Silk Road

by Falconer, Colin

  They all muttered into their beards. Christians they might be, but not all of them regarded the Pope with the veneration that they might.

  A gloomy and profane silence fell on the discussion.

  ‘What of Prester John?’ someone said.

  Prester John was the legendary priest-king, a descendant of the Magi, who many believed would come from the East to save Christendom in its darkest hour. His name had first been spoken in Rome 150 years before.

  ‘Isn’t he a little old to save us now?’ the giant Templar muttered.

  William glared at him but the Templar stared him down. ‘Some believe that John may have been vanquished by the Tatars,’ William went on, ‘and that their king then married John’s daughter. It is their descendant who now sits on the Tatar throne and this is why we hear talk of Christians among them. We may yet find our salvation there.’

  ‘It is a possibility we should not ignore,’ Geoffrey said.

  Thomas Bérard nodded. ‘If Father William wishes to arrange a meeting with this Hülegü, then we shall be happy to accommodate him, as our charter requires us to do.’

  ‘What do you suggest?’ Geoffrey asked him.

  ‘We can arrange for him to be escorted to Aleppo under flag of truce to deliver his message. One of my own knights can serve him as escort and interpreter. This man might also serve as our spy, so that we may better know the mind of this Tatar before we proceed.’

  Geoffrey nodded, thoughtfully. ‘Do you have someone in mind for this charge?’

  ‘Indeed, I have,’ he said. ‘He speaks Persian, Arabic and Turkic, and is as accomplished at diplomacy as he is at arms.’ Bérard smiled and looked over his shoulder at the giant knight with the chestnut hair. ‘May I present to you Josseran Sarrazini. This man I would trust with my life.’ Then he added: ‘He may even save yours, Brother William. If it suits him.’

  When they left meeting Bérard took Josseran aside. ‘Try not to slit his throat the moment you are outside the castle walls.’

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘I know what you think of churchmen like him.’

  ‘I came here to fight for God not the Dominicans. But I also took an oath of obedience and if you say I must escort this fool on his errand, then that is what I shall do.’

  ‘You have almost completed your five years of service. You could ask to be relieved of this duty.’

  Josseran thought about it. For a moment he was almost tempted. A long journey in the company of a Dominican friar was not a proposition he relished.

  ‘I have nothing to hurry back to France for. I am not sure I know how to take up my former life. Besides, France is full of men like this William now. At least here there is only one.’

  The smells of the city were themselves an assault on the senses. Gasping from the stink of ordure, Josseran took two more paces along the alley and smelled jasmine; taking a deep breath he caught a whiff of offal left to dry in the sun on the bare brick window of a butcher, but then was immediately seduced by the heady scent of cardamom and cumin at a spice merchant just another step further on.

  Veiled women, arms jingling with gold hooped bracelets, hurried past him, hugging the walls. The huge brown eyes behind their veils betrayed hate and fear in equal measure. Long-bearded Armenians in blue turbans and barelegged water carriers jostled him and he was as careless of them as he would have been of any French burgher or peasant in Troyes.

  The street was so steep it was like a stone ladder, but he could have found his way along it blindfold. He ducked his head into a dark vaulted passageway, emerging suddenly into a small square courtyard, fringed with yellow sand. Three servant girls were squatting on straw mats spinning wool. They looked up as he entered, but he was a familiar presence here, and they quickly returned to their work.

  A broad square of red cloth had been stretched over the court to shade it from the worst of the midday sun, but the heat radiated from the whitewashed walls like a brick oven. A rampart looked out over the harbour where the tips of yellowed sails drifted past, but the sea offered up only a scrap of breeze.

  The light was intense. It was the one thing that he would miss when he returned to Burgundy. Even on its fiercest summer days the light was never like this.

  The striped curtain that had been drawn across the door was flung aside and Simon stepped out. He looked like a bear in a djellaba and skullcap, and was almost as tall as Josseran himself. His salt and pepper ringlets and beard framed a broad smile.

  ‘Friend,’ he said and embraced him. ‘Come inside. Drink tea with me.’

