Silk Road (53 page)

Qaidu sat on a mat of silken carpets behind the cooking fire, his eyes fixed on the mountains framed in the entrance of the yurt. Tekudai and Khutelun were greeted by the wife of Qaidu’s second
ordo
, and took their proper places either side of the iron cooking pot. Warm bowls of koumiss were brought.

‘I have just learned,’ Qaidu said, ‘that Khubilai has taken control of the Silk Road all the way from Tangut to Besh Balik. My cousin, Khadan, has pledged him his support and with his help he has cut Ariq Böke’s supply route to the south and the east.’

‘The whole of the Blue Mongol has risen against Khubilai,’ Tekudai said. ‘This can only be a temporary setback.’

Qaidu gave him a look of impatience. ‘Khubilai has too many friends among the Uighurs and the Tanguts now. The whole of the Blue Mongol may no longer be enough.’

Tekudai fell silent after this rebuke. ‘The empire of Chinggis Khan is gone,’ Qaidu went on, ‘as I prophesied. Hülegü and all the other khans have their own kingdoms now. What the two brothers fight over now is Cathay.’

‘The messenger was from Khubilai, then?’ Khutelun asked.

Qaidu nodded. ‘It is his heart’s desire that I brighten his eyes with my presence in Shang-tu next summer.’

‘You will go?’

He shook his head. ‘I will not bow the knee to Khubilai.’

‘We shall fight then?’ Tekudai asked. ‘We will join Ariq Böke?’

‘We must consider what will happen to us if Khubilai proves to be the stronger,’ Khutelun said.

‘Your sister is right,’ Qaidu said and Tekudai glared at her. ‘Before Chinggis Khan, men lived on these steppes without a palace at Qaraqorum and without a Khan of Khans to sit in it. The Tatars have lived this way since time began. If we must now return to those days, then this is what we shall do.

‘I have made my decision. We shall not rebel, nor shall we cooperate with these mighty lords. We will keep the caravan trails open, but all who wish to cross the Roof of the World must pay tribute now to Qaidu. It will be well for Khubilai to remember that in the Fergana Valley at least, Qaidu is khan of khans!’

the Taklimakan

T
HE LINE OF
camels and horses snaked across the dunes. Sartaq led the way, on foot, leading his camel by its string. Josseran followed. Just before dawn they stopped to rest. No one spoke, but Josseran felt the Tatars’ fury. It was Angry Man, predictably, who broke first. He threw an empty leather water bag in the sand. ‘We will not find him!’ he shouted at Sartaq. ‘This barbarian is mad!’

Sartaq looked at Josseran.

‘I cannot abandon him,’ he said.

Sartaq looked back at Angry Man and shrugged his shoulders.

Josseran went back to his camel and dragged on the nose cord, jerking her back to her feet. He trudged on. The Tatars had no choice but to follow him.

And so they filed across the dunes, back the way they had come, looking for one solitary swimmer in that great ocean of sand.

He had always expected to find peace, perhaps even elation, at the moment of his death. But he had never imagined that he would die unshriven and alone in the wilderness. As the sun rose over the Taklimakan he curled inside his robe and sobbed like an infant, saying the name of Christ over and over again.

The dark angels had gathered already. They swarmed around him, their terrible wings spread, tiny eyes bright and greedy. William raised his head from the sand. ‘No!’ he shouted.

The spectres ventured closer, ready to bear him down to hell. He could imagine the brands glowing in the braziers, all the instruments of his torment prepared for him. God had no mercy on
sinners. As Christ had said, it was not only the actions that a man performed in his lifetime but the longings of his heart that betrayed him in the sight of God.

Even beyond the Taklimakan, an eternity of suffering still awaited him. ‘Get away from me!’ William shouted. ‘God have mercy!’

The griffons fluttered backwards, just a few paces, wary but not deterred. They were the largest vultures he had ever seen, each of them as tall as a man’s chest and with a wingspan of perhaps two rods. They knew the carrion was theirs but they would not set to work with their beaks until their prey was still.

‘I am saved in Christ!’ William shouted again and threw a handful of sand at the nearest bird. Then he collapsed, weeping, on his face.

