Silk Road

by Falconer, Colin

  Josseran relented. ‘If that is your wish.’

  He removed his tunic and hose and the three women gasped. He gave them an abashed smile. ‘Among my own it is not considered a lance of any great length or girth. But I am flattered that you think it so.’

  They made him stand on the tiles while they drew water from the cistern with wooden bowls. They washed the dust from his hair and his body, clucking and giggling like hens, pulling at the forest of hairs on his chest and belly, prodding the various parts of him as if he were a camel at the bazaar. They seemed both repulsed and fascinated in equal measure.

  Afterwards they dried him and then the wife gave him the long robe that belonged to her husband.

  By the time they returned to the house it was sunset. The wife lit an oil lamp. ‘This way,’ she said and led him to their sleeping quarters. The two daughters sat next to him on the bed and for the longest time no one spoke or moved.

  ‘Do you all intend to stay?’ he wondered aloud.

  ‘You are the lord,’ the wife said. ‘It is for you to say.’

  Josseran hesitated. Perhaps the wife read the expression in his eyes, for she nimbly got to her feet, placing the lamp in a niche in the wall. ‘I shall bid you good night,’ she said. ‘May you rest well.’

  And she went out, drawing a curtain across the doorway.

  Josseran looked at the two daughters. They were not giggling any more.

  One of them, the youngest, stood up and took off her gown. He stared at her in wonderment. In the soft yellow light of the lamp she appeared as fragile as porcelain. She had no hair anywhere on her body except on her head. He had heard that Mohammedan women shaved their bodies with sharpened scallop shells.

  Her sister was the same, except a little plumper. He felt himself stirring. He heard Catherine’s voice whisper to him from the shadows: Forget everything, Josseran, forget everything tonight except me.

  The two girls lay down on the bed either side of him. They both looked a little frightened.

  The older girl took it upon herself to open his robe. ‘The lord is mighty,’ she whispered.

  He reached out a hand. ‘You have nothing to fear. I shall be gentle.’

  Suddenly the curtain was thrown aside and the lady of the house romped into the room, chortling. She was naked. She threw herself on him with an abandon that would have shocked him had he not spent so much time in the brothels of Genoa on the way from France.

  She wrapped her thighs around him and rolled him on top of her. They joined violently. He supposed she must have done this sort of thing before.

  The two younger women watched. To his eternal shame he found that their presence spoiled his performance not at all.

  The dim-lit saints and their attendant angels mounted the pillars of the great church, drawn in thick brushstrokes of black and gold. Icons of the Virgin flickered in the glow of candles while an old woman with a brown and toothless face poured oil into the lamps that were set in niches around the mud-brick walls.

  The choir of young boys in the balcony had begun a falsetto chant while acolytes in vestments of pale violet attended the altar. Incense rose from brass censers while a black-bearded priest opened his arms in prayer.

  Nestorians, William hissed from the shadows at the rear of the church.

  Nestorius had been Archbishop of Constantinople eight hundred years before. His heretical views – among other false beliefs, he had refused to accept the Pope as his spiritual leader – had isolated him and his followers from the rest of the Christian world and his sect had been forced to flee into Persia. They still survived there, on good terms with the Mohammedans, it was said.

  It seemed they had spread their filthy heresies much further east than anyone in Rome had supposed. These must be the Christians that Rubruck had reported seeing among the Tatars. At least it meant some of these savages were not unfamiliar with the word of Christ. All that was needed was to bring these renegade Nestorian priests to the Pope’s dominion and they would have a foothold among these devil hordes. If he succeeded, it would make him as great an apostle as Paul.

  The priest kissed the gold-embossed cover of the Gospel and read the liturgy in a language William did not recognize; it seemed to be neither Tatar nor Arab. He placed a scarlet cloth around the chalice and dipped the silver Eucharist spoon into the wine to administer the blood of Christ to his congregation.

  William’s hands balled into fists at his sides. To see such heresy and be powerless to stop it rankled in his very soul. How could a man offer up the body and blood of Christ without sanction from the Pope? It was a corruption of all that was sacred.

