by Dan Davis
Myself, I could not wait to explore the city.
William was there somewhere, so close now. And I was determined to find him. Someone would know. Someone would talk.
Eva, of course, came with me. And young Nikolas would not leave her side, as he had become besotted with her. He had only fared well because Eva and I had taken rather good care of the lad, I suppose, but he was still on shaky legs and would have been better off resting like the others. Then again, knowing how bad-tempered most of our company was, I thought the boy might be safer out with us in the city.
Stephen Gosset decided that he would also accompany us and though he still irritated me, there was something about the young man. Some force within him that intrigued me as much as it maddened me. Though he suffered physically, he claimed that his heart was lifted at the sight of the Tartar city and he could not wait to speak to the peoples of the world.
“And how will you speak to them, Stephen?” I asked, not wanting him trailing around after me and getting in the way of my vengeance. “You should save your breath.”
“God will provide,” he said, grinning. “Between Nikolas and I, we will get by.”
“Let him come,” Eva said. “For he is indeed learned about the ways of strange people and may help us.”
Stephen stood to one side, smiling at me like the village idiot.
“Say nothing to anyone,” I said, sticking my finger in his face. “Lest you get yourself killed by these heathens.”
“Oh, yes, they are heathens, sir, but there is the rule of law here,” Stephen said, earnestly.
“There is the rule of law everywhere,” I said. “And everywhere men are murdered.”
I felt profoundly alien, wandering in that city. And I felt exposed and vulnerable and expected an attack at any moment. For months, we had been amongst Mongols almost exclusively, other than crossing paths with occasional surviving local peoples, or fellow travellers on the road, coming or going to Karakorum. Often, these were Saracens, who the Mongols loved to use for their experience with trade, and with money and transactions of all kinds.
But the road was sparsely populated, where Karakorum was full to bursting with arrogant Mongols of all stations, from lowly slaves to powerful men. All were bundled up in their heavy coats but one can always tell by a man’s gait and by the quality of the cloth he wears on which rung he stands on the ladder of his society.
There were women, also. Dressed the same as the men, wrapped up so thickly that they waddled when they trudged through the streets.
“Such strange faces,” I said to my wife as we watched a group of four Mongol women walking by us. “Their eyes, and the width of their cheeks. I will never fail to be amazed by their strangeness. Utterly unlike women from civilised lands, are they not?”
“When they are naked,” Eva said to me, “they will look just the same as a Christian woman.”
I blinked at Eva, unsure how to respond.
“You were wondering about their naked form,” she said, helpfully.
“I most certainly was not,” I said.
She needed only to shake her head, for she knew me well.
Stephen lurked behind us. “Your pardon,” he said, stammering. “But how do you know about their nakedness?”
Eva threw him a look over her shoulder. “I saw our guides and other Mongol men stripped and showing their bodies to the open air, on a number of occasions during our journey. Despite the difference of their faces, their bodies were like any other man’s.”
“Ah,” Stephen said, staring at Eva in wonder. “You are applying logos to the question, in order to come up with a reasoned conclusion.”
“No, no, I disagree entirely,” I said, while Eva rolled her eyes at Stephen’s condescension. “The men are soft. Barrel-chested and strong but somewhat pudgy. Their legs are short and bowed. Eva, they are not like us at all. Who knows what the women’s bodies are like?”
“Well,” Eva said, sighing. “Why do we not find a desperate Mongol woman and offer her a few coins to disrobe before us?”
I nodded. “Stephen, how much do you have in your purse?”
He begged us not to make trouble with our hosts, and so we agreed to temporarily postpone our investigation.
“They are making mock of you,” I heard Nikolas whisper to Stephen.
I swatted the young Greek lad on his furred hood. “You are too kind-hearted by far, Nikolas,” I said. “But what makes you think I was making mock of Stephen? Anyway, keep an eye out for any harlots, will you, son?”
Our young monk prided himself on his wits and, as he could not divine whether we were indeed serious, he stopped speaking to us all the way across the city until we reached the Nestorian church. It was small and simple, no more than a rectangle and had no tower. Built from plain stone, plastered, and with a low wall all around making a small enclosure, it was not much to look at. The roof was a sweeping gable in the Chinese style, so it looked halfway to becoming a temple.
“Do you wish to enter, and pray?” I asked Stephen.
“I do not like this place,” Stephen said, glancing around at the crowds heading this way and that behind us. “It seems to me that the people are watching us.”
“Nonsense,” I said. “Our strangeness is unremarkable here. Half the people you see likely feel the same way as you do.”
He was quite right, of course, but I wanted him to remain calm.
We had in fact been followed by a group of men from our ger, across the city. By taking many fleeting glances, I had determined that they were, to a man, competent warriors. Too arrogant to truly blend into the masses.
But whose men were they? Did they report to Mongke Khan?
Or were they followers of William de Ferrers?
“Stephen,” I said. “I need you to find out where my brother William is.”
His face dropped. “Me?”
