“It can only be something that affects them in the most profound way,” he said.

The besiegers had stationed a protective screen of heavy cavalry across Lake Rong hu, not far from the pen where the thousands of prisoners who had survived the siege sat on the bare ground. The prisoners, Jebu thought, were probably rejoicing that they were still alive and might return home soon.

A high voice shouted a command to the riders on guard. They formed a long line and began to trot in a circle around the pen. Another shrill order and they were firing arrows into the prisoners. Jebu shut his eyes momentarily and clenched his fists as the screams and pleas for mercy stabbed his ears. The Chinese soldiers on the wall shouted curses at the enemy and prayers for the dying. They tried to shoot at the Mongols, but their arrows would not carry that far. For Jebu, the pain of seeing the killing of so many innocents was like a barbed arrow in his own chest.

Again and again the Mongols circled the slave corral, shooting at any movement.

“They will have their massacre, one way or the other,” Yukio said. Jebu saw that Liu had turned his back on the slaughter and stood with tears trickling down his pale cheeks.

“I do not know which is worse,” he whispered, “to see the severed head of my own son, or to see my helpless people slaughtered.”

Now the Mongols had dismounted and were walking in a line through the pen. They had their sabres out and were inspecting the bodies, beheading or stabbing to death any who were still alive. Auxiliary troops moved behind them, retrieving arrows from the corpses.

Yukio also turned away. “There is no need for this. No need at all,” he said hoarsely. “It is true that the Mongols are less than human.”

And if they are, Jebu wondered, what am I? These are also my people. But I was not reared in their ways. I would sooner die than do what they are doing. To kill poor peasants is bad enough, but how can they kill women and children by the hundreds?

Genghis Khan, Arghun’s master, had commanded the death of all Jamuga’s seed, and Arghun had tried to kill Jebu when Jebu was a baby. That would not seem a task repugnant to a man who could shoot an arrow into a screaming child clinging to its mother’s skirts.

Yukio, his face crimson with rage, said, “We have our prisoners, too. Let us show that we can be as merciless as these Mongols.” In the months of the siege, the defenders had captured over a hundred Mongols and nearly three hundred auxiliaries.

“No,” said Jebu. “I will not shame myself by killing those who cannot fight back.”

“The Mongols always kill their prisoners,” said Liu. “Perhaps, if we were to let our captured Mongols live, even return them to their people, it would show them there is another way. Our Master Confucius said, ‘Do not do to others what you would not want others to do to you.’ If we do not kill Mongols today, perhaps they will spare Chinese lives tomorrow.”

“We always execute captured fighting men in our land,” said Yukio. “To let men live so that they may attack you again is foolish.”

“The few hundred Mongols and their auxiliaries that we captured are no great danger to us,” said Jebu. “I will personally conduct them to Arghun.”

“I’m sorry, Jebu-san,” Yukio said, “but you must be completely mad.”

“I will go as an envoy. The life of an ambassador is, sacred to them.” Liu said, “You put too much temptation before Arghun.”

“He has spent years of his life and made long and dangerous journeys to try to kill me. His very fidelity to his law is my protection.”

Yukio stared at Jebu, large-eyed. “I can forbid you to take those men back to Arghun. I can order you to execute them.”

Jebu nodded. “Yes, Lord Yukio, you can.”

Yukio turned away. “Go ahead. Do whatever foolish thing you like.”

When Jebu entered the Mongol camp, he was able to address an officer in the barbarian language, presenting himself as an envoy from Kweilin and requesting a meeting with Arghun Baghadur. His language practise with the prisoners had served him well.

The tarkhan sat astride a barrel-chested grey steppe pony, one gauntleted fist resting on his hip. His eyes were the colour of a cloudy winter day.

“An envoy, are you? You are viler than a diseased dog to mock the laws of my people.”

“I mean no mockery, tarkhan,” said Jebu, looking back at him calmly. Arghun’s reaction did not surprise him. He must hate me as much as I have been hating him, Jebu thought.

“So, you’ve learned a few more words in the language of your father,” said Arghun with an ironic smile. “Perhaps you’d like to become one of us. Unfortunately, if you submitted yourself to our law, you’d die at once.” His face darkened. “If you are an ambassador as you claim, approach me properly. Off your horse. Down on your face.”

