Silk Road (27 page)

Through a long afternoon they would occasionally glimpse this tantalizing spectre. Finally the lake would transform into mirage, created by dust storms or by the rippling heat, but the trees were real enough, slender poplars that were gold and green in the light of the evening. Just before dusk they would find themselves riding along a shaded avenue, past whitebeards on donkey carts and fields of wheat and watermelons, past walled gardens and dark courtyards dotted with mulberry and ash.

Everyone in the town would come out of their houses to witness their arrival: grey-bearded farmers; women with infants swaddled and slung on their backs; naked children screaming and running through the muddy ditches.

There would always be a Mohammedan church with blue and jade mosaics glittering in the sun. But at a town called Kuqa they discovered an entirely new religion.

They had crossed a gravel plain studded with mounds and clay sarcophagi. Suddenly two gigantic stone idols reared up, standing sentinel either side of the road. These gods had the same benign smiles, and each had his right hand raised in benediction. Erosion by the sand and wind had lent gentle curves to their broad cheeks.

The camels passed under the shadows of the great statues and Josseran suppressed a shudder. He wondered what new devilment lay beyond.

‘His name is Borcan,’ Khutelun told Josseran that night as they sat by the fire in the courtyard of the caravanserai.

‘Is he a god?’

‘Very like one. In some places he is revered as a prophet as great as Mohammed himself.’

‘I do not understand. You are the masters here yet you allow these people to build their idols in plain view?’

‘Of course.’

‘But these lands belong to the Tatars. Yet you let them flaunt their religion this way?’

‘Of course. This Borcan is a lesser god. If he was stronger than Tengri, the Spirit of the Blue Sky, we could not have defeated them in wars. So we let them keep their gods. It is better for us that way. It keeps them weak.’

Josseran was astonished at this line of reasoning. Unthinkable that Rome would allow any religion to flourish where they held dominion. Pope Innocent III had even ordered a crusade against the Cathars in the Languedoc because they had refused to recognize the authority of the Pope or the liturgy of Rome. Many of the cities were still rubble forty or fifty years later, and Cathar fields still lay fallow beside ruined hamlets.

Yet these Tatar devils – as William would have it – let those under their dominion do as they wished as long as they paid their taxes. It seems to me, he thought, that we Christian gentlemen can learn a lot from these barbarians.

But there were other beliefs he found harder to accept.

Josseran saw one of the camels at the head of the string stagger and slump to its knees. Its head drew back so that it was touching its front hump, its mouth gaping to the sky. The noises it made in its death agonies curdled his guts.

‘It was a snake,’ Khutelun shouted. ‘I saw it strike!’

Josseran drew his sword.

‘What are you doing?’ One-Eye shouted, running towards him, his robe flapping behind him.

‘I am going to put it out of its misery.’

‘You cannot!’ Khutelun said, joining the camel man.

‘But it is a mercy!’

‘You cannot throw a camel away! Its soul will bring us bad luck. We must wait and see if it dies.’

‘Of course it will die. Look at it! Is there any cure for a viper bite?’

‘Nevertheless,’ she said, ‘we must wait.’

So he waited with Khutelun and the camel man. It took long
minutes but finally the camel emitted one last bellow and toppled on to its side. Its legs kicked convulsively and then it was still.

‘You see,’ Josseran said to her. ‘We could have spared the beast its misery.’

‘It would have been bad luck to kill it,’ Khutelun repeated and walked away.

Josseran sheathed his sword. ‘Superstition!’ he hissed.

‘No, Barbarian!’ One-Eye said. ‘She is right. Its spirit would have returned and dogged us for the rest of our journey.’ He sighed, aggrieved at the loss of one of his precious string.

Josseran shook his head. Who could ever understand such a people who freely tolerated other religions within their domains and thought that even a beast of burden possessed a soul? What was a Christian knight to make of it?

T
HE DIVIDE BETWEEN
the barren and the sown was dramatic. There was no gradual transformation of the landscape; it was like diving from the land into the sea. One moment they were trudging beside their camels, their eyes screwed tight against the glare and the grit, the next they were riding through patchwork fields of rice and hemp and barley. Bright clear water gurgled through the irrigation channels.

Josseran knelt to wash his face. It seemed impossible that there should be so much water in the middle of the desert. It seemed to appear from the mouth of a cave on the other side of the field. Above the cave the earth had been formed into a mound, and beyond this mound was another, and yet another, forming an unbroken line that vanished in the haze in the direction of the violet mountains, perhaps some ten leagues distant.