“Speak to the Christians. They will trust you, as you are a monk. Would you not like to find out why we are being kept waiting? If there is some reason that they tell us nothing about our status amongst them?”
“Is it not simply the bureaucracy of the Mongol state? Is it not as we were told, that we must wait our turn to be seen?”
“I do not know, Stephen. Is it?”
He lowered his voice, looking around. “Are we in danger?”
He stared up at me in alarm. I paused, waiting to see if he was serious, then laughed. “Try to make a friend or two at the church. See what they have to say.”
“About us?”
“No, no. Do not ask them about us directly. Men love to talk. All you have to do is smile and nod your head and listen.”
Stephen nodded, then his face lit up. “Perhaps Abdullah can do the same in the Mohammedan temples?”
I sighed. “Not a bad idea but we cannot trust him. The man is a drunkard, and when he is sober he is a miserable cur. Who knows what he would say or do for a skin of wine, especially for his own people. No, you will find out plenty from the Nestorians.”
Stephen chewed his lip. “My brothers will not like me speaking to anyone without them present.”
“Why did you come here, Stephen?” I asked.
“To Karakorum?”
“You followed Friar William because you believe you will rise in importance with your order once you return, is that it?” He did not respond to my question. “Is that all that you seek for yourself?”
His obsequious façade dropped for a moment. “And what do you have to offer me instead, Richard? An empty, dead-end mission of familial vengeance? Or is there something more to the two of you?”
I clapped him on the arm, hard enough to stagger him and leaned in. “You have only one way to find out, Stephen.”
Most places excluded us, but where I could speak to people, I tried my best. Without a huge amount of gold, or the ability to bestow favours, I had little to bargain with. All my questions about William were met with indifference or denials. Occasionally, I would see hint of a knowing smile
and I knew that if I could take that man into a dark alley and beat him bloody, I could make him tell me where my brother was hiding.
But I could not do such a thing and hope to live.
Stephen reported that the Nestorians knew of my brother and they believed he was not in the city.
“I could have bloody-well guessed that by now,” I said when he told me. “Where is he?”
“No man will say.”
All the time that we waited in the city through that winter for the Khan to grant us an audience, I was alert to the danger all around us. It chafed my nerves so that I grew evermore short-tempered and everyone avoided me.
“Just as I need blood, you need a fight every few days,” Eva said one night. “Else you will make one with someone.”
“I dare not make a fight here,” I said. “It would mean death for all of us.”
Residing in such a place, where every man was a possible enemy, is no way to live. Whether Saracen or Cathay or Rus, all other foreigners were still more at home than we were, and they were a danger also. Not just the people but the bleakness of the landscape wore me thin. The madness that the Mongols would erect a city in the face of such barrenness was an affront to me.
Most of all, my frustration at not finding William, nor knowing what to do about it, was driving me into madness.
There was a particular cold after midwinter that came on with a wind which killed an uncountable number of animals about Karakorum. Little snow fell in the city during the winter until that bitter wind when there fell so much that all the streets were full of great mounds of it and they had to carry it off in carts. Even in our ger, wearing all our clothes at once, we still shivered beneath blankets while the dung fire smouldered and gave off more foul smoke than warmth. Little Nikolas had already grown as thin as a bird that winter, and through the sudden cold spell Eva and I held him between us beneath our blanket so that he did not expire.
Without prompting, young Stephen wrapped himself in strips of cloth, tunnelled out of the ger and struggled out through the great drifts and howling wind to beg at the palace for succour, claiming that elsewise his fellow holy men would surely perish. His cleverness and courage brought us from the ordus of Mongke’s first wife sheepskin and fur gowns and breeches and shoes, which we all took most gratefully. I would not say that Stephen saved all our lives, but he may have saved the life of Nikolas, for which I was most grateful, and also the life of ancient Bartholomew, for which I forgave him.
There was no thaw in all the time we were there, yet the wind blew all the snow away in time and the cold became somewhat less deadly. Just in time, too, because I felt certain it would be only days before I murdered someone and drank his blood in public. I was almost beyond caring.
It was in January 1254, as I was pondering whether killing Bertrand or Bartholomew would give me greater satisfaction, that we were summoned to court.
Finally, we would be presented to Mongke Khan.
And there I would demand to be told where he was hiding my brother.
***
“You will be silent,” Friar William said to me before we left the warmth of the ger on the way to the court. “Say nothing of this vengeance of yours. Do you hear me? Nothing. We were blessed by God in the court of Batu when we were all forgiven by the prince after you spoke out of turn. The Great Khan will never be so generous should you break with etiquette in such fashion once more. Do not think of yourself, Richard, but think of the all the harm that you would do to us, should you cause us to be expelled, or worse. We could bring many of the Tartar lords into the Church if we have the opportunity. Think of why Thomas and Bertrand are here. If Louis the King of France can make an alliance or even an understanding with the Great Khan then think what could be done in the Holy Land against the—”
“I do not serve you,” I said. “And I value neither your greater good nor your advice. So save your breath.”
