was mostly, he plied trades where a man can come and go tittle remarked. His old seamanship was among these, and it took him widely across the world. Ever he sought for more tike himself. Was he unique in the whole creation? Or was his kind simply very rare? Those whom misfortune or malice did not destroy early on, they doubtless learned to stay hidden as he had learned. But if this be the case, how was he to find them, or they him?

"And if his was a hard and precarious lot, how much worse must it be for a woman? What could she do? Surely none but the strongest and cleverest survived. How might they?

"Does that conundrum interest my lady?"

He drank of his wine, for whatever tranquility might lie within it. She stared beyond him. Silence lengthened.

At last she drew breath, brought her look back to engage his, and said slowly, "That is a curious tale indeed, Kyrie Cadoc."

"A tale only, of course, a fantasy for your amusement. I do not care to be locked up as a madman."

"I understand." A smile ghosted across her countenance. "Pray continue. Did this undying man ever come upon any others?"

"That remains to be told, my lady."

She nodded. "I see. But say more about him. He's still a shadow to me. Where was he born, and when?"

"Let us imagine it was in ancient Tyre. He was a boy when King Hiram aided King Solomon to build the Temple in Jerusalem."

She gasped. "Oh, long ago!"

"About two thousand years, I believe. He lost count, and later when he tried to consult the records they were fragmentary and in disagreement. No matter."

"Did he—meet the Savior?" she whispered.

He sighed and shook his head. "No, he was elsewhere at that time. He did see many gods come and go. And kings, nations, histories. Perforce he lived among them, under names of their kind, while they endured and until they perished. Names he lost track of, like years. He was Hanno and Ithobaal and Snefru and Phaon and Shlomo and Rashid and Gobor and Flavius Lugo and, oh, more than he can remember."

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She sat straight, as if ready to spring, whether from him or at him. Low in her throat, she asked,

"Might Cadoc be among those names?"

He kept seated, leaned back, but eyes now full upon hers. "It might," he answered, "even as a lady might have called herself Zoe, and before that Eudoxia, and before that— names which are perhaps still discoverable."

A shudder passed through her. "What do you want of me?"

He set his glass down, most carefully, smiled, spread his hands, palms up, and told her in his softest voice, "Whatever you choose to give. It may be nothing. How can I compel you, supposing that were my desire, which it is not? If you dislike harmless lunatics, you need never see or hear from me again."

"What ... are you . . . prepared to offer?"

"Shared and lasting faith. Help, counsel, protection, an end of loneliness. I've learned a good deal about surviving, and manage to prosper most of the time, and have my refuges and my hoards against the evil days. At the moment I command modest wealth. More important, I stay true to my friends and would rather be a woman's lover than her overlord. Who knows but what the children of two immortals will themselves prove deathless?"

She studied him a while. "But you always hold something back, don't you?"

"A Phoenician habit, which a rootless life has strengthened. I could unlearn it."

"It was never my way," she breathed, and came to him.

THEY LOUNGED against pillows at the headboard of the huge bed. Talk grew between them like a blossoming plant in spring. Now and then a hand stroked across flesh gone cool again, but those were gentle caresses. A languor possessed them, as if part of the lingering odors of incense and love. Their minds roused first. The words were calm, the tone tender.

"Four hundred years ago I was Aliyat in Palmyra," she said. "And you, in your ancient Phoenicia?"

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"My birthname was Hanno," he answered. "I used it the oftenest, afterward, till it died out of every language."

"What adventures you must have had."

"And you."

She winced. "I would rather not speak of that."

"Are you ashamed?" He laid a finger under her chin and brought her face around toward his. "I would not be," he said gravely. "I am not. We have survived, you and I, by whatever means were necessary. That's now behind us. Let it drift into darkness with the wreckage of Babylon. We belong to our future."

"You ... do not ... find me sinful?"

He laughed a_bit. "I suspect that if we both grew quite candid about our pasts, you'd be the one shocked."

"Nor do you fear God's curse?"

"I have learned much in two thousand years, but nothing about any gods, except that they too arise, change, age, and die. Whatever there is beyond the universe, if anything, I doubt it concerns itself with us."

Tears trembled on her lashes. "You are strong. You are kind." She nestled close. "Tell me of yourself."

"That would take a while. I'd grow thirsty."

She reached for a bell on an end table and rang it. "That we can do something about," she said with a flash of smile. "You're right, however. We have the whole future wherein to explore our past. Tell me first of Cadoc. I do need to understand him, that we may lay our plans."

"Well, it began when Old Rome departed from Britannia— No, wait, I forgot, in all this joy. First I should tell you about Rufus."

A maidservant entered. She dipped her glance, otherwise seemed unperturbed by the two naked bodies. Athenais ordered the wine and refreshments brought hi from the anteroom. While this was done, Cadoc marshalled his thoughts. When they were alone, he described his companion.

"Poor Rufus," she sighed. "How envious he will be."

"Oh, I expect not," Cadoc replied. "He's grown used to being my subordinate. In return, I do his thinking for him. Give him adequate food, drink, and swiving, and he's content."

"Then he has been no balm for your aloneness," she said softly.

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"Not much. But I owe my life to him, several times over, and therefore this day's magnificence."

"Glib scoundrel." She kissed him. He buried his visage in her fragrant hair until she guided him to a glassful, a sweet cake, and sober discourse.

"—the western Britons preserved some vestige of civilization. Yes, I frequently thought of making my way here, where I knew the Empire continued. But for a long time, the likelihood of arriving with any money, or arriving at all, was slight. Meanwhile life among the Britons was not too bad.

I had come to know them. It was easy to move among identities and to stay reasonably well-off. I could wait for the English, the Franks, the Northmen to acquire milder ways, for civilization to be reborn throughout Europe. After that, as I've mentioned, the Rus trade route let me make a good living and meet a variety of people, both along it and down here in the Mediterranean world. You understand that that seemed my only hope of finding anyone else like me. Surely you've cherished the same hope, Athenais—Al-iyat."

He could barely hear: "Until it grew too painful."

He kissed her cheek, and she brought her lips to his, and presently she crooned, "It has ended.

You have found me. I keep striving to believe that this is real."

"It is, and we'll keep it so."

With that practicality which bespoke her intelligence, she asked, "What do you propose we do?"

"Well," he said, "it was about time anyhow for me to finish with Cadoc. He's been in sight longer than he should have been; some old acquaintances must be starting to wonder. Besides, since the Norman duke made himself king of England, more and more young English, ill content, have been coming south to join the Emperor's Varangian Guard. Those who happened to hear of Cadoc would know how unlikely it is that a Welshman be a trader of his sort.

"Worse, when the Rus lord Yaroslav died his realm was divided among his sons, and they are now falling out with each other. The barbarian plainsmen take advantage. The routes grow dangerous.

Fresh Rus attacks on Constantinople are quite conceivable, and could hurt the trade even more. I well remember what difficulties previous forays caused.

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"So, let Athenais and Cadoc retire from their businesses, move away, and drop out of touch with everybody they knew. First, naturally, Aliyat and Hanno will have liquidated their possessions."

She frowned. "You talk as if you meant to leave Constantinople. Must we? It is the queen of the world."

"It will not remain that," he told her grimly.

She gave him a startled glance.

"Think," he said. "The Normans have taken the last Imperial outpost in Italy. The Saracens hold everything south of there from Spain through Syria. They have not been totally hostile of late.

However—the Imperial defeat at Man-zikert last year was more than a military disaster that led to an abrupt change of Emperors. The Turks had already taken Armenia from you, remember. Now Anatolia lies open to them. It will be touch and go whether the Empire can hold the Ionian littoral against them. Meanwhile the Balkan provinces chafe and the Normans venture east. Here at home, commerce shrinks, poverty and unrest grow, corruption at court vies for mastery with incompetence. Oh, I daresay the catastrophe will be a while in coming full upon New Rome. But let us get out well ahead of it."

"Where? Is any place safe and, and decent?"

"Well, certain of the Muslim capitals are brilliant. Far eastward, I hear, an emperor reigns over a realm vast, peaceful, and glorious. But those are alien folk; the ways to them are long and beset. Western Europe would be easier, but it's still turbulent and backward. Also, since the churches openly split apart, life there has been hard for people from Orthodox countries. We'd have to make a show of conversion to Catholicism, and we'd best avoid conspic-uousness like that.

No, on the whole I'd say we should stay within the Roman Empire for another century or two. In Greece, nobody knows us."

"Greece? Hasn't it gone barbarian?"

"Not quite. There's a heavy population of Slavs in the north and Vlachs in Thessaly, while the Normans are plaguing the Aegean Sea. But such cities as Thebes and Corinth remain well off, well defended. A beautiful country, full of memories. We can be happy there."

Cadoc raised his brows. "But haven't you given thought to this yourself?" he went on. "You could only have contin-THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS

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tied as you are for another ten years at best. Then you'd have had to withdraw, before men noticed that you don't grow old. And as much in the public eye as you've been, you could scarcely stay on in these parts."

"True." Athenais smiled. "I meant to announce I'd had a change of heart, repented my wickedness, and would retire afar to a life of poverty, prayer, and good works. Fve already made arrangements for the quick, quiet transport of my hoard—against,any sudden need to escape. After all, that has been my life, to drop from one place and start afresh in another."

He grimaced. "Always like this?"

"Need forces me," she answered sadly. "I'm not fit by nature to be a nun, a she-hermit, any such unworldly being. I often call myself a well-to-do widow, but at last the money is spent, unless some upheaval—war, sack, plague, whatever—brings ruin first. A woman cannot very well invest her money tike a man. Whatever pulls me down, usually I must begin again among the lowliest and . . .

work and save and connive to become better off."

His smile was rueful. "Not unlike my life."

"A man has more choices." She paused. "I do study things beforehand. I agree, on balance Corinth will be best for us."

"What?" he exclaimed, sitting straight in his astonishment. "You let me rattle on and on about what you perfectly well knew?"

"Men must show forth their cleverness."

Cadoc whooped laughter. "Superb! A girt who can lead me, me, by the nose like that is the girl I can stay with forever."

He sobered: "But now we'll make the move as soon as may be. At once, if I had my wish. Out of this

. . . filth, to the first true home we've either of us had since—"

She laid fingers across his lips. "Hush, beloved," she said low. "If only that could be. But we can't simply disappear."

"Why not?"

She sighed. "It would rouse too much heed. A search for me, at least. There are men, highly placed men, who care for me, who'd be afraid I'd met with foul play. If then we were tracked down— No." A small fist clenched. "We must go on with our pretenses. For another month, perhaps, 144

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while I prepare the ground with talk of, oh, making a pilgrimage, something like that."

A little while passed before he could say, "Well, a month, set against centuries."

"For me, the longest month I ever knew. But we'll see each other during it, often, won't we? Say we will!"

"Of course."

"I will hate making you pay, but you can see I must. Never mind, the money will be ours once we are free."

"Hm, we do need to lay plans, make arrangements."

"Let that wait till next time. This while we have today is so short. Then I must make ready for the next man."

He bit his lip. "You cannot tell him you've fallen sick?"

"I'd best not. He's among the most important of them all; his good will can spell the difference between life and death. Bardas Manasses, a manglabites on the staff of the Arch-estrategos."

"Yes, someone that high in the military, ye&, I understand."

"Oh, my dearest, inwardly you bleed." Athenais embraced him. "Stop. Forget everything but the two of us. We still have an hour in Paradise."

She was wholly as knowing, as endlessly various and arousing, as men said.

A MINIATURE procession crossed the bridge over the Horn and approached the Blachernae Gate. They were four Rusi, two Northmen, and a couple in the lead who were neither. The Rusi carried a chest that was plainly heavy, suspended on two poles. The Northmen were off-duty members of the Varangian Guard, helmed and mailed, axes on their shoulders. Though it was clear that they were earning some extra pay by shepherding a valuable freight, it was also clear that this was with official permission, and the sentries waved the party through.

They went on by streets under the city wall. Heights soared above them to battlements and heaven.

The morning was yet young and shadow lay deep, almost chill after the brightness on the water.

Mansions of the wealthy fell behind and the men entered the humbler, busier Phanar quarter.

"This be muckwit," grumbled Rufus in Latin. "You've even sold your ship, haven't you? At a loss, I'll bet, so fast -you got rid of everything."

"Turned it into gold, gems, portable wealth," Cadoc corrected merrily. He used the same language.

While he had no reason to distrust their escort, caution was alloyed with his spirit. "We're leaving in another pair of weeks, or had you forgotten?"

"Meanwhile, though—"

"Meanwhile it'll be stored safely, secretly, where we can claim it at any hour of the day or night and no beforehand notice. You've been too much sulking when you weren't off bousing, old fellow.

Have you never listened to me? Aliyat arranged this."

"What'd she tell their high and mightinesses, to make the way so smooth for us?"

Cadoc grinned. "That I let slip to her what a glorious deal I stand to make with certain other high and mightinesses—a deal which these men can have a slice of if they help me. Women, too, can learn how to cope with the world."

Rufus grunted.

The building in which Petros Simonides, jeweler, lived and had his shop was unprepossessing.

However, Cadoc had long had some knowledge of what trade went through it, besides the owner's overt business. Several members of the Imperial court found it sufficiently useful that the authorities turned a blind eye. Petros received his visitors jovially. A pair of toughs whom he called nephews, though they resembled him not in the least, helped bring the chest to the cellar and stow it behind a false panel. Money passed. Cadoc declined hospitality on the grounds of haste and led his own followers back to the street.

"Well, Arnulf, Sviatopolk, all of you, my thanks," he said. "You may go where you like now. You will remember your orders about keeping silence. That need not keep you from drinking my health and fortune." He dispensed a second purseful. The sailors and soldiers departed gleefully.

"You didn't think Petros' food and wine be good?" asked Rufus.

"They doubtless are," said Cadoc, "but I really have need to hurry. Athenais keeps this whole afternoon for me, and first I want to get myself well prepared at the baths."

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"Huh! Like this whole while since you met her. Never seen you lovesick before. You could as well be fifteen."

"I feel reborn," said Cadoc softly. His vision dwelt on distances beyond the bustle and narrowness around. "You will too, when we've found you your true wife."

"With my luck, she'll be a sow."

Cadoc laughed, clapped Rufus on the back, and slipped a bezant into his single palm. "Go drown that gloom of yours. Or better yet, work it off with a lively wench."

"Thanks." Rufus showed no change of mood. "You do toss money these days."

"A strange thing about pure joy," Cadoc murmured. "One wants to share it."

