Silk and Song Read online

  SILK AND SONG

  Dana Stabenow

  Start Reading Book 1

  Everything Under the Heavens

  Start Reading Book 2

  By the Shores of the Middle Sea

  Start Reading Book 3

  The Land Beyond

  About this Book

  About the Author

  Table of Contents

  www.headofzeus.com

  About Silk and Song

  Beijing, 1322.

  Sixteen-year-old Wu Johanna is the granddaughter of the legendary trader Marco Polo. In the wake of her father’s death, Johanna finds that lineage counts for little amid the disintegrating court of the Khan. Johanna’s destiny – if she has one – lies with her grandfather, in Venice.

  So, with a small band of companions, she takes to the road – the Silk Road – that storied collection of routes that link the silks of Cathay, the spices of the Indies and the jewels of the Indus to the markets of the west. But first she must survive treachery and betrayal on a road beset by thieves, fanatics and warlords...

  This one is for

  Barbara Peters,

  who always believed.

  Contents

  Cover

  Welcome Page

  About Silk and Song

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Map

  Book 1 - Everything Under the Heavens

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Book 2 - By the Shores of the Middle Sea

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Book 3 - The Land Beyond

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Supplemental

  Timeline

  Acknowledgements

  Bibliography

  About Dana Stabenow

  About the Kate Shugak Series

  Also by Dana Stabenow

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  There was no attempt to force my medieval characters to, in Josephine Tey’s inimitable phrase, ‘speak forsoothly.’ When people spoke in 1320, they sounded as contemporary to each other as you and I do when we speak to each other today. I chose to offend neither the reader’s eye nor my own-oh-so-delicate writer’s sensibilities with any zounds!-ing.

  Map

  Everything Under the Heavens

  Book I of Silk and Song

  —

  Dana Stabenow

  1

  1292, Cambaluc

  HE WAS KEPT WAITING not even an hour. As a mark of special favor, not lost on the others waiting on their own audiences in the cramped anteroom, Bayan’s own personal aide came to escort him into the general’s presence. They had travelled the Road together half a dozen times and Marco knew him well.

  “Dayir!” They gripped each other’s arms. “What’s this I hear? A father, no less, and of a hearty son! Congratulations!”

  Dayir, a short, muscular man near Marco’s own age, had a wide, engaging grin. He gave his head a rueful shake. “Hearty is the word, I fear. He has a temper. My wife says he has his nurse terrorized.”

  Marco laughed. “He is a warrior already. What have you named him?”

  “Ogodei.”

  “A good name, a strong name for the strong man to be.”

  “From your lips to the ears of all the gods, my friend.”

  Dayir opened a door and waved him forward, and Marco heard the door close gently behind him.

  Bayan of the Hundred Eyes received him with courtesy and without ceremony, in a small, luxuriously appointed study. An exquisitely worked carpet in shades of red and gold covered the floor. Rolled maps, books and scrolls were slotted into shelves that reached the ceiling. A sliding door made of translucent rice paper was painted with bold bursts of golden chrysanthemums, and stood open to allow the intoxicating scent of the plum tree blossoms to drift inside.

  “Hah, my Latin friend,” Bayan said, rising from behind the lacquered table and reaching to pull Marco into a hearty embrace. “It has been too long.”

  “It has,” Marco said, smiling. It was impossible to dislike Bayan when he greeted you so warmly and with such obvious good will.

  “Sit, sit,” Bayan said, waving him to a pillow-strewn couch. Tea and a tray of delicacies were brought by a female servant who teetered away again on bound feet. Kublai Khan’s favorite general poured and served it himself. “Now, my Latin friend, tell me all about your recent journey on behalf of our most heavenly master. Where have you been? What have you seen?”

  It was never the way of the East to come directly to the point, and it was only good manners that Marco pay for the privilege of this audience, so he obliged, over the next hour giving Bayan a vivid and detailed description of his journey to Cambay. Bayan listened with attention, asking many questions, and more than once rising to pull down a map from one of the shelves so Marco could trace out his route. Terrain, distance between stops, and the condition of the roads were Bayan’s chief interests, after the amount and experience of armed troops, but Marco was also closely questioned as to the customs of local cultures, the goods for sale, and the beauty of the women in every region. It was a Cambaluc joke that Bayan’s other nickname was Bayan of the Hundred Wives.

  At last the general sat back and clapped his hands to order more tea. Again, he sent away the servant who brought it and poured it out with his own hands. “And you had no trouble along the way?” he said, offering Marco his cup.

  “None. Oh, there was the usual pilfering, but no more than you might expect. We heard rumors of bandits in the hills outside of Bengal, and we saw one village that we were told was destroyed by them, but we never saw any ourselves.” He smiled. “Carrying the Khan’s paiza must be a guarantor of safe passage through the very bowels of hell itself, I think.”

