Silk Road (65 page)

‘You were charged with my protection until we are safe returned to Acre.’

Josseran sighed. Yes, that had been his commission and what a burden it had proved to be. ‘Why did you not agree to baptize the girl?’

‘She is not ready. Your princess pretends to love Christ, but her soul has no understanding of God. She is still a heathen.’

‘You have just described almost everyone in France. None of us understand anything about God or religion other than what you tell us to believe. Look, priest, she has asked for instruction and the solace of baptism and you refused it.’

William stayed silent.

‘I do not understand you.’

‘That is, as you say, because your vocation is war, not religion. For instance I do not understand this sudden concern for a certain
Tatar princess. Is that the reason you planned to leave tonight without me?’

A long silence. Vapour from their breath hung in the frigid air. Josseran shivered and drew his cloak more tightly around his shoulders.

‘Well?’ William persisted.

‘I am thirty-one years old. I could return to Troyes, but there is nothing for me there. I have seen and heard things this last year that have forever changed the way I see myself and the world. Besides, the moment I step on French soil you will bring charges against me for heresy, as you have threatened to do almost since we left Acre. The only way I can protect myself from you and your holy brothers is to remain with the Temple, and I have had enough of a monk’s life. You want me to help you now, priest, but I know you Dominicans, what you are like. The moment we are back safe in Outremer, you will think nothing of bringing me down.’

‘Can you think of nothing but yourself? You have a duty to your Temple and to God. You have been charged with the safe return of the Pope’s legate at Acre and you gave your word to Thomas Bérard that you would fulfil it. And what of the truce you have brokered with Khubilai? The fate of the Holy Land rests with us.’

‘You may tell the Haute Cour all you have seen and heard, and I am sure they will be glad of your reports. Your voice in the Council will do as well as mine. As for the treaty, Hülegü will do what he wants now. The Emperor has no interest in affairs beyond this war with his own brother. The Tatar empire is breaking into pieces from within. They are destroying themselves without any help from us. Our journey was for nothing. Should we never return, it will make no difference to the history of Jerusalem.’

William was silent. Something rustled in the dark corners, a rat perhaps, foraging through the straw. A pool of water had frozen black on the stones at William’s feet.

‘They toyed with us, William, from the very beginning. Hülegü already knew the Great Khan was dead. He wished only to play for time, to see if the succession would be contested by his brothers, as indeed it has transpired. The charter we received from Khubilai is lost, but even if we still had it, it means nothing now. Hülegü is free
to treat as he pleases, and the Son of Heaven has no authority over him. It is all to be done again.’

‘You have sworn an oath before God to see me safe returned to Acre,’ William repeated.

‘Which God did I swear to? The God of Jerusalem? The God of the Mohammedans? Or the God of the Tatars? I have never seen such gods as I have witnessed in this last year.’

‘If you ride out of these gates, they will kill you. You will ride not only beyond the help of Christendom but beyond the help of God Himself.’ When Josseran did not respond, he said: ‘Stay with me to Acre and I shall stay silent about your heretical opinion and blasphemies.’

Josseran’s horse, saddled to ride, stamped its feet in the shadows.

‘What has made you so afraid, William?’

‘I am not afraid,’ William said but Josseran heard the catch in his voice.

‘You are terrified to go on from here without me. What has happened to shake you like this?’

‘You flatter yourself. Go, if you must. But remember this. If you ride away from Kashgar tonight you abandon forever your own kind. You will be lost in this world and the next.’

‘I fear that I already am, no matter what I do.’

William stepped closer. ‘What would your father say if he were here? Would he want you to throw away your life, as he did? What a legacy he left you! If you can find redemption nowhere else, find it there, in making your peace with him.’

Josseran sat unmoving in the shadows long after William had gone. Finally, he got to his feet. He found his horse and rested his head on the poll, breathing in the smell of horse and leather. He felt the pony’s withers twitch beneath his beard.

William was right. Qaidu and his bandits would kill him should he return. Was that what his father had wanted for him? Had his ghost followed him all along the Silk Road, as Khutelun had said, his guardian and protector, just to see him die in one defiant but futile gesture? He had to go on, if only to find something to believe in,
something to make his father proud, something that would make even heaven worthwhile.

He started to unstrap the girth, defeated by faith, as well as by reason.

M
IAO-YEN WATCHED
the preparations from the window of her chamber, high in the western tower. Men and horses filled the courtyard, mostly Alghu’s irregulars in their brown furs, the wooden quivers on their backs bristling with arrows. It seemed they were ready for a fight on the road. Their force was bolstered by the men of her father’s
kesig
who had accompanied her from Shang-tu.

