Silk Road (50 page)

‘We are racing the winter to the Roof of the World.’

‘So there are to be no more prayers and no more stories about Gesu?’

‘No, my lady. And no more paternosters.’

‘I shall miss you, Christian. But I shall not miss the odour of your companion’s body. How do you endure it? Even the ducks swim to the other side of the lake when he comes here.’

Josseran had only ever met with her before this seated in her pavilion or on her pleasure barge. This was the first time he had seen her walk and he was struck by her strange, waddling gait. The reason for it was immediately obvious. Beneath the long gown he glimpsed a pair of impossibly tiny feet clad in silken slippers. They were so small it was a wonder she could move around at all.

She noticed the direction of his stare. ‘My feet please you?’

‘It pleased Nature to make them so small?’

‘Nature did not do this.’

He looked puzzled.

‘My feet were bound when I was a small child. My father ordered
it. He thinks one day to marry me to a Chinese prince and he wishes me to embody all that the Chin find beautiful.’

‘Your feet are bound up? Does it distress you?’

She gave him a smile of infinite pain. ‘How may I answer that?’ She stopped walking and looked up at him. ‘I was four years old when my mother first wrapped tight bandages around my toes, curling them under my feet. Then she placed large rocks on the instep to crush the bones.’

‘God’s holy blood,’ Josseran breathed.

‘It is not something you do but once. The foot, of course, tries to heal itself. So the toes have to be crushed again and again. I cannot remove the bindings. Even now.’

‘That is unspeakable,’ he managed, finally.

‘On the contrary, I have heard men say it is very beautiful. The Chin call them lily feet. For them such dainties are the epitome of womanhood. Perhaps they also think it is beautiful to see a leper or a one-armed man.’ She blushed and lowered her face. ‘Again, I speak too freely with you. It is because of the part of me that is still Tatar.’ She gazed wistfully into the black water. ‘My grandmother and my great-grandmother were thought to be very great women. They both ruled as regents of the clan while the men waited for the
khuriltai
. I shall never rule anywhere. A girl with lily feet is no more use than a cripple.’

‘I could never imagine you as anything other than fair and wise,’ he said to her.

She bobbed her head at the compliment, but did not smile. ‘My mother was a concubine from the
ordo
of Tarakhan, my father’s third wife. Perhaps if I had been born to Chabi instead, he would have treated me otherwise.’

They stood for a long time, listening to the murmur of the water. Josseran was unable to dispel the image of a young girl constantly tortured beyond pain for the sake of fashion, at her father’s whim.

‘You must be eager to return to your home,’ she said at last.

‘I am eager to take back the news of our treaty with the Emperor.’

‘And yet there is great sadness in your face. You do not wish to go.’

‘This journey has opened my eyes to the vastness of the earth. I have seen things other men only dream of. Now I fear that when I
return to my own world its boundaries, even its beliefs, will be too small for me.’

‘You fear they will bind your feet.’

‘Yes. Yes, I imagine that is what I mean.’

‘Is that all that makes you sad?’

How could he explain to her about Khutelun? He knew that when he returned to Acre the dream of her would disappear along with his memories of Shang-tu and the great, shimmering desert of Goin-and-you-will-never-come-out. His heart ached. Yet what else could he do but make himself forget?

‘You know your return will be more dangerous than your first passage here?’ she said to him.

‘How is that possible?’

‘Has my father the Emperor told you there is civil war between him and his brother in Qaraqorum?’

Josseran shook his head. Khubilai had not entrusted him with such information, though he had suspected it. He had seen a vast army of soldiers leave the city a few days before, headed west. ‘Ariq Böke also calls himself Khan of Khans, and he has the backing of the Golden Clan, the descendants of Chinggis Khan.’

‘Your father, then, is the usurper?’

