Silk Road

by Falconer, Colin

  They had clearly meant to capture him, but his hands were not tied, and there was no one standing over him with a sword. Why?

  A face swirled into his vision, a sparse black beard and a drooping moustache: a young Tatar with a thin mouth and eyes liquid and brown like a leopard.

  ‘Barbarian, wake up!’ He felt a boot in his ribs. ‘You want to sleep forever?’

  Josseran sat up and groaned as the nausea gripped him again.

  The Tatar squatted down beside him. ‘A little tap on the head and you swoon like a woman!’

  Josseran aimed a blow at the Tatar’s face but the man jumped back, laughing. Josseran found himself once again face down in the gravel.

  The other Tatars were laughing too. ‘So, you have some spirit left!’ the young man shouted. ‘That’s good!’

  ‘Do not antagonize them! I fear they mean to take our lives.’ It was William’s voice, for the love of God.

  So. They had taken the friar also.

  William was huddled miserably by a camp fire, his face pale as chalk, and there was blood caked into the hair at the back of his head. Josseran wondered if they had taken any of the others, but there was no sign of them.

  ‘If they wanted . . . our lives . . .’ Josseran began. If they wanted our lives, they would have killed us by now. He gave up. What was the point of explaining such things to a churchman?

  Josseran stared at his tormentors. They crowded around, jostling each other for a good look at their prize. Grinning like wolves.

  ‘Did they . . .’ Josseran turned back to William. It was an effort to talk, his tongue felt twice its normal size. ‘Did they kill . . . our escort?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ William said, irritably. ‘I was half-dead when they dragged me off. What does it matter? Find out what these bandits want with us. Tell them I have an urgent commission for their khan from the Pope.’

  ‘I am sure . . . they will . . . be greatly impressed.’

  One of the Tatars nudged him with his boot, as if he were something he had found dead on the ground. ‘He’s big.’

  ‘Ugly, too,’ their young leader said. ‘And look at his nose!’

  ‘The next one . . . of you flat-faced bandits who . . . speaks ill of my nose I shall run through with . . . my sword.’

  The young Tatar grinned. ‘So! You are the one who speaks like a civilized person. We heard this but we did not believe it.’

  Spies had been watching them at the caravanserais then, Josseran thought. But whose spies? ‘Who are you? What is it you want . . . with us?’

  ‘My name is Sartaq. I and my brothers here are soldiers in the service of Khubilai, Lord of Heaven, Emperor of the Middle Kingdom, Khan of the Whole Earth. And we want nothing of you. It is you who wants to parlay with the Emperor. We have been sent here to escort you to him.’

  ‘But we had an . . . escort. You murdered them. We were on our way to parlay . . . with the Khaghan . . . when you kidnapped us.’

  Sartaq spat angrily on the sand. ‘Your escort are traitors. They were taking you to Qaraqorum. All you will find there is the Emperor’s brother, Ariq Böke, a usurper and by appearance no lovelier or more gracious than the hind parts of a horse. If you want to see the true Khan of Khans you must come with us to Shang-tu, to Khubilai, Emperor of Heaven.’

  ‘What are they saying?’ William asked.

  ‘It seems we have stumbled into a . . . civil war. He says there are two kings and that this Ariq Böke, in Qaraqorum, is a usurper.’

  ‘But what do they wish with us?’

  They were caught up in Tatar politics now, Josseran realized. If this Khubilai believed himself the rightful khan, he would want to treat with all foreign ambassadors himself, to give himself legitimacy. ‘They wish to take us to see the one they call the true king . . . they call him Khubilai, and his capital is Shang-tu.’

  ‘So they do not intend to murder us?’

  ‘No, Brother William. We are safe from the glory of heaven for now.’

  ‘The good Lord looks over us still! He guides our steps. We should have more faith.’ Josseran saw that William had had the presence of mind to sling the leather satchel over his neck before they were captured. ‘We still have the Psalter and the Bible,’ he said, beaming.

  Josseran was indifferent to the contents of the satchel. All he could think of was Khutelun. She had been beside him when the skirmish began. What had happened to her? Had she survived the assault?