In the midst of the preparations she saw the barbarian sitting motionless on his stallion, the holy man beside him, mournful in his black-cowled robe.

Our-Father-Who-Art-in-Heaven had saved her life and yet now he refused even to speak to her. It was all so mysterious. What had she done to earn his enmity?

She did not relish the prospect of another journey. Although she had recovered from the fever, she had a sickness in her stomach and she had not bled this moon. It must be because of the illness. Her breasts were also sore and swollen but she was reluctant to mention so delicate a matter even to her maidservants.

The girls helped her wrap her lily feet for the journey. Two of them removed the embroidered silk shoes on her feet, then carefully unwound the long strips of binding cloth, yards and yards of it. She groaned as it was done and almost wept with relief, as she always did, when the last cloth was removed.

She looked down at the wreckage of her limbs in loathing and disgust. There was not, as men imagined, the feet of a small girl beneath the bindings. Without their coverings they were the feet of a monster. The arches had been crushed and the toes were curled inward under the insteps. Rotting flesh hung from them in long strips.

She whimpered as her feet were cleaned, for the agony did not grow any less with time. During this operation she held a flower to
her nose to alleviate the smell. When it was finally done the maids replaced the bindings with a fresh strip of cloth.

So much for the life of a royal princess.

Josseran sat stiffly in the saddle, waiting for the gates of the fort to be thrown open. Their party was pressed tightly together in the courtyard and the smell of the Tatars was overpowering, a pungent mixture of horse and goatskin and unwashed bodies that had him almost gagging, even after so long amongst them. Wild-eyed shamans passed amidst the milling throng of men and horses, sprinkling mare’s milk on the ground and on to the polls of the horses. They were filthy creatures with matted beards and hair, their white robes stained with mud, shrieking incantations to the sky.

He stared at William’s back. Dark patches stained the rough wool of his robe. He had been at the birch again, it seemed, punishing himself for some transgression known only to God and himself.

How he wished he had never set eyes on him.

The iron-studded gates creaked open and the vanguard rode out. Their officer turned the column to the right, the lucky way, before straightening their line and heading towards the mountains. A cart, covered in silks and furs and white ermine, followed them out, bearing the gilt sedan of Princess Miao-yen and her ladies.

Josseran and William were at the rear of the line with the rest of Sartaq’s cavalry. They followed the caravan through the Kashgar oasis, along avenues of poplar, past clusters of mud-brick houses and orchards of apricot trees.

Later that morning Sartaq and his
kesig
veered away to the southwest and the blue gallery of the mountains. The rest of the caravan, Alghu’s irregulars and the wagons bearing the princess, continued on, taking the northern route through the pass.

They galloped across a desert of black stones, the impossible mountains rearing ahead of them. Josseran spurred his horse after Sartaq and caught him at the van. Sartaq grinned. ‘What is it, Barbarian?’ he shouted.

‘It is never wise to split your forces,’ Josseran yelled at him over the rush of the wind and the drumming of their horse’s hooves.

‘And if your enemy is also wise,’ he shouted back, ‘he will never assume that you are foolish!’

‘What are you saying?’

‘Qaidu’s troops are waiting for us in the mountains! We know they are there but they do not know that we know it. So we have set a trap for them. When the caravan reaches the Valley of the Shepherds it will make a very tempting target. But we shall have already doubled back through the passes and we will be waiting on the high ground. If Qaidu commits his forces to an ambush we shall decimate them!’

‘You risk Miao-yen’s life!’

‘Miao-yen is still in the fort! There is no one in the sedan but Alghu’s archers.’ Sartaq laughed, eager for the battle he had engineered, delighted with his own ingenuity. ‘An enemy will see what you wish him to see. We have chosen the killing ground. Once we trap Qaidu these mountains will be safe again for our caravans!’

Josseran fell behind, leaving Sartaq to gallop on ahead. He was impressed with the Tatar’s cunning, but a part of him also felt unutterably sad and, yes, frightened. He prayed that if Qaidu did send his raiders into Sartaq’s trap, Khutelun would not be among them.

K
HUTELUN AND HER
cavalry waited in the black shadows of the spruce. The brown hills glistened under a blanket of frost that was slowly melting away with the rising of the sun in the eastern sky. A minaret and a stand of poplars rose from the mist at the far end of the valley.