  It was blessedly cool inside, the thick stone walls keeping out the worst of the heat. It was dark, and redolent with the frankincense that burned in copper censers hanging from the ceiling. There were rich carpets on the walls and the floor. Simon clapped his hands and a woman brought tea and a tray of almonds.

  ‘So, you are leaving us?’ Simon said.

  ‘You know already?’

  ‘All everyone does in this city is gossip. I probably knew about the envoy from Rome before you did.’

  ‘Then I did not need to come and bring you the news.’

  Simon clapped him on the shoulder. ‘You came because we are friends and you wanted to say goodbye.’

  Doves fussed and fluttered around the window. ‘I am going to miss this,’ Josseran said.

  ‘I will still be here when you return.’

  Josseran shrugged his shoulders. If I return.

  Simon must have known what he was thinking, for he said: ‘Is it dangerous, what you are about to do?’

  ‘Being a Templar is always dangerous.’

  ‘Not as dangerous as being a Jew.’

  Josseran smiled. ‘You are probably right.’

  ‘Before I forget!’ Simon said and jumped to his feet. He opened an iron-banded chest in a corner of the room and took out a small crimson velvet pouch. He handed it to Josseran. ‘For your protection on your journey.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Something of no use whatever to a Jew like myself.’

  Josseran loosened the drawstring. A heavy crucifix fell into the palm of his left hand. He held it towards the light. It was made of burnished copper and inset with garnets. ‘How did you come by this?’

  ‘It was given to me as part of a transaction I made a long time ago. It is very old, I believe, five or six centuries, perhaps more. The man who sold it to me said his father found it many years ago near a convent high in the Languedoc. He believed it has a certain magic to it.’

  ‘Why did he sell it?’

  ‘He was dying and he had no further need of magic. He wanted the money instead, to give to his concubine. Would you like it?’

  ‘I should never shun good fortune, or a gift from a friend.’

  ‘Now you have both.’

  Josseran put the cross around his neck. It felt curiously warm against his skin. Then they drank tea and sampled sweetened almonds from an enamelled dish and Simon tried to explain to Josseran the rudiments of al’jibra. At home, Josseran thought, I should drink myself senseless on ale, tear at a joint of beef with my teeth and talk endlessly about jousting. Perhaps I am getting soft living here.

  He said goodbye to his friend and made his way back up the alley towards the castle. How strange that I should feel so at home here among these hawk-eyed traders and veiled women. I speak Latin more often than I speak French and Arabic more than I speak Latin. His best friend was not a soldier but a heathen and a usurer and, thanks to him, he knew the Talmud, the Q’ran and the Kabbalah as well as he knew the Gospel. He had found more kinship with a man whose ancestors had murdered Jesus than with his own kind.

  He feared he was becoming a stranger to his fellows and a foreigner to his friends. But should he not return from Aleppo he yet hoped to find heaven. At least there he might find a corner where he belonged.

  VII

  Fergana Valley

  THE STEPPES WERE dusted with snow. The air was brittle, under a sky of endless b
lue. Two figures, wrapped in furs, were silhouetted against the morning sun, their broad-shouldered ponies at the walk.

  ‘You had to win,’ Tekudai said. ‘He would have made as fine a husband as any other. Father wanted it. His father wanted it. I think perhaps you even wanted it. But no. You had to win. You always have to win.’

  She ignored him. Her breath formed white clouds on the air.

  ‘You have to get married some time,’ he said, pressing her.

  He is jealous, she thought. It burned in him, this envy, for he was not like Gerel. Gerel was drunk on black koumiss all the time. He cared for nothing else. Tekudai was a warrior with a warrior’s soul. But simple. He had neither the brains of a general nor the athleticism of a good horseman. She knew she had been favoured by the gods with both and it rankled with her brother that she was the better hunter and the better horsewoman.

  And that she was their father’s favourite, as her mother had been. Her father had three other wives now, as well as concubines, in the Tatar custom, but it was still Bayaghuchin he grieved for.

