by Dan Davis
The other quarter was that of the Cathays, which is what we called the Chinese, all of whom were artisans making a great many useful things in iron, silver, and gold, and in timber and stone, also. For the Mongols were utterly ignorant of all civilised things and could make nothing for themselves. I assumed that they were all too stupid to learn such things.
“Yet they are not stupid in war,” Stephen pointed out when I made my judgement of their failures in mercantile activities and skilled crafts.
“A man may be stupid in one way but not another,” Bertrand pointed out, and he was living proof of his own statement.
“Please pardon my presumption, my lords, but would you yourself seek to become a silversmith or a merchant?” Stephen said.
“Of course I bloody well would not stoop so low as that, you impudent little monk.”
Stephen bobbed his head as his cheeks flushed. “Quite so, my lord, yes indeed. And each Mongol man, whether he be lowly or wealthy, considers himself to be something like a knight, in that his trade is war, and so none of them would become anything lesser, just as you would not.”
“How dare you!” Bertrand had roared. “These little fat shits are not knights, you ignorant villein.”
Stephen had hitched up his robes and fled from Bertrand’s presence while the man shouted after him. I had laughed at the sight of it but I did believe Stephen was quite right about the Mongols. Still, it made their one city a very strange place, cobbled together as it was from the skills and cultures of alien peoples so that it felt like no other town I had ever seen. The closest thing I could liken it to was, perhaps, a busy port in the Holy Land.
Besides these foreign quarters and the Mongol ger quarter, there were the great palaces set about Mongke’s own, though what were called palaces would have been grand townhouses in any leading city of Christendom. The palace quarter was home and workplace for the leading administrators of the court and the entire empire of the Mongols.
There were twelve idol temples of different nations all over the city, two mosques in which was cried the law of Mohammed, and one church of Nestorian Christians in the extreme end of the city. Karakorum was surrounded by a mud wall about ten feet high that did little more than keep out wandering animals and, I suppose, provided the Mongols with a means of controlling the entry of people. The four gates in the wall were guarded at all hours of the day and night by hard-looking men.
At the eastern gate was sold millet and other kinds of grain, although there was rarely any to be brought there. At the western one, sheep and goats were sold. At the southern, oxen and carts were sold. And at the northern gate were the horse markets.
Even though it was so small, and even though every surface was covered in ice and the ground was so hard that a pick could never be hammered into it, the city of Karakorum stank. It was surrounded by herd after herd of horses and oxen, clustered together in tight groups against the winds and shivering in the bitter cold. Every morning, more would be dead. Frozen to the ground. But the Mongols seemed not to care overly much, for there were always more animals to be had and the ones that died were eaten.
The animal smell surrounded the city but within the streets, such as they were, it reeked from the dung-fuelled fires that burned in every hearth. And, God forbid, when you were inside a ger that was warm enough to thaw out the people within and heat their clothing. For then the stench of months of sweat and filth would fill the air like a cloud of pestilence so foul that I saw children vomiting from it. And the food and the drink that they consumed was always sour and bitter. The iron-hard ground was too solid to bury night-soil or absorb urine, so it was collected in buckets and thrown into great mounds here and there all across the city, within and outside the walls. Those frozen mounds grew all through the winter and I wondered what would happen when summer thawed those mountains of shit.
This, then, was the capital city of the great Mongol Empire.
Yes indeed, I was far from impressed.
But I was not there to be awed.
From the moment we were led in through the gate, I looked everywhere for William, or for any sign of him. The city was so small and there were so few men who could conceivably be from Christendom that I was certain I would clap eyes upon him from across a marketplace or along a street.
But William was nowhere to be seen.
Our guides, who had brought us from Batu, housed us all together in a single ger on the edge of the city near to the church, which pleased the monks mightily. They told us to wait in the city and that the Khan would send for us. Every day, someone would bring food and fresh water. It was never enough but it kept us alive.
And we were free to explore the city at will. No one guarded us.
After so many months of hard travelling, our company was suffering from terrible ailments. Feet were rotten, skin was raw. All of them had sores and weeping blisters. I was astonished that Friar Bartholomew had survived the journey and I was certain that he would die at any moment. Abdullah, for the first few days, seemed as though he had already died but he was young and recovered quite rapidly. All they wanted was to stay inside the ger, away from the wind and by the fire.
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, “t
hey 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 woul
d 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.
