Shike by Robert J. Shea (classic children's novels txt) đź“–
- Author: Robert J. Shea
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“There is only one way I can convince you.” A smile was in his voice. He stood and moved around the table. He took her in his arms.
At first she didn’t want him to see or touch her. She felt old. Her body was used, worn.
A coldness filled her. All right, let him have his way with me, she thought. It’s as he said. Everyone belongs to someone. No, that is just how Kublai Khan saw it. I was his toy, his little creature.
Jebu doesn’t want to possess me. He wants to show me that I am desirable, I am wise, I am witty, I am beautiful. That’s what Jebu is trying to tell me with his hands and his body. But no, it can’t be, not after seventeen years. It is not me he is doing this with. He does not see me as I am. There’s a vision that only he can see. He wants to find his Buddha in me. Almost always, these things of the bed are things of the mind.
In spite of herself, she was gliding, like a ship that had slipped its moorings, like a horse given its head, like a falcon unleashed. Past and present swirled together until it seemed that she was with Jebu on the hill overlooking Heian Kyo, with Jebu in the murderous, pitch-black night at Daidoji, with Jebu in the tents of Kublai Khan, all at once. This was really happening. Why it was happening no longer mattered.
Joy filled her body and her mind. She was beyond asking any question. The delight of being with him, the only man in the world, was a happiness that consumed her entire being like fire. It was the boundless light she had so often called upon.
She heard voices, hers and his, mingling together, but could not tell what they were saying, if they were saying anything, or if they were just crying out without words. The light within her was dazzling. The yurt around her was plunged into blackness. Her body dissolved.
They lay side by side on the beautiful carpet, each listening to the other’s breathing. She felt as if they were drifting across the lake on a dragon barge on a golden afternoon. She could not remember ever having known such peace, such completeness.
Then the doubts crept in again. He had proved to her with his body that he wanted her. But still he might have given himself over to illusion. She could never be sure that he wanted her as she really was.
There were scars, not on his face but on his body. He wore strips of cloth wrapped tightly around his chest. A scar, still red, completely encircled his neck. He had a hideous wound in his left arm. The skin was puckered and blackened around it, drawn together with some kind of stitching. Gingerly she touched his arm.
“What was this?”
He shrugged, looking deep into her eyes with his grey ones. Odd, that eyes of such a colour could radiate such warmth.
“One of Arghun’s riders gave it to me during the battle last month.” “It was Arghun who killed your father. He was the Mongol warrior you told me about on the journey from Kamakura to Heian Kyo.” “Yes, and not long after I left you at Daidoji, he came back and tried to kill me again.”
“You have so much to tell me, Jebu. So many years have gone by. I have no idea of the adventures you’ve had in the years we’ve been apart. You must tell me everything, from the moment you left Daidoji. Take seventeen years to tell it if you like. We have the time.”
A strangely haunted look came into Jebu’s eyes. “Yes. I will tell you everything. There is so much. It will take awhile.”
“What disturbs you, Jebusan?” she smiled. “You need not tell me about the women you have known. I’m sure there have been many.” He did not smile back. “I must tell you everything. In time.”
A shadow had fallen. She did not know what it was, but there was something he did not want her to know. She could not imagine the Jebu she had known on the Tokaido Road wanting to conceal anything. Much had happened to him. He had changed. She had changed. Once we find out how much each of us has changed, she thought, whatever was between us before might be severed.
She was a happy woman, possibly happier than she had ever been at any time in her life. Yet even this happiness was shot through with veins of uneasiness, doubt, fear and sadness. She had not known that happiness would be like that. She must write a poem about it.
From the pillow book of Shima Taniko:
I have known how the Great Khan lives. Now I am finding out how the warriors of the Great Khan live. Jebu has servants who cook and clean for him. Like the Mongols, he drinks mostly milk and eats cheese. The Mongols eat veal and mutton only on special occasions. Jebu says that cattle, goats, sheep and yaks are their wealth, so they prefer to live on the products of these animals, rather than butcher them.
All of us from the Sacred Islands have had to learn to eat meat, may the Buddha forgive us, but we eat a good deal less of it than the Mongols do, and we buy celery, onions, beets, beans and rice from the farms around Khan Baligh, so we can eat somewhat as we are used to.
I do not believe any woman of my country has had a chance to describe so many different places and ways of life as I have. Of course, this pillow book of mine can have no literary value. How could it, when it is written in the language of women?
This is a Mongol camp rich and at peace, located beside the capital of the empire. A very unusual state of affairs. I can see trouble for Kublai unless he embarks on a new war soon. The Mongols do nothing but hunt, gamble, chase women and get drunk. They seem to do more drinking than anything else.