He was outraged but I had spent months listening to his prattle, and he still did not realise that he had only ever been sent to Batu as a cover for Thomas’ true mission. And even after so long living amongst the Mongols, he failed to see that they believed in everything, every God as it suited them, and so they ultimately believed in nothing. For the Mongols, Christianity was already available to them through the Nestorian Church and they had no need of Franciscans, let alone some distant Pope Khan.
Still, my irritation at his ignorance had been expressed only because I was dying to find my brother. It had been decades since I had seen him last, in the Forest of Sherwood. He was so close now, I could almost smell him.
After being officially ignored for weeks on end, our party was escorted most reverentially to the palace, such was the significance of the royal invitation.
Entering the walls of the palace compound, I strained to see the famous silver tree that a Parisian silversmith had wrought for Mongke. It stood in a courtyard at the entrance to the palace and it was a lovely thing to look upon. At first, it appeared to be a magnificent sculpture, dripping with fruits made of gold, the branches reaching into the upper windows of the palace. Yet it was more than that. The tree was also a device in the form of a fountain that dispensed different kinds of wine from its metal vines into basins below. At the top, a silver angel held a trumpet aloft that would play a sweet note and golden serpents wound about the trunk. Little birds and other creatures would bend and trill when the device was set in motion, which I saw only briefly that one time.
“It is a marvel, is it not?” Friar William said, breathily as we were ushered past it. “You see how it moves so, from some cunning mechanism within?”
“A little slave boy is encased within the trunk,” I said. “Yanking on pulleys.”
He thought I was being contemptuous to anger him but that was the truth, as I had heard it. It was still a marvellous sight to behold, even if it should have by rights been erected in Paris, if anywhere.
In an antechamber, the door-keeper searched our legs and breasts and arms to see if we had knives upon us, which we had already been told not to bring.
Then we were brought within the great hall of the Khan’s palace.
The palace inside was all covered inside with cloth of gold, and there was a fire of briars and wormwood roots, and of cattle dung, in a grate in the centre of the hall. It was set out just as if we were in a Mongol tent, only the walls were stone and square rather than felt and circular. There were hundreds of people within, men and women of all stations, though mostly it was richly-dressed men. Some sat in silence, others carried on whispered conversations so that there was a steady hum of quiet muttering filling the air.
Mongke was seated on a couch and was dressed in a skin spotted and glossy, like a seal's skin. He was a little man, of medium height, aged about forty-five years, and a young wife sat beside him. And a very ugly, full-grown girl, with other children sat on a couch after them.
They made us sit down on a bench to the side of the dais, just as if we were in a ger.
Mongke Khan had us asked what we wanted to drink, grape wine or cervisia, which was rice wine, or carakumiss, which was clarified mare's milk, or bal, which was honey mead. For in winter they make use of these four kinds of drinks. It seemed at first to be rather courtly, and quite peaceful, and I was apprehensive about the coming moments. I knew I would have to force the issue and by so doing I risked my own death and that of my wife and the other men who were in my company.
But I had set myself on a path and I knew no other way to fulfil my oath to kill William.
While we awaited our audience, a series of other supplicants were brought forward to plead with the Khan. Mongols and men of other races. I dragged Abdullah to my side and made him speak in a low voice into my ear. All I wanted was the general gist of what was said by the Khan and by those brought before him.
The first few were discussions of disputes between the Khan’s subjects, and also between his subjects and the kingdoms on the edges of the Mongol lands. Men sought guidan
ce on whether to raid into neighbouring countries and the Khan appeared to tell each of them to maintain their own territories, to keep to treaty boundaries and to settle disputes with diplomacy rather than force.
It is fair to say I was shocked by the civility. Both that of the Khan and his honouring of treaties and that each man, many of them clearly great lords in their own right, took the Khan’s judgements with not a hint of ire.
Until a young man was brought forward, along with a young woman.
The sight of the girl made me sit up as straight as an arrow.
She was remarkably beautiful. Most of the Mongol women were quite unpleasant to look upon. Their bodies were wrapped from chin to ankle in thick woollen coats, or great bundles of silk. And their heads were often crowned with elaborate headdresses made from lacquered wood and silks. For some reason, the Mongols found the forehead to be a most attractive feature, in both men and women, and so they shaved the front part of their hair. In the men, it made them appear rather savage and intimidating. In the women, it made them appear the same. And their countenances were often round and flat, and quite alien to me.
Some of them, though, were very fine to look upon. Their eyes could be astonishingly alluring, especially over high and prominent cheekbones. Many of those women had lips as soft and pink as a ripe apple.
But the young woman brought forward into the hall was something else altogether. She looked almost like a Christian, perhaps like one you might see in the lands north of Constantinople. Certainly, her skin was pale enough. And her face was narrow, not round, yet her cheeks were high and sharp and she had the flat face and narrow eyes of a Mongol. Her hair was as shiny and as black as any woman of the east. In her clothing, she was also like a Mongol, wearing a coat wrapped at her waist with a belt and on her legs, she wore trousers.