THE SILK TREE

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

Nicander’s heart was bursting; there were so many things that he wanted to say to Ying Mei, but she was riding ahead with Tai Yi.

He found his chance at the midday break when they stretched their legs together under the spreading willow trees along the river.

‘My dearest, dearest Callista,’ he murmured, ‘we haven’t had a chance to talk.’

‘Dear Ni K’ou – it’s hard for both of us, but you see-’

They were startled by one of Mansur’s drivers as he brushed past on his way to wash a water skin.

Nicander collected himself. ‘I’m sorry you had to leave Samarkand where you would have been able to listen for news of China.’

She gave a small smile. ‘Don’t worry about that, Ni K’ou. I’ve thought of a way. You told me that the caravans end in Constantinople. Travellers can’t get through Persia, but messages can. I’ll send a letter to Yulduz and ask him to deliver it to my uncle’s agent in Khotan. That way my uncle can get it to my father in Shaolin. You see? So when I’m in Constantinople I can tell him I’m safe and happy – and perhaps that I’m Ni K’ou tai tai,’ she added shyly.

His eyes misted and his hand went out to hers.

‘Please don’t, Ni K’ou.’ She drew away and her face clouded. ‘We can’t be… close… It would shock Tai Yi and I would hate to hurt her. And it wouldn’t really be fair to Marius…’

‘My darling love – how can I-’

She looked at him tenderly. ‘Ni K’ou, I love you and I want nothing to spoil it. Why don’t we keep things as they were until we get to Constantinople? Then, when we’re safe, we’ll tell the world and be married.’

‘B-but it’ll be so long and…’

‘I’ll be strong and you must be too,’ she said, easing away from him as they walked.

‘For you, I’d…’ he gulped.

But a thought came: was she in fact testing him? To discover whether it was love – or lust – that his feeling for her would be the same in far distant Constantinople before she gave her heart?

They continued on in silence for a short distance.

‘We should join the others, Ah Yung.’

‘Yes, Ying Mei,’ he said sadly.

After more than a week of heading ever deeper into the dusty, empty plains they reached the great Oxus river then followed a pathway north for another week.

There, they came across two shy but curious shepherd children tending a flock of sheep. Mansur called to them familiarly and they sang out a reply.

‘Hah. The Turghiz, they ahead, wait for me.’

He jolted his horse forward. ‘That a good sign. If trouble, they not there.’

After an hour the gentle rise fell away – and below was the extraordinary sight of the sea.

It was so unexpected that Nicander felt disoriented. He went up to Mansur, ‘I thought we were…’

‘What the Turghiz they call the Aral Sea because many islands.’

Along the low-lying coastland there was a village with a few modest timber houses and numbers of yurts, substantial round tent houses, from which wisps of smoke were rising.

A wave of people came out to greet them and soon they were surrounded by laughing, chattering strangers in outlandish and colourful garb. Far from the pitiless savages they’d feared, mused Nicander.

‘We feast!’ Mansur announced.

The next morning Mansur’s wagon was made the centre of an enticing display of his trade goods and he stood back to let the villagers see his wares. But as the afternoon drew to a close, Nicander saw he seemed in no hurry to conclude his stay.

‘When do we start out again?’ he asked politely.

‘Again?’

‘Why, yes. We want to get going as soon as we can.’

‘Nothing stop you. Over there -’ he indicated vaguely away from the Aral ‘- you reach the Caspian. Around, and you meet your Black Sea.’

‘No, I meant all of us together. When do we go?’

Marius heard the talk and came up. ‘That’s right. We’re not paying you to lay about and peddle your stuff all day!’

Mansur stiffened. ‘I don’t know what you talk, foreigner! You pay me, leave Samarkand, through nomads – I do it! Tell you where to go on old silk route, I do it! Not hold your hand all way to Constantinople.’

‘Tell me you’re not saying this is as far as you go?’ Marius said dangerously.

‘I say. This is Dost. I stay one month, return to Samarkand. You don’t like, you come back with me.’

‘Why, you fucking cheat! I’ll-’

But Nicander had seen several Turghiz men moving closer, fingering weapons. ‘Marius! Not now,’ he muttered.

Mansur snapped some words at the Turghiz who remained nearby, watching warily.

Nicander held Mansur’s eyes. ‘Let’s get this clear – you say this is as far as you go with us?’

‘Is right.’

‘So if we want to go on, we go alone.’

‘Yes.’

‘Through the steppe barbarians – just us.’

‘They leave you alone. Mongol or Turk, they get no honour for killing weak, helpless. Only if you have treasure – but you not have.’

‘We don’t know the way!’

Mansur shook his head as if to an imbecile. He pointed in exaggerated fashion to the west. ‘You go there, you meet Caspian. Big! Cannot miss! You go around. Finish!’

‘How far?’

‘I give you good horses. Two week, you go slow. Other side, I don’ know, never go.’ He folded his arms.

‘We don’t know the barbarian tongue. If we need to…?’

The man simply shrugged.

They had no choice but to set off alone. Six horses, two mules and four travellers, moving over the dry, featureless plain in the general direction of a vast inland sea that none of them had seen.

Ahead were the lands of the restless Turks and Mongols that were so terrifying that the Huns and Goths who had wrought so much carnage in Europa had fled before them.

The little band stopped for the night by a slow-moving watercourse.

Nobody spoke more than the odd word – was it the towering silence of the stark, empty landscape or their utter helplessness in the face of both nature and man?

And their painstaking politeness to each other – was this to keep the fear of the barbarous primitives at bay?

The stars came out, a scintillating splendour overhead, but with it a chilling cold. They shuddered and drew closer to their fire until it began to die.

There was only one tent and without weapons it made no sense to take turns to be on guard outside so each lay down to their sleep.

They travelled deeper and deeper to the west.

The going was good and there was fine grass for the horses