They, having grown up mostly outdoors, in rude living conditions, among horses and such, had many nicks and pocks and abrasions marring even the more intimate areas of their flesh.
Hui-sheng was at that moment seated in the most graceful and endearing posture a woman can ever unconsciously assume. Quite unaware of anyone’s regard, she was fixing a flower in her soft black hair. Her left hand held the pink blossom above her left ear, and she had her right hand arched over her head to assist in the arranging. That particular placement of the head and hands and arms and upper torso makes of any woman, clothed or naked, a poem of curves and gentle angles—her face turned a little downward and to one side, her arms framing it in harmonious composition, her neck line flowing smoothly to the bosom, her breasts sweetly uplifted by the raised arms. In that posture even an old woman looks young, a fat one looks lithe, a gaunt one looks sleek, and a beautiful woman is never more beautiful.
I remember also noticing that Hui-sheng had, in front of each ear, a fluff of very fine black hair growing as far down as her jaw line, and another feathery floss growing down the back of her neck into her collar. They were winsome details, and they made me wonder if a Min woman might be exceptionally furry in more private places. The Mongol maidens, I might mention, all had in their most private places those peculiarly Mongol “little warmers” of smooth, flat hair like small swatches of cat pelt. But, if I have uncharacteristically said little else about their charms, or about my nights of frolicking with them, it is owing to no sudden access of modesty or reserve on my part; it is only that I do not too well remember those girls. I have even forgotten now whether I was visited by an even dozen of them, or eleven, or thirteen, or some other number.
Oh, they were handsome, enjoyable, competent, satisfying, but they were that and no more. I recall them as just a succession of fleeting incidents, a different one each night. My consciousness was more impressed by the small, unobtrusive, silent Echo—and not simply for the reason that she was present every night, but because she outshone all the Mongol maidens together. Had she not been a distracting influence, I probably would not have found them so forgettable. They were, after all, the pick of Mongol womanhood, of twenty-four-karat quality, eminently well suited to their function of bed partnership. But, even while I enjoyed the sight of them being undressed by the lon-gya slave, I could not help observing how unnecessarily over-sized they seemed alongside the diminutive, dainty Hui-sheng, and how coarse of complexion and physiognomy, alongside her peach-blossom skin and exquisite features. Even their breasts, which in other circumstances I would have adored as beautifully voluptuous, I thought somehow too aggressively mammalian, compared to the almost childlike slimness and fragility of Hui-sheng’s body.
In honesty, I will say that the Mongol maidens must have found me not their ideal, either, and they must have been less than overjoyed to be mating with me. They had been recruited, and had survived a rigorous system of selection, to be bedded with the Khan of All Khans. He was an old man, and perhaps also not the dream man of a young woman, but he was the Khakhan. It must have been a considerable disappointment for them to be allotted to a foreigner instead—a Ferenghi, a nobody—and worse yet, to be commanded not to take the fern-seed precaution before lying with me. They were, presumably, of twenty-four-karat fecundity, meaning that they had to expect impregnation by me, and the consequent bearing not of noble Mongol descendants of the Chinghiz line, but of half-breed bastards, who were bound to be regarded askance by the rest of the Kithai population, if not actively despised.
I had doubts of my own about the wisdom of Kubilai’s having set me and the concubines to this conjoining. It was not that I felt myself either superior or inferior to them, for I was aware that they and I and all other folk in the world are of the same single human race. I had been taught that from my earliest years, and I had in my travels seen ample evidence of it. (Two small examples: all men everywhere, except sometimes the holy and the hermit, are ever ready to get drunk; all women everywhere, when they run, run as if their knees are hobbled together.) Clearly, all people are descendants of the same original Adam and Eve, but it is just as clear that the progeny have diverged widely in the generations since the expulsion from Eden.
Kubilai called me a Ferenghi, and he meant no offense by it, but the word lumped me into a mistakenly undifferentiated mass. I knew that we Venetians were quite distinct from the Slavs and Sicilians and all others of the Western nationalities. While I could not perceive as much variety among the numerous Mongol tribes, I knew that every person took pride in his own, and regarded it as the foremost breed of Mongols, even while asserting that all Mongols were the foremost of mankind.
In my travels, I did not always conceive an affection for every new people I met, but I did find them all of interest—and the interest was in their differences. Different skin colors, different customs, foods, speech, superstitions, entertainments, even interestingly different deficiencies and ignorances and stupidities. Some while after this time at Xan-du, I would visit the city of Hang-zho, and I would see that it, like Venice, was a city all of canals. But in every other respect, Hang-zho was not at all like Venice, and it was the variances, not the similarities, that made the place lovely in my eyes. So is Venice still lovely and dear to me, but it would cease to be if it were not unique. In my opinion, a world of cities and places and views all alike would be the dullest world imaginable, and I feel much the same way about the world’s peoples. If all of them—white and peach and brown and black and whatever other colors exist—were stirred together into a bland tan, every other of their jagged and craggy differences would flatten down into featurelessness. You can walk confidently across a tan sand desert because it is not fissured by any chasms, but neither does it have any high peaks worth looking at. I realized that my contribution to the blending of Ferenghi and Mongol bloodlines would be negligible. Still I was reluctant that people so distinct should be blended at all—by fiat, deliberately, not even by casual encounter—and thereby made in any degree less various, and therefore less interesting.
