Silk Road

by Falconer, Colin

  ‘He is a holy man, not a knight!’ Josseran answered, finding himself rushing unexpectedly to the friar’s defence. ‘And do not call me Barbarian! My name is Josseran!’

  So, she had finally baited him to anger. Wonderful. She felt her mood lighten. ‘Joss-ran the Barbarian,’ she said laughing and wheeled her horse away.

  William settled himself into his saddle.

  ‘Do not die on me, priest,’ Josseran said, between gritted teeth. ‘You are under my protection.’

  ‘God guides and protects me each day. Do not fear for me.’

  ‘I do not fear for you. I just do not like to fail in my duty.’

  ‘Nor I in mine, Templar.’

  Josseran watched the friar wearily spur his horse forward. He sits in the saddle like dough on a griddle, he thought. His heart belongs to the Pope, but surely his buttocks belong to the Beast.

  XXXIII

  THEY SLEPT THAT first night in the yurt of a Kazak shepherd. Although it was spring, the nights were still bitter and Josseran and William huddled under a mountain of furs while the Tatars lay on the carpets with only their felt coats to keep them warm. The sleeves of their jackets could unfold well beyond their fingertips, and this was how they kept their fingers from freezing on even the coldest night.

  They were the most self-sufficient people he had ever known, for though they were conquerors of half the world they were still nomads. Everything they needed for survival they carried with them: a fish hook and line; two leather bottles, one for water, one for koumiss; a fur helmet and sheepskin coat; and a file for sharpening arrows. Two of Khutelun’s horsemen also carried a small silk tent and a thin animal hide to serve as a ground sheet should they need to make their own shelter for the night.

  They climbed the emerald pastures of the valleys, picking their way between boulders and rock falls along a path that snaked between valley torrents and cliffs. Once they even negotiated a waterfall that frothed down the blue-grey of the mountain face.

  Spring had swollen the rivers to a silty torrent the colour of blood, and the Tatars used their saddlebags, which were made from cows’ stomachs, as floats to ford the raging streams. Sometimes they were forced to cross the same river many times as it twisted down through the valleys.

  Josseran stared at the frozen wastes around them. Just a few patches of rock and lichen were beginning to appear from beneath the wind-scattered snow. ‘You call this your spring?’ he said to Khutelun.

  ‘You cannot even imagine winter on the Roof of the World. We must press hard every day with our journey if we are to see Qaraqorum in time for you to return. The snow comes like a fist over these passes and when its fingers close nothing ever comes out.’

  The old man placed his right hand on his left shoulder and murmured: ‘Rahamesh.’

  The woman of the house clapped both hands in front of her and bowed. Like her husband, she wore a padded maroon tunic over baggy trousers and leather boots with upturned toes. There was a silk headscarf around her head and trailing over her shoulder.

  Her husband was the manap, the headman, of the tiny village they had found in this lost valley. He waved them inside his house. There was no furniture, only earth mounds covered with richly patterned rugs of scarlet and blue. There were more thick felt rugs on the floors and the walls.

  Two young girls entered with bowls of sour milk and thick rounds of unleavened bread. The Tatars tore off pieces of the bread, dipped them into the sour milk and started to eat. Khutelun indicated to Josseran and William that they should do the same.

  William ate just a little of the bread. Hunched by the fire, shivering, he was an unprepossessing sight. His nose was red from the cold and wet, like a dog’s. When the main dish arrived, still steaming, the manap, perhaps feeling sorry for him, placed a huge hunk of boiled mutton in his bowl and dropped a dumpling the size of a large orange on top.

  He motioned for him to eat.

  The rest of the Tatars did not wait on invitation. They took out their knives and started to tear at the meat. Josseran did the same. William just sat staring at the bowl.

  ‘Your holy man should eat or he will offend the manap,’ Khutelun said.

  How do I explain to her about Lent? Josseran thought. He tore hungrily at his own piece of mutton with his teeth. How could this insufferable priest endure so much without sustenance? ‘It is a holy time,’ Josseran said. ‘Like Ramadan. He is only allowed bread and a little water.’

