Then one of the khans rose, and made obeisance to Temujin, kneeling before him.
“This is my choice: that the lord Temujin be named emperor.”
The khans broke into a tumultuous confusion of voices, and pretended to consult among themselves. And Temujin watched and waited, smiling darkly. His swift and ruthless nature made him feel an overwhelming contempt and amusement for all this pretense, but still, he knew he dared not violate the ancient law.
Then one by one the khans rose and knelt before him, proclaiming him emperor. They seized his rough garments; they wept. They laid their swords at his feet. A tumult broke from their throats, an acclamation which was like the roaring of beasts.
Temujin affected to be stunned, to be overcome. He bowed his head. His eyes, filled with tears, moved from face to face. His chest heaved. He affected to be unable to speak. This pleased the khans, who loved ceremony and pretense, and the observance of tradition. Their love and adoration poured out to him like wine from golden goblets.
Kokchu had been waiting in his yurt. The old Chief Shaman already knew his part. Now he advanced into the circle of the fires, attended by his young shaman. In his hands he bore a golden circlet, part of the loot of a rich city. Seeing this, Temujin pretended to start, to be completely overwhelmed and swamped with emotion. The hands of the khans seized him, and forced him to his knees.
He knelt before Kokchu, who was arrayed like the rainbow, his fat old hands covered with jewels. And Kokchu raised the circlet solemnly aloft, and appeared to consult the terrible spirits of the Eternal Blue Sky. His lips moved; his eyes distended. He trembled, and tears ran over his face. Temujin knelt before him with bent head, and now even the clamorous khans were silent.
Then Kokchu, dropping his eyes, surveyed the kneeling Mongol. His lips shook. In a strangled voice of awful emotion, he cried out:
“The spirits have spoken, and the kings of the earth! And it hath been declared that Temujin, son of Yesukai, shall be named Emperor of All Men, Genghis Kha Khan, the Mighty Ruler, the Rider of Heaven!”
And slowly, with elaborate gestures, he placed the golden circlet on Temujin’s red head.
Chapter 27
“I have only begun!” said Temujin to himself. He sat alone on his horse, and waited for the morning.
Behind him, the exhausted and resplendent khans were asleep in their yurts. He was completely alone. Even the horses and all the beasts slept, immobile.
He gazed at the east. There the sky was a pale and luminous silver, a throbbing pallor. But along its lower edges the frail fire of the dawn was running. The desert lay in purple mystery and silence to the west. The distant mountains, fanged and chaotic, were black with night, but their upper reaches were flaming with gold and scarlet. The endless wind rushed like torrents of water over the world, and blew into Temujin’s face.
He smiled no longer, with his usual dark cynicism. His red hair lay on his shoulders. In his eyes was a vast deep shadow, and his expression was somber and fixed. His hands lay along the neck of his white stallion, who stood like a marble statue, only its snowy mane, rippling in the gale.
Then Temujin looked to the east, where lay the empires of Cathay. He looked to the west, at the Moslem provinces and kingdoms, and beyond them, to Europe, adrift with the fogs of the unknown, which he was to conquer. He looked at the world. A frightful exultation suddenly filled him, and his spirit seemed to expand, to grow as large as eternity. He lifted his clenched fist, and held it rigid in the air. His nostrils flared in his brown face. His eyes sparkled, as though with the reflection of a conflagration, and the shadow of a mysterious fire fell over his face. There was something dreadful, something ghastly, in his aspect. Asia slept still, in its immense reaches, to west of him, to east and north and south of him. But its emperor, its destroyer, its builder and its devastater, stood alone, with his lifted fist and his appalling face, confronted only by God and death. “I have only begun!” he said again.
He was suddenly aware of some terrible Presence, of some unsleeping Eye, some most ominous regard. For an instant, his heart quailed, and his hand dropped. Then, lifting his eyes, he gazed at the brightening immensity of the skies, and his whole spirit was filled with triumph and defiance, fury and savage joy.
“I have the world!” he cried, and his voice seemed to sound like a trumpet note in the silence. “I, Genghis Khan, am the world!”
Only silence answered him, unbroken and contemptuous and awesome. Only the silence of God replied. The sun rose above the broken horizon. It fell with a bloody light upon the face and the figure of Genghis Khan. And suddenly, about him, there seemed a spectral horde, the shadows of the past and the shadows of the future, the shadows of the enemies of men.
They stood about him, silent and fierce, seeing, but unseen.
And the eyes of God saw everything, and the silence of God swallowed up the universe, and the spirit of God seemed to flow out upon the earth, invincible, conquering, and ever victorious.
A Biography of Taylor Caldwell
Taylor Caldwell was one of the most prolific and widely read American authors of the twentieth century. In a career that spanned five decades, she wrote forty novels, many of which were New York Times bestsellers.
Caldwell captivated readers with emotionally charged historical novels and family sagas such as Captains and the Kings, which sold 4.5 million copies and was made into a television miniseries in 1976. Her novels based on the lives of religious figures, Dear and Glorious Physician, a portrayal of the life of St. Luke, and Great Lion of God, a panoramic novel about the life and times of St. Paul, are among the bestselling religious novels of all time.