I was first attracted to Hui-sheng at least partly by her differences from all other women I had so far known. To see that Min slave girl among her Mongol mistresses was like seeing a single spray of pink-ivory peach blossom in a vase of shaggy, spiky, brass- and copper- and bronze-colored chrysanthemums. However, she was beautiful not only in comparison with those less so. Like a peach blossom, she was comely all by herself, and she would have stood out even
among a whole flowering peach orchard of her comely sisters of the Min. There were reasons for that. Hui-sheng lived in a perpetually silent world, so her eyes were full of dreaming even when she was wide awake. Yet her deprivation of speech and hearing was not a total handicap, nor even very noticeable to others—I myself had not realized, until I was told, that she was a deaf-mute—for she had evolved a liveliness of facial expression and a vocabulary of small gestures that communicated her thoughts and feelings without a sound but without any mistaking them. In time, I learned to read at a glance her every infinitesimal movement of qahwah-colored eyes, rose-wine lips, feathery brows, twinkling dimples, willow hands and frond fingers. But that was later.
Inasmuch as I had become enthralled of Hui-sheng under the worst possible circumstances—while she was seeing me shamelessly cavort with her dozen or so Mongol mistresses—I could hardly commence any courtship of her, without risking her derisive repulsion, until some time had passed and, I would hope, blurred her memory of those circumstances. I determined that I would delay a decent while before beginning any overtures, and in the meantime I would arrange to put some distance between her and those concubines, while not distancing her from me. To do those things, I needed the help of the Khakhan himself.
So, when I was sure there were no more Mongol maidens forthcoming, and when I knew Kubilai to be in a good mood—the messenger had recently arrived to tell him that Yun-nan was his and that Bayan was forging into the heartland of the Sung—I requested audience with him and was cordially received. I told him that I had accomplished my service to the maidens, and thanked him for giving me that opportunity to leave some trace of myself in the posterity of Kithai, and then said:
“I think, Sire, now that I have enjoyed this orgy of unrestrained pleasure, it might stand as the capstone to my bachelor career. That is to say, I believe I have attained to an age and maturity where I ought to cease the prodigal squandering of my ardors—the filly-chasing, as we call it in Venice, or the dipping of the ladle, as you say in these parts. I think it would be fitting for me now to contemplate a more settled conjugality, perhaps with an especially favored concubine, and I ask your permission, Sire—”
“Hui!” he exclaimed, with a smile of delight. “You were captivated by one of those twenty-four-karat damsels!”
“Oh, by all of them, Sire, it goes without saying. However, the one I would have for my keeping is the slave girl who attended them.”
He sat back and grunted, with rather less delight, “Uu?”
“She is a girl of the Min, and—”
“Aha!” he cried, smiling broadly again. “Tell me no more. That captivation I can appreciate!”
“—and I would ask your leave, Sire, to purchase the slave’s freedom, for she serves your Lady Matron of Concubines. Her name is Hui-sheng.”
He waved a hand and said, “She will be deeded to you as soon as we get back to Khanbalik. Then she will be your servant or slave or consort, whatever you and she may choose. She is my gift to you in return for your help in acquiring Manzi for me.”
“I thank you, Sire, most sincerely. And Hui-sheng will thank you, too. Are we returning soon to Khanbalik?”
“We will leave Xan-du tomorrow. Your companion Ali Babar has already been informed. He is probably in your chambers packing for you at this moment.”
“Is this an abrupt departure, Sire? Has something happened?”
He smiled more broadly than ever. “Did you not hear me mention the acquisition of Manzi? A messenger just rode up from the capital with the news.”
I gasped, “Sung has fallen!”
“The Chief Minister Achmad sent the word. A company of Han heralds rode into Khanbalik to announce the imminent arrival of the Sung’s Dowager Empress Xi-chi. She is coming herself to surrender that empire and the Imperial Yin and her own royal person. Achmad could receive her, of course, as my Vice-Regent, but I prefer to do that myself.”
“Of course, Sire. It is an epochal occasion. The overthrow of the Sung and the creation of a whole new Manzi nation for the Khanate.”
He sighed comfortably. “Anyway, the cold weather is upon us, and the hunting here will be less enjoyable. So I shall go and take an Empress trophy instead.”
“I did not know that the Sung Empire was ruled by a woman.”
“She is only Regent herself, mother to the Emperor who died a few years ago, and died young, leaving only infant sons. So the old Xi-chi was reigning until her first grandson should grow up and take the throne. Which now he will not. Go then, Marco, and make ready to ride. I return to Khanbalik to rule an expanded Khanate, and you to start putting down roots. May the gods give wisdom to us both.”
I hurried to my chamber, and burst in shouting, “I have momentous news!”
Ali Babar was helpfully gathering up the traveling things I had brought with me to Xan-du, and the few new things I had acquired while in residence—the tusks of my first-killed boar, for example, to keep as mementos—and was packing them into saddlebags.
