Jayani’s Big Gamble
by Tom Durwood
part 1
Prologue: Orphans
From the eastern sea to the western sea, the area
in between the Himalayas and the Vindhyas,
is what wise men call the land of the Aryans,
beyond it is the country of the barbarians.
— Manusmriti, Second Century B.C. Book of Law
“Orphans?” said the Council Chief as she bent an ear to her associate. She cast a glance to her left, where a thin, forlorn young girl sat. A swaddled baby rested in the girl’s arms. “Ah, yes...”
The village council was gathered beneath the tall palm trees of that northern oasis called Ahichhatra.
“Last item. New business,” said the Council Chief.
Several heads turned at a clatter by the lower gates. “Is that the French caravan?” The shuffling sounds of camels moving across sand mixed with low drivers’ voices and the swinging gates of the paddocks.
“The orphans,” announced the Council Chief.
“As you may know, we lost dear young Shamira in childbirth, two days— What? ‘Samira’? Well, what did I say?”
She started over. “We lost our dear Samira. And now her young daughter as well as the baby boy are orphaned.”
The girl with the baby in her arms stood, so she could be seen. Her eyes had a hard glint.
“We need a family to adopt them,” continued the Council Chief. “Is there a family who will take them in?”
In the silence, various braying and shuffling sounds of the caravan’s arrival wafted into their midst.
“The girl Jayani is a hard worker,” urged the Council Chief. “And clever, I am now being told...
“Come, come.” She clapped her hands. “The pair will have to go to the shelters. No one wants that. Will no one stand?” A desperate tone had entered her voice. Uncomfortable shifting and rustling spread among the council members
“Yes,” came a voice.
Heads turned.
“I will.”
* * *
A slender figure emerged from the assemblage. She was wrapped in dusty, patterned jamdami robes, embroidered, those that fold in the front, and a woolen cap, such as the caravan drivers wear.
“Ah!” said the Council Chief, pleased. “And your name, dear?”
“I am Cyra,” replied the slender girl evenly. “I am their mother’s cousin, twice removed.” She took off her cap and scarf. Her hair was braided. “Jayani calls me Third Aunt.” She pushed back the sleeves of her robe. “I have come from Pataliputra. I wanted to be here sooner.”
“You are but a girl yourself,” observed the Council Chief.
“I have seen fourteen summers,” replied Cyra. “I have a dowry.”
“Ah. I see. And you are... a... caravan driver, from the looks—”
“Aye. I am known along the trail. Driver and scout.”
“You would have to give that up, I’m afraid,” said another Council member.
“I know,” agreed Cyra. “I can work the stables. With Gagin’s crew. Those two children,” the girl Cyra seemed to want to clarify, “they are the blood of my blood!” She stepped forward. Azure and indigo threads in the embroidery of Cyra’s robes caught the firelight and glimmered. “They will never be abandoned.”
The girl Jayani sniffed and held the baby tight.
“One of my granger huts is empty,” volunteered Bhagat, the blacksmith. “By the paddocks. First week free. Twenty shivasi monthly after that.”
“You see? Charity flows already.” The Council Chief smiled, although it was a small smile. “Can you make that rent, young lady?”
“I will use my dowry,” answered Cyra, Third Aunt.
“I’m sure your intended’s family will appreciate the gesture.”
This sarcasm aside, an agreement had been made. All could tell. The assemblage had come wordlessly to a commonly-held conclusion, as they tend to do. Ambient sounds of water pouring into wooden trenches and the bristling of groomers’ brushes and low commands among the stables reminded the Council members that the world still turned around them.
“Very well! Unless there are other comments...” The Council Chief looked around. “It is so resolved.”
1. Morning at the Ovens
The power of pure thought has shaped
our world for over two millennia.
— Jim Al-Kahlili
Eight years later.
