Silk Road (45 page)

But what astonished him most were the books they possessed. William’s Bible was a rare and precious object in the Christian world; but in Shang-tu everyone owned at least one almanac and an edition of the
Pao
, which was used by the idolaters to enumerate the merits and demerits of almost every action in their lives. They were not copied by hand, as they were in Christendom, but reproduced in large numbers using woodcut plates which reproduced their calligraphy on paper.

Sartaq took him to a large shop to see them being made. In one room a scribe copied the book on to thin oilpaper, in another these sheets were pasted on to boards of apple wood. Then another artisan traced each stroke with a special tool, cutting the characters in relief. ‘Then they dip this block into ink and stamp it on to a page,’ Sartaq said. ‘This way we can reproduce each page, each book, very fast, as many as we want.’

Sartaq showed him his copy of a book called the
Tao de-jing.
‘It is a book of magic,’ he said. ‘It can predict wars and the weather. I also have this.’

‘You believe in magic also?’

He showed Josseran the amulet he wore at his neck. ‘It is very expensive. It protects me from all danger. Because of this I will live a long and happy life.’

‘I don’t believe in charms,’ Josseran said.

Sartaq laughed and tugged on the cross that Josseran wore at his throat. ‘So what is this then?’

Most of the Chin were followers of an ancient sage, Kung Fu-tse. Sartaq called them Confucians. ‘Is this the god I see everywhere, the one with all the incense and flower offerings at his feet?’

‘Yes, that is Kung Fu-tse but he was not really a god. He was just a man who understood the gods and how life is.’

‘Like our Lord Jesus.’

‘Yes, that is what Mar Salah says. Only he says his Jesus was more clever and had better magic. But of course, he would say that, wouldn’t he?’

‘What god do these Confucians believe in then?’ Josseran asked him.

‘They have many, even I don’t remember them all. God of the hearth, god of money. They light joss to their ancestors too, because they are afraid of them. But the god they love most is Rules! They have a rule for everything. They follow a code called the Five Virtues and they say this is their guide to living a good life.’

‘Like our Ten Commandments,’ Josseran said, thinking aloud.

‘I have never heard of this Ten Commandments but if it means you say one thing and do another, then yes, just like that. These Chin are very good at counting and organizing but I wouldn’t trust one of them with my back turned. They have one virtue to us, they do what they are told. What good are their gods and their Five Virtues anyway? We are overlords here, not them, so that tells you how much use their religion is.’

The beating William had taken at the hands of the Nestorians had left his face so bruised and swollen that he looked like one of the diseased beggars Josseran had seen in the streets. But it had not dampened his spirits or weakened his resolve. He spent hours every day outside the Metropolitan’s church in the poor quarter of the city, shouting out his prayers for divine intervention and attracting crowds of curious Chin who came to stare at this strange-looking and evil-smelling foreigner on his knees in the mud.

Josseran tried to persuade him to desist, but William would not be swayed. He said the Lord would provide a miracle and bring the Nestorians back to God’s true Church.

And he was right, because soon afterwards he confounded Josseran and got his miracle, just as he said he would.

T
HEY SPENT HOURS
every day with Miao-yen in her yellow-tiled pavilion. She proved a good student and could soon recite the paternoster and Ten Commandments by heart. William also taught her that the Pope was God’s divine emissary on earth and that her only way to salvation was through the Holy Church. William was a patient tutor, but tolerated no questions. Her immortal soul was at stake, he reminded her.

He did allow her, once, to look through his missal. She pointed to one of the figures and asked who it was.

‘That is Mary, the mother of God,’ Josseran told her.

‘Mar Salah says that God cannot be a man, so no woman can be the mother of God.’

‘Mar Salah is a heretic!’ William said, when Josseran translated what she had said. ‘Tell her she is not to listen to his foul teachings, or question the mysteries of faith.’

Miao-yen seemed to accept this. She tilted the page to the light so that she might examine it more closely. ‘She looks very much like Kuan Yin. Among the Chin she is known as Goddess of Mercy.’

William was exasperated. ‘Please tell her she cannot compare the Holy Virgin to any of her heathen idols. It is blasphemous.’

Miao-yen took the rebuke mildly, and never again offered comment on his lessons, which she devoted herself to wholeheartedly. But despite her apparent enthusiasm for the task Josseran sensed that it was nothing more than an intellectual exercise for her. She remained, in her heart, a Tatar.

After a while even William sensed her recalcitrance and was no longer satisfied with merely giving her instruction in the forms of the Catholic religion. He looked for a sign that his lessons were bearing fruit.

‘Tell her,’ he said to Josseran one day, after he had told her the story of Jesus’s resurrection from the dead, ‘tell her that to be godly she should refrain from using perfumes and putting paint on her face.’

Josseran put the request to her as delicately as he could.

‘But she says it is required of her both as a Chinese lady and the daughter of the Emperor,’ he said.

‘She has the look and smell of a whore.’

‘You want me to tell her that?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Then what do you wish me to say?’