  Khutelun shook her head. ‘I do not care if he dies, but it is not fair or just that we should make this long journey into the mountains only to bury him in the valley on the other side.’

  ‘There is nothing I can say that will deter him. He does not listen to me.’

  She studied Josseran over the rim of her bowl as she drank down some warm goat’s milk. ‘We revere our shamans. Yet you treat him with contempt.’

  ‘I am pledged to protect him. I do not have to like him.’

  ‘That is plain.’

  William looked up from his miserable contemplation of the fire. ‘What are you saying to that witch?’

  ‘She is curious why you do not eat.’

  ‘You should not speak with her. You endanger your very soul.’

  ‘She may be a witch, as you say, but she still has our lives in her care. It would be churlish not to talk with her, do you not think so?’

  ‘Our lives are in the care of the Lord.’

  ‘I doubt if even He knows his way through these mountains,’ Josseran murmured, but William did not hear him.

  Khutelun watched this exchange, her head to one side. ‘You are of his religion?’

  Josseran touched the cross at his throat, and thought of his friend Simon. ‘I put my trust in Jesus Christ.’

  ‘Do you put your trust in him also?’ She indicated William.

  Josseran did not answer her.

  ‘There are followers of this Jesus at Qaraqorum,’ she said.

  He stared at her in astonishment. So, was it really true, the rumours that had filtered back to Acre about Christians among the Tatars? ‘They know of the Lord Jesus at the court of the Great Khan?’

  ‘All religions are known to the Khan of Khans. Only barbarians know of one single God.’

  Josseran ignored this deliberate barb. ‘Are there many who know of Our Lord?’

  ‘When you arrive at the Centre of the World you will see for yourself.’

  Josseran wondered how far this savage princess could be believed. Was she merely taunting him, or was there substance to her claims?

  ‘My father says your holy man does not perform magic,’ Khutelun said.

  Josseran shook his head.

  ‘Then what use is he as a shaman?’

  ‘He does not need to perform magic. He is anointed as God’s instrument on earth. If I wished, I could tell him my sins and he would bring me God’s forgiveness.’

  ‘Forgiveness, for what?’

  ‘For things I have done wrong.’

  ‘Mistakes, you mean. You need your God to tell you that it is all right to make a mistake?’

  ‘He also interprets for us the mind of God.’

  Khutelun seemed surprised at that. ‘It is a simple matter to understand the mind of the gods. They stand with those who are victorious.’

  It was irrefutable logic, he supposed. Even the Pope said that it was God who gave them their victories and that it was their sins that were to blame for their defeats. Perhaps they were not so unalike after all. ‘You are shaman to your people,’ he said. ‘So can you do magic?’

  ‘Sometimes I see portents of the future. It is a gift that few others have. Among our people I am reckoned the best.’

  ‘Is that why you were chosen to lead us across these mountains?’

  ‘No. My father ordered it because I am a good leader and I am skilled with horses.’

  ‘Why did he not choose Tekudai?’

  ‘You do not trust me because I am a woman?’ When he hesitated to reply, she said: ‘It w
as not my wish to lead you. I was commanded. Why should I crave the company of barbarians?’

  It seemed he had offended her. She turned away from him to talk instead to her companions; ribald talk, uncomplimentary comparisons between William and his horse.

  After the food had been taken away the manap brought out a flute, made from the hollowed wing bone of an eagle. He started to play. Another of the men joined in, playing something that looked like a lute; it was a beautiful instrument, the bulbous soundbox had been carved from a piece of rosewood and inlaid with ivory. Khutelun clapped her hands, laughing and singing along, the firelight throwing her profile into shadow.

  As he watched her Josseran wondered, not for the first time, what it might be like to lie with a Tatar woman. He knew for a certainty that she would not be indifferent to him, like the whores in Genoa and Venice. He wondered why he tormented himself with such thoughts. After all, it could never happen.

