Silk Road (22 page)

J
OSSERAN OPENED HIS
eyes. Wood smoke drifted lazily through the roof; weak yellow sunshine angled across the carpets. The entrance flap had been pulled aside to reveal a high, green meadow. He heard the neighing of horses.

William sat by the fire, watching him.

‘It is well for you that you did not die, Templar. Your soul is steeped in sin.’ William lifted his head and brought a wooden bowl of fermented mare’s milk to his lips.

‘How long have I . . . slept?’

‘Just a night.’

‘Khutelun . . .’

‘The witch is outside.’

Josseran put his fingers gingerly to his scalp. The dried blood had matted his hair and there was a gaping wound beneath. ‘I thought I should die.’

‘It was not God’s will.’

‘She was here. I remember now. She was here.’

‘She tried to enslave you with her devilment.’

A shadow fell across the entrance. Khutelun stood there, her hands on her hips. Josseran thought he saw a measure of relief in her eyes when she saw him awake but the look was gone as quickly as it had come.

‘You seem to have recovered your strength,’ she said.

‘Thank you,’ Josseran mumbled.

‘For what?’

‘For . . . your prayers.’

‘I would have done the same for any of our party who was sick.’ She held a bowl of steaming boiled meat. ‘Here. You should eat.’

I wish I knew what you were thinking, Josseran thought.

‘I am glad you are recovered. My father would have been angry if you had perished. He was charged with your safe delivery to the Centre of the World.’ She left the food and gave him an enigmatic smile that made his heart leap. Then she left.

William clutched his crucifix to his breast. ‘What did she say? Doubtless the witch claims credit for your recovery.’

‘You were ready to . . . bury me. Why should I not give her my thanks?’

‘You suffered no more than a knock to the head. It was not serious.’

‘You were about to administer . . . the rites.’

‘Just a stratagem to have you confess and unburden your stinking soul.’

Josseran stared at the breakfast she had brought him. ‘More boiled mutton?’

‘Not mutton,’ William said. ‘This morning we enjoy a variety to our diet.’ There was a look on his face Josseran could not decipher. ‘One of the horses died during the night.’

‘Which horse?’ But he already knew.

William did not answer. At least the friar had the decency to appear abashed.

‘Kismet,’ Josseran said.

‘The witch said that we should not leave her for the vultures while we ourselves starve.’ William got to his feet. ‘In His wisdom He chose to take your horse’s soul instead of yours. He perhaps found more value in it.’

‘Then He is not just. He should have been more merciful to my horse. I chose this journey. She did not.’

‘It was just a beast of burden! Praise God that you yet live!’

William stormed out.

Kismet! Josseran thought. William was right; why grieve over a horse? But although she was, as the friar had said, merely a beast of burden, it did not ease his shame or his sorrow. He had watched her starve by inches over these last months. She had carried him to her last breath. Her suffering was on his head.

Another weight added his load. Well, so be it. He remembered how the priest had carped at him last night to give up his burden and confess. Lay down these sins, he had said. Why had he not taken the opportunity? Why was he so stubborn?

Perhaps it was because he was the harsher judge. Even if God could forgive Josseran Sarrazini, Josseran Sarrazini could not forgive himself.

T
HE NEXT DAY
Josseran was well enough to travel. William bandaged his head with some strips of cloth and they prepared to resume their journey. They saddled their horses under a perfect sky. The reflection of the sunlight on the snowfields above them hurt their eyes.

He overheard several of the Tatars muttering to each other about William. The crow has brought us bad luck, they said. It is because he would not ride around the
obo.
Now we have lost two horses and a day’s ride. Worse will follow.

‘Something is amiss with these Tatars,’ William said to him, tightening the girth on his saddle. Khutelun had replaced William’s mount with one of her own horses, a straw-yellow mare with a milk eye and bad-tempered disposition. Josseran also had a new mount, a stallion of dirty colour with shoulders like a woodcutter.

‘I have noticed nothing unusual.’

‘They are all scowling at us.’

‘They do not scowl at
us
, Brother William.’

The churchman looked bewildered.