He sauntered off, whistling. Rufus stood with hunched shoulders and stared after him.

STARS AND a gibbous moon gave light enough. The streets, gone mostly quiet, were swept clean.

Occasionally a patrol marched by, lantern-glow shimmering on metal, embodiment of that power which held the city at peace. A man could walk easy.

Cadoc drank deep of the night air. Heat had yielded to mildness, and smoke, dust, stenches, pungencies lain down to rest. As he neared the Kontoskalion, he caught a ghost of tar on the breeze, and smiled. How smells could rouse memories. A galley lay at the Egyptian Harbor of Sor, weathered and salt-streaked by fabulous seas, and his father towered over him, holding his hand.

... He raised that same hand to his nostrils. The hair on it tickled his lip. A scent like jasmine, Aliyat's perfume, and was there still some of her own sweetness? That had been such a long farewell kiss.

And so happily weary. He chuckled. When he arrived, she told him a message had come from the great Bardas Manasses, he was unable to visit her this evening as planned, she and her dearest had that added time as a free gift of Aphrodite. "I have discovered what immortal strength means," she purred at the last, close against his breast.

He yawned. Sleep would be very welcome. If only it were

at her side— But her servants already saw how she favored this foreigner. Best not give them further cause for wonderment. Gossip might reach the wrong ears.

Soon, though, soon!

Abruptly darkness deepened. He had turned into a lesser street near the harbor and his lodging.

Brick walls hulked on either side, leaving just a strip of sky overhead. He slowed, careful lest he stumble on something. Silence had also grown thick. Were those footfalls behind him? It crossed his mind that he had several times glimpsed the same figure hi a hooded cloak. Bound the same way by mere chance?

Light gleamed, a lantern uncovered in an alley as he passed it. For an instant he was dazzled.

"That's him!" struck through. Three men came out of the gut into the street. A sword slipped free.

Cadoc sprang backward. The men deployed, right, left, in front. They had him boxed, up against the opposite wall.

His knife jumped forth. Two of the attackers were armed like him. He wasted no breath in protest or scream for help. If he couldn't save himself, he'd be dead in minutes. His left hand ripped his mantle loose from its brooch.

The swordsman swung back to strike. The lantern, set down at the alley mouth, made him a featureless piece of night, but Cadoc saw light ripple along his hip. He was mail-clad. The steel whirred. Cadoc swayed aside. He snapped the mantle at the unseen face. It drew a curse and tangled the weapon. Cadoc leaped right. He hoped to dodge past the foeman there. That wight was too skillful. His bulk stepped in the way. His dagger thrust. Cadoc would have taken it in the belly, had he possessed less than immortal vigor. He parried with his own knife and retreated.

Bricks gritted against his shoulderblades. He was trapped anyhow. He showed teeth and feinted, side to side. The daggennen prowled beyond his reach. The swordsman prepared to hew afresh.

Sandals thudded on stones. Light glimmered on a coppery beard. Rufus' hook caught the swordsman's throat. It went in. Rufus worked it savagely. The man dropped his blade, clawed at the shaft, went to his knees. He croaked through the blood.

Cadoc scrambled, snatched up the sword, bounced back

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erect. He was no grand master of this weapon, but he had tried to acquire every fighting art that the centuries brought. A knifeman scuttered clear. Cadoc whirled in time to smite the second, who was nearly at his back. The blade struck an arm. Through the heavy impact, Cadoc thought he felt bone give. The man shrieked, stumbled, and fled.

Snarling, Rufus pulled his hook out and went for the first slabber. That one vanished too, down the street and into night. Rufus halted. He turned about. "You hurt?" he panted.

"No." Cadoc was as breathless. His heart banged. Yet his mind had gone wholly cold and clear, like ice afloat in the sea off Thule. He glanced at the mailed man, who writhed and moaned and bubbled blood. "Let's go ... before somebody . . . comes." He discarded the telltale sword.

"To the inn?"

"No." Cadoc trotted away. His wind returned to him, his pulse slowed. "They knew me. Therefore they knew where to wait and must know where I'm staying. Whoever sent them will want to try again."

"I guessed it might be a good idea to tail after and keep an eye on you. That be a pile o'

treasure you left with that Phanariot son of a pig."

"I shouldn't pride myself on my wits," said Cadoc bleakly. "You showed a banelful more than I did."

"Haw, you be in love. Worse'n drunk. Where should we go? I s'pose the main streets be safe. Maybe we can wake 'em at another inn. I've still got money on me, if you don't."

Cadoc shook his head. They had emerged on a thoroughfare, bare and dim under the moon. "No. We'll slink about till sunrise, then mingle with people bound out of the city. Those can't have been common footpads, or even killers for hire. Armor, sword—at least one of them was an Imperial soldier."

VSEVOLOD THE Fat, who stood high among the Rus merchants, owned a house in St. Mamo. It was small, since he only used it when he was at Constantinople, but furnished with barbaric opulence and, during his stays, a wanton or

two. The servants were young kinsmen of his, whose loyalty could be relied on, and upstairs was a room whose existence was not obvious.

He entered it near the close of day. Gray-shot, his beard fell to the paunch that swelled his embroidered robe. A fist clutched a jug. "I brought wine," he greeted. "Cheap stuff, but plenty.

You will want plenty, and not care how fine it is. Here." He shoved it toward Cadoc.

The latter rose, paying it no heed. Rufus took it instead and upended it over his mouth. He had snored for hours, while Cadoc prowled to and fro between the barren walls or stared out a window at the Golden Horn and the many-domed city beyond.

"What have you found, Vsevolod Izyaslavev?" Cadoc asked tonelessly, in the same Russian.

The merchant plumped his bottom down on the bed, which creaked. "Bad news," he rumbled. "I went to the shop of Petros Simonides and met guards posted. It cost me to get an honest answer out of them, and they don't know anything anyhow. But he is arrested for interrogation, they said." A sigh like a steppe wind. "If that is true, if they don't let him off, there goes the best smuggling outlet I ever had. Ah, merciful saints, help a poor old man earn the bread for his little wife and darling children!"

"What about me?"

"You understand, Cadoc Rhysev? I dared not push too hard. I am not young like you. Courage has leaked out with' youth and strength. Remember now the Lord, in these high days of your life, before age and woe come on you too. But I did talk with a captain in the city guard that I know.

Yes, it is as you feared, they want you. He does not know just why, but spoke of a brawl near your rooming place and a man killed. Which I knew already, from you."

"I thought as much," said Cadoc. "Thank you."

Rufus lowered the jug. "What do we do?" he grated.

"Best you stay here, where you have sought refuge,"

Vsevolod replied. "Before long I go home to Chernigov, you know. You can ride with me. The Greeks shall not

{, know you in my ship. Maybe I disguise you as a beautiful Circassian slave girl, Rufus, ha?" He guffawed.

"We don't have the cost of our passage," Cadoc said.

"No matter. You are my friend, my brother in Christ. I 150

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trust you to pay me back later. Thirty percent interest, agreed? And you tell me more about how you got into this trouble. That might forewarn me."

Cadoc nodded. "Once we're outbound, I will."

"Good." Vsevolod's eyes flickered between his guests. "I thought we would have a jolly time tonight, get drunk, but you are not in the mood. Yes, a terrible sorrow, all that money gone. I will have your supper sent up. We shall meet tomorrow. God cheer your sleep." He rose and lumbered out. The panel slid shut behind him.

Constantinople was a blue shadow above golden-shining water, against golden-red sunset. Dusk filled the room in St. Mamo like smoke. Cadoc raised the wine jug, swallowed, set it down again.

"You really going to tell him?" wondered Rufus.

"Oh, no. Not the truth." Now they spoke Latin. "I'll invent a story that he'll believe and that will do him no harm. Something about an official who decided to get rid of me and seize my gold rather than wait for his share of the profit."

"The swine could've been jealous o' you, too," Rufus suggested. "Vsevolod might know you was seeing that Athenais."

"I have to make up a story in any case." Cadoc's voice cracked. "I can't understand what happened, myself."

"Hunh? Why, plain's a wart on your thumper. The bitch put one o' her customers onto it. Shut your mouth for aye— they'd've gone after me next—and diwy your money. Maybe she's got a hold on a fellow high in the gover'ment, like something she knows about him. Or maybe he was just glad to oblige her and take his share. We was lucky and lived, but she's won. The hunt is out for us. If we want to stay alive, we won't come back for twenty-thirty years." Rufus took the wine and glugged. "Forget her."

Cadoc's fist struck the wall. Plaster cracked and fell. "How could she? How?"

"Ah, 'twas easy. You wove the snare for her." Rufus patted Cadoc's shoulder. "Don't feel bad.

You'll swindle yourself another chest o' gold inside a ge-ne-ration."

"Why?" Cadoc leaned against the wall, face buried in arm.

Rufus shrugged. "A whore be a whore."

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"No, but she—immortal—I offered her—" Cadoc could not go on.

Rufus' mouth drew tight, invisibly in the gloom. "You ought to could see. You can think better'n me when you put your mind to it. How long's she been what she be? Four hundred years, you said?

Well, now, that be a lot o' men. A thousand a year? Maybe less these days, but likely more than that earlier."

"She told me she, she takes as ... much freedom from the life ... as she can."

"Shows you how fond she be of it. You know the sort o' things a lot o' fellows want from a whore.

And all the times a girl gets roughed up, or robbed, or kicked out, or knocked up and left to handle that however she can—leave it on a trash heap, maybe? Four hundred years, Lugo. How d'you s'pose she feels about men? And she'd never've got to watch you growing old."

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Lady in Waiting

RAIN FELL throughout the day. It was very light, soundless, and lost itself in the mists that smoked over the ground; but it closed off the world like sleep. From the verandah Okura looked across a garden whose stones and dwarf cypresses had gone dim. Water dripped off the shingles above her and filmed the whitewash of the enclosure wall. There sight ended. Though the broad south gate stood open, she barely glimpsed the avenue outside, a puddle, a leafless cherry tree.

Fog had taken away the minor palace beyond. All Heian-kyo might never have been.

She shivered and .turned back toward her quarters. The two or three servants whom she passed by were bulky in wadded garments. Her overlapping kimonos kept some warmth of their own and the carefully matched winter colors preserved a forlorn elegance. Breath drifted ghostly. When she entered the mansion, twilight enfolded her. It was as if cold did also. Shutters and blinds could hold off wind, but dankness seeped through and braziers availed little.

Yet comfort of a sort awaited her. Masamichi had been kind enough to allot her a sleeping platform to herself in the west pavilion. Between the sliding screens that marked the room off, a pair of chests and a go table hunched on the floor. She had a fleeting fancy that they wished they could creep under the thick tatami that covered the platform. No one else was about, so its curtains were drawn back. By the flicker of a few tapers, futon and cushions lay as black lumps.

She opened the cupboard where her koto stood. It was among the heirlooms not yet removed; its name was Cuckoo Song. How right for such a day as this, she thought: the bird THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS

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that is the inconstant lover, that can bear word between the living and the dead, that embodies the ineluctable passage of time. She had in mind a melody well-liked when she was a girl.

Afterward she had sometimes played it for her men— those two among her lovers whom she truly cared for— But no, she remembered that the instrument was now tuned for a winter mode.

A maid came into the section, approached, bowed, and piped, "A messenger has arrived from the noble Lord Yasuhira, my lady." Her manner took it for granted. The liaison between Chikuzen no Okura, lady in waiting in the household of Ex-Emperor Tsuchimikado, and Nakahari no Yasuhira, until lately a Minor Counselor to self-re-proctaimed Emperor Go-Toba, went back many years. Her own name for him was Mi-yuki, Deep Snow, because that had been his first excuse for staying the night with her.

"Bring him." Okura's pulse quivered.

The maid left. She returned as the courier showed himself on the verandah. With the light from outside at his back, Okura could not only see through the translucent blind that he was a boy, she made out that his brocade coat was dry, his white trousers hardly sullied. Besides wearing a straw cape, he must have gone on horseback. The least of smiles touched her lips. Deep Snow would preserve appearances until the end.

Her smile died. The end was upon them both.

With proper ritual, the messenger reached that which he carried under the blind to the maid and knelt, waiting for the reply. The maid brought the letter to Okura and went out. Okura released and unrolled it. Yasuhira had used a pale green paper, tied to a willow switch. His calligraphy was less fine than erstwhile; he had grown farsighted.

"With dismay I learn that you have lost your position at court. I hoped the Ex-Emperor's consort would shelter you from the wrath that has fallen on your kinsman Chikuzen no Masamichi. What shall become of you, deprived of his protection when I too am made well-nigh helpless? This is a sorrow such as only Tu Fu could express. To my own poor attempt I add the wish that we may at least meet again soon.

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"In the waning year

My sleeves, which lay over yours,

Are wet as the earth,

Though the rain on them is salt

From a sea of grief for you."

His poetry was indeed not to be named with any line of the great Chinese master, Okura thought.

Nevertheless a desire for his presence struck with astonishing suddenness. She wondered why.

Whatever ardor they once felt had long since cooled to friendship; she could not recall just when they had last shared a mattress.

Well, seeing one another might strengthen them by the knowledge that each was not uniquely alone in misfortune. True, she had heard that the new military governor was confiscating thousands of estates from families who had supported the Imperial cause; but that was a mere number, as unreal as the inner life of a peasant or laborer or dog. True, this house would be taken over by a follower of the Hojo clan; but to her it had simply meant lodging given her out of a sense of duty toward common ancestors. Her dismissal was the sword-cut she actually felt. It lopped her from her world.

Still, she would shortly have left in any case. Surely Yasuhira's isolation was worse. Let them exchange what solace they could.

One must cling to form, even in answering what she recognized as an appeal. Okura knelt silent, thinking, composing, deciding, before she called for a servant. "I will have a sprig of plum," she instructed. That should complement her reply more subtly than cherry. From her writing materials she selected a sheet colored pearl-gray. By the tune she had the ink mixed, her words stood clear before her. They were only another poem.

"Blossoms grew fragrant,

Then faded and blew away,

Leaving bitter fruit.

It fell, and on bare branches

Twig calls to twig through the wind."

He would understand, and come.

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She prepared the package with the artistry it deserved and gave it to a maid to bring to the courier. He would fare swiftly across the city, but his master's ox-drawn carriage, the only suitable conveyance for a nobleman, would take the better part of an hour. Okura had time to prepare herself.

