The Great Khan had died in 1294, two years after Johanna’s grandfather had left his court, but the yambs he commanded to be built that greeted those traveling the Silk Road at every twenty-fifth mile had yet to fall into disrepair, and the great trees he planted to show the way were just beginning to leaf out as Johanna’s tiny group passed between them. Occasionally they met an imperial mailman, hurrying to complete his two hundred daily miles, but for most of the way the road was as bare of company as her companions were bare of conversation.
Jaufre had been curt and uncommunicative since Johanna’s return from the summerhouse. He grew even surlier when he saw her riding North Wind. Johanna, rebuffed in her efforts to share her wonderful new feeling of freedom, was bewildered and resentful and surly in turn. Olan, glancing surreptitiously from one to the other as if to gauge the amount of unvented spleen gathering in each youth, kept her own counsel. And the towers and spires and hills of Chandu faded in the distance.
They followed the road east, making for Kinsai, traveling well into each night and up early the following morning.
“Why the rush?” Jaufre, forced into voluntary speech, said irritably one morning as they rose before the sun. “Wu’s widow was glad to be rid of us. Three less mouths to feed, three less bellies to fill, to less servants to pay. And I doubt she’ll make any effort to come after you.”
“My father’s second wife doesn’t like being crossed,” Johanna replied, glancing behind her. “And she will be angry that she will now not receive the commission on Edyk’s marriage settlement.”
“I, too, will rest more easily when we are out of her reach,” Olan agreed.
“Well, then, you mind telling me just where it is we’re going in such a hurry?” Jaufre said with awful sarcasm.
Johanna froze up. “I would have thought you would be able to recognize the road,” she said haughtily.
Jaufre looked for a moment as if he might explode, and Olan waited hopefully.
Teeth clenched, hands on his hips, Jaufre watched Johanna fold her bedroll with military precision, thinking how wonderful it would be to turn her over his knee and treat her like the twelve-year old she used to be and was reminding him of so forcibly this morning.
And then, without warning, a memory returned to him of the day his horse had tossed him into a ravine and Johanna had commandeered a baron’s hunting expedition one of the barons of the Shieng, no less into a rescue party. And she had been what? Twelve. Twelve years old, and fearless.
The penalty for interrupting a royal hunt, for even being inside the twenty league radius of a royal hunt was at worst death, at best imprisonment and the brand of the criminal on one cheek. The penalty for climbing one hundred and twenty five feet down a vertical cliff to where he lay unconscious and bleeding could also have been death, but she had not hesitated to do it, had indeed because of her small size insisted on being the only one down the rope, and such was her imperious manner that the retainers of the Great Khan himself had meekly given way.
She was with him now. She had not stayed behind, with Edyk, she was traveling the Silk Road with him, Jaufre.
From the other side of their camp, North Wind shied at a dragonfly and pulled at his picket, his white coat gleaming in the predawn light. North Wind, the preeminent race horse of his day and Edyk’s pride and joy, now Johanna’s saddle horse.
Jaufre burst out laughing. Johanna looked around, startled. Still laughing, he reached out to pull her hair in not quite his old, brotherly manner, but close enough to lay her hackles. Johanna melted instantly, grinning at him, every constraint falling away, not thinking to question why there had been any constraint to begin with.
Olan muttered to herself. They looked at her questioningly. “So we go to Kinsai,” she said. “And who do we meet in Kinsai?”
“Guess,” Johanna said, her eyes narrowed with amusement.
Olan stared at her with rising suspicion. “Johanna, you wouldn’t!”
“I would, too,” Johanna said.
Olan groaned. “Not old No-Nuts!”
“The very same,” Johanna said proudly. She moved to tie her bedroll to the back of North Wind’s saddle, and added in a reproving voice, “And I don’t think that’s a very respectful way to refer to my honorable uncle, either.”
Jaufre turned his face so that Olan wouldn’t see his grin.
Olan took a deep breath and swore with a surprising range and fluency.
Johanna widened her eyes and said in a shocked voice, “But, Olan! I thought you liked Uncle Ho!” Olan wasn’t finished swearing and Johanna said reproachfully, “Such is gratitude. And after Uncle Ho rescued your teeth from that prince in Zeilan, too!”
