The Silk Road Caravan – Part 1: The Desert Crossing

The caravan left Samarkand before dawn, in a haze of dust and camel bells. Nilufar watched it from the shadow of a mud-brick wall, dressed in the plain grey cloak of a scribe's apprentice, a leather satchel on her back and her hair bound tight under a cap.

She had been a princess for thirty years, and she had never once been allowed to leave the city walls.

"Hurry," hissed the old servant who had bribed the caravan master for her place. "Before he sees your face."

"He won't look at a scribe's boy," said Nilufar, and slipped into the line of camels.

The caravan master was called Ahmad, a cheerful, one-eyed man who did not care who she was so long as she could count coins. The trader who led the caravan's foreign goods was a different matter. He rode at the head of the line on a tall grey horse, a broad-brimmed hat pulled low, and his Persian was fluent but accented with the sea.

Lorenzo Vendramin. A Venetian merchant with silk to sell and a reputation for never losing a bargain.

She saw him for the first time at the second well, where the camels drank and the men shouted and laughed in the heat. He was watching her over the rim of a water skin, his grey eyes narrowed against the glare.

"You're not a scribe," he said, in Italian, very softly.

Nilufar froze. Then she answered, in the same language, which she had learned from a Genoese tutor in secret. "And you're not a merchant. Merchants don't read Dante in the desert."

He laughed, low and surprised, and his face changed entirely. "Then we both have secrets," said Lorenzo. "I won't tell yours if you don't tell mine."

"Deal," said Nilufar.

They travelled together for ten days. He taught her to shoot a bow from the back of a camel. She taught him the names of the stars in the dialect of the Sogdian shepherds. At night, when the fire burned low and the desert was silent except for the wind, they talked until the sky began to pale.

On the eighth night, a sandstorm came out of nowhere. The caravan scattered in the dark. Nilufar's camel bolted, and she was thrown into the sand, her cloak tangled, her breath gone.

A hand caught her wrist.

"Hold on," said Lorenzo's voice, rough and close, through the howl of the wind. "I've got you."

He dragged her into the lee of a rock and pulled his cloak around them both, his body a solid wall against the storm. She could feel his heart pounding through his shirt.

"Are you hurt?" he shouted above the noise.

"No," she gasped. "But I think you are."

"Only my pride," said Lorenzo, and laughed unsteadily.

When the storm finally passed, the desert lay silver under the moon, and the two of them were still tangled in the same cloak, breathing hard.

"Nilufar," said Lorenzo, quietly. "Can I ask you something?"

"Yes."

"Would you like to tell me your real name?"

She looked at him, her heart hammering, the moonlight on his face.

"I'm Nilufar," she said. "The princess of Samarkand. And I'm very tired of being told what I'm allowed to want."

He let out a long breath, half laughter, half wonder. "Then let's find out what you want," he said. "Together."