Silk Road (17 page)

Josseran took a deep breath, knowing this was his opportunity to discover the truth, as unpalatable as it might be. ‘Tekudai, tell me something. When you decide to take a wife – must she be . . .?’ He stumbled for the right word in the Tatar language, but realized he did not know it.

Tekudai frowned. ‘Must she be – what?’

Josseran pointed to his groin. ‘What if she does not bleed a little. On the night of the wedding?’

‘Are you asking if a wife must have her blood veil intact?’ Tekudai said.

‘Yes, that is what I mean.’

‘Of course she does not. It would be too shameful. Would you have such a woman as your wife?’

‘Such a condition is highly prized in my country.’

‘Perhaps that is why you cannot defeat the Saracen!’

Josseran wanted to slap him off his horse. Just a boy and he was taunting him!

‘I have heard,’ Josseran pressed on, ‘that your women lose their maidenhood to their horses.’

Tekudai reined in his horse and twisted in the saddle. He seemed confused. ‘How else would they lose it?’

‘This does not bother you?’

‘To have the blood veil is the sign of a woman who has spent little time on horseback. She cannot therefore be a good rider and so she would be a burden to her husband.’

Josseran stared at him. ‘They lose their maidenhood riding in the saddle.’ He said it slowly, comprehension dawning.

‘Yes,’ Tekudai said, ‘of course.’ He stared in bewilderment at this barbarian who needed to be told simple facts three or four times before he understood them. And Juchi had told them he had a quick wit and a lively mind!

‘They lose their maidenhood riding in the saddle,’ Josseran said a second time, and then he smiled. ‘Good. Let’s ride on.’ Then, for no reason comprehensible to his companion, he threw back his head and started to laugh.

H
E DID NOT
recognize her at first. She wore a red and purple robe and a loose-fitting cap with a long flap that extended down her neck. A coarse black fringe covered her forehead. She held a tambourine in her right hand and a rag flail in her left. She entered the great pavilion backwards, mumbling a long, low chant. She shuffled into the centre of the great tent, between the two fires, and fell to her knees.

She reached behind her and one of the women passed her a tobacco pipe. She inhaled deeply.

‘Hashish,’ Josseran murmured under his breath. He knew of hashish from the Outremer where certain sects of the Saracens – the Hashishim, the Assassins – used the drug to calm their nerves before an assignment.

After several deep inhalations Khutelun went to each corner of the yurt in turn, falling to her knees and sprinkling mare’s milk from a small pitcher on to the ground as libation for the spirits. Then she returned to the centre of the pavilion and sprinkled more koumiss on to the fire for the spirits of the hearth. Finally she went outside and made another offering to the Spirit of the Blue Sky.

When she returned she fell on to the ground and lay there, her limbs in tremor. Her eyes rolled back in her head.

‘The Devil has possession of her,’ William hissed. ‘I told you. She is a witch.’

Like every good Christian Josseran feared the Devil’s works, for the Church had warned him many times of the power of Beelzebub. He felt the blood drain from his face.

The yurt was dark and heavy with the incense they had sprinkled on the fire and the sweet, cloying smell of the hashish. Josseran looked around at the gathering of Tatars, their faces as pale and
frightened as his own. Even Qaidu, sitting there at the head of the fire, was trembling.

There was a long silence.

Finally she stirred and rose slowly to her feet. She went to the fire and took out the blackened shank of a sheep. She examined it carefully, studying the charred bone for cracks and fissures.

‘She summons the Beast,’ William whispered.

‘It is knavery. No more.’

William fell to his knees, clutching the silver cross at his breast. He held it in front of him and started to loudly intone a prayer of exorcism.

‘Get him out of here,’ Qaidu snarled and two of his soldiers grabbed William under the arms and dragged him outside.

Everyone in the yurt returned their attention to Khutelun.

‘What is the judgement of the spirits?’ Qaidu asked her.

‘The spirits say it is a good time for the journey,’ she said.

Qaidu turned to Josseran. ‘You hear that, Barbarian? Tomorrow you leave for Qaraqorum!’

Josseran hardly heard him. He was still staring at Khutelun, who had fallen back to the ground. Her whole body was shuddering as if she was possessed.

By the holy balls of Saint Joseph, he thought. I lust for a witch!

Her scarf whipped like a banner in the wind. Khutelun sat motionless in the saddle, around her the escort of twenty riders who would accompany them on their journey across the Roof of the World. Qaidu and Tekudai were there also, to see them on their way.

‘Who is to lead us?’ Josseran said.

Qaidu nodded in the direction of his daughter. ‘Khutelun will see that you arrive safely at the Centre of the World.’

