Silk Road

by Falconer, Colin

  But there was no violence and no lives ruined that day in the bazaar. Instead, an hour later, Khutelun and her Tatars left Kashgar with a string of camels in place of their horses and the grinning one-eyed trader as their guide.

  XLIV

  THE KASHGAR OASIS was spread a day’s ride across the plain, through avenues of poplar trees and fields of sunflowers and green wheat. Behind them, the ragged peaks at the Roof of the World were barely visible through the heat haze. Just a dream now.

  They spent that night in a drab caravanserai, a fortified inn that provided safe haven from bandits in the lonely deserts. This one had stark mud walls devoid of windows, just slit holes for firing arrows. The only entrance was a barred gate of wood and iron. Animals were sheltered in a central courtyard; there was also a well for water and a mosque. Beside it was a cavernous hall with a high, vaulted roof and beaten-earth floor where travellers ate and slept together. The rules of the caravanserai were immutable, Khutelun told Josseran; it was a sanctuary from all violence. Even sworn blood enemies would not feud while they were inside the walls.

  They ate a meal of mutton and rice and spices. Tiny grains of sand had inevitably found their way into the rice and crunched between their teeth. That would be the way of it from now on, Khutelun warned him. The desert would insinuate its way into everything.

  Like the Devil, William answered, when Josseran translated what she had said.

  ‘If everything that is said becomes an opportunity for a sermon,’ Josseran answered, ‘then I shall leave you as a deaf mute for the rest of the journey.’

  Just on sunset a rider appeared at the gates of the caravanserai. Josseran recognized him as one of Qaidu’s bodyguard. He had ridden hard from the west, and his horse was exhausted, its flanks streaked with froth. He whispered a message to Khutelun and she stalked away, white-lipped.

  But whatever had happened, it seemed no one was of a mind to tell the barbarian.

  They were the only travellers that night and spread themselves around the vast hall. Even down from the mountains the night was yet cold. Josseran shivered under a huddle of furs on the hard ground.

  Shadows lit by the dying fire danced around the walls. The Tatars were subdued; they feared the desert more than they feared the Roof of the World.

  He stared at the blackened beams of the roof and wondered how many other travellers had passed through this great vault over the centuries, merchants going east to Cathay or west to Persia, with their silks and spices and ivory and Roman coins. There must have been very few Christian men like himself. He had heard of Venetian traders who were supposed to have come this way, but if they had, they never returned to tell of it.

  ‘When will you make your confession to me?’ the friar whispered in the darkness.

  ‘I fear you are growing tiresome.’

  ‘Your soul is in danger.’

  ‘Let me worry for my soul.’

  ‘I have seen the way you look at the witch. Did you not take a vow of chastity when you joined your Order?’

  ‘My vow was not of lifelong obedience. I pledged five years to the Temple as penance. Those five years are almost done.’

  William fell silent. Josseran thought he had fallen asleep.

  ‘So you are not a true knight of the Temple?’

  ‘I have faithfully fulfilled my pledge of service to the Order. When it is done I shall return to France. I have a manor house and a few poor fields that have doubtless been stolen by my neighbours in my absence.’

  ‘You abandoned your estate to come to Outremer? What sin required such a penance?’ When Josseran did not answer, William said: ‘Something must weigh heavily on your conscience.’

  ‘My service to the Order grants me remission from my earthly sins.’

  ‘You say the words but you do not believe them. I can see into your heart, Templar.’

  ‘I shall enumerate my sins to my confessor at the Temple on my return.’

  ‘Be sure I shall enumerate them also.’

  ‘I do not doubt it.’

  ‘Mend your ways if you wish to see France once more,’ William said, and then he rolled over and went to sleep.

  Mend your ways if you wish to see France once more.

  He expected the good friar would accuse him of all manner of blasphemy and disservice before the Council on their return to Outremer. He knew what these Dominicans were like. He could drag this ingrate from the fires of Hell with his bare hands but if he winked at a harlot on the way out, he would report him to the bishop.

