Henry's Journey

by Hyarrowen

Henry is sent into exile, accompanied by a rather reluctant Herald. They go on a great journey together, but it's Henry who travels furthest. Henry V/French Herald. First time. Slight AU; based on the 1989 film.

Henry's Journey

Disclaimer: Not mine, Shakespeare's, Marlowe's and Renaissance Films'. Not making any money out of this. Heartfelt apologies to all concerned.

-x-

'You think this is hard work? You should try getting a giraffe to go on board.'

Giraffe?

Henry, who had been a king not so long ago, kept a firm grip on the headstall of the horse he was leading towards the gangplank, and squinted round in the bright Arabian sunlight for the next person in the queue waiting to load the animals. Jehan, who had been Herald Montjoy, took on an inward expression as he did the double translation, from Arabic to French and from French to English, and then he said 'Camelopard.'

The horse jibbed again at the gangplank and Henry turned his attention back to it, although since it was perhaps the twentieth he'd led on board that day his own temper was fraying. But when they were back on the docks, and had found they had time for a breather while a line of slaves took stores aboard, he said to Taqi, 'Tell us about the giraffe, then.' The man obviously wanted to be asked, and Henry had perforce re-learned the art of getting along with people in the six months or so since catastrophe had overtaken him.

-x-

The start of their journey was still hazy in his memory, and he'd given up hope of ever finding out some of the details. His sudden, near-fatal illness while consolidating his gains in France had left him stranded, isolated from his youngest brothers and uncle, and his enemies had taken the opportunity with a vengeance.

It was no surprise that among the enemies in question was Dauphin, now King, Charles, but that Henry's second brother Thomas, Duke of Clarence, should turn traitor had shocked him beyond all measure. Not that he'd ever trusted Thomas, who had always been flighty, unreliable, his father's favourite and with an inflated notion of his own importance as a result. Thomas had been 'invalided' home after Harfleur had fallen because of his known sympathies with the French royal party.

No, Henry had never trusted Thomas, but he had never thought he was capable of turning his discontent into action. But that was what had happened, with Thomas in London, Henry barely alive and the rest of the family scattered and unable to come to his aid in time. Lapsing in and out of consciousness, Henry had found himself in rapid succession captured, deposed and his marriage annulled. There were blurred memories of non-stop pain, darkened rooms, people coming and going, and one person who was almost always there and seemed less than happy about it. It was Montjoy who had handed him a letter, written in his sister Philippa's unmistakable hand, which brought the news that Katherine had taken their child (apparently trusting neither Henry's brother nor her own with the boy's life) and got clean away into Wales, and then, entirely unexpectedly, to Philippa in Denmark. Henry had lain back on his pillows, laughed and then wept, and suggested that a stalemate had been reached, and what was King Charles going to do about it?

The answer came soon enough. Presented with a fait accompli, neither of the new kings was eager to quarrel with Philippa, that very capable young queen, or her warrior husband Eirik. Katherine and the prince would be safe where they were. But Henry was told that his choices were exile, if he went willingly, or worse if he didn't. So he went, wondering vaguely if this was what his enemies had hoped for, but quite unable to think his way through the problem, and had found himself on a barge sailing downriver to southern shores, taken rapidly further and further from his friends, with Montjoy travelling with him to take news of his continued existence back to them when he had left the country.

Then, after a long period of movement, and more pain and disorientation – Henry couldn't remember much about that – there was, suddenly, a stir of people outside his door, voices raised and then lowered, and then Montjoy had got him with extreme haste onto a ship (for apparently they had reached a port) and again his memory failed him.

In a little town on a small, dusty, windblown island he'd recovered enough to ask what had happened on that last day. Montjoy said simply, 'I was given orders that I couldn't follow,' and had refused to say any more. Henry, whose former life already seemed a little distant, had gone straight back to sleep. He still wasn't sure how many times over he owed his life to Montjoy.

He owed his life also to the fact that the infirmary where he'd spent the next fortnight had a Greek physician in residence. Grimly learning to walk again in the sheltered cloister, with Montjoy's arm under his and with long rests on every available bench, he tried to express a necessary gratitude. Montjoy, unfamiliar without his tabard, his face unreadable as it had ever been, would accept none of it. Henry gave up, and resumed his walks, now crossing the cloister between herb beds and cistern, and then outside in the orchard, Montjoy still watchful and uncommunicative at his side. Henry was always too shaky at the end of these sessions to do anything other than fall onto his bed and wait for the pain and exhaustion to pass, and there at least Montjoy seemed prepared to leave him unguarded.

It was from the window of his narrow room that he looked out one afternoon and saw Montjoy sitting on a bench looking out over the orchard. Normally so imperturbable, the Herald slowly lowered his head into his hands for a few moments in a gesture of utter weariness: then straightened up, scrubbed one hand across his eyes, visibly braced himself and appeared at Henry's door minutes later with no sign that he'd ever given in to a moment of human weakness. Henry, knowing that he could not mention the matter, simply carried on with his walks that day but with rather greater diligence. He had no idea what had caused Montjoy's brief vulnerability.

At the end of another fortnight he was walking, on sunny days, to an old fort on the headland and back and still making no progress with the wall of silence which Montjoy had erected around himself. An enquiry about money received the answer, 'I've got enough to last us for a while yet.'

'Us?'

That got no satisfactory answer, either.

-x-

On the day the physician looked him over and pronounced that in her opinion he was well enough to travel, Montjoy sat down with him and began dividing up the money.

'You can't stay here. It's too close to France and England. Denmark's out of the question. Your sister's protecting the prince, but if you went there you'd be putting her, and him, and the whole kingdom in danger. So you'll have to travel on. But I don't know who would take you in. You might have to work your way after a while.'

Henry looked at the pile of coins and made no move to touch them.

'I need to know what happened before I can make any plans. You've been very close-mouthed all this time, Montjoy, but you'll have to tell me now.'

Montjoy got up abruptly and went to stare out of the window, his back firmly turned to Henry. 'I've been trying not to think about it. And I've got no proof for any of this. But your sickness came very close to the old King's, and at a very convenient time for anyone who wanted to take your throne. And not only that but three months ago I had to take a dispatch to Rome, to the Pope. I don't know what was in that message, or in the reply he sent, but - '

'The annulment,' Henry could hardly get the words out. 'I never did understand the grounds for that.'

'The grounds that Rome owed France a favour after the ending of the Avignon papacy, as like as not.'

'But I was always loyal to Rome!' exclaimed Henry, and then got himself under control again. 'Go on.'

Montjoy gave him a not unsympathetic look. 'Anyway, they hadn't expected Queen Katherine to flee Thomas, and take the prince with her. I think it was Captain Fluellen who got her away -'

'He was always a good man,' said Henry, and he had to smile a little at the thought of his friend; but he privately doubted that it had been entirely Fluellen's doing.

'So with the prince safely with your sister, Thomas' plans were going awry. I'd already been told to escort you to a port, into exile, but somebody must have thought he could curry favour, or maybe panicked at the last moment.' Henry appreciated the fact that he put it that way; so much more palatable than 'Someone, possibly your brother, must have decided to dispose of you.' 'And that was the order that I couldn't follow.' Montjoy seemed inclined to lapse into silence again.

'Why weren't we both killed?'

'Oh, I told them that I'd had my suspicions all along, and had got word out to the other heralds. There are a dozen of them out all over Europe now, and it'll take time to track them all down and find out it wasn't true.'

Henry half-laughed, for the first time in a long while.

'I couldn't come up with a better lie on the spur of the moment,' admitted Montjoy, turning away from the window. 'But it means time is short now, which is why you have to move on as soon as possible.' He made a gesture at the piles of money, which Henry ignored.

'Montjoy, you've given up a lot for me. Why did you do it?'

'Not for you, for the sake of my own conscience. I refused to send a sick man to his death, that's all. And I was concerned for the good reputation of the heralds. I won't have us used in that way. No, I don't want your thanks. I haven't earned them. I'm not happy about any of this, I'm not particularly proud of what I've done, and I'd much rather it had never happened. But now we both have to think ahead. Do you have somewhere you could go, further away? Family, friends?'

'You have my gratitude whether you want it or not. You saved my life, I'll probably never know how many times over.' That got a wry smile in acknowledgement. Many times, then. 'As for the future, I can't think of anywhere I'd be welcome. With England and France both against me, no-one will want to take me in, apart from my sister, and you're right, I can't endanger her. And truth to tell, I've no wish to parade myself as an exiled king. I'll have to travel quietly for a while. That's no hardship. I haven't always lived in palaces,' and he'd reprehensibly enjoyed his months in Eastcheap, while Thomas had basked in their father's favour. 'And you? What will you do?'

'Lie low, for the present. I might go further east. I've been there before, and there are fewer people who would know my face, out there.'

'No family waiting for you in France?'

'No wife nor child. I've always been a herald, always travelled. It wouldn't have been fair to them. I have parents, and a brother, back in Picardy.'

Henry looked at him. 'I came close to home, then, on that march from Harfleur to Calais.'

'Yes, and did less harm there than our own armies in the civil wars. I was grateful to you for that.'

Henry looked down at the coins again, and stirred them with one finger. Gold, not silver. No omen of betrayal there. Henry needed a friend, and it was just possible that Montjoy did, too. He took a chance. 'What say you we travel together, for a while at least?'

-x-

In Malta rumours confirmed what Montjoy, (or Jehan, as he'd learned to call him) had said, and Henry debated sending a message off to his younger brothers or sister, but doubted that it would get through. In the end the letter was sent to old Sir Thomas Erpingham at the last address he had for his brother Gloucester, and was terse in the extreme, but included praise to Katherine and an injunction to be happy, and a request to get word quietly to Picardy. Then they moved on in a hurry before the letter could be traced.

Henry still wondered occasionally if Jehan was sending messages of his own back to France. Trust came hard to him these days. But it would make no sense. Though the man obviously loved his country, as a herald he had always stood a little aside from the murky depths of politics. In any case he could have dispatched Henry, quietly and without fuss, at any time in the weeks of his helplessness, but had been a constant, protective (though uncommunicative) presence all that time. He was still uncommunicative, still protective, and Henry found his cryptic company immensely comforting. He would have been utterly lost without him. Jehan, if he knew that, made no attempt to exploit it.

The gold was lasting well. It turned out that Henry had a much better idea of how to make it last than Jehan, who had simply relied on the privileges of his office when travelling as a herald. Running a kingdom, financing campaigns, or even paying his way at the Boar's Head had given Henry a very clear idea of the value of money, and the mysterious ways in which it could disappear. Jehan had boggled slightly at the accommodation they sometimes found, but to Henry it was like a return to old times. 'In any case they gave me enough to get rid of me, and keep me quiet,' observed Jehan as they sat over a cup of wine in a tavern under a citadel wall.

'Or to send you a good long way. Where could we go from here?' Here being Syracuse.

'More or less anywhere in the Mediterranean. Where do you want to go?'

He kept doing this, not attempting to direct Henry in any way, forcing him to make his own decisions, to take responsibility. Henry, still fighting a daily, sometimes hourly, battle with melancholy, would happily have let him take the lead and followed passively in his wake for the time being. Jehan did not allow passivity. Henry appreciated this, and resented it, in about equal measure. In any case it suggested that Jehan was not attempting to lead him into a trap.

'How about Jerusalem?' This was said in an effort to get a reaction out of him. It was a very long way to Jerusalem.

A surprised smile acknowledged that Jehan hadn't been expecting this. 'I've never been,' a faint noise of disbelief from Henry, 'but there's no reason why not. Ships aplenty and they're used to Christians making the pilgrimage.'

'My father went, while I was still a child. He often told me about it. He always wanted to go back, but never had the chance. I can go for him, perhaps.'

At last there was some point to their travels. Jerusalem it was.

-x-

One day as the ship lay becalmed off a small island, castle-crowned, Jehan sat watching Henry retreating into himself again. He was well enough while they were moving, but enforced idleness took its toll on a man who had been so active. Jehan had already seen one king succumb to the demons of despair, though the old man had been terribly afflicted with periodic madness too. For that reason he could not stand by and watch while Henry fought the long battle with his losses alone. And he, too, needed something to do.

