Silk Road (35 page)

‘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?

L
ATE 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.’

‘What is an arrow rider?’

‘They carry urgent despatches to and from the imperial court. They are expected to ride at full gallop for the entire day. That way they can travel perhaps eighty leagues a day, changing horses at every post house. If it is an emergency they may even travel at night, and footmen will run in front with torches.

‘Every hamlet, every town must provide horses for the
yams
, so it costs the Emperor nothing. He provides horses only for those stations on the steppes or in the desert where no one lives.’

‘Why was he wearing all those belts?’

‘They help keep him upright in the saddle. The scarves around his head protect him against the wind and the flying stones.’

‘And the gold medallion?’

‘It is a
paizah
, the seal of the Emperor himself. If his horse goes lame he can empower any man to give up his own horse for him, on pain of death. You look surprised, Barbarian. Do you not have anything like this where you come from?’

Josseran did not know how to answer him. I have never seen anything like this, he thought. But how much should I tell these Tatars about us? They already call us barbarians.

He estimated that there was a
yam
around every eight leagues or so. They were like a Mohammedan caravanserai, but far more luxurious than any he had seen in the desert. Most were surrounded by green meadows, with hundreds of horses at pasture, others waiting in the stables ready to be saddled at a moment’s notice.

An imperial official was always waiting for them on their arrival and Josseran and William were each furnished with an apartment with wooden beds to sleep on and sometimes even silk coverlets. There were even servants to bring them refreshments.

The privations of the Taklimakan seemed a distant memory already.

T
HEY FOLLOWED A
great river between high green gorges. The villages here were so close to each other that on leaving one hamlet they could already see the walls of the next. Everywhere there was rich pastureland dotted with walled farms; mud houses with straw-thatched roofs crouched below sparse groves of poplars; men with stringy muscles tilled fields with ox-drawn ploughs or fished in the shallows of the river.

Josseran saw ruins of watchtowers and fortresses everywhere, gateways and barbicans crumbling into disrepair. What was it the old monk had said?
Empires are built and will crumble; even Chinggis Khan did not live forever.

The river flowed like a yellow vein into the heart of Cathay. The gorges above it were scalloped with rice fields, and the yellow loess cliffs beehived with row upon row of caves. The people winnowed grain in the sun, retreating inside the mountain at nights, as they had done for thousands of years.

Everything seemed strange and frightening and compelling at once: the demonic clash of cymbals and doleful beating of a gong from the temples; the rhythmic chanting of priests; the massive statues of Borcan reclining beside the road, painted with stupendous colours. Once he saw a statue the height of ten men, hewn from bare rock in the cliff face.

The Silk Road was no longer a lonely place, it was crowded with creaking carts, or peasants treading their way to market with baskets of fruit and vegetables balanced across their shoulders on bamboo yokes. Small caravans of a few mules or camels brought silks and teas from the south. Occasionally Josseran heard an imperial postman run past with his great belt of bells. They saw countless
orchards of mulberry trees, where they harvested the moths for their precious silk cocoons.

The villages they passed were mostly poor, the huts made of mud and straw and thatch. Pigs and geese waddled through muddy alleys; bare-bottomed children squatted to defecate in the ditches.

Once they passed a funeral cortège. The boarded coffin was covered in dazzling silk coverlets, and the mourners were laughing and singing as if it were a feast day. A troupe of musicians followed behind, trumpets wailing. Josseran had never known any funeral that was not an occasion for mournful silence and seeing people celebrate a death left him astonished.

‘They are happy for the dead,’ Sartaq said. ‘They do not have to worry about the cares of the world any more. The loud noises keep away the evil spirits.’ He leaned closer. ‘I must be an evil spirit because I hate the sound of those trumpets too!’ And he laughed.

The people of the Middle Kingdom found them just as curious, and perhaps even more terrifying. Plump, moon-faced children, squatting under roofed gateways, would run inside as they passed, pointing at them and screaming in fright. Old whitebeards set aside their long pipes and stared open-mouthed; old women in quilted vests and trousers, with toothless mouths and impossibly small and slippered feet, hurried inside their hovels, wailing like the small children.