I hear, though, that Kublai intends to make war once again on the Sung. That means that Jebu and Yukio and their samurai comrades will be fighting against those they formerly defended. Since the Sung courtiers betrayed them at Kweilin, I’m sure Yukio and his men have no qualms about aiding the Great Khan. Kublai has proved himself a good master to us all.
-Second Month, second day
YEAR OF THE OX
Taniko and Jebu spent their first three days alone together. Then he took her riding to the north, where the Great Wall crossed Nankow
Pass. Even though it would soon be spring, the wind from Mongolia was bitter. They both wore fur caps, and Jebu protected himself in a heavy sheepskin coat, while Taniko wore the magnificent ermine cloak Kublai Khan had given to her.
For two nights they slept and ate at a small Buddhist temple just south of the wall, where the monks knew Jebu. They spent three days riding or walking along the top of the ancient earth and stone rampart built a thousand years earlier by the Eirst Emperor, Ch’in Shih Huang-ti, to hold back the barbarian horsemen to the north. No soldiers patrolled the wall now. China belonged to the barbarian horsemen.
“It was built to keep the Chinese in as much as to keep the nomads out,” Jebu told her as he helped her over the broken and jumbled stones. “Poor farmers in northern China have a tendency to drift away from the Emperor’s control. They either become nomads themselves or ally themselves with the nomads.”
“Like you and Yukio,” said Taniko.
Each day she felt more at ease with Jebu. They talked with pleasure and interest, but it was obvious to Taniko that Jebu preferred not to talk about what their lives had been like during the many years they were apart. Probably, she thought, he wanted to avoid mentioning Kiyosi and Kublai Khan, to say nothing of Horigawa. A man doesn’t like to think about the men who have been before him with the woman he cares for, men who may have been important to her.
She was just as happy that he kept talking about such matters as the antiquity of Chinese civilization, Buddhism and Taoism, the Great Wall, the Mongol conquests, what the world was like far to the west, what might be happening now in the Sacred Islands. These were things about which they both had thought much, and had much to say. It was too soon to tarnish the joy of their coming together by talking about their own recent past.
As for their feelings about each other, their words and acts when they were alone together said all that was needed.
After they returned from their excursion to the Great Wall, Muratomo no Yukio came to visit them. On being introduced to the young Muratomo, Taniko felt a momentary flash of hatred for this short, pleasant young man, handsome except for his bulging eyes and protruding front teeth. It was during Yukio’s escape from Hakata Bay that Kiyosi had met his death. Even though Yukio doubtless had had nothing directly to do with it, she could not forgive him the death of Kiyosi and the loss of Atsue.
Yukio stood in the doorway of Jebu’s yurt and bowed deeply. Taniko placed her hands on the carpet before her and returned the bow with a lower one of her own. He was, she supposed, of better family than she. Again she thought how pleasant it was to return to the formal manners of her people after knowing nothing for so long but the simple ways of the Mongols.
“Lord Yukio, I had the honour of knowing both your mother, Lady Akimi, with whom I served at the Imperial Court, and your distinguished father, Captain Domei. Also, I once had occasion to meet your older brother, Lord Hideyori.”
Yukio’s face lit up in a broad grin. “You are my angel.” “Excuse me, Lord Yukio? Angel?”
“My mother told me about you. It was you who helped my mother meet Sogamori and persuade him not to kill my brother and me. You are the lady who saved my life.” Yukio dropped to his knees and pressed his forehead against the carpet.
Taniko sat demurely with her eyes cast down and her hands folded in her lap. “I did not save your life, Lord Yukio. Your mother, Lady Akimi, saved your life at the greatest personal sacrifice. She became the consort of a man she detested.”
“I was a child at the time,” Yukio said gravely. “My mother made me swear that I would never fail in my gratitude to the gracious Lady Shima Taniko.”
“Sit down and have a bowl of ch’ai, Yukio-san,” Jebu said. “You have all afternoon to express your gratitude.”
“The rest of my life would not be time enough,” said Yukio as he sat down with them at the black jade table.
Taniko remembered the morning eighteen years ago at Daidoji when she had confronted Yukio’s older brother, Hideyori. She recalled the boyish charm of his wish to see her behind her screen of state and his cold anger when she mentioned this young man, his half-brother, Yukio. How sad that Sogamori had commanded Hideyori’s death.
“I’m sorry, Lord Yukio, but you owe me no gratitude,” Taniko said as she poured boiling water into a cup with the fine ground ch’ai leaves and whisked the green liquid into a foam. “Please forgive me for saying so, but my family has always been an enemy of yours. We are Takashi, after all.” And besides, because of Kiyosi she did not want
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