  That night Josseran and William slept together with the Tatars in the yurt of the manap, the quilts wrapped around them, their feet towards the fire. Knowing Khutelun was curled up just a few feet away from him tortured his rest, and, fatigued as he was, he found it difficult to sleep. His conscience and his passions went to war inside him.

  He argued with himself for his honour. Yet my honour is already stained with blood and with lust, he thought. I have no honour left! Now I want to sully myself even further and find a way to couple myself with a Tatar savage?

  By the Rule of the Temple I have sworn myself to obedience and chastity; and I have been entrusted with a sacred commission that may save the Holy Land from the Saracens. Yet all I can think of is bedding a Tatar?

  You are almost beyond salvation, Josseran Sarrazini. Or perhaps being beyond salvation means being beyond damnation as well. The Lord God has pursued you these last five years and out here on the steppe I no longer feel his hot breath on my neck. If it was not for this priest, I would perhaps at last be free of him.

  XXXIV

  THE CLOUDS PLUNGED from the high summits, rolling and broiling like smoke, and the earth under their feet turned to shale. All colour was leeched from the world.

  Occasionally, through breaks in the cloud, they saw barbicans of white appear for just a moment before disappearing again. Eagles watched them from the crags, or rode on the freezing winds that were channelled through the cols.

  Their ponies’ hooves slipped on the loose scree, the rocks tumbling hundreds of feet and they never heard their fall. The horses gasped and fought for breath, and as soon as they reached the crest of a ridge they would have to dismount and lead the beasts clattering and slipping down to the valley on the other side.

  They climbed higher and higher.

  One evening they reached a high col and for a moment the clouds parted. Josseran looked back and saw the lonely tablelands of the Kazak shepherds far behind them. Then the grey clouds and soft snow closed around them once more, like a curtain, leaving them alone with the clink of horses’ hooves on shale, the sound of William’s voice as he shouted his prayers to the echoing mountain passes, the distant baying of a wolf. Beside the track the bones of a long-dead horse crumbled into the snow.

  The Roof of the World was still far above them, cold and terrible.

  When they climbed above the tree line there was nowhere to tie off the reins of the horses. Instead Khutelun showed Josseran and William how to fix their lead reins around the front legs of their horse as a hobble, then showed them the special quick-release knot the Tatars used. The horses seemed accustomed to this treatment. Josseran never once saw a Tatar pony protest at having its legs handled.

  Josseran was surprised at the relationship between the Tatars and their horses. Although they were without exception the best horsemen he had ever seen, they did not forge any bond with their mounts, as Christian or Saracen knights did. They would not treat a stubborn horse with cruelty nor would they treat a good horse with any particular affection. They did not talk to them or stroke them or give them any encouragement at all. At the end of a day’s ride they would simply give their mount a brisk curry with a wooden blade to scrape away the dried sweat and then the horses were immediately hobbled and turned loose to forage for themselves, for the Tatars did not find feed for their ponies, even in the snows.

  Josseran himself worried endlessly over Kismet. He did not think she would survive long up here.

  They were in the high valleys now, where not even the hardy Tajiks or Kirghiz would venture. For the last few nights they had huddled under makeshift canvas tents. They stacked saddlebags as low ramparts against the encroaching wind and snow. Tonight, as the sun sank below the Roof of the World, Kismet stood miserable and shivering. She was starving, a parody of a horse, her bones visible beneath her skin. She twitched in the last of the sunlight as the shadows of the cliffs crept towards her and whimpered when Josseran stroked her scrawny neck.

  He whispered a few words of comfort into her ear, knowing that unless they came down off these mountains soon, he would lose her.

  ‘Not far, my brave Kismet. You must keep your courage. Soon there will be rich grasses to eat and the sun will warm your flanks again. Be brave.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  He looked around. It was Khutelun.

  ‘She is suffering.’

  ‘She is a horse.’

  ‘Kismet has been with me for five years. I have had her ever since I first arrived in Outremer.’