He went and sat next to Henry on the deck, and said, 'I ought to teach you Arabic. You'll need it now, especially if we travel on after Jerusalem.' He'd been going to say 'especially if anything happens to me,' but realized that this was perhaps not the best time to raise that possibility. 'Persian too, if you like. And maybe, in return, you could teach me to defend myself.'

Henry came out of his introspection and looked at him quizzically, apparently well aware of his friend's motives but willing to be distracted. 'You've got your own ways of defending yourself, and they're highly effective. But I could teach you less subtle methods. And I'd be glad to learn Arabic and Persian, though I'll be a woeful student, I warn you. And there's a story behind how you learned them, I don't doubt.'

Jehan relaxed. Catching Henry's interest had been the whole point of the suggestion. 'It was on an embassy to Tamburlaine, twenty years ago.' Where did the time go?

At any rate, this revelation had the desired effect. Henry was staring at him, incredulous. 'You've met Tamburlaine?'

'Yes. I was a young herald, and there was some thought of a treaty with him, against the Turk. He wrote to our king, proposing the alliance, and protection for Christian merchants, so an embassy was sent out to Asia to speak to him. It was a two years' journey, there and back.'

He told Henry about the long voyage from Venice to Trebizond on the Black Sea, and the months of travelling under Tamburlaine's safe conduct as guests of castellans or amirs, sometimes in the company of sultans or small traders; but all, like them, were on the road to Samarkand. The terror of Tamburlaine's name ensured their safe and speedy passage. But it was still a year after they left Paris when they crossed a great river that another conqueror, Alexander, had crossed fifteen hundred years ago and more, and had finally entered that marvellous city, Tamburlaine's capital, through a gate guarded by archers mounted on elephants.

Henry listened, transfixed by the tale. 'And the man himself? What was he like?' he asked, one leader fascinated by another.

'It's hard to say. He was all contradictions. He never called himself king or emperor, but he was master of half Asia. Illiterate, but he loved books. A fearsome soldier, but lame and his eyes were failing him. A gracious friend and a truly terrifying enemy. I could never feel quite safe, all the time we were in Samarkand. We never knew when he might suddenly swat us, as a man might swat a mosquito. Before his queen died, they say he was more human, but we heard stories…' He trailed off, looking back down the years. 'I think in the end he decided that we simply weren't worth bothering with. Not all of Europe together would have made a worthy ally. We came away, and a few years later he died on another campaign, and his sons fought amongst themselves for their inheritance. Shah Rukh has the empire now, and his son rules in Samarkand. They say Ulugh Beg's a gentle soul, a scholar-prince. How could Tamburlaine have had such a grandson?'

He realized with a start that he was talking not to one of his family or a fellow herald, but to another conqueror, and fell silent. Henry, oblivious to any comparison between himself and the tyrant, was also thinking back.

'So that was what you meant when you said you'd been out east before. I was imagining the Levant, or Greece. But Samarkand - ! Tell me about the city,' and he listened to traveller's tales for an hour or more, while the ship rocked on the slight swell. Then he started to ask questions about the governance of the great empire, and as evening fell he said, 'No wonder you dealt with me so effortlessly. While I was a young prince in a rainy northern kingdom, you'd already been to Samarkand and back. I must have seemed hopelessly provincial to you.'

'Hardly!' Jehan smiled at him, caught his eye and looked away, feeling himself flush slightly. 'You were a surprise. We'd heard so much about you, and it was all wrong. You weren't effortless at all. Very hard work, in fact. But I didn't let you know that.'

'I'll find learning Persian and Arabic hard work, too, I'm sure,' said Henry, apparently feeling the need to shift the conversation away from the rather personal turn he himself had given it. 'But I ought to try. And I'll teach you to fight, though I don't suppose that'll come naturally, either.'

The lessons were slow and at times literally painful, but they kept at them and slow progress was made. Henry began to lose his closed-off air, and as time went on they both acquired a few extra pupils.

-x-

They reached Jerusalem in late winter. It brought no real answers, any more than it had for Henry's father, but Henry felt that he had done something significant for the first time since his deposition, and came away in a happier frame of mind. But at the pilgrim port of Jaffa he glimpsed faces that he knew from the French court, and looked at Jehan with a last faint flicker of doubt.

Jehan looked straight back at him and shook his head.

'I'm sorry,' said Henry. 'I am ashamed of myself.' He looked away.

Jehan, voice shaking slightly, said 'We need to get well away, though. You have to decide for certain where you want to go. I'll ask at the harbour what ships there are in port.'

'Jehan – wait - ' Jehan shook his head again and was gone down an alleyway, leaving Henry alone in a town that for all its crowds suddenly seemed empty, in a country where he had no other friend. The early twilight of winter was falling swiftly, and with it, a chill that struck through to Henry's bones. He left the darkening streets, and with nowhere else to go, and nowhere else he had any inclination to go even if Jehan came back with a whole contingent of French men-at-arms, he returned to their small, bare room and sat berating himself. He wondered if he would be entirely alone from now on, knowing he could not survive without Jehan's knowledge and experience and above all without his company.

He heard Jehan's step on the stair a couple of hours later – only one person, so no party come to arrest him, and they would have come long ago if they were coming at all – and looked up from the pointless re-packing of his belongings.

'I'm sorry I've been so long,' Jehan began rather formally. 'There are ships for Italy, Cyprus and Alexandria in the harbour. We would have to work our way to Venice, but there's enough money left for either of the other two.' He didn't quite look at Henry.

Ignoring most of this, Henry stood up and said, 'You don't have to go anywhere with me. I half thought you wouldn't come back, and I wouldn't have blamed you if you hadn't. I've still got no idea how many times over I owe you my life, and you've given up everything you had for me. I can't tell you how sorry I am that I doubted you, even for an instant. Leave me if you want to, Jehan.'

'I spent a while, walking and thinking, down at the harbour,' admitted Jehan. 'Once I'd got over the impulse to get on the first ship I came to. And I thought: you were betrayed by your own brother. Of course you can't trust a Frenchman completely. And,' his voice took on a slight edge, 'I am a traitor, that's true enough. I disobeyed a direct order, given by someone in authority over me. So you have every right to doubt me.'

Henry was shocked into looking up straight into the other's face. 'You saved a sick man from a squalid death! That doesn't mean you're a traitor!'

'My duty was to carry out my orders.'

'We've just come from Jerusalem. You have a Christian duty too. You fulfilled that, at great cost to yourself. I can never repay my debt to you. Jehan, I don't deserve your company, your friendship.' He was getting into deep waters now, but floundered on. 'But I want them. Will you forgive me?'

'I did, when I decided to come back. You've got reason to be mistrustful, Henry. But you can trust me, though I can't prove that.'

Henry, relieved beyond measure, and moved by who knew what impulse, stepped close to him and embraced him for the first time, head going down onto his shoulder. He was suddenly aware of the cold night air clinging about the other man's clothes and hair. Jehan hesitated a moment, and then his arms came awkwardly round him, and they stood like that for a few heartbeats before breaking apart, neither quite sure what to say next.

Henry fell back on practicalities. 'So, which is it to be? Venice, Cyprus or Alexandria?'

'I've been to all three, but since we have to avoid being recognized or followed, Alexandria is the safest choice.'

'I would be truly lost without you,' said Henry with an embarrassed half-laugh.

'Never mind that. The ship bound there is Italian, which would give us contacts in the merchant enclave there and some choice of work. Further than that we can't plan.'

'When does it sail?'

'Midday tomorrow. They're still loading.'

That gave them another night in this lodging. They began to make ready for bed. Henry said, 'Good night, Jehan,' and blew out the light, with a mind much more at ease than it had been an hour ago, except for one thing. He had liked that embrace far more than he should have done. It had been many years since he had enjoyed being in another man's arms in quite that way, and Lord Scroop had most certainly been a traitor and Henry himself had had to sign the order for his execution. But now, at this very inappropriate time, his body suddenly reminded him that yes, he liked men as well as women and yes, he'd always liked and respected the French Herald, even as his own policies took them headlong into war. There had even been fleeting moments long ago when he'd been half-aware of attraction that had everything and nothing to do with liking, but he'd ignored them. It could not happen. And then in the months of his exile, the creeping misery that he'd fought every day (the hardest battle of a life of hard battles) had left him no time or strength for such thoughts, until this evening when he'd almost driven Jehan away. That embrace, given and returned, had been something that he had wanted for a while without realizing it.

Now, though, was hardly the time to do anything about it. They had a very long road to travel together, whatever happened after Alexandria. But he could at least be as good a friend to Jehan as Jehan had been to him, taking some of the burden of responsibility from the man's back, starting to look outwards. He began to run through what he could offer to their partnership. Work; they'd need to earn money soon. Well, he was a soldier and the merchants always needed protection. Fully recovered physically, he could undertake unskilled labour if necessary. He'd need to work harder at his languages, especially if they were to travel far. And he would continue to teach Jehan to defend himself.

Then, following on that thought, came another, and one that should have occurred to him earlier; months ago, in fact, if he had not been fighting his own demons all that time. What would happen to his friend if any pursuit caught up with them?

Nothing good.

'Jehan?' he said softly, intending to ask him; but the other man was asleep.

-x-

At any rate he now had a clear purpose, to get them both well away to safety, and a clear duty, to protect the man who had protected him. Alexandria would certainly be a good place for them to disappear. So the next morning they went down to the docks, and took ship, and vanished a week later into the huge city with its people thronging like the waves of the sea, and emerged days afterwards on a ship taking Venetian glassware up the Nile to Cairo, and then along the canal to the Red Sea. This time, they were not passengers but were working their way, Henry as a guard, the pirates at the mouth of the Sea being more than usually troublesome, and Jehan as an interpreter between the few remaining Italian merchants and their increasingly diverse customers.

Henry continued to fret about Jehan's proficiency with weapons. Sitting over backgammon with him one day, he said briskly, 'I'll start teaching you to use a bow when we're next on shore,' provoking a startled look.

'You can use a longbow?' Jehan seemed amazed and amused at the same time.

'Yes; why ever not?'

'You're – er, you were, the king. You had common soldiers to do that for you.'

Henry reminded himself that Jehan couldn't help being French. 'Nothing common about a longbowman. It takes years to learn to use a longbow properly. I'm a poor excuse for an archer compared to my men. But I had to know what the weapon was capable of and what I could ask from the men. We used to go out hunting with longbows, in the rain all day. It's surprising how heavy a bow can get when you have to carry it twenty miles or more.'

'But you'd be riding, surely, and have servants to carry the bows?'

'No, what would that have taught me? My cousin Edward was the real hunting enthusiast. He'd drag me out in all weathers. Said we had to follow the deer on foot or we'd learn nothing. I really hated him at times.' That 'you were a king' had hurt less than he would have believed possible, but with the dry coast of Ethiopia slipping past them it was hard to dwell overmuch on his fall from power. But he remembered Edward's death in the mud of Agincourt as he tried to redeem his family's honour which his brother Richard, Earl of Cambridge, had brought low.

Jehan was saying, 'We've hardly got years for me to learn.' Henry came back to the present with a start.

'No, but I can start to teach you to use an eastern bow. You won't have years to learn, but you'll have a very determined tutor. It's a useful skill, even if you can't loose twelve arrows a minute. And with an eastern bow I can try to learn to shoot from horseback, as they do here, though they say it's very difficult. Not something you can do with a longbow! And we might get a chance to hunt gazelle, or wild goats – remind me of the right words, yes?'

'Not on foot?' Jehan sounded rather worried.

'Of course on foot. It'll be good training.' Henry grinned at him.

Jehan, who had been fully occupied a few minutes previously trying not to notice the way Henry's hair had bleached flaxen fair in the spring sun, had never imagined that he might one day have to hunt goats, let alone on foot. But he had berated himself over his faux pas – 'you were a king' and had hated to see how Henry's face had taken on its old introspective look, which hardly ever appeared now. 'Goat-hunting,' he said, martyred, and was rewarded by real amusement in Henry's smile.

-x-

The little convoy gave a good account of itself as it passed the narrows at the mouth of the Red Sea, with no ships lost and only a few men wounded in the one skirmish they had with the pirates. They turned the corner of Arabia, and docked at a small, malodorous town on the south coast. Here they paused to take on a cargo of horses for India, and here, while they were earning extra money loading the horses, they heard the story of the giraffe.

'We needed a lot of men for that one,' said Taqi. 'It came up from Africa with the Cathayan fleet a few years back. They were taking it home for their Emperor.'