  And yet the presence of this church so far within Tatary was cause for hope, if not rejoicing. While the Templar was busy fornicating, he, William, had at least found a purpose in their quest. The Silk Road was the path to his destiny.

  He slipped silently away.

  LIV

  JOSSERAN ROSE EARLY and stole silently from the bed. The three women were curled around each other, asleep. Guilt came, as it always does, with the morning. I shall seek absolution from Brother William, he thought. I shall go to him this very morning.

  And yet, he thought, compared to my other sins, this is really of no account. This man came to me openly and offered me his women; he considers it a thing of merit. Why should I be in sin for taking what was freely offered?

  The sun had not yet risen. The green-tiled dome of a Mohammedan church appeared through a damp and swirling fog. Men in white-laced skullcaps moved silent as wraiths through the streets. A veiled woman scurried from sight behind a wooden, nail-studded door.

  It was a nether world, as alien to him as if he had stepped through the crust of the earth. Here, beyond all Christian laws, he was cast adrift with his own uncertainties. Removed from the strictures of the Rule and the suffocating dictates of his Church he saw himself more clearly than he had ever done in his life.

  His freshly laundered clothes dried quickly in the dry air. He made his way through the waking town to the darughachi’s palace. One-Eye had already saddled and loaded the camels. When he saw Josseran he made an obscene gesture with the finger of one hand and the thumb and first finger of the other. He cackled and hawked cheerfully in the dust.

  William was standing by the pens, his hands folded before him like a penitent. ‘I shall hear your confession whenever you wish.’

  ‘Damn you, priest.’

  ‘I would have thought damnation a subject you would wish to avoid.’

  Josseran sighed. ‘I will come to you at sunset. You will hear me then.’

  ‘May God be praised. I was beginning to fear you had no shame.’

  ‘There are many things I am ashamed of.’

  He raised his right hand in the air: ‘Confess everything to me tonight that I may free you from all your sins with this hand.’

  Josseran shook his head. ‘I shall accuse myself of what took place last night, but that is all you will get from me.’

  ‘Do you wish to suffer the Devil’s torments in the flames?’ William hissed at him.

  Josseran nodded. ‘Perhaps that is exactly what I want.’

  Khutelun did not speak to him, would not even meet his eye. An hour after dawn they rode out in caravan, across the misted fields, into the drab grey shale of the desert.

  Later that morning they stopped at the far borders of the oasis to replenish their water from the last of the wells. Already there was sand in his clothes, in the tiny crevices of his eyes, in his beard. The desert was quick to reclaim its ground.

  She crouched beside one of the muddy ditches, refilling her leather water bag.

  ‘Are we far from our destination?’ he asked her.

  ‘Why? Would you rather we stayed in Gaochang?’

  Something in her tone pleased him. ‘I found Gaochang an oasis of delights.’

  ‘Where we are going,’ she snapped, ‘there is only desert.’ She pushed past him. Josseran stared after her. In a Christian woman he would hav
e said this was very like jealousy. The idea that Khutelun was afflicted with such an emotion on his account put an extra spring into his step. That morning he vaulted easily on to his camel and right through the long hot day he could not stop smiling.

  LV

  IT WAS THREE weeks since they had left Kashgar. They were travelling perhaps seven or eight leagues every day, spending their nights in one of the oasis towns or behind the walls of a caravanserai. But one afternoon Khutelun stopped the caravan near a stand of gnarled poplars and ordered the Tatars to make camp for the night in the open desert. She gave no explanation for her command.

  ‘Leave your camel saddled,’ she said to Josseran. ‘I want you to come with me.’

  His camel bellowed at this injustice as Josseran forced her back to her feet. He followed Khutelun north across the desert.

  They rode through a narrow defile, following a dry stream bed. Red cliffs rose hundreds of feet into the air on each side of them. Khutelun’s soft souk-souk as she urged her camel on echoed from the rock walls. The heat was intense.