Jayani had grown into a keen-eyed, self-possessed young woman. She had gone to work at an early age at the ovens, taking orders and arranging loaves of bread at first, then graduating to apprentice baker. She had a perfect memory and could quietly advise senior bakers and the oven-handlers as to which kiln had burnt a platter of biscuits in the past and which charcoal pit was most likely to produce a well-cooked brisket roast. She was quick with her abacus. Customers began to consult her directly.
“Listen,” was Third Aunt’s habitual advice. Brother Ganesh ignored it, along with all advice. Jayani had taken it as a sort of universal rule, and so she spoke sparingly and attended carefully to the messages that a tradesman, a traveler or a camel might offer, as well as the wind or a bank of passing clouds, as well as the ovens.
Cyra would not allow Ganesh to work in the quarry and took on more work herself, to compensate.
Cyra bought a patch of cow leather for gloves from the tanner, and paid the talented seamstress, Sayara, to sew a fine pair of oven mitts for Jayani. It cost her three weeks’ wages.
* * *
Third Aunt placed a small device on the table. “We cleaned out the pouches from the two Yunhee caravans. I found this,” said Third Aunt to Jayani, “in one of the Italian saddlebags.” It was a tool, wrapped in linen, with unfamiliar contours.
“What is it? What does it say?” asked Ganesh.
“Maybe if you actually did your lessons, you’d know,” answered Third Aunt.
It was a small, intricate metal-and-wood instrument. Mounted in the carved oak was a glass tube with a red liquid.
Jayani looked close. She wiped it clean. The word “Regolare” and the name the name “Sanotorio” appeared within the inked designs. “I’ve seen something like this before,” said Jayani. “I think it’s Venetian.”
“’Regulator’?” Third Aunt looked close, but would not touch it. “That sounds like it might be a gauge. Maybe it can help you among the ovens.”
* * *
“You are Jayani,” said the tall traveler. “The Oven-Master’s apprentice.”
The tall Arab cast a shadow as he stood in the courtyard of the kilns compound. He was cloaked in black. A servant knelt behind him. The traveler’s speaking voice was rich with influences, syllables and vowels and cadences from other lands.
“Aye, yaatree,” answered the oasis girl, turning to face the visitor. She might have used the term musafirin, but she was not yet sure about him. “I am Jayani.”
This fateful exchange took place in the age of the Mughal princes, the age of the self-involved celestial, Mirza Abu Bakr, and the ever-incompetent Rafi-ush-Shan, at an oasis named Ahichhatra, which lay some small distance from the northern highway known as Uttarapatha, in the Valley of the Gangee. The Grand Trunk trade route, a segment of the Silk Road.
This small watering-hole community, Ahichhatra nestled in the dusty lower hills of the Gongotri range was a beehive of activity.
Jayani stood in front of the second cylindrical oven, holding an oversized kiln paddle in her gloved hands. She was as slight a figure as the stranger was imposing, yet the girl Jayani, only fourteen, stood straight and calm, even when the Arab stepped closer.
“I am Salim Abdallah al-Ayyashi.” He signaled to his servant. “I come lately from the Christian lands. Bound for Changsha.”
The girl squinted in the morning sunlight.
“Won’t you bake this for me?” said the traveler evenly. The Arab’s servant removed the cloth cover from a large platter and handed it to Jayani. “It would be a great favor.”
Jayani, hard-working apprentice of the communal ovens, removed the big leather gloves from her hands. She stuck them in the pocket of the blue apron she wore.
It was a Govindan upahaar, a ceramic platter, one of a kind. Its ivory surface showed the outlines of carvings. Looking closely, you could see circular patterns, the delicate articulation of some vision. It was a most remarkable piece of art, featuring a mosaic version of Karta Purakh, with many hues of blue and gold, depicting the creation of the universe, accompanied by stars and comet trails. Lunar and solar symbols disguised a cosmic compass embedded in the patterns. Those hidden painted patterns would emerge, changing into vibrant colors, if the platter was properly glazed at the correct heat for the correct length of time.
“This is the work of Nabil Matar,” said Jayani.
The Arab nodded. “A heavenly scene. A gift for Yikuang, the Manchu prince. His wife has given birth to a son.”
