Silk and Song

by Dana Stabenow

  “Ah.” Many heads nodded around the circle.

  The elder nodded his head, too. “He and his people have been preying on travelers through the high pass ever since we banished him, these ten years and more since.”

  Jaufre wanted to know why the man had been banished, but he intercepted a fierce look from Rambahadur Raj and subsided. That they didn’t volunteer the information said enough. It would only have shamed them to have recounted a story that did not reflect well on one who had once been their own.

  The elder looked around at the faces of his family and friends and neighbors. “We should send someone up into the hills for his women and children.”

  A man was dispatched forthwith.

  The elder turned again to the havildar and this time bowed, deeply. “You have solved a problem we were not able to resolve for ourselves, Rambahadur Raj, and we are in your debt. Rest here a while. There will be no fees charged, and our water is your water for man and beast alike.” He smiled. “And trade freely, if your merchants have a mind to trade. No taxes will be levied upon your people during your stay.”

  Already well disposed toward their havildar for his speedy and able defense of themselves and their goods, Rambahadur Raj now soared in the caravan merchants’ estimation and Jaufre foresaw a large bonus for him when they reached Damascus. Booths of scavenged poplar limbs and lengths of cloth were set up to form a tiny circular marketplace before the last camel was picketed. Women streamed out of the town and crowded around each vendor, talking and laughing and haggling. Children in high spirits tore around in games of tag and hide-and-seek, so happy and healthy and noisy that after a while Alaric muttered something about strangling them all in their sleep and took himself off. A juice cart appeared, a second cart with rounds of bread on it, a third with stuffed sheep’s lungs and other delicacies. Félicien unrolled his rug and produced his lute. After a while a boy appeared with a tambour, and another boy with a flute.

  It was a long way from the bloody morning day before yesterday. Jaufre looked on the peaceful scene full of laughing people and to his horror felt tears sting the backs of his eyes.

  “Here,” he heard Shasha’s voice say. “This way.”

  She led him stumbling to their tent, pushed him inside and shut the flap after him.

  He fell on his bedroll and tears were arrested by a heavy sleep that rolled over him like a thick black blanket. If he dreamt he heard the sound of his blade slicing into human flesh, or heard the panicked, pained, disbelieving scream of the first man whose flesh he had sliced into, he did not remember it afterward. Not that first night, at least.

  He woke again near dark, and saw that Shasha had left him a change of clean clothes. He took them to the baths in the town, small but adequate and fueled by a natural hot spring that had been brought down from the hills by an ingenious stone trough supported on a series of connected stone arches. He steamed away the rest of his aches and pains, suffered his cheeks to be scraped free of beard, and returned to camp feeling, if not exactly at peace, then once more calm and in control of his emotions.

  Shasha met him at their yurt. “Come,” she said, “there is food, and drink, and dancing, and song this night.” She smiled. “It has been so ordained by the imam, who has taken a great liking to Hari.”

  “God help us all,” Jaufre said piously, and Shasha laughed. She set off and, after tossing his dirty clothing inside the yurt, he followed her.

  A large fire had been built in the center of where that day’s makeshift market had been, and members of the caravan and citizens of the town intermingled freely. To one side a dignified gentleman in immaculate white robes sat on a rich carpet, in earnest conversation with Hari, who with his thin yellow robe slipping from one shoulder looked distinctly underdressed by comparison. Félicien and his lute were accompanying a tenor with a gitar, the harmony forming a pleasing whole.

  “How old do you think he is, anyway?” Jaufre said when Shasha came up with a tray full of lamb and onion kebabs.

  Shasha followed his gaze. “Félicien, do you mean?” She arranged the tray and sat down next to him. “Why do you ask?”

  “He is yet a beardless boy,” he said. “Look at him. He must have left home at the age of ten.”

  “Some do,” Shasha said. She looked at him and smiled. “You and Johanna were late bloomers.”