Jebu hesitated. But Arghun was within his rights to demand obeisance from an ambassador. And did not The Zinja Manual say, “Whatsoever role you play, manifest your inner perfection by acting it perfectly.” Jebu climbed down from his horse. The muddy ground had been churned into a brown soup by thousands of hooves. He knelt and pressed his hands and forehead into the mud. He waited there.

At last Arghun said irritably, “Get up, that’s not what I want from you.”

Jebu stood up, wiping the mud from his forehead with the back of his hand. “Will nothing less than my death satisfy you, tarkhan?”

“Nothing less will satisfy the spirit of Genghis Khan. I cannot take your life today, but I will have it one day. Why did you come here?”

“First, to propose, since you seem to be leaving us, a treaty of eternal peace between the Mongols and the City of Kweilin.”

“That is an absurdity. We make peace only with those who surrender. What else?”

“Also, to return to you the men we captured. We do not consider it necessary to murder helpless prisoners.”

Arghun shrugged. “Then you are fools.” Arghun turned to an officer beside him. “Have those men taken away.” The officer shouted orders, and guards led away the men brought by Jebu. The returned prisoners walked with pale faces and downcast eyes.

“It may interest you to know that they will be strangled with bowstrings before we leave here,” said Arghun, smiling.

Jebu’s heart sank. “They don’t deserve punishment. They are brave men. They were all wounded or unconscious when we captured them.”

“It is not a punishment. We must send a detachment of warriors to the next world to serve the Great Khan. It is an honour to be chosen. These men will be part of the Great Khan’s spirit. We have our ways of mourning, monk, which you could not possibly understand.”

Amazed, Jebu saw at once what was happening. “Your Great Khan is dead?”

“He is.” Arghun’s rough-hewn face was bleak. “For now, our war with Sung China is ended, by our own choosing. It is our unalterable law that when a Great Khan dies, all of us shall return to the homeland to bury him and to choose his successor. Tell the people of Kweilin to thank Eternal Heaven for granting them this respite. But let them remember that it is only a respite.”

He fixed his strangely empty eyes on Jebu. “For you also, son of Jamuga, this is only a respite. Three times now I have tried to carry out the command of Genghis Khan that you die. Each time you have been saved, but never by your own power. A man who must rely on others or on chance events to protect him is a poor creature. Destiny will bring you and me together again, and the next time I will surely kill you.”

Then Bourkina took Taniko by the hand and led her through the entrance of the tent. Within, all was cloth of gold, and it seemed as if hundreds of hanging lamps were blazing. Taniko was momentarily blinded as she entered the dome-shaped chamber filled with dazzling light.

Chapter Twelve

The clouds that rolled across the night sky reflected red light. Missiles poured over Kweilin’s walls, while bands of Mongols and their Kin Tartar and Turk auxiliaries pressed forward with siege towers and ladders. Four war elephants smashed a stone-filled battering ram against the south gate, arrows glancing off their armour like raindrops off a sedge hat.

Jebu expected the city’s defences to crumble at any moment, but he stood on the walls, smiling. There was beauty in war, the fire, the colour, the flow and ebb of human waves, the enormous power of the elephants and siege artillery.

“No wonder this people has conquered half the world,” Jebu called to Yukio over the roar of battle.

“You admire them?”

“I simply find it remarkable what human beings can do.”

He did not admire the Mongols for their conquests, but he was impressed by their ability to throw all their energies into action, by their discipline and by the carefree way they faced hardship and death. These qualities reminded him of the Zinja. Now that he saw Arghun among his people, no longer a mysterious assassin from an unknown world, he was able to understand him better.

Kweilin had held out much longer than it had any right to. The Mongols had arrived before the city in the Fourth Month of the Year of the Sheep. It was now the Seventh Month, and the city remained unconquered. Rarely, since Genghis Khan first led them out of the steppes, had the Mongols found a city so troublesome.

Rain had helped Kweilin’s defenders. The timing of the siege was bad for the attackers. The monsoons began just about the time Arghun arrived to direct the siege. The rain slowed down the Mongol assaults, dampened their explosive powder, put out the fires they started, and provided the people of the city with plenty of fresh water.

