Silk Road (43 page)

F
ROM HIS WINDOW
high in the palace, Josseran looked over the darkened streets of Shang-tu. A single mournful note sounded from a wooden drum, followed by the resonant echo of a gong as the watchmen on the bridge tolled the hour of the night.

I have travelled further than a hundred merchants might travel in a lifetime, he thought, further than I had ever hoped or wanted. And I have never felt so lonely.

He thought of Khutelun. He had imagined that the madness would have left him by now. But the thought of her lying dead or bleeding in the desert tormented him constantly. I must believe she survived the skirmish, he thought. Else how will I ever rest? If only there was some way of knowing for certain.

What am I to do? I finally find a renegade spirit to match my own and she is forbidden to me. I grieve when I think her dead; I ache when I tell myself she might still be alive. She has left me broken as a mourner, weak like a boy.

Did she really see my father ride in my shadow?

A visceral pain bent him double. I do not think I will ever be at peace if I never see her again.

W
ILLIAM WAS IN
a towering rage. The news that the Emperor wished him to instruct his own daughter in the Christian faith had mollified him for a few hours, but only as long as it took him to discover that there were Christian artisans in the city, brought as captives from Hungary and Georgia many years before, who had been denied the sacrament by Mar Salah.

Communion had been withheld from them until they consented to being baptized again in the Nestorian church, and repudiated the authority of Rome. Even then, Mar Salah would only perform the liturgy for payment.

This Mar Salah had further corrupted God’s law by taking three wives, in the Tatar manner, and benighted his own soul by consuming large quantities of black koumiss every night.

‘This man is a blot upon the reputation of clerics everywhere!’ William shouted at Josseran.

‘On the contrary, Brother William, I would say he is exactly like every cleric I have ever known.’

William nodded, conceding the point. ‘Yet it is outrageous that such a man speaks out against me, the Pope’s emissary!’

‘He doubtless sees you as a threat to his own position.’

‘As a priest, to think of oneself before God is unconscionable. We are all servants of Christ!’

‘It behoves us to be politic, William. This Mar Salah has some influence at court. If we wish to treat with the Tatars, we should take care what we say about him.’

‘We are here to show them the true path to salvation, not treat with them! You speak of them as if they were equals. These Tatars are uncouth, loud-mouthed and foul-smelling!’

‘They have said the same of you.’

‘I care nothing for their opinions. I care only for the truth! I wish you to come with me now and confront this Mar Salah and remind him of his duty before God.’

Josseran shot him an angry look. He would not take orders from this arrogant churchman. Yet he could not deny him his services as translator.

‘As you wish,’ he sighed.

T
HE GLOW OF
a single oil lamp was reflected in the silver cross on the altar. William fell on his knees, repeating the words of the paternoster. Josseran hesitated, and then did likewise.

‘What are you doing here?’ Mar Salah said, in Turkic.

Josseran rose to his feet. ‘You are Mar Salah?’

‘I am.’

‘Do you know who we are?’

‘You are the barbarians from the west.’

‘We are believers in Christ, as you are.’

With his long, angular face and hawk nose Mar Salah looked more like a Greek or a Levantine Jew. He even had a tonsure, like William himself. But his teeth were bad and he had a disease of the scalp that had left raw, red patches on his skull. ‘What is it you want?’

‘Brother William wishes to speak with you.’

Mar Salah studied them down the length of his nose. ‘Tell him he is not welcome here.’

‘As I told you, he is not overjoyed to gaze upon us,’ Josseran said to William.

‘Ask him if it is true that he told the Emperor that we are not true Christians.’

Josseran turned back to Mar Salah. ‘He knows what you said to the Emperor about us.’

‘He asked me what I thought of you. I told him.’

‘What does he say?’ William said.

‘He dissembles.’ Josseran turned back to the Nestorian. ‘Brother William is angry because you refused to give the Georgians and the Hungarians the sacrament until they were baptized into your church.’

‘Who do you think you are to question me? Get out!’

‘What is he saying
now
?’ William shouted. If only he had the gift for tongues that this godless knight possessed!

‘He says you have no right to question him.’

‘No right? When he debauches himself with three different wives? When he shames the name of his church by drinking himself into a stupor every night and takes money from the poor souls that the Tatars hold hostage here, just to perform the liturgy!’

