‘Yes – I suppose so.’ He couldn’t bring himself to look at her.
‘Oh, you worry too much! The bad part is all over now.’
When he didn’t reply there was a tiny frown. ‘Are you feeling unwell, Ah Yung?’
‘No.’
‘I wouldn’t want to miss our Greek lessons, now we’re so close to Samarkand.’
‘I… I don’t think I’ll have time tonight. I have to… to meditate.’
‘Oh. Well, when you’re free you’ll find a ready pupil.’ She quietly fell back to Tai Yi.
As the days passed, Nicander found it harder and harder.
In her place, alone in a country that was as different from her own as it was possible to be, he would be clinging to anything that was familiar, secure. Yet she never allowed her fears and anxieties to drag her down, standing before the world as the high-born lady she was.
He nearly weakened several times over resuming their Greek lessons but he knew he couldn’t, the closeness would be too difficult to bear.
He told himself that in any case he’d been teaching under false pretences: he’d assumed that here, as everywhere in the civilised world, Greek would be spoken by all but the barbarians but this, it seemed, was not the case. She’d trusted him and…
If he and Marius safely made Constantinople, in their box of holy scriptures – now mustered daily by Marius – was the means to make both of them insanely rich, never to be troubled by anything again. He should be rejoicing, looking forward to the climax of their adventure.
Instead, he was being torn in two at the thought of parting from a woman who he now knew he loved but who saw him only as a friend, albeit one she had said she would never forget.
They were soon approaching Samarkand. The verdant plain was populated by farms – irrigated peach orchards and greenery stretching on and on. In the hazy distance a single massif thrust out of the flatness.
The caravan headed towards it and as the roads thickened to streets and the traffic choked the way it came into plain view. It seemed peoples from every conceivable corner of the world were streaming there.
A walled city with impressive towers and monuments was atop the rocky eminence. After they had passed through the caravan gate they wound along a wide flat area to the prodigious-sized caravanserai.
There were two other caravans in the bays and their arrival caused little interest.
Nicander dismounted. This had been the last time he would be with Ying Mei in a fabled caravan on the silk route. From now on-
Suddenly she gave a squeal. He wheeled round in alarm to find her pointing to a shabby sign above an alcove that read, ‘Andros and Sons, Merchant Factors’ in Greek.
She ran across into the office, Nicander quickly following.
‘Good morning!’ she said breathlessly in Greek to the clerk.
‘What do you want, lady. We’re busy, can’t you see?’ he replied in the same language.
‘How wonderful!’ she breathed.
She turned to Nicander, ‘You see? I can speak – I can talk! Isn’t it marvellous!’
A lump came to his throat at hearing his native tongue. He thrust outside hoping she did not see the tears welling.
Ying Mei followed in concern and put her hand on his arm. ‘Something’s the matter, isn’t it, Ah Yung?’
The touch was all fire and flowers and he strove for control. ‘Oh – only that – someone speaking Greek after all this time.’
The others came hurrying up.
‘Anything wrong?’ Marius wanted to know.
‘No, nothing,’ Nicander managed. ‘Well, we’re here, aren’t we?’
‘Yes, o’ course we are, Nico! Now, there’s to be no caravanserai for the ladies any more. This is going to be their home, so we’ve got to find ’em a place to start off.’
‘I was just about to ask here if there’s a Greek-speaking lodging house nearby. Somewhere to stay while they find out what they want to do.’
There was one such, and in a better-quality quarter up the steep slope above the caravanserai.
The door was answered by a maid who quickly sent for her mistress, a Mrs Malech.
She was a pleasant-faced woman who took to Ying Mei immediately. A guest of quality who knew Greek: it would be an honour to have her.
It was a modest but comfortable house, faintly reminiscent of the antique Euboean style with its mock porticoes and inner courtyard. Quiet, away from the lower streets, it seemed to fit the bill perfectly.
‘What do you think, Ying Mei?’ Nicander asked, puzzled that she had suddenly gone pale and withdrawn.
‘Yes. It will do,’ she said woodenly, then enquired, ‘What are you asking for the rooms?’
Mrs Malech named a value in Sogdian soms which Nicander’s quick merchant’s brain quickly converted to a usable reference, but before he could speak Tai Yi snapped in Greek, ‘That’s too expensive!’
Nicander wheeled around in astonishment.
‘Who do you think I was practising with?’ Ying Mei said with a small smile.
He shook his head in admiration as an arrangement was satisfactorily concluded.
‘Then you’ll need your gear to settle in. We’ll have it sent to you from the caravanserai. Is there anything else…?’ The lump in his throat had returned.
Ying Mei turned and looked at him for a long moment. ‘You promise you’ll come back and say a proper goodbye before you leave?’ she whispered.
Nicander nodded slowly, unable to speak.
Marius chuckled. ‘O’ course we will! There’s the little matter of settling up for the rest of our trip, we haven’t forgotten. Come on, Nico, we’ve a lot to do.’
‘Well, how did you get on?’ Nicander asked Marius.
‘There’s a caravan, sure enough, but the master needs clearance from his agent before he’ll put us on the books. How about you?’
‘Good and bad.’
‘Tell me.’
‘I know more about where we are now.’
‘Oh?’
‘Marcanda of Transoxiana.’
‘What?’
‘This is what Alexander the Great called this place when he conquered it. And it’s why they still have Greek here. You wouldn’t believe it but he put in another week’s march from here towards Osh but when his generals saw the mountains we came down they mutinied and wouldn’t go on any further.’
In a way Nicander felt a kinship with these ancestors of his and a comforting realisation that at last they were on known territory. On this very ground Greeks and Macedonians had set their boots and in a line that stretched back to Greece itself, a saga of conquest that was unmatched in history.
‘You also said bad,’ Marius prompted.
‘Yes. The way home is due west in a straight line. Just a small obstacle we have to face.’
‘What?’
‘We’re the wrong side of Persia, it’s in the way and we have to get through it – Justinian’s greatest enemy and we don’t quite look like harmless Sogdians.’
Marius was not going to be put off. ‘Well, let’s see what happens with the caravan. We may have to go in disguise or something. We’ll work it out – after coming all this bloody way there’s nothing going to stop me now!’
Nicander tried to be enthusiastic for his friend’s sake.
It was tedious, having to remain at the caravanserai for word, not being able to get out to see sights that might take his mind off things, or visit a wine house to drown his sorrows. Hanging over everything was the crushing thought of having to see Ying Mei one last time.
Nicander pulled himself together. It had to be done. Then he would try to get on with what was left of life.
‘Marius. I think I’ll say my farewells to the ladies now. No sense in waiting to the last minute. Will you come?’
‘I don’t think so. I’m not much for goodbyes, and some bastard has to stay around here. You go, tell ’em I wish ’em well, that sort o’ thing, you know. Oh, and don’t forget the settling up!’
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Ahead was her lodgings: in a way so sweet-sad in its Hellenism of another age, and from now on where she would have her being. How could he just go in and end it all?
Nicander shied away as if he’d come to the wrong address. But this was just delaying things. He turned back, determined to see it through; he would make it short and final, be strong and resolute – it was the only way.