Disease helped too. The Mongol camp quickly turned into a steaming swamp. Inured for generations to a chill northern climate, they were an easy prey to the fevers of this almost tropical country. By order of the governor, the human waste of the large population of Kweilin, which in peacetime would have fertilized the rice fields around the city, went into the moat and the Kwei Kiang River. Some of it, as Liu intended, poisoned the Mongol drinking water. Thousands of the nomads were felled by dysentery.

But the rain and the sickness had only slowed the Mongols down. It was the samurai who held them off. For the first time since they had emerged from the steppes, the Mongols were encountering warriors as tough, as energetic, as ferocious as themselves. Without help the samurai could not hold out much longer, but they had already wrecked the Mongol schedule for the conquest of the Sung empire.

Daily during those months Jebu looked into the heart of the Jewel of Life and Death. Taitaro, who had given him the Jewel, was somewhere in this land. They would never meet, though, because the city would fall at any moment, and soon after that he would be dead.

He found he could face the prospect with serenity.

But now a strange thing was happening. The noise that had been deafening Jebu for months was slowly dying down. A silence was spreading almost visibly like a blanket of snow. The boulders came hurtling over the walls less often. A single fire pot tore through the air like a shooting star. No more followed it. The hua pao were silent.

At the base of the wall where thousands of prisoners had died filling in the moat with stones and brushwood and human flesh, a detachment of Kin Tartar foot soldiers was rushing forward with a long ladder. A volley of samurai arrows fell among them. The ladder dropped to the ground. In response to a shouted command from across the moat, the surviving Tartars turned and ran back to the Mongol camp.

The sun had started to rise above the Kwei Kiang. In the pale light the elephants’ handlers were unchaining the battering ram. It fell with a crash. Now the elephants turned and lumbered over the stone causeway the Mongols’ prisoners had built across the junction of the two lakes. Flights of arrows followed them, leaving the armoured elephants unharmed but killing several of the men with them.

In the full light of morning the samurai and the Chinese watched, dumbfounded, as the Mongols broke down their camp and made preparations to withdraw.

“They expect us to throw open the gates as soon as they disappear over the horizon,” said Yukio. “Then they’ll come roaring back and catch us off guard.”

“But they would have had the city today or tomorrow anyway,” Jebu said. “And they could hardly take us by surprise if we sent scouts after them.”

Governor Liu picked his way over the broken stone covering the top of the wall. “So, what I heard is true. They do seem to be leaving.”

Jebu watched the Mongols mount some of their larger yurts on carts, while they stripped the felt covering away from the wooden poles of the smaller ones and packed them away on wagons. The Kin engineers were untying the ropes and knocking out the pegs that held the siege machines together. Others were digging out the bases of the hua pao.

Yukio remained convinced that the whole withdrawal was a deception. Liu suggested that there might be a Chinese relief army on the way, or perhaps this army had been called away to meet a Chinese counter-attack in one of the other war zones. Jebu thought that only some requirement of their own law could draw the Mongols away from an almost certain victory.

“It can only be something that affects them in the most profound way,” he said.

The besiegers had stationed a protective screen of heavy cavalry across Lake Rong hu, not far from the pen where the thousands of prisoners who had survived the siege sat on the bare ground. The prisoners, Jebu thought, were probably rejoicing that they were still alive and might return home soon.

Now she could really feel how Jebu must have felt, living among people to whom he looked strange.

She must not lie to herself. Even if this Mongol general should find her pleasing, what would she have gained? A man she did not care for would enter her body and use her. Like those first years with Horigawa. Disgusting. And she must feign delight. And this, just so she could eat and sleep and be allowed to live. She still did not want to kill herself, but how much shame was she willing to endure just to stay alive?

And sooner or later this great one of the Mongols would tire of her, just as Horigawa said, and would cast her off. What affection could there be between people of nations so different?

Sooner or later she would begin the slow descent through the ranks of the Mongols. It could only end one way. Horigawa would have his revenge.

She sat, looking at her fingertips peeping from beneath her sleeves. The maids were silent, she was silent. The bleak thoughts kept pursuing one another through her mind. She brooded back over the course of her life. She had never been permitted to decide on a course of action for herself and by herself. She had always been subject to the whims of one man or another.

She wanted to weep, but held back her tears. She dared not spoil her make-up, or the great Mongol would not want her. She must take her mind off these thoughts.

She knew only one way to distract herself. In her mind she said, “Homage to Amida Buddha,” over and over again. She did not want to recite the invocation to the Lord of Boundless Light aloud. She did not want to be the object of the maids’ idle curiosity. And besides, she might end up hoarse before Bourkina came for her.