“I have heard already,” he said, with not much enthusiasm. “The Khanate is bigger and greater than ever.”
“More amazing news than that! I have met the woman of my life!”
“Let me think if I can guess which. There has lately been quite a procession through this room of yours.”
“You would never guess!” I said gleefully, and started to extol the charms of Hui-sheng. But then I checked myself, for Ali was not rejoicing with me. “You look unusually glum, old companion. Has something cast you down?”
He mumbled, “That rider from Khanbalik brought other news, not so inspiriting … .”
I looked more attentively at him. If he had had a chin under that gray beard, it would have been quivering. “What other news?”
“The messenger said that, when he was leaving the city, he was intercepted by one of my kashi artisans, who asked him to tell me that Mar-Janah has gone away.”
“What? Your good wife Mar-Janah? Gone away? Gone where?”
“I have not the least idea. My shop man said that, some while back—it must be a month ago, by now, or more—two palace guards called at the kashi shop. Mar-Janah departed with them, and has not been seen or heard of since. The workers are consequently in some confusion and disarray. My man told the messenger no more than that.”
“Palace guards? Then it must have been official business. I will run again to Kubilai and ask—”
“He professes to know nothing of the matter. I naturally went to inquire of him. That is when he told me to pack for us. And, since we are going back to Khanbalik immediately, I have made no great outcry. I suppose, when we get there, I will learn what has occurred … .”
“This is most strange,” I murmured.
I said no more than that, though a recollection had come suddenly and unbidden into my mind—the message Ali had brought: “Expect me when you least expect me.” I had not shown it to Ali or told him what it said. I had seen no need to burden him with my troubles—or what I then assumed were my troubles only—and I had torn up and thrown away the missive. Now I wished I had not. As I have said, Mongol writing was not easy for me to unravel. Could I perhaps have misread it? Could it, this time, have said something slightly different? “Expect me where you least expect me,” perhaps? Had it been given to Ali Babar to deliver, not only to threaten and alarm me again, but also to get him out of the city while dirty deeds were being done?
Whoever in Khanbalik wished me evil must have been aware that—when I was absent from the city—I was vulnerable only vicariously, through the few persons I held dear there. A mere three persons, in fact. My father and uncle were two. But they were grown men, and strong, and anyone who harmed them would have to answer to an irate Khakhan. The third, however, was the good and beauteous and sweet Mar-Janah, who was only a weakling woman, and an insignificant former slave, and treasured by none but me and my former slave. With a pang, I remembered her saying, “I was left my life, but not much else …” and wistfully,
“If Ali Babar can love what is left of me … .”
Had my unknown enemy, the lurking, sneaking whisperer, abducted that blameless woman for no reason but to hurt me? If so, the enemy was loathsomely vile, but clever in his choice of surrogate victim. I had helped to rescue the fallen Princess Mar-Janah from a life of abuse and degradation, and had helped her at last to safe and happy harbor—I remembered her saying, “The intervening twenty years might never have been”—and if I should now be the cause of her enduring yet another kind of misery, it would be a bitter hurt to me indeed.
Well, we would know when we got to Khanbalik. And I had a strong apprehension: if we were ever to find the vanished Mar-Janah, we should have first to find the veiled woman who had given Ali that missive for me. But, for the time being, I said nothing of that to him; he was already worried enough. I also ceased to exult over my newfound Hui-sheng, out of regard for his concern for his own darling, so long lost before and now lost again.
“Marco, could we not ride out ahead of this slow cortege?” he asked anxiously, when we and the whole Xan-du court had been on the road for two or three days. “You and I could be in Khanbalik much sooner if we could put spurs to our horses.”
He was right, of course. The Khakhan traveled with much ceremony and no haste at all, holding the whole train to a stately slow march. It would not have been seemly for him to travel otherwise, especially when this was something in the nature of a triumphal procession. All his people in towns and villages along the way—having heard of the Sung war’s successful conclusion—were eager to gather along the roadside and cheer and wave and throw flowers as he passed.
Kubilai rode in a majestic, thronelike, canopied carriage adorned with jewels and gilding, drawn by four immense elephants likewise much bedizened. Kubilai’s carriage was followed by others carrying a number of his wives and many more of his other women, including those maidens he had lent to me, and servants and slaves and so forth. Variously before and behind and beside the carriages rode Prince Chingkim and all the other courtiers on horses gorgeously arrayed. Behind the carriages came wagons loaded with luggage and equipment and hunting arms and trophies of the season and traveling provender of wines and kumis and viands; one wagon was occupied by a band of musicians and their instruments, to play for us at our nighttime stops. A troop of Mongol warriors rode one day’s journey ahead of us, to trumpet our approach to each community, so that its inhabitants could prepare to light their incense-fires and, if we arrived in twilight, to ignite the fiery trees and sparkling flowers (stores of which the Firemaster Shi had deposited with them on the outward march), and another troop of horsemen followed a day behind us, to retrieve any broken-wheeled wagons or lamed horses that had to fall out of the train. Also, the Khakhan, as usual in this season, had two or three brace of white gerfalcons riding on the sideboards of his carriage, and the whole procession would have to halt whenever we started some game that he wished to fly the falcons at.