Silk Road (44 page)

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.’

W
ILLIAM 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.

T
HE 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 judges 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.