“Why, it would be a wonderful opportunity,” Miranda went on. “All the caravan men would applaud. They’re fanatical Mohammedans, and the killing of a purdah-breaker would exalt them to the skies. In their eyes it would earn Nicolo, an uncircumcised Christian, the right to go to Paradise. Your being his son would thrill them all the more. He tells everyone you’re not—only a relation of his wife’s—but of course they know different. The dimmest-eyed of the lot can see the resemblance.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Sheba sees everything, and I’m not exactly blind.”
“He wouldn’t like to kill me until we cross the Hwang Ho.”
“Then he won’t try to catch you before then. He’ll only make sure you do no damage to a slave worth three thousand dinars.”
I drew in all my thoughts and set them at one task. Presently they performed it to their best ability.
“Miranda, I don’t believe he suspects we know each other. I’ve seen no sign of it and many signs that he doesn’t. He’ll expect me to covet you and try to get you when I’m tired of Sheba, but he’ll not look for any stroke this soon.”
“In that case, you may sit.”
“A slave girl giving leave to a Venetian merchant?”
“I’m the mistress of this pavilion.”
I bowed to her and sat down.
“You’ve grown from a child to a woman—from the great ladyship you were born to almost to a queenliness that perhaps you aspired to—in three and a half years,” I said.
“That’s one reason Signor Nicolo and I are going to join forces in the matter I mentioned.”
“What matter?”
“Making sure that you’ll do no damage to a slave worth three thousand bezants.”
I stopped and looked at her. My eyes had grown accustomed to the candlelight: it was no longer a pale blue-yellow globe hanging in pitch-dark but a diffused glimmer dimming away to vagueness. Miranda’s eyes were big and shining. In better weather, as Baram had expressed it, her gaunt face would regain all its former beauty, added to a new beauty I was discovering there, which had come upon her on the long road. I did not know its source or exactly where it lay. Like almost all real beauty, it was unanalyzable. On the night that I swam beside her to Sea Pig’s Wallow, I saw her amazing aliveness, expressed in physical grace, behind her quietude. Now I saw the same thing behind serenity, which is born of power.
I could believe now that she had rid herself of her ornamental flesh in order to travel light and better withstand hunger, thirst, and heat. When she needed it, she would put it back. And what remained was still beautiful and ineffably desirable. I could hardly breathe. . . .
“You’ve come to a new attitude toward your slavehood,” I remarked.
“I wondered if you’d noticed it.”
“How could I help it? It’s a far cry from your wanting me to keep you a while, then sell you as a farm wench.”
“That was before you cast me out.”
“Do you mean—before I sold you?” But I knew she did not mean that.
“No, I still forgot myself in love of you. But when you forgot me—and I knew it in my dreams—I knew I must quit you and look out for my own interests. Instead of a farm wench, working in the sun, I decided to be a queen ruling a palace.”
“When did that happen?”
“About two years ago. I belonged to a Syrian trader named Abu Kyr. He paid fifteen hundred bezants and hoped to sell me to the Emir of Isfaham for two thousand. The Emir would not pay it, and in the meantime I had heard of Baram of Bukhara, buying treasures to sell to the great Khan. I persuaded Abu to take me there along with some other things Baram might buy. Besides selling me for five hundred bezants’ gain, the journey profited him well.”
“Do you mean you had the ambition to be one of Kublai’s concubines?”
“No. I meant to be one of his queens.”
I could not keep my eyes from widening and some scales from falling from them.
“When you decided to go to his Court, the brand on your foot must have mysteriously healed.
“That would have taken a miracle. Miracles aren’t given to slave girls wanting to be queens—they’ve got to run risks, as Esther did. When Abu Kyr had brought me to Bukhara, Baram wanted to buy me for his main offering to the Khan—until he saw the brand. Then he said he couldn’t consider me for his venture, although Abu Kyr could make a fair profit on me in the market there. I asked Baram if he would take me provided I got the brand cut out without disfigurement. He said he’d gladly do so. I had already heard that the greatest physicians in the Mohammedan world, including amputators and trepanners, practiced their arts at the University of Bukhara.”
She spoke calmly, without haste. My wonder at her poise changed to alarm at her complaisance.
“Wait just a minute, Miranda.”
I stole out of the tent, afraid that the time had flown even faster than it seemed. The hush of sleeping men and beasts—not quite silence, yet without distinguishable sound—hung over the camp; its only breach was a splashing of water near the well in time with low, wailing song. Dust murk hid the stars and Sheba’s dung fire glimmered fitfully. I looked at my sand glass. Not half an hour had passed since I had entered Miranda’s door.
I approached Sheba from the direction of my tent. “Sall’ ala Mohammed (Bless the Prophet),” I told her in good Arabic.
“Al,” she answered without looking up—the accepted abbreviation of “Allah umma salli alayh! (O Allah bless him!).”
“Half an hour more?”
“If those zither players out on the desert don’t come for me. If they do, I’ll need holy water sure.”
I left her, went to my pavilion, and made my way through pitch-dark to Miranda’s.
“I was sorry to have you go,” she said, “but I hoped you wouldn’t come back.”
“Why?”
“You’ll make me so much trouble. But after a minute or two I wanted you back.”
“Why, again?”
“To triumph over you, partly. My story is one of triumph—you can’t help seeing that. Instead of disappearing in the house of some rich burgher or a palace of a prince, I’m almost to the Gobi Desert on the way to the Court of Kublai Khan. Your rejecting me made a woman out of me. Much more of one than if I’d become your concubine, or even your wife.”
“What’s the other part?”
“I think I’ve fallen in love with danger.”
“Why not? He’s been your companion for many a moon.”
“Not too great danger, you understand, only enough to be exciting. Tonight there’s just the right amount. The chance of murder or a duel to the death for you, but only a scolding, at worst a slapping, for me. I’d tell him you came to ask about Sheba—that she wouldn’t surrender to you—and tried to make love to me. I’ll say I couldn’t get rid of you without alarming the camp and bringing disgrace upon him——”
Her eyes gleamed in the candlelight. I had cast a pearl beyond price before swine. No, I had dropped it where the connoisseur, Nicolo, could pick it up.
“My time’s short. What about your foot?”
“Oh yes. I got Baram to take me to one of the greatest physicians, a disciple of Avicenna. He said I couldn’t cut out the brand without possibly laming me or certainly leaving a scar, but because it was on the sole of my foot, where the skin is thick and has great power to rebuild, in six months he could wear it off with drugs. Of course Baram couldn’t wait half a year, so I asked if I could take the medicine with me. That was possible, he answered, but its application would be a long, uncomfortable process, most awkward on the road.
“When he explained it a little more, I saw what to do. The drug was extracted from the root of a scrub with pointed evergreen leaves—it was similar to what we call barberry in England. It ate flesh away and was used for removing warts and wens. Then why couldn’t I put a little in my sandal and walk on it every day? He said if I mixed it with olive oil, it would destroy layer after layer of skin while new layers grew from inside. Baram could hardly believe it, but agreed to pay down sixteen hundred bezants for me, and to sell me at the great market at Samarkand if the medicine had no effect. If it worked, he would in due time send Abu four hundred bezants more. I walked all the way from Bukhara to Samarkand and most of the road to Hokand. That’s the real reason I’m so lean. With the burning and the walking, I wore the brand away.”[21]