The oldest of them, whose beard was shot with gray, glowered at Moishe under his heavy brows. Nonetheless it was not he who spoke but the man beside him, whom Moishe recognized as the man from the gate: Barak, the big man who looked more like a soldier than a scholar. Moishe had thought then that he was more than he chose to seem. The thought came back to him now as Barak asked, "You allow your men to labor on the Sabbath?"
Moishe's heart contracted. He did not know why it should do that. The man's voice was mild and he was unarmed. But there was an undertone, like a low growl. "It is for the glory of the Lord God," Moishe said.
"The Lord bade us remember the Sabbath, that He has made holy," Barak said.
"Indeed," said Moishe, "and what is more holy than the Temple that He has asked us to build?"
"Not on His Sabbath," said Barak.
The man had no humor, and no flexibility, either. Moishe mustered a smile, bowed as if in submission, and said humbly, "That may be. I am only a simple servant. Shall I present your complaint to the Khan's chief architect?"
"It is not a complaint," said the eldest of the westerners. "It is a statement of truth. You desecrate this Temple with the breaking of the Sabbath."
"Such strong words," Moishe said. "I shall speak to my master. Now come. Come and pray."
"How can we pray while men labor in the very Temple?" Barak demanded.
"Pray for us, then," said Moishe a little too sweetly.
"That, we can do," Barak said with no more humor than he had ever shown.
That was the first sign of trouble. The second followed all too quickly. Moishe had managed to divert the westerners from the horror of Sabbath-breaking, then after prayer they were invited to dine with the high priest. That should be a quiet and decorous gathering, and suitably scrupulous in its observance of the Law.
He had reckoned without a pack of young would-be scholars, a day of idleness, and rather more boredom than was good for any of them. Almost he had yielded to temptation and taken his supper in his room, but that indulgence must wait for a more peaceful time. He was hungry, he discovered, even under the cold eye of the westerner who sat nearest-not one of those who had been exploring the temple, but by now they had all heard of his offense in the face of the Lord.
He had just finished a quite delectable dish of cold roast fowl and reached for his bowl of noodles when something small and fast burst through the door to the kitchens. Several larger figures ran in hot pursuit. The quarry was silent except for an occasional grunt, but the pursuers were squealing as if they and not the pursued were the pigs.
Prince Subotai led the pack. The piglet led them a wild chase, darting under tables, veering around legs, then in a feat truly remarkable for a pig, hurdled a portly westerner, caromed off the elder beside him, and skidded down the table in a spray of food, drink, and shattered crockery. It came to an abrupt halt in the lap of the chief of the embassy, and crouched there, gaping up as he gaped down. Their expressions were perfectly matched.
Moishe did not want to laugh. Nor, he was sure, did any of the other easterners who were in the hall. He succeeded-somewhat-in restraining himself, but others were not so fortunate. The hall erupted in a roar of mirth.
"Even if it had been a calf," Moishe said, "or a foal, or even a dog, there might have been some way to repair the insult. But a pig-Lord of Hosts, could anything have been worse?"
"A pig on a platter," said Chen, "with an orange in its mouth." He licked his lips. "Gods! That makes me hungry. I don't suppose…"
"The pig's sentence is exile, not death." Moishe sighed deeply and knotted his fingers before they went back to tearing out his hair. "No, I won't let you eat him! He's unclean. Which is why-"
"He's as clean as a pig gets," Chen said. "The boys' servant has been looking after him. He bathes more often than the boys do, and eats better, too. What do you call that? Kosher-he's a kosher pig."
Moishe aimed a cuff at him, which he eluded with laughing ease. "He's a pig, pagan. That's all our honored guests can see. He defiled the Sabbath table-not to mention the Sabbath itself, and the Temple in which he was kept."
"How rigid," said Chen.
"Wars have begun for less."
"So they have," Chen said. "There's been no sign of the army we've been hearing of. No more bandits strung up by the road. Even the rumors have vanished into the earth."
Moishe shook himself. He rubbed his cheeks, then slapped them, in some small hope of bringing his mind back to order. This was what he had wanted to hear. Surely it was. His fears had been imaginary. The only threat he need face was the threat of disapproval from the Jews of the Diaspora, and God knew, that had already come to pass.
Chen watched him with a distinct edge of mockery. Moishe stared back hard and said, "If a signal has gone out, no one here has observed it."
"Certainly no one has," Chen said.
"Including you."
"Including me." For once, and abruptly, Chen was almost grim. "I can find anything anywhere. But these hundreds or thousands of men… I can't find them at all."
"So Ogadai is right," said Moishe. "They don't exist."
"They exist," Chen said. "Believe that. There isn't a bandit alive or raiding within nine days' journey of Chengdu. That's their doing. Now they've gone to ground."
"I don't think-" Moishe began.
"Do think," said Chen. "Forget pigs. There's an army out there. I'll wager it's coming here."
"I don't know if I can take your side of that wager," Moishe said in odd mixture of reluctance and relief. "Every sign points to this being an innocent caravan of priests and scholars. Some of them are more martial than one might expect, but that makes sense for a journey so long through so many wild countries. They'd want strong men to protect their scholars."
"The old Khan used to say," said Chen, "that no fort ever lost a war by overdoing its defenses."
"No small number of servants have lost their positions-and sometimes their heads-by crying danger when none exists."
"There is danger," Chen said stubbornly. "I trust my sources. You used to trust me."
"I still do," Moishe said. "But-"
"Don't give me 'but. There's trouble brewing. I have as fine a nose for that as any spy in the Khan's service. That trouble is connected with your guests, and it's coming soon."
"They are looking for a fight," Moishe granted him. "We're managing rather handily to give them one."
"Why not?" said Chen. "Maybe a good fight is what we all need. It will clear the air."
Moishe glowered but did not try to cuff him again. Chen's impudence had a method in it, and Moishe had done well before to forget the annoyance and focus on the kernel of good sense. Chen was wise in his way. He could see, sometimes, what no one else could. And he had never yet, to Moishe's knowledge, seen what absolutely was not there.
"When your ancestors were worshipping stones in the desert," said the Rabbi of Huashan, "ours were a noble and cultured people."
"We are the chosen of God," said the Rebbe of Prague. "You are converts-and however old your country, your dedication to the truth is only as old as the barbarian who conquered you."
If these had been fighting men, they would have settled matters with swords. Since they were scholars, they slashed at each other with words. It had begun as a debate regarding certain finer points of the Talmud, until the Chinese rabbi had offered the possibility that his own ancient language might be better suited to such rarefied matters. The rebbe would hear no such thing.
"The Lord God set forth His Covenant in Hebrew," he said, "and in Hebrew it shall remain."
The rabbi sniffed in aristocratic disdain. "He matched His words, with some difficulty, to the limited tongue of a provincial people. It speaks well of His kindness and His supernal mercy."