‘I wish I were more gentle than I am.’
Miao-yen indicated William. ‘Your companion does not speak like a Person?’
‘I shall be his tongue and his ears.’
She gave a small, trembling sigh, like wind rustling the leaves of a tree. ‘Before we begin I have one last question to ask of you. Do you know the reason my father sent you to me?’
‘He says he wishes to know more of the Christian faith.’
‘We already have the Luminous Religion here in Shang-tu.’
‘But it is not the true form of our religion. The monks who teach it are rebels. They do not recognize the authority of the Pope, who is God’s emissary here on earth.’
‘And you think to convert my father to your ways?’
‘What now?’ William said.
‘Wait a moment,’ Josseran told him, hoping to seize this unexpected opportunity to gain an insight into Khubilai’s character. He turned back to Miao-yen. ‘You think he toys with us?’
‘You have seen our royal court. There are Tanguts and Uighurs and Mohammedans and Chinese and Kazakhs. From everyone he takes something, gathering the wisdom of the world to him like a squirrel storing all it can before the winter comes. He will not buy from you, but he will pick your purse.’
He had not expected such a bald assessment of the Ruler of Rulers from his own daughter. ‘The friar here believes that we can convince him that ours is the one and true way,’ Josseran said.
She tilted her head, a gesture that could mean many things.
‘You do not think so?’
‘What I think is that I should not talk so freely with you. Should we not begin my instruction now?’
Josseran reminded himself to be patient, as he had so often counselled William. There would be many other days.
‘So what does she say?’ William asked him.
‘Nothing of consequence. But thank you for your patience, Brother William. She is ready to begin her lessons now.’
LXXXII
WILLIAM WOKE IN the middle of the night, panting as if he had just run from a fire. He rolled on to his side, tucked his knees into his chest, making himself as small as he could. He imagined himself hiding from God.
The fault was not his. The Church warned of demons who came to men and women in their sleep and ravished them while they were in this helpless state. He had battled this she-devil many times, but now she had returned in a new guise, with almond eyes and a willowy body.
He leaped from the bed and removed his friar’s robe. He fumbled in the darkness for the switch that he had made himself that morning from cherry-tree branches.
He heard the rustle of silk as his succubus slipped her crimson brocade gown down her shoulders. He saw the pulse of blood at her throat, her ivory breast like a teardrop. He ran her long jet hair through his fingers.
No.
He lashed again and again, but he could not drive her out. She knelt at his feet like a penitent. He smelled her musk and imagined her long and warm fingers reaching beneath his robe. She was so real to him that he did not feel the blood running from his striped back, only the heat of her as he gripped his flesh in his own hand and gave his she-demon his seed.
William blessed the wine and held it aloft.
‘The blood of Christ,’ he whispered, and raised his eyes to the vault of the incense-blackened roof. His white vestments were ragged and stained after the long journey from Outremer, but they were still the robes of the Holy Mother Church and he imagined they shone as the rays of the sun in this black heathen land.
It was a poignant moment for his secret congregation of Hungarians and Georgians, none of whom had attended a Latin rite since they had been captured in Sübedei’s sweep through Europe twenty years before. William had commandeered Mar Salah’s own church for this mass, had brought with him his Gospel and the missal and Psalter so carelessly cast aside by Khubilai.
Even in the darkness, he thought, God will shine his light. There is no corner of the earth that He cannot find us. I shall be his angel and emissary.
Suddenly the door to the church boomed open and Mar Salah stood framed in the entrance. His own black-robed priests were ranged behind him. He stormed up the aisle, his face contorted with fury.
‘How dare you defile my church!’
William held his ground. But then, in order to display his piety before the congregation, he fell to his knees and began to recite the Credo.
They were on him then, kicking and beating him while the exiles looked on, guilty and afraid. Mar Salah’s priests dragged him back up the aisle and hurled him outside into the mud, his Psalter and missal tossed into the muck after him.
The heavy door slammed shut.
A few startled townspeople stared as they hurried past on their way to the market. William got slowly to his feet, grimacing at the pain in his ribs. If I should suffer like Christ, he thought, then it only brings me closer to my beautiful reward. They can beat me and revile me but I will never waver. God is with me now and I cannot fail.
LXXXIII
THE LOCAL CUSTOM was to bathe at least three times a week and Josseran found that, as in Outremer, the habit was pleasing both to his body and his mind. In his quarters there was a great earthenware bath with a small bench on which to sit while he bathed. To heat it, a fire was built underneath it using the special black stones that the Chin mined from the mountains. When it was fired it gave off great heat for hours before finally crumbling to grey ash.
On other mornings the attendants they had assigned to him brought him at the very least a jug and a bowl of water for washing his hands and face.
William, by the smell of him, did not avail himself of any of these opportunities.
Josseran also found, as he did in Outremer, that it was more comfortable to dress in the local fashion when possible. He was given a broad robe of golden silk. Its sleeves reached almost to his fingertips and it had a phoenix artfully embroidered on its back. It was tied with a broad sash that had a buckle of horn that came from a country they called Bengal. He was given also a pair of silk sandals with wooden soles.
