Silk Road (54 page)

Josseran stood on the roof of the
han
staring into the darkness. He could make out the silhouette of the Celestial Mountains against the night sky. Beyond them, somewhere, was the Roof of the World.

‘I did not think to find you here,’ William said. ‘I thought you would be disporting yourself with the wives of the heathen. It seems our Tatar escort have availed themselves almost to a man of the whoring that passes in these lands as hospitality.’

Josseran had been offered similar comforts but tonight he had no interest in such consolation. But he would not allow William even this small victory, and so he said: ‘I fear there were only the ugly women left. Sartaq has offered me use of the camels, should I find one that is not too displeasing to my eye.’

‘Knowing you, you will find one.’

‘I see you are recovered from your ordeal.’

‘Why did you come back for me?’

‘I gave my word that I would protect you on this journey.’

‘Many men give their word, few keep it. You are a man of many contradictions, Templar. There have been times when I thought your sole purpose was to confound my every effort to bring Christ to these godless lands. Yet now I owe you my life.’

‘It was God’s will that we found you.’

‘Do not think you have me now in your debt.’

‘Oh, I would never think that. I am sure that in the weeks to come I will rebuke myself many times for not letting you die in the desert.’

‘Perhaps you should have done.’

Josseran was startled by this admission. He wondered what had prompted it. But William was not about to say more. He turned away and left Josseran there on the rampart, under the cold shelter of the dispassionate stars.

T
HE NIGHT WAS
a torment. Fleas and mosquitoes and sandflies feasted on Josseran with voracious appetite and there was no escape. Finally, exhausted, he drifted into fitful sleep, only to be rudely woken in the middle of the night when something fell on him from the beams above his head. He sat up, his heart hammering in his chest, and reached for the candle. He saw a spider with a body as large as an egg scuttle away across the earth floor. There was a red-eyed cockroach in its jaws.

After that, sleep was impossible.

He was roused from his bed at dawn by terrible screams. William! His first thought was that the friar had been bitten by a scorpion. Josseran stumbled to his feet.

The friar was sitting with his back against the wall, eyes wide with shock. His face and arms were covered in hard, reddening lumps from the bites of the lice and fleas. Otherwise he appeared unharmed.

Sartaq was standing over him, holding a torch he had snatched from the wall. The other Tatars appeared one by one, stumbling through the shadows, also woken by his screams.

‘I heard him shout out,’ Sartaq said. ‘When I got here there was a giant cockroach sitting on his face.’

‘How could you tell?’ someone said. It was Drunken Man.

Sartaq and the others roared with laughter.

William curled into a ball, scrabbling at the earthen floor with his fingers, making a soft mewing sound like a wounded animal. The laughter died stillborn in their throats.

‘He is possessed by the sand spirits,’ Sartaq hissed. ‘They crawled into his body while he was lost in the desert.’

‘It is all right, I will deal with him,’ Josseran said. ‘Leave us.’

‘He has a bad-luck demon,’ Sartaq insisted, and then he and his fellows withdrew. He heard them outside, preparing the caravan, saddling the horses and camels for the day’s journey.

Josseran crouched down. ‘William?’

‘I dreamed of the Devil,’ he mumbled.

‘It was a roach. That is all.’

‘Beelzebub knows how sinful I am. He knows I have failed.’

Perhaps the sun has turned his mind, Josseran thought, just as Sartaq said. ‘William, it is morning. We must continue with our journey.’

‘I have put my fingers in the wounds of Christ and still I do not believe! I do not have the faith. I am filled with lust and envy. It is why God did not vouchsafe me the souls of the barbarians.’

‘The sun will soon be up. We have to leave.’

‘I have failed. All my life I have wanted to bring God to men but I have failed.’

Josseran helped him to his feet and led him outside. They were back to travelling by day again. The horses stamped in the dawn chill, and the camels hawed and complained as Sartaq tied them to the string.

He helped William astride his camel, leading him as he might a blind beggar. As a mauve dawn spread along the horizon they set off again, through the gates of the
han
. William kept his eyes fixed on the horizon and the private fancies of his nightmares. He did not speak all that day. The Tatars muttered among themselves and kept their distance.

Another endless day of furnace heat. Midway through the morning the dust haze cleared suddenly and the Celestial Mountains loomed before them. The necklace of snow seemed unbearably close. Far to the west, they could even make out the white ridges at the Roof of the World.

The haze descended again as quickly as it had lifted and the mountains vanished once more behind the yellow mists of the Taklimakan.

They rested that night in the ruins of an abandoned caravanserai.

It was as desolate a place as Josseran had ever seen. The dome of the mosque had collapsed many years ago, and moonlight filtered in through the vault, dappling on the flagged stones of the floor and the broken black beams. There were scorch marks on the walls where it had been fired, perhaps by the soldiers of Chinggis Khan half a century before.

Josseran and William sat apart from the others. The Tatars huddled around their fire, muttering darkly among themselves and casting hostile glances in William’s direction. But Josseran was not afraid of them. The Tatars had learned cast-iron discipline in Khubilai’s army and they would see them safe to their destination, even though he knew Angry Man for one would have gladly cut both their throats.

Josseran gazed upwards. Through the ruin of the roof he saw a single star appear in the northern sky.
That is the Golden Nail. It is where the gods tie their horses.

Perhaps it was William’s fall from grace that had unnerved him, or that day’s first glimpse of the Roof of the World, but tonight the burdens of his life weighed heavier on him than they had ever done. For all his rhetoric, he was yet a Christian, and in his heart he lived in terror of his fearsome God. He regretted his blasphemies tonight, or, rather, he feared their consequence.

William sat hunched against the wall, his face hidden by the hood of his robe. Josseran measured the distance between them; just a few strides, and yet as great a journey for him as their odyssey from Acre to Shang-tu. But it was not God that brought him to his feet and made him kneel in front of the priest. It was rather that he was simply exhausted. He could not carry his father one more step.

‘William, hear my confession,’ he whispered, and fell to his knees.

William looked up at him, startled. When he spoke, his voice was gentle as a woman’s. ‘I shall fetch my vestments from the camels,’ he said and went to gather the trappings of his vocation and save at least one soul for God.

‘M
Y MOTHER DIED
when I was nine years old and my father, the Baron of Montgisors, married the daughter of a nobleman from Troyes. Her name was Catherine. She was much younger than my father, and perhaps only five years older than I. She had eyes as black as sin and when she looked at me it filled me with heat. I was just a boy, seventeen years old, and my loins were as raw and inflamed as an open wound.’

‘Go on,’ William murmured. He was aware of the Tatars watching them: the mad Christian shaman, the purple stole around his neck; the giant barbarian on his knees before him.

‘I sought constantly to catch her eye but she ignored me, and left me in a frenzy of despair. Whenever she walked past me I caught the scent of her. I could not sleep at night; I woke in lathers of sweat and spilled my seed in my hand whenever I thought of her. I even prayed in the chapel that he would die so that I could have her. I was lost in my unholy devotion to her.’

He stopped, ran a hand across his face. Just thinking of her again made him sweat. ‘My father was a knight of some renown in Burgundy. Every day he trained me in the use of sword and lance, and how to fight from the back of a horse. And all the time we practised I wanted him to kill me, I was so ashamed.