‘Usurper?’ She smiled. ‘Let me tell you this. Most of my father’s soldiers are levies, Chinese or Uighur or Tangut or Burmese, but they have been trained in Mongol tactics by Mongol generals. The infantry are armed with short stabbing spears, not for use against men but to bring down horses. Once the vast numbers of our enemies meant nothing in the face of Tatar cavalry, but now, thanks to my father, the Chin and Uighur soldiers they once so easily defeated are more than a match. Khubilai has lost his home and his legitimacy but in return he has gained an empire. So now it is Ariq Böke who is the usurper. Because as sure as the sun will rise and set, he will not defeat my father on the battlefield and it is power that makes the Khan of Khans, not legitimacy.’

‘And what of you?’ Josseran whispered.

‘Me?’ she whispered, not truly understanding his question.

‘Which Great Khan do you believe is the usurper?’

‘My opinion does not matter. I am neither Mongol nor Chin. I have the blood of Chinggis Khan but the feet of a Chinese princess.
I cannot ride a horse or even walk very far on my own. I am not a Person any more. I am my father’s sacrifice to those he has conquered.’ She stopped walking. ‘I am tired now. You should leave. I hope we shall meet again.’

‘I do not think such a happy event is likely. But I wish you the peace of God.’

‘To you also. And a thousand blessings on Our-Father-Who-Artin-Heaven,’ she said, using the name she had given to William.

‘My lady,’ he murmured and bowed.

And there he left her, in the Garden of the Refreshing Spring, the princess with the heart of a Tatar, the body of a doll and the tiny, terrible, lily feet of a child.

They set out on the second moon of the autumn, accompanied by a hundred imperial troops. Sartaq led the vanguard with Drunken Man and Angry Man. They took the road south, towards the teeming villages and towns that stretched along the green plains of Cathay and then to the dusty and meagre trails of the Silk Road to the west.

The Taklimakan Desert
from the Feast Day of the Assumption of
Our Lady to the Feast of St Michael

I
T HAD BEEN
a rainless summer and the spiked haze from winnowed husks mixed with the fine loess dust that had blown in from the northern steppes. It was a world so golden it was difficult to discern tracks from rivers. The fields had been laid with round stones from the riverbeds, to prevent the topsoil from turning to dust and being borne away by the wind. A whole landscape lay honeyed and choking.

Behind this yellow veil lay the evidence of the frenetic summer industry of the farmers: the carefully tended mulberry orchards where the precious silkworms fed; hay stacked into twist-topped beehives; winter grain and vegetables drying on roofs. Here and there a few farmers were yet busy with sickles in their fields, their sinuous brown bodies clad only in loincloths. Mules laden with wicker panniers, stacked high with the last of the harvest, plodded along crumbling tracks on the banks of the Yellow River.

As they travelled west they came across more and more evidence of military activity: imperial cavalry in their lamellar armour; lightly armoured levies marching west with their short lances over their shoulders; squadrons of Uighurs and Tanguts led by Tatar officers in winged helmets.

Josseran thought again of Miao-yen’s warning:
You know your return will be more dangerous than your first passage here.
If war began, they might be stranded here in Cathay for years. If that happened, their treaty would mean nothing when . . . indeed, if . . . they reached Acre.

William no longer concerned himself with present or future hazards. His thoughts had turned inward, contemplating his own
failure. He had thought he had won a king for Christ; instead he had been played for a fool.

A hundred priests! How might such an expedition be gathered, and if it was, could they really trust this Khubilai? He had dreamed of an apostolic mission of Pauline proportion, bringing all the souls of the East to God. Instead he would return with mumbles and promises.

The realization had come to him that he had failed because God had examined his heart and found him unworthy.

He journeyed in silence, rarely speaking a word to Josseran, the cowl pulled over his face, alone with his misery. He was no longer afraid, or hopeful; he was a different man to the one that had travelled these same roads two months before.

Prayer flags fluttered in the wind; there was the sonorous booming of a gong, an ochre wall flushed pink by a lowering sun, a gate of timber studded with heavy nails. Josseran followed William into the courtyard of the lamasery and looked around. Galleries had been carved from the ancient black timbers on all four sides. Two camels were tethered by their nose cords to the twisted limbs of a pomegranate tree.

They wandered through a cloister alive with brilliant frescoes of scarlets and greens, where snarling devils dismembered unfortunates in a heathen hell. William gave a shout of fear as a bear rose snarling from a doorway.