Silk Road

by Falconer, Colin

  ‘Tell him we must not delay our journey another second!’ William said.

  ‘What is this babble coming from the mouth of your holy man?’ Qaidu asked.

  ‘He says he will be honoured to be your guest until it is time to move on,’ Josseran said. ‘Only he is much concerned by the news that your Khan of Khans is dead. He asks if a new Great Khan has been anointed.’

  ‘That is of no concern to a barbarian,’ Qaidu said and lifted a hand languidly in the air, to indicate that the audience was over. ‘See that they have food and lodging,’ he said to one of his aides.

  As they left the pavilion Josseran saw the girl among the crowd of faces by the door of the yurt. A longing, as yet formless and nameless, moved in the shadows of his mind. He brushed it aside, as a man might brush aside an importunate beggar. Yet from that moment it dogged him and would not leave him alone.

  XXIV

  A BAND OF sunset was framed against a pale sky in the doorway of the yurt. Fur-clad figures hurried in and out, carrying broiled sheep or horsemeat for their dinner.

  Josseran stared into the cooking fire. The thin blue flame charred the outside of the meat, without really cooking it. He put some of the mutton in his mouth. It was still raw and bloody.

  ‘Look at the fire,’ William said. ‘It hardly burns. A mark of the Devil.’

  Josseran spat a piece of gristle into the coals. ‘If there is one thing the Devil can do, it is make a fire burn well.’

  ‘Then how do you account for this magic?’

  ‘The woman Khutelun says it is because we have climbed so high up the valley. It takes the strength from the flames.’

  William grunted his disbelief.

  They had been brought to the yurt of Tekudai, Qaidu’s eldest son. It was unlike any dwelling Josseran had seen so far on their journey. It was a circular, domed tent with a collapsible lattice framework of bamboo or willow poles. The frame had been covered with sheets of heavy felt and the whole structure lashed down with ropes of horse-hair. He supposed it was perfectly suited to the nomad’s way of life, for Tekudai said it could be erected or dismantled in a few hours and the whole structure transported on the back of two or three camels when the Tatars moved from the summer pastures down to the winter lowlands.

  Even the larger yurts, such as that belonging to the khan and his family, could be carried intact on the back of a wagon.

  But the interiors all conformed to the same established Tatar design: in the centre was a fire pit, covered with smoke-blackened pots. Magenta and blue garment chests and rolls of bedding were stored around the walls, along with saddles and riding harnesses and huge earthenware water jars. The beaten-earth floor was covered with rugs. Spiders and scorpions, Tekudai told him, would not set foot on a felt carpet, so they served a dual purpose, keeping the yurt warm and dry as well as deterring insects. The entrance, which faced the south, as they all did, had a heavy flap, brightly painted with pictures of birds.

  Either side of the entrance hung two felt figures, one with the udders of a cow, the other with the teats of a mare. The cow hung on the left side, the east, for that was the woman’s side of the yurt. The mare hung on the man’s side, on the west, for women were not allowed to milk the mares; that was man’s work. It was from mare’s milk that they fermented their koumiss, the staple of the Tatar diet.

  It still astonished him the amount of mare’s milk these Tatars could drink at a single sitting. Sometimes it seemed that it was all that they lived on.

  Tekudai, as master of the ordu, sat on a raised couch behind the fire. Above his head hung another idol which the Tatars called ‘the master’s brother’. Above his wife’s head hung another called ‘the mistress’s brother’. The Tatars called these idols ongot, and there were several in every yurt.

  Only Qaidu, as khan, was allowed to keep the hallowed image of Chinggis Khan.

  Josseran watched the Tatars as they ate. First they took some of the fat from the meat to graze the mouth of Natigay, another of their gods, then they tore off great chunks of the parboiled mutton and held them close to their faces with one hand, while slicing off mouthfuls of meat with a knife held in the other.

  ‘Look at them, how they eat!’ William said. ‘They are not men at all. The earth opened up and these creatures swarmed out of Hell itself. Even the woman. She is a she-devil, a witch.’