  He laughed and chose a kebab. The lamb was crusted on the outside, tender and juicy on the inside. He had never tasted better.

  Later in the evening Alaric wandered into the circle of people who had formed around the fire. He had acquired a jug of wine from some illicit source and was very merry in consequence, while the elders of the town looked on with tolerant indulgence. It was not their way, but their way was not everyone’s way. It was a very nice sort of town.

  “Ho, Jaufre of Cambaluc,” Alaric said, squinting. He offered out the jug.

  Jaufre waved it away. “I’ve had wine. I don’t like it,” he said.

  Alaric shrugged. “More for me.” He drank, and wandered off again.

  They all coped with the aftermath of battle in their different ways.

  The conversation continued around them, the city fathers extracting the last bit of news from far and near that Rambahadur Raj had to offer. It wasn’t long before one of them said, “Is it true, what we hear? Are the Mongols on the move again?”

  The havildar looked grave. “I am very much afraid that it is,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “In Kabul they said he was in Samarkand. In Kerman, they said he was in Kabul.” Rambahadur Raj shrugged. “If rumor were truth, the Mongols would be advancing on a dozen Persian cities, all at the same time.”

  “In this case, perhaps rumor is truth,” one of the men said bluntly.

  “Even the Mongols don’t number that many,” another man said.

  The first man turned his head and spat. “They settled away to the east, we know that. And we let them, and left them to breed. In a hundred years, who knows how great their forces have become?”

  The eldest stirred. “It is said on the desert wind that this Mongol acts on his own for himself.”

  “Rumor, again.”

  “Perhaps. If true, however, invasion this time might not involve a horde.”

  There were muted chuckles at this dry comment. The first man flushed angrily and opened his mouth to speak further. He was elbowed into silence by the man sitting next to him, who said, respectfully, “Eldest, if they are coming, should we not prepare?”

  The elder looked at Jaufre. “I am told, young sir, that you are of Cambaluc.”

  “Sir, I am,” Jaufre said, bowing his head in acknowledgement, his heart sinking. He had no wish to be singled out, either as a repository of Mongol wisdom or as a target.

  “Is all they say of the Mongol true?”

  “Sir,” Jaufre said again. He frowned a little, hesitating over an answer that would be both true and satisfactory to his listeners.

  It was very quiet now around the fire, Félicien and his accompanists having scented an interesting conversation and downing tools so everyone could hear it.

  “It is true,” Jaufre said at last, and a sigh ran round the circle. Some looked frightened, others pugnacious. He met the eldest’s eyes. “Almost all of what they say is true. If you fight, they will annihilate you to the last man, woman and child. Believe it.” He paused. “If you yield—” there was an angry muttering and he raised his voice “—if you yield, yes, you will have to live under Mongol rule. But you will live.”

  He sighed. “If it comes to that,” he said. “Your Bastak is small, and off the main routes. From what I saw in the market, you mine a little copper and a bit of turquoise, is this not so?” Nods. “You grow enough food in your fields to sustain yourselves, but not so much that you have entire grain houses filled to bursting and therefore irresistible targets. And your carpets, while very fine indeed, again are not so fine as to make Bastak the destination for an entire army bent on plunder.” H
e paused again. “In short, eldest, if there is no reason for the Mongol to come here, he will not. He will go around you to find other, richer targets. If, against all logic, he does come…”

  “If he does come, surrender, or die?”

  Jaufre bent his head again. “I am afraid those are the only options, eldest. You cannot fight, because you cannot win.”

  There was more conversation after that, of course, the elders now mining Jaufre for every bit of information about Mongols and Mongol soldiers and Mongol strategy and tactics that he had. He did his best to comply, but he was weary before the fire burned low. He left them still in conversation there by the coals.

  Most of the camp was asleep by then, and the town, too, but he felt restless. The southeast corner of the city’s walls looked like it would have the best view of the valley. At the top of the stairs he found Alaric before him, legs dangling over the edge, jug in hand. “Ho, young Jaufre,” he said.