'Why did he want a giraffe?' Henry was utterly at sea.

'They think it brings good luck, or some such thing. It did for us. They paid us well for that day's work – mind you, we earned it!' The waterskin went round. 'The junk it was on -' Henry cast another inquiring look at Jehan, who for once appeared baffled, 'was near sinking, and we had to transfer it to another. It took every man in the docks all day to do it.'

'Are they really such big animals?' said Henry, with a slight air of disbelief, and this provoked a welter of claims and counter-claims, some of the men getting up to pace out the giraffe's dimensions amid derisive comments and laughter, and then someone said 'Of course, elephants are even trickier,' but then the next batch of horses came up and the question of elephants was left for another time.

The extra pay was welcome, and there would be plenty of work with the horses in Dhafari for a month or so until the winds swung round, but there was really no choice between staying there and travelling on.

'Africa or Asia? We have to decide now,' said Jehan as they ate their evening meal. Privacy was non-existent, so they were speaking English again.

The choice between continents was one that Henry never thought he would find himself making. 'If we've got to stay here another month to catch the winds to Africa, then Asia it is, I'd say. I may smell of fish for the rest of my life as it is. Even the horses smell of fish. How can anyone bear it?'

'You don't want to go hunting giraffe down in Africa, then?'

'Or elephant, or lions, if it means staying here another month. But what do you think?' Henry was starting to prod Jehan into sharing the decision-making; he himself needed the discipline of thinking ahead, thinking outwards, less by now.

'My languages will be more use in Asia than Africa,' said Jehan with a shrug.

'Good,' said Henry. 'To be honest, it isn't just the fish.' He sobered and looked aside, then back again. 'The slaves upset me more.' There were slaves everywhere in Dhafari, selling produce in the market or raising water at the wells, not just on the docks.

'I don't like to see slaves either,' and Jehan spoke with some vehemence. Henry gave him a questioning look, remembering how tense Jehan had seemed whenever they had seen a Genoese slave-ship at sea or in the ports of the Mediterranean; and suddenly his mind made the leap.

'That was what you saved me from, wasn't it, that last day in France,' he stated flatly. 'They were going to sell me to a slave-trader.'

Jehan, obviously distressed, looked away in his turn, shutting his mouth tight.

'All right,' said Henry, though he felt a little sick. 'You don't have to say anything about it. But – thank-you. Again.' His hand, shaking slightly, found Jehan's, and closed on it, hard. At the touch Jehan turned back to him and gave a tiny nod and a wan attempt at a smile. Henry held onto his hand a moment longer – my friend – and then loosed it, and gave his attention to his dinner. 'So, we're decided on Asia, then,' and the subject was not mentioned again.

Two dawns later, they continued for India, a month's voyage away, on the same ship that had brought them from Cairo, and reached it with the last of the westerlies.

-x-

Jehan found India something of a trial at first. Alexandria had been equally full of people, but there he had known they would be moving on rapidly, Henry having emerged from his lassitude and eager to be off. The crowds in the Indian port of Cambay oppressed him, though. His life had always been rather solitary, always on the move, and he had relished the freedom, the quiet, and the time to think. He had none of those in India.

But trade was as important in India as anywhere else. There was work to be had, a consignment of iron and salt to be taken to the interior. After a few days they set off again, along the ancient road leading to the northern cities. The merchants needed protection, bands of lawless men roaming the country as they had since the fall of the sultanate decades before. Two guards more, one of them with a good command of several languages, were a welcome addition to the bullock-train.

'Reminds me of a Roman road,' said Jehan, and with its inns and waystations it was an easy one to travel at first. Then, as they left the coastal area, it began to fall into disrepair. Inns became less frequent, wells were poorly maintained, and sometimes they had to camp by the side of the road in the shelter of the trees that had been planted long ago to give shade to travellers.

One night the bullock-train stopped by the shell of a waystation and Jehan wandered off a little way, past the line of gnarled old mulberry trees and out into the abandoned farmland beyond, and sat looking up at the sky. Some of the stars were old friends from travels long past. He felt the tensions of the day, of too many people for too long, begin to unravel.

'Jehan!' A quiet call.

With a private sigh, he replied 'Yes, here,' and Henry came up beside him.

'You all right?'

'Mm. I should have said I was going out of camp for a bit.'

'I'll leave you to it, shall I?' This was obviously Henry's idea of tact.

'No need. I was stargazing. Some of them I haven't seen for years.'

Henry sat next to him on the ground, a barely-seen shape. 'Don't tell me you've been here before.'

'No, but I've travelled south as well as east. A long time ago,' said Jehan vaguely.

'I won't enquire.' Henry looked at the horizon. 'Some of those stars I've never seen before, even in Arabia.'

'Different time of year.'

Henry was quiet for a while, and then said, 'I feel very far from home here, where even the sky is strange.'

'Some of it's still familiar.' Jehan twisted round to point north, over the line of trees. 'There's Charles' Wain – the Plough, you'd call it – and Orion just setting, and you can't mistake Sirius.'

'No, but those stars following it?' Henry's hand, a dark shadow, swept the southern arc of the horizon.

'If I remember rightly, that big group of bright stars is Argo, the Ship.'

'A suitable sign for travellers like us, then.'

Henry appeared to be in the mood for conversation. Jehan made an effort to oblige. 'Let's see…Can I find it? Yes, there it is. See that cross of bright stars, east of Argo but west of Libra?'

'Libra?' Henry sounded slightly suspicious.

'You know your Zodiac?'

'No, I do not.' Said with something of a snap.

'Not a believer in astrology, then.'

'It's quite astonishing how often the astrologers get things wrong.' A rather tart observation. 'And they can be pretty unsavoury. Not much to choose between astrology and the dark arts, sometimes. Did you ever meet Christine de Pizan's father?'

'He was an extreme case. And you said yourself that the Ship was a suitable sign for travellers.'

'Suitable, not significant!' Henry said rather hastily.

'Of course. Well, as I was saying, the cross of stars, down there on the horizon. That's a good one to know. The long axis of the cross always points south.'

Henry got behind his shoulder, and peered along his arm. 'Yes, I can see it.' The tension which had left Jehan during his few minutes of solitude was back, but in an entirely different form. 'How can I find it again?' continued Henry. He hadn't moved away.

'South of Leo,' a distracting snort, 'south of the Sickle, then, if you must, half the sky away. And east of Orion and Sirius, about the same distance. West of Scorpio,' said with a mild asperity. 'Really, it's useful to know your stars if you're going to travel far.'

'Instruct me, then.' He pointed over Jehan's shoulder at the next bright group. 'What comes after the Cross?'

Jehan dredged through his memory. 'The Centaur, battling the Wolf.'

'The sky's a busy place. How did you learn all these?'

'The Arabs are great astronomers.'

'Back in your mysterious past. Well, let's see if I've got them right. Orion,' now leaning down on the western horizon, 'can't mistake him anywhere. The Great Dog, and Sirius is easy enough. The Ship, the Cross, the Wolf - '

'The Centaur first, then the Wolf.'

'Ach. Orion, the Dog, the Ship, the Cross, the Centaur,' with a teasing emphasis, 'and the Wolf.'

'Yes, you've got them. And after the Wolf, Scorpio, though you can't see it yet. I'll teach you your Zodiac yet.'

'Not if I can help it. Teach me stars I can find my way by. I can use those.'

'So, which way is south?'

'There.' Henry pointed, and then his forearm dropped to rest casually on Jehan's shoulder.

'What's that group?'

'Argo.'

'What comes before Scorpio?'

'The Wolf.'

'You're a quick learner.'

'It's easier here, where you can see the stars clearly. Back home…' Henry's voice faltered for a moment, and then continued, 'it was usually cloudy, and too cold in the winter and too light in the summer. And there was always someone to ask, if you lost your way.'

'Sometimes, when you're travelling, there's no-one to ask.'

'And sometimes there is.' There was a smile in Henry's voice, which warmed Jehan's heart, because he obviously wasn't talking about asking just anybody. Then a stifled yawn. 'Sorry. Past my bedtime. I'm turning in. I'll leave you in peace.' He got up. 'Don't stay out here alone too long.' And with a repeat of that awkward tact, he got up, gave Jehan's shoulder a friendly pat, and made his way back to the waystation.

With that disturbing presence gone, Jehan gave himself a few more minutes to regain his equilibrium, which had taken an unexpected though not unwelcome knock, and then followed him; and they slept, while far away in the sky the Ship sailed on into the west from which they were exiled.

-x-

Henry woke in a rather more cheerful frame of mind than usual. He had been beginning to wonder if he would ever progress beyond friendship with Jehan, and that friendship meant so much to him that he had been reluctant to risk souring it by trying for more. But last night he had taken the chance given by privacy and quiet just to sit close and talk and Jehan had not rebuffed him; and then he had removed himself before his company could become irksome. Now he had hopes for further evenings under the stars.

All of which were thrown into disarray as they approached a great city surrounded by scenes of destruction that gave even Henry, who had brought a few cities low himself, pause for thought. Deserted farmlands spread wide on either side of the deteriorating road; the ruins of forts rose out of piles of rubble; and then the city itself, now revealed as a wrecked place inside husks of walls, came into plain view. And yet the destruction was not new, decades old in fact by the growth of trees and shrubs amongst the ruins.

'Who did this?' Henry asked Khalid, another of the guards, as they passed the shattered remains of a village, and got a one-word answer, 'Tamburlaine.'

Henry's eyes fastened on Jehan, a little way ahead. He'd had no idea that the young herald of twenty years ago had been in such danger.

'What happened?'

'He came over the mountains. It was in my father's day. He was down on the coast, so he escaped what happened.' He told Henry the terrible story of the sack of Delhi, and Henry forgot Jehan and listened appalled, aghast, disbelieving. Yet it fit with some of the tales that he'd heard since arriving in India, and there was the ruined landscape all around him, and there were the mounds which Khalid told him had been towers of skulls.

I was never that bad, he thought as they went on through the heat of the day. I did what I had to do for my country and my people.

To those who died, you were as bad.

Any king in Europe would have done the same if he could. In a way, I brought peace.

At the sword's edge. Was there no other way?

The clergy gave me their blessing.

They were using you. You were using them.

I should have…

Too late now.

Khalid, used to horrified silences greeting his tale, had moved away, leaving Henry to fight his demons alone, and he did so all through that day. In the evening, exhausted in mind and spirit, and barely able to speak, much less eat, he rolled himself in his blankets and tried to block out the images of Tamburlaine's visitation. Then, unable to sleep, he got up and continued the fight, alone in the dark as he had been the night before Agincourt. He tried to pray, as he had done that night, but found he could not; but this time, as then, he was reminded that he had friends –

'Henry?'

He looked round.

'Come on. Sleep. Another day's journey tomorrow,' said Jehan quietly.

Henry made a noise somewhere between a gasp and a sob, and said, 'Gentle Herald,' as he'd said the morning of the battle, but now it meant so much more; and then, speechless again, let Jehan shepherd him back to his blankets.

He lay awake a while longer in his misery, but then Jehan sighed, in his sleep perhaps, and turned over, and his out-flung arm settled across Henry's chest. He turned towards his friend, seeking comfort, and rested his forehead against the Frenchman's shoulder, and there, in his former enemy's embrace, he finally slept.

-x-

He knew that, for reasons he could not fathom, he had Jehan's steady affection. But he questioned anew his right to it. In his darkest moments, he thought that the difference between him and Tamburlaine was only one of degree. He could not ask for more from Jehan than he already had, which of course only made him want his friend's love all the more.

But he had lost his nerve to approach Jehan again. Backing delicately away from the intimacy they'd achieved on that starlit night, he caught one or two concerned glances coming his way from his friend, who was of course long practiced in reading unspoken signals. As they escorted a shipment of metalwork and rare timber down a river so vast it made even the Nile look small, he began to make an effort to demonstrate that the friendship was all-important to him and that he had no desire for anything else between them. It was all immensely hard work.

Nor was this confusion helped by the temple carvings he saw in some of the river ports they visited. He'd thought he was past the age of blushing. Even Jehan got a thoughtful look on his face at times, and encouraged by the discovery that his friend wasn't as sophisticated as he'd thought, Henry began to relax at last. The shadow of Delhi was beginning to recede too. He knew he could not have committed Tamburlaine's deeds. His own brutalities, now, he hoped, behind him forever, had been born of a terrible fear for his own men's lives.

