The Year of Rice and Salt

Bold spotted some Chinese, wearing their characteristic red felt coats even here, where they were certainly much too warm. They wandered the market, fingering the goods on display and chattering among themselves, trading with the aid of a translator Zeyk knew. Zeyk approached and greeted him effusively, asked about direct trade with the Chinese visitors. The translator introduced him to some of the Chinese, who seemed polite, even affable, in their usual way. Bold found himself trembling slightly, perhaps from heat and hunger, perhaps from the sight of the Chinese, after all these years, on the other side of the world. Still pursuing their business.

Zeyk and his assistant led the slaves through the market. It was a riot of smell, colour and sound. People as black as pitch, their eyeballs and teeth flashing white or yellow against their skin, offered goods and bartered happily. Bold followed the others past Great mounds of green and yellow fruit, Rice, coffee, dried fish and squid,

Lengths and bolts of coloured cotton cloth,

Some spotted, others striped white and blue; Bales of Chinese silk, piles of Mecca carpets; Huge brown nuts, copper pans Filled with coloured beads or gemstones, Or round balls of sweet smelling opium; Pearls, raw copper, carnelian, quicksilver; Daggers and swords, turbans, shawls; Elephant tusks, rhinoceros horns,

Yellow sandalwood, ambergris,

Ingots and coin strings of gold and silver, White cloth, red cloth, porcelains,

All the things of this world, solid in the sun.

And then the slave market, again in a square of its own, next to the main market, with a central auction block, so much like a lama's dais when empty.

The locals were gathered around a sale to one side, not a full auction.

They were mostly Arabs here, and often dressed in blue cloth robes and red leather shoes. Behind the market a mosque and minaret stood before rows of four- and even five-storey buildings. The clamour was great, but surveying the scene, Zeyk shook his head. 'We'll wait for a private audience,' he said.

He fed the slaves barley cakes and led them to one of the big buildings next to the mosque. There some Chinese arrived with their translator, and they all went inside to an inner courtyard of the building, shaded and full of green broad leaved plants and a burbling fountain. A room opening onto this courtyard had shelves on all its walls, with bowls and figures placed on them in an elaborate, beautiful display: Bold recognized pottery from Samarqand, and painted figurines from Persia, among Chinese white porcelain bowls painted in blue, gold leaf and copper.

'Very elegant,' Zeyk said.

Then they were to business. The Chinese officers inspected Zeyk's string of slaves. They spoke to the translator, and Zeyk conferred in private with the man, nodding frequently. Bold found he was sweating, though he felt cold. They were being sold to the Chinese as a single lot.

One of the Chinese strolled down the line of slaves. He looked Bold over.

'How did you get here?' he asked Bold in Chinese.

Bold gulped, waved north. 'I was a trader.' His Chinese was really rusty. 'The Golden Horde took me and brought me to Anatolia. Then to Alexandria, then here.'

The Chinese nodded, then moved on. Soon after they were led off by Chinese sailors in trousers and short shirts, back to the waterfront. There several other strings and groups of slaves were gathered. They were stripped, washed down with fresh water, an astringent, more fresh water. They were given new robes of plain cotton, led to boats, and rowed out to the huge side of one of the great ships. Bold climbed a ladder forty one steps up the wooden wall of the ship's side, following a skinny black slave boy. They were taken together below the main deck, to a room near the rear of the ship. What happened in there we don't want to tell you, but the story won't make sense unless we do, so on to the next chapter. These things happened.

FOUR

After dismal events, a piece of the Buddha appears;

Then the treasure fleet asks Tianfei to calm their fears.

The ship was so big it did not rock on the waves. It was like being on an island. The room they were kept in was low and broad, extending across the width of the ship. Gratings on both sides let in air and some light, though it was dim. A hole under one grating overhung the ship's side and served as the place of relief.

The skinny black boy looked down it as if judging whether he could escape through the hole. He spoke Arabic better than Bold, though it was not his native tongue either; he had a guttural accent that Bold had never heard before. 'They trot you like derg.' He came from the hills behind the sahil he said, staring down the hole. He stuck one foot through, then another. He wasn't going to get through.