Silk Road

by Falconer, Colin

  The abbot leaned closer. ‘What?’

  ‘And yet Sartaq told me when he returned that afternoon that he thought he’d seen two heads bobbing in the water, far downstream. Were they alive or were they dead? He could not be sure. And neither can I be sure, not completely. Ten years later, when I visited Acre for the last time, I heard a story of a Mohammedan merchant who had just returned from Baghdad and claimed he had met a Frank with flame-red hair who was living with the Tatars somewhere at the Roof of the World. Perhaps it was he, or perhaps it was just another of the legends that fly the steppe, without any more substance than the dust devils and the clouds.’

  He smiled, revealing rotten teeth. His breath had the taint of death on it. The abbot recoiled from the bed but the monk held on to him, gripping the edge of his robe between his fingers. ‘I often picture him. Is it not strange? I lied to him that last night in Kashgar. If he had returned with me to Acre I would certainly have denounced him to my fellow Inquisitors as a heretic and blasphemer. Yet now I think back on him as perhaps my greatest friend. I even smile when I think of him living there beyond redemption, beyond faith, in the arms of his barbarian witch, sire of his own heathen brood.’

  He closed his eyes.

  ‘And so hear this my confession, in the year of the Incarnation of Our Saviour twelve hundred and ninety-three. I have slept with my sins these thirty-three years; I can bear them no more. Soon the candle will gutter and die and leave me here in the darkness. I have often looked from this window towards the east and my thoughts have travelled to the places I knew in those days. There is snow on the sill tonight; somewhere there will be snow on the Roof of the World and the Tatars will lead their herds down the valleys once again for the winter. I remember them, my companions, in the days of my glory and my sin. Pray for me now, I beg you, as I go to meet my judge.’

  The abbot hurried from the cell. The monk’s confession had chilled him to the bone; all this talk of idolaters and strange lands and devil-women on horseback. The ravings of a sinful and enfeebled mind! He believed none of it. He doubted if this old man had ever been any further east than Venice. Yet as he hurried down the darkened cloister he felt a sudden chill on his face, as if a wind had sprung from nowhere, and he imagined he had brushed against the Devil himself.

  GLOSSARY

  arban: a Tatar platoon of ten soldiers.

  argol: dried camel droppings used to make a fire.

  Borcan: the Tatar name for the Buddha.

  bonze: monk.

  chador: garment worn by Islamic women covering the entire body.

  chai-khana a teahouse.

  darughachi: resident commissioners. Local men employed by the Tatars to administer their government in the area and collect taxes.

  del: a quilted wrap-around gown worn by the Tatar.

  fondachis: the warehouses of the Italian merchant communes in the Palestine states.

  gebi: round flat stones found in the deserts of central Asia.

  han: caravanserai located inside a town or city.

  iwan: vaulted entrance to a mosque.

  jegun: a Tatar military unit of one hundred men, made up of ten arban.

  karez: a well linked to an underwater irrigation channel; found near Turpan in the Taklimakan desert. The Persian name is qanat.

  keffiyeh: traditional Arab headdress.

  kesig: Khubilai Khan’s imperial bodyguard.

  khang: raised platform of mud brick under which a fire can be lit and sometimes used as a bed.

  khuriltai: meeting called to anoint a new khan after the death of a reigning khan.

  kibitka: ox-drawn wagon used by the Tatars for transporting their yurts.

  Kufic: Arabic calligraphy used on monuments.

  league: three nautical miles.

  li: approximately one-third of a mile.

  manap: village headman.

  maidan: an open field.

  magadai: literally ‘Belonging to God’, a Mongol suicide squadron.

  mingan: a Tatar military unit of one thousand soldiers.

  muezzin: a Muslim official who summons the faithful to prayer from the minaret.

  ordu: the household; by law a Tatar could have four wives, with a household for each, although he could have any number of concubines.

  Registan: ‘sandy place’, central square in a Silk Road oasis.

  rod: approximately five and a half yards.

  the Rule: the strict laws that governed the daily life of the Templars.

  stupa: Buddhist tomb or mausoleum with characteristic bulbous shape.

  touman: a Tatar military unit of ten thousand men.

  yassaq: the code of laws as promulgated by Chinggis Khan.