  Then Josseran looked up and what he saw made him catch his breath. The cliff face was honeycombed with caves, and at the mouth of each cave idols had been gouged out of the sheer rock. They were like the idols of Borcan that he had seen at Kuqa and some were the height of three men. Delicate stone robes, weathered by centuries, billowed in the windless silence of the canyon.

  ‘By the holy blood of all the saints,’ he murmured.

  Khutelun halted her camel ‘Is it not a wonder?’

  ‘Is this what you wished me to see?’

  ‘There is more,’ she said. She jumped down and hobbled her camel’s front legs. Josseran did the same.

  ‘What is this place?’

  ‘It is the valley of a thousand Buddhas. A monk named Lo Tsun came here and had a vision of countless Buddhas rising to the sky in a cloud of glory. He spent the rest of his life making his vision true.’

  ‘One man could not have made all these idols.’

  ‘There used to be a monastery at the far end of the valley. The monks who lived there dedicated their lives to making these statues.’

  ‘But how did they get them up there? There is no way up.’

  ‘There is a way, but it is steep. Come.’

  Josseran followed her as she sprang up the rocks. He felt like a bear lumbering after a gazelle. Khutelun did not pause for breath. He could not catch her.

  She waited for him at a ledge high up the cliff face. A patina of sweat on her forehead was the only outward sign of her exertions. He slumped to his knees, gasping for breath. When he was recovered he looked up at her and saw a slow, mocking smile on her lips.

  By all the saints, he thought. Her mother must have been a mountain goat.

  He looked around. It was a dizzying panorama, the red cliffs of the gorge, the white peaks of the Celestial Mountains far behind, thrusting through the heat haze of the afternoon.

  Around and above him were the statues of the idolaters, some carved from wood, others of stone. Some lay recumbent, their heads supported on their hands like houris at a bath. They were much bigger than he had imagined looking up at them from the valley. He guessed some of them were perhaps a dozen paces long.

  When he returned to Acre no one would believe he had seen such things.

  He stumbled to his feet.

  ‘This way,’ she said, and led him into the mouth of the cave.

  It was blessedly cooler inside the mountain and every sound was magnified. He sniffed the must of centuries.

  As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he saw there were many tunnels leading from the entrance, honeycombed into the rock. Some led to vaults barely large enough for one man, others were the size of a church, carved square out of the rock with truncated and vaulted roofs.

  Opposite the entrance was a rectangular platform that bore a giant terracotta statue of this Borcan, seated with his right hand raised, illuminated by a chevron of light from the entrance. His earlobes were unnaturally long, reaching almost to his shoulders, and his heavy-lidded eyes were lowered demurely like a maiden’s. He wore a toga-like robe, and had been elaborately painted in ochres and aquamarines.

  His acolytes were ranged in the niches in the rock around him, terracotta statues the height of a man, and so lifelike in the darkness that Josseran was almost ready to reach for his sword.

  ‘They are only clay,’ Khutelun murmured and led him into one of the smaller caverns leading from the main chamber.

  It was even gloomier in there and it took him some moments to make out the shapes on the ceilings and walls. He gasped. Every part of the wall had been filled with paintings, mostly of this Borcan and his acolytes, with their satyr smiles. But there was a myriad of other figures, his worshippers and angels, as well as portraits of kings and queens in elaborate palaces, soldiers at war, farmers in their fields, hellish musicians with lutes and pipes. They were all elaborately painted in tempera on coatings of plaster, a fantastic nether world of mountain landscapes and fortified castles, skies like marbled paper teeming with thunder demons and monsters and naked houris, all executed with the finest brushwork in blacks and creams and jades.

  ‘It is . . . hellish,’ he whispered.

  ‘You do not understand.’

  ‘Borcan’s monks glory in such things?’