  She had died when Khutelun was ten years old. Bayaghuchin had been Qaidu’s first wife. Khutelun remembered her as strong and straight and with a temper to match. She was a woman in the mould of a true Tatar; it was said that even Chinggis Khan had been afraid of his wife. But Khutelun had not only inherited her mother’s fire; she had her gifts as a seer as well.

  Suddenly there was movement on the steppe. Two marmots, ground squirrels, perhaps two hundred paces distant, whistled in perplexity at the appearance of these intruders in the vast emptiness. One scampered underground, the other hesitated, head jerking quizzically, tail erect.

  Khutelun had her bow to her shoulder first, the arrow already in her right hand, her movements so swift and practised it was as natural to her as blinking. Her first arrow – there would not have been time for a second – took the small creature cleanly through the skull, death swift and merciful. More food for the pot that night, some meat for the winter stew.

  Tekudai had yet to draw back his own bowstring. He replaced the arrow in the wooden quiver at his waist. Their eyes met.

  He hated her.

  VIII

  the Templar fortress at Acre

  A SARACEN MOON rose over the lighthouse, a perfect crescent. Josseran stood on the parapet, staring at the sleeping city. He could hear the rush of the ocean against the rocks below.

  The great monastery of San Sabas loomed in the darkness, on a hill between the Venetian and Genoese quarters. It had been abandoned by the monks who lived there several years before and had immediately become a point of contention between the two rival merchant communities. Each had tried to gain possession of it, first by legal wrangling in the Haute Cour, then by force. Pitched battles in the street had led to a full-scale civil war, with the barons and military orders being forced to take sides. The survival of the Crusader states themselves, after all, depended on the sea power of the Italian merchants.

  The war had culminated in a naval battle off Acre just eighteen months before in which the Venetians had sunk twenty-four Genoese ships. An uneasy truce had been patched together by the Pope. But the dispute still simmered, with the Genoese having now abandoned Acre for Tyre, to the north.

  We were supposed to be fighting the Saracens.

  Josseran picked out other landmarks in the darkness: the tall, graceful silhouette of St Andrew’s Church; the palace of the governor in the Venetian quarter; the cathedral of the Holy Cross; the Dominican monastery in Burgos Novos; and in the distance, on the northern walls, the Accursed Tower and the Tower of St Nicholas.

  He knew this city now better than he knew Paris or Troyes. Five years he had been in Outremer and he barely recognized himself as the zealot who had first stepped on these shores, fervent, conscience-weary, afraid. On leaving France he had secured a loan of two thousand shillings from the Templar preceptory to make his way to Acre. In return he had pledged his properties to the Templar lodge should he not return from his pilgrimage.

  Five years!

  He had changed so much. At home he and his fellow Franks had dressed in furs and gorged themselves on beef and pork. He rarely washed his body, believing that he would make himself sick with chills. What a savage I was! Here he ate little meat and supped from copper salvers of oranges, figs and melons, drank sherbets instead of mulled wines. He bathed at least three times a week.

  He had been taught from a child that the Mohammedans were the embodiment of the Devil himself. But after five years in Acre he sometimes wore robes and turbans in the Saracen manner, and had learned from these same devils a little of mathematics and astronomy and poetry. The Temple even kept Mohammedan prisoners as artisans or armourers and saddlers. Over time he had formed tentative friendships with several of them, had come to see them as men like himself.

  I don’t know if I can ever go home now. I don’t even know where my home is.

  His regime as a Templar was strict. In winter his day began just before dawn; after prime he would check his horses and their harnesses, inspect his weapons and armour and those of his sergeants-at-arms. Then he would undertake his own training and that of his men: the constant practice with lance, mace, sword, dagger and shield. He would eat his first meal at noon and not sup again till the evening. He would recite a dozen paternosters each day, fourteen every hour, and eighteen for vespers. It was the life of a warrior monk.

  He had thus made his pilgrimage, done his penance, almost served the five years of his pledge. The chaplain said he was forgiven all his sins. So why then did he still feel this heaviness in his heart? Soon it would be time to return to France and resume the patrimony of his father’s lands. He should be more eager for that homecoming.

