The Blessing Stone (55 page)

His name was Lo-Tan, which meant “Fierce Dragon,” and it was explained to Katharina that every night when she told her stories to the court of Zhandu, he sat hidden behind a screen, listening. But now he wished to meet the storyteller in person.

Summer Rose went on to say that her son was the reason Katharina had been brought to Zhandu in the first place, because Heavenly Ruler had sent out a proclamation for a woman fitting a certain description, with the intention of marrying her to his heir. When Lo-Tan appeared, Katharina saw at once why she had been rejected as soon as Summer Rose had set eyes on her: for, pale and blond as she was, Katharina was not as white as this young man, who was in fact so white and colorless he was what Katharina had heard called albino.

Had his name been given to him in the hope that he would grow into a fierce dragon? For he struck Katharina as being like a dove, a pure white, unblemished dove, soft and gentle and the color of snow. Katharina was captivated by his eyes—red pupils in pink irises. They held her with a steady, confident gaze, and his smile was friendly and disarming.

Before Katharina could return his softly spoken salutation, Adriana broke free of her mother’s grasp and, instead of running away as Summer Rose had feared, she ran to the prince and, tugging on his yellow silk pantaloons, said, “Are you a rabbit?”

“Adriana!” Katharina said.

But the prince only laughed. Dropping down to one knee, he said to the five-year-old, “Do I look like a rabbit?”

Adriana frowned. “Well, you don’t have the ears.”

He grinned. “That is because I do not wear them all the time.”

Her face lit up. “Really? Where do you keep them?”

Lo-Tan returned to his feet and said to Katharina in a voice that was as soft as clouds, “Would the young lady do me the honor of telling me a story?”

As Katharina blushed, and replied, “The honor would be all mine,” Summer Rose smiled with tears of relief and gratitude in her eyes.

Katharina and Adriana spent afternoons in the enchanting indoor garden, discovering pools and waterfalls, more birds flying freely, tame deer. Because the royal physicians had warned that any exposure to sunlight could sicken or perhaps even kill him, Lo-Tan never went beyond these walls. But Katharina did not mind, for she found peace and tranquility in his presence, and Adriana, to whom he gave the nickname Happy Flea, loved to play in his make-believe wonderland.

Fierce Dragon shyly confessed to Katharina that he thought her name unbecoming and difficult to pronounce, so he gave her a new one: Wei-Ming, which meant Golden Lotus. Therefore when Summer Rose came to Katharina one afternoon in the Garden of Peaceful Reflections, she addressed her as Golden Lotus, and said solemnly, “You are thinking of leaving us.”

Katharina saw the sadness on the older woman’s round face, and she realized how fond she had grown of Summer Rose and how she was going to miss her. “Yes. I have enough money to buy passage on a caravan to Jerusalem.”

“And you will take your daughter?”

Katharina didn’t immediately respond, for she was still undecided. Adriana was now five years old, a happy healthy child with many friends, Fierce Dragon being her favorite. She was such a cheerful little fixture in the court, with her miniature silk robes and golden hair twisted into spires, prattling on in rapid Kosh as if she had been born here, that she was everyone’s favorite. But Katharina had said all along that their stay was only temporary, that someday they must leave.

“Let me offer you a proposition,” Summer Rose said, in a kindly tone, understanding the young woman’s dilemma, for what mother can leave her child behind and go on a long, unknowable journey? “This Jerusalem you speak of is very far away. Many things can happen in the time it takes you to get there. You have already been kidnapped and sold twice, it could happen again. And Happy Flea would be orphaned, if you left her here. Or if you took her with you she could be killed, or sold into slavery, or at the least, grow weak again once away from the healthful influences of Zhandu.”

Katharina nodded. Summer Rose was not saying anything she herself had not already considered. It seemed there was no solution: she had to leave, yet she could neither take nor abandon her child.

And then Summer Rose spoke words that, for once in her life, left Katharina speechless: “Marry my son and we shall find your father for you.”

When the younger woman did not respond, Summer Rose spoke quickly, “Our dynasty needs healthy heirs. You see that my brother has no offspring that have survived, and Lo-Tan is my only son. Fifteen years ago, when Lo-Tan was twelve, we sent out a proclamation looking for a female like himself. We thought this was the way it should be done. But we think now that we shall never find a woman like him.”