‘Tell her she should pray to God for guidance. A woman should be virtuous in all things and paint and perfume are the tools of the Devil.’

‘What does he say?’ Miao-yen asked.

‘He compliments you on your beauty,’ Josseran said. ‘Even without your lotions and perfumes he thinks you would be the most exquisite woman in Shang-tu.’

Miao-yen smiled and bobbed her head, and thanked Josseran for his kind words.

He turned to William. ‘She says she will think about it.’

There were some days when, after William had finished his instruction, Josseran would remain behind with her in the pavilion. He hoped to learn more from her about Khubilai and his great empire. He was also fascinated by this strange creature, although not in the same way he had been drawn to Khutelun. He was simply intrigued as to how the daughter of the Emperor could be trapped here in this gilt palace, while Khutelun lived her life from the saddle of a horse. Were they not both the daughters of Tatar khans?

He felt that in turn she enjoyed his companionship. They talked for hours over the fragrant teas brought by her maidservants, for she was endlessly curious about France. ‘You are a khan in Christian?’ she asked him.

‘Yes, a khan I suppose. But not a great khan like your father Khubilai. I am the lord of just a few people.’

‘How many wives do you have?’

‘I have no wife.’

‘No wives? How can this be? A man cannot live without a wife. It is not natural.’

‘I have pledged myself to live as a monk for a time.’

‘How can a khan be a monk? I do not understand. A man must be one thing or nothing. How do you know who you really are when you are so many things?’

One day they were sitting together watching one of the servant girls feed the goldfishes, when she pointed across the water at a stag that was standing silently under the willows in the Emperor’s park. ‘Do you hunt in the barbarian lands?’ she asked him.

‘Indeed. We hunt for food and for sport.’

‘Then you would like to hunt in my father’s park. It is truly a wonder.’

Josseran thought of Khutelun and how she had brought down a charging wolf with a single arrow. ‘Do you not hunt?’

She gave a bitter laugh. ‘Sometimes I long to.’

‘Then why do you not?’

‘It is not the way of the Chin for women to behave as the Tatars do.’

‘But you are not Chin. You are Tatar.’

She shook her head. ‘No, I am Chin, because that is what my father wishes. My father has in every respect taken on the forms and manners of a Chin. Have you not seen this for yourself?’

‘I confess I do not always know what to make of the things I see.’

‘Then I will tell you this: my brother, Chen-chin, will be the next Emperor and Khaghan of the Tatar. Do you not find this strange? At his age my grandfather, Chinggis Khan, already rode at the head of his own
touman
, and had conquered half the steppe. Chen-chin spends his days closeted with Confucian courtiers learning Chinese customs and etiquette, reading
The Book of Odes
and
The Analects of Kung Fu-tse
and learning Chinese history. Instead of the smell of a horse, he has the smell of aloe and sandalwood from the censers. Instead of conquest, he has calligraphy.’

‘Khubilai does this to win over the people, no doubt.’

‘No. My father does this because his soul is barren. He wishes to be all things to everyone. He even wishes to be thought of kindly by those he has crushed.’

It stunned him to hear such a brutal judgement of the Emperor
from his own daughter. ‘If that is his aim, it would seem to me that he has succeeded,’ he murmured.

‘It is only “seems”. The Chin smile pleasantly at us and do our bidding and fill our courts and pretend to love us. But privately they call us barbarians and mock my father for his inability to speak their language. They make fun of us in their theatres. Their actors make jokes about us; their puppeteers lampoon us. They ridicule us because we want so much to be like them. It makes them despise us all the more. The truth is that we are invaders and they hate us. How could they do otherwise?’

Josseran was shocked. The Son of Heaven, then, was not as omnipotent as appearances would have him believe. He faced both civil war in his homeland and rebellion in his empire. ‘But Sartaq tells me that many of Khubilai’s soldiers are Chinese.’

‘He uses them wisely. All his levies are assigned to provinces far from their own homes so they feel as much like foreigners as their Tatar officers. My father retains his own bodyguard, the
kesig
, and has hand-picked regiments from his own clan stationed all over his empire to crush any rebellion. They have torn down the walls of all the Chinese cities, have even ripped up the paving stones in their streets so they will not obstruct our Tatar ponies should we need to attack them. You see? They do not hate him openly because they do not dare. That is all.’ She realized she had said too much and lowered her eyes. ‘I speak too freely with you. You are a good spy.’

Silence, save for the murmur of a fountain, the clicking of bamboo.

‘It is politic that I live here in this beautiful park with only the birds and long-life fishes for company, for my father wishes me to be a Chinese princess. But it is not only politics. He genuinely loves these Chin whom he has vanquished. Is it not strange in such a man?’

He nodded. ‘It is as you say.’

‘Strange and unfortunate. For I long to ride on a horse and learn to fire an arrow, like a Tatar. Yet I must sit here every day among the willows with nothing else to pass the hours but to place pins in my hair. Our father gives us life and then becomes our burden. Is that not true, Barbarian?’

‘Indeed,’ he said, wondering if he might ever set down his own load.