  Josseran said nothing. He did not think her a devil at all.

  ‘Somewhere this way is Prester John. If we can get a message to him, we can save ourselves from these devils.’

  Prester John! Josseran thought. As much a superstition as the giant ants!

  ‘You do not believe?’ William asked.

  ‘I believe if there ever was a Prester John he is with God now.’

  ‘But surely his descendants live on.’

  ‘The Mohammedans have commerce with the East; some claim they have even been as far as Persia itself and they have never heard of such a king.’

  ‘You believe the word of a Saracen?’

  ‘You believe the word of men who have never been further east than Venice? If this legend is true, where is this Prester John?’

  ‘The Tatars may have forced him south.’

  ‘If he runs from the Tatars like everyone else, what use is he to us?’

  ‘He is this way somewhere. We must listen for word of him. He is our salvation.’

  Josseran grew irritable, as he always did when talking to this friar, and returned his attention to the food. Khutelun, sitting just across the fire from him, watched his efforts to eat in the Tatar way and said: ‘Perhaps you should eat in your own manner. You have such a big nose you may cut off the end of it.’

  Josseran stared at her. ‘Among my own people my nose is not considered so large.’

  Khutelun relayed this knowledge to her companions, who all laughed. ‘Then you must all be descended from your horses.’

  Damn her, he thought. He continued using the knife in the Tatar way. He had learned from his many years in Outremer that it was wiser to imitate local customs than to continue with old habits. And besides, he would not give up and let her have the satisfaction.

  Some of the men had finished eating and were now supping bowl after bowl of black koumiss. Tekudai’s brother Gerel was already drunk and lay on his back, snoring. His companions sang raucously while another played a single-string fiddle.

  Josseran watched Khutelun from the corner of his eye. She was beautiful but not in the way of a Frankish woman. Her face was oval, with the high cheekbones of the Tatars, polished like the bronze of a statue that had been much regarded and admired. Her movements reminded him of a cat, sinuous and graceful. But it was something in her manner, her spirit, that attracted him, the way she looked at him.

  Though, of course, it was absurd to even contemplate such a union. ‘I have never seen hair of such colour,’ she said to him, suddenly. He realized that as he had been secretly been watching her, she had been watching him.

  Josseran kept his head short-cropped in Acre, as was the rule inside the Order, but since they had been travelling there had been no barbers to attend him and now he was conscious of the length of it. He brushed it away from his face with his fingers.

  ‘It is the colour of fire,’ she said.

  For a moment their eyes locked.

  ‘So,’ she said, finally. ‘You have come to make peace with us.’

  ‘An alliance,’ he corrected her. ‘We have a common enemy.’

  She laughed. ‘The Tatars do not have enemies. Only kingdoms we have not yet conquered.

  ‘You have seen for yourself. Our empire extends from the rising of the sun in the east to its setting place We have never been defeated in battle. And you say you want to make peace! Of course you do!’ He still did not contest with her and she seemed frustrated by his passivity. ‘You should have brought tribute for my father.’

  ‘We had not expected to have the honour of gazing on your father. However, we bring words of friendship.’
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  ‘I think my father would rather have gold.’ The men around her laughed again. Josseran noticed how they deferred to her. In France a woman would never be allowed to talk so freely unless she was a whore and would not be treated with such respect unless she was a queen. It was evident the Tatar customs concerning women were very different to their own.

  ‘Who is your friend?’ she asked him.

  ‘He is not my friend. He is a holy man. I am commissioned to escort him to Qaraqorum.’

  ‘He is the colour of a corpse. Does he know how ugly he is?’

  ‘Do you wish me to tell him?’

  ‘What is she saying?’ William asked. He had some of the boiled mutton in his fingers and was pulling at the tough meat with his teeth.

  ‘She finds you pleasing to her eye and wishes me to pass on her admiration.’