  ‘Kismet?’

  ‘It is the name I gave her,’ he said, stroking the horse’s muzzle. ‘It is a Mohammedan name. It means “fate”.’

  ‘Her name?’

  ‘Yes, her name.’

  Khutelun gave him a look one might give an idiot found playing with his own excrement.

  ‘You do not give your horses names?’ he asked her.

  ‘Do you give names to the clouds?’

  ‘A horse is different.’

  ‘A horse is a horse. Do you talk to your sheep and your cattle as well?’

  She was mocking him, perhaps, but she was also trying to understand. She was the only one of the Tatars who was genuinely curious about him. Although he had taught himself their language, and he could communicate with them easily now, they did not ask him questions about himself or his country, as Khutelun did. They accepted his presence with brute passivity.

  ‘You despise your own holy men, yet you love your horses. You are a difficult people to understand.’ She turned and looked back towards their camp: strips of canvas whipping in the mountain wind, their scrap of shelter for the night. She watched William struggle with his saddlebag, leaning into the wind as he staggered towards the tent.

  ‘What is in the bag that is so precious to him?’

  ‘It is a gift for your Great Khan.’

  ‘Gold?’

  ‘No, not gold.’ He had learned that the friar had brought with him an illuminated Bible and Psalter, together with the essential regalia of his profession: a missal and surplice and silver censer. He guarded them as if they were the greatest treasure on earth; the Bible especially, for no one outside the church was allowed to have in their possession either an Old or a New Testament. Josseran himself possessed only a breviary and a Book of Hours.

  ‘Why does he guard them like that? If we were going to murder you for your trinkets we would have done it in more comfort a moon ago.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Josseran said. ‘The only valuable thing he has is a censer made of silver.’

  She nodded, thoughtfully. ‘I doubt if our new khan will be much impressed. After the khuriltai, he will have mountains of silver and gold.’

  ‘William hopes to impress your khan with our religion.’

  ‘Without magic?’ She seemed incredulous. She turned around in time to see him stagger and fall on the ice. ‘He is not even going to impress the street sweepers. That is, if he gets to Qaraqorum, which I cannot imagine.’

  ‘You underestimate him. He enjoys his sufferings as much as you e
njoy your mare’s milk. It spurs him on. He will get there.’

  ‘May I see this Bible?’ she asked suddenly.

  ‘You must ask Brother William.’

  ‘And he will refuse. But not if you were to ask him for me.’

  ‘Me? He thinks I am a devil. He won’t give it to me. He is very jealous of it.’

  ‘Tell him it is his opportunity to impress a Tatar princess with his religion.’

  Josseran wondered how much weight this argument might carry when William considered her not a Tatar princess but a Tatar witch. ‘I will do what I can.’

  He stared at her, unashamedly. So much of her beauty, or her beauty as he imagined it, was hidden under her furs. Or was it? He was curious about her body but it was her eyes that kept him trans-fixed. When he looked at her, it was as if he could look into her soul.

  ‘Can you really see the future?’ he asked her.

  ‘I see many things, sometimes in the present, sometimes things still to come. It is not something I wish for. I have no control over this gift.’

  Gift! Josseran thought. In France, the priests would not call it a gift. They would put you to the rack and then have you burned!

  The sudden dark descended, leaving them alone with the mournful howl of the wind.

  ‘It is late. I must check the guards. I shall leave you to finish your conversation with your horse. Perhaps later you will share its thoughts with us.’

  And she laughed and walked away.

  XXXV

  SUMMER CAME TO the Roof of the World for just a few weeks and this early in the spring nothing grew. There was just a restless, snow-bitter wind that moaned and murmured hour after hour, rasping the nerves.

  At times they pulled their horses through snowdrifts into the teeth of a gale, following a series of finger ridges that snaked ever upwards into a sheer spine of rock. The air was thin here and William seemed on the point of collapse. His face was tinged with blue and his breath wheezed in his chest.