  “Alaric,” Jaufre said. He saluted the sentry stationed at the corner, who nodded back, and sat down next to the ex-Templar.

  The founders of Bastak had chosen their site well, a rise of ground with the western wall of the valley behind them, with a prospect that commanded a view of the valley from north to south. Moonlight limned the narrow peaks on either side and cast a pearly gaze on the irrigated farms that lined the Bastak River, a silver ribbon that wound between them.

  “There is a structure made of arches,” Jaufre said. “I saw it in the city.”

  “An aqueduct,” Alaric said. “There is a pipe on the top which brings the hot water from the springs into the city.”

  “It looks very old.”

  “It should,” Alaric said. “It was probably built by the Romans.”

  “They settled this far east?”

  “And farther.”

  There was a promontory a short distant away, a triangular-shaped wedge of rock formed between the river where it came down out of the western ridge and a smaller tributary, that rose to the height of the walls of Cambaluc. Bordered on all three sides by sheer cliffs, there were what looked like ruins on the top of it.

  Alaric followed his eyes. “Ah, yes, young Jaufre,” he said. “That is the Bastak that was. Their spring ran dry a hundred years ago. Or maybe it was a thousand.” He belched. “And so they moved here.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Young Adab here was telling me the tale.”

  Jaufre looked over his shoulder at the sentry, and saw a flash of white teeth in a dark beard. “They chose wisely, both times.”

  “It will do them no good when the Mongol comes,” Alaric said.

  “It is possible that Ogodei will not bother to come this far,” Jaufre said.

  “Or the Seljuks from the other side,” Alaric said, and belched again. “But peace such as this is only an illusion, young Jaufre. You would do well to remember that. There is no safety, no security from ambitious men who lead their own armies.”

  Jaufre waited while the other man tipped up his jug. It was empty. Alaric tossed it aside and looked out over the valley with a glum expression. The jug rolled over the edge of the wall and a moment later was heard to shatter on the rocks below.

  Jaufre let the silence grow for a few moments. Even the hardest and most cynical heart had to soften at prolonged exposure to this kind of pastoral beauty. Also, he was waiting for the alcohol to take full affect.

  After a while he said, almost indifferently, “You recognized my sword when we first met in Kabul, didn’t you?”

  He felt the other man stiffen next to him.

  “And since we have never met before, and since the sword came to me directly from my father, it follows that you might have known him.”

  Silence.

  “Or heard of him,” Jaufre said. “Robert was his name. Robert de Beauville.”

  An owl hooted, and was answered by the howl of a far-off wolf. The moon continued its serene passage above, flooding the landscape with light enough to read by.

  Perhaps Alaric was inspired by that light, which illuminated so much of the dark places in the valley. Or, perhaps, he had decided that since Jaufre had been blooded and was, perforce, now a man that he was to be admitted to the confidence of other men. “Robert de Beauville,” he said, and Jaufre felt the tension that had been coiled around his spine since Kabul relax, just a little.

  “Tell me about him,” he said. “Please.”

  “How much do you know?”

  “That he was born in an island kingdom far to the west,” Jaufre said. “That he was a Knight Templar, sworn to celibacy, but he married my mother. That he was a fine swordsman.”

  “How did he die?” Alaric’s voice cracked on the last word.

  Jaufre swallowed, half-forgotten memories of a caravan on a stretch of desert, raiders rising up as if materializing from the very sand. “He was working as a caravan guard, as you are,” he said. “We were attacked. There were too many.” He paused. “I was the only one who escaped.”

  “How did you manage to keep Robert’s sword?” Alaric said. “That would be prime booty for bandits.”

  “I was beside him when he fell. He knew he was—He gave me the sword. Told me to bury myself and it in the sand. So I did. I waited until they were gone, and then I buried him.” The horror of those moments, of listening to his father die and to his mother and the other women scream as they were dragged off, had never, would never fully leave him.

  “Your mother?”