  He tried to imagine being back in France again. He would have to find himself a wife, he supposed, talk to some of his neighbours about their daughters. He had left a bailie in charge of his affairs and he did not doubt that the man had robbed him blind in his absence and let the fields and the manor house fall into disrepair. He imagined arriving home in the middle of winter with no fresh meat in the larder, filthy rushes on the floor and half the servants asleep or run off.

  He had forgotten most of their names. He wondered if even one of them would remember him either. So many memories slipping away from him. If it were not for William he wondered if he would remember France at all.

  XLV

  THE CAMELS KHUTELUN had bought in the Kashgar bazaar were different from the beasts Josseran had seen in Outremer. These were shaggy Bactrians, with two humps instead of the single-humped camels the Mohammedans used in the Holy Land. They were ugly brutes with spindly legs and cleft lips, and they grew thick tufts of fur on the dome of each of their humps and around their hocks. With the approach of summer they were shedding some of their hair and each day they looked ever more bedraggled.

  ‘These very good camels,’ their guide told them. ‘Best in all Kashgar. See how their humps stand up? If they all go flip-flop means they are too worn out, too hungry. But I sell you good camels. I am an honest man. Ask anyone.’

  As a physical specimen the one-eyed camel man was scarcely better than his camels. His left eye had a milky covering which, taken together with his brown and mossy teeth, gave him the look of one of the beggars in the Kashgar bazaars. Like his beasts, he appeared to be shedding his winter coat, for his beard grew in dark and uneven clumps; and one shoulder was curiously hunched, so that he, too, possessed a sort of hump. Despite his unprepossessing appearance he was expert with the camels and knew this desert, he said, better than any man alive.

  One-Eye gave Josseran and William instruction in how to ride their camels.

  ‘First you must make him get up,’ he said. He showed them how a cord was attached to a peg that pierced the septum of the camel’s nose. He walked towards the herd. The nearest started spitting and snarling. Undeterred he picked up its nose cord and gave it a sharp tug. The camel roared out in protest but grudgingly got to its feet, raising its spindly back legs first.

  As it did so, One-Eye placed his left foot on the animal’s long neck and scrambled on top of the load on its back. Then, as it rose on its forelegs, he was thrown violently backwards.

  ‘Now what?’ Josseran shouted up at him.

  ‘Now you hold on!’ One-Eye shouted and grabbed at the load to steady himself.

  The animal lurched forward. One-Eye thrust his feet straight out in front, along its back. The camel lurched forward and One-Eye rode it around them in a wide circle. The dismount was simple but crude; he clambered down the animal’s neck, released his hold on the load and threw himself clear.

  He grinned at them with his bad teeth. ‘You see,’ he said to Josseran in Turkic, ‘very easy. Like mounting a woman. Once you have decided to do it, you must be firm, quick and not be discouraged if they try to bite you.’

  ‘What did he say?’ William asked.

  Josseran shook his head. ‘He said it’s easy if you practise,’ Josseran said.

  The next day they rode out into the desert. The Tatars exchanged their heavy felt jackets and boots for the cotton robes of the Uighurs. Now they imitated Khutelun and wrapped silk scarves around their heads, to pr
otect their faces from the worst of the sun and the whirlwinds of grit and dust.

  It was a wasteland not of dunes and soft, butter-yellow sand, but an endless plain of grey salt flats and root hummocks with a few dry, thorny desert plants. They rode into the teeth of a hot wind; the horizon dissolved to a yellow dust haze, and the poplar trees at the rim of the oasis bent and swayed as their caravan wound its way towards the great deserts at the centre of the Earth.

  XLVI

  RIDING A CAMEL was a different torture from riding a Tatar pony. The Bactrians moved with a long, swaying motion very much like the rocking of a boat and for the first few days Josseran was overcome with something very much like seasickness until he learned to sway forward and back in rhythm with the camel’s movements.