He was still baffled by Jehan's steadfast friendship, and while his heart told him that perhaps there was a reason for it that he would like, his head dared not listen. They continued downriver in a companionship that was easing at last, but he made no more advances, however tentative.

The carvings, however, reminded him that he had lived chaste since his exile, and that as far as he knew, so had Jehan. Since he had no wish to be unchaste with anyone but Jehan, he chose to be comforted by this.

-x-

Jehan, who had met many kings and princes in his day and liked very few of them (Tamburlaine being a case in point), let his Englishman retreat into himself again. He had a fair idea of what the matter was, having heard Khalid's story, and worse stories long ago which he hadn't passed on to Henry, but this was one battle that his friend would have to fight on his own. Henry was very gentle with him, but sad, and the tears he'd felt against his shoulder that long night when he'd held Henry in his embrace (perhaps the only night that he would do so) had told their own story. He hoped desperately that Henry would not fall back into the months-long melancholy of the early days of their journey. But Henry was making a real effort to be alert and interested in all he saw, and eventually his friend's awkwardness around him began to ease slightly. Jehan's heart ached a little for the might-have-been that had so briefly shown itself on that starlit evening, but the man had been a king, and had taken hard decisions, and had lost everything, and Jehan could not pester him for his own small wants. He confined himself to practicalities.

-x-

When they reached the coast, the question as always was whether to go on or stay, but by now they were used to travelling and had contacts among the merchants who could help them find work. Jehan, a traveller by nature, was glad that Henry seemed to have settled to the life, ready for new sights and challenges, so with the winds still set for the south-east for a month or two yet, and the prospect of a very long wait at the rivermouths if they hesitated, they decided to go on. The cargoes of precious stones which left India by this port were irresistibly attractive to the pirates in these seas. So they sailed, more south than east now, for Malacca, and reached that city, after a few unfriendly encounters, as the winds failed at last.

It was warm, and sticky, and uncomfortable.

There was, however, plenty of work in the great warehouses around the docks, as goods were sorted and stored for the resumption of trade; some to go to India or even to Africa, some to go out along the great island chain to the east; and some were bound for Cathay.

'Two-three months, and we'll be loading for Cathay,' said their warehouse supervisor. 'Tribute, they call it, but we all know they're customers just like everyone else. Good customers too, but they're particular about quality and the paperwork.'

'I barely believed the place existed, and now we're being told that they're finicky customers!' said Henry in wonderment to Jehan.

'People are still people, even here at the edge of the map.'

'And to them, we're at the edge of the map too - Jehan, how can I ever have been your enemy? We lived barely a week's journey apart. We've been travelling nearly a year now, and to the people here we might as well be brothers.'

'They've got no quarrel with us, but they've plenty of wars closer to home…But did you really see me as an enemy?'

'No,' said Henry softly, and looked away, and then, barely audible, 'Don't see you as a brother, either,' and Jehan decided to be pleased by that.

-x-

Their lodgings were on the edge of town, inexpensive because they were at a little distance from the port. Their workmates warned them that when the rains came they would regret their choice, but for the present they lived cheaply in a little hut in a compound of itinerants like themselves. There were palm trees on one side, the sea on the other, and fresh air to replace the pungent odour of spices that surrounded them all day. There was a variety of crawling life that gave Jehan pause at first, but for every spider there was a butterfly, and the trees were full of brightly-coloured, raucous birds. They got to know the people in the compound, and on days when work was slack they would sometimes pile into a boat with their friends and go fishing. Life became almost routine, if working in a port thousands of miles from home could be said to be routine for a king.

Then the monsoon came.

-x-

The heavens opened, suddenly and decisively, as they made their way back to the compound in the dark at the end of a day's work. Water fell out of the sky. Breathing was difficult. They put their heads down, and ran. Under the eaves of the hut they stopped and stripped the water from their hair and clothes, laughing and gasping for air. Jehan watched the torrents sluicing off the overhang of the thatch for a moment as the smell of wet earth, decaying vegetation and orchids rose into the night, and then he dragged open the door and went in. Henry followed.

'They warned us, but I didn't quite believe it,' Jehan said, 'and this is just the beginning.' He still had the lantern in his hand, and stretched up to hang it on its peg.

No answer. He looked round, and Henry was watching him, fear and longing in his eyes. No mistaking that look. 'Oh,' he said. The rain was loud.

'Jehan.' Henry didn't seem able to find anything else to say, but reached out, putting his hands softly on him, pulling his arm down gently, taking the lantern from him and setting it on the floor. Then he stopped, for Jehan was holding him at a little distance with a dripping hand on his dripping face; but the fingers were twining in his hair.

'What's the matter?' asked Henry, anxious.

'All we've got is each other. We have to be able to rely on each other. If we try for more than friendship, and fail, we're lost.'

'That worried me, too. But I think we're good enough friends that we could survive that. We'd be friends who've been lovers, too. Jehan, we're grown men, not selfish boys. I know it's hard work being close to someone.'

Jehan remembered why he would know that and said quickly, 'Queen Katherine. Henry, what of her?'

'I think I know why she went to Wales,' Henry was almost muttering. Jehan had to bend his head close to hear him. 'There was someone she liked, a young nobleman. She'll be safe with him, and he'll make her happier than I ever could. He's a good man. But we've got our own chance at happiness, you and I, Jehan, if you think I'm worth the risk. Sweet friend, mignon. You've taken so many risks for me.' His arm went up round Jehan's neck, and they stood close and silent for a few moments. Jehan slid his arms around Henry and he lowered his head until his lips were on Henry's hair. 'I won't ask anything of you that you're not willing to give,' continued Henry after a while. 'I'll take whatever you can offer and be thankful, and offer as much and more in return.' That was about as solid a declaration of love and intent as Jehan could imagine any man giving. His fingers moved back up into Henry's hair, and resumed their stroking. Henry sighed.

Jehan smiled down at him. 'You know, you look just like you did all those years ago in Picardy. Remember how it rained? Every time I saw you, you were soaking wet. And I kept having these mad half-impulses to touch you, to try to warm you – like this -' his embrace tightened around Henry – 'and I couldn't understand myself at all. Never thought I'd feel that way about another man. And after the battle, when you all but collapsed into my arms, it was all I could do not to hold you close, even there on the battlefield.' He urged Henry's head up, tracing gentle fingers over his mouth, and they kissed, warmth and rain and salt from the sea air. Henry whispered 'Oh. That's better.' They leaned their foreheads together, and kissed for a second time.

'Jehan, the battle,' said Henry, when he could speak again.

'There are always battles. Civil wars, rebellions, raids, invasions. Every nation on earth has its battles. I was a herald, remember? I've probably seen more battles than you. Henry, we can't change what's past. What matters is what we do in the future. And I never stopped wanting to touch you – when I let the thought through, that is. My beleaguered young enemy king. You were driven, just like the rest of us.' They kissed again, while the rain hammered on the roof and the water from their bodies formed a little pool around their feet. Then they broke the kiss, the better to look at each other.

'Herald of France, are you telling me that all the time I was leading an army through your country, you were having impure thoughts about me?'

'The thought crept in. From time to time. Of a soaking wet young Englishman. In my arms. I knew I had no chance, ever.'

'You had a chance, even then. I - noticed you. You kept turning up when I was wet through or covered in mud, and you always looked so aloof and immaculate. Sometimes I wanted to get you to look a little less immaculate.'

Realising they were talking too much, Jehan ran a gently enquiring fingertip down the side of Henry's neck. 'How would you have done that?'

Sudden intake of breath. 'Like this,' Henry said, and began to undress him at last.

-x-

The weeks went by, and the rains eased. The great ships which had lain idle in the harbour began to take on cargo again. The warehouses emptied, and the work dried up. They would have to leave their little hut between the palm trees and the sea. So they signed on, to follow the tides of trade once more.

-x-

Their European looks were an asset now, rather than a curiosity, as they were so obviously not local pirates infiltrating the ships' crews. So for three months or more they got work easily, sailing on south-westerly winds, up around the coast of Cathay, and at the end of that time they fetched up at a vast port that made every city they had seen so far look small and quiet. At a tea-house not far from the docks they heard the news that the old Emperor was dead. Rumour had it that his son was closing the trade routes. All foreigners might have to leave the Empire before long.

They sighed and sat back over their tea.

'We couldn't have gone much further anyway. No ships to the east, and north is out of the question with those raids coming in from Nippon,' said Henry.

'We still need to move on. We'll have contrary winds all the way if we go back the way we came, at least until the north-easterlies begin, and we must be out of the country by then.'

'So, west it is, then.'

Their contacts at the tea-house led them to a consortium of merchants who needed men to escort a last caravan to the border, and so they left Shanghai, which was now an uneasy place as its people worried about their livelihoods, with some relief.

Upriver they came to the old capital, and it took a whole day to cross. But they were beyond wonder by now, and simply concentrated on their new work and on getting to know their fellow-travellers. The language was difficult even for Jehan, but by the time they left the crowded valley-lands (to his relief) a month later they could get by in it without too many problems. They journeyed on. Rice paddies gave way to wheat fields gave way to grazing. More huge rivers, more great cities, and though they were still speaking Mandarin they began, very occasionally, in a provincial capital or large market, to hear Persian. Henry groaned, and began to practice the language with Jehan again, and then to take pride in being able occasionally to provide translations: a very new experience for him. Jehan grumbled that he'd be out of a job soon. Still they rode on, Jehan now wearing a sword that Henry had found for him in a small market town.

In the fourth month from the coast their friends started to look more often at the grasslands sweeping in from the north, and they began to see groups of soldiers and peasants moving across the landscape. 'They're repairing the wall,' said Zhen, the guard captain. 'Not before time, if you ask me.'

'Wall?' asked Henry.

'To keep the northern barbarians out. You'll see.'

'We had a wall in - my - country as well, to keep the northerners out.'

'Did it work?'

'No, never. We always found it was more effective to keep them fighting amongst themselves.'

'We should try that. All our wall ever did was delay them for a while. And even when we managed to defeat them, there were always more barbarians moving down from the north.'

'Wherever you go, there are northern barbarians,' said Jehan. 'Even the sea can't keep them out.'

'You had the same problem, then?' enquired Zhen, with sympathy.

'Oh, yes. But it was partly our own fault. We were so busy quarrelling in our own house that we never noticed the lion at the door,' and the lion in question, blushing under the grime on his face, shot Jehan a look that said 'You wait till I get you alone tonight.'

A week or so later they rounded a spur of low hills, crowned with watchtowers, and got a clear view to the north for the first time in days, and Henry said 'My God so that's your wall?'

Zhen grinned. 'Foreigners never understand until they see it. It's pointless even trying to explain.'

The caravan halted in the shelter of a grove of poplar trees, so that the foreigners could gawp and the traders could eat.

'This is – I never imagined – how far does it go?'

'From the desert to the eastern sea.'

'How far is it to the sea?'

'Three months' journey.'

'Good God.' The rest of the men were enjoying their astonishment.

Small figures, busy as ants, were visible on the rampart. Jehan and Henry looked to their left, and then, disbelieving, to their right, and back again. Laughter and friendly jeers sounded around them. 'Every single foreigner does that!' The traders got their meal out, unloaded the beasts to graze, and prepared to enjoy the incredulity of their own foreigners, definitely with an air of having seen it all before.

'You brought us this way on purpose,' accused Jehan.

'Of course we did. Wouldn't be any fun if you could see it coming days away, would it?'

'My God,' said Henry again. Someone pushed flatbread and a flask into Jehan's hands, and he took them without noticing.

After a while they calmed down enough to be able to ask sensible questions, Jehan taking over when Henry's Mandarin failed him.

'Forced labour,' he said, in response to Henry's questions about the maintenance of the wall.

'Ah,' said Henry in tones of such comprehension that Jehan blinked.

'You're looking for weak points in it, aren't you.'

'No need to look. The whole wall's a weak point. No wonder they can't keep the barbarians out.'

Jehan looked again at the massive structure, and said, 'I know you're a military genius and I'm but a humble herald -' Henry snorted – 'but what have you seen that these people haven't?'

