PARSI
They settled at once into the routine of the journey. For the first three days both the Scots and the Jews regarded him politely and left him alone, perhaps made uneasy by his battered face and the bizarre markings on the wagon. Privacy had never displeased him, and he was content to be left to his thoughts.
The girl rode in front of him constantly, and inevitably he watched her even after they made camp. She appeared to have two black dresses, one of which she washed whenever there was opportunity. She was obviously a sufficiently seasoned traveler not to fret over discomforts but there was about her, and about Cullen, an air of barely concealed melancholy; he assumed from their clothing that they were in mourning.
Sometimes she sang softly.
On the fourth morning, when the caravan was slow to move, she dismounted and led her horse, stretching her legs. He looked down at her walking close by his wagon and smiled at her. Her eyes were enormous, as deep a blue as irises can be. Her high-boned face had long, sensitive planes. Her mouth was large and ripe like everything about her, yet curiously quick and expressive.
“What’s the language of your songs?”
“Gaelic. What we call the Erse.”
“I thought so.”
“Och. How is a Sassenach to recognize the Erse?”
“What is a Sassenach?”
“It’s our name for those who live south of Scotland.”
“I sense the word isn’t a compliment.”
“Ah, it is not,” she admitted, and this time smiled.
“Mary Margaret!” her father called sharply. She moved to him at once, a daughter accustomed to obeying.
She must be near the age Anne Mary would be now, he realized uneasily. His sister’s hair was brown when she was a little girl, but there had been reddish tints …
The girl was not Anne Mary, he reminded himself firmly. He knew he must stop seeing his sister in every woman who wasn’t elderly, for it was the sort of pastime that might become a form of madness.
There was no need to dwell on it, since he had no real interest in James Cullen’s daughter. There were more than enough soft things in the world, and he decided that he’d stay away from this one.
Her father evidently determined to give him a second chance at conversation, perhaps because he hadn’t seen him talking again to the Jews. On their fifth night on the road James Cullen came to visit, bearing a jug of barley liquor, and Rob said words of welcome and accepted a friendly pull from the bottle.
“You know sheep, Master Cole?”
Cullen beamed when he said he didn’t, ready to educate him.
“There are sheep and there are sheep. In Kilmarnock, site of the Cullen holding, ewes often run as small as twelve stone in weight. I’m told that in the East we’ll find ewes twice that size, with long hair instead of short—denser fleece than the beasts of Scotland, so full of richness that when the wool is spun and made up into goods, it will shed rain.”
Cullen said he planned to buy breeding stock when he found the best, and bring it back to Kilmarnock with him.
That would take ready capital, a goodly amount of trading money, Rob told himself, and realized why Cullen needed packhorses. It might be better if the Scot also had bodyguards, he reflected.
“It’s a far journey you’re on. You’ll be a long time away from your sheep holding.”
“I left it in the reliable care of trusted kinsmen. It was a hard decision, but … Six months before I left Scotland I buried my wife of twenty-two years.” Cullen grimaced and put the jug to his mouth for a long swallow.
That would explain their rue, Rob thought. The barber-surgeon in him made him ask what had caused her to die.
Cullen coughed. “There were growths in both her breasts, hard lumps. She just grew pale and weak, lost appetite and will. Finally there was terrible pain. She took a time to die but was gone before I believed it could be so. Her name was Jura. Well… I stayed drunk for six weeks but found it no escape. For years I’d engaged in idle talk about buying fine stock in Anatolia, never thinking it would come to pass. I just decided to go.”
He offered the jug and didn’t seem offended when Rob shook his head. “Piss time,” he said, and smiled gently. He had already finished a large amount of the jug’s contents and when he attempted to clamber to his feet and leave, Rob had to assist him.
“A good night, Master Cullen. Please come again.”
“A good night, Master Cole.”
Watching him walk away unsteadily, Rob reflected that he hadn’t once mentioned his daughter.
The following afternoon a French factor named Felix Roux, thirty-eighth in the line of march, was thrown when his horse shied at a badger. He struck the ground badly, with the full weight of his body on his left forearm, breaking the bone so the limb hung askew. Kerl Fritta sent for the barber-surgeon, who set the bone and immobilized the arm, a painful procedure. Rob struggled to inform Roux that although the arm would give him hell’s pain when he rode, he would still be able to travel with the caravan. Finally he had to send for Seredy to tell the patient how to handle the sling.
He was thoughtful on his way back to his own wagon. He had agreed to treat sick travelers several times a week. Although he tipped Seredy generously, he knew he couldn’t continue to use James Cullen’s manservant as interpreter.
Back at his wagon, he saw Simon ben ha-Levi sitting on the ground nearby, mending a saddle cinch, and he walked up to the thin young Jew.
“Do you have French and German?”
The youth nodded while holding a saddle strap close to his mouth and biting off the waxed thread.
Rob talked and ha-Levi listened. In the end, since the terms were generous and the time required wasn’t great, he agreed to interpret for the barber-surgeon.
Rob was pleased. “How do you have so many languages?”
“We’re merchants between nations. We travel constantly, with family connections in the markets of many countries. Languages are part of our business. For example, young Tuveh is studying the language of the Mandarins, for in three years he’ll travel the Silk Road and go to work with my uncle’s firm.” His uncle, Issachar ben Nachum, he said, headed a large branch of their family in Kai Feng Fu, from which every three years he sent a caravan of silks, pepper, and other Oriental exotics to Meshed, in Persia. And every three years since he was a small boy, Simon and other males of his family had traveled from their home in Angora to Meshed, from which they accompanied a caravan of the rich goods back to the East Frankish Kingdom.
Rob J. felt a quickening within him. “You know the Persian language?”
“Of course. Parsi.”
Rob looked at him blankly.
“It’s called Parsi.”
“Will you teach it to me?”
Simon ben ha-Levi hesitated, because this was a different matter. This could take a good deal of his time.
“I’ll pay well.”
“Why do you want Parsi?”
“I’ll need the language when I reach Persia.”
“You want to do business on a regular basis? Return to Persia again and again to buy herbs and pharmaceuticals, the way we do for silks and spices?”
“Perhaps.” Rob J. shrugged, a gesture worthy of Meir ben Asher. “A bit of this, a little of that.”
Simon grinned. He began to scratch out a first lesson in the dirt with a stick, but it was unsatisfactory and Rob went to the wagon and got his drawing things and a clean round of beechwood. Simon started him in the Parsi language exactly as Mam had taught him to read English many years earlier, by teaching him the alphabet. Parsi letters were composed of dots and squiggly lines. Christ’s blood! The written language resembled pigeon shit, bird tracks, curled wood shavings, worms trying to fuck each other.
“I’ll never learn this,” he said, his heart sinking.
“You shall,” Simon said placidly.
Rob J. took the piece of wood back to the wagon. He ate his supper slowly, buying time in which to control his excitement, then he sat on the wagon seat and at once began to apply himself.