  “They took her. All the women and children. We believe she was sold at auction in the Kashgar slave market a week after the attack.”

  A long silence this time. Alaric had to know how much Jaufre had left unsaid. “How old were you?”

  “Ten.”

  Alaric’s eyes closed and he shook his head. “You were lucky.”

  “Yes,” Jaufre said, only now, seven years after the fact, able to admit that it was true. “I was found by a Cambaluc trader three days later. I would have died but for him. He adopted me as his foster son, and raised me as his own.”

  “You were lucky,” Alaric said again. “Many on the Road are not so fortunate.”

  This time Jaufre waited.

  After a while Alaric sighed. “Yes, well, why not. Surely we are far enough away, in space and in time, for the truth to be spoken out loud, here beneath the moon and the stars.” He looked up at the sky and began to speak, slowly, even sorrowfully. It felt eerily like a confession.

  “Robert de Beauville was born the fourth son of a Norman noble who settled in western England. His father was not wealthy and with three other sons and two daughters to dispose of, Robert was left to find his own way. He took the Cross at the age of seventeen—”

  Jaufre’s own age.

  “—and traveled to the East as a Knight Templar. We were both on Ruad when it fell.” Alaric hesitated. “It would be five years until Philip sent out the order to have us all arrested, but Robert—” He shrugged. “The Knights fell with Ruad, he said. He said it didn’t matter if it was our fault or not, that we would be blamed.” He spat over the walls. “And he was right, of course, but then Robert was an old head on young shoulders and he usually was.”

  “You were friends.”

  Alaric shrugged. “We were comrades, for a while. Enough to exchange personal histories.” He looked at Jaufre. “His vocation was more expediency than piety, I think. He was the youngest son, his father had provided for him as well as he could. But he was bitter at our failures.” He sighed. “We all were.”

  “What happened after Ruad fell?”

  “Most of the Knights were killed,” Alaric said in a voice devoid of emotion, as if he were reading from an ancient text of events hundreds of years before. “I was wounded. Robert stripped us both out of our armor and pulled me through the water to a coracle he saw floating a little way out. There was no paddle, so he used his hands to get us to the mainland.” He looked down at his own hands, turning them back to front and back again. “I was in a high fever and deliri
ous by then. I don’t remember much beyond what he told me afterward. Somehow, he got us off the beach, where we were most in danger of discovery, and found a hayloft to hide in. He cared for me until I was well enough to care for myself.”

  “And then you parted company?”

  Alaric raised his head. “Not at once,” he said. “We made our way to Antioch and hired ourselves out as guards on a caravan to Damascus. We had to eat, and all we had to sell was our skill with a sword. In Damascus, Robert met Agalia.” He fell silent.

  “My mother.”

  “Yes.” Alaric brooded for a moment, and then seemed to realize that more was needed, and to give it freely was a better option than to have it demanded of him. “She was the daughter of a merchant traveling with the Damascus caravan. Robert—as I said before, Robert’s vocation was less than devout. He had always struggled with the vow of celibacy.” He added, reluctantly, “And she was very beautiful.”

  “And so they were married.”

  “Yes.”

  “And then you parted ways.”

  “Yes. I didn’t believe Robert when he said the blame for the loss of Jerusalem would fall on our shoulders.” Alaric’s shoulders straightened and his chin lifted. “We Knights Templar were heroes, soldiers of God, anointed by the Pope himself. It was inconceivable to me that we could fall so far so fast. I wanted to go home, to see my family, to take up the Cross again in some other way, for some other purpose.”

  “And you went home?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “Oh, they greeted me with loud rejoicing and went straight off to kill the fatted calf.” Alaric stared across the valley. “And the next day came the men of Philip the Fair, who may have been fair to look at but was not at all fair in his dealings with the Templars.”

  “Your family betrayed you?”

  “My father, probably. His nose was ever up some royal ass.” Alaric shrugged. “And he had not wanted me to take the Cross in the first place.”