The Earth Is the Lord's

by Taylor Caldwell

  In his heart was a wound of bleeding desolation. It seemed to him that life was leaving his body. He sank on the earth beside the door, and darkness fell over his eyes.

  He awoke suddenly, trembling and sobbing aloud. No one was near him. He lay alone in his room. A warm sunlit wind was stirring the draperies in the archways, and he could hear the dim murmuring bustle of the palace life.

  He sat up on his couch, trying to control his trembling, and the horrible nausea in the pit of his stomach. He dressed himself. His arms were cold and nerveless, and suddenly he retched, ignominiously.

  When he had done, he lay back on his couch, as weak as an infant. Complete desolation and despair overwhelmed him. It was a long time before he was able to fight his way out of the darkness of his sensations. At last he thought: It was an omen. We cannot wait. We must flee tonight.

  The draperies were lifted, and Chepe Noyon and Kasar entered, laughing youthfully together. But when they saw Temujin’s face, they were silent and alarmed.

  He spoke at once, in a hoarse, weak voice:

  “See to it that our warriors are prepared to leave tonight, at midnight.”

  An expression of intense relief appeared on the faces of the young men.

  “It shall be done, lord,” said Chepe Noyon. He glanced at Kasar, and nodded his head.

  Temujin sat up, and put his hands to his aching forehead. “Azara doth leave with us,” he said.

  Chepe Noyon paled. He compressed his lips. Kasar uttered a faint cry, and then was silent.

  “It shall be done,” repeated Chepe Noyon. He inhaled a deep breath, and then held it. His hand touched the hilt of his sword.

  They knew now what faced them. Most certain death, if not immediately, in the near future. But they could do nothing but obey. Temujin was their khan. His word was their law. A pinched maturity and resolution appeared on Kasar’s doglike face.

  Neither of them attempted to dissuade Temujin.

  A black gloom had settled upon him. He could not eat the food the servants brought him. He was feverish. Chepe Noyon suggested a walk in the gardens, but he shook his head. His bronzed skin was pale and damp. His red hair rose on his head like the mane of a lion. He was like a man obsessed with some terrible premonition.

  Chepe Noyon, who was of a sensitive nature, tried to arouse him with gay chatter, but Kasar was unable to speak. Temujin listened to Chepe Noyon, but in reality all his attention was strangely trained on the tranquil noises of the palace. In the midst of Chepe Noyon’s words, he suddenly raised his hand sharply.

  “Hark!” he exclaimed. “Didst thou hear a woman scream?”

  Chepe Noyon listened, then shook his head. “Nay, there was nothing.” Then he listened again, more intently. The tranquil noises of the palace had been hushed, as though cold hands had been laid upon a multitude of mouths. An awful silence seemed to have descended upon everything. There was not a single sound. Even the birds appeared to have been struck into that silence, and the wind, and the trees.

  Temujin sprang to his feet. He stood before his noyon like a wild beast suddenly affrighted. But he did not look at them. He stared before him, listening, his head bent, his whole body visibly trembling. And they, too, caught by his attitude and his look, listened, also, their hearts beating heavily.

  Then, as though a gale had struck the palace, it appeared to shudder, and resound all through it with aching cries and shrieks. It was like a wind, sweeping through every corridor, battering at every door, shaking every column and every wall. It rose to a frightful crescendo, deafening.

  Temujin’s face had become like stone. His arms hung nerveless at his sides. But Chepe Noyon ran out into a corridor. It was swarming with eunuchs and women, slaves of both sexes, running blindly to and fro. He caught a woman by the arm, and looked into her dazed face. Her mouth was open, and emitting shriek after shriek. He shook her. But she continued to glare blindly at him, shrieking. He struck her across the face, and again demanded the reason for all this tumult.

  She burst into tears, seeing him for the first time. “The Princess Azara!” she cried. “She hath been found in her chamber, hung with her own girdle!”

  Horror turned Chepe Noyon to marble. He released the woman, and stood among the rushing throngs like a slender tree in a flood. He thought only: Do they know about Temujin? And: We must flee at once.