Katharina recovered herself. “But…I do not love him.”

Summer Rose stared at her blankly. “What has love to do with marriage? I did not love Lo-Tan’s father.”

“And I am already married,” Katharina said softly.

Summer Rose patted her hand. “Dear child, the man of your heart is dead. You must live your life. He would have wished it, I am sure. Tell me, are you at least fond of my son?”

“Oh yes,” Katharina said, meaning it. She had developed a deep affection for the gentle Lo-Tan. A kinder and more modest man did not live, and he was so good with Adriana.

“If you marry him,” Summer Rose continued, “you can remain in Zhandu and we will send out proclamations as we once did for an albino woman. You have seen how far and wide our proclamations travel. We plucked you from deep in Persia, did we not? We can reach Jerusalem, too. All caravans stop here, and all caravan leaders know of the riches that await them if they bring us what we seek. In this way, Golden Lotus, you need not be separated from your daughter, nor need you hazard the risks of so long and dangerous a journey, and you will still find your father!”

Katharina said, “I must think about it,” and that night prayed to St. Amelia for guidance, holding the little painting that had a mate somewhere in the world, another little painting of St. Amelia and her sacred blue crystal, most likely in the possession of a European nobleman with a beard like a golden sunburst, waiting for his daughter to find him. She prayed also to the spirit of Don Adriano, whom she would love for the rest of her life, and finally she prayed over the sleeping form of her daughter, little Happy Flea, glowing in health and free from nightmares at last.

As sunlight streamed through the silken hangings of their bedchamber the next morning, and Katharina heard the whispering of courtiers, and the tinkle of fountains, and glorious birdsong, she wondered that she had even hesitated. For what Summer Rose had said was wise: the proclamations of Zhandu did indeed reach the ends of the earth and if anyone could find her father, it would be the emissaries of this mountain kingdom.

And, after all, Katharina
was
fond of Lo-Tan.

And so she said yes, and on a glorious summer day when all the citizens of Zhandu turned out for the great celebration, Katharina Bauer-von Grünewald of Badendorf, Germany, mother of the child of a knight of the Brotherhood of Mary, Don Adriano of Aragon, Spain, married the albino nephew of Heavenly Ruler and son of Summer Rose, Prince Lo-Tan, and in so doing became Princess Wei-Ming of Zhandu.

As promised, Heavenly Ruler sent men out in search of the blue stone and her father: runners and emissaries bearing proclamations promising rich rewards to whoever came back with information about the blue stone, or the blue stone itself, or a yellow-bearded foreigner.

Word spread. It was carried on camels and yaks, in the mouths of men dreaming of Zhandu riches, in conversations at garrisons, in dialogues at caravansaries and crossroads. Wherever two travelers met over a campfire, the blue crystal of Zhandu and the yellow-bearded stranger were discussed. Like wind whispering across sand dunes the proclamations flew so that within a year the first fruits began to appear: blue stones of all kinds were brought to the plateau at the foot of Zhandu, some as big as melons, some as small as peas; peacock blue and heaven blue, some nearer to green, others nearer to black. Everyday, guards went out to gather up the stones and bring them back for Katharina to inspect, and everyday the reward went unpaid.

Then Heavenly Ruler had his royal artists copy the diptych of St. Amelia on durable paper and they were very good likenesses except they didn’t capture the living blue of the crystal, and the saint had an Asian look to her. These paintings went out of Zhandu in the form of scrolls, with a promise of reward written on them in Kosh, Latin, Arabic, and German.

Years passed. While Katharina’s love for Lo-Tan never neared the passion and hunger she had felt for Adriano, her fondness for her gentle husband ran deep. She shared his sunless world with him, and Adriana grew and flourished and became elder sister to a brother, a sister, and a third brother. When Adriana was old enough, she attended school with other children of the court, learning to work basic sums on an apparatus called an abacus, and to paint rudimentary letters and words in calligraphy. Though she learned nothing in the way of geography, for the people of Zhandu believed the world was flat and that Zhandu was at its center, there were lessons in astronomy and mathematics, poetry and painting.