Jayani handed it back. “It is a most elegant thing,” said the girl. “Rare. I will not be the clod who ruins it.”
“Ibn Batuta recommends you,” said the Arab. “He speaks of you as an artist.”
“The Moroccan is too generous with his praise.”
Zrimat, Ovens-Master, hovered nearby, sensing a transaction.
“Of course,” Salim Abdallah al-Ayyashi challenged Jayani. “If you think you are incapable of such a task...”
Jayani turned to face the bank of ovens nestled into the rock. She saw the impossible jumble of generations of clever bakers and smelters applying all manners of flame and heat to all manners of substances. Here stood Venetian vertical stoves, four active half-cylinder ovens which dominated the kilns’ commerce, with wooden pallets hung alongside. And there were deck ovens as well, and behind them, squat, square Vulcans and clay chamber stoves, clusters of dwarf cob — mud, that is — furnaces.
Along the sides of the bake-shop array lay open char pits lined with coals, half-buried wood-fired roasters, columns of pottery kilns. There were dusty banks of fourneaux, or chimneyed bread ovens. Two kang platform stoves towered over the left batteries. There were kilns for pottery, some abandoned, and blazing furnaces for metal. She saw cauldron-hung fire-pits for stews and open roasters for poultry. Spits for large fish. Earthen kilns for dye and a section of domed beehive ovens or skep, such as the long-dead butchers and bakers and culinaires used when they prepared the wedding feasts of Qasim Abdallah.
“Come back after lunch,” Jayani told Salim Abdallah al-Ayyashi.
2. Events Come to Pass
Okay. But it’s going to hurt.
— Eiichiro Oda
Four hours later, Jayani held up the finished platter. Every particle, every brushstroke, every atom of the ceramic dish’s latent beauty had come to life. The Italian instrument was indeed a gauge: a heat gauge and a partial regulator. That is, it showed changes in heat, but once Jayani had worked with it, she realized it could also show absolute values. It took the guesswork out, how long to bake, and at what temperature.
The oven-master, Zrimat, had “impounded” the Venetian thermostat, to see how it worked. Even so.
“This is... fine work. Very fine. It is beyond my hopes,” breathed Salim Abdallah al-Ayyashi. “You are no baker. You are something more.”
The purples and ruby reds and midnight-blue hues on the plate had emerged in lacquered glory, and the more somber ochres and ambers as well. The Arab traveler swore that Matar himself would blush to see star-fields and phases of the moon so vividly captured. One could now see the carving’s influences: Persian, Indian, even European. Cosmological figures which had been invisible before were now prominent, and the symbols would please and mystify those of the Middle Kingdoms — land where the Yunhee hold sway — for years to come. One of the passing shepherds stopped and invented an impromptu song about the platter, its fine glaze, and the iron-rich clays, and the brave young oven-keep who had brought the pigments to life.
A crowd gathered.
The Arab held the piece aloft. “All the Mughal lands will hear of this!”
The Ovens-Master inserted himself. “It took my assistant hours of her most concentrated labor, neglecting her other work,” Zrimat reminded the Arab. “Plus customized details...”
Salim Abdallah al-Ayyashi smiled and paid with a flourish that implied it would have been cheap at ten times the price.
Zrimat rolled the coins along his fingers. He counted them twice. He placed the bag of coins in his jacket pocket. None did he pass on to his talented apprentice, Jayani.
* * *
Jayani was plotting how to steal back the Italian regulator when Garesh came running and shouting up the slope. “Jayani!” he cried. “Come quick! Cyra’s hurt!”
Third Aunt lay in the dust in the paddocks surrounding one of the barns. She was clutching her left side. Blood gushed from a wound across one side of her face.
A tired, inexperienced camel wrangler of insufficient patience had tossed a hand shovel too near the feet of Dakshinapatha, a young female camel from one of the outlying herds. Dakshinapatha had spooked and tripped and fallen over on top of Cyra. The other camels, upset at the smell of blood and braying at the sight of their favorite handler, scuffled and pawed, doing more damage.
