The girl turned and left her father’s second wife’s receiving room for the last time. Pride kept her step to a stroll much slower than her usual rapid, ground-eating stride, and the widow’s servant scowled and closed the door so swiftly and so firmly behind her that her robe nearly caught in the crack. She paused for a moment. The door had been closed against her, to keep her out, to separate her from her father and, more importantly, any claim on his estate. It would never occur to the widow or her servant that the barrier of the door worked both ways.
She made straight for her own suite, two small rooms in the back of the house to which she had been relegated upon the occasion of her father’s remarriage. If asked Johanna would have replied truthfully that she preferred her new location, as it was closer to both the stables and the kitchen, and horses and food ranked very high on her list of priorities.
Once in her room she threw off the heavy silk robe she had donned for the visit of state and pulled on trousers and tunic made of heavier raw silk. It was dyed a rich black and trimmed with dull black sateen. She paused a moment to smooth one hand over its nubbled texture. The blue-gray eyes went blank for a moment and she stood still, unmoving, staring at nothing. She shook her head determinedly and raised her voice. “Olan? Where are you?”
“Johanna? In the kitchen.”
Olan, once Johanna’s nurse, then her maid and now a kitchen drudge, was stirring a steaming pot over the stove. She looked up, ran her eyes over the girl’s tall form, and said, “I remember the trip to Shandong with your father to buy that silk. It was the first time he permitted you to conduct the bargaining.”
“Yes,” Johanna said. Unable yet to bring herself to speak of her father, she gestured at the empty kitchen. “Where is everyone?”
Olan snorted. “Over in her quarters, making sure they are still employed.”
“Good,” the girl said. “It will be easier for us to talk.”
The thin hand slowed its stirring, and the thin face raised to hers. Olan’s brown eyes were keen and clever between their narrow lids. She examined the girl before her shrewdly. “So?”
“So, we go.”
“When?”
“Three days. After the cremation.”
“So soon?”
Johanna grimaced. “She has arranged a marriage for me.”
Olan’s almost invisible brows raised. “Who?”
“Edyk.”
Olan’s lids drooped until she looked half asleep, and she resumed her stirring. “Hmmm.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“What?” Olan said innocently.
“That `hmmm’. You `hmmm’ and you nod to yourself. I hate it when you do that.”
Olan lifted the spoon out of the pot and setting it to one side. “He does love you.”
Johanna shrugged impatiently. “I know that. I love him. It doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t work.”
Olan nodded. “You think not?”
There was as much pain as there was certainty in Johanna’s reply. “I know not.”
Olan nodded again. She moved the pot to the back of the
stove and reached for two bowls. “Bird’s nest.”
“My favorite.”
The woman and the girl ate in companionable silence. Johanna asked for more. Olan filled her bowl again, smiling to herself.
“What?” Johanna said, catching sight of the smile.
Olan shook her head without replying. Wu Li’s widow’s complaints that Johanna ate twice as much as the hungriest horse in the stables lent spice to every bite of food the girl took. Olan was willing to admit it lent a certain zest to ladling it out, too.
Johanna finished her third helping, set her bowl aside and stretched. She met the older woman’s eyes with a gravity that sat heavily on her young features. “I must show you something, Olan,” she said.
She led the way into her bedroom. She went straight to the silken tapestry hanging above her bed, caught up one corner and without hesitation ripped out the lining. Six small packages fell out, wrapped carefully in rice paper and neatly tied with string. Johanna picked one up, and with a certain solemn ceremoniousness in her manner untied the string and unfolded the paper. She tilted the package, and a gleaming stream of red stones fell to the coverlet, to lie winking redly up at them in the slanting, golden rays of the afternoon sun.
Olan reached out to pick up one of the stones and cradle it in one hand. It looked like her palm was on fire; indeed, where the gem rested her skin felt scorched. “From Locac,” she said, and it wasn’t a question. She let the stone fall again to the coverlet.
“Yes,” the girl said. She stirred the little heap of gems with a pensive forefinger. “That trip, we came home on the Grand Canal from Kinsai. The night before we started, this funny little man tied up next to us in a dhow.” She smiled at the memory. “All those junks, and his was the only dhow. We had never seen one so far from Calicut before. Father invited him aboard for dinner and when he realized I was a girl he dropped his jib and tied it round him with one of the jib sheets.” At Olan’s puzzled look she smiled. “All he wore for traveling was a turban, you see.”
Olan laughed.
“His name was Lundi. He had a hooded snake he kept in a basket that lapped milk out of a saucer like a cat. He drank too much wine after dinner and started telling the story about Princess Padmini of Rajputana and the Moslem invader Ala-ud-din, only the way he told it Ala-ud-din got to Rajputana before Padmini killed herself, and I could tell Father was about to send me to bed when Lundi’s turban fell off and all these rubies fell out. It was like the story of From-Below-the-Steps and the night it rained emeralds. They were so beautiful. Father bought all of them on the spot.” Johanna smiled again. “Edyk said the last time he was in Kinsai that Lundi had bought a house by the river and filled the garden with hooded snakes and the house with pretty concubines, all named Padmini.”
They stood in silence, staring down as the fiery swath of color glittering up at them. “Put them where Father said Grandfather did, Olan,” Johanna said at last, putting her arm around the older woman’s shoulders. “Some in the hems of my clothes, some in yours, some in Jaufre’s. We leave in three days.”
“Does she–”
“No,” Johanna said swiftly. “She knows nothing of them. Father gave them to me at the end of our last trip together and told me to hide them.” Her expression was bleak. “He said he thought I might need them one day.”
“Well,” Olan said dryly, “at least the man wasn’t a complete fool.”
She knew at once that she had trespassed, and waited philosophically. There was a brief, still silence, and when Johanna spoke again it was in a cold, clear voice that Olan had not heard since the last time the master was angry. “Never speak of my father in that way again, Olan. Do you understand me?”
Oh, I understand perfectly, Olan thought, and said in a gentle voice, “He was only a man, Johanna, not a god. He mourned your mother for five years. And she is very beautiful.”
Johanna turned abruptly. “I’ll tell Jaufre,” she said over her shoulder, “and then I’m going to Edyk’s.”
Olan thought before speaking this time, and then said, very carefully, “Is that wise?”
“Perhaps not,” Johanna said, pausing in the doorway. “But it is only fair.”
With a lithe, confident stride she was gone, leaving Olan to reflect ruefully on the unwisdom of tying her future to someone as proud and as stubborn and as reckless as Johanna. But then what could one expect of a child born beneath the broom star? The signs had been there the night of Johanna’s birth for all to read. Did the appearance of that cloud banner, that peacock feather in the skies over Everything Under the Heavens not signify the wiping out of the old and the establishment of the new? Certainly the description fit Johanna who, raised by a liberal and loving father, never bothered with the usual limitations placed on the behavior of females, or children for that matter. Olan chuckled. Wu’s widow would–and had–taken the legend of the broom star even further, and prophesied drought, famine and disease as a natural consequence of Johanna’s birth and continued presence in Wu Li’s house. Wu had put up with a lot from his second wife but he had stopped that nastiness in its tracks, so firmly that the second wife had never referred to Johanna again in his presence. If she could not speak ill of the girl, she would not speak of her at all.
Olan swept up the rubies in her hands and smiled to herself. At least life on the road with Johanna would never be dull.
She thought of Jaufre, and her smile faded.
No, not dull at all.