  He swung about, struggled through the weeping and wailing throngs, and returned to his apartments. He found Temujin still standing there, stonelike, not moving nor breathing. Only his green eyes were horribly alive in his ghastly face. And then Chepe Noyon knew that he had heard, that he knew everything.

  He spoke very quietly, without inflection in his steadfast voice:

  “She did this for me. She sacrificed herself for me.”

  But he did not weep, nor cry out. He seemed like a man who now understood everything.

  Chapter 23

  The palace sank into a black apathy of grief, terror and despair. Silence again descended upon it, but it was a disorganized silence. The servants moved about like stunned shadows, unspeaking. Even the eunuchs, who hated all women, had loved Azara. They leaned on their swords, and wept silently, their heads bowed.

  It was said that Toghrul Khan had collapsed, and lay in a stupor. Only his son Taliph was with him. His physicians would admit no others. They would not allow even a Moslem or Christian priest to see him. He lay on his couch, his old withered face empurpled and swollen, as rigid as a corpse. The Caliph’s envoys whispered behind his shut doors, and shook their heads ominously. The ambassadors of sultans whispered, also. There was a muted coming and going. Statues were draped in black. Within the purlieus of the palace dark shadows lay, for the sun was shut out.

  Within her own bedroom, attended only by Taliph’s weeping and terrified wife, lay Azara, smiling palely and serenely in her final sleep. A silver scarf was wound about her throat, hiding the horrid marks of her death. Her hands were folded on her breast; her hair streamed over her shoulders and her limbs. She was strangely alive, and appeared to glitter with a golden light of her own, in that shadowed and shuttered room. Beyond the doors whispered and shivered the wives of Toghrul Khan and Taliph, their faces and heads draped in black veils. They whispered that Azara had been seized with madness; that she had died rather than marry the old Moslem Caliph. There was an avid and excited gleam in the eyes of these women, who had hated Azara.

  The corridors were full of motionless groups, silent or whispering.

  Chepe Noyon marvelled at the composure of Temujin, who gave his orders for their departure that night. His face was gray and expressionless. His eyes were like bits of dead green stone. He did not speak of Azara. Chepe Noyon was intensely relieved. Temujin, the realistic and the exigent, would expend no energies in this deathly place any longer. He would keep his emotions at a minimum, never extravagant nor dangerous. What he had come for had gone. He would leave. He was a wise man. Chepe Noyon knew that he would never hear Azara’s name on Temujin’s lips again. She had vanished like an ominous dream, like the shadow of death over a multitude of people.

  Chepe Noyon thought: If there are gods, I thank them that this girl hath died. This is but another evidence that they are concerned with Temujin’s destiny.

  The cynical young man was suddenly superstitious and taken aback. But he was also joyous. He did not fear death, but neither did he court it. He preferred to live. Now he was being allowed to live.

  No one noticed their departure at midnight, for every one was occupied with the tragedy which had occurred, and the grave state of Toghrul Khan. Their absence would not be missed for several days. Then they would be forgotten. They were only stinking barbarians from the steppes, covered with grease, slightly bowed of legs from the curve of their horses’ bellies, wearing strange garments. Chepe Noyon saw himself as these townsmen saw him, and was happily grateful.

  They left the city, and were only perfunctorily challenged at the gates. The moon was dissolving into a pale mist,
and earth and sky were swimming in nebulous clouds. The warriors rode behind their lord, the sound of their horses’ hoofs the only echo in a profound stillness. Temujin spurred his horse; the others followed at this quickened pace. All about them stretched the dark plains, motionless under the moon.

  Chepe Noyon rode only slightly behind Temujin. He could see Temujin’s face clearly. It was gray-colored, yet shining, like steel. His eyes were fixed ahead. Of what is he thinking? thought Chepe Noyon. Of Azara, for whom he had been prepared to risk everything, even those who had loved and served him? But Chepe Noyon decided this could not be so. A man did not remember his dead love and have such a face. There was no despair in it, no anguish. It was the face of a falcon, seeking for prey, and hating it with a curiously human hatred.