After a time she found it easiest to let the mental recitation fall in with the rhythm of her breathing, and she repeated the invocation each time she breathed out, just as if she were saying it aloud. Whenever she found her mind wandering to her wretchedness, she gently drew it back to the invocation.

She began to see Amida Buddha seated in his paradise. His face was round and golden, like the sun. His expression, bearing the faintest of smiles, was one of infinite peace. Gradually she was able to see all of him, sitting in the clouds, his hands touching together in his lap, surrounded by circling flocks of angels and seated bodhisattvas.

A vast peace filled her. She forgot all her sorrows. She forgot the passage of time.

The face of Buddha was replaced by the deeply tanned face of Bourkina, peering into hers.

“I’m sorry you have had to wait so long. There is always so much happening here.”

Taniko smiled. “It is quite all right.”

Bourkina peered at her. “What has happened to you? Have you been using the Arabian drug?”

Still smiling, Taniko shook her head. “Drug? No. I simply have tried to take your advice. I’m not frightened any more.”

Bourkina nodded; “I sensed you had possibilities. Good. Well, then, let us go.”

In spite of what Taniko said, she did feel a faint twinge of fear as she rose smoothly to her feet. What would happen to her now?

Bourkina looked at her appraisingly. “We have only a short way to go. I hope you won’t be too warm with all those robes you have on. You look very lovely, though strange. I’ve never seen a woman dressed as you are. But that’s all to the good.”

The two Chinese maids sat like statues as Bourkina and Taniko walked out into the warm night. At first Taniko was unable to see. She hesitated, and the big Mongol woman reached down and took her hand.

When Taniko’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could see the round tents on all sides. The fear was gone again. She had discovered that she carried the paradise of Amida Buddha within her and could enter it, without having to die, any time she wanted to. No longer could anyone harm her. She could always escape.

They were walking towards the large white pavilion in the centre of the camp where Horigawa had gone the day before. Though it was only a tent, it was as large as the house of a noble in the Sunrise Land. It covered the top of a low hill. Before it stood two standards, one the horns and tails of some great beast, the other a silk banner inscribed with the Chinese word Yuan, “a beginning.”

There was a front entrance facing south, the most auspicious direction, protected by six warriors armed with lances. Bourkina went around to the side of the felt-covered tent, where there was another, smaller entrance guarded by only one huge man with a broad, curving sword in his belt. He bowed to Bourkina.

“Now you must know,” Bourkina said, suddenly turning to Taniko. “I did not want to give you time to be frightened. You must not be afraid now. You are about to enter the presence of one of the greatest among us. If you please him, your future happiness is assured. Prepare now to meet the grandson of Genghis Khan, the brother of the Great Khan Mangu, the overlord of China, the commander of this army and the favoured of Eternal Heaven, Kublai Khan.”

Then Bourkina took Taniko by the hand and led her through the entrance of the tent. Within, all was cloth of gold, and it seemed as if hundreds of hanging lamps were blazing. Taniko was momentarily blinded as she entered the dome-shaped chamber filled with dazzling light.

“You come from a land so different from our own that I find it hard to see it in my mind. Yet there are qualities in you I like. You are strong. You are quick-witted, and you have lived long enough to acquire some wisdom. I will give you a little advice. Do not try, because you are among Mongols, to appear beautiful in the Mongol manner. Make yourself beautiful according to the custom of your land, no matter how strange you think you might seem to us. You are a woman of experience. You understand men and you have attracted great ones to you. Do not be frightened. Try to be calm and cheerful. Behave as you would in your own home among friends and family.”

“Why do you assume that I am calm and cheerful in my own home?” asked Taniko. Bourkina laughed.

“I understand your advice,” Taniko said. “You are kind. Thank you.” Remembering that Bourkina was one of Jebu’s people, Taniko felt a sudden surge of affection for the big woman.

Bourkina smiled at her again. “I am always happy to help a woman who deserves it. Prepare yourself now, little lady.”

“I will. Please remember to send paper, ink and brush.”

Taniko asked the Chinese maid holding the large mirror to circle her slowly. She held a small mirror in her own hand, and when the maid was behind her, she swept her long black hair to one side and studied the nape of her neck. Pure white, slender, defenceless. As it should look.