‘He says you sin with three wives,’ Josseran said to Mar Salah, ‘and that you steal money from the Christians for performing your religious services. What have you to say for yourself?’

‘I am not answerable to you for what I do here! Or your Pope in the west! The Emperor is not going to listen to you. Now get out!’

Josseran shrugged his shoulders. He had no taste for theological argument between two hot-smelling priests. ‘He says he has nothing to say and we are to leave. We serve no good purpose here. Let us do as he says.’

‘Tell him he will burn in hellfire! God will know him for what he is and send His avenging angels down on him!’

Josseran was silent.

‘Tell him!’

‘Curse him in your way if you will. It does not serve us.’

He slammed out of the church. Even from the street, he could hear the two priests still insulting one another inside, each in their own language. They sounded like two tomcats in an alley at night.

T
HE NEXT DAY
they presented themselves at the Palace of Coolness. Miao-yen received them kneeling on a silken carpet. She was a striking creature with almond eyes and bronzed skin. Her long jet hair had been combed back from her forehead, wound in rolls and pinned on top of her head in a chignon. It was decorated with hairpins and ivory combs and ornaments of golden birds and silver flowers. Her eyebrows had been plucked and replaced with a thin but well-drawn line of kohl, and her fingernails were tinted pink with an ointment made from crushed balsam leaves.

Khubilai’s youngest daughter was very different from the woman Josseran had expected. He had anticipated a robust and spirited creature like Khutelun; yet this woman was more like a Christian princess in her manner and refinement. While Khutelun was tall for a Tatar, Miao-yen was petite; while Khutelun was haughty, and quick to temper, Khubilai’s daughter had downcast eyes and appeared as fragile as a porcelain doll.

She was likewise dressed, not for the steppe, but for the court. She had on a long gown of pink silk with a white satin collar at the throat, fastened on the left side with little oblong buttons that were tied into loops of cloth. The sleeves were so long that her hands could not be seen. There was a broad girdle at her waist with a jade buckle in the shape of a peacock and on her feet were tiny red satin slippers adored with gold embroidery. She had the look, not of a princess, but of a pretty child.

He remembered Tekudai’s admonition:
To have the blood veil is the sign of a woman who has spent little time on horseback. She cannot therefore be a good rider and so she would be a burden to her husband.

He wondered what he would think of
this
Tatar princess.

They settled themselves on the carpets around the table. Josseran looked around the room. The windows were covered by squared trellis and glazed with oiled paper, and on the floor there were carpets of rich gold and crimson brocade. Watercolours of snow scenes hung from the walls. They are intended to induce a feeling of coolness in the hot weather, Sartaq had told him. It is how the pavilion got its name.

Calligraphy scrolls hung on the walls, brilliant vermilion on a white background. On the low black-lacquered table was a statue of a horse, made from a single piece of jade, and a vase made of agate to which had been added a spray of plum blossom. At the princess’s side was a bamboo cage containing a giant green cricket.

In the corner, three young Chinese girls in beautiful gowns played tiny harp-like instruments. Their music drifted across the lake.

‘They tell me you have been brought here to educate me in the ways of your religion,’ Miao-yen said.

‘It was your father’s wish,’ Josseran answered.

‘Is it your wish also?’ she asked him.

‘I wish for everyone to know of the one true God.’

Miao-yen smiled. Two servant women brought them something she called White Clouds tea. It was served in cups of fine blue and white porcelain from a lacquered tray.

As they sipped the scalding liquid she asked endless questions of him. She was intensely curious and, like her father, wanted to know about Christian – which was how she referred to France – and about Outremer and also about their journey and what they had seen. She listened hungrily to Josseran’s descriptions of the Roof of the World and the Caves of a Thousand Buddhas. William pestered him endlessly for translations, requests which he ignored or answered only peremptorily.

Finally William grew impatient. ‘Enough of this. It is time we talked to her of Christ.’

Josseran sighed. ‘He wishes to begin your instruction now.’

‘So you are not my teacher?’

Josseran shook his head. ‘I am merely a warrior and a very humble lord.’

‘You do not have the eyes of a warrior. Your eyes are gentle. His eyes are very hard for a shaman’

‘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.