  He heard a footfall on the stone in the darkness and turned around. His hand went instinctively to his sword. So many assassins in this accursed city. ‘Put away your sword, Templar,’ a man said, in Latin.

  He recognized the voice. The Dominican friar, William.

  ‘They told me I would find you here,’ he said.

  ‘I often find comfort in the night.’

  ‘And not in the chapel?’

  ‘There are fewer hypocrites up here.’

  The friar came to stand at the battlements and looked towards the harbour, his face in silhouette. The Dominicans. Domini canes, as some wits would have it, ‘the bloodhounds of the Lord’. The order had been founded by the Spaniard, Guzmán, the one they now called St Dominic, during the crusade in the Languedoc. They had set themselves the task of eradicating heresy and bringing Europe under the heel of the clerics.

  They had the Pope’s ear. A Dominican had held the position of Master of the Sacred Palace, personal theologian to the Pope himself, since the days of Guzmán. In 1233 Gregory IX had entrusted them with the holy work of the Inquisition.

  They were all meddlers and murderers, in Josseran’s opinion. The one thing you could say about them was that they were not hypocrites like the bishops and their priests; they did not get their housemaids pregnant and they kept to their vows of poverty. But they were cruel and joyless creatures. The tortures and burnings they were responsible for in the Languedoc were simply unspeakable. All done in the name of God, of course. Josseran hated every single one of them.

  ‘It seems we are to be companions,’ William said.

  ‘It would not have been my choice.’

  ‘Nor mine. I have heard of the vices and treachery of Templars.’

  ‘I have heard the same things said of priests.’

  William gave a short, barking laugh. ‘I have to know. Why were you chosen?’

  ‘You heard what Bérard said of me. I know how to use a sword and I ride passably well. And I am skilled in certain languages. It is a gift it pleased God for me to possess. Do you have anything besides Latin?’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘It is hard to make any commerce in Outremer unless you speak a little Arabic.’

  ‘The language of the heathen.’

/>   Josseran nodded. ‘Our Lord spoke Latin, of course, when he strolled through Nazareth.’ William did not reply and Josseran smiled to himself. A small victory. ‘So you speak only Latin and German. A fine ambassador the Pope has chosen for the East.’

  ‘I speak French passably well.’

  ‘That should be useful in Syria.’

  ‘If you are to be my interpreter I expect you to serve me faithfully.’

  ‘I am to be your escort, not your servant.’

  ‘You should know that I shall tolerate no interference in my plans.’

  ‘Should I get in your way, you can always go on alone.’

  William reached out his hand and touched the crucifix that hung on a silver chain at Josseran’s throat. Josseran knocked his hand away.

  ‘A pretty piece,’ William said. ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘That is none of your business.’

  ‘Is it gold?’

  ‘Gilded copper. The stones are garnets. It is very old.’

  ‘It is just that you do not appear to me to be a man of much piety. And yet you have come here to fight in Christ’s army. Why the Templars? They shelter all sorts of criminals, I hear.’

  ‘I may not be a man of much piety but you do not appear to be a man of much diplomacy. And yet they have sent you here as an ambassador.’

  ‘I hope your master knows the kind of man in whose hands he has entrusted my life.’ William turned on his heel in the darkness. Josseran scowled. Priests! But the charter of the Templars required that he guard him well and endure his arrogance all the way to Aleppo. With God’s speed the journey should take no longer than a month.

  He turned back to the night and its stars, wondering where fate might bring him by the time the moon waxed full.

  IX

  THE NEXT MORNING, at dawn, Josseran arrived at the wharf with his sergeant-at-arms, one Gérard of Poitiers, and provisions for the journey. He brought three horses. His big war horse, his destrier, he left behind but he had brought his favourite white Persian, Kismet. Gifts for the Tatar prince were locked in an iron-bound money chest; there was a damascened sword with gold quillon and motifs in Arabic script, an ebony inkstand ornamented with gold, a suit of chain mail, a mail helmet, some gauntlets of tooled red leather and a handful of rubies. He also had a quantity of golden Arab dinars and silver drachmas at his disposal, to use as he saw fit.