“If that old fart hadn’t tried to buy off the local priest with pork instead of beef, my teeth wouldn’t have been in any danger in the first place!”
“Well,” Johanna said, vaulting astride North Wind and glancing over her shoulder at the rising sun, “the sooner we start the sooner you can abuse him all you like to his face. We’ve got to hurry anyway; he wrote me that he wants to sail on the new moon’s first tide.”
And indeed Cheng Ho, also known as the Admiral of the Triple Treasure and the Three-Jeweled Eunuch, was seen to be pacing impatiently up and down the deck of the nine-masted sailing ship that served as his floating headquarters. They pulled up and dismounted. Their steaming horses were led on board the Horse Ship. Johanna followed them below to supervise their grooming and feeding. When she emerged on deck the ships of Uncle Ho’s fleet were shaking out their sails. She had barely enough time to be ferried to the flagship.
At the head of the rope ladder Cheng Ho greeted her with a scowl. “You had to bring Olan?”
She grinned. “Of course. You know how unhappy you are without Olan to irritate, uncle.”
The scowl deepened. Undismayed, Johanna hugged him. “How big is the fleet this year, uncle? It looks enormous.”
The scowl faded. One sure way to divert Cheng Ho was to praise his fleet. “Three hundred seventeen ships.”
Johanna was properly impressed. “Imagine! And how many crew?”
“Thirty-seven thousand.” He pointed out the individual ships riding at anchor in the harbor, the Treasure ship with its nine masts, the Horse Ship, a floating stable, and the smallest, Combat Ship, less than half the length of the Treasure Ship.
But then Uncle Ho wasn’t interested in making war, Johanna thought, he was interested in amassing influence and spreading the peacock tail of Chinese prestige from Chipangu to Calicut and beyond. These immense Chinese flotillas of hundreds of ships were to put ashore to dole out an excess of treasure to impress upon the barbarians how Everything Under The Heavens wanted for nothing. It wouldn’t do to say so, however, and Johanna didn’t.
They set sail on the evening tide, with Johanna standing next to Cheng on the high, overhanging stern gallery. The breeze was fresh and out of the northwest, and the sails above their heads swelled to full bellies and strained at their lines. The sun was sinking below the horizon in a magnificent red-orange blaze, casting a golden shadow over the land. Everything Under the Heavens had never seemed as beautiful to Johanna as it did now, receding over the horizon and out of her life, and she discovered to her surprise that there were tears in her eyes.
Goodbye, my father, she thought. Thank you for giving me life. Thank you for giving me freedom. I loved you. I will always love you. And I will live my life to make you proud.
She bowed her head, and Jaufre, coming up the steps to the deck, saw the last ray of the setting sun strike her bronzed hair, and knew he would forgive her anything.
He set foot on the deck and trod softly to her side, but she heard him and looked up, smiling through her tears. He felt her hand slip into his, and told himself that it was enough. For now, it was enough.
They sat down on the stern rail, and after handing over the watch Cheng came to sit down next to them. “Where do you go, then?” He knew of the death of Wu Li, and he had met Wu Li’s second wife. He knew without being told why they were sailing with him.
“West,” Jaufre said.
“Ah,” Cheng Ho said. “And how far?”
“Until the ocean drops off the edge of the world, uncle,” Johanna said, tears banished now, “and the dragons who live there burn us up with their fiery breath.”
Cheng Ho laughed. “As far as that? A very long journey, indeed.” He paused. “I will be sad to see you go. It is not likely we will meet again on this earth.”
“Who is to say?” Jaufre said diplomatically, before Johanna could protest.
Cheng Ho gave a polite nod, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. “You will trade as you go?”
“Yes.”
“You have names?”
“Madhar in Calicut, Grigori in Kabul, Fakhir in Antioch, Eneas in Alexandria, Ignazio in Venice.”
Cheng Ho nodded. The three of them watched the sun fade from the west. The brighter stars were beginning to brighten into existence when Olan joined them on the gallery, not deigning to speak to Cheng Ho. Jaufre nudged Johanna, who retaliated with a discreet pinch.
“We must eat,” Cheng Ho said.
“About time,” Olan muttered.
“But first I have a story to tell.”
“Naturally,” Olan said, casting her eyes upward.