  “How could it be otherwise?” Bayan said simply.

  The eyes of the two men met. There was a long silence which Marco was determined not to break.

  Bayan sighed. “I have spoken with our heavenly master, the Khan. He has said you may escort the Princess Kokachin to the court of King Arghun.” A tart note entered into his voice. “He says it is to be hoped that you will succeed where those three nitwits of Arghun’s failed.”

  Marco tried to conceal the leaping of his heart beneath a judicious expression. “To be fair, they couldn’t know their chosen route home would lead through a civil war. It was simply bad luck.”

  “You make your own luck,” Bayan said, who had certainly made enough of his own to be an authority. “At any rate, you, your father and your uncle wil
l together be named the guardians of the Princess Kokachin. Your job is to deliver her safely to her bridegroom in the Levant.”

  “As always it is our very great joy to obey the wishes of the Son of Heaven,” Marco said.

  The promptness of this reply earned him a raised eyebrow. “As you say,” Bayan said. “Your expedition will also be accompanied by delegations to the Pope in Rome, and to the kings of France, Spain, and England. You will be entrusted with messages to other leaders of Christendom as well.”

  “Expedition?” Marco said. “How large is this caravan going to be?”

  “You will not be going overland, you will be going by sea,” Bayan said, “in fourteen ships. The expedition is even now being assembled in Kinsai.” He smiled to see Marco for once at such a loss for words. It didn’t happen often.

  “I am—humbled, as will be my father and my uncle, by the Great Khan’s trust in us to lead such a grand mission.” Marco knew a flood of happiness that at long last he would be going home, equalled only by the surge of satisfaction that it would be in such style. “When do we leave?”

  “The court astrologers have decreed the last of the spring tides will be the most propitious day for your departure.”

  Marco cast an involuntary glance through the open door, where the garden was in full bloom.

  “Yes, I know, my friend, we have left your departure a little late.” Bayan leaned forward, a grave expression on his face, and dropped his voice to that barely above a whisper. “Within these four walls,” he said, “I will tell you, my friend, that I do not know how much longer the Khan will live. His illness has progressed to where he rarely leaves his chambers. Very few are admitted into his presence.” Bayan grimaced. “You’ll know how bad it must be when I tell you that Chi Yuan sent for me, of all people, to visit our master the Great Khan in hopes I would ease his depression. A bit ironic, when we both know that Chi Yuan will be first in line with a dagger aimed at my heart when our master the Great Khan breathes his last.”

  Marco was silent. The struggle for power between the Mandarins and the Muslims at the court of Cambaluc was legendary. If Chi Yuan, a Mandarin and a jealous guard of the Great Khan’s private life, had sent for Bayan of the Hundred Eyes, a Muslim, to relieve the Great Khan’s spirits, they must be low indeed.

  “He is leaving this life,” Bayan said, his expression somber, “and he knows it. While he lives, you are safe here in Everything Under the Heavens. When he dies…”

  The two men sat together in silence.

  It was nothing Marco had not known before he had requested this audience. Many times over the past several years, ever since the Khan’s health had begun to fail, the Polos had petitioned to leave the court and return home to Venice. Each time they had been refused, partly because the Great Khan feared what the loss of such effective tools would do to his own power and prestige, and partly because he was truly fond of them.

  There was that much more urgency for his departure, that the Khan now lay dying. The twelve barons of the Shieng were jealous of his influence over their leader. While the Khan lived, their spite would be kept in check. When the Khan died…

  “If we leave so soon, then I must return home at once,” Marco said at last. “There is much to be done.” His smile was rueful. “Shu Lin will be furious to be given so little time to pack.”

  Bayan did not smile back. “Alas…”

  Marco stiffened. “There is a problem?”

  Bayan placed his cup on the low table with exact precision, and delivered his next statement in a manner that showed that he knew just how unwelcome the words would be. “Our master the Great Khan has said that the beautiful Shu Lin and your equally lovely daughter, Shu Ming, must await your return here in Cambaluc.”

  “What!” Marco found himself on his feet without remembering how he got there.

  Bayan smoothed the air with both palms. “Gently, my friend, gently. Sit. Sit.”

  After a tense moment Marco subsided to his pillows, his mind in turmoil. “But he gave her to me. She was a gift from the Great Khan, to me personally, Marco Polo, his most valued emissary. Or so he said.” He could not quite keep the bitterness from his voice.

  “Our master the Great Khan does not go back on his given word,” Bayan said.

  “But he holds my wife and my daughter hostage against my return!”

  Again, Bayan smoothed the air. Again he said, “Gently, my friend, and lower your voice, I beg you. The eyes and ears of our master the Great Khan are everywhere, even here.” He settled his hands on his knees and leaned forward again. “Commend Shu Lin and Shu Ming into the care of someone you trust. Escort the Princess Kokachin to her betrothed. When enough time has passed that our master the Great Khan’s attention has turned elsewhere, I will send her to you.”