Josseran felt William’s pony nudge alongside his own. ‘The witch is to guide us?’ he hissed.

‘So it seems.’

‘Then we are doomed. Demand that they provide us with another guide.’

‘We are in no position to demand anything.’

‘Do it!’ William snapped.

Josseran rounded on him. ‘Listen, priest, I bend my knee only to the Grand Master at Acre and to no one else. So do not presume to order me to do anything!’

William reached for the silver cross at his breast and held it in front of his face. He began to recite the paternoster.

‘What is he doing?’ Qaidu asked.

‘It is a prayer for a safe passage,’ Josseran lied.

‘We have our own way of ensuring a safe journey,’ Qaidu said and he nodded to Khutelun.

She dismounted and gave a signal to one of the women in the throng around the horses. The woman stepped forward carrying a wooden pail of mare’s milk. Khutelun thrust a wooden dipper into the pail, knelt on the grass and sprinkled some of the milk on to the ground as an offering to the spirits. Then she went to each of the riders in turn and sprinkled milk on to the poll, the stirrups and then the rump of their mounts.

‘More witchcraft,’ William muttered.

They rode out of the camp, heading north. The sun was a cold copper coin, risen now over the Roof of the World; the air was frigid, searing the lungs. Khutelun turned them to the right, the lucky direction, and then they headed east, towards the sun. From here, Josseran knew, they entered a world where few men, not even the Mohammedan traders, had ever journeyed. They were travelling beyond darkness, and fear settled in his belly like lead.

T
HEY SET OFF
across the plain at a hard gallop. He had almost forgotten how much he had suffered riding from Aleppo. After a few hours, Josseran felt as if his spine had been jarred through the top of his head. He looked over at William and could see that the good friar was suffering far more. The Tatar saddles were very narrow, upswept at front and rear, and made of wood painted in bright colours. They were beautiful to look at but like riding on stone.

Khutelun rode ahead of him. Her own saddle was covered in rich red velvet, the pommel studded with jewels. There were silver studs at the level of her thighs. He wondered how she could ride in such a device. It must be an agony. Or perhaps the silk of her thighs was as tough as leather. Well, he thought grimly, that is one mystery I will never learn the answer to.

They rode in the shadow of the snow-capped mountains, through valleys budded with poplars and cypress, fields yet to green after the long winter. Here the people did not live in yurts; they were Kazaks and Uzbeks who lived in square, flat-roofed houses. The houses were made of stone, the cracks in the walls stuffed with straw, the roofs made of branches, grass and dried mud.

The towering grey and white ramparts ahead of them seemed an impossible barrier: Was there really a way over these walls of rock and ice?

After two days of hard riding they wound their way into the foothills, through forests of walnut and juniper, into the high pastures, dotted with the black beehive yurts of the Kirghiz shepherds. Some of the herdsmen had already migrated to the high valley pastures with their flocks.

The sheep grazing on the slopes were not like the sheep of
Provence. They had huge, curling horns, some of them the length of a fully grown man. They were, in appearance, more like goats except that they had curious fat tails, like griddle pans made of wool. Josseran saw fearsome cattle with great coats and massive horns that the Tatars called yaks.

They saw wispy smoke rising through the pines, and stopped at a lonely yurt. There was goat cheese drying outside on bamboo mats. They hobbled their horses, and Khutelun pushed aside the tent flap as if it was her own. They all sat down inside the yurt and the Kirghiz shepherd and his wife brought them goat’s milk and some dried mutton. Then, just as abruptly, Khutelun got them to their feet, and with a few murmured words of thanks, they remounted their horses and rode on.

The Christian holy man had collapsed. He lay on his back on the grass, mumbling his incantations into the growth of beard on his face. The barbarian knelt beside him, trying to dribble koumiss from his saddlebag into his mouth. Two more ill-suited companions she had never seen.

‘What is wrong with him?’ she snapped.

‘He is exhausted.’

‘We have ridden barely a week.’

‘He is not accustomed to it.’

‘This Pope of yours selects his ambassadors poorly.’

‘He chose him, I suspect, for his piety, not for his ability on a horse.’

‘That much is obvious.’ She fidgeted in the saddle. Her father had honoured her, of course, by making her escort to these ambassadors, but in truth it was an honour she would have forgone. She was afraid of this man of fire and his crow. She had flown into the future in her dreams and there were dark histories written there concerning these two.

‘We must ride on.’

‘We have been riding all morning,’ Josseran protested.

‘If we keep stopping like this we will never get there. This shaman of yours is a weakling.’