‘Their ill disposition is directed entirely at
you
,’ Josseran said, as if explaining something to a small child.

‘At me?’

‘They blame you for what has happened.’

‘I am not to blame if my horse loses its footing on the rocks!’

‘But it was you who refused to pay homage to their cairn of stones.’

‘That was just their foolish superstition!’

‘They said it was bad luck not to do so and now we have had bad luck. You see what you have done in your pride? You have reinforced for them their belief in the sanctity of the
obo
and now they
believe our religion cannot be as strong as theirs, for it did not protect you. So in trying to prove how great we are, you have succeeded only in lessening our esteem in their eyes.’

‘I will not demean my faith by allowing their witchcraft.’

‘You may be a pious man, Brother William, but you are not a wise one.’ Josseran climbed on to his new mount. After Kismet it felt as if he was astride a child’s pony.

William jerked the reins, transmitting his ill temper to his horse, which turned her head and tried to bite him.

‘See? You even antagonize the horses.’

‘It is just a beast!’

‘If you say so. By the way, our witch still wishes to see the Bible and Psalter.’

‘Never! She will defile it!’

‘God’s bones!’ Josseran swore and spurred away from this damned priest and set off down the trail.

T
HE WHITE PEAKS
at the Roof of the World were behind them now. They had disappeared into an overcast of lead-grey cloud. The air turned suddenly warmer.

On the fourth day they followed a track down a dune of loose sand to a salt marsh. Their approach startled a flock of wild geese. A boulder-strewn valley led to yet another gorge and then a broad plain of hard-baked sand and black gravel.

A dusty road led to an avenue of murmuring poplars and an oasis town of mud-brick houses, with straw and manure drying in the sun on the flat roofs. They saw donkey carts, piled high with melons and cabbages and carrots, entire families perched on the running boards. Startled faces stared at them from the fields and houses.

Khutelun rode up beside him. Her scarf was coiled around her face and all he could see were her dark, liquid eyes. ‘This place is called Kashgar,’ she said.

‘Then we survived the Roof of the World?’

She pulled the scarf away. ‘You had a guardian, Christian.’

Christian? So he was no longer a barbarian.

He looked around, saw the friar slumped over the milk-eyed pony behind them. ‘Guardian? I would rather trust my life to a dog.’

‘I do not mean your shaman. You have a man riding with you.’

He felt the small hairs on the back of his neck start to rise. ‘What man?’

‘He has long yellow hair going to grey, and a beard much like yours. He wears a white coat with a red cross painted here, on the left shoulder. I have seen him often, riding behind you.’

The man she was describing was his father.

He had said not a word to him before he left for the king’s court but he knew. Josseran could see it in his eyes. When he returned from Paris he told him that he had excused himself from service on King Louis’s armed pilgrimage because of his age, but within days of his return he announced a change of heart. He discovered a sudden and uncharacteristic zeal to assist in the liberation of the Holy Land from the Saracen.

But Josseran knew the real reason he took up arms for the King.

They said that when the king’s ships landed at Damietta there were scores of Mohammedan horsemen waiting for them. The Frankish knights collected on the beach, braced their lances and pointed shields into the sand and waited for the charge.

His father pulled his horse through the surf to join them on the strand and jumped into the saddle. He did not even stop to put on his coat of mail. He charged past the startled defenders and hurled himself among the Saracen, killing three of them before he himself was brought down by a sword thrust to his belly. They carried him back to the ship, still living. They said it took him four days to die.

Why would he do such a thing?

Josseran could find only one reason for his father’s impetuosity.

‘Christian?’ Khutelun said, jolting him back from his reverie.

‘The man you describe is my father. But he is dead these many years and he would never ride with me.’

‘I know what I see.’

More sorcery! As if there was not enough to trouble a man’s soul. This journey began as a straightforward escort mission. It should have taken no more than a few weeks. Instead I am dragged on an odyssey beyond the limits of the world, and every belief I hold dear to me, my chastity and my duty and my faith, are challenged at every turn.

What is happening to me?

Kashgar to Kumul
the Year of the Monkey