The Divining (36 page)

     "Please inform His Majesty that I am not able to provide such information, as I am not a military man."

     Noble Heron returned to his sovereign, kowtowed again, delivered the reply and received another message and returned. And thus the exchange was conducted.

     "My Lord says that as a trader, Honorable Gallus, you know rivers, borders, towns. He would be delighted to see these things, and their exact placement within your empire. My Lord will provide cartographers, artists, calligraphers, and all the paper and parchment you desire. He will place as
many people at your command as you need, and as many months or years as you need. Your comfort is My Lord's greatest concern, as is your spiritual need. And so he will generously allow you to build a shrine to your ancestors here in Luoyang, for a man must honor his ancestors."

     The three men from Rome digested this bit of news along with sweet glazed pork and curried rice, and they understood the deeper meaning of what the emperor had just said.

     Sebastianus, Primo, Timonides, and Nestor were now prisoners of the Chinese empire.

T
HEY WERE CALLED
"S
OCIAL FLOWERS
" and their sole purpose was to give sexual pleasure to the Emperor's guests.

     Little Sparrow was one such young lady in the royal court at Luoyang, a beautiful daughter of nobility schooled in the erotic arts, such as the Twenty-Nine Positions From Heaven to Earth. She specialized in "sharing the peach" and "cutting the sleeve," and had kept the Emperor's guests satisfied with these exquisite arts since she was thirteen years old.

     She was twenty now and had managed these past seven years to avoid breaking the number-one rule of Social Flowers—never to fall in love. Her sisters in the dormitory had warned her against it, and she had never thought it would happen. But as Little Sparrow lay in Heroic Tiger's arms, she thought she could happily listen to him talk all night.

     It didn't matter that she didn't understand a word he said. She loved the sound of his voice, the rich timbre, the exotic syllables that tumbled from his lips, the utter foreign-ness of his speech. He always talked for a while after they took pleasure, filling the perfumed evening with words brought
from far away, while she lay in his strong arms, wishing the night would never end.

     They lay on a mattress filled with goose down, the sheets made of silk, while a blind slave kept the air moving with the constant sway of a magnificent feather fan. The lovers were otherwise alone in the bedchamber, but they could hear the voices and music of the royal household drift over the garden wall. Heroic Tiger spoke, she imagined, of his home far away in the west. And she silently thanked the gods for this bronze-haired man to whom she had given her heart.

     The role of Social Flower was a respected and dignified one, and it was a great honor to live at the royal court and serve as a pleasure-girl for important visitors. Only the daughters of the most noble families were chosen. Selection was rigid: a girl's looks, comportment, health, and ability to please a man were judged. In the case of Little Sparrow, she possessed a delicate round face, a smooth unblemished complexion, a slim, willowy body, small hands and feet. Her family had rejoiced when she was selected out of a hundred candidates. The rules were complex, and each girl was rigorously schooled in modesty and discretion, proper decorum. Her guest's pleasure was her primary aim. What she herself felt was of no importance. Once a newly recruited girl was chosen, she was moved into a special dormitory overseen by eunuchs, where she lived out her life in luxury and ease, with no other thought than how to decorate her hair or improve the painting of her eyebrows. When she was called to pay a visit to a guest, she went for the time required, did not speak unless spoken to, and returned afterward to her cot in the dormitory.

     Little Sparrow was not her real name. When the Chief Eunuch had introduced her to the esteemed guest from a place called Rome, the visitor could not pronounce her name, for it was long and meant "she who awaits a little brother," as her parents had hoped for a son. And so she had told the eunuch to give the westerner her "milk" name, given to babies in their first year of life, a temporary name, as many infants did not live long. Her parents had called her Little Sparrow and only the man from the west now called her that.

     By the same token, she could not pronounce the foreigner's name—
Sebastianus—and so she called him Heroic Tiger, for that was how he was in bed.

     But it was not for his sexual prowess that she had fallen in love with him. Unlike former guests of the Emperor to whom she had given pleasure, Heroic Tiger treated her with kindness. He smiled at her, stroked her hair, asked her how she was feeling. To other men, esteemed ambassadors and princes who were given royal hospitality when they came to Luoyang, Little Sparrow had been a piece of furniture—something to relieve the weariness of travel and then set aside. So she had reached the age of twenty without having borne even a mild affection for any of the men she had pleasured.

     And then, six months ago, she had been selected to be Heroic Tiger's bedmate, and in that time she had surrendered her heart to him. But she kept her love for this foreigner a secret. She told none of her friends, and did not bare her heart even to Heroic Tiger himself.

     And as she knew he was never going to be allowed to leave Luoyang, she prayed that when she grew old and was no longer desirable in bed, he would keep her as a companion.

