I went, and I introduced myself, “Marco Polo, my lady,” and I made a proper ko-tou.

“My lord husband has spoken of you,” she said, indicating that I should rise by giving me a playful nudge with a bare foot. Her hands were occupied in playing with an ivory ball, as her husband had done, for the suppling of the fingers.

As I stood, she went on, “I wondered when you would deign to call upon this lowly female courtier.” Her voice was as musical as wind chimes, but seemed somehow just as devoid of any human agency in the making of that music. “Would you wish to discuss my titular office, or my real work? Or my pastimes in between?”

That last was said with a leer. Lady Chao evidently and correctly assumed that, like everyone else, I had heard of her gluttonous appetite for men. I will confess that I was briefly tempted to join her cupboard of morsels. She was about my own age and would have been fetchingly beautiful if she had not had her eyebrows plucked entirely off and her delicate features coated with a dead-white powder. I was, as always, curious to discover what was beneath the rich silk robes—in this case, especially, because I had not yet lain with a woman of the Han race. But I restrained my curiosity and said:

“None of those today, my lady, if you please. I come on a different—”

“Ah, a bashful one,” she said, and changed her leer to a simper. “Let us begin, then, by talking of your favorite pastimes.”

“On some other occasion, perhaps, Lady Chao. I would speak today of your female slave named Mar-Janah.”

“Aiya!” she exclaimed, which is the Han equivalent of “vakh!” She sat abruptly upright on her couch, and she frowned—and a frown is very unpleasant to look at when it is done without eyebrows—and she snapped, “You find that Turki wench more appealing than I am?”

“Why, no, my lady,” I lied. “Having been nobly born in my native land, I would never—there or here—even consider admiring any but a woman of perfect pedigree, such as yourself.” I tactfully did not point out that she was only nobility and Mar-janah was royalty.

But she seemed mollified. “That is well said.” She leaned voluptuously back again. “On the other hand, I have sometimes discovered that a grimy and sweaty soldier can be appealing … .”

She trailed off, as if inviting comment, but I did not care to be drawn into a contest of comparing our experiences of perversity. So I attempted to continue, “Regarding the slave—”

“The slave, the slave …” She sighed, and pouted, and petulantly tossed and caught the ivory ball. “For a moment there, you were well spoken, as a gallant should be when calling on a lady. But you prefer to talk of slaves.”

I reminded myself that any business with a Han ought to be approached roundabout, only after long exchanges of trivialities. So I said gallantly, “I would much rather talk of my Lady Chao, and her surpassing beauty.”

“That is better.”

“I am a little surprised that, with such a choice model so conveniently at hand, the Master Chao has not made many paintings of her.”

“He has,” she said, and smirked.

“I regret that he showed me none.”

“He would not if he could, and he cannot. They are in the possession of the various other lords who were portrayed in the same pictures. And those lords are not likely to show them to you, either.”

I did not have to ponder on that remark to realize what it meant. I would defer making judgment on Master Chao—whether I felt sympathy for his predicament or disgust for his pliant complicity in it—but I knew that I did not much like his young lady, and I would be glad to quit her company. So I made no further attempt at small talk.

“I beg that my lady will forgive my persistence in the subject of the slave, but I seek to right a wrong of long duration. I entreat the Lady Chao’s permission for her slave Mar-Janah to marry.”

“Aiya!” she exclaimed again, and loudly. “That aging slut is pregnant!”

“No, no.”

Unhearing, she went on, while her nonexistent eyebrows writhed. “But that does not obligate you! No man weds a slave just because he has impregnated her.”

“I did not!”

“The embarrassment is slight, and easily disposed of. I will call her in and kick her in the belly. Concern yourself no further.”

“My concern is not—”

“It is, however, a matter for speculation.” Her little red tongue came out and licked her little red lips. “The physicians all pronounced that woman barren. You must be exceptionally potent.”

“Lady Chao, the woman is not pregnant and it is not I who would marry her!”

“What?” For the first time, her face lost all expression.

“It is a man slave of my own who has been long enamored of your Mar-Janah. I merely entreat your concurrence in my permission for them to wed and live together.”

She stared at me. Ever since I had come in, the young lady had been assuming one expression after another—of invitation, of coyness, of petulance—and now I saw why she had kept her features so much in motion. That white face, without some conscious contortion, was as empty as a sheet of unwritten paper. I wondered: would the rest of her body be as unexciting? Were Han women all blanks that only sporadically assumed human semblance? I was almost grateful when she put on a look of annoyance and said:

“That Turki woman is my dresser and applier of cosmetics. Not even my lord husband infringes on her time. I do not see why I should share her with a husband of her own.”

“Then perhaps you would sell her outright? I can pay a sum that will purchase an excellent replacement.”

“Are you now trying to insult me? Do you imply that I cannot afford to give away a slave, if I so choose?”

She bounded up from the couch and, her little bare feet twinkling, her robes and ribbons and tassels and perfumed powder swirling in her wake, she left the room. I stood and wondered if I had been summarily dismissed or if she had gone for a guardsman to take me in charge. The young woman was as exasperatingly changeable as her inconstant face. In just our brief conversation, she had managed to accuse me in quick succession of being bashful, presumptuous, salacious, meddlesome, gullible and finally offensive. I was not surprised that such a woman required an endless supply of lovers; she probably forgot each one in the moment that he slunk from her bed.

But she came tripping into the room again, unaccompanied, and flung at me a piece of paper. I snatched and caught it before it drifted to the floor. I could not read the Mongol writing on it, but she told me what it was, saying contemptuously:

“Title to the slave Mar-Janah. I give it to you. The Turki is yours to do with as you please.” In its fickle way, her face went from contempt to a seductive smile. “And so am I. Do what you will—to render me proper thanks.”

I might have had to, and I could probably have nerved myself to do it, if she had commanded it earlier. But she had incautiously given me the paper now, before setting a price on it. So I folded it into my purse, and bowed, and said with all the floweriness I could muster:

“Your humble supplicant does indeed most fervently thank the gracious Lady Chao Ku-an. And, I am sure, so will the lowly slaves likewise honor and bless your name, as soon as I inform them of your bountiful goodness, which I shall this minute go and do. Until we meet again, then, noble lady—”

“What?” she screeched, like a wind chime being blown to pieces. “You would simply turn and walk away?”

I was inclined to say no, that I would run if it were not undignified. However, having told her I was well born, I maintained my courteous manner and bowed repeatedly as I backed toward the door, murmuring things like “most benevolent” and “undying gratitude.”

Her paper face was now a palimpsest written over with disbelief, shock and outrage, all at once. She was holding the ivory ball as if about to throw it at me. “Many men have regretted my sending them away,” she said menacingly, through clenched teeth. “You will be the first to regret having gone away unbidden.”