No one, he noticed, went barefoot or bareheaded except the Buddhist monks. So he took to wearing a turban of black silk as was the custom among the nobles. He also summoned the palace barber and had his face shaved clean. Unlike Outremer, where the Saracens considered it unmanly not to grow a beard, most men in Shang-tu were clean-shaven. The Tatars and the Chinese did not grow beards easily and those he saw tended to be sparse.
Only William remained intransigent, odiferous, hirsute and scowling in his black Dominican’s robe.
Shang-tu, which meant Second Capital in the Chin language, was Khubilai’s summer residence; his main seat, where he spent the long winters, was the ancient Chin city of Ta-tu, First Capital, further to the east. Shang-tu had only recently been completed, its construction supervised by Khubilai himself, its site chosen on the Chin principles of feng shui, the happy conjunction of wind and water.
It had been laid out with mathematical precision, in a grid-work of parallel streets, so that from his window high inside the palace near the northern wall Josseran could see all the way along the city’s main thoroughfare right up to the southern gate.
‘The Chin say that heaven is round and the earth is square, so that is why Khubilai’s engineers designed it this way,’ Sartaq told him.
‘What about the characters painted over the lintels? Every house has them.’
‘It is the law. Every citizen in Cathay has to display his name and the name of everyone in his family, as well as the servants. Even the number of animals. This way Khubilai knows precisely how many people live in his kingdom.’
Josseran was astonished at the order he had imposed on his empire. These restrictions even applied to his own life.
By Tatar custom he possessed four ordos, or households, from each of his four wives, who were all Tatars like himself. But he also kept an extensive harem for his personal use. ‘Every two years a commission of jud
ges is sent on an expedition to find a new intake of virgins,’ Sartaq said. ‘I was given the honour of providing an escort last summer. We visited countless villages and they brought out their most beautiful young girls, and they were paraded before the judges. Those selected we brought back here to be assessed.’
‘Assessed? Who assesses them?’
‘Not me, unfortunately,’ Sartaq said, grinning. ‘The older women of the harem, that is their job when they are retired from night-time duties. They sleep with the new girls, make sure that their breath and their body odour is sweet, and that they do not snore.’
‘And if they are not suitable?’
‘I wish they would give them to me! I would not mind if some of these women I saw snored like donkeys! But no, they are employed instead as cooks or seamstresses or dressmakers.’
‘And the ones chosen for the Emperor?’
‘They are given special training to prepare them for their attendance upon the Son of Heaven. When they are ready, he accepts five of them in his bedchamber each night for three nights. So should we all like to be the Khan of Khans! But Barbarian, you look pale.’
‘Five women a night!’
‘Do you not have harems in Christian?’
‘I know of them from the Mohammedans only. In France a man may have only one wife.’
‘Even your king? Just one woman his whole life?’
‘Well, if a man is inclined, he sleeps with other men’s wives, or the household servants.’
‘Does that not cause a lot of problems? Surely it is better our way?’
‘Perhaps. Brother William might not agree.’
‘Your shaman,’ Sartaq said, tapping his forehead with his finger, ‘is a good example of what happens to a man when he does not have enough women.’
Every day there was some new wonder. The food prepared in Khubilai’s court was beyond comparison to anything he had ever tasted, and quite unlike the unrelenting diet of milk and singed mutton he had become accustomed to during their journey across the steppe. At various times he sampled scented shellfish in rice wine, lotus seed soup, fishes cooked with plums and a goose cooked with apricots. There was also bear’s paw, baked owl, the roasted breast of a panther, lotus roots, steamed bamboo shoots and a stew made from a dog. The methods of preparation were more painstaking than any he had ever seen. They would use only wood from a mulberry tree to cook a chicken, claiming that it made the meat more tender; likewise only acacia wood would do for pork, and only pine for boiling water for tea.
Josseran practised every day with the ivory sticks they used for eating and after a time he became reasonably proficient. After the ravenous frenzies which had distinguished his meals among the Tatars on the steppe, Josseran’s repasts in the company of Sartaq and the rest of the courtiers had all the delicacy of needlepoint.
But what astonished him most were the books they possessed. William’s Bible was a rare and precious object in the Christian world; but in Shang-tu everyone owned at least one almanac and an edition of the Pao, which was used by the idolaters to enumerate the merits and demerits of almost every action in their lives. They were not copied by hand, as they were in Christendom, but reproduced in large numbers using woodcut plates which reproduced their calligraphy on paper.
Sartaq took him to a large shop to see them being made. In one room a scribe copied the book on to thin oilpaper, in another these sheets were pasted on to boards of apple wood. Then another artisan traced each stroke with a special tool, cutting the characters in relief. ‘Then they dip this block into ink and stamp it on to a page,’ Sartaq said. ‘This way we can reproduce each page, each book, very fast, as many as we want.’
Sartaq showed him his copy of a book called the Tao de-jing. ‘It is a book of magic,’ he said. ‘It can predict wars and the weather. I also have this.’
‘You believe in magic also?’
He showed Josseran the amulet he wore at his neck. ‘It is very expensive. It protects me from all danger. Because of this I will live a long and happy life.’