“I’ve sent for the rahasanvi !” said the stablemaster worriedly. “Her hip, the hip...”
They stanched the bleeding and cleaned the wounds. But deeper problems were evident. “I fear it is broken,” the senior of the healers told Jayami, away from the crowd.
* * *
Third Aunt was coughing blood.
By midnight, the three rahasanvi had given up. “Our powers only go so far,” said Chikistak, one of the healing women. “A better world awaits her.”
Third Aunt squeezed Jayani’s hand with her own. She was propped up in cushions. She winced when the pain stabbed but never complained. She eventually stopped coughing.
“What if I can get her to the clinic in Pataliputra?” asked Jayani.
“Too far,” said Chikistak. “She could not make that journey and survive.”
“What about the Vedic doctors coming here?”
“Yes, they might fix this. But that costs money,” said Chikistak. “Do you have it?”
“How much?” asked Jayani.
The healer gave Jayani an amount.
The girl shook her head. The blood had drained from her face. She had never heard of such a huge sum.
“End all sorrow, accept our prayer,” offered the boy Ganesh, frightened, rocking slightly to and fro.
Third Aunt’s coughing started up again. Her condition was a lit fuse. The balms were topical and would wear off soon.
“I am strong, sister,” said Ganesh when the healers had gone. “I can work harder! In the next rotation, I might be a wagon boy.”
“You’re only eight,” Jayani told her little brother.
Third Aunt slept, but fitfully. Her breath was labored. Her curved body position looked uncomfortable. Jayani fed her soup.
“How will we get all that money?” asked Ganesh.
“I will pray,” said Third Aunt.
Jayani sat beside Third Aunt’s bed. “We owe you our lives,” Jayani told Cyra, Third Aunt. “You gave up your future to raise us. Let us pull the weight now, priyajan.”
Later, deep in the night, hidden among the murmurs of the evening prayers and rustlings among the camels, the boy could see the silhouette of his sister out on the sands, alone, and he could hear the forlorn sound of her crying.
3. A Pre-Dawn Visit
We just had the discussion.
— Brian Burns
Very late on the second night after the accident, so late it was almost morning, a tall figure appeared in the entrance to the hut that was home to Third Aunt, the girl Jayani and her brother, Ganesh.
Only the camels stirred, milling among the fountains and banked fires.
Jayani rubbed her eyes to see the Arab trader Salim Abdallah al-Ayyashi in her doorway.
“We depart for points East,” murmured he. “We offer our thanks.”
He inspected Third Aunt, testing and probing. He murmured reassurances to her in several languages.
The boy Ganesh watched, wide-eyed, from behind a chair.
“Three problems,” the black-clad tall Arab traveler concluded. “First, she has a broken pelvis. This is not itself fatal. Two, there is damage to her spinal cord. Third, the internal damage will sooner or later generate infection. She is weak.”
“I can send for the Vedic doctors,” said Jayani.
“Huh. Imbeciles. No, Ayurvedics will not help your Aunt. There is an Englishman, a London surgeon named Beekman, coming this way with the Persian caravan bound for the easternmost port of Grand Canal. He is being paid a king’s ransom to deliver a field hospital for the armies of Emperor Jianxi. He can fix this. It will cost you dearly. Twice the fee you were quoted for the Vedics.”
The Arab placed a heavy bag on the dining table. “Fruits. For pajee. Scorbutus.”
A second heavy bag. “Herbs. For rickets.” He nodded to sleeping figure of Third Aunt. “These should keep her condition stable until the Englander arrives.”
He produced a jar of seeds. “Plant these on a northern-facing slope.”
“Mashallah,” said Jayani, and Salim Abdallah al-Ayyashi smiled to hear this correction of her previous remark. “Allah has willed it,” he said, nodding.
“We will raise the money somehow. My thanks, prince among travelers,” said Jayani. She bowed low.
Copyright © 2025 by Tom Durwood