  William’s response was startling. It was as if she had slapped him. ‘Remind her she is a woman and has no place speaking to a friar in such a manner. Is she a whore?’

  ‘I think she is a princess.’

  ‘She does not behave like any princess I have ever known.’

  ‘Their customs are different perhaps.’

  When Josseran turned back to Khutelun, the mocking expression on her face had disappeared. She was looking at the priest with a wild and strange look in her eyes. The Tatars around her had fallen silent.

  ‘Tell him he must go back,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He must go back. If he crosses the Roof of the World he will never find rest in his soul again.’

  ‘He cannot go back. He has his duty, as I have.’

  There was a dangerous silence. The Tatars, both the men and the women, were watching Khutelun; even the lute player had set aside his instrument and the drunkards had stopped singing. She was staring at William; not at him, through him, somehow.

  ‘What is happening?’ William said.

  ‘I do not know.’

  ‘Why do they stare? Have we done something to incite them?’

  Khutelun spoke again. ‘Tell your shaman that if he will not go back, he must learn to suffer.’

  ‘Suffering is something he enjoys.’

  ‘He does not even begin to understand what suffering is,’ Khutelun said, and then the look was gone from her eyes and she returned her attention to the mutton.

  The moment passed. The talk and laughter resumed. The drinkers attacked the black koumiss with renewed vigour. But Josseran was shaken. He felt a chill along his spine as if the devil himself had stepped on his grave.

  XXV

  JOSSERAN AND WILLIAM were given their own yurt near the centre of the great encampment, close to Qaidu’s ordu. Their Tatar hosts had lit a silver bowl of incense by the shrine of Natigay, and though William had quickly snuffed it out, its aroma lingered in the air. Josseran crawled under his blankets of animal skins and lay on his back staring at the sky through the smoke hole in the roof.

  Josseran saw William on his knees silhouetted by the glowing coals in the fire. He murmured a prayer for their deliverance.

  Josseran huddled further under the furs. He wished William would just shut up and sleep. His nerves were frayed and he needed rest. France, even Outremer, seemed such a very long way away tonight. It was as if they had arrived at some underworld. He had laughed at William’s superstition of giant ants and other beasts but now he, too, was afraid. At night it was harder to scoff at tales of men with tails and feet growing from their heads.

  They were so far from Christ’s mercy. Few survived journeys such as this. Most were swallowed up in the fastnesses of these mountains, lost to Christendom forever, and were never seen again.

  William was the only vestige of the familiar that remained to Josseran, his only anchor to the Christian world. What sad irony.

  In Acre Thomas would be wondering why he had not returned with Hülegü’s response to their entreaties. Gérard and Yusuf would be growing beards down to their knees while they sat in some barred cell in Aleppo. Everyone else would have forgotten about them. Even the Pope, he suspected.

  ‘Do you wish to make your confession?’ William asked in the darkness.

  ‘My confession?’

  ‘We have been travelling these many weeks and you have not made confession.’

  ‘I have spent all my time in the saddle of a horse. It has not given me great opportunity to sin.’

  ‘How long since your last confession, Templar?’

  More than ten years, he thought. It would be pointless to enumerate my small sins when there is an unwashable stain on my very soul that I cannot, or will not, speak aloud, especially to a priest. ‘In the Order we have our own chaplains who serve us.’

  ‘If that is so, then you know you should make penance regularly.’

  ‘When I feel the need for penance, Brother William, I shall advise you.’

  Josseran rolled on his side and tried to sleep.

  ‘Why do I feel you carry a great burden with you?’ William said.

  ‘I do carry a great burden. He is a Dominican friar and his name is William.’

  ‘I know your opinion of me, Templar. But do not make the mistake of thinking me dull in the wits. I know when a man is greatly troubled. War may be your province. The vagaries of the spirit are mine.’

  ‘I thank you for your concern. Now go to sleep.’