Holding a taper close, she examined her face in a mirror. It had never been beautiful: too thin, cheekbones too strong, eyes too wide, mouth too large. However, it was properly powdered, the brows well plucked, the cosmetic brows painted just sufficiently far up the forehead, the teeth duly blackened. Her figure also left much to be desired, more bosom and less hip than should be there. It did carry its clothing well; the silks flowed gracefully when she walked with the correct gait. Her hair redeemed many faults, a jet cataract trailing on the floor.

Thereafter she ordered rice wine and cakes made ready. Her karma and Yasuhira's could not be altogether bad, for she was alone with a few of the servants precisely now. Mas-amichi had taken his wife, two concubines, and children to settle in with a friend who offered them temporary shelter. Their private possessions were going along for storage. He had said Okura and hers could come too, but was noticeably relieved when she told him she had her own plans for the future. Well-bred, the family had never said anything unseemly about the men who called on her and sometimes spent the night. Nonetheless, the fact that somebody who mattered was bound to overhear things would have inhibited conversation on this day when, of all days, it must be either frank or useless.

With the clepsydra taken away and the sun obscured, it was impossible to tell time. Okura guessed that Yasuhira's arrival occurred about midday, the Hour of the Horse. Because of the servants, she had one of them place her screen of state conveniently, and upon hearing his footsteps on the verandah she knelt behind it. Also for his sake, she thought wryly. Their world falling to pieces around them, the old proprieties mattered perhaps more than ever.

He and she spent a while in formalities and small talk. Thereupon she broke convention and pushed the screen aside. Once that would have implied lovemaking to come. Today a poetic reference or two among the banalities had

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made it clear that such was the intent of neither. They only wished to speak freely.

The maids Kodayu and Ukon might well be more taken aback by this than by any union of bodies so daylit blatant. They preserved blank deference and brought in the refreshment. Good girls, Okura thought as they went away. What would become of them? Slightly surprised, she found herself wishing the new master would keep the staff on and treat them gently. She feared he would not, being the kind of creature he was.

She and her visitor settled onto the floor. While Yasuhira courteously contemplated the floral pattern on his wine cup, she thought how he seemed to have aged overnight. He went gray years ago, but moon face, slit eyes, bud of a mouth, tiny tuft of beard bad remained as handsome as in his youth. Many a lady sighed and compared him to Genji, the Shining Prince of Murasaki's two-hundred-year-old story. Today rain had streaked the powder and blurred the rouge, revealing darkened lower lids, blotchy sallowness, deepened lines, and his shoulders were slumped.

He had not lost the courtier grace with which, in due course, he sipped. "Ah," he murmured, "that is most welcome, Asagao."—Morning Glory, the name for her that he used in private. "Savor, aroma, and warmth. 'Resplendent light—'"

She was compelled to cap the literary allusion by saying, "But not, I fear, 'everlasting fortune,'" and whetted that a little by adding, "As for Morning Glory, at my age might not Pine Tree be better?"

He smiled. "So I have kept some of my touch in guiding conversation. Shall we get unpleasant topics out of the way at once? Then we can discourse of former times and their joys."

"If we have the heart to." If you do, she meant. I never had any choice but to make myself strong.

'"I had hoped the Lord Tsuchimikado would retain you."

"Under these circumstances, dismissal may be less than the worst thing that could happen to me,"

she said. He failed to completely hide puzzlement. She explained: "Without a family holding rice land, I would be scarcely more than a beggar, lacking even a place of my own like this to THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS

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retire to when off duty. The others would despise and soon abuse me."

"Indeed?"

"Women are as cruel as men, Mi-yuki."

He nibbled a cake. She realized that was cover for the collecting of his thoughts. At length he said, "I must confess, the knowledge of the situation made thin my expectations for you."

"Why so?" She knew the answer perfectly well, but also knew that explaining to her would help him.

"It is true that Lord Tsuchimikado stayed at peace during the uprising," he said, "but if he did not work against the Hojo chieftains, neither did he assist them. Now I daresay he feels a need to curry favor, the more so because they may then make one of his line the next Emperor when our present sovereign dies or abdicates. Ridding himself of every member of any family that was in revolt seems a trivial gesture. Just the same, it is a gesture, and Lord Tokifusa, whom they have set as military governor over Heian-kyo, will take due note of it."

"I wonder what sin in a past life caused Lord Go-Toba to try to seize back the throne he had quitted," Okura mused.

"Ah, it was no madness, it was a noble effort that should have succeeded. Remember, his brother, the then Emperor Juntoku, was with him in it, and so were not only families like ours and their followers, but soldiers of the Taira who would fain avenge what the Minamoto did to their fathers; and many a monk also took up arms."

A bleakness' passed through Okura. She knew how the monks of Mount Hiei repeatedly descended on this city and terrorized it, not only by threats but by beatings, killings, looting, burning. They came to enforce political decisions they wanted; but were they any better than the outright criminal gangs who effectively ruled over the entire western half of the capital?

"No, it must have been because of our own former sins that we failed," Yasuhira continued. "How far have we fallen since the golden days! We might have won to an Emperor who truly ruled."

"What do you mean?" asked Okura, sensing how he needed to express his bitterness.

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It erupted: "Why, what has the Emperor been for generations but a doll in the hands of the mighty, enthroned as a child and made to step down and retire into a life of idleness when he reached manhood? And meanwhile the clans have made earth sodden with blood as they fought out who should name the Shogun." He gulped for air and explicated in the same rush of words: "The Shogun is the military head in Kamakura who is the real master of the Empire. Or who was. Today—today the Hojo have won the clan wars; and their Shogun is himself a boy, another doll who says what their lords want him to say."

He reined himself in and apologized: "I beg Asagao's pardon. You must be shocked at my bluntness; and needlessly, for of course a woman cannot understand these things."

Okura, who had kept her ears open and her mind awake amply long enough to know everything he had told her, replied, "True, they are not for her. What I do understand is that you grieve over what we have lost. Poor Mi-yuki, what shall become of you?"

Somewhat calmed, Yasuhira said, "I was in a better position to bargain for leniency than Masamichi or most others. Thus I have leave to occupy my mansion in Heian-kyo for a short time yet. After I must depart, it will be to a farm in the east, well beyond Ise, that I am allowed to keep. The tenants will support me and my remaining dependents."

"But in poverty! And so far away, among rude countryfolk. It will be like passing over the edge of the world."

He nodded. "Often will my tears fall. Yet—" She could not readily follow his quotation, having had scant opportunity to practice spoken Chinese, but gathered that it was about maintaining a serene spirit in adversity. "I hear there is a view of the sacred mountain Fuji. And I can take some books and my flute with me."

"Then you are not wholly destroyed. That is one bright dustmote in the dark air."

"What of you? What has happened to this household?"

"Yesterday came the baron who will take possession here. The worst kind of provincial, face unpowdered and weathered like a peasant's, hair and beard abristle, uncouth as a monkey and growling a dialect so barbarous that one could barely comprehend him. As for the soldiers in his train, oh, they could almost have been wildfolk of Hok-r.,--:

kaido. Yes, knowledge of what I leave behind may temper my longing for Heian-kyo. He gave us a few days to make our preparations."

Yasuhira hesitated before he said, "Mine will be no fitting existence for a well-born lady.

However, if you have nothing eke, come with my party. For the rest of our days we can strive to console each other."

"I thank you, dear old friend," she answered mutedly, "but I do have my own road before me."

He emptied his cup. She refilled it. "Indeed? Let me be glad on your account, not disappointed on mine. Who will take you in?"

"No one. I will seek the temple at Higashiyama—that one, for I have often been there with the Ex-Imperial consort and the chief priest knows me—I will go and take vows."

She had not expected him to show dismay. He almost dropped his cup. Wine slopped forth to stain his outer robe. "What? Do you mean full vows? Become a nun?"

"I think so."

"Cut off your hair, your beautiful hair, don coarse black raiment, live— How will you live?"

"The fiercest bandit dares not harm a nun; the poorest hovel will not deny her shelter and some rice for her bowl. I have in mind to go on perpetual pilgrimage, from shrine to shrine, that I may gain merit in whatever years of this life are left me." Okura smiled. "During those years, perhaps I can call on you from time to time. Then we will remember together."

He shook his head, bemused. Like most courtiers, he had never traveled far, seldom more than a day's journey from Heian-kyo. And that had been by carriage—to services that for his kind were occasions more social than religious; to view blossoms in the springtime countryside or the maple leaves of autumn; to admire and make poems about moonlight on Lake Biwa . . . "Afoot," he mumbled.

"Roads that wet weather turns into quagmires. Mountains, gorges, raging rivers. Hunger, rain, snow, wind, fiery sun. Ignorant commoners. Beasts. Demons, ghosts. No." He set down his cup, straightened, firmed his voice. "You shall not. It would be hard for a young man. You, a woman, growing old, you will perish miserably. I won't have it."

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Rather than remind him that he lacked authority over her, for his concern was touching, she asked gently, "Do I seem feeble?"

He fell silent. His eyes searched, as if to pierce the garments and look at the body that had sometimes lain beneath his. But no, she thought, that would never cross his mind. A decent man, he found nudity disgusting, and in fact they had always kept on at least one layer of clothing.

Finally he murmured, "It is true, it is eerie, the years have scarcely touched you, if at all. You could pass for a woman of twenty. But your age is—what? We have known each other for close to thirty years, and you must have been about twenty when you came to court, so that makes you only a little younger than me. And my strength has faded away."

You speak aright, she thought. Bit by bit I have seen you holding a book farther from your eyes or blinking at words you do not quite hear; half your teeth are gone; more and more fevers come upon you, coughs, chills; do your bones hurt when you rise in the mornings? I know the signs well, and well I should, as often as I have watched them steal over those I loved.

The impulse had seized her days before, when the bad news broke and she began to think what it meant and what to do. She had curbed it, but it stayed restlessly alive. If she yielded, what harm? She could trust this man. She was unsure whether it would help or hinder him against his sorrow.

Let me be honest with him, she decided. At least it will give him something to think about besides his great loss, in the solitude that awaits him.

"I am not the age you believe, my dear," she said quietly. "Do you wish the truth? Be warned, at first you may suppose I have gone mad."

He studied her before replying with the same softness, "I doubt that. There is more within you than you have ever manifested. I was vaguely but surely conscious of it. Perhaps I dared never inquire."

Then you are wiser than I believed, she thought. Her resolution crystallized. "Let us go outside,"

she said. "What I have to tell is for no ears but yours."

Not troubling about cloaks, they went forth together, onto the verandah, around this pavilion, and along a covered gallery to a kiosk overlooking the pool. Near its placidity rose a man-high stone in whose ruggedness was chiseled the emblem of the clan that had lost this home. Okura halted. "Here is a good spot for me to show you that no evil spirit uses my tongue to speak falsehoods," she said.

Solemnly, she recited a passage she had chosen from the Lotus Sutra. Yasuhira's manner was as grave when he told her, "Yes, that suffices me." He was of the Amidist sect, which held that the Buddha himself watches over humankind.

They stood gazing out at things of chaste beauty. Mist from the rain filled the kiosk and covered hair, clothes, eyelashes with droplets. The cold and the silence were tike presences, whose awareness was remote from them.

"You suppose I am about fifty years old," she said. "I am more than twice that."

He caught a breath, looked sharply at her, looked away, and asked with closely held calm, "How can this be?"

"I know not," she sighed. "I know only that I was born in the reign of Emperor Toba, through whom the Fujiwara clan still ruled the realm so strongly that it lay everywhere at peace. I grew up like any other girl of good birth, save that I was never ill, but once I had become fully a woman, all change in me ceased, and thus it has been ever since.",

"What karma is yours?" he whispered.

"I tell you, I know not. I have studied, prayed, meditated, practiced austerities, but no enlightenment has come. At last I decided my best course was to continue this long life as well as I was able."

"That must be ... difficult."

"It is."

"Why have you not revealed yourself?" The voice trembled. "You must be holy, a saint, a Bodhisattva."

"I know I am not. I am troubled and unsure and tormented by desire, fear, hope, every fleshly evil. Also, as my Jigelessness first came slowly to notice, I have encountered jealousy, spite, and dread. Yet I could never hitherto bring myself to renounce the world and retreat to a life of sacred poverty. So whatever I am, Mi-yuki, I am not holy."

He pondered. Beyond the garden wall swirled formlessness. Eventually he asked her, "What did you do? What have your years been like?"

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"When I was fourteen, an older man—his name no longer matters—sought me out. He being influential, my parents encouraged him. I cared little for him, but knew not how to refuse. In the end he spent the three nights at my side and thereafter made me a secondary wife. He also got me a position at the court of Toba, who by then had abdicated. I bore him children, two of whom lived1. Toba died.

Soon after, my husband did.

"By then the wars between the Taira and the Minamoto had broken out. I made an occasion to retire from the service of Toba's widow and, taking my inheritance, withdrew to the family from which I sprang. It helped that a lady not at court lives so secluded. But how empty an existence!

"At last I confided in a lover I had gotten, a man of some wealth and power. He brought me to a rural estate of his, where I spent several years. Meanwhile he got my daughter married off elsewhere. He took me back to Heian-kyo under her name—such people as remembered marveled at how much she resembled her mother—and through his patronage I came again into service at a royal household. Gradually I outlived the scorn they have for provincials; but when they gradually observed how I kept my youth—

"Do you wish to hear it all?" she asked in an upsurge of weariness. "This has been my third such renewal. The tricks, the deceptions, the children I have borne and, one way or another, managed to have adopted elsewhere, lest it become too plain that they grow old while I do not. That has hurt most. I wonder how much more I could endure."

"Therefore you are leaving everything behind," he breathed.

"The time was already overpast. I hesitated because of the strife, the uncertainty about what would become of my kindred. Well, that has been settled for me. It feels almost like a liberation."

"If you take nun's vows, you cannot return here as you did before."

"I have no wish to. I have had my fill of the petty intrigues and hollow amusements. Fewer are the midnight stars than the yawns I have smothered, the hours I have stared into vacancy and waited for something, anything to happen." She touched his hand. "You gave me one reason to linger. But now you too must go. Besides, I wonder how much longer they can keep up the pretense in Heian-kyo."

"You choose a harder way than I think you imagine."

"No harder, / think, than most in times to come. It is a cruel age we are bound into. At least a wandering nun has people's respect, and . . . nobody questions her. Someday I may even win to understanding of why we suffer what we do."

"Could I ever show courage like hers?" he asked the rain.

Once more she touched his hand. "I feared this tale might distress you."

Still he looked before him, into the silvery blindness. "For your sake, perhaps. It has not changed you for me. While I live, you will remain my Morning Glory. And now you have helped me remember that I am safely mortal. Will you pray for me?"