  Sartaq squatted down beside him. ‘I am sorry about the blow to your head; we were merely defending ourselves. You fight like a lion. You wounded two of my men.’

  ‘I prefer the company of the others.’

  Sartaq stared into the night. ‘If you wish to find them, they are out there in the desert somewhere. But you will have to run like the wind for they are many miles away now. Our horses are swift and they have only camels.’

  ‘Then you did not kill them all?’

  ‘My orders were only to capture you and your companion.’

  ‘Some of them are still alive?’

  Sartaq cocked his head to one side. ‘You care about this?’

  ‘The woman? The woman who led our party? Is she dead?’

  A murmur among the Tatars. Sartaq appeared shaken. ‘There was a woman with you?’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘We saw no woman. Just Tatar renegades. Bandits from the steppe.’

  You must have seen her! Josseran thought. And yet . . . perhaps this Sartaq was telling the truth. When she wore her scarf around her head like the other men, how would they know? He supposed he would never know if she had survived. His torment was over, at least. He would do his duty now by the Grand Master of the Templars and by his God. He would relay the Pope’s messenger to Khubilai and try to forget he had ever contemplated betraying his religion and his warrior brothers for a savage and a witch.

  LXIII

  THEY SPED ACROSS the gebi plain at full tilt, leaping the gullies at breakneck speed. Josseran consigned himself again to the tender mercies of the Tatar ponies. Exhausted from months of travel and ill from the wound to his head this time he did not even attempt to stand in the stirrups as they did, but resigned himself to a pounding, slumped in the saddle, league after spine-jarring league.

  His new companions, he had learned, were cavalry from Khubilai’s own imperial guard. Sartaq was the only one he knew by name; two others, who appeared to be his lieutenants, he christened Angry Man and Drunken Man. Angry Man scowled and spat on the ground every time Josseran came close; Drunken Man got his name the first night they stopped at a caravanserai and he soused himself with black koumiss and staggered around the courtyard singing at the top of his voice.

  Sartaq was an engaging fellow and Josseran found it hard to dislike him, despite the circumstances. He squatted next to him in the firelight and gave him a detailed account of their civil war, telling him that Ariq Böke and his supporters in Qaraqorum were all idlers and fools and confidently predicting their slaughter.

  Josseran did not care which of their khans prevailed but it posed a dilemma for him and William; even if they made an accommodation with this Khubilai, what purpose would it serve without the agreement of the other? And how might they return to Acre with Qaidu and his followers standing astride the Silk Road, barring their way? As soldiers, these men were better equipped than Qaidu’s troopers. As well as a bow and three wooden quivers of arrows, each man carried an iron mace or battleaxe on his hip and a dagger strapped to his left arm.

  ‘What is this for?’ Josseran asked him, pointing to the silk under-shirt Sartaq wore underneath his lamellar armour. ‘Where I come from only women and emperors wear silk.’

  ‘It is protection,’ Sartaq said. ‘Silk is strong.’ He pulled at the edge of the material. ‘It will not tear, so even if an arrow pierces my armour it will bind itself to the arrowhead and wind tightly around it. It makes it easier to withdraw the arrow without damaging too much flesh.’

  ‘I shall hav
e to get one,’ Josseran said.

  ‘I will see what I can do for you, Barbarian. If you ever fight against us, you will need a whole bale of silk!’

  LXIV

  ‘THE JADE GATE,’ Sartaq announced. On one side the green gables of the fort were set against the snow-capped backdrop of the Qilian Mountains. Triangular emerald and white flags snapped from the pennants on the walls. On the other rose a series of black hills that their companions called the Horse’s Mane.

  Drunken Man pointed out the ruins of a wall the Chin had built between their land and the steppes as protection against Chinggis Khan’s ancestors.

  ‘You may judge for yourself how well it served them,’ he said, laughing.

  In the distance they glimpsed a patchwork of fields and stands of poplar. ‘From here,’ Sartaq said, ‘the plain narrows to the valley that runs between the Qilian Shan and the Horse’s Mane. Here we say goodbye to the Taklimakan.’ And he spat in the sand.