  Now they were out upon the barrens, black and endless. The moon came out more clearly. The air was very cold and still as death. They dismounted, and prepared to camp for the night. Chepe Noyon, seeing that Temujin would give no orders, gave them himself. There would be no fires. They would eat their dried Mongol beef, which they had carried under the saddles of their horses, against the latter’s warm flesh, so that it should be softened. They would drink water. Every one spoke and moved about warily, as though expecting enemies.

  Temujin ate nothing. He sat apart with his brother and Chepe Noyon. His hands hung between his knees. He appeared absorbed in some profound melancholy of his own. But surely it was not grief. It was too somber, too menacing, for that.

  The men wrapped themselves in their cloaks and lay down to sleep near their horses. Temujin lay down, with Chepe Noyon beside him. Chepe Noyon was peacefully tired. But still he could not free himself from a vague uneasiness.

  Then Temujin spoke, as though aloud, and to himself, quietly and deeply:

  “I shall be avenged.”

  Chepe Noyon was startled. Avenged? Upon whom? He puzzled this to himself, with growing alarm. But in the very midst of his perturbation he fell asleep.

  He awoke instantly to full consciousness later, aware that he must have slept for some time. The moon had vanished. Now there was only darkness. But Chepe Noyon sat up, intently listening, straining all his power to hear. He could see nothing, but knew that no one had stirred, not even Temujin, wrapped in his cloak beside him.

  He decided that he must have dreamed the sound that had awakened him: the sound of a man’s weeping, broken and dry, and muffled.

  Chapter 24

  Each morning Jamuga searched the pink horizon, and each evening he searched the hyacinth horizon, desperately hoping to see Temujin returning. His alarm and perturbation were increasing as the days passed. Each night he reassured himself that Temujin was sagacious; each morning his old patronizing underestimation of his anda returned, and he was positive that the end lay crouching somewhere behind those horizons he searched so desperately.

  He was not too happy in his position, for he was no fool. He saw that his khanship was not only temporary, but negligible. The true rule of the tribe was in the hands of the silent and beautiful Subodai. It is true that Subodai consulted him with great respect, and at frequent intervals, but it was only lip service. He felt himself dragged helplessly along, as usual, on a current decided by another. To a man of his cool and hidden vanity, this was intolerable. The pale stern line between his brows deepened. He became petty in small matters, and irritable, in order to display to others that he was in truth the khan, and not Subodai. He was guilty of small tyrannies and caprices. But even this did not give him pleasure. He felt a hidden disdain beneath the respect accorded him, a sly amusement at his pallid arrogance. Had Temujin detected this against himself, he would have come savagely out in the open and fought it down into genuine respect and fear. But Jamuga was at once too proud, too timid, too egotistic, to force an open struggle in which he doubted that he would be victor.

  He was too fastidious to be cruel; he did not possess any real warmth nor kindness, and because of this he could not win affection if not respect. He was either embarrassed, alarmed, uneasy or nervous among his fellows. Had he possessed potential ferocities and power, his aloofness would have inspired awe and even worship. But uncertain, cold, filled with shadowy arrogance, proud and vain, he lacked strength and exigency, and consequently was regarded with contempt. As the days passed, the stern but gentle Subodai found it all he could do, by prodigious will power and low warnings, to compel the people to heed Jamuga and at least allow him to believe he ruled them. The sensitive Jamuga soon detected it, and a thin venomous hatred rose in him against Subodai, who ruled wherever he desired without apparent effort. At night, he wept bitter tears and could not sleep.

  Once he was guilty of a grave error. This error was the seed which was to bear terrible fruit for him, in the years to come.

  He had told himself that during his khanship he would rectify many “injustices” among the people, in order to have an arguing-point against Temujin when he returned, and to demonstrate to his anda some of the errors of his rule.

  The nokud each had absolute life-and-death control of those members of the tribe assigned under their jurisdiction. The nokud made all decisions, judged all quarrels, punished all offenders. If a man were condemned to die, no one could appeal the judgment of the nokud.