'Our way is better. We haven't needed our wall for nearly a thousand years. Though I'll admit that that,' he nodded northwards 'is a lot more impressive than the Roman wall. I was expected something along the same lines. I feel a complete idiot. Ignorant foreigner indeed!'

'I still can't see the weakness.'

'It isn't walls that defend a country, it's men.' Jehan began to have a vague inkling of what he was talking about, remembering King Henry at the head of his ragtag army, all carrying the most fearsomely effective weapons it had ever been his misfortune to come across, and apparently entirely trusted by him.

A pity Henry's own brother was less trustworthy.

'You have the sea, as well, in England.'

'Yes, that helps. But only up to a point.' Henry went thoughtful, still scanning the wall; they finished their meal, packed up and went on.

They went on for weeks more into the worsening weather, and stopped at the gate of empire, Jiayuguan, where the wall turned south at last and blocked the pass that led out into the desert of the Taklamakan.

Some of the merchants would turn back here, with goods that had come in across the desert; some were going on, planning to return by their own private routes if the new Emperor set a watch on the main roads. The traders just in from Central Asia, with no good grace, prepared to turn back, but all made profits on what might be the last exchange of goods on this route for a long time. So as the worst of the weather abated they made ready to cross the desert. Henry, whose continuing care to train Jehan in swordsmanship had not gone unnoticed, was the guard captain of the new caravan, for Zhen was going back home. News had come in by imperial messenger that the coastlands were to be cleared, as part of the new inward-looking policy, and he had to get back to his family.

Henry and Jehan had looked blankly at Zhen when he passed on the news of the evacuation. 'You're not serious? Your Emperor can really do that?' Henry asked, and Zhen said, 'Of course he can. Can't your king?'

'No,' said Henry, with finality.

They looked at each other in incomprehension. 'Foreigners,' said Zhen. 'Well, I'd better tell you about the Taklamakan. The first thing you need to know is that the name means 'He who goes in never returns' but it isn't really as bad as that, not quite,' and after this less than cheering start he took Henry methodically through all he needed to know; you can dig here for water if you're desperate; watch out for bandits at this spring, there's a place where they can ambush you; this is what you do if there's a flood, and yes they do happen. As the caravan filed through the tunnel under the fortress Jehan did his best to forget all he'd read about this desert, long ago back in France. There were enough real dangers ahead without worrying about imaginary ones.

-x-

Three weeks travelling across drying lands from oasis to oasis, and then a long stretch without a source of water, and it was with huge relief that they reached the first spur of the northern mountains. Climbing a little way into the foothills they came to a small lake surrounded by fir trees, and drank, and swam, and watered the beasts. On the way back to the road, Henry noticed scars branded into many of the tree-trunks, but only on the older trees. It was always the same device, three small circles formed into a triangle.

'This sign,' he asked Liang, who'd travelled this road many times. 'What does it mean?'

The trader, who had been with them since Shanghai, spat, and spoke a name that Henry hadn't heard for a long time. 'Tamburlaine,' as if that explained everything.

'What? Here?' Henry's mind went back to the devastated plains of India, and traced the distances they'd journeyed in the year since then. 'He got this far?'

'Almost to the Wall. He wasn't here himself; his men did this. If he'd been leading his armies, not even the desert would have stopped them. The Wall certainly wouldn't.'

Henry tried to imagine the destruction Tamburlaine would have wreaked on the orderly and ancient lands of Cathay. 'You were incredibly fortunate.'

'We know. And yet, while he was alive, he protected the merchants. All the world was afraid of him, but he knew the value of trade, especially if it passed through his capital at Samarkand. He was at the crossroads, there. But to have him this close to your borders?' He shuddered.

The caravan descended through the woods, quiet on the carpet of needles, the resinous air a benison after the desert. Henry looked at the scarred trees. There must be forests like this all over Asia, marked with Tamburlaine's sign. Henry had a vision of a continent astir with armies, years on the road, bringing destruction or prosperity in their wake, and hardly spoke for the rest of the day.

That night, they reached the next oasis town, and in their attic room in the caravanserai he burrowed into Jehan's arms. 'Mignon, what's the matter?' asked Jehan, with sleepy concern, but he couldn't answer, because he didn't know himself.

Three days later, men and pack animals rested, they set out again through the narrow gateway between sentinel crags and the river, and on into true desert, heading for another chain of oases a week away; and it was of course while they were at the mid-point of this stretch that the sky turned dirty copper and lightning began to flicker far above them. They turned back to the ruined city they'd left that morning and reached its shelter as the sandstorm howled down on them. Two days of misery, the wind shrieking for hours, sand clogging their lungs despite the shelter; and then abruptly the wind dropped and there was a light pattering of rain. They emerged from the ruins, and went on. Then, under the southernmost slopes of the Tien Shan, the Heavenly Mountains, they encountered the survivors of another caravan, and then a company of soldiers from the next oasis, coming down out of the foothills, and their news was bad.

-x-

'We need the water,' said Henry.

Qurgan, the next oasis, was under attack.

'Nomads, from beyond the hills. They've been getting bolder all along this stretch of the road. It was only a matter of time.' Ghazan, the troop leader, a veteran who had taken over when his officer was killed, sketched out the situation to Henry; Jehan on hand to facilitate the translation. They had got into cover and Henry, who commanded the largest number of men in the three forces, listened to Ghazan's story in silence. The tale unfolded. Movements of the nomads in the hills, a scouting party sent out, their own signallers found dead, and then, when they returned to the oasis, the town surrounded and the road cut off.

'They'll have sent riders to Aschur to the west, but who knows if they'll get through? Or if the garrison at Aschur can spare the men? There have been raids all along this section of the road, a year or more.'

'And we need the water,' repeated Henry, and they did. Those days lost to the sandstorm had ensured that they wouldn't reach Aschur, even if they managed to get past Qurgan. 'Tell me…' He got the details out of the survivors, the lie of the land, asking opinions and advice from all of the locals and from his own men. Jehan listened and translated as necessary, and felt the dread which had settled over him begin to lift. Henry knew what he was about, of course. They were far from helpless. He watched the men steady down as they realised the same, that this was no ordinary guard captain leading them. Ghazan began to draw maps in the sand.

An hour or two later, Henry had his tactics clear, and spoke to the men, drawing them round him as he had with his own army at Agincourt. Hampered by his workaday knowledge of the language, he couldn't inspire his troops as he had done that day, (Jehan had caught the tail end of that speech, and had all but switched sides there and then) but his confidence was very clear.

'We march in absolute silence; I'll enforce that. Ghazan here will take us in through the hills. We'll leave the camels outside the oasis with all those who can't fight. The rest of us will go on with the horses and then Ghazan's men will take us up to the town. We'll attack while it's still dark to offset their greater numbers and their horse archers. Strike where they're strongest. They'll find it harder to regroup that way. Remember, they just want plunder; we'll be fighting for our lives or our families' lives. Right, lads – let's go!'

The last words were called out in English, but it seemed the 'lads' understood, for they raised a muffled cheer before silencing themselves and leading off, Jehan and Ghazan riding in the second rank just behind Henry. The column of men, horses and camels moved almost inaudibly over the sparse feathergrass of the foothills.

They approached Qurgan as the night wore on, through orchards and fields, creeping along walls and irrigation ditches. Stopping at a well, they paused to drink while some of the local men went ahead as scouts.

'By the fires over there,' said Ghazan when he returned. 'That's where the main force is. They're over-confident, careless.'

'That's our objective, then. Leave the horses here; we can take theirs if necessary. Small rearguard stays behind. Ghazan, Jehan, with me.'

They struck hard and fast, through the horse-lines, artillery overwhelmed and disabled, on to the next knot of attackers and through them too, confusion spreading in their wake as the nomads' lines of command were broken. As the noise of the counter-attack rose into the dawn, sally-ports opened in the town walls, and parties of the defenders raced out to join the fight. The attackers, their own tactics of mobile warfare turned unexpectedly on them, staggered under this new shock as the light grew. Then news came from the town walls that a small group of the nomads was making an escape. Separated from Henry in the charge, Jehan heard from Liang, injured and left behind, that Henry had cursed, gathered together what horsemen he could, and vanished in pursuit.

-x-

Jehan, in his first full-scale battle, had fought like everyone else. A year and more of concentrated tuition from Henry had ensured that. Now his body shook and shook through the reaction. He cleaned his sword awkwardly, sheathed it, and looked around him for the distraction of something useful to do.

Fires were smoking here and there on the battlefield. Small parties of townsfolk were quartering it, searching for the wounded of both sides, their shouts sharp through the chill air of dawn. He found the garrison commander, located those of their own men who hadn't gone with Henry, sent back for the caravans, and settled down to liaison work, a new twist on the once-familiar role of herald.

Qurgan had not suffered much in the attack. Henry's forces had arrived before much damage could be done, and the attacking nomads had not been numerous. But even so, the town could not have held out long, and they'd had no reply to the plea for help they'd sent to Aschur.

Arun, the garrison commander, had sent as many men as he could spare after Henry soon after the first charge from the town walls. 'We need to find their lair and clear it out if we can. We can't let them get word back to their own people.' It was as Ghazan had said; all this section of the road was problematical now. Even the clearing-out of any lair would not ease the situation much. As Zhen had said, there were always more nomads coming in from the north, and with the trade route from Cathay closing there seemed little point in defending the oasis towns.

Jehan, suddenly turning back into Montjoy, wondered if negotiation might be the answer to the problem, considered what he knew of the history of the region, and knew with absolute certainty that this was not a mission he wanted to undertake himself. He and Arun continued to make arrangements for accommodation at the caravanserai; all the water and food the men needed, the same for the animals; medical care; and baths.

From time to time he continued to look out to the northern horizon, but news came in from the west first: All this part of the road is being abandoned. Break out and retreat to Aschur. We will send help if we can.

'We would have been lost without you and your Henry,' observed Arun, as they sat in his office, snatching a meal in the middle of another planning session.

'How soon might the help from Aschur reach us?' Jehan's food sat heavy in his stomach.

'Four days for troops. But we can't risk waiting for them, and it'll take longer than that to get there with the townsfolk.'

'We have the horses and wagons we captured.'

'Those will help. Water, food, transport for the old and sick…' Arun was not a native of Qurgan, but still took his responsibilities very seriously. 'Your friend. Once we're ready to go, we can't wait for him. I'm sorry.'

Jehan had known it. 'He's beaten overwhelming odds before. Get the evacuation ready. When the time comes, I'll know whether to go or stay.' He would stay of course, maybe with some of their friends from Shanghai, but there was no point asking for help from Arun, whose duty lay with the people of Qurgan. 'How long before you're ready to leave?'

'Two days.'

'What help do you need?' So the conversation was turned away from the unthinkable.

But that night, signal rockets went up in the north, 'victory, returning', which told Jehan nothing that he needed to know. Rather than trying to sleep, isolated in his room, he got up and continued the work on the evacuation; the caravanserai and its warehouses had become the centre of this operation.

Early in the morning Jehan was multiplying number of wagons by sacks of flour and making a tally of the result to send to the town's mill when word came in from Arun. A messenger had arrived from the north. Few casualties, commanders safe. Jehan sat down very suddenly on a pile of blankets, and couldn't think at all for a few minutes. One of the women, Sarai he thought it was, patted him kindly on the shoulder and handed him a cup of tea. He blinked back tears and tried to hold it still long enough to drink it.

He was at the infirmary, talking to the town's physicians and working out how to transport the sick and wounded, when the pursuit party returned, each man leading a couple of extra horses or ponies with him. Shouts and cheers followed their progress into the town, but by the time he'd settled the question of transport, Henry and Ghazan had disappeared into conference with Arun, and there was always more to be organised, so he simply carried on. It was evening by the time he got away.

Henry had reported on the foray to Arun. The retreating nomads had been hunted down, no signals sent that they knew of, most of the attackers killed and their mounts taken, but they couldn't be sure that none of them had escaped to get the word out. Qurgan was too vulnerable to try to hold. They had agreed that evacuation was the only way. He had seen his men settled, snatched a meal and cleaned himself up, found his way to Jehan's room in the upper levels of the caravanserai, and slept for a while. It was here that Jehan finally found him, rising rumpled from the bed, the evening light slanting in through the casement turning his sun-bleached hair back to the ruddy fair it had been when they had first met. Jehan, seeing him standing there blinking, surrounded by lazy floating dust motes lit by the same light, simply had no words.