  Josseran closed his eyes but sleep would not come. He thought about this Khutelun, and of the black void that had come to her eyes when she looked at William and the way the Tatars had fallen silent around her. It was as if she could see inside his soul. Can she see inside mine as well? He hoped she could not, for it was not the monsters lurking beyond the Roof of the World that he feared most, but those hiding within himself.

  XXVI

  KHUTELUN HAD HAD the gift for as long as she could remember. It had begun as an energy in her body she could not contain. She had never been able to stay still, even as a child; she had always found it difficult to sleep and several times she had wandered off in the night.

  Her brothers would be sent out into the teeth of the wind to search for her in the darkness. Sometimes they could not find her. When she reappeared at the camp the next morning, frozen and wild-eyed, her mother would already be weeping for her, mourning her death.

  Khutelun was always filled with remorse afterwards. But there was nothing she could do to stop. The gift would not allow it.

  The strange urgings of her soul quieted after her first bleeding, but did not stop. Once she walked her horse to the lip of a cliff and imagined spurring over the ledge into space and the silence of the everlasting Blue Sky. She had thought how she might spread her arms and they would become the great, tawny wings of a falcon.

  She could fly.

  Fly.

  It was her brother, Tekudai, who found her, grabbed the reins and pulled her pony back from the edge.

  Soon afterwards Tekudai became ill. Her father called for the shamans and they said their prayers over him, and on their advice three Kerait prisoners were cut open and their blood sprinkled on Tekudai’s body as he lay convulsing on his bed of furs. But still he became weaker.

  Only the shamans ever entered a yurt when there was sickness for evil spirits could leap from one body to another and it was perilous for an ordinary person to come too close. But one morning Qaidu peered through the flap of the yurt and found Khutelun curled up beside her brother, fast asleep. He rushed in and carried her out, wailing in despair, thinking that now he would lose a daughter as well as a son. But Khutelun did not fall sick.

  Instead, Tekudai began to get well.

  It was after this that she began to have visions. One day she went to her father and told him not to hunt that day because she had dreamed of a monster eating him. He had laughed away her protests. But that same afternoon, while he was retrieving his arrows from a fallen ibex, he was attacked by a bear. It ripped four great slashes in his chest and when they brought him home there was scarcely breath in him.
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  Khutelun stayed with him all through that night, sucking the clotted blood from his wounds. When her father survived, the other shamans came to her and told her she had the gift.

  An old woman, Changelay, and a man, Magui, taught her the sacred rites and from that moment on Qaidu always consulted her whenever there were important decisions to be made.

  But for Khutelun the gift was sometimes a burden. There were occasions when her knowing tormented her, as when she dreamed that one of the men of the tribe was bulling another man’s wife. She kept her silence, but was haunted by it until the man was killed in a battle with the Kermids.

  She did not want this gift. She wanted to be free, like her brothers, to ride the steppes and gallop with her father.

  But in the smoky dark of the night the spirits would talk to her and transport her across the steppe. At first these visions lasted no longer than a splinter of lightning in the mountains at night. But as she grew older she stayed longer and longer in the Otherworld, could sometimes glimpse to the very horizon of time. When the spirit was strong in her she could fly through the whole valley and see into everyone. But it was a dizzying experience and it left her exhausted.

  Tonight she streaked across the Roof of the World with the barbarian with the fire-blond beard, twisting the shifting axis of the hours to see what lay ahead for her and for him. It was a terrible prescience, for the future that lay below her in the panorama of the seasons was too frightening to contemplate.

  XXVII

  JOSSERAN WOKE TO the sound of a commotion outside. He got up and pushed aside the heavy flap at the entrance. A crowd had gathered on the plain, just beyond the first line of wagons. It was clear something of import was about to happen.

  ‘Some viciousness, no doubt,’ William said behind him.

  Josseran threw on his furs and boots and set off. William hurried after him. The ground was hard, and dusted with snow.

  Hundreds of Tatars, men, women and children, had gathered in a circle. The mood was festive. He had seen such flushed expressions before, at public executions in Orléans and Paris.