"Always," she promised.

They stood a while in silence, then went back inside. There they spoke of happy things and summoned up happy memories, pleasures and lovelinesses that had been theirs. He got a little tipsy. Nevertheless, when they said farewell it was with the dignity becoming a nobleman and a lady of the Imperial court.

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IX

Ghosts

DID SMOKE rouse her? Bitter in her nostrils, sharp-edged in her lungs, at first it was all that was. She coughed. Her skull flew asunder. The shards fell back with a crash. They ground against each other like ice floes on a lake under storm. Again she coughed, and again. Amidst the noise and the sword-blade hurt she began to hear a crackling that loudened.

Her eyes opened. The smoke savaged them. Through it, blunily, she saw the flames. That whole side of the chapel was coming ablaze. Already the fire licked up to the ceiling. She could not make out the saints painted there, nor any icons on the walls—were they gone?—but the altar abided. As the smoke drifted and the half-light leaped, its bulk wavered in her sight. She had a wild brief sense that it was adrift, would soon reach her and crush her under its weight or else float away forever on the smoke.

Heat billowed. She crept to hands and knees. For a while she could not lift her head. It was too heavy with pain. Then something at the edge of vision drew her in a slow shamble. She slumped above and groped after comprehension.

Sister Elena. Sprawled on her back. Very still, more than the altar was, altogether empty of movement. Eyes open, firelight ashimmer in them. Mouth agape, tongue half out of it, dry. Legs and loins startlingly white against the clay floor and the habit pulled up over them. White flecks likewise catching the light across her groin. Blood-spatters bright on thighs and belly.

Varvara's insides writhed. She threw up. Once, twice, thrice the vomit burst forth. The surges ripped through her head. When they were done, though, only the foul taste and the burning left in her, more awareness had awakened. She wondered in a vague way whether this had been the final violation or a sign of God's grace, covering the traces of what had been done to Elena.

You were my sister in Christ, Varvara thought. So young, oh, how young. I wish you had not been in such awe of me. Your laughter was sweet to hear. I wish we could sometimes have been together, only the two of us, and told secrets and giggled before we went to prayers. Well, you have won martyrdom, I suppose. Go home to Heaven.

The words wavered over pain and throbbing and great swoops of dizziness. The fire roared. Its heat thickened. Sparks danced through the smoke. Some landed on her sleeves. They winked out, but she must flee, or else burn alive.

For a moment, weariness overwhelmed her. Why not die, here with little Elena? Make an end of the centuries, now when everything else had come to an end. If she breathed deeply, the agony would be short. Afterward, peace.

Sunlight struck long, brass-yellow, through haze and whirling soot. While she wondered about death, her body had crawled out the door. Astonishment jolted her more fully back to herself. She swung her gaze to and fro. Nobody was nigh. Mostly wood, the cloister buildings were afire all around. Somehow she got to her feet and stumbled from them.

Beyond the enclosure, animal wariness took hold. She crouched back down, next to a wall, and peered. Monastery and nunnery stood a distance from the town, as was usual. The religious should have found shelter behind the defenses. They had not had time. The Tatars arrived too soon, were there, horses between them and safety. They scrambled back and beseeched the Virgin, the saints and angels. Presently some of the wild men came to them, yelping like dogs.

It made no difference, Varvara saw. Pereyaslavl had

fallen. No doubt the Tatars stormed it before they troubled

/.about the house of the Virgin. A monstrous black cloud

-.. rose from its walls, up and up into the sky, where it broke apart into smears across eventide purity. Flames stabbed into view beneath. They tinged the gloom with restless red.

; She remembered dimly how the Lord went before the Is-

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raelites as a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night. Did His voice roar like the pyre that had been Per-eyaslavl?

Here and there across the rolling farmlands, villages burned too, smaller darknesses taking flight. The Tatars seemed to be assembling near the town. Squads galloped through grainfields toward the main body of horsemen. Warriors afoot herded captives along, not many—but then, Varvara saw, the invaders were no huge army, not the locust swarm of rumor, several hundred perhaps. They weren't steel-clad either, it was mostly leather and fur on those stocky forms, now and then a blink but that was likelier off a weapon than a helmet. One at their van bore the standard, a pole from whose cross-arm hung—tails of oxen? The mounts were just ponies, dun-colored, shaggy, longheaded.

Yet these men had come as a runaway blaze over the land, driving all before them or trampling it down. Even cloister dwellers had heard, years ago, how the Pechenegs themselves fled to the Rusi, begging for succor. Riders who attacked like a single dragon with a thousand thunderous legs, arrows that flew like a sleetstorm—

Otherwise the countryside reached green, outrageously peaceful, eastward from the sun. Light streamed into the Trubezh, so that the river became a flow of gold. Flocks of waterfowl winged toward the marshes along its shores.

Yonder is my refuge, Varvara knew, my one tiny hope.

How to reach it? Her flesh was a lump of pain, splintered in places with anguish, and her bones were weights. Nevertheless, with the fire at her back, go she must. Knowledge made up for awkwardness. She could advance a bit, freeze, wait till it appeared safe to gain a few more feet.

That meant a long time till she reached her goal, but time remained to her, oh, yes. She choked off a crazy laugh.

At first a cloister orchard gave concealment. How often had these trees blossomed amazing pink and white in spring, rustled green in summer, offered crisp sweetness in autumn, stood skeletally beautiful against winter's gray, for her sisters and her? The number of years was lost somewhere in Varvara's head. Certain of their people flitted through, El-ena, shrewish Marina, plump and placid Yuliana, Bishop Simeon grave behind his huge bush of beard—dead, today THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS

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or years since, ghosts, she herself perhaps dead too but denied quietness, a rusalka creeping back to its river.

Beyond the orchard was pasture. Varvara thought for a while she would do best to wait among the trees for nightfall. Terror whipped her onward. She found herself slipping along more and more snakishly. Skill returned, indeed it did, when you had gained it in your girlhood. Before Christ came to the Rusi, and for generations afterward, women often ranged the forest as freely as men.

Not the deep forest, no, it was dark, trackless, a place where beasts and demons prowled: but the verge, where sunlight reached and you could gather nuts and berries.

That lost greenwood felt closer than the cloister. She had no recollection of what happened after the enemy drew near the sanctuary.

At a sudden thudding, she went flat in the grass. Despite utter weariness, her heart banged and a thin singing lifted between her temples. It was well she had not stayed in the orchard. Several Tatar horses trotted among the trees and out onto the slope. She glimpsed one rider clearly, his broad brown face, slant slit eyes, wispy whiskers. Did she know him? Had he known her, back in the chapel? They passed close by but onward, they had not noticed her.

Thanks welled in her breast. Only later did she recall that they had not been to God or any saint but to Dazhbog of the Sun, the Protector. Another ancient memory, another strong ghost.

Dusk softened horizons by the time she reached the marsh for which she aimed. Fitful reddenings still touched the smoke of Pereyasiavl; the outlying villages must be entirely ash and charcoal.

Tatar campfires began to twinkle in ordered clusters. They were small, like their masters, and bloody.

Mud oozed cool over Varvara's sandals, between her toes, up her ankles. She found a hummock where the grass was merely damp and sank down, curled onto its springiness. Her fingers dug into the turf and the sod beneath. Earth, Mother of All, hold me close, never let me go, comfort your child!

The first stars glimmered forth. She grew able to weep.

Thereafter she pulled off her clothes, layer by layer. A breeze nuzzled her nakedness. Having left the garments

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bundled, she pushed through reeds till she waded in the stream. Here she could wash out her mouth and gullet, drink and drink. The water was slow to reach every parched finger-end. Meanwhile she crouched and scrubbed herself, over and over. The river laved, licked, caressed. She squatted and opened her loins to it. "Make me clean," she begged.

Light of stars and the Heaven Path gleamed off its current, enough for her to find her way back.

She stood on the hummock so the breeze could dry her. That made her shiver but didn't take long.

Her lips quirked for a moment— cropped hair was a legacy of the cloister, useful tonight.

Afterward she took up her clothes, and nearly retched. Now she caught their stench of sweat, blood, Tatar. It took almost the last of her strength to put them back on. Maybe she couldn't have, were it not for the overlay of smoke-smell. Another legacy, another remembrance. She must keep covered against the night chill. Though she had never been sick in her life, she might well be too weakened to stave off a fever.

Slumping back onto the hummock, she dropped into a half-sleep wherein ghosts gibbered.

Dawn roused her. She sneezed, groaned, shuddered. However, as brightness lengthened across the land, the same cold clarity waxed within. Cautiously moving about her hiding place, she felt the stiffness work out of her joints, toe aches dwindle. Wounds still hurt, but lesseningly as day wanned them; she knew they would heal.

She kept well down amidst the reeds, but from time to time ventured a look outward. She saw the Tatars water their horses, but the river blotted up any filth before it reached her. She saw them ride from horizon to horizon. Often they returned with burdens, loot. When the shifting masses at camp chanced to part before her eyes, she spied the captives, huddled together under mounted guard. Boys and young women, she supposed, those worth taking for slaves. The rest lay dead in the ashes.

She still lacked memory of her last hours in the cloister. A blow to the head could do that. She had no wish for the knowledge. Imagination served. When the raiders broke in, the religious must have scattered. Quite likely Varvara seized Elena's hand and led her, a dash into the chapel of THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS

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St. Eudoxia. It was small and offside, without treasures, the devils might overlook it. Of course they hadn't.

But what then? How had Elena died? Varvara—well, she dared hope she had fought, forced three or four to hold her down by turns. She was big, strong, a survivor of much, used to looking after herself. At last, she guessed, a Tatar, maybe when she bit him, smashed her head against the floor. Elena, though, Elena was slight and frail, gentle, dreamy. She could only have lain where she was while the thing went on and on and on. Maybe the last man, seeing what his fellow did to punish Varvara, had grinned and done the same to Elena. It killed her. Did they take her companion for dead also, belt up their breeches, and go? Or did they simply not care?

At least they hadn't used knives. Varvara would not have outlived that. Indeed, while her skull seemed amply hard, she might not have roused in time to escape, save for the vitality that kept her ageless. She should thank God for it.

"No," she breathed, "first I thank You for letting Elena die. She would have been broken, haunted all her days, hounded all her nights." •

Further gratitude slipped her mind.

The river and the hours muttered past. Birds clamored. Flies buzzed thick as smoke, drawn by her stinking garb. Hunger began to gnaw. She recollected another old skill, lay belly down in the mud by a backwater that some drifted brushwood had formed, waited.

She was no longer alone. Ghosts crowded close. They touched and tugged at her, whispered, beckoned. At first they were horrible. They took her against her will, drunken husbands and two different ruffians who had caught her during the years when she wandered. With a third she had been lucky and gotten a knife into him first. "Burn in hell with those Tatars," she snarled. "I outlived you. I shall outlive them."

Yes, and the memories of them. If nothing else, she would humble the new ghosts as she had overcome the old ones. It might take years—she had years—but at last the strength that had kept her alive this long would again make her able to live gladly.

"Good men, come back to me. I miss you. We were happy together, were we not?"

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Father. White-bearded Grandfather, from whom she could wheedle anything. Elder brother Bogdan, how they used to fight but how splendid he later grew, before a sickness ravaged his guts and tore him down. Younger brother, yes, and sisters, who teased her and became dear to her. Neighbors. Dir, who kissed her so shyly in a clover meadow where bees buzzed; she was twelve years old, and the world wobbled. Vladimir, first of her husbands, a strong man until age gnawed him hollow but always gentle with her. Husbands later, those she had liked. Friends who stood by her, priests who consoled her, when sorrow returned to her house. How well she recalled ugly little Gleb Ilyev, but then, he was the first of those who helped her escape when a home turned into a trap. Oh, and her sons, her sons, grandsons, daughters and granddaughters too, great-grandchildren, but time took them away. Every ghost had a face that changed, grew old, finally was the mask that the dead wear.

No, not quite every one. Some she had known too fleetingly. Strange, how vivid remained that trader from abroad—Cadoc, his name? Yes, Cadoc. She was glad she had not watched him crumble—when?

Two hundred years, more or less, since their night in Kiyiv. Of course, he might have perished early, in the beauty of his youth.

Others were misty. Certain among them she was unsure of, whether they had been real or were fragments of dreams that had clung to memory.

With a splash and splatter, a frog jumped from among the rushes, onto the brushwood. He settled himself, fat, green-white, to lurk for flies. Varvara stayed moveless. She saw his attention turn from where she lay. Her hand pounced.

He struggled, cool and slippery, till she knocked him on the head. Then she plucked him apart, gnawed and sucked his meat off the bones, cast them into the river with muttered thanks. Ducks bobbed in midstream. She could have shed her clothes, slid into tfie water, swum carefully underneath to seize one by the legs. But no, the Tatars might glimpse it. Instead, she grubbed sedges of a kind with edible roots. Yes, the forest skills lived on in her, had never really faded.

Otherwise— She supposed it was a growing despair, a sense of her soul slipping from her, that brought her to the

sanctuary. No, that wasn't the whole reason. She had said too many farewells. In the house of God was refuge that would endure.

Surely there was peace, around her if not always within. The lusts of the flesh refused to die, among them the wish to feel again a smalt warmth in her arms, a small mouth milking her. She reined them in, but then sometimes they kicked up mockeries of the Faith, memories of old earthy gods, longings to see beyond walls and fare beyond horizons. And petty sins too, anger at her sisters, impatience with the priests and the endlessly same tasks. Nonetheless, on the whole, peace. Between the chores, the chafings, and the puzzled search for sanctity were hours in which she could bit by bit, year by year, rebuild herself. She discovered how to order memories, have them at her beck rather than let them fade to nothing or else overwhelm her with their many ness.

She tamed her ghosts.

f A wind made the sedges rustle. She shivered likewise. •V_ What if she had failed? If she was not alone in the world, ! was the common fate of her kind to go mindless and perish helpless?

Or was she in truth alone, whether blessed or damned? Certainly the cloister had no record of such folk, ever, since the Methuselan morning of the world. Not that she had told anybody beforehand.

The caution of centuries forbade. She came as a widow, taking the veil because the Church encouraged widows to do so.

To be sure, when the decades slipped by and her flesh continued young—

Noise thrust into the marsh, shouts, whinnies, drumbeats. She scuttered to look. The Tatars had trussed up their loot and marshalled their ranks. They were departing. She saw no captives, but guessed they were bound astride pack horses with the rest of the baggage. Smoke still blew thinly

: out of the blackened, broken walls of Pereyaslavl.