Born Janet Miriam Holland Taylor Caldwell in 1900 in Manchester, England, into a family of Scotch-Irish descent, she began attending an academically rigorous school at the age of four, studying Latin, French, history, and geography. At six, she won a national gold medal for her essay on novelist Charles Dickens. On weekends, she performed a long list of household chores and attended Sunday school and church twice a day. Caldwell often credited her Spartan childhood with making her a rugged individualist.
In 1907, Caldwell, her parents, and her younger brother immigrated to the United States, settling in Buffalo, New York, where she would live for most of her life. She started writing stories when she was eight years old and completed her first novel, The Romance of Atlantis, when she was twelve, although it was not published until 1975. Marriage at the age of eighteen to William Combs and the birth of her first child, Mary Margaret—Peggy—did not deter her from pursuing an education. While working as a stenographer and a court reporter to help support her family, she took college courses at night.
Upon receiving a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Buffalo in 1931, she divorced her husband and married Marcus Reback, her boss at the US Immigration Department office in Buffalo. Caldwell then dedicated herself to writing full time. Even as her family grew with the arrival of her second daughter, Judith, Caldwell’s unpublished manuscripts continued to pile up.
At the age of thirty-eight, she finally sold a novel, Dynasty of Death, to a major New York publisher. Convinced that a pre–World War I saga of two dynasties of munitions manufacturers would be better received if people thought it was written by a man, Maxwell Perkins, her editor at Scribner—who also discovered F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway—advised her to use only part of her name—Taylor Caldwell—as her pen name. Dynasty of Death became a bestseller in 1938 and the saga continued with The Eagles Gather in 1940 and The Final Hour in 1944. Inevitably, a public stir ensued when people discovered Taylor Caldwell was a woman.
Over the next forty years, Caldwell often worked from midnight to early morning at her electric typewriter in her book-crammed study, producing a wide array of sagas (This Side of Innocence, Answer as a Man) and historical novels (Testimony of Two Men, Ceremony of the Innocent) that celebrated American values and passions.
She also produced novels set in the ancient world (
A Pillar of Iron, Glory and the Lightning), dystopian fiction (The Devil’s Advocate, Your Sins and Mine), and spiritually themed novels (The Listener, No One Hears But Him, Dialogues with the Devil).
Apart from their across-the-board popularity with readers and their commercial success, which made Caldwell a wealthy woman, her long list of bestselling novels possessed common themes that were close to her heart: self-reliance and individualism, man’s struggle for justice, the government’s encroachment on personal freedoms, and the conflict between man’s desire for wealth and power and his need for love and family bonding.
The long hours spent at her typewriter did not keep Caldwell from enjoying life. She gave elegant parties at her grand house in Buffalo. One of her grandchildren recalls watching her hold the crowd in awe with her observations about life and politics. She embarked on annual worldwide cruises and was fond of a glass of good bourbon. Drina Fried recalls her grandmother confiding in her: “I vehemently believe that we should have as much fun as is possible in our dolorous life, if it does not injure ourselves or anyone else. The only thing is—be discreet. The world will forgive you anything but getting caught.”
Caldwell didn’t stop writing until she suffered a debilitating stroke at the age of eighty. Her last novel, Answer as a Man, was published in 1981 and hit the New York Times bestseller list before its official publication date. She died at her home in Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1985.
William Combs, Taylor Caldwell’s first husband and father to Peggy, aboard a naval ship, circa 1926.
A portrait of Caldwell at the start of her career in the late 1930s.
A portrait of Caldwell taken before Scribner’s publication of Melissa on June 21, 1948.
Caldwell at her desk in Palm Beach, Florida, in 1949. She spent many winter months at Whitehall, a resort hotel on the property of Henry Flagler’s former estate, which is now the Flagler Museum.
Caldwell’s second daughter, Judith Ann Reback, during time with her mother at Whitehall in the 1940s.
Caldwell receiving an award in Los Angeles, California, for A Pillar of Iron after its publication in 1965.
Caldwell with her daughters, Peggy Fried and Judith Ann Reback (Goodman), and Ted Goodman in 1969 on the MS Bergensfjord.
Caldwell at a cocktail party with her daughter, Peggy, and the hostess of a research world cruise on the SS President Wilson in 1970.
Caldwell with her granddaughter, Drina Fried, at her home in Buffalo, New York, winter 1975. Soula Angelou, her personal assistant, insisted on taking this rare family picture.
An invitation from 1975 to one of Caldwell’s many cocktail parties. She hosted at least two parties a year in Buffalo, New York, before she moved to Connecticut.
Caldwell with her fourth husband, Robert Prestie, who cared for her in the last six years of her life in Connecticut.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1940 by Taylor Caldwell
Cover design by Connie Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5309-9
This edition published in 2018 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
180 Maiden Lane
New York, NY 10038
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TAYLOR CALDWELL
FROM AND OPEN ROAD MEDIA
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