  Josseran translated what he had said for William.

  ‘Then we have survived, by the grace of God,’ the friar responded.

  Josseran nodded.

  ‘So where does he say we are now?’

  ‘He calls this place the Middle Kingdom. I believe we are headed for Cathay, where the Silk Road begins.’

  William had recovered from the battering he had taken when they were kidnapped and seemed quite undeterred by their change of fortune. He pointed to the dun-coloured temples and drum towers of the idolaters that rose above the squat and dreary town below.

  ‘We have much work to do here,’ William said. ‘With your help I shall bring these people the word of God. I admonish you to help me in this. We are part of a grand design.’

  ‘I shall do my duty as I see fit,’ Josseran said and spurred his horse down the slope after Sartaq and their Tatar captors.

  Paper offerings burned in a copper bowl. An almond-eyed god, his black beard flowing down his gilt armour, snarled at them from a corner of the chamber. Offerings of fruit and flowers lay at his feet.

  The altar soared almost to the ceiling between two vermilion pillars. In the tabernacle a great-bellied bronze god with earlobes that hung like dewlaps to his shoulders sat cross-legged and surveyed them with a merry grin. Josseran recognized him as the god Khutelun called Borcan. He was coated with gold leaf, which was dulled with centuries of incense. Other depictions of the god, carved from bronze and wood, were ranged around the temple, on plinths, or set in niches in the walls.

  There was silence, save for the gentle tinkling of a brass bell.

  A monk knelt before the shrine, a book of mantras and a brass prayer bell at his knees. His head was shaved and gleamed like polished steel in the gloom. He heard them enter and rose to greet them. His face registered neither surprise nor fear.

  ‘Who is he?’ William asked Josseran.

  Josseran spoke to the man in the Tatar language. ‘He is the abbot,’ Josseran translated.

  ‘He heard of our approach and was expecting us. He says we are welcome here.’

  ‘Expecting us? How could he be expecting us?’

  ‘I do not know. But that is what he says.’

  The abbot spoke again, nodding his head towards William.

  ‘He asks to know how old you are,’ Josseran said.

  ‘Tell him I have three and thirty years. The same as Our Lord when he died for us on the Cross.’

  Josseran passed this information to the abbot. There was another brief exchange and Josseran laughed bawdily and the abbot’s face split into a gap-toothed smile.

  ‘What now?’ William said.

  ‘He said you look a lot older. Then he asked if you have led a very dissolute life.’

  ‘And what did you answer him?’

  ‘I told him you were a notorious whoremonger.’

  A hissing of breath. William had lost all patience with his Templar compatriot. All the way from Acre he had been subjected to a tirade of ridicule and blasphemy. He had always suspected that the Pope’s trust in the Order of the Temple was misplaced. These men were all heretics and recalcitrants and this particular knight showed no piety at all. One day, he promised himself, there would be an accounting. God’s truth would be served.

  The abbot was watching him intently from rheumy eyes. He was dressed, like many of the idolaters in these lands, in saffron robes, but wore no other ornamentation. He was very old. His smooth skin was stretched tight across his skull but hung in dewlaps under his jaw, and his high cheekbones and wispy beard gave him the appearance of a sad and curious monkey.

  ‘Tell him I have come to bring him the good news of Our Lord,’ William said.

  Another whispered conversation in the strange tongue.

  ‘He says he always welcomes good news.’

  ‘Say that I have come from the Pope, God’s mortal representative on this earth, with word of the one and true faith. Tell him he must cease his idolatrous practices immediately and worship God, whose son Lord Jesus Christ came to this earth to die for men’s sins. If he does not do this he will fall into hell and suffer eternal punishments at the hands of Beelzebub.’

  ‘He is an old man, Brother William. That might be a lot for him to take in at once.’

  ‘Just do as I ask.’

  A long conversation. William watched the old monk’s face for sign that he understood the import of what he was being told. Finally William grew impatient. ‘How does he respond?’