The Tatars were headed northeasterly, away from the Trubezh, toward the Dniepr and Kiyiv. The great city was a day's march in that direction, less on horseback.

O Christ, have mercy, were they off to take Kiyiv?

No, they were too few.

But others must be raging elsewhere across the Russian land. Their demon king must have a plan.

They could join

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together, resharpen swords blunted by butchery, and go on as a conquering horde.

In the house of God I sought eternity, passed through Varvara. Here I have seen that it also has an end.

I too?

Yes, I can die, if only by steel or fire or famine or flood; therefore someday I shall die.

Already, to those among whom I was ageless, those that live, I am a ghost, or less than a ghost.

First the nuns, later the monks and secular priests, finally the layfolk began to marvel at Sister Varvara. After some fifty years, peasants were appealing to her for help in their woes and pilgrims arriving from places quite far. As she had feared from the outset, there was no choice but to tell her confessor the truth about her past. With her reluctant leave, he informed Bishop Simeon. The latter planned to inform the Metropolitan. If they did not have an actual saint in the cloister of the Virgin, and Sister Varvara said she could not possibly be one, they had a miracle.

How was she to live with that?

She would never have to. The bishop, the priests, the believers were dead or fled. TTie annals of the cloister were burned. Anything elsewhere was likewise destroyed, or soon would be, or was doomed to molder away forgotten now when people had so much death to think about. A memory of her might linger in a few minds, but seldom find utterance, and it would die with them.

Had the Tatars come as God's denial, His decision that she was unworthy—or as His release from a burden no child of Adam should bear—or was she, defiled and torn, nonetheless so full of worldly pride that she dared imagine she mattered?

She clung to the hummock. Earth and sun, moon and stars, wind and rain and human love, she could understand the old gods better than she understood Christ. But they were forsaken by man, remembered only in dances and feasts, fireside tales and fireside spirits; they were ghosts.

Yet lightning, thunder, and vengeance forever walked the skies above Russia, be they of Perun or of St. Yuri the drag-onslayer. Varvara drank strength from the soil as a babe drinks milk. When the Tatars were out of sight, she sprang to her feet, shook her fist after them, and shouted, "We will

abide! We will outlast you, and in the end we will crush you and take back what is ours!"

Calmer, then, she removed her clothes, washed them in the river, spread them on a slope to dry.

Meanwhile she cleansed herself again and gathered more wild food. Next morning she sought the ruins.

Ash, charred timber, snags of brick and stone lay silent under heaven. A pair of churches were left, foul with soot. Inside them sprawled corpses. The slain outside were many more, and in worse condition. Carrion birds quarreled over them, flying off with a blast of wingbeats and shrieks whenever she approached. There was nothing she could do but offer a prayer.

Searching about, she found clothes, shoes, an undamaged knife, and such-like needs. Taking each, she smiled and whispered, "Thank you" to its owner's ghost. Her journey would be hard and dangerous at best. She did not mean it to end until she had reached the kind of new home she wanted—whatever that was.

In the dawn that followed, before setting forth, she told the sky: "Remember my name. I am Varvara no more. I am again Svoboda." Freedom.

X

In the Hills

1

WHERE MOUNTAINS began their long climb toward Tibet, a village nestled. On three sides its dell lifted steeply, making horizons high and close. A stream from the west rushed through upper woods of cypress and dwarf oak, gleamed as a waterfall, passed among the buildings, and lost itself in bamboo and ruggedness eastward. The people cultivated wheat, soybeans, vegetables, melons, some fruit trees on the floor of the vale and on small terraces above. They kept pigs, chickens, and a fishpond. This, their score or so of turf-roofed earthen houses, and they themselves had been there so long that sun, rain, snow, wind, and time had made them as much a part of the land as the pheasant, the panda, or the wildflowers in spring.

On the east the view opened,-a wrinklescape manifoldly green and tawny with forest, to right and left a sight of snowpeaks afloat in heaven. Through it wound a road, scarcely more than a track, the village its terminus. Traffic was sparse. Several times a year, men undertook a journey of days, to market in a little town and home again. There they also paid taxes in kind. Thus the governor very seldom thought to send a man to them. When he did, the inspector only stayed overnight, inquired of the elders how things were going, received ritual answers, and departed eagerly. The place had a somewhat uncanny reputation.

That was in the eyes of orthodox outsiders. To others it was holy. Because of this awe, whether vague or devout, as well as its loneliness, war and banditry had passed the village by. It followed its own ways, enduring no more than

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die ordinary sorrows and calamities of life. Once in a while a pilgrim overcame the obstacles—distance, hardship, danger—to visit it. In the course of generations, a few among those had remained. The village took, them into its peace. Thus things were. Thus had they always been.

Their beginnings were unknown save to myth and the Master.

Great, therefore, was the excitement when a herdboy came running and shrilled that a traveler was on the way, "Shame, bad, that you left your ox unattended,'* chided his grandfather, but gently.

The boy explained that he had first tethered the beast; and, after all, no tiger arrived. He was forgiven. Meanwhile folk bustled and shouted about. Presently a disciple struck the gong in the shrine. A metal voice toned forth, rang off the hillsides, mingled with shush of waterfall and murmur of wind.

Autumn comes early in the high hills. Woodlands were dappled brown and yellow, grass was turning sere, fallen leaves crunched underfoot near puddles left by last night's rain. Overhead the sky arched unutterably blue, empty of all but wings. Bird cries drifted faint through air flowing down the mountainside. Smoke from hearthfires sharpened its chill.

As the stranger trudged up the last stretch of road, the gathered villagers saw with astonishment that this was a woman. Threadbare and oft mended, her gown of coarse cotton had faded to gray. Her boots were equally near the end of their service, and use had worn smooth the staff that swung in her right hand. From her left shoulder hung a rolled-up blanket, just as wayworn, which held a wooden bowl and perhaps one or two other things.

Yet she was no beggar granny. Her body was straight and slim, her stride firm and limber. Where a scarf fluttered loose, one could see hair like a crow's wing, hacked off just below the earlobes; and her face, though weathered, drawn close over the bones, was unlined. Never had such a face appeared in these parts. She did not even seem of quite the same breed as the lowlanders from whose country she fared.

Elder Tsong trod forward. For lack of a better thought, he greeted her according to the ancient rite, despite every newcomer hitherto having been male. "In the name of the Master and the people, I bid you welcome to our Morning Dew Village. May you walk in the Tao, in peace, and the 176

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gods and spirits walk with you. May the hour of your advent prove lucky. Enter as a guest, depart as a friend."

"This humble person thanks you, honorable sir," she replied. Her accent was like none that anybody had heard before, but that was no surprise. "I come in search of ... enlightenment." The word shook. Fervent must her hope be.

Tsong turned and bowed toward the shrine and the Master's house behind it. "Here is the home of the Way," he said. Some persons smiled smugly. Their home.

"May we know your name, that it be borne to the Master?" Tsong asked.

She hesitated, then: "I call myself Li, honorable sir."

He nodded. The wind ruffled his thin white beard. "If you have chosen that, you have likely chosen well." In her pronunciation, it could mean the measure of distance. Ignoring whispers, mutters, and stirrings among the folk, he forbore to inquire further. "Come. You shall take refreshment and stay with me."

"Your . . . leader—"

"In due course, young miss, in due course. Pray come."

Her features settled into an aspect no one could fathom, something between resignation and an ageless determination. "Again, my humble thanks," she said, and accompanied him.

The villagers moved aside. Several uttered words of goodwill. Beneath a natural curiosity, they were as alike in their mildness—the very children were—as in their padded garments and work-hardened hands. Alike, too, were many faces, broad and rather fiat-nosed above sturdy frames.

After Tsong, his family, and Li disappeared, they chatted for a while, then piecemeal went back to their cookfires, handmills, looms, tools, animals, all that kept them alive as it had kept their ancestors alive from time out of mind.

Tseng's oldest son, with wife and offspring, lived with him. They stayed in the background, except for serving tea and food. The house was larger, than most, four rooms inside rammed-earth walls, darksome but comfortably warm. While homes were poorly and rudely furnished, there was no real want; rather, contentment and cheerfulness prevailed. Tsong and Li sat on mats at a low table and enjoyed

broth flavored with ruddy peppercorns, fragrant amidst the savors of other foodstuffs hung under the roof.

"You shall wash and rest before we meet with my fellow elders," he promised.

Her spoon trembled. "Please," she blurted, "when may I see the teacher? I have come, oh, a long and weary way."

Tsong frowned. "I understand your desire. But we really know nothing about you, ah, Miss Li."

Her lashes lowered. "Forgive me. I think what I have to tell is for his ears alone. And I think—I, I pray he will want to hear me soon. Soon!"

"We must not be overhasty. That would be irreverent, and maybe unlucky. What do you know about him?"

"Hardly more than rumors, I confess. The story—no, different stories in different places as I wandered. At first they sounded like folk tales. A holy man afar in the west, so holy that death dares not touch him— Only as I came nearer did anyone tell me that this is his dwelling ground.

Few would say that much. They seemed afraid to speak, although ... I never heard ill of him."

"No ill is there to hear," said Tsong, softened by her earnestness. "You must have a great soul, that you ventured the pilgrimage. Quite alone, too, a youthful woman. Surely your stars are strong, that you took no harm. That bodes well."

Dim of eye and in smoky dusk, he failed to see how she winced. "Nevertheless our wizard must read the bones," he continued thoughtfully, "and we must offer to the ancestors and spirits, yes, hold a purification; for you are a woman."

"What has the holy man to fear, if time itself obeys him?" she cried.

His tone calmed her somewhat: "Nothing, I daresay. And certainly he will protect us, his beloved people, as he always has. What do you wish to hear about him?"

"Everything, everything," she whispered.

Tsong smiled. His few stumps of teeth glistened in what light passed through a tiny window. "That would take years," he said. "He has been with us for centuries, if not longer."

Again she tautened. "When did he come?"

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read and write, but the rest of us cannot. We tally the months, but not the years. Why should we?

Under his good sway, lifespans are alike, as happy as the stars and the spirits may grant. The outside world troubles us never. Wars, famines, pestilences, those are gnat-buzz borne in from the market town, which itself hears little. I could not tell'you who reigns in Nanking these days, nor do I care."

"The Ming drove out the foreign Yuan some two hundred years ago, and the Imperial seat is Peking."

"Ah, learned, are you?" the old man chuckled. "Yes, our forebears did hear about invaders from the north, and we know they are now gone. However, the Tibetans are much closer, and they have not attacked these parts for generations, nor ever our village. Thanks be to the Master."

"He is your true king, then?"

"No, no." The bald head shook. "To rule over us would be beneath his dignity. He counsels the elders when we ask, and of course we heed. He instructs us, during our childhoods and throughout our lives, in the Way; and of course we gladly follow it as well as we are able. When someone falls from it, the chastisement he orders is gentle—though quite enough, since real evildoing means expulsion, exile, homelessness for life and ever afterward."

Tsong shuddered slightly before going on: "He receives pilgrims. From among them and from among our own youths who wish it, he accepts a few disciples at a time. They serve his worldly needs, listen to his wisdom, strive to attain a small part of his holiness. Not that this keeps them from eventually having households of their own; and often the Master honors a family, any family in the village, with his presence or his blood."

"His blood?"

Li flushed when Tsong answered, "You have much to learn, young miss. Male Yang and female Yin must join for the health of the body, the soul, and the world. I am myself a grandson of the Master.

Two daughters of mine have borne him children. One was already married, but her husband kept from her until they were sure it would indeed be a child of Tu Shan that blessed their home. The second, who is lame in one leg, suddenly needed only a bedspread for her dowry. Thus is the Way,"

"I see." He could barely hear her. She had gone pale.

"If you cannot accept this," he said kindly, "you may still meet him and receive his blessing before you leave. He forces no one."

She gripped the spoon in her fist as if its handle were a post to which she clung lest she be whirled off the earth. "No, I will surely do his will," stumbled from her throat, "I who have been seeking over all these li, all these years."

HE COULD have been a peasant man of the village—but then, every one of them was closely or distantly descended from him—with the same strong frame clad in the same thick coat and trousers, the same grime and calluses on feet that indoors were bare. His beard hung thin, youthfully black, his hair was drawn into a topknot. The house he inhabited with his disciples was as big as any, but no bigger, also of plain earth above a clay floor. The room to which one of the young men admitted her before bowing and leaving was scarcely better furnished. There was a bedstead, wide enough for him and whatever woman might attend him; straw mats, stools, table^ a calligraphic scroll, gone brown-spotted and flyspecked, on the wall above a stone altar; a wooden chest for clothing, a smaller brass one that doubtless held books; a few bowls, cups, cloths, and other everyday things. The window was shuttered against a blustery wind. A single lampflame did little to relieve murkiness. Coming in from outdoors, Li was first aware of the smell. It was not unpleasant, but it was heavy, blent of old smoke and grease, manure tracked in on shoes, humanity, centuries.

Seated, he lifted a hand in benison. "Welcome," he said in die hill dialect. "May the spirits guide you along the Way." His gaze was shrewd. "Do you wish to make offering?"

She bowed low. "I am a poor wanderer, Master."

He smiled. "So they have told me. Fear not. Most who come here believe gifts will win them the favor of the gods. Well, if it helps uplift their souls, they are right. But the seeking soul itself is the only real sacrifice. Be seated, Lady JLi, and let us come to know each other."

As the elders had instructed her, she knelt on the mat

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near his feet. His look searched her. "You do that otherwise than any woman I have seen before,"

he murmured, "and you talk differently, too."

"I am but newly in these parts, Master."

"I mean that you do not talk like a lowlander who has picked up some of the highland form of speech."

"I thought I had learned more than one Chinese tongue well, as long as I have been in the Middle Kingdom," broke from her.

"I've been widely about, myself." He shifted to the idiom of Shansi or Honan, though it was not quite what she remembered from the wealthy, populous northeastern provinces and he used it rustily. "Will you be more at ease talking this?"

"I learned it first, Master."

"It's been long since I— But where are you from, then?"

She raised her face toward his. Her heart thuttered. With an effort like reining in a wild horse, she kept her voice level. "Master, I was born across the sea, in the country of Nippon.".

His eyes widened. "You have come far in your search for salvation."

"Far and long, Master." She drew breath. Her mouth had gone dry. "I was born four hundred years ago."

"What?" He leaped to his feet.

She rose too. "It is true, it is true," she said desperately. "How could I dare lie to you? The enlightenment I seek, have sought, oh, that was to find someone like myself, who never grows old—"

She could hold back the tears no more. He laid his arms around her. She clung close and felt how he also trembled.