Josseran watched his hopeless thrashings with the same feelings of pity and disgust he experienced at a bear-baiting or a public execution. The rest of the Tatars were gathered behind him in awed and dreadful silence. They had not expected to find the other barbarian, but it seemed that they were too late anyway. The sun had driven him over the brink of madness.

He had been on the point of abandoning the search, but just after dawn he saw the griffons circling in the sky. William had been saved, in the end, by a flock of vultures.

‘You have no claim on me!’ William shouted again. He raised his arms to the sky. ‘Holy Father, forgive me for my sins and bear me on the arms of angels to heaven!’

Josseran ran down the sand. The vultures craned their ugly heads around at his approach and one by one they fluttered away, reluctantly giving up their prize. But they did not yet take to the sky. They waited at a safe distance, yet hoping for easy pickings.

‘William!’

The priest was half-blinded by the sun, his face blistered raw. There was sand stuck to his lips and eyelids.

‘William!’

The friar did not recognize him, nor even understand what nature of creature he was. He collapsed on the sand, still raving. Josseran tried to haul him to his feet but could not.

He felt the weight of the priest’s robe. ‘What in God’s name have you got there?’ he grunted.

The friar hooked his fingers into Josseran’s cloak. His lips were bleeding, and burned skin hung in paper-thin strips from his forehead. ‘Protect me,’ William croaked, ‘and half shall be yours.’

And with that he fainted away.

William was too weak to continue the journey. The Tatars made a makeshift shelter with some poles and strips of canvas, and laid him there in the shade. Josseran dribbled water into his mouth while he shouted and raved. The wind came up again and they huddled together inside the protective ring of the camels and endured as best they could the miserable whipping of the sand.

By evening William was no longer screaming at the phantoms of his delirium and had instead fallen into a deep slumber. Josseran brought him some more water and as he bent over him William’s eyes blinked open.

‘I had a dream,’ he murmured. His tongue was so swollen it was difficult to make out his words. ‘I was lost.’

‘It was no dream,’ Josseran said.

‘Not a dream? Then . . . you have rescued . . . the treasure?’ Watery blood oozed from his blistered lips.

‘What treasure?’

‘With it . . . we shall build a church . . . in Shang-tu. A church as fine . . . as the Holy . . . Sepulchre . . . in Jerusalem.’

‘William, there was no treasure.’

‘The rubies! Did you . . . not find them?’

‘Rubies?’

‘There were . . .’ He held his hand in front of his eyes, as if he still expected to find the gems in his palm. ‘I held them . . . in my hand.’

‘You dreamed it. Your cloak was weighed down with stones.’ Josseran picked up William’s cloak, showed him the rent in the cloth. He put his hand inside, scooped out a handful of dust and crumbled brick from the ruined tower. ‘Just stones,’ he repeated.

William stared at him. ‘You . . . you stole them?’

‘William, there were so many rocks concealed in your robe, I could barely lift you on to my camel.’

William’s head fell back on the sand and he closed his eyes. If there had been moisture in him he would have wept. Instead he grimaced in an agony of despair and the blood from his lips ran into his mouth in place of tears.

I
F
Q
AIDU’S MOUNTAINS
were the Roof of the World, then Kharakhoja was its dungeon, a great depression far below the level of the sea. The oasis was just a grey jumble of hovels and dusty fields. Somehow the Uighurs who lived there had coaxed vineyards and fig and peach orchards out of that grey oven of a desert, using the glacial waters of the
karezes
.

Like the other oases of the Taklimakan, it was a village of dusty narrow alleys and mud-walled courtyards. But here many of the dwellings had been built underground as sanctuary from the boiling heat of summer and the incessant, gritty winds. They were roofed over with wooden poles and straw matting and were invisible except for their chimneys, sticking up through the hard grey sand.

The vines were bare now, just broken brown fingers protruding from the earth, and the red mud roads were cracked like paving stones. A solitary donkey stood miserably beneath a dead tree, flicking its tail at the hordes of flies.

Dispirited, they made their way towards the
han
.

‘The worst place on earth,’ Sartaq growled. ‘They say you can boil an egg here by burying it in the sand. If you kill a chicken you do not even have to cook it. The flesh is already white and tender.’

His odd, barking laugh was without humour. They had survived the desert but they were close to the borderlands now and Qaidu and his renegades were out there somewhere, waiting. Sartaq knew the many ways an ambush might be laid. Now the tables had turned on him.