‘They are the
karezes
,’ Khutelun said, from his shoulder. She pushed aside her scarf and knelt beside him, cupping the cold water in her hands. ‘All of the oases of the Taklimakan get their water this way. Come, I will show you.’

She led him towards the cave. But as they came closer he saw that it was not a cave at all, but the mouth of a tunnel. They were built centuries ago, she said, and had their origins beneath the glaciers in the distant Tien Shan. They were large enough inside for a man to walk upright, and had been artfully designed so that the slopes of the channels were slightly less than the gradient of the great depression of the desert. In this way the water reached the surface close to ground level where it could be used to irrigate the crops.

The mounds they could see were the wells that had been dug to provide access to the tunnels, so they did not become silted or blocked with rubble. She led him over the baked sand to one of these
wells. He peered over the mud-brick wall, tossed in a pebble, heard the splash as it hit the stream gurgling below.

‘The
karezes
,’ Khutelun told him, ‘were built by the Tatars.’

Josseran remembered the irrigation systems he had seen near Samarkand and Merv and wondered if they had not really been built by the Persians. Hard to imagine nomads would see the need for irrigation. But he said nothing. These Tatars liked to believe nothing in the world existed before them.

They returned to their caravan and rode along the long avenues of Gaochang. Sunflowers peered down at them over the mud-brick walls; veiled women looked out from darkened doorways. The hawk-nosed men looked very much like the Arabs of the Outremer. Everything so strange, yet so familiar.

They rode through the double walls of the west gate, past a monastery with painted niches above its gates where statues of this Borcan smiled down at them. A great park surrounded the government palace. ‘We will accept the
darughachi
’s hospitality tonight,’ Khutelun said, and then she added: ‘I think you will enjoy Gaochang.’

‘Why?’

‘You will see, Christian. You will see.’

T
HE MAN STOOD
by the camel pens, his head bowed, deep in conversation with Khutelun. One-Eye and several of the Tatars stood around him, grinning like idiots. Josseran went over, William dogging his footsteps.

‘You wanted to see me?’ he said to Khutelun.

‘This man wishes to talk with you.’

‘What does he want?’

‘He thinks because you are journeying to visit the Khan of Khans you must be a rich man.’

‘Does he want money?’

‘He has invited you to spend the night at his house.’

‘The quarters here are comfortable enough.’

‘That is not quite what he means. He is inviting you to take over his home, with all that it implies. He will move out and you can be the master of his house for the night. He says he has a wife and two beautiful daughters and they are yours to do with as you please.’ There was no expression on her face, nothing in her eyes to give him any clue what she was thinking. ‘He expects to be paid for this service, of course.’

Josseran stared at her, then at the man.

‘What is the matter, Christian? Have you never mated with anything other than your hand?’ One-Eye asked him.

The Tatars roared at this.

‘Is this seemly?’ Josseran said.

‘They regard it as an honour here,’ Khutelun answered. ‘To provide such hospitality draws down a blessing from their gods.’

‘What is going on?’ William shouted, beside himself with frustration at being unable to understand a word of this argument.

‘I am being offered . . . a woman . . . for the night.’

‘A whore?’ William shouted.

‘No, not a whore. She is this man’s wife.’

‘His wife is a whore?’

Josseran was about to say: ‘Yes, and his daughters, too,’ but thought better of it. William looked as if he was about to have a fit of apoplexy.

‘You have refused, of course.’

But Josseran had not yet decided to refuse. Five years without a woman, he was thinking; five years of penance and chastity has done nothing for my soul. He tried to calculate the month. It must be close to the Feast of the Pentecost. By this reckoning his five years of service were now complete and he had fulfilled his vow to the Temple and was a free man once more. His freedom before God was perhaps another matter, but he was already steeped in sin, so what of another?

I can always confess tomorrow to the priest.

‘You will refuse,’ William hissed at him. ‘We are on a holy mission from the Pope himself. I shall not tolerate this!’

It was this that made up his mind. ‘
You
are on a holy mission from the Pope. I am just a man, flesh and blood, that is all.’ He turned back to the Uighur, who was waiting patiently for an answer. Josseran studied him carefully. His sashed coat was torn and his teeth were bad. There were wisps of hair on his chin that might have been a beard on a youth. Not promising stock.

‘
Es salaam aleikum
,’ the man said in Arabic and was delighted when Josseran responded, as he had learned in Outremer, with: ‘
Wa aleikum es salaam.
’