After a time they drew apart and, for another while, stared at one another. The wind boomed outside.

A strange calm had fallen on her. She blinked her lashes clear and told him, "You have only my word for this, of course. I learned quite early to be nobody that anybody was . . . much concerned about or would . . . especially remember."

"I believe you," he answered hoarsely. "Your presence, you, a foreigner and a woman, that speaks for you. And I think I am afraid to disbelieve you."

A laugh sobbed. "You will have time aplenty to make certain."

"Time," he mumbled. "Hundreds, thousands of years. And you a woman."

Old fears awoke. Her hands fluttered before her. She forced herself to stand where she was. "I am a nun. I took vows to Amida Butsu—the Buddha."

He nodded, against straining muscles. "How else could you travel freely?"

"I was not always safe," she wrung out of her lips. "I have been violated in wild lands of this realm. Nor have I always been true. I have sometimes taken shelter with a man who offered it, and stayed with him till he died."

"I'll be kind," he promised.

"I know. I asked ... of certain women here . . . But what of those vows? I thought I had no choice before, but >• now—"

; His laughter gusted louder than needful. "Ho! I release you from them."

"Can you?"

i "I am the Master, am I not? The people aren't supposed to pray to me but I know they do, more than to their gods. i Nothing bad has come of it. Instead, we've had peace, lifetime after lifetime."

"Did you ... foresee that?"

He shrugged. "No. Myself, I am—maybe a thousand and a half years old. I don't remember just when I came here."

The past took possession of him. He looked beyond her and the wall, he spoke low and rapidly:

"The years blur together, they become one, the dead are as real as the living and the living as unreal as the dead. For a while, long ago, I was mad, in a waking dream. Some monks took me in, and slowly, I'm not sure how, slowly I grew able to think again. Ah, I see that something like that .t happened to you too. Well, for me it still is often hard to be sure what I truly remember, and I forget much.

"I had found, like you, the safest thing was to be a footloose religious person. I only meant to stay here a few

' years, after they'd made me welcome. But tune went on and on, this was a snug den and foes feared to come, once word of me had drifted about, and what else, what better, was 182

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there? I've tried to do my people no harm. I think, they think I do them good."

He shook himself, trod forward, caught both her hands. His were big, strong, but less hard than other men's. She had heard that he lived off their labor, at most diverting himself with his ancient trade of blacksmith. "But who are you, Li? What are you?"

In sudden weariness, she sighed. "I have borne many names, Okura, Asagao, Yukiko—names did not matter among us, they changed as our positions changed, and we might use a different nickname for every friend. I was an attendant at a court that became a shadow. When no more pretense of being mortal was possible, and I feared to proclaim what I was, I turned nun and begged my way from shrine to shrine, place to place."

"It was easier for me," he admitted, "but I too found I'd better keep moving, and stay clear of anybody powerful who might want me to linger. Until I found this haven. How did you come to leave

. . . Nippon, you call that land?"

"I was forever hoping to find someone like me, an end to the loneliness, the—meaninglessness; for I had tried to find meaning in the Buddha, and no enlightenment ever came. Well, the news reached us that the Mongols—they who had conquered China and tried to invade us, but the Divine Wind wrecked their ships—they had been driven out. The Chinese were sailing far and wide, also to us.

This land is ... our motherland in spirit, the mother of civilization." She saw puzzlement, and recalled that he was of lowly birth and had lived withdrawn since before she came into the world.

"We knew of many holy sites in China. I thought, as well, there if anywhere would be other . . .

immortals. So I took passage as a pilgrim, the captain gained merit by carrying me, and on these shores I set off afoot... I did not then know how vast the country is."

"Have you never wished to go home?"

"What is home? Besides, the Chinese have stopped sailing. They have destroyed all their great ships. It is forbidden on pain of death to leave the Empire. You had not heard?"

"We're free of overlords here. Welcome, welcome." His tone deepened, strengthened. He let go her hands and once more laid arms about her waist, but now the clasp was strong and his breath turned musky. "You've found me,

we're together, you, my wife! I waited and waited, prayed, offered, cast spells, till at last I gave up hope. Then you came. Li!" His mouth sought hers.

She turned her cheek, protested faintly, no, this was too fast, unseemly. He paid no heed. It was not an assault, but it was an overwhelming. She surrendered as she might have surrendered to a storm or a dream. While he had her, she tried to bring her thoughts under control. Afterward he was drowsy and gentle for a while, then wildly merry.

WINTER STRUCK with blinding snow on wind that rampaged among the houses and stretched fingers through every crack around door or shutter. The calm that followed was so cold that silence seemed to ring, with stars uncountable above a white hardness that gave back their glitter. Folk went into the weather no more than they needed, to tend their livestock and get fuel. At home they crouched over tiny hearth-fires or slept the hours away within heaped sheepskins.

Li felt sick. She always did in the mornings during the first part of a pregnancy. That she had become fruitful was no surprise, as often as Tu Shan lay with her. Nor did she regret it. He meant well, and bit by bit, without letting him know what happened, she schooled him in what pleased her, until sometimes she too flew off into joy and came back down to lie happily wearied in the warmth and odor of him. And this child they had gotten together might also be ageless.

Still, she wished she could exult over it as he did. On her best days she was free of forebodings, no more. If only she had something to do. At least in Heian-kyo there had been color, music, the round of ceremonies, the often vicious but oftener titillating intrigues. At least on the road there had been changing landscape, changing people, unsureness, small victories over trouble or danger or despair. Here she could, if she liked, weave the same cloths, cook the same meals, sweep the same floors, empty the same muck buckets—though the disciples expected to do the menial tasks—

and swap the same and the same words with women whose minds ranged as far as next year's kitchen gardening.

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them, though not much more. However, they felt ill at ease with her. They knew her for the chosen of the Master and accorded her respect, in a clumsy fashion. Yet they also knew her for a woman; and she was soon taken for granted, sacred but a part of everyday life, like Tu Shan; and women did not sit in the councils of men. Li gathered that this was no great loss to her.

One day of that winter stood forth in memory, an island at the middle of an abyss that swallowed all the rest. The door swung open on dazzlingly sunlit, blue-shadowed drifts. A wave of chill poured through. Tu Shan's bulk blotted the light. He entered and closed the door. Gloom clapped down again. "Hoo!" he whinnied, stamping the snow off his boots. "Cold enough to freeze a fire solid and the anvil with it." She must have heard him say that a hundred times, and a few other favorite expressions.

Li looked up from the mat on which she knelt. Bright spots danced before her. They were due to reflection off the brass chest, which the disciples worshipfully kept polished. She had been staring at it for—an hour? two hours?—while sunken in the half-doze that was her retreat from these empty months.

A thought smote. The suddenness of it made her catch her breath. Next she wondered why it had not occurred to her before, then supposed that was because the newness of this life had driven everything else out of her mind until the life went stale, and she was saying: "Horseshoe," the pet name she had given him, "I have never looked in yonder box."

His mouth was open, he had been about to speak. He left it hanging thus for a moment before he replied slowly, "Why, uh, those are the books. And, uh, scrolls, yes, scrolls. The holy writings."

Eagerness thrilled through her. "May I see them?"

"They're not for, uh, ordinary eyes."

She rose and told him fiercely, "I too am immortal. Have you forgotten?"

"Oh, no, no." He waved his hands, a vague gesture. "But you're a woman. You can't read them."

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men could properly comprehend. Nevertheless she had contrived to study the writing, and sometimes in China had found a chance, a span of rest in a tranquil place, to refresh that knowledge.

Moreover, these texts were most likely Buddhist; that faith had intermingled here with Taoism and primitive animism. She would recognize passages.

"I can," she said.

He gaped. "You can?" He shook his head. "Well, the gods have singled you out. . . . Yes, look at them if you want. But handle them carefully. They're quite old."

Joyful, she went to the chest and opened it. At first she saw it only full of shadow. She fetched the lamp and held it above. Wan light nickered and fell.

The chest gaped across rot, mildew, and fungus.

She moaned. Barely did she keep from letting hot grease spill onto the corruption. With her free hand she groped, caught hold of something, lifted a gray tatter up to view.

Tu Shan bent over. "Well, well," he muttered. "Water must have gotten in. How sad."

She dropped the shred, replaced the lamp, rose to confront him. "When did you last look into that box?" she demanded most quietly.

His glance shifted elsewhere. "I don't know. No reason to."

"You never read the sacred texts? You have them perfectly by heart?"

"They were gifts from pilgrims. What are they to me?" He summoned bluster. "I don't need writings.

I am the Master. That's enough."

"You cannot read or write," she said.

"They, well, they suppose I can, and— What harm? What harm, I ask you?" He turned on her. "Stop nagging me. Go. Go into the other rooms. Leave me be."

Pity overcame her. He was, after all, so vulnerable—a simple man, a common man, whom karma or the gods or the demons or blind accident had made ageless for no know-able reason. With peasant shrewdness he had survived. He had acquired the sonorous phrases that a saint should utter. And he had not abused his position here; he was a god-figure that required little and returned much, assurance, protection, oneness. But the unchanging cycle of season 186

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after season after season, world without end, had dulled his wits and even, she saw, sapped his courage.

"I'm sorry," she said, laying a hand on his. "I meant no reproach. I'll tell nobody, of course.

I'll clean this out and from now on take care of such things for you—for us."

"Thank you," he replied uncomfortably. "Still, well, I meant to tell you you'll have to stay in the back rooms till nightfall."

"A woman is coming to you," she said in a voice as leaden as the knowledge.

"They expect it." His own voice loudened. "So it's been since—since the beginning. What else was there for me? I can't suddenly withhold my blessing from their households. Can I?"

"And she's young and pretty."

"Well, when they aren't, I've been kind to them anyhow." He forced indignation. "Who are you to call me faithless? How many men have you been with in your time, and you a nun?"

"I said nothing against you." She turned around. "Very well, I go." She felt his relief like radiance at her back.

The four disciples huddled together in one room of their quarters, blurs of darkness by lamplight, and played a game with slicks tossed on the floor. They sprang to their feet when Li entered, bowed awkwardly, stood in abashed silence. They knew quite well why she was here, but could not think what to say.

How young they were, she thought. And how handsome Wan, at least, was. She imagined his body on hers, lithe, hot, delirious.

Perhaps later. There would be boundless later. She smiled at them. "The Master wants me to rehearse you in the Diamond Sutra," she told them.

IT WAS raining when the village buried the first child of the Master and the Lady, They had hoped for sunshine but the wizard and the tiny corpse both told them they could not auspiciously wait longer than they had done. Spring that year had come late. Its bleakness and damp stretched on into the

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summer. They slipped through to the lungs of the girl-child, who gasped for a few days before she lay still. Oh, very still, when she cried and sucked and snuggled no more.

With Tu Shan, Li watched the wizard lower the coffin into a hole where water sloshed. The disciples stood close, the rest of the people in a rough ring. Beyond them she saw mists, shadowy hints of hillside, grandeur dissolved in this formless gray that tapped on her face and dripped off her hat and weighted her hair. Wet wool stank. Her breasts ached with milk.

The wizard rose, took up the rattle tucked under his rope belt, and shook it as he pranced around the grave screaming. Thus he warded off evil spirits. The disciples and those few others who had prayer wheels spun them. Everybody swayed to and fro. The chant sounded as raw as the air,

"—honored ancestors, great souls, Honored ancestors, great souls—" over and over, rite of a heathendom that the Tao and the Buddha had barely touched.

Tu Shan raised his arms and intoned words more fitting, but blurred and mechanical. He had spoken them too often. Li hardly noticed. She likewise had known too many deaths. She could not at the moment count the number of infants she had borne and lost. Seven, eight, a dozen? It hurt more to watch children grow old. But farewell, daughter of mine. May you not be lonely and afraid, wherever you have gone.

What Li felt now was the final hard freezing of resolution within herself.

Things ended. Folk mumbled words and went back to their work. The wizard remained. His task was to fill the grave. At her back, through his ongoing quavery song, Li heard clods fall on the coffin.

The disciples sought their parents' homes for the nonce. Li and Tu Shan entered an empty house. He left the door ajar for light. Coals aglow on the hearth had somewhat wanned the room. He shucked his coat and tossed it on the bed. A sigh gusted from him. "Well," he said. "That's done."

After a span, into her silence: "The poor wee girl. But it happens. Better luck next tune, eh? And maybe a son."

She tensed. "There will be no next time, here," she answered.

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"What?" He lumbered around to stand before her. His arms dangled at his sides.

She met his stare full on. "I will not stay," she told him. "You should leave with me."

"Are you crazed?" Fear crossed the usually firm countenance. "Has a demon gotten into you?"

She shook her head. "Only an understanding, and it has been growing for months. This is simply no life for us."

"It's peaceful. It's happy."

"So you see it, because you've lain in it so long. I say it is stagnant and squalid." She spoke calmly, the least bit sadly. "At first, yes, after my wanderings, I believed I had come to a sanctuary. Tu Shan,"—she would not give him his endearment name until he yielded, if ever he did—"I have learned what you should have seen an age ago. Earth holds no sanctuaries for anyone, anywhere."

Amazement made his anger faint. "You want back to your palaces and monkey courtiers, eh?"

"No. That was another trap. I want . . . freedom ... to be, to become whatever I am able to.

Whatever we are able to."

"They need me here!"

She must first put down scorn. If she showed hers for these half-animals, she could well lose him.

And, true, in his liking for them, his concern and compassion, he was better than she was. Second she must muster all the will at her command. If she surrendered and abided, she would likewise slowly become one with the hillfolk. That might aid her toward selflessness, toward ultimate release from the Wheel; but she would give up every imaginable attainment that this life held.

What escape, except through random violence, did she have from it?

"They lived much the same before you," she said. "They will do so after you. And with or without you, it cannot be for always. The Han people press westward. I have seen them clearing forest and breaking earth. Someday they will take these lands."

x He fell into bewilderment. "Where can we go? Would you be a beggar again?"

"If need be, but then only for a short while. Tu Shan, a whole world lies beyond this horizon."

"We kn-know nothing about it."

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"I know something." Through the ice of her resolve shone a strengthening fire. "Foreign ships touch the shores of China. Barbarians thrust inward. I have heard about mighty stirrings to the south, on the far side of the mountains."

"You told me ... it's forbidden to leave the Empire—"

"Ha, what does that mean to us? What watchmen stand on those paths we can find? I tell you, if we cannot seize the opportunities that beckon everywhere around, we do not deserve our lives."