  ‘He asked me a lot of questions about hell. I tried to explain it to him as best I could.’

  William clenched his jaw. Now the Templar believed himself to be a theologian! ‘It would be better if you would direct all such questions to me. You are not qualified to speak of hell with any authority. Not yet, at least,’ he added, with a sour smile.

  ‘I qualified my opinions, Brother William.’

  ‘What was it that he asked you?’

  ‘He seemed very interested in hell as a place and wanted to know if it was anywhere near the Taklimakan.’

  ‘Tell him it is not of this world. It is a place reserved for the souls of the damned.’

  Josseran made a face. ‘This is what I said. But he answered that he already believes in hell.’

  William felt a surge of hope.

  ‘He thinks this world forms the greater part of such a place,’ Josseran went on. ‘He watched his own father die in agony of the plague, saw his mother raped and disembowelled by Chinggis Khan’s soldiers, then was forced to stand by while all his brothers and sisters had their throats cut. He is curious to know what you think your Devil can do to frighten him.’

  ‘You must tell him his immortal soul is at stake. He should not be frivolous.’

  ‘I assure you, he was not being frivolous.’

  ‘Tell him that the Devil is ten times worse than Chinggis Khan.’

  Again Josseran entered into conversation with the old man. William dearly wished that he had the facility for language that God, in his wisdom, had given to the Templar.

  Josseran turned back to him at last. ‘He says if you think the Devil is worse than Chinggis Khan, you did not know Chinggis Khan.’

  ‘But does he not wish for eternity?’ William said.

  Josseran posed the question. ‘He thinks not,’ Josseran said.

  William could not believe his ears.

  ‘He says he has suffered from gout for many years, which is a pain like no other. The physicians tell him death is the only cure. He also says he has pain in the joints of both his knees and the only way he can endure it is by reminding himself he will not have to suffer it much longer.’ Josseran hesitated. ‘He is also curious why you yourself wish to live forever when you have bad skin and such a foul smell.’

  William felt the blood drain from his face. Now these barbarians insulted him. And he was there to bring them their salvation! For a moment outrage left him speechless.

  Meanwhile the old man leaned forward and whispered something else.

  ‘What does he say now
? More insults?’

  ‘He asserts that there is no god that can grant immortality to flesh. Look around you, he says. The snow melts, the leaves fall from the trees, flowers die; everything has its time. Heaven cannot grant permanence to anything so why do we seek it? Empires are built and will crumble; even Chinggis Khan did not live forever.’

  ‘You must tell him the story of Our Lord Jesus . . .’

  Josseran shook his head. ‘No, Brother William. I am tired of this. He is an old man and I think in many ways he is wiser than you. I think we should leave here now.’

  ‘Are you refusing to assist me on my holy mission?’

  ‘I fought the Saracens for the Pope. Isn’t that enough?’

  He walked away. The old bonze regarded him from rheumy eyes, immobile, mute. William felt the frustration of his position and wanted to weep. So many souls to be saved, and all he had to assist him was one obdurate knight with a heart as black as a bear. What was he to do? Where was he to find his inspiration, where was he to find God in this wicked land?

  LXV

  LATE ONE AFTERNOON, they stopped at a remote post house and were unsaddling their horses when he saw a horseman approaching from the north. Josseran heard the plaintive whine of a post horn. As the rider galloped into the yam, a groom appeared from the pens leading a fresh horse, already saddled, resplendent in scarlet halter and saddle blanket. Without a word the rider leaped from one mount on to the other and rode on.

  Josseran caught just a glimpse of him; his torso was strapped with leather belts, his head wrapped in swathes of cloth. There was a large gold medallion around his neck. Then he was gone, leaving the groom holding the reins of the steaming and exhausted horse. Within minutes he was a distant speck on the plain, heading west, the way they had come.

  ‘Who was he?’ Josseran asked Angry Man.

  He spat on the ground and walked away.

  Sartaq overheard his question and walked over and slapped him on the shoulder. ‘That was an arrow rider. One of the Emperor’s messengers.’