‘I don’t believe in charms,’ Josseran said.
Sartaq laughed and tugged on the cross that Josseran wore at his throat. ‘So what is this then?’
Most of the Chin were followers of an ancient sage, Kung Fu-tse. Sartaq called them Confucians. ‘Is this the god I see everywhere, the one with all the incense and flower offerings at his feet?’
‘Yes, that is Kung Fu-tse but he was not really a god. He was just a man who understood the gods and how life is.’
‘Like our Lord Jesus.’
‘Yes, that is what Mar Salah says. Only he says his Jesus was more clever and had better magic. But of course, he would say that, wouldn’t he?’
‘What god do these Confucians believe in then?’ Josseran asked him.
‘They have many, even I don’t remember them all. God of the hearth, god of money. They light joss to their ancestors too, because they are afraid of them. But the god they love most is Rules! They have a rule for everything. They follow a code called the Five Virtues and they say this is their guide to living a good life.’
‘Like our Ten Commandments,’ Josseran said, thinking aloud.
‘I have never heard of this Ten Commandments but if it means you say one thing and do another, then yes, just like that. These Chin are very good at counting and organizing but I wouldn’t trust one of them with my back turned. They have one virtue to us, they do what they are told. What good are their gods and their Five Virtues anyway? We are overlords here, not them, so that tells you how much use their religion is.’
The beating William had taken at the hands of the Nestorians had left his face so bruised and swollen that he looked like one of the diseased beggars Josseran had seen in the streets. But it had not dampened his spirits or weakened his resolve. He spent hours every day outside the Metropolitan’s church in the poor quarter of the city, shouting out his prayers for divine intervention and attracting crowds of curious Chin who came to stare at this strange-looking and evil-smelling foreigner on his knees in the mud.
Josseran tried to persuade him to desist, but William would not be swayed. He said the Lord would provide a miracle and bring the Nestorians back to God’s true Church.
And he was right, because soon afterwards he confounded Josseran and got his miracle, just as he said he would.
LXXXIV
THEY SPENT HOURS every day with Miao-yen in her yellow-tiled pavilion. She proved a good student and could soon recite the paternoster and Ten Commandments by heart. William also taught her that the Pope was God’s divine emissary on earth and that her only way to salvation was through the Holy Church. William was a patient tutor, but tolerated no questions. Her immortal soul was at stake, he reminded her.
He did allow her, once, to look through his missal. She pointed to one of the figures and asked who it was.
‘That is Mary, the mother of God,’ Josseran told her.
‘Mar Salah says that God cannot be a man, so no woman can be the mother of God.’
‘Mar Salah is a heretic!’ William said, when Josseran translated what she had said. ‘Tell her she is not to listen to his foul teachings, or question the mysteries of faith.’
Miao-yen seemed to accept this. She tilted the page to the light so that she might examine it more closely. ‘She looks very much like Kuan Yin. Among the Chin she is known as Goddess of Mercy.’
William was exasperated. ‘Please tell her she cannot compare the Holy Virgin to any of her heathen idols. It is blasphemous.’
Miao-yen took the rebuke mildly, and never again offered comment on his lessons, which she devoted herself to wholeheartedly. But despite her apparent enthusiasm for the task Josseran sensed that it was nothing more than an intellectual exercise for her. She remained, in her heart, a Tatar.
After a while even William sensed her recalcitrance and was no longer satisfied with merely giving her instruction in the forms of the Catholic religion. He looked for a sign that his lessons were beari
ng fruit.
‘Tell her,’ he said to Josseran one day, after he had told her the story of Jesus’s resurrection from the dead, ‘tell her that to be godly she should refrain from using perfumes and putting paint on her face.’
Josseran put the request to her as delicately as he could.
‘But she says it is required of her both as a Chinese lady and the daughter of the Emperor,’ he said.
‘She has the look and smell of a whore.’
‘You want me to tell her that?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Then what do you wish me to say?’
‘Tell her she should pray to God for guidance. A woman should be virtuous in all things and paint and perfume are the tools of the Devil.’
‘What does he say?’ Miao-yen asked.
‘He compliments you on your beauty,’ Josseran said. ‘Even without your lotions and perfumes he thinks you would be the most exquisite woman in Shang-tu.’
Miao-yen smiled and bobbed her head, and thanked Josseran for his kind words.
He turned to William. ‘She says she will think about it.’
There were some days when, after William had finished his instruction, Josseran would remain behind with her in the pavilion. He hoped to learn more from her about Khubilai and his great empire. He was also fascinated by this strange creature, although not in the same way he had been drawn to Khutelun. He was simply intrigued as to how the daughter of the Emperor could be trapped here in this gilt palace, while Khutelun lived her life from the saddle of a horse. Were they not both the daughters of Tatar khans?
He felt that in turn she enjoyed his companionship. They talked for hours over the fragrant teas brought by her maidservants, for she was endlessly curious about France. ‘You are a khan in Christian?’ she asked him.
‘Yes, a khan I suppose. But not a great khan like your father Khubilai. I am the lord of just a few people.’
‘How many wives do you have?’
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