"If we become famous, they . . . would notice we don't grow old—"

"We can cope with that. Change rushes through the world unbridled. The Empire can no more stay forever locked into itself than this village can. We'll find advantages to take. Perhaps just setting money out at interest for a long time. We'll see. My years have been harder than yours. I know how full of secret places chaos is. Yes, we may well go under, we may perish, but until then we will have been wholly alive!"

He stood dazed. She knew she would need months wherein to prevail, if indeed she could. Well, she had the patience of centuries to draw upon, when there was something for which to work. *

Clouds thinned, light broke through, the rain in the doorway gleamed like flying arrows.

SPRINGTIME CAME back, and that year it was mild, overwhelmingly bright, full of fragrances and the cries of wildfowl returned. Gorged with snow melt, the stream sprang white amidst hillside leaves, brawled through the dell, plunged into the bamboo forest, bound for the great river and so at last the sea.

A man and a woman followed it on the road. They were clad for travel. Staves swung in their hands.

On his back was a load of needful goods, on hers a swaddled baby boy who gurgled lustily and happily as he looked around him at wonders.

The people stood gathered together behind, where their homes came to an end, and wept.

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XI

The Kitten and the Cardinal

ARMAND JEAN du Plessis de Richelieu, cardinal of the Church, first minister to His Most Christian Majesty Louis XIII, who had created him duke, gave his visitor a long regard. The man was altogether out of place in this chamber of blue-and-gilt elegance. Though decently clad for a commoner, he seemed unmistakably the seafarer he proclaimed himself. Of medium height, he had the suppleness of youth, and the dark hawk face was unlined; but something about him—perhaps the alert steadiness of the look he gave back—bespoke a knowledge of the world such as it takes many years in many comers to gain.

Windows stood open to summer fragrances blowing from the fields and woodlands of Poitou. The river Mable clucked past an ancestral castle lately rebuilt as a modern palace. Sunlight, reflected off the water, danced in shards among the cherubs and ancient heroes that adorned the ceiling. At a little distance from the cardinal's thronelike chair, a kitten played with its shadow across the parquetry.

Richelieu's thin fingers stroked the parchment on his lap. Its age-spotted dun made his robe appear blood-bright. For this meeting he had put on full canonicals, as though to shield against demons. But when he spoke, his voice held its wonted wintry calm.

"If this be not falsified, today shall perhaps see the strangest audience I have ever granted."

Jacques Lacy bowed with more grace than would have been awaited. "I thank your eminence for it, and assure him all is true." His speech was not quite of the region nor of any in France. Did it still bear a lilt of Ireland, or of some land farther yet? Certainly it showed that, if not formally

educated, he had read many books. Where did a skipper plying between the Old World and the New find time?

"You may thank the bishop who prevailed upon me," said Richelieu dryly.

"After the priest of St. Felix had prevailed upon another, Your Eminence."

"You are a bold one indeed, Captain Lacy. Have a care. This matter is dangerous enough already."

"I humbly beg Your Eminence's pardon." The tone was by no means insolent, but neither was it contrite.

"Well, let us get on with your business." Even away from Paris, hours were precious; and the future might not hold a large store of them. Nevertheless Richelieu considered for a minute, stroking the beard that brought the gauntness of his features to a point, before ordering:

"Describe exactly what you said to the priest and caused him to do."

Surprise slightly shook Lacy's self-command. "Your Eminence knows."

"I will compare the accounts." Richelieu sighed. "And you may spare the honorifics hereafter. We are alone."

"I thank Your— Well." The mariner, drew breath. "I sought him out at his church in St. Nazaire after I heard that . . . monsieur would grace these parts, no enormous distance to travel from there, with his presence for a while. I told him of the casket. Rather,*! reminded him, for he knew about it in a half-forgotten way. Naturally, that caught his attention, for nobody else remembered. It had simply gathered dust in the crypt these past four hundred years."

The kitten pounced at Lacy's foot. A smile in its direction flickered across the cardinal's lips.

His eyes, huge and feverishly luminous, turned back to the man. "Did you relate how it came to be there?" he pursued.

"Certainly, monsieur. That was evidence for my good faith, since the story had not become part of folklore."

"Do so again."

"Ah ... in those days a Breton trader named Pier, of Ploumanac'h, settled in St. Nazaire. It was hardly more than a village—not that it's major these days, as monsieur doubtless knows—but on that account a house cost little, and the location was handy for the small coastwise vessel he acquired. Men could more easily change their homes and trades then than now. Pier prospered modestly, married,

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raised children. At last, widowed, he declared he'd enlist in the crusade—the final one, as it turned out—that King Louis the Saint was launching. By that time he was old, but remarkably well-preserved. Many people said he still looked downright youthful. He was never seen afterward, and folk supposed he had died.

"Before he left, he made a substantial donation to the parish church. That was common when someone was about to go on a long journey, let alone off to war. However, to this gift he attached a condition. The church was to keep a box for him. He showed the priest that it contained nothing more than a rolled-up parchment, a document of some importance and confidentiality; whereupon he sealed it. One day he or an heir would return to claim it, and the parchment itself would validate that claim. Well, a request of this kind was not unheard of, and the priest duly entered it in the annals. Lifetimes went by. When I appeared, I expected I'd have to find the record for today's priest; but he's an antiquarian and had browsed through the books."

Richelieu lifted the parchment and read it for perhaps the seventh time, repeatedly glancing at Lacy. "Yes," he murmured, "this declares that the rightful heir will look just like Pier de Ploumanac'h, whatever name he bears, and describes him in full. Excellently crafted, that description." The cardinal fancied himself a man of letters, and had written and produced several dramas. "Furthermore, there is this verse in supposed nonsense syllables that the claimant will be able to recite without looking at the text."

"Shall I do so for monsieur?"

"No need—thus far. You did for the priest, and later for his bishop. The proof was sufficient that he in turn wrote to the bishop of this diocese, persuading him to persuade me to see you. For the document concludes by declaring that the ... heir . . . will carry tidings of the utmost importance. Now why did you refuse any hint of their nature to either prelate?"

"They are only for the greatest man hi the land."

"That is His Majesty."

The visitor shrugged. "What chance would I have of admission to the king? Rather, I'd be arrested on suspicion of—almost anything, and my knowledge tortured out of me. Your eminence is known to be more, m-m, flexible. Of an

inquiring mind. You patronize learned and literary men, you've founded a national academy, you've rebuilt and generously endowed the Sorbonne, and as for political achievements—" His words trailed off while he waved his hands. Clearly he thought of the Huguenots curbed, yet kept conciliated; of the powers of the nobles patiently chipped down, until now their feudal castles were for the most part demolished; of the cardinal's rivals at court outwitted, defeated, some exiled or executed; of the long war against the Imperialists, in which France—with Protestant Sweden, the ally that Richelieu obtained—was finally getting the upper hand. Who really ruled this country?

Richelieu raised his brows. "You are very well informed for a humble sea captain."

"I have had to be, monsieur," replied Lacy quietly.

Richelieu nodded. "You may be seated."

Lacy bowed once more and fetched a lesser chair, which he placed before the large one at a respectful distance, and lowered himself. He sat back, seemingly at ease, but a discerning eye recognized readiness to explode into instant action. Not that there was any danger. Guards stood just outside the door.

"What is this news you bear?" Richelieu asked.

Lacy frowned. "I do not expect Your Eminence to believe upon first hearing it. I gamble my life on the supposition that you will bear with me, and will dispatch trusty men to bring you the further evidence I can provide."

The kitten frolicked about his ankles. "Chariot likes you," the cardinal remarked, a tinge of warmth in his voice.

Lacy smiled. "They say monsieur is fond of cats."

"While they are young. Go on. Let me see what you know about them. It will tell me something about you."

Lacy leaned forward and tickled the kitten around the ears. It extended tiny claws and swarmed up his stockings. He helped it to his lap, chucked it under the chin and stroked the soft fur. "I've had cats myself," he said. "Afloat and ashore. They were sacred to the ancient Egyptians; They drew the chariot of the Norse goddess of love. They're often called familiars of witches, but that's nonsense. Cats are what they are, and never try like dogs to be anything else. I suppose that's why we humans find them mysterious, and some of us fear or hate them."

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"While some others like them better than their fellow men, God forgive." The cardinal crossed himself in perfunctory fashion. "You are a remarkable man, Captain Lacy."

"In my way, monsieur, which is quite different from yours."

Richelieu's gaze intensified. "I obtained a report on you, of course, when I heard of your wish,"

he said slowly. "But tell me about your past life in your own words."

"That you may judge them—and me, monsieur?" The mariner's look went afar, while his right hand continued as the kitten's playmate. "Well, then, I'll tell it in a curious way. You'll soon understand the reason for that, which is that I do not want to lie to you.

"Seumas Lacy hails from northern Ireland. He can't readily say when he was born, for the baptismal record is back there if it's not been destroyed; but on the face of it, he must be around fifty years old. In the year 1611 the English king cleared the Irish from the best parts of Ulster and settled it with Scottish Protestants. Lacy was among those who left the country. He took a bit of money along, for he came of a mildly well-to-do seafaring family. In Nantes he found refuge with old-established Irish trading folk, who helped him regularize his status. He took the French form of his Christian name, became a French subject, and married a French woman. Being a sailor, he made long voyages, as far as Africa, the West Indies, and New France. Eventually he rose to shipmaster. He has four children alive, their ages from thirteen to five, but his wife died two years ago and he has not remarried."

"And when he heard that I would be in Poitou for several weeks, he went downstream to St. Nazaire and opened the casket that his ... ancestor had left in the church," Richelieu said low.

Lacy looked straight at him. "Thus it is, Your Eminence."'

"Presumably you always knew about it." "Obviously I did."

"Although you are Irish? And no member of your family claimed the thing for four centuries. You yourself lived almost thirty years in nearby Nantes before you did. Why?"

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._ "I had to be sure of the situation. At that, the decision was hard."

"The report states that you have an associate, a redheaded man with a missing hand who goes by the name of MacMahon. Lately he has disappeared. Why?"

"No disrespect intended, Your Eminence, but I sent him off because I couldn't foresee what would come of this, and it was wrong to risk his life also." Lacy smiled. The kitten tumbled about his wrist. "Besides, he's an uncouth sort. What if he gave offense?" He paused. "I took care not to know just where he's gone. He'll find out whether I've returned safely home."

"You show a distrustfulness that is ... scarcely friendly."

"On the contrary, monsieur, I'm putting a faith in you that I've put in none but my comrade for a very long time. I stake everything on the belief that you will not immediately assume I'm a madman, an enemy agent, or a sorcerer."

Richelieu gripped the arms of his chair. Despite the robe, it could be seen how his wasted frame tautened. His eyes never wavered. "What, then, are you?" he asked tonelessly.

"I am Jacques Lacy from Ireland, your eminence," the visitor replied with the same levelness. "The only real falsehood about that is that I was born there, for I was not. I did spend more than a centftry in it. Outside the English-held parts people have a large enough measure of freedom that it's rather easy to change lives. But I fear they are all doomed to conquest, and the plantation of Ulster gave me an unquestionable reason for departing.

"I came back to where I had once been Pier de Ploumanac'h—who was not a Breton born. Before and after him I've used other names, lived in other places, pursued other trades. It's been my way of surviving through the millennia."

Breath hissed between teeth. "This is not a total surprise to me. Since I first heard from the bishop, I have been thinking. . . . Are you the Wandering Jew?"

The head shook; the kitten sensed tension and crouched. "I know about rascals who've pretended they were him. No, monsieur, I was alive when Our Lord was on earth, but never saw him, nor knew about him till much later. Once in a while I have passed myself off as a Jew, because that was 196

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safest or simplest, but it was pretense, same as when I've been a Mussulman." The mouth formed a grim grin. "For those roles, I had to get circumcised. The skin slowly grew back. On my kind, unless a wound is as great as the loss of a hand, it heals without scars."

"I must think anew." Richelieu closed his eyes. Presently his lips moved. They shaped the Paternoster and the Ave, while his fingers drew the Cross, over and over.

Yet when he was done and looked back upon the world, down at the parchment, he spoke almost matter-of-factly. "I saw at once that the verse here is not actually nonsense. It bears a certain resemblance to Hebraic, transcribed in Roman letters, but it is different. What?"

"Ancient Phoenician, Your Eminence. I was bora in Tyre when Hiram was its king. I'm not sure whether David or Solomon was reigning in Jerusalem just then."

Again Richelieu closed his eyes. "Two and a half millennia ago," he whispered. He opened them wide. "Recite the verse. I want to hear that language."

Lacy obeyed. The rapid, guttural words rang through sounds of wind and water, through the silence that filled the chamber. The kitten sprang off his lap and pattered to a corner.

Stillness prevailed for half a minute before Richelieu asked, "What does it mean?"

"A fragment of a song, the sort men sang in taverns or when camped ashore during a voyage. 'Black as the sky of night is my woman's hair, bright as the stars are her eyes, round and white as the moon her breasts, and she moves like Ashtoreth's sea. Would that my sight and my hands and myself lay upon all!' I'm sorry it's so profane, monsieur. It was what I could remember, and at that, I had to reconstruct it."

Richelieu quirked a smile. "Yes, I daresay one forgets much in thousands of years. And in ...

Pier's day, clerics, too, were less refined than they are now." Shrewdly: "Though did you expect that something like this would go a little way toward authenticating you, since it is the kind of thing that would stick in a man's mind?"

"I am not lying to Your Eminence. In no particular."

"In that case, you have been a liar throughout the ages."

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me do? Imagine, if you please, even in this most enlightened of eras and countries, imagine I proclaimed myself openly. At best I'd be taken for a mountebank, and be lucky to escape with a scourging. I could easily go to the galleys, or hang. At worst I'd be condemned as a sorcerer, in league with Satan, and burned. Evil would befall me without my saying a word if I just stayed in one place, living on and on while they buried my sons and grandsons and I never showed signs of age. Oh, I've met folk—many live at this moment in the New World—for whom I could be a holy man or a god; but they've been savages, and I prefer civilization. Besides, civilization sooner or later overruns the savages. No, best I arrive at a new home as a plausible outsider, settle down a few decades, and at last move onward in such wise that people take for granted I've died."

"What brought this fate upon you?" Richelieu signed himself anew.

"God alone knows, Your Eminence. I'm no saint, but I don't believe I was ever an especially terrible sinner. And, yes, I am baptized."

"When was that?"

"About twelve hundred years ago."