Red, she felt, was her most seductive colour, so she had chosen a costume built up of layers of red. Outermost, though, was a richly embroidered over robe of light green. It made her look young and innocent. The innocence would cover passion, a dark red robe. The sleeves of an unlined dress of deep red damask peered from beneath the two outer robes. Beneath these she wore three under robes of different shades of plum red, all visible at her throat, sleeves and skirt.

When she was fully dressed, only her fingertips and her face were visible in the midst of the flowing silks. The two Chinese women who were helping her dress tried to keep blank, impassive expressions, but Taniko caught them darting curious looks at her. Would she be laughed at tonight? She could imagine how the courtiers at Heian Kyo would make fun of a Mongol woman trying, in her native clothing, to make a good impression.

But she knew that she had not beautified herself this much since Kiyosi died. Horigawa might hope for her degradation, but she would thwart his hopes. She would not let them crush her. She called on the Lord of Boundless Light.

She had one of the maids tuck a cloth into her neckline to protect her outer robe. She seated herself on cushions and drew her box of make-up to her, asking one of the maids to hold up the mirror. She applied a layer of white paint to her face. From this moment her face must remain frozen. She could neither smile nor weep. She dipped a brush into a jar of red pigment and painted her lips, a bow shape for the upper lip, a narrower red line for the lower; her natural mouth was too wide for perfect beauty. With rouge she filled in a circle of pink on either cheek. Now her face was no longer that of an individual. It was the face of ideal Woman. It might as easily be the face of the sun goddess or the Empress or a peasant girl as that of Taniko.

She glanced up at the two Chinese women. They were not laughing; they were awed, looking at her as if they were seeing a statue in a strange shrine.

Now she opened her jewellery box. Horigawa was a fool to have left me all this, she thought. With these weapons I will conquer. For a pendant she selected a jade necklace with an image of the seated Buddha. And of course she would wear the mother-of-pearl butterfly in her hair.

Now she was finished. She looked up at the circular smoke opening in the ceiling of the felt tent. The sky was indigo. The sun must be setting. Bourkina had told her to be ready by sunset.

She seated herself on the cushions and waited. She remembered the writing materials and pointed to the writing box, adorned with a landscape of trees and mountains, set on top of her clothes chest. “If you get ink on your robe—” one of the maids protested. “I never do.”

She did not want to write for her pillow book. That could come later, when she knew what was going to happen to her. She would attempt a poem. She began rubbing the ink stick on the stone. One of the maids offered to do it for her, but she waved her away. By the time the ink was made she had her poem. She dipped the brush and wrote:

Fire warms all who come near. Only the light of the Buddha Can warm the fire.

She sat back, wondering what the poem meant. The two maids sat humbly against the wall of the tent to Taniko’s right so she would not have to look at them unless she wanted to. They, at least, see me as a great lady, she thought.

But how would she be treated tonight? Was this all some trick? she wondered. The interview with Bourkina, the opportunity to make all these elaborate preparations, was it all preparation for a band of Mongol officers to make sport of her at a drunken feast? No, Bourkina appeared, though a hard woman, to be honest enough. Probably some officer of the khan, some commander of a thousand or ten thousand men, would enjoy her tonight. Or perhaps he would find her dwarfish and freakish and would contemptuously send her away or throw her to the brutes in the ranks.

Now she could really feel how Jebu must have felt, living among people to whom he looked strange.

She must not lie to herself. Even if this Mongol general should find her pleasing, what would she have gained? A man she did not care for would enter her body and use her. Like those first years with Horigawa. Disgusting. And she must feign delight. And this, just so she could eat and sleep and be allowed to live. She still did not want to kill herself, but how much shame was she willing to endure just to stay alive?

Taniko shut her eyes. She felt herself about to cry, remembering Kiyosi and Atsue. But this Mongol woman would only despise her for her tears. She masked her feelings.

“I was, as I told you, a woman of noble family married to Prince Horigawa. He and I were estranged and I did, indeed, become the consort of a man who was not simply a noble, but the heir of the most powerful family on our islands and commander of all our warriors. I had a son by him. When he was killed in battle, I wanted none of his wealth. I only asked to keep our son, but he was torn from me by his father’s family. I was taken out of the country so I could not protest.”

“How many children have you had?”