     A distant gong sounded the midnight hour, and she knew it was time to leave. As always, Heroic Tiger kissed her tenderly on the forehead and rolled over to go to sleep. But as she dressed, she heard a knock on the outer door, and when Heroic Tiger left the bed to see who it was, Little Sparrow heard an urgent exchange of words.

     When she saw the big ugly westerner named Primo stride into the chamber, followed by one of Heroic Tiger's translators, and a man who wore the robes and colors of a nobleman from a southern province, she gathered her clothes to her naked breast and slipped behind a privacy screen where she could eavesdrop.

     She recognized the fourth man in the group. He was Bold Dragon, and everyone knew of his political ambitions.

     H
IS FAMILY WAS POWERFUL AND RICH,
with many friends, and, as she listened, Little Sparrow quickly grasped that he was here to offer a means
of escape to the westerners. She suspected it was a way to undermine the emperor's power rather than an act of kindness. For these foreign "guests" to escape so easily from the Emperor's clutches would cause Ming to lose face.

     Little Sparrow held her breath as she listened to a scheme emerge from the words the translator spoke—Bold Dragon boasting that he knew how to get Heroic Tiger out of Luoyang and back to the western borders, but that it would cost a high price. He did not need gold or riches, the young nobleman said. And as he was doing this at great personal risk, the reward would have to be something very desirable indeed.

     When Heroic Tiger offered him a rare and potent aphrodisiac, Little Sparrow saw that he suddenly had Bold Dragon's attention.

     She watched as a curious scene unfolded. Heroic Tiger went to a locked chest and brought out a cloth sack. He opened it and showed Bold Dragon the contents, letting him sniff them and feel some of the stuff on his fingertips. Heroic Tiger then took the teapot that was simmering with hot water, poured it into a cup, and sprinkled some of the bag's contents into the water.

     While the mixture brewed, Heroic Tiger said, "I met a man in Babylon. He told me he had a farm in distant Ethiopia which lies near the source of the Nile. He noticed one day that his goats were extraordinarily frisky, and mating almost constantly. He watched them over a few days, and found that they were eating the berries off what he had thought was a useless bush. He picked some berries and tried to eat them, but they were inedible for a man. And so he roasted them in a fire, and then ground them to a gritty powder. Boiling this powder in water provided a bitter brew, but he drank it down, wondering if the berries would have the same effect on him as they had on his goats.

     "His experiment worked. Within a short while, the farmer felt himself grow younger, more invigorated, and with more energy than he had felt in years. He immediately sought out his wife, and delighted her for days. The Ethiopian then took his discovery to Babylon, where I encountered him. I tasted the brew and indeed felt its stimulating affects. And now, my honored guest, you will experience this remarkable elixir for yourself."

     Heroic Tiger gave it to Bold Dragon to drink, taking a sip first to prove it was not poison.

     Bold Dragon sipped and pulled a face.

     "Drink it all," Heroic Tiger said, while the ugly one named Primo and the translator looked on.

     Bold Dragon drained the cup, smacked his lips and said, "I feel nothing."

     "It takes a short spell."

     The four stood in silent anticipation as Little Sparrow watched from behind the screen. Bold Dragon looked down at himself, then ran his hand over his groin. He frowned. "I have drunk only brown water."

     "Patience, my friend. How do you plan to get us out of the city?"

     "I can arrange for it tomorrow. You and your companion will meet me at—"

     "It is not just for me and Primo. All my men are to leave."

     Bold Dragon's eyebrows shot up.
"All
your men? That is over a hundred, I believe."

     "I will not leave anyone behind."

     Bold Dragon gave this some thought, and as he did, he raised his hand to rub his nose. But his hand shook. He held it out and the trembling increased. He whispered an oath that the interpreter did not translate. And then he said, "I am feeling something! I feel ... invigorated!"

     Sebastianus smiled. "It is a potent brew."

     "Indeed! What is it called?"

     "The Ethiopian said it had no name as the beans grow on a plant everyone thought useless. But he called it
qahiya
, which in his language means to have no appetite, as this brew dulls hunger."

     "Perhaps it dulls the stomach's hunger, but it stimulates another type of hunger. I feel I could bed ten women tonight and not sleep! Very well, for that entire bag of
qahiya
, I will take you and your people out of Luoyang. This is my plan ..."

     Little Sparrow trembled as she listened to the details of Heroic Tiger's escape.

     He was going to leave her. The only man she had ever loved.

     N
O ONE COULD GUESS
the dowager empress's age. Each morning, her team of personal beauticians scrubbed her face and removed every speck of hair, including her eyebrows. Then they artfully repainted her face on a background of white rice power. In order to preserve the look, the empress controlled her facial expressions and spoke with minimal movement of her lips and jaw. The effect was to give her the appearance of a ceramic doll.

     "I granted this audience, Little Sparrow," she said in a voice that was as smooth and flawless as the silk robes she wore, "because I call your father my friend. But be quick, for time rushes."