Blue stones continued to be brought to Zhandu—big and little, transparent and opaque, from powder blue to royal blue—and along with them came stories of yellow-bearded men. Katharina listened to each with the same attention she gave to examining the stones, but none matched a German nobleman who had gone to Jerusalem looking for a magic blue crystal.

Finally, in the summer of the tenth year after the first proclamation had gone out, and Katharina, while happy with Lo-Tan and her Zhandu children, was beginning to wonder if she should have taken the journey herself after all, a runner came to say that traders had found the man searching for the blue stone.

Katharina, always hopeful, always doubtful, said, “You have found my father?”

“And we are bringing him to you!”

The foreigner was brought to the Garden of Eternal Bliss, where the royal family was gathered in breathless anticipation. Katharina’s heart fluttered anxiously as her mind raced with questions:
What will we say to one another? How shall I address him? Are my brothers with him?

And then he stepped through the archway and entered splendid sunshine. Katharina gave a cry. She saw the cloak first, and although travel-worn and patched, and not as white as it had been at the emerald stream, it still looked handsome and dignified. Adriano’s skin was sun-darkened and contrasted against his shoulder length white hair. Although his hair was no longer dark, his eyes still were, and he did not have the face of an old man, merely a well-journeyed one.

Katharina ran into his arms, and while everyone looked on in amazement and awe, Adriano told her he was in Tashkent when he had met a man showing this little painting around. He knew then that he had found her.

Katharina feasted her eyes on him, touched his arms, felt his solidness, and silently thanked God for this miracle. “But you were killed by the emerald stream! I saw!”

Adriano could not get his fill of the sight of her, still his Katharina, and yet foreign in her silk robes and golden hair arranged on her head like an exotic birdcage. “There was a man in our caravan who coveted my cloak, and while I bathed he stole it. It was his poor fortune that at that moment the Kosh attacked. I was wounded and nearly drowned in the stream. But I was found by nomads who took me into their tents and nursed me back to health.”

Realizing that a story was about to be told, Heavenly Ruler and Summer Rose, Lo-Tan, and the children gathered close to listen. “After I recovered,” Adriano said, “and bade good-bye to my rescuers, I went looking for you, Katharina. But there was no trail, I had no way of knowing which direction you had gone, if you were still alive even. So I went to Jerusalem, for I thought if I would find you anywhere, it would be there. I looked for the blue stone, but it was no longer there. I met a man who told me of a Saxony nobleman, Baron von Grünewald, who had also been in Jerusalem looking for the blue stone. We missed him by fifteen years, Katharina. The man said the German went next to Baghdad, and so I followed his trail there. All these years, I have been following your father’s trail, hoping it would lead me to you.”

“But you never found him?”

“No, but I found you,” he said with a smile.

“But what of your work on Crete? What of your brotherhood? Should you not have gone to them?”

“While I was in Jerusalem I heard news of the Turks invading Crete where my brotherhood were wiped out to a man.” He paused and looked at his audience with the air of a man bearing a wonderful secret. “And now the news…Katharina, although I did not find your father, I do know where he is.”

A collective gasp filled the garden, for everyone was familiar with Katharina’s lifelong quest. “Tell me quickly,” she said.

“When I was in Tashkent, I met a man who told me of a father and three sons, Germans, carrying a small painting like yours. They were searching for a blue stone. I was told that they learned it had been sold to monks traveling east to Cathay, where they were headed for the court of the emperor. That is where your father went, Katharina, to China, and he is most likely there still.”

Food was brought, and wine, and the incredible people in dazzling silks flitted and fussed around him like exotic birds. Though white-haired and care-worn, Adriano still towered over the Zhandu, and he laughed at all the attention for, truth be told, he had had no idea what to expect while he was being escorted to this isolated kingdom in the sky.

But when a young girl was brought before him, and she bowed respectfully and called him father, his laughter died. The garden fell silent, even the birds and tinkling fountain seemed to hush themselves in awe of this man’s reaction to news of something he never knew: that he had a child.

It was some minutes before he could speak, and then it was in a voice tight with emotion. “In our home in Aragon there hung a portrait of my mother when she was your age. You could be her, Adriana, the resemblance is so strong.”