  It happened that at one sunset Jamuga was walking gloomily through the tent city to take up his customary vantage point where he might watch the evening horizon for Temujin. It was far from his own yurt and household. This section was under the jurisdiction of a stern middle-aged man by the name of Agoti, whom Jamuga knew slightly and disliked for his inexorable stolidity. Too absorbed in his own dismal thoughts, he did not at first hear the wailing of women and children coming, muffled, from a certain large yurt. But at last he heard it. He was sensitive, rather than compassionate, and the noise made him wince. He went to investigate. He found, in the yurt, about twenty young women, two older women, and two crones, and at least twelve children. They were packed in the smoke-filled musky confines of the yurt, squatting on their haunches, their heads covered by their garments. All wept and moaned in unison, rocking back and forth.

  Jamuga’s light low voice could not at first penetrate the wall of grief, but at last a boy noticed him and called his mother’s attention to the khan. At the sight of him she screamed aloud, flung herself upon her face before him, and grovelled at his feet, kissing them, drenching them in her tears, and crying for mercy. In a few moments all the other women had followed her example, and the evening was hideous with their cries and screams and imploring broken voices. A small crowd gathered outside, ejaculating and conjecturing.

  Jamuga finally was able to gather that their lord, Chutagi, had been condemned to death. None of them appeared to know why. But he was to be strangled at midnight by orders of Agoti. Only Jamuga Sechen, the great khan, could save him. They knelt about him or lay prostrate, clutching his garments, weeping. The dim light fell on their haggard wet faces and disordered hair. One of the older women was the mother of Chutagi, and one his grandmother. All the others were his wives, daughters and sons.

  Jamuga looked at them; his pale face changed, and he compressed his lips. He remembered Agoti with hatred and anger. Finally he was able to tear himself loose from the clinging women. He promised them that he would consult with Agoti and see what the crime of Chutagi had been, and what could be done.

  He went back to his own yurt, burning with a strange and fiery emotion, his heart beating painfully. He did not know why he felt so. He knew that the laws of the tribe were immutable, and that Chutagi had apparently violated one of them, and gravely. He did not know why he wished to interfere. He did not try to analyze what he felt, nor what he might do. But he seemed to see the face of Temujin, and all his thin and acid gorge rose. He began to tremble violently. But still, there was no pity in him for the man who was to die, nor even for his women.

  At the door of his own yurt, he paused. Then still obeying his strange impulse, he went to Temujin’s yurt. Standing on the platform
, he commanded a servant to bring Agoti to him at once. Then he entered Temujin’s yurt and sat down on his smooth and empty couch. He looked about him, breathing very hard. The palms of his hands were wet. His flesh shook, and his mouth was dry. Now he began to understand some of his emotion. It was rage that had him, but an obscure if mortal rage that he had never felt before. Behind him hung the banner of the nine yak-tails, and beneath it one of Temujin’s drawn sabers. He picked up the saber and laid it across his knees. Then he waited, breathing thinly and with difficulty.

  Many had seen him enter, and were outside, whispering excitedly together. Soon they were joined by others. Within a few minutes nearly five hundred men were gathered in the section surrounding Temujin’s yurt. Jamuga Sechen had entered the house of their lord and was sitting on his couch, holding Temujin’s sword!

  When Agoti, summoned, approached the yurt, a huge throng was at his heels. Something portentous was afoot, every man knew. But Agoti walked stolidly, looking ahead with complete indifference and even contempt. Occasionally, he spat, glowered at the men, who shrank back and dropped their eyes.

  When he reached Temujin’s yurt, he said in a loud voice: “So!” And smiled with dark grimness. Then he entered the yurt, and bowed low and ironically before Jamuga Sechen. He waited in silence for Jamuga to speak.

  Jamuga’s white face glistened with sweat; his light blue eyes were brilliant with emotion. But he spoke quietly:

  “Agoti, I am informed that thou hast condemned one Chutagi to death. Why was I not informed of it?” Quiet as his voice was, it reached the nearest of the keen-eared Mongols, who quickly relayed it to their companions.

  Agoti stared. Then his face became thick and congested. He could not keep the disdain and arrogance from his tones, when he answered:

  “Lord, I am a nokud. I need to report to no one, not even the lord Temujin, about the disposition of the law among those under my command. Such hath he decreed.”