"Who converted you?" *

"I'd been a Christian catechumen a long time, but customs changed and— May I ask leave to defer telling how it happened?"

"Why?" demanded Richelieu.

"Because I must convince Your Eminence that I'm telling the truth, and in this case the truth looks too much like invention—" Before those eyes, Lacy broke off, threw up his hands, laughed, and said, "Very well, if you insist. It was in Britain after the Romans were gone, at the court of a warlord. They called him Riot ham us, their High King, but mainly he had some cataphracts. With them he staved off the English invaders. His name was Artorius."

Richelieu sat motionless.

"Oh, I was no knight of his, merely a trader who came by on my rounds," Lacy stated. "Nor did I meet any Lancelot or Gawain or Galahad, nor see any glittering Camelot. Little of Rome lingered there. In fact, it's only my guess that this was the seed corn of the Arthur legend. But monsieur 198

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will understand why I was reluctant to mention it at all, I was tempted to concoct a prosaic falsehood."

Richefieu nodded. "I do understand. If you continue a liar, you are as skillful a one as I have found in a wide experience." He forbore to inquire whether the Phoenician had embraced Christ out of expediency, the same as when he did homage to numerous other gods.

Lacy's tone became wry. "I shan't insult you by denying that I've given a great deal of beforehand thought to this interview."

Richelieu plucked the parchment from his lap and cast it to the floor. It struck with a small rattling noise that drew the notice of the kitten. So much of a bodily gesture did the cardinal permit himself. He leaned forward, fingertips pressed together. Sunlight glistened off a great ring of gold and emerald. "What do you want from me?" he snapped.

"Your protection, monsieur," Lacy replied, "for myself and any like me." Color came and went in his lean cheeks, above the closely trimmed beard which had not a single silver hair.

"Who are they?"

"MacMahon is one, as your eminence must have guessed," Lacy told him. "We met in France when it was still Gaul. I've encountered or heard of three more whom I wondered about, but death by mischance took them before I could be certain. And another I did feel sure of, but that person—disappeared. Our kind must be very rare, and shy of revealing themselves."

"Vanishingty rare, as the learned doctor Descartes might put it," said Richelieu with a flash of bleak humor.

"Some, over the centuries, may have tried to do what I am trying this day, and come to grief. No record of them would likely remain, if any was ever made."

The kitten advanced cautiously toward the parchment. Richelieu sat back. Lacy had stayed well-nigh immobile, hands folded on the sober-hued knee breeches. "What more evidence have you to offer?"

the cardinal asked.

Lacy gazed away at nothing visible. "I thought about this for lifetimes before I took the first measures." His voice was methodical. "One gets into the habit of taking forethought and biding one's time. Perhaps too much so. Perhaps opportunities slip by and it's again too late. But one has learned,

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sometimes at a high price, monsieur, one has learned that this world is dangerous and nothing in it abides. Kings and nations, popes and gods—no irreverence meant—all go down in the dust or up in the flames, all too soon. I have my provisions, piecemeal made over the centuries, hoards buried here and there, tricks for changing identities, a tool chest of assorted skills, and ... my reliquaries. They are not all in churches, nor are they ail of them caskets containing parchments.

But throughout Europe, northern Africa, hither Asia lie the tokens I planted whenever I could. My idea was that if and when a hope came along, I'd go to the nearest of those caches and retrieve what it held. That should give me my opening wedge.

"Now, if Your Eminence likes, I can describe quite a few that will be accessible to his agents. I can say exactly what the nature of each is, and where it reposes. In several cases, at least, it will definitely have been there for a long while. In every case, they can verify that Captain Jacques Lacy could not possibly have made the arrangements at any time in the half century that men have known him."

Richelieu stroked his beard. "And meanwhile you expect to wait in custody, hostage to this material," he murmured. "Yes. I have little doubt that if exists, for you show no signs of madness. Therefore you cannot be an impostor either, of any sort known to criminal justice.

Unless, indeed, you really are a sorcerer, or an actual demon."

A film of sweat shone on Lacy's brow, though he responded steadily: "Holy water or exorcism won't hurt me. You could have me put to the question. You'd find me healing quite fast from anything that didn't kill or totally mutilate. I came here because everything I could find out made me think you are too wise—I do not say 'merciful,' monsieur, I say 'wise, enlightened, intelligent'—to resort to that."

"Others will urge me to do so."

"Your Eminence has the power to refuse them. That's another reason why I sought you. I've waited centuries for such a man at such a crux in history."

The kitten arrived at the parchment, reached out, patted it. Curled back into a loose roll, it rustled and moved. Delighted, the kitten bounced to and fro.

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Richelieu's look smoldered. "Have you never before had a protector?"

Lacy sighed. "Once, monsieur. About three hundred years after my birth, in Egypt."

"Tell me."

"Like a number of Phoenicians—I'd resumed that na-_ tionality—I sailed in the service of Pharaoh Psammetk. You may have read of him under the name Psammetichus. He chanced to be strong and wise, like you, a man who saved his country from disaster and made it once more secure. Oh, I'd planned nothing, except to depart in my usual way when the tune came. But it also chanced this king lived long, reigning for more than fifty years. And I—well, it was a good service I was in; and when my first Egyptian wife died I married another and we were . . . uncommonly happy. So I lingered, till the king saw past the mannerisms by which I feigned encroaching age. He persuaded me to confide in him, and took me under his wing. To him I was sacred, chosen by the gods for some purpose unknown but surely high. He set inquiries afoot throughout his realm and as far abroad as possible.

Nothing came of them. As I said, my kind must be very rare."

"What finally happened?"

"Psammetk died. His son Necho succeeded him, and had no love for me. Nor hatred, I suppose; but most of the priests and courtiers did, seeing me as a threat to their positions. It grew plain that I wouldn't last in the royal compound. If nothing else, an assassin would get me. But the new king denied me leave to go. I think he feared what I might be able to do.

"Well, talk rose about dispatching a Phoenician crew to try sailing around Africa. I used what little influence was left me to help make that come about, and be named to it. An immortal man might prove valuable in unknown countries." Lacy shrugged. "At the first opportunity, I jumped ship and made my way to Europe. I never found out whether the expedition succeeded. Herodotus said it did, but he was often careless about his information."

"And I assume any record of you in Egypt has decayed, if your enemies didn't expunge it,"

Richelieu said. "Not that we can read those glyphs." "Please understand, monsieur," Lacy urged,

"I've seldom

been in the presence of greatness. Psammetk, Artorius, two or three others, but usually insignificantly; and now Your Eminence. I've glimpsed more, but only when I was in a crowd. It's almost always been wisest to stay obscure. Besides, I'm just an old sailor, with nothing special to offer." Eagerly: "Except my memories. Think what I can mean to scholars. And if, under your protection, I draw other immortals to us^think, my lord, what that will mean to ... France."

Silence fell again, except for the wind, the river, a ticking dock, and the kitten that made a toy of the parchment. Richelieu brooded. Lacy waited.

At last the cardinal said: "What do you truly want of me?"

"I told you, monsieur! Your protection. A place in your service. The proclamation of what I am, and the promise that anyone like me can come to the same safe harbor."

"Every rogue in Europe will swarm here."

"I'll know what questions to ask, if your learned men don't."

"M-m, yes, I daresay you will."

"After you've made a few examples, that nuisance should end." Lacy hesitated. "Not that I can foretell what the immortals will each prove to be like. I've admitted, my Mac-Mahon is a crude sort. The other whom I was sure of is, or has been, a prostitute, if she still lives. One survives as best one can."

"But some may well be decent, or repent. Some may in truth be holy—hermits, perhaps?" Richelieu's momentarily dreamy tone sharpened. "You have not sought for any new patron after that Egyptian king, more than two thousand years ago?"

"I told Your Eminence, one grows wary."

"Why have you now at last let down your guard?"

"In part because of you," Lacy answered at once. "Your Eminence hears much flattery. I needn't go into detail about what's the plain truth. I've already spoken it.

"But you by yourself wouldn't have been enough. It's also that I dare hope the times are right."

The parchment jammed against a leg of the chair of state and resisted further attempts. The kitten mewed. Richelieu looked down and half reached. "Does my lord wish—?"

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Lacy sprang to pick up the animal and proffer it. Richelieu took the small fuzzy form in both hands and placed it on his lap where the parchment had rested. Lacy bowed and resumed his seat.

"Continue," the cardinal said while he caressed his pet.

"I have watched the course of things as well as a man can who's in the middle of them," Lacy said.

"I've read books and listened to philosophers, and to common folk with native wit. I've thought.

Immortality is lonely, monsieur. One has much time for thinking.

"It seems to me that in the past two or three centuries, a change has been coming upon the world.

Not just the rise or fall of another empire; a change as great as the change from boy to man, or even worm to butterfly. Mortals feel it too. They speak of a Renaissance that began perhaps fourteen hundred years after Our Lord. But I see it more clearly. Pharaoh Psammetk—how far could his couriers go? How many could they find who'd understand my question that they bore, and not cower from it, ignorant and frightened? And he was as powerful a king as any in his age. The Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Persians, all the rest, they were little better as regards either knowledge or range. Nor did I ever again have access to a ruler I trusted; nor had I then thought to prepare myself for such a meeting. That came later.

"Today men have sailed around the globe; and they know it is a globe. The discoveries of such as Copernicus and Galileo—" He saw the slight frown. "Well, be that as it may, men learn marvelous things. Europe goes forth into a whole new hemisphere. At home, for the first time since Rome fell, we begin to have good roads; one can travel swiftly, for the most part safely, over hundreds of leagues— thousands, once this war is over. Above all, maybe, we have the printing press, and more people every year who can read, who can be reached. At last we can bring the immortals together!"

Richelieu's fingers amused the kitten, which was becoming drowsy, while his brows again drew downward. "That will take a considerable time," he said.

"Oh, yes, as mortals reckon— Forgive me, Your Eminence."

"No matter." Richelieu coughed. "With none but Chariot to hear, we can speak plainly. Do you indeed believe mankind—here in France, let us say—has attained the security that you found to be such a delusion through all prior history?"

Taken aback, Lacy stammered, "N-no, monsieur, except that—I think France will be strong and stable for generations to come. Thanks largely to Your Eminence."

Richelieu coughed afresh, his left hand to his mouth, his right reassuring the kitten. "I am not a well man, Captain," he said, hoarsened. "I never have been. God may call me at any moment."

Lacy's visage took on a somehow remote gentleness. "I know that," he said softly. "May He keep you with us for many years yet. But—"

"Nor is the king in good health," Richelieu interrupted. "Finally, finally he and the queen are blessed with a child, a son; but the prince is not quite two years old. About when i he was born, I lost Father Joseph, my closest councillor and

| ablest helper."

;'„• "I know that also. But you have this Italian-born Mazarin, who's much like you."

i "And whom I am preparing to be my successor." Richelieu's smile writhed. "Y«s, you have studied us care-

| fully."

*. "I must. I've learned how, during my span on earth. And I, you too think far ahead."

Lacy's words quickened. "I beg :, you, think. You'll need a while to take this in, as well as to verify my story. I'm amazed how calmly you've heard me out. But—an immortal, in due course a gathering of immortals, at the service of the king—today's king, and afterward .., his son, who should reign long and vigorously. Can you imagine what that will mean to his glory, and so to the glory ,. and power of France?"

*: "No, I cannot," Richelieu snapped. "Nor can you. And I |" have likewise learned wariness."

7 "But I tell you, Your Eminence, I can give you evidence—"

"Silence," Richelieu commanded.

He rested left elbow on chair arm, chin on that fist, and I stared into space, as if beyond the walls, the province, the

* kingdom. His right hand gently stroked the kitten. It fell 204*

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asleep, and he took his fingers away. The wind and the river rustled.

At last—the clock, on which Phaeton careered desperately in Apollo's runaway sun chariot, had snipped off almost a quarter of an hour—he stirred and looked back at the other man. Lacy had gone Orientally impassive. Now his countenance came alive. The breath shivered in and out of him.

"I need not trouble myself with your tokens," Richelieu said heavily. "I assume you are what you assert. It makes no difference."

"I beg Your Eminence's pardon?" Lacy whispered.

"Tell me," Richelieu went on, and he came to sound nearly amiable, "do you, in the teeth of what you have seen and suffered, do you really believe we have won to a state of things that will endure?"

"N-no," Lacy admitted. "No, I think instead everything is changing, everything, and this will go on and on, and nobody can guess what the end will be. But—because of it— we and the generations to come, our lives will be unlike any that ever were lived before. The old bets are off." He paused.

"I've grown weary of being homeless. You cannot dream of how weary. I'll snatch at any chance of escape."

Richelieu ignored the informal language. Perhaps he did not notice it. He nodded, and said as he might have crooned to one of his pets, "Poor soul. How brave you are, to have ventured this. Or else, as you say, how weary. But you have just your single life to lose. I have millions."

Lacy's head lifted stiffly. "My lord?"

"I am responsible for this realm," Richelieu said. "The Holy Father is old and troubled and never had any gift of statecraft. Thus I am also responsible to a certain extent for the Catholic faith, which is to say Christendom. A good many people think I've given myself over to the Devil, and I confess to scorning most scruples. But in the end, I am responsible.

"You see this as an age of upheaval, but also of hope. You may be right, perhaps, but if so, you look on it with an immortal eye. I can only, I may only, see the upheaval. War devastating the German lands. The Empire—our enemy, yes, nevertheless the Holy Roman Empire that Charlemagne founded—bleeding to death. Protestant sect

after sect springing up, each with its own doctrine, its own fanaticism. The English growing back to power, the Dutch growing newly to it, voracious and ruthless. Stirrings in Russia, India, China. God knows what in the Americas. Cannon and muskets bringing down the ancient strongholds, the ancient strengths—but what will replace them? To you, the discoveries of the natural philosophers, the books and pamphlets that pour from the printing presses, those are wonders that will bring a new era. I agree; but I, in my position, must ask myself what that era will be like.

I must try to cope with it, keep it under control, knowing the entire while that I shall die unsuccessful and those who come after me will fail."

His question lashed: "How then dare you suppose I would ever allow, yes, encourage and trumpet the knowledge that persons exist whom old age passes by? Should I— the doctor Descartes might say—throw yet another, wholly unknown and unmanageable factor into an equation already insoluble?

'Unmanageable.' Indeed that is the right word. The sole certainty I have is that this spark would ignite a thousand new religious lunacies and make peace in Europe impossible for another generation or worse.

"No, Captain Whatever-you-are," he ended, glacial again in the way the world had corn* to fear, "I want no part of you or your immortals. France does not."