Henry was smiling, saying something about the pursuit, but Jehan cut this off with a desperate hug, feeling the real and solid warmth of him. Then, still speechless, he stripped him with single-minded purpose, inspected him minutely for hurts and finally, with fears relieved, picked him up (surprising them both) and took him to bed.

-x-

As the cooling night air flowed in through the open window Jehan shifted to let Henry extricate himself from the tangled mass of bedclothes. He went across to close the shutters, pausing to scan the northern horizon. Pointlessly; he would see nothing. He swung the shutters closed and returned to bed.

'I'm not complaining at all, you understand,' he said as Jehan received him back into the curve of his arm. 'But why now, in particular?'

Many reasons. 'I, er. Had to be sure you were real, and whole.'

'I was whole. Not any more,' mock complaint grumbled into the hollow of Jehan's shoulder; but after his initial surprise Henry had been very willing. 'What took you so long? I simply thought you didn't fancy me that way.'

'You're a king.'

'Still bothered by that? It was far away and long ago.'

'Easy for you to say. If it hadn't mattered, you'd have let Scroop inside you.'

Henry put out a hand, and turned Jehan's face towards him. 'If it mattered that much, I wouldn't have let you inside me. I couldn't quite trust Scroop enough. You, I trust, to the ends of the earth and inside my own body. Don't leave it as long till next time, hmm?'

'Then I won't. And you might have to get used to being thoroughly rogered every time you come back from a battle.'

A huff of laughter against his neck. Soft breaths sighing down towards sleep; then, on the brink of unconsciousness, a last murmur: 'I thought heralds were supposed to be good with words?'

-x-

'We were lucky,' said Henry the next morning, continuing the story of the pursuit which Jehan had interrupted so summarily the night before. 'They were over-confident, and there weren't many of them. We caught up with them before they had time to signal for reinforcements. But the news will have got out by now. We had to kill all we could,' and he cast a careful eye at Jehan, who simply nodded, glad that the decision had not been his to take '- but some will have got away. We've got days, no more, if they decide it's worth a counter-attack.'

'The township's ready to evacuate. Arun will probably want to leave today.'

In the end it was evening when they set out. Troops and horses had to be rested, the injured tended and equipment overhauled. Henry had looked in on Arun and been sent back to his room to rest, which he did with a slightly startled air, still not being quite used to such treatment, for all his 'far away and long ago' of last night. So he slept, while preparations for the departure surged in the courtyard beneath. Arun, whom Jehan respected more every day, oversaw the final arrangements with calm competence, leaving Jehan with remarkably little to do in the last hours before departure. He went back to their room, nudged Henry over in the bed, and settled in beside in him.

'I've got to be able to ride tonight,' mumbled Henry, only half-awake and not sounding altogether unwilling.

'I know. I just want to get some sleep, that's all.' He kissed Henry's shoulder, settled him more comfortably into his arms, and dropped into a doze. The chance of a few hours in a bed with his beloved was not to be missed.

-x-

A thump on the door woke them as the sun neared the horizon, and they dressed and went downstairs to eat their last meal in Qurgan. Families, marshalled by commanding grandmothers, were filing into the caravanserai, soldiers arming, traders loading up, children herding animals or smaller siblings. Many of the women carried bows, and some wore lamellar armour, which made Henry raise his eyebrows; in the Khmer lands he'd got used to seeing women in positions of authority but women soldiers were something new to him. But the more fighters they had, the better.

They stopped at the infirmary to gather up the sick, and a thin moon lit their way out of the oasis. They travelled in silence. Henry, glad for once not to be in the lead, stayed with those who had gone a-hunt in the hills in the centre of the long caravan. The troops who had stayed in Qurgan formed the van and rearguards.

Sunrise saw them encamped in a patch of tumbled ground, defensible in an emergency and with a tiny hidden spring. There was little to do but watch and wait. So the pattern of the next few days was set, march by night, rest by day, cold food, silence enforced as far as possible. The desert stretched before them. Sometimes Henry was able to sleep at Jehan's side, sometimes not as the troops rotated through their duties, day-watch, scouting, main escort; often Jehan was busy with his own tasks of liaison and translation. A few times, to his own surprise because he knew how his looks set him apart, Henry came in for interested glances from some of the young women, and once or twice these were positively inviting. Jehan came in for similar treatment from time to time, coming into contact with the townsfolk much more often than Henry. He coped with such small incidents with his usual diplomat's courtesy, and was apparently much less bothered by them than Henry, who didn't know how to deal with them at all.

'Pretend you can't understand a word they're saying,' advised Jehan, in English and an amused undertone, as Henry nodded and smiled awkwardly at a group of girls, passing unnecessarily close, who burst then into smothered giggles.

'They're speaking a language anyone could understand!' An exasperated rejoinder.

'You'll have to get used to being a hero. They know what would have happened to them if you hadn't raised the siege.'

'Not just me. Everyone fought.'

'You led us. You took the responsibility.'

Henry smiled for a moment, glad that he'd made a difference, and then suddenly he sobered and looked away.

'Now what?'

Henry sighed. 'At Harfleur. I made threats. Against the women, and the old folk, and the children.'

'As I recall, you treated them very well in the end.'

'They didn't know I had no intention of harming them. I played on their fears.'

'Would you do that again?'

'No!'

'So, you've learned. I'd say you paid off all your debts a few days ago. And if I know you, you'll be defending us with your life, all the way to Aschur. Henry, we'd all be dead by now if it wasn't for you. Except for the girls, and some of the boys.' He nodded at the group of youngsters, now on their way back from this campsite's spring. 'And they'd be wishing they were dead.'

Henry looked at them, and at the families camped round them, the wagons with the sick and the animals in their makeshift pens, and got to his feet. 'I'll go and see what help Arun needs.'

'Don't wear yourself out. We've got a long way to go yet.'

Jehan watched him make his way through the camp, and stretched out in the morning sun. Henry was the love of his life (and he must tell him that sometime) but there was no denying that he could be quite hard work.

-x-

The next day, they sighted a company of horsemen coming up out of the west. Careful observation identified them as troops from Aschur, sent belatedly to the relief of Qurgan, and after meeting up with them, they were able to travel further and faster. Henry's pursuit of the nomads, and destruction of their main camp, had done more to lift the threat from the north than they'd realised.

'It seems you killed one of their khans, and they'll need to choose a new one,' Arun explained, with Jehan's help, when he'd conferred with the leader of the relief column. 'This branch of the road is still being abandoned, but now we can do it in a much more orderly fashion. They'll be pleased in Samarkand.'

'Well, that's good, if we can bring the people in safely.' Henry's eyes swept over the camp, and his face relaxed for the first time in a long while.

Two days later they reached Aschur, and the process repeated itself along the journey to the city of Kashgar, guarding the passes to Samarkand. There were a few deaths along the way; it was a hard trek for all its lack of incident, but there were some births as well, and things could have been so much worse.

And every so often, they had overheard a muttered comment, around camp fires or in the corner of a caravanserai or at a well while they waited to water the beasts: 'This wouldn't have happened in Tamburlaine's day.'

-x-

At Kashgar they halted for two weeks' rest. Henry and Jehan went along to the governor's office with Arun and the other garrison commanders, and made their reports. With the northern route round the Taklamakan abandoned and the border with Cathay sealed theirs was the last caravan to cross the desert. The merchants found their old contacts; prices were good, but as always the question arose: where now?

'North is the steppe; south is India, a long way. West is Samarkand. Mountains either way. Cross them before the passes close, unless you want to stay here all winter,' they were advised.

'Samarkand?' said Jehan in surprise. He hadn't realised they were so close. It felt odd to be approaching the fabled city from the other end of the world. 'Well, I've been there before; we were there for months. Is Ulugh Beg still prince there?' and he was, they were told.

So Samarkand it was. Rested, fed and watered, they loaded up again the day after a cacophonous market and climbed the long valley into the Pamirs, most of the camels exchanged now for massive hairy beasts unlike anything Jehan had seen before. Henry looked at them warily and said, 'They're rather like Scottish cattle, only about three times the size,' and kept a respectful distance from them. They went up through tall, quiet forests, through steep meadows tapestried with wildflowers, hugging the edges of gorges all boulder and scree, and into the snowfields between mountains like the roof-line of the world. Bones marked their way. At night Henry and Jehan huddled close in a pile of blankets but none of the traders remarked on it; they were all doing the same. Even in the rest-houses it was icy at night.

Valley and pass, valley and pass, and then they dropped down into an immense vale, reached Samarkand amongst its tall trees and farmland, and there they stopped. The now-familiar exchange of goods, traders and beasts went on, but for the first time in a long while they saw a west-bound caravan depart without them. It was a year since Shanghai; eighteen months since Malacca; over two years since their odyssey had begun. They were utterly exhausted.

Arun had returned to the capital with them and took Henry along to his headquarters with a glowing report about his part in defeat of the nomads and the long retreat along the edge of the Taklamakan. As a result of this, Henry found himself made tarkhan, a signal honour for a foreigner.

'Similar to being a knight, I think,' he said, bemused but very pleased nonetheless. 'Did I ever tell you that one of my ancestors was a khan from these parts?'

Jehan hadn't known, but felt that it explained quite a lot about Henry's character.

There was work to be had on short-haul caravans around Samarkand, but even Jehan had had enough of travel for a while. They had made enough money over the last year to be able to afford small rooms in the papermakers' street, and there they stayed for the winter months. Jehan showed Henry the city, which had grown since he had left it so many years before. Ulugh Beg had all Tamburlaine's passion for building and display, but none of his capacity for destruction. One day they walked out past the nobles' palaces and the city wall to see the scholar-prince's new observatory on its hill.

'I never did teach you the Zodiac,' Jehan remarked to Henry, as they sat by the river gazing at the great round building.

Henry laughed, remembering how he'd taken the opportunity to get close to him. 'It was the stargazer I was interested in, not the stars.'

'Ah. I wondered. And you backed away, and looked completely miserable about it for weeks afterwards.'

'I came face to face with what he'd done,' with a jerk of his head back at the city, because who knew what ghosts might stir if the old monster's name was spoken, 'and I saw myself as others might see me. And I was ashamed. How could I come to you as a lover, after what I'd done?'

'Queen Katherine didn't blame you for that. I never blamed you.'

'You and she saw the best of me.'

'We've been through all this before. Your first duty was to your people and your country.'

'I would try to fulfil that duty differently now.'

They sat quietly on the old stone bench, the trees turning gold around them, gold carpeting the ground underfoot.

'I wonder what's happening there, at this very moment?'

-x-

Jehan found work, better-paid than Henry for once, when he visited the bookshops at the centre of the bazaar. In one of these his eye fell on a volume lying disregarded on a cabinet, unlike the rest which were carefully displayed on individual shelves. Something about the style of binding looked familiar. Glancing at the bookseller for permission, he picked it up and found it was the Romance of the Rose.

'I can let you have that at a good price, if you want it,' said the bookseller. 'It came from far away in the west, years ago. No-one here can read it, but I've never had the heart to throw it out, because the illustrations are beautiful.'

'I could translate it for you, if you liked,' said Jehan.

The bookseller's head went up. 'You can read that language?'

'I should hope so. It's French, and so am I.'

'I have other books from Europe that have come in over the years. Come through,' and the bookseller locked the shop and took him into his stockroom, where more volumes were stacked in cupboards, and a large orange cat occupied the only chair. Jehan went through the European books, picking out the ones he could read, and they decided which ones would be most likely to sell at court. Jehan said, 'But I can't write in your language. Do you have someone who could transcribe for me?' They worked out a deal, and Jehan left with the most dog-eared of the romances packed in a box under his arm.

He progressed to being trusted with the newer volumes, and when he came home with English editions, Henry would seize upon them as soon as he walked through the door, and would not be parted from them. In the end they worked out a system whereby they could both read the precious books at once, lying on their battered old sofa, one of them resting back against the other's chest. This had the advantage as winter drew on of keeping them both warm, though sometimes the book had to be closed and placed carefully on a table as they attended to more pressing matters. Still, the translations got done one way or another.

They were reading through a romance of King Arthur when they came across the phrase 'rex quondam, rexque futurus.' Henry put the book down abruptly, got up and paced about the room for a few moments, and then disappeared out through the door. Jehan watched him go, and then made himself a cup of coffee. This had been bound to happen sooner or later.