  ‘The pictures are not for glory but to show the futility of the world,’ she said. ‘Borcan’s real name was Siddhartha. He was born a great prince but one day he gave up his life of ease to become a monk. He taught that everything is transient, that happiness and youth can never last, that all life is suffering, and we are trapped by an endless cycle of birth and rebirth. If you have a good life, your next life will be better. If you do bad things, you will return next as a beggar, or a beast of burden perhaps. But only by giving up all desire can you escape the endless wheel and reach heaven.’

  ‘Give up desire?’

  ‘All suffering is the result of our desire for pleasure, or power. Look.’ She ran a finger along the wall. ‘This is Mara, the god of illusion. He attacks Borcan with flaming rocks and tempests, and tempts him with gold and crowns and beautiful women. But Borcan knows all these things are phantoms and he will not yield his godhead.’

  ‘So Borcan is not a god?’

  ‘He is a man who has found his way to the source of God. He understands the Spirit of the Blue Sky.’

  Josseran shook his head. ‘I do not know what to make of all this,’ he said. He turned back to her. ‘Why did you bring me here?’

  ‘I do not know. I myself have been here only once before. I was still a girl then, I was accompanying my father to Qaraqorum. He showed me this. I remembered it as we rode and I thought somehow . . . somehow you would understand it.’

  ‘But you do not believe in this idol . . . this Borcan?’

  ‘There are many religions and each has its own truths. No, I am not a follower of Borcan. But is it not beautiful here?’

  She thinks I will understand. Like him, then, she felt some bond between them, some indefinable sympathy. I am a Christian knight and a Templar; she is a savage, a Tatar, who knows none of the gentleness and modesty of a Christian woman. And yet, yes, she is right, we do understand each other somehow.

  ‘This way,’ she whispered.

  In the next cave the images danced and joined. Josseran almost reeled back. The walls were covered with the tempera couplings of a man and a woman. The erect phallus of the male had been delicately and faithfully reproduced; his joinings with the maid were joyous and acrobatic. The sunlight here was filtered through the narrow passages, it threw a golden aura on the frieze, bringing the shadowy lovemaking of the idols to shimmering life.

  ‘What is wrong?’ she whispered.

  ‘The Devil’s work!’

  ‘The artist only portrays a likeness similar to your recent encounters with that woman and her two daughters.’

  ‘It is sinful.’

  ‘You tell me it is sinful yet two nights
ago you abandoned yourself to those women with little hesitation. Surely I do not understand what it is to be a Christian.’ He could not see her face in the twilight of the cavern but he heard the reproof in her voice.

  ‘William says sex is the Devil’s tool. What I did was wrong.’

  ‘What you did was natural. It was only wrong if the woman’s husband did not know what you did.’ She turned back to the frieze. ‘Look at this picture here. Do you see? The god so shamelessly employing the Devil’s tool is Shiva, the god of personal destiny. We each of us have a destiny, Borcan says, yet we also have choice.’ She ran a finger lightly across the tempera surface. ‘Have you not thought of us joined together in this way, as Shiva is joined with his wife? Have you not sometimes thought of this as your destiny? And as mine?’

  His voice caught in his throat. ‘You know I have.’

  ‘And yet I am not given to you in marriage, can never be. Is that not also a sin for you, Christian?’

  ‘Why do you taunt me?’

  She stood closer to the painting, where the lord she called Shiva mounted his wife like a mare. ‘This hunger. It destroys our rest but we cannot rid ourselves of it. You and your shaman say you know the path better than we Tatars and yet you are maddened by your natures as a man lost in the desert is tormented by his thirst.’

  He could not deny that.

  She laid her hand on his shoulder. ‘We must go now.’

  He was angry. Women should be modest, championed, protected. This savage lady was none of those things. So why was he so drawn to her? First she made him doubt his religion, now she made him doubt even his own heart. And yet, in truth, she only gave voice to every doubt, every rebellious thought he had ever had and never had the courage to speak. She was the siren call to the part of his soul he had kept hidden all his life. He was overwhelmed by blasphemous thoughts and heretical notions and a desperate longing for something that was beyond his reach.

  ‘We must go,’ she repeated.

  He did not move. His hands hung at his sides.