  His Tatar companions were almost as expert with camels as they were with their horses. They could mount and dismount with such ease that they did not even have to stop the caravan. Khutelun might one moment be walking beside her camel, the next she would pull down hard on the nose cord and, as the beast lowered its neck, she would have already grabbed the load on its back and pulled herself on to the saddle. The secret, it seemed, was to release the nose cord slowly afterwards so that the camel did not jerk its head back up again too quickly and throw you off its shoulder.

  Which was what happened to Josseran when he first attempted this manoeuvre, much to the amusement of One-Eye and the Tatars.

  William’s camel was called Leila by One-Eye but the friar had rechristened her Satan. For reasons of their own the Tatars had given him the most bad-tempered of all the string. She was an intimidating beast, her head topped with a wiry knot of wool, her forefeet as large as footstools. Each time the priest tried to mount her, Satan would turn her head to bite his rump as he climbed up the pack.

  At the end of every day, the packs were unloaded and the string was turned loose to forage. One evening, instead of looking for pasture, Satan approached William from behind, put her mouth close to his shoulder and screamed in his ear. William jumped into the air as if he had been struck by the flat of a broadsword.

  The Tatars stood back and roared.

  Khutelun laughed along with the others. It was the first time she had smiled since that evening in Kashgar when her father’s messenger had arrived at the caravanserai.

  The message from her father had worried her. Events in Qaraqorum and Shang-tu had moved faster than anyone had expected.

  The khuriltai to choose the new Khan of Khans had already been gathered in Qaraqorum; and the dead Khaghan’s brother, Ariq Böke, had already been elected as the supreme Tatar.

  But not everyone had agreed with the choice. His younger brother, Khubilai, conducting the war against the Chin in distant Cathay, had not attended. Instead he had summoned his own khuriltai in Shang-tu, his capital, and had his generals elect him Khaghan. It was unthinkable that a khuriltai of the Tatars should be called anywhere but in the capital at Qaraqorum. It signified nothing less than rebellion and would bring on a civil war for the first time since the days of Chinggis Khan.

  The wives and sons of the late Khan of Khans, Möngke, were siding with Ariq Böke. The Golden Clan, the descendants of Chinggis, had also pledged their loyalty, as had Ariq Böke’s brother, Batu, of the Golden Horde. Only Hülegü had allied himself with Khubilai.

  Khubilai should have been isolated by this lack of support. But he had a large and well-supplied army and a strong power base in Cathay. He posed a potent threat to the whole Tatar empire.

  Qaidu’s message had ended with a warning: the closer they travelled to the borders of Cathay, the more caution she should exercise. Their caravan might even be vulnerable to soldiers loyal to Khubilai.

  The desert was not the only danger they would face during the first summer moon.

  XLVII

  THEY STOPPED THAT night in the middle of a vast gravel plain. The camels, their forelegs hobbled, grazed on a few brittle salt reeds and dry thorn bushes.

  William knelt beneath a wind-blackened willow, the crucifix at his throat clutched in his fist, his lips moving silently in prayer. The Tatars watched him, contemptuous and afraid of this benighted creature in their trust. He had brought them bad luck once. They were convinced he would bring them bad luck again.

  Josseran sat down next to the friar and turned up the cowl of his robe as protection against the hot, gritty wind. ‘For what do you pray, Brother William?’

  William finished his words of supplication and dropped his hands to his sides. ‘That we shall serve God’s will by our sufferings here.’

  ‘And what do you think is God’s will in this?’

  ‘That is not for poor creatures such as ourselves to know.’

  ‘But you know the contents of the Bull his Vicar has entrusted to you. And the Pontiff knows God’s will, does he not?’ Ever since they left Acre he had been wondering about William’s embassy. Did the Pope want a truce with the Tatars, just as the Templars did?

  ‘The Bull is secret. I will read it only to the Tatar king, as I was charged to do.’

  ‘Does he want to make peace with them?’

  ‘He wishes to bring them the word of God.’