Henry returned after an hour or so, gave Jehan the forthright look that he hadn't seen for so long and said, 'I have to go back.'

'I know,' said Jehan. 'Sit down. You can't go this instant.'

'I can't think why it's taken me so long.'

'Then a week or two longer won't matter, will it?'

'I'll ask at the caravanserai tomorrow. I haven't seen much traffic since the snows began, but we need to know when the first one's due to leave.'

'I've been thinking about that, and I don't see why we need to join a caravan. Why not lead one of our own?'

-x-

The caravan left in January, Henry and Jehan having taken an emotional farewell of their friends (though some of the young men of Qurgan, who still lacked steady employment, were coming with them as guards). They headed out through the western gate along the road Jehan had travelled so long ago. The country was well-peopled to begin with, and then there was a great river full of sandbanks, and another desert, which seemed tame after the Taklamakan. On into the spring through a narrow land between snow-capped peaks and a great freshwater sea, and then through a green mountainous country where Jehan's powers of translation were taxed to the uttermost. On a warm summer evening they came into Trebizond, last outpost of the Byzantine Empire, on the shores of the Black Sea. They went down the hill to the Italian enclave, and unloaded.

For a week they rested, and then helped their friends prepare for the journey back to Samarkand, taking silver from Trebizond and amber just in from the Baltic, and saw them on their way with mixed feelings.

'They're good lads. They'll do well enough without us, but I half wish I was going back with them,' admitted Jehan.

'They're going home. So are we,' said Henry, looking at him with affection. 'But 'home' doesn't mean quite as much to you as it does to the rest of us, does it? Sometimes I wonder if you went into exile with me just for the chance to travel.'

'I had my reasons,' He remembered the slight figure, restless in the sickbed, who had quieted at the sound of his voice; and all the confused feelings long denied that had stirred in his heart then, and how long it had taken him to come to terms with those feelings.

Henry was smiling at him. 'Well, we're not home yet. Months to go still, and then there's the small matter of what to do when we get there. I should speak to those Baltic traders. Find out if they have news from Copenhagen.'

Jehan's eyes went to the northern horizon, and he tracked in his mind the journey they might take, across the sea and upriver to the great ports of the Hanseatic League, and then, perhaps, to Queen Philippa, and Henry's son.

Henry finished his drink and stood up. 'I'll go now,' he said, and Jehan watched him cross the little sunlit square where they'd been sitting under the plane trees, pigeons rising with a clatter of wings and settling again when he'd gone down the stair that switchbacked its way down to the harbour.

-x-

Three weeks later they were travelling north into the cooler weather. What little news they had from the Baltic traders was good. Philippa and the young prince were well, the boy thriving in her care. Of England and France they had been able to learn less. Trade was faltering, that was all. But they had to go anyway.

Now the landscape, people and voices were taking on a familiar turn. Jehan had been to these parts once or twice before, on his way to this or that court, and he was ambushed by memory more and more often, recognising a spire or palace or a fortress on a hill. It was all curiously unsettling in a way that the journey from Samarkand had not been. They were truly coming home, the great disjuncture in his life suddenly closing, and Jehan the exile was finding it hard to become reacquainted with Montjoy the herald.

-x-

They came into Konigsberg on the Baltic as dark was falling, and the first snow of winter with it. Docking and unloading took time, and Henry and Jehan had their own trade goods to oversee now, so they slept on board that night and the next before going into the town to find lodgings, warm clothes and a bank. They fetched up at the sea-guild, and took stock.

'We've done well on the spices,' said Henry, looking at the docket he'd brought from the bank. 'Enough to keep us for a few months, at least…I wonder if some of those spices came from Malacca?'

'Tempted to go back there and do it all again?' Jehan was pulling off his jacket and boots, reddened hands clumsy. The room had a couple of beds, a brazier, and not much else. They would have been warmer in the great hall downstairs, but they were used to cramped quarters. They liked their privacy, and could generate their own warmth.

'Not this year, at any rate. But at least we know we can earn our bread from trade if need be. And talking of bread, I need a hot meal and a drink.'

Down in the hall, with Karl and Olaf, their shipmates since Trebizond, they got both of those, and good company besides. Then the four of them went out for another drink, crossing the snow-quiet streets to a tavern, and then another tavern, losing Karl and Olaf somewhere along the way and getting what snippets of news from the west that they could. Then, in the square in front of the old castle of the Teutonic knights, as they were debating going for another drink or back to their lodgings, Henry clutched at Jehan's arm as a group of riders went past them towards the castle gate, shadowy in the leap of torchlight, and one of them checked his horse, turning in the saddle at the sounds of the voices, stared at Henry, and said incredulously 'Cousin?'

The horseman pulled aside from the other riders with a muttered apology, dismounted, stared again at Henry, and pulled them into the shadow of the gatehouse tower. Jehan saw a middle-aged man with iron-grey hair (though his own was greying now). His clothes were well-worn. Jehan knew him but it was a moment before he placed the memory: the earl of Westmoreland, one of the leaders of the English army on the Agincourt campaign, now embracing Henry and asking disjointed questions, 'Where – how – why didn't - ?'

Henry thumped his back, grinning, and said 'Long story, and I'll tell you, but first, what of Denmark?'

Westmoreland's eyes slid to Henry's companion and Henry said, 'Oh, you remember the French Herald, Montjoy? Jehan, my cousin of Westmoreland.'

Comprehension flooded across the Earl's face and he shook hands and said, 'We heard you'd gone with him, Montjoy, but there was no news after you'd left Malta. So you've been hiding out here all this time, then?'

'No, we came here by a roundabout route. We've been wanting to get news. Tell us, cousin. What's been happening?'

'Ah. Well.' Westmoreland's face sobered. His eyes went to Jehan, and then back to Henry, unsure.

'I've got no secrets from Montjoy. Tell us.'

Still the Earl hesitated. Henry made a small noise of exasperation.

'Henry,' said Jehan quietly. 'It might be necessary for us to have secrets from one another, now. We knew that when we came back.'

Henry pulled him into the corner of wall and gatehouse tower, eyes locked on his. 'No.' Snowflakes drifted down between them.

'Go talk with your cousin. You haven't seen him for years. I'll be back at the sea-guild.' He made to give Henry a little push towards the Earl, but Henry's hands came up and caught his for a moment.

'I'll come back to the guild. Later,' promised Henry, and turned back swiftly to Westmoreland, who was waiting with barely concealed impatience. 'Now, cousin, where away?'

-x-

Jehan was almost asleep when there was a knock at the door. 'Yes?'

'It's me.'

He got up, unlocked the door, and made haste to get back into bed. Henry got rid of his outer clothes and boots, and hesitated.

'Jehan?'

He heard the unspoken request, and shifted over in his bed. Henry shed the rest of his clothes, and huddled under the covers with him. Jehan stifled an exclamation as the cold body touched his, and then with an act of sheer willpower put his arms round him. Henry almost purred at the warmth.

'He said -' There was no urgency in his voice.

'In the morning. We'll think about it tomorrow. Just sleep, for now.' He kissed Henry, reached over him to dowse the candle, and settled them down together.

-x-

The cold grey morning found them, breakfasted and ready, sitting on Jehan's bed and considering Westmoreland's news. Henry's son, youngest brothers and sister all well, England restive under Thomas' inept rule, all Henry's gains in France ceded back to King Charles, and Katherine?

'Married to her Welsh nobleman, and expecting their first child.' Henry managed to sound pleased, relieved and slightly put out, all at once. Then he nudged Jehan's arm with his own. 'It could have been much worse, no?'

'She deserves to be happy. She's a sweet lady.'

'Hmm.' Henry smiled slightly. 'It does make things easier for you and me.' They both stared at the wall opposite, lost in their own thoughts.

'It was always going to be difficult, coming back,' said Jehan after a while.

This limbo came to an end when Westmoreland arrived. He took in at a glance the two beds, one clearly slept in, the other piled high with two sets of jackets, cloaks and bags, his cousin and the Frenchman sitting in relaxed closeness, and betrayed no reaction at all, taking the room's only chair.

'Have you thought about what you'll do?'

'Go to Denmark first and talk to the family. See my son. We don't have to do anything publicly for a while. We can even pay for our board and lodging!' He and Jehan both smiled, remembering times when they'd been hard put to it to do just that. 'And if needs be, we can just fade quietly away again.'

'We? You're not going back to France?' Westmoreland looked at Jehan.

'I'd hardly be welcome at court.' That was something he and Henry had worried at; unthinkable that he could betray either his country or his lover. In the end Jehan had said, 'Henry. We'll think of something. We've been halfway round the world and back; we ought to be able to manage this. We don't have to solve it today.'

'Diplomat,' Henry had said, without rancour, and they'd left it at that.

'Then, if you and Montjoy are for Denmark, I'll go on round the Baltic cities raising finances,' for that was what the Earl was doing here in Konigsberg, the finances being for an attempt to oust Thomas and salvage the kingdom for the young prince, 'but I'll make no mention of you as yet!' He was smiling. After three years he saw something to hope for. 'I'll give you letters for Queen Philippa and your brothers. You'd never be allowed near them as you are.'

'You should have seen us last year.' Henry looked down at his clothes, workaday but new and whole; he and Jehan grinned at each other, remembering the crossing of the Taklamakan and the frightful figures they cut when they'd trudged into Kashgar from that desert.

'And you'll need money for the voyage to Copenhagen, though I don't know when a suitable ship will be leaving.'

'We can work our way if necessary. It would be quicker than waiting for a passenger ship. Cheaper, too.' Jehan felt it was time he reasserted his presence.

'We'd make a profit! They'll know downstairs which ships are going. We can be in Denmark inside a fortnight. What are people buying in Copenhagen?'

Westmoreland blinked. 'Was it like this, all the way to Cathay and back?'

'Yes,' they said in unison. 'And sometimes it was a lot more eventful,' added Henry.

His cousin, sobered, said 'I shouldn't let you go without an escort. We can't lose you now the end's in sight.'

'Jehan's kept me alive these last three years. We don't need an escort for a little sea-voyage.'

'In any case an escort would only attract attention, and either of us might be recognised this close to home,' pointed out Jehan, though he suddenly saw how they'd spent those years, as though nothing could wholly touch them. They'd sallied into dangers that would have given them pause in their old lives, and now that they had returned, danger became somehow real again.

'Be of good cheer, cousin,' said Henry solemnly. 'We're as likely to be shipwrecked as passengers as traders. Maybe you'll be the one to go to the bottom of the Baltic.'

Westmorland, with bad grace, conceded the point. 'You'll be staying here, then, rather than coming to the inn with me?' He wasn't slow on the uptake, and was getting used to Henry again, the speed and decisiveness of him.

'That's the idea. We'll be two ordinary traders.'

-x-

Several ports later, the ordinary traders were in a tavern near the docks (the kind of tavern that Jehan had never considered entering before travelling with Henry, and now regarded as rather tame) bidding a warm and slightly maudlin farewell to Karl and Olaf, and promising to keep an eye out for them. 'And we might, at that,' said Henry, with a thoughtful look that meant he'd had another idea; and they made their way through the port and into Copenhagen to find a lodging for the night.

They dropped their luggage on one of the beds of their room, perhaps the last time that they would do that, and debated who should take Westmoreland's letter to Henry's brothers.

'You'll be recognised if you take it,' argued Jehan. 'They'll have people in their household who know you. If word gets out - ' to France. He stopped. 'Henry, I - '

'What is it?'

It wasn't the time to talk about divided loyalties. 'I'll take the letter.'

In the dim light of a winter's afternoon Henry looked straight at him. 'Tell me.'

Jehan's eyes wavered away from him. 'Henry, mignon, I love you. You know that. But I love France too. There's a voice in my head that's telling me I should remember that. Now that we're almost home.'

Henry squatted in front of him as he sat miserably on the bed, and took his hands. 'We should have talked this out before, but there was no time, and I want to see my brothers again, now. But remember what you said? We'll find a way round it? And one of the ways is that, if ever I'm a king again, there'll be no more adventuring in France. Unless there are more attacks on England, and I'd make sure that wouldn't happen.'

'Would it be that simple?'