“Two. I had a daughter, and Prince Horigawa killed her because she was not his.”

Bourkina said, “Among my people the penalty for adultery is death. For both the man and the woman.”

Taniko was astonished. “Death? If that were the law in my land, all the best families would be wiped out.” Instantly she wished she had not said so. If the Mongols considered it a great crime to couple with someone other than your spouse, perhaps Bourkina would think Horigawa’s low estimate of her to be accurate.

“The prince despised me long before I lay with any other man,” she said. “He married me only because my family is wealthy.”

Bourkina patted her hand. “I have seen the prince. He is not much of a man. And he is a fool to have given away a woman as clever and pretty as you. You have every reason to have strayed from his pasture.” She stood up. “Now let me help you undress.”

“Undress? Must I?”

“We have talked for a while now, and I know something of your life and your mind. But you are not being considered for a post as a general or an ambassador. I want to see whether your body is beautiful and without blemish.”

Taniko sighed and stood. “Then it is true that I am nothing more than a vessel to be used by men.”

There was a note of irritation in Bourkina’s voice. “You know too much of the world to talk that way. A woman’s fortune is founded on her beauty, just as a man’s rests on his strength. It is obvious enough, though, that your worth does not end with your body. If you were merely to be given to the troops for their pleasure, do you think I would have spent this much time with you?”

It took Taniko some time to undress. She removed robe, jacket, skirts and dresses. She had bound her hair up for convenience while travelling. Now she let it fall to her waist, and the Mongol woman’s thin eyebrows went up. Finally Taniko undid the last robe and handed it to Bourkina, who let it fall to the cushions as she appraised Taniko.

Taniko had never been embarrassed by nudity, especially in front of other women. When a man and a woman came together, they did not desire complete nakedness. The most attractive way was to open your clothes just enough to permit glimpses of your body and to give your lover access to yourself. But complete nudity for practical reasons, such as when bathing or changing clothes, was commonplace, and in her own household Taniko often saw women and men naked.

No one, however, had ever examined her as closely as Bourkina did. Without a word the Mongol woman walked all around her, squinting at her from the crown of her head to her toes.

“You do not bind your feet like the Chinese. That is good. We find that custom ugly.”

Now Bourkina began to touch her. Taniko shrank from the Mongol woman’s rough hands, and Bourkina ordered her sharply to stand still. Taniko felt like a melon being probed by a household cook. Bourkina peeled back her lips and poked her teeth. She smelled her breath. She kneaded Taniko’s breasts, pinched her nipples and felt her buttocks. She ran her fingertips over Taniko’s belly.

“Not bad. Only a few stretch marks. You had two children, you say? How old are you?”

Taniko quickly decided that she could have lost five years in the China Sea. “Twenty-three.”

“You are between twenty-five and thirty. But your small size and light weight have kept your body young. To a man, you might pass for even younger than twenty-three. Now lie on your back and open your legs.”

Taniko knew better by now than to protest., She lay back on the cushions, turning her head away and gritting her teeth as the Mongol woman peered and probed inside her.

“Good. Childbearing has not made you slack. You appear to be free of disease. Put some clothing on.” Bourkina beamed, the round, brown face stretched by a broad grin. “May I presume that you are as expert in the arts of the bed as a married woman who has also had two lovers should be?”

“I suppose so,” said Taniko.

“Are you prepared to use those arts with enthusiasm, in order to live well among us?”

“What is to become of me? You must tell me that.”

Bourkina held up her hand. “I don’t yet know for sure. I have to make my report. Then it will be decided. Meanwhile, your clothing and possessions will be brought to you. You will bathe. You will array yourself in your finest robes, as for your wedding night. Make yourself as beautiful as you know how to. You have until sunset.” Bourkina moved to the doorway of the yurt, her yellow silk robe swirling about her.

“You come from a land so different from our own that I find it hard to see it in my mind. Yet there are qualities in you I like. You are strong. You are quick-witted, and you have lived long enough to acquire some wisdom. I will give you a little advice. Do not try, because you are among Mongols, to appear beautiful in the Mongol manner. Make yourself beautiful according to the custom of your land, no matter how strange you think you might seem to us. You are a woman of experience. You understand men and you have attracted great ones to you. Do not be frightened. Try to be calm and cheerful. Behave as you would in your own home among friends and family.”