  “And if he dies in the meantime?”

  “Gently, my friend, I beg you, gently. She is only a woman, and with you gone will have no status, and therefore offer no threat to anyone at court.”

  “She is safer with me gone, you mean.”

  “Yes.” The soft syllable was implacable.

  Marco sat in a leaden silence filled with despair.

  Bayan leaned forward to put a hand on Marco’s shoulder. “Think,” he said, giving the other man a hard shake. “You must leave, you, your father and your uncle, for your own safety, for the sake of your very lives. Our master the Great Khan knows this as surely as do we ourselves, and he has found this way to make use of you for the last time. But you have been his friends for twenty years, and our master the Great Khan’s heart aches at your parting. This is his way of ensuring himself that you come back to him.”

  Their eyes met. This was Marco’s last departure from the court of the Great Khan, and both men knew it.

  “How will I tell her?” Marco said heavily.

  Bayan sat back. “Her father was one of the twelve barons of Shieng. She will understand.”

  She had. There were tears, but tears only of sorrow at their parting, and none of anger or remonstration. She did not blame him for his decision to leave his wife and daughter behind. Indeed, she said, as Bayan had, “If the Great Khan is as ill as Bayan says, it will be safer for us if you are gone when he dies.” She had smiled up at him with wet but resolute eyes. “If Bayan says he will send us to you, then he will send us to you. We will be parted for only a short time. Have courage, my love.”

  That night in their bed he gathered her into his arms and buried his face in her dark, fragrant hair. Here was wealth beyond measure, the highest status, unlimited privilege. Here was work he could do, and do well. Here was Shu Lin, beautiful and loving and loyal beyond words, and Shu Ming, three years old, as intelligent and healthy a child as any father could wish.

  But here also was a once-strong and visionary ruler rendered timid and withdrawn by age, weary of spirit, limbs swollen with the gout that came from a diet of meat and sweets washed down with koumiss. He must leave, and he must leave soon. His father and his uncle were impatient to be away, and both of them had remonstrated with him over his reluctance to leave Shu Lin behind. The thought flashed through his mind that they would be glad not to have to explain her presence at Marco’s side to their family in Venice.

  “You have all the courage for both of us, it seems,” he said.

  Three-year-old Shu Ming was harder to convince, and his last sight of her was sobbing in her mother’s arms. Wu Hai, Marco’s partner in business and in many journeys over the years, stood at Wei Lin’s side, square, solemn, solid. Wu Hai, one of the most successful businessmen from Cambaluc to Kinsai, was a man of worth and respectability. He had the added advantage of being well known to Shu Lin and Shu Ming.

  “I give you my word,” Wu Hai had said with a gravity befitting one undertaking a sacred oath, “your wife and your daughter will be no less in my house than members of my own blood.”

  Marco looked long upon the faces of his wife and child, and did not turn away until the firm hand of his uncle Maffeo pressed har
d upon his shoulder.

  The three Polos went out beneath the wooden arch that was the entrance of the only home Marco had known for the last twenty years. The sound of his daughter softly weeping followed him into the street.

  He never saw wife, nor daughter, nor home again.

  2

  1294, Cambaluc

  KUBLAI KHAN DIED before Marco reached Venice, even before the Polos managed at last to deliver Princess Kokachin safely to her bridegroom. As the lady’s consistently bad fortune would have it, he was also dead, murdered before ever she reached the kingdom of the Levant.

  In Cambaluc, Kublai Khan’s grandson, Temur, took the throne after months of uncertainty, followed by a struggle for power that did little to reinforce the stability of the Mongol realm. Trade went forward, of course, because nothing stopped trade, and Wu Hai returned from a trip to Kinsai shortly after Temur came to power.

  Full of plans to open a new route to the pearl merchants of Cipangu, it was, shamefully, a full day before he noticed that Shu Lin and Shu Ming were missing. It took another day and making good on a threat to have his majordomo stripped to the waist and whipped before the assembled members of the family before he could discover where they were. He went straight to Bayan, the new emperor’s chief minister.

  By then, Shu Lin was dead.

  Bayan did Wu Hai the courtesy of summoning him to his house to deliver the news in person. “Almost before the Great Khan breathed his last, the Mandarins and the Mongols were at each other’s throats. Both factions were determined to remove any obstacles to their acquisition of power, as indeed was Temur Khan. Any favorites of the old Khan were suspect, and subject to immediate…removal.”

  “I understand,” Wu Hai said, rigid with suppressed fury and guilt. “Marco, his father and his uncle were beyond their reach. His wife and child were not.”

  Bayan cleared his throat and dropped his eyes. “It may be that there was an informer who directed attention their way.”