'There are other ways to be a power in the world than to wage war.' Well, Henry would always be Henry. 'I've learned that much in three years, wouldn't you say?'

'Yes.'

'So, Herald. Will you take the letter?'

-x-

The letter, handed to Henry's brother the Duke of Bedford, resulted in their swift removal to his house in a suppressed storm of emotion. Messages were dispatched to the dukes of Exeter and Gloucester, to summon them from their army commands. Another message to Queen Philippa, and Henry was gone to the palace with Bedford, leaving Jehan to sit out the ebb-tide of homecoming in the quiet house. A hot bath, the best meal he'd had in months, and he found his way to his bed and stretched out in it with a weary sigh, to be woken, hours later, by someone sliding in beside him. 'Alright?' he whispered, and Henry answered 'Yes,' and slung an arm around him; but complained in the morning that the bed was too small (roomy though it was compared with some they'd shared in the past) and chivvied him back to his own much larger bed. When they'd slept again, Henry talked about his son.

'He didn't remember me, of course. But he liked the carved dragon I bought for him in Chengde market – do you remember, where we bought your sword?'

'Half a world away, two years ago, in another life,' said Jehan dreamily. Autumn leaves glowing scarlet in the forested hills, snow-capped mountains against a blue sky, the smell of frying food, and the caravan ready to depart. 'Were we ever really there?'

'You need a good long rest,' grinned Henry.

'So do you.'

'Nothing will happen for a few days, until we can get the family together. I need reports from England too. You and I will stay here for now. Going to the Palace would make it all too official. And Philippa's ready to get news of your family, but we'll have to think of a way to do it. I don't think we can tell them you're safe. Yet.' Henry looked away.

Jehan drew a breath. This was perhaps his best opportunity to bring up a subject that had been worrying him for a while. 'I've already written to them, from Trebizond.'

'You did what?' Henry sat bolt upright, scattering pillows.

This reaction was more or less what he had expected. 'Oh, calm down. Of course I didn't. But I wanted to, and maybe I should have done. Henry, my parents are old. But that's not the point. Do you think King Charles hasn't got agents here, or that your arrival won't be noticed? Reports might be going back to Paris even now.' Henry sank back among the pillows, listening, watching him. 'You half believed me when I said I'd written home. If your plans – whatever they might be – are betrayed, who do you think will come under suspicion?'

Henry scoffed. 'I might believe you'd write to your parents. I'd never believe you'd betray me to my enemies.'

'Scroop did,' said Jehan bluntly. Henry flinched.

'You are not Scroop!'

'If something happens to you, I've got no wish to be put to the question by your family,' continued Jehan soberly.

'They know you could have killed me any time these last three years and more. You didn't even have to kill me. You just had to abandon me.'

'Scroop,' repeated Jehan.

'I half wish we hadn't come back.' Henry looked away from him, scowling.

'We had to, for all sorts of reasons. And some day, one of us is going to be left alone, mignon, and what if that had happened in Shanghai, or Samarkand? No, we had to come back. But I've been thinking. I don't want to know your plans. If for no other reason, because Thomas is an ally of France, and I still have other loyalties than to you. Oh, I know you meant it when you said there'd be no more campaigns in France, and I'll hold you to that. But I can't actively help someone who's working against a French ally. So you can't even let me go back on the road - '

'Why ever not?'

'For my own safety and reputation, or what remains of it.'

Henry sighed, and took his hand.

'So, put me under guard. It doesn't have to be in a dungeon. Your sister can arrange something, I'm sure. We can even see each other, if someone's there to make sure I'm not getting secrets out of you. And you can make your plans, and when it's all over, I can come to England, and you can sign a new treaty with Charles. Or if things go wrong, we can go on our travels again.'

Henry thought this through, and then looked at him with a new fear. 'Jehan, are you giving me an easy way out?'

Jehan didn't even pretend to misunderstand. 'Maybe. Henry, you're almost home now. Having an unsuitable lover isn't going to help your cause.'

'My family know what I am. If they didn't object to Scroop they can't possibly object to you. If we put this ridiculous plan of yours into action I'm going to tell them that I'll miss my bedfellow, and they'll know what that means, if they haven't worked it out already. And I will miss my bedfellow, and I'll want him back as soon as possible. You and your damned conscience. If it hadn't saved my life three years ago I'd hate it now.' His arm curved round Jehan's shoulders, pulling him close, and his hand stroked through Jehan's hair, giving the lie to his words. 'Sweet friend,' he murmured. Then another thought struck him, and he froze. 'You're not looking for a way out yourself?'

'No.'

Henry finally smiled. 'And what would you do, alone in your tower, while I'm planning to invade my own country?'

'Rest. Sleep. I'm fifteen years older than you, Henry. I'm tired. And when I've rested, maybe I'll write the story of our travels. People are still reading Marco Polo's book. Why shouldn't they read our story as well? I might make our fortune!' He was striving for a lighter note.

'If you tell the whole story, you certainly will.' A kiss, another kiss. 'But there's one other thing you could do. Think about a trade policy for England. No-one's better qualified for that than you, and I'll have to get the country prosperous again, and quickly. If I get trade moving again, the shipping will need protection, and that'll give the young men something to do, too. Otherwise they'll be wanting war again before too long, and even the Scots can't keep us busy forever. Can you do that?'

Horizons opened in Jehan's mind again. 'Of course I'll try.'

'Good.' Henry slid further down into the bed, and pulled Jehan down on top of him. 'Well, if we're going to be parted for a while, we'd best make the most of the here and now, don't you think?'

-x-

Confined in a pleasant enough suite of rooms in the palace, Jehan was content to sleep for most of the next few days, and then the restlessness that had always been a part of him surfaced again, and he would move from one window to another, cursing his self-imposed passivity. Philippa got news from Picardy, by her own mysterious methods, (his family were well, though his parents were getting frail) and he had access to the royal library. Henry's relatives would look in to pay courtesy calls; often he'd be allowed outside, supervised of course. Henry saw him whenever he could, with one of his brothers or Philippa at a tactful distance going through state papers, while they talked carefully about Jehan's memoir of their travels, reliving their journey, correcting each other's memories, laughing sometimes. Once or twice, Henry brought his son with him, a solemn-eyed child who watched spellbound as Jehan drew him small pictures of pirate junks or yaks, and Henry watched them both with a lurking smile.

Then one day Henry came alone, dressed for war.

'You're going, then.' It was rather a shock to see the scruffy companion of the last three years wearing the royal arms of England again.

'On the next tide. You'll be free from now on, Jehan. You can't give away any secrets now. Most of Denmark knows more than you do.' Henry stepped into his arms with a sudden sigh, and Jehan could feel the tension in him, for all his confident manner. He returned the embrace, though they didn't kiss. Words deserted them both for a while, and then Jehan pushed him away gently.

'Go on. You can't miss your tide. And when it's all over, remember what I told you in Qurgan.'

Henry struggled for the memory, and then broke into a knowing smile. 'At the end of a campaign…'

'Exactly. Now go,' and he sent him on his way, still smiling reminiscently.

Jehan, sitting in the window-seat, watched until the ships left the harbour. He had no idea how he was going to tell Henry that, even if everything turned out well, he could not stay with him forever.

-x-

And a month later he was in London again, after a shorter campaign than they'd dared hope for. Thomas (deserted by his ally King Charles, who saw no reason to risk a single man-at-arms on his behalf, having gained France's freedom three years ago) was caught between Henry, Bedford and Erpingham in the east and Gloucester, Westmoreland and Exeter coming up from the west. He lost his judgement and gave battle without waiting for his own archers to come up.

'It took us half an hour to defeat him,' said Henry, not quite believing that even Thomas could be so reckless, 'but he died bravely in the end. I'm glad about that.'

They were half-lying propped up on pillows in Henry's great bed. The night before, Jehan had fulfilled his promise of Qurgan; and had woken that morning with Henry's solid weight sprawled half across him for the first time in far too long. Now he had an arm around his lover, letting him talk himself out.

'He'd have lost the country to someone else before long. It's just as well it was me, and not – ach, you know what I mean.' Henry was too fired up to be entirely tactful. 'The rest of his faction will go to trial. Not too many death sentences, I hope. I don't want to divide the country. But we'll have to see what the courts decide.'

Jehan was too relieved at the way things had turned out to do anything other than nod. Henry went on, hardly drawing breath, 'And I've called a meeting of the Privy Council for next week; you've got a seat on it - '

'You're like one of those juggernauts we saw in India.'

'My true vocation. And of course you're on the Council. You were always wasted as a herald. So, you'll be advising me on foreign affairs as well as trade.'

'Oh.' Jehan looked away. 'France.'

'Treaty's already being drawn up. You can take it to Charles yourself if you like, as my envoy. You have to be able to travel to France to see your family. so we may as well start as we mean to go on. We can take the line that you knew that the order you refused to follow couldn't possibly have come from him. You were acting to preserve his chivalrous reputation by rescuing me. That'll save his face, and Thomas can take the blame for the rest of it.' Henry shifted against him, still close in the circle of his arm but looking out of the bedchamber's windows where the pale light of a February dawn was growing. 'Now, this Privy Council meeting next week. Have you thought that trade policy through?'

'I'll need to talk to your City financiers, but the basics are there, yes. If the Lord Mayor and the guilds don't want to put up the loans I can talk to the Merchant Venturers, or the Italian bankers.'

'Last resort. Parliament say they're pleased to have me back. I'll get what I can out of them, though they never did give me enough, whether for defence or anything else.'

'We were lucky, then, in France, though you did a lot with a little.' There was no longer any point in skating round their history.

'Mm. That isn't what you said last night.' Henry turned back to him with a grin. But now Jehan had to say his piece before he was completely distracted.

'Henry. Wait,' and his tone brought Henry up short. 'I'll sit on your Privy Council, and I'll get your new trade policy started.'

'But.' Henry had sobered, his face closing down, anticipating hurt.

'In Copenhagen, those weeks I spent locked up. Yes, my idea, I know. But I'm a wanderer by nature. Mignon, I can't stay in one place forever, even with you. I wouldn't be myself any more. I'll always come back, if you'll have me on those terms. But stay in London, even in England, for the rest of my life? I couldn't do it.'

And Henry, though pulled up in mid-seduction, thought this through carefully, and understood. 'Remember what I said in Malacca? That I'd take whatever you can give me? I stand by that. But you don't have to stay cooped up here.'

Jehan slumped in relief; he'd been dreading making the choice between Henry and himself. He would have made it, and gone desolate back into the world rather than deny so great a part of himself; but now he did not have to. Of course he should have guessed that Henry, of all people, would comprehend his restlessness, because by now he shared it, in part.

He became aware that Henry was talking again. '- and we'll need trade contacts abroad, with the Merchant Venturers and the Hanseatic League. You can go to Portugal to talk to my cousin the prince – he's interested in exploration - and back to Denmark, to Philippa, to see if we can reopen the routes to Greenland. And do you remember the stories Olaf used to tell us about the lands further west? The world's a big place, and England – and France – are so small. Jehan, London is so small!'

He surged up out of the bed, pulling Jehan in his wake, flinging on a robe and barely giving Jehan time to do the same before throwing open the doors to the balcony and leaning over it, as though he'd take flight up into the cold air.

Out over the Thames the sun was rising red through coal smoke and river mists, and Jehan could see him tracing its path back around the curve of the world, following their great journey from the wide lands of the east, where they could never go again.

'Nowhere's got everything, Henry. Every time I go away, I'll miss you, and maybe you'll be wishing you were back on the road with me. But think on this. Perhaps your London's small now, but it needn't always be so. It'll take work, that's all.'

'If I've got work to do, and you come back to me often, I can be content, even here at the edge of the world.'

'I'll be here more often than not, and I'll always come back to you, sweet friend.'

They smiled at each other a little sadly, and then they turned and went back inside, to the warm room, and breakfast, and the day's work.

-x-

FIN

-x-

Historical note: The French embassy of 1402 to Tamburlaine, or Timur, met him while he was on campaign in Turkey. It was the Spanish embassy of 1403-6 that went to Samarkand; but since I wanted to send the young Montjoy there, I have taken a few liberties with history (as with other aspects of this story). Special thanks and apologies are therefore due to the Spanish envoy, Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, who left a very detailed and highly readable account of the journey and his meetings with Timur, of which I have made liberal use while writing this fic.

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