  ‘It seems to me they are only interested in loot. They wish for kingdoms here on earth, not in heaven.’

  ‘God will open their hearts and minds.’ William rose from his knees and groaned aloud.

  ‘What is wrong?’

  ‘It is just the rheumatics. Do not concern yourself on my account.’

  Josseran shrugged. ‘Be assured that I won’t. But it is my duty to deliver you safely back to Acre’

  ‘I shall try not to disappoint you.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  In fact, though he did not wish the Templar to know it, he was suffering terribly. There were swellings at the opening of his bowels that resembled small bunches of grapes and the jerking movements of his camel made each moment on its back an agony. But if he suffered, he suffered for his Saviour and each step across this terrible desert purified his soul and brought him closer to his God.

  Khutelun saw the crow get up and walk off to one side to make his water. His camel was grazing nearby and it raised its ugly head and watched him. She could almost see its thoughts written in its vapid brown eyes. It helped itself to the spiny thorns of a tamarisk, chewing slowly, contemplating its tormentor in his black-cowled robe, listened to the splatter of his water on the gebi stones. It wandered closer, to the limit of its rope, until it was almost at his shoulder.

  Then it regurgitated a bellyful of green slimy curd over his back.

  William staggered forward, his water spraying over his robe as he groped one-handed behind his back to discover what had befallen him. One-Eye, who had also seen what had happened, collapsed on the ground, helpless with laughter. William attempted to wipe the foul slime from his robe while still clutching his member in the other hand. He saw Khutelun watching him and tottered away, his face crimson.

  Only Josseran did not laugh. She wondered why, for she knew he had no great love for his companion.

  ‘The beast does not like him overmuch,’ she said.

  ‘That much is plain.’

  ‘Tell him to wait till the sun dries it,’ she said, ‘then he may flake it off. Else he will just make it worse.’

  ‘I will tell him,’ Josseran said.

  William was shrieking as if the regurgitated cud were molten lead. If he were typical of all the barbarian shamans, she thought, they had nothing to learn from them or their religion. Yet this warrior, this . . . Joss-ran . . . was different. He had proved himself strong and brave, and ever since he was injured on the mountain she had sensed a certain kinship with him.

  Though why that should be she had no idea.

  They were in the lands of the Uighurs, Khutelun told him.

  The people here, she said, were vassals of the khan in Bukhara, and had been since the days of Chinggis, to whom they had made their submission to prevent the destruction of their fields and their cit
ies. The nomad Tatars imposed taxes on the people through local governors, who ruled with their sanction. There was an annual tribute, the tamga, paid by merchants and craftsmen in the cities, and the kalan or land tax imposed on the farmers. Even local nomads paid taxes with a portion of their herds. This was called the kopchur. And there was also a 5 per cent levy on all merchants passing through the khanate. It was in this way that the Tatars kept a stranglehold on the lucrative Silk Road.

  For nomads, it seemed to Josseran, they had a firm grasp of the principles of empire.

  A week later they reached Aksu, the Uighur capital. The ruins of ancient beacon towers rose from what Josseran at first thought to be mist. But as they came closer he saw that this mist was actually a dust storm. The ancient town lay just beyond, a huddle of white buildings sheltering under swaying poplar trees, nestled against the base of yellow loess cliffs. The green strip of the oasis clung to the banks of a river.

  Suddenly they were riding through poplar-shaded lanes between green fields planted with tomatoes and aubergines. Water sparkled in the irrigation canals. A young girl veiled her face at the sight of these infidels, while little boys, bathing naked in the streams, stared at them with huge blueberry eyes. People ran into the streets in their skullcaps, old whitebeards pushing and shoving along with the rest to get a better view of these strange barbarians the Tatars had brought with them.

  That night they did not stay at a caravanserai but lodged in the house of the local darughachi, the Tatar-appointed governor. There was a meal of mutton and rice and spices, and servants with platters of fruit and pots of aromatic green teas and a real bed with silk coverlets.