Silk Road (68 page)

She had always dreamed she could fly.

She felt the rush of the wind against her cheek and as it had been in her dreams the sky was both above and below her. And she shouted out the words, I would gladly live with you and have your babies and be your woman if that is what you want, but almost at once her voice was drowned by the rushing of the river as it came to meet them.

She had always dreamed she could fly.

S
UMMER CAME AGAIN
to Bukhara, and the almond trees were once more in bloom. The honey-coloured bricks of the great Kalyan minaret were framed against a sky of impossible blue. Under the raggle-taggle awnings in the bazaar, the fresh-dyed rugs blazed in crimson and buttercup yellow and royal blues as they hung to dry in the sun. Grapes, figs and peaches set the stalls groaning with their weight and there were scarlet-fleshed watermelons in abundance, the gutters running with their sweet juice leaving the cobblestones of the bazaar ankle deep in rind.

But in the palace of Khan Alghu other seeds had also begun to ripen.

Dust motes drifted through the shafts of sunlight that filtered down from the vault. There was silence in the great hall, a shuffling dread before the face of the khan’s anger. The prisoner, his wrists tied behind him with leather thongs, was thrown face-first on to the stone flags, and there was no one in that great company who would not have rather laid open their own veins than swap places with the miserable wreck writhing like some night crawler at the khan’s feet. It was apparent he had been beaten over a period of days rather than hours. There were few teeth left in his head and his eyes were almost shut.

William felt his bowels turn to water. He had not recognized the man at first. ‘What is happening?’ he whispered to the man at his side.

His companion was a Mohammedan, a Persian scribe who spoke Latin as well as Tatar. He had been assigned to him by Alghu’s court on his arrival in Bukhara from Kashgar a few weeks before.

‘The princess Miao-yen is with child,’ the man answered. ‘Her maidenhood had been taken before she arrived here. This officer stands accused. As chief of her escort he was responsible for her protection. If he will not give up the culprit then he must pay the price himself.’

William watched, gripped by a terrible fascination. Sartaq was hauled to his feet by his guards and stood there, swaying, blood caked in his sparse beard, his skin the colour of chalk. William imagined he could smell his fear.

Alghu barked out something in his heathen tongue and Sartaq answered him, his voice no more than a croak.

‘He denies it was him,’ the Persian whispered in William’s ear. ‘It will do him no good. Whether it was or it wasn’t, he was in charge.’

‘What will they do to him?’ William asked.

‘Whatever it is, it will not be easy.’

At a command from Alghu, Sartaq was dragged from the court. He was screaming and babbling, his valour had deserted him in the face of whatever death Alghu had pronounced for him.

No, William thought. No, I cannot allow this to happen.

‘Tell Alghu it was me,’ William said. ‘He is innocent. I am the guilty one. Me.’

But he only imagined he heard himself say the words. Terror had paralysed him and he could not speak, or think. He could not even pray.

That night he dreamed he was falling. Below him was the blue-ribbed dome of the Shah Zinda mosque and beyond, the burning plains of the Kara Kum. His arms and legs kicked frantically at the spinning blue sky. Then the dust of the
Registan
rushed to meet him and there was a terrible sound, like a melon being split with a sword, and his skull cracked open like an egg and stained the dust.

And then he dreamed he was standing in the square staring at the corpse, but it was not his own body lying there below the Tower of Death, it Sartaq’s; and it was not a dream.

Sartaq was already raw as a carcass when they tossed him from the minaret, for they had flayed him first, there in the Tower of Death,
slicing off his skin in strips with sharp knives and levering it from the flesh with iron pincers. His screams had rung over the city, a call to prayer for all those ever unjustly accused, Mohammedans and unbelievers together. William stood over the tortured and broken flesh with the others who had witnessed his execution that afternoon, and murmured over and over: ‘
Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.
’

But no one understood. William knew he had escaped his terrible punishment and now stood condemned a second time for his silence.

A
LGHU SENT A
swift message by
yam
to Khubilai to request his further wishes in the matter. The answer was unequivocal.

Miao-yen was sequestered in a tower of the palace with her handmaidens for the remaining months of her confinement. Alghu’s executioner was then given a further and secret charge. Miao-yen was a royal princess and it was not permissible for the blood of Chinggis Khan to be spilled. Another method of execution must be devised for her.

Swallows darted among the cupolas and semi-domes, dipping under the branches of the mulberry trees in the gardens, fluttering into the nests they had built under the jutting beams of the thick-walled mud-brick houses. They are preparing for their hatchlings, she thought, placing a hand on the swell of her own stomach. There is a frantic joy to their busy swooping and wheeling. Yet I wait here in this dolorous tower like a prisoner.

She knew she had displeased her new lord, that she had displeased everyone, and she knew that it had to do with the child growing in her belly. She did not understand how such new life was made, but that it had to do with the lying of a man with a woman. But she also knew, from her conversations with Nestorian priests and with Our-Father-Who-Art-in-Heaven, that a child could be born from a young and chaste woman, and that this was regarded as a great blessing.

The maidservants she had brought with her from Cathay had been sent away and in their place were sullen, silent Persian girls
who spoke only their own Farsi and could tell her nothing of what was happening. They did not understand the custom of the lily foot and did not try to hide their disgust when they changed the dressings. She endured her lonely vigil, wondering at the manner of her offence and fearful of the coming birth, of which she was as helpless and as ignorant as a child.

Late that evening, the soldiers appeared, their armour clattering as they hurried through the corridor to her quarters. They were Alghu’s soldiers, the first men she had seen since the day of her arrival in Bukhara. Their expressions were cheerless. She turned from the window, expecting some messenger from Alghu or her father, but instead the soldiers took her by the arms and without a word marched her out of the apartments and through the heavy barred door at the end of the cloister.

She was rushed across the hexagonal flagstones of a treed courtyard, the mulberries crunching under the soldier’s boots in the grey twilight. Beyond another gateway a
kibitka
with a curtained litter was waiting, and she and two of her Persian handmaidens were motioned to step inside.

They were driven through the streets towards the western gate. Through the curtains Miao-yen saw oil lamps flickering in countless windows. And then they were out of the city, and she felt the hot, fetid breath of the desert.

She wondered what the khan had planned for her. Perhaps, she thought, there is to be no marriage after all. Perhaps they have decided to spirit me away in the darkness, and I am to return to Shang-tu.

But the soldiers had not come to escort her to Shang-tu. She was not even to leave the khanate of her proposed husband. She was instead brought to a lonely yurt on the featureless plains of the Kara Kum, with only her two mute servant girls and a dozen of Alghu’s soldiers as company.

She passed the next few days alone inside the yurt, frightened and confused. Outside the wind howled across a barren plain.

Don’t let them hurt my baby.

It was dawn when the waters broke. The stab of pain in her belly took her by surprise, leaving her gasping in shock on the floor of the yurt. She cried out for her servant girls but they just stared at her wide-eyed and made no move to help her. One ran off to fetch the soldiers. Moments later the flap of the yurt was pushed aside and when she saw their faces she screamed, for she knew in that moment what her fate was to be.