“This story I heard long since, of a man and a time even longer past. He lived in Alexandria, oh,
five hundred years ago and more. He was a Muslim, like I was once, and he converted, as I did, although he converted to Christianity, and I to the tao. His name was Cosmas.”
The breeze was growing colder the farther they got from shore and Johanna was grateful when Jaufre pulled his cloak around her. She snuggled into the curve of his arm. His body was like an oven, radiating heat.
“It is said that this Cosmas constructed a model of the earth, in the shape of a large, rectangular box with a high, curved lid. The lid represented heaven, and as man would look down on it, so would God look down on his work. Do you see it?”
“I see it, uncle.”
“Inside the chest there was a great mountain, and around this mountain moved the sun. Because the mountain was uneven in size and shape, the rays of the sun shining down upon the earth shifted as the sun moved, making the days and the seasons were unequal in length.”
“Was heaven in the box?”
“There was Paradise,” Cheng Ho said. “From Paradise flowed four great rivers, the Indus into India, the Nile through Egypt, the Tigres and Euphrates to Mesopotamia. There were four peoples in Cosmas’ world, the Scythians in the north, the Indians in the East, the Ethiops in the south, and the Celts in the west.”
Johanna waited. When Cheng Ho said no more, she said, “But where was Everything Under the Heavens?”
Cheng Ho looked down at her. “It wasn’t in the chest.”
Johanna sat up. “Not in the box? Why not?”
“I don’t know why not.”
“Was this Cosmas unaware of the existence of Everything Under the Heavens?”
Cheng Ho considered. “He may have been. He may also have been deliberately ignoring it.”
“But how can this be?” Johanna said. “One cannot ignore Everything Under the Heavens. It just…is. Everything Under the Heavens, is, well, Everything Under the Heavens.”
“Not everything,” Cheng said. “Not even most.”
Johanna didn’t understand him, and didn’t understand Cosmas, either, for that matter. “And to make the earth a box when everyone knows it is a ball? This is nonsense, Uncle.”
“It is,” Cheng agreed. “And then it isn’t.”
She looked at him accusingly. “You’re as bad as Olan, uncle.”
Olan looked indignant at being compared to Cheng Ho in any way.
“I am wounded that you would say so,” he said gravely.
Olan snorted.
“Johanna.” The serious note in Cheng Ho’s voice caused Johanna’s smile to fade. He looked stern, even a little harsh. “Listen to me, all of you. If the Celts and the Scythians and the Indians and the Ethiops think they share the whole world between them, and if they have thought that for five hundred years, and if for that long they have ignored the existence of Everything Under the Heavens…”
“Then,” Jaufre said, “they will not wish to hear of the power and the greatness that we have left behind.”
“No. They are also very jealous of their gods. You would do well to adopt, outwardly at least, whatever faith rules wherever you are.”
Johanna, who had been ready to leave Everything Under the Heavens since she was old enough to walk, began for the first time, dimly, to realize the dangers of doing so.
The deck shifted beneath them, and Uncle Cheng rose to his feet. “The tide changes. It is time.”
Chains clanked as anchors were hauled in all over the harbor. The lateen sails, stiffened with battens, billowed and snapped and then bellied out before the breeze that freshened with the rising of the sun. Ships heeled to the wind, a flock of red birds skimming over the water.
Johanna stood in the bow, drinking in the wind and the sun and the salt air. She had but one glance to spare over an indifferent shoulder for Chandu, a place that had always been eager to see the back of her.
She put a hand on her sash. The hard rectangular lump had not moved, still caught securely in a fold of the rough-nubbed raw silk. She smiled to herself. Had her father’s wife missed it yet? Very likely, and discovering the theft how furious she would be, and how much more so with no abomination of a child to take it out on, and how much more than that when she sent out riders and discovered that Johanna was now out of her reach.
On her left, Olan noticed the gesture, and frowned a little. She looked over her shoulder at the receding coastline, at Everything Under the Heavens falling behind, the grasping arms of the harbor loosing their grip, and wondered at the unease that whispered up her spine.
On her right, Jaufre noticed the smile. “You look happy,” he said.
She breathed in, deeply. “Do you smell that, Jaufre?”
“What?” He sniffed. “You mean the salt air?”
She shook her head, still smiling. “Freedom,” she said.
“Freedom.”