The Kadin by Bertrice Small Page B

drivers and dirty, barbaric herdsmen bid on her. She would be slaving for some primitive tent dweller if Hadji Bey hadn’t seen her and bought her. In the weeks we have been together I have learned that pride is very important to these people of Cathay. It still rankles that she was betrayed by—”
    “If you don’t mind, Firousi, I’ll tell my own story.” Zuleika rose from her distant divan and plumped herself down amid the pillows next to Cyra and Firousi. Unlike her blond companions, who had wept remembering the past Zuleika’s voice grew hard.
    She would never forget the afternoon that decided her fate. It was spring, and she sat beside the marble fishpond in her mother’s garden watching the large fantail goldfish snap and chase at the falling blossoms that ruffled the serenity of the pond’s surface. The soft voice of her slave girl, Mai Tze, disturbed her, and she looked up questioningly.
    “Mistress, your noble mother requests your presence.”
    “I will come at once.”
    “No, no,” cried the slave girl. “First you must change your robe. He is with her.”
    “My brother, the emperor?”
    “Yes, mistress.”
    Quickly she returned to her room and, with her slave’s help, changed into a white silk robe embroidered with pink plum blossoms. Mai Tze brushed her long, glossy black hair, braided it, and wound a braid about each side of her head, fastening them with small pearl ornaments.
    Waving the slave away, she stood for a moment and gazed at her reflection in the glass. A tall, slender girl with ivory-gold skin, perfectly shaped black almond eyes, a flawless face with high cheekbones, a slim nose, and a small, haughty red mouth gazed back at her. She was well aware that she was beautiful. She turned and walked slowly and with dignity into her mother’s chambers.
    “The Princess Plum Jade,” intoned the eunuch.
    Gracefully she knelt, bowing her head to the floor.
    “Rise, younger sister.”
    She stood up, carefully keeping her eyes lowered and averted from the emperor’s gaze.
    “I have arranged for you to be married,” he said.
    She glanced toward her mother, whose face betrayed no emotion, but whose eyes warned her to be silent
    “You will,” continued the emperor, “be wed to the shah of Persia. In three months’ time you will leave your home for Persia. You will travel with a full retinue of servants and imperial soldiers as befits a Ming princess and a daughter of our late father, the honorable Ch’eng Hua. When you reach Persia, our people will leave you in the hands of the shah’s servants and soldiers. You may retain only your slave girl, Mai Tze.”
    “Thank you, my honored lord.”
    “I have made you queen of Persia, sister. You! The daughter of a concubine. Is ‘thank you’ all you can say to me?”
    “You, too, are the offspring of a concubine, and one not half so noble as my mother.”
    Hung Chih laughed. “You are too proud, sister. You will make the shah an excellent queen, and bind his kingdom closer to China.”
    “I am grateful for this opportunity to serve my lord and my homeland.”
    “Hah,” chuckled the emperor. “Your subtle mind is beginning to calculate the advantages of being a queen, little peacock. Do not change, my sister. I like your pride. Never lose it. Now”—he turned to Plum Jade’s mother—“let us have tea.”
    Three months later, the great caravan of the imperial Ming princess Plum Jade left the Forbidden City in Peking and turned westward toward Persia. It was now midsummer, and as they passed through the many villages of China the peasants crowded out to press gifts of melons and other newly harvested fruits and vegetables upon the princess. She accepted everything with gracious aloofness. She felt nothing for the people who wished her well.
    And toward the shah, her intended husband, she also felt nothing. No anticipation. No hopes. He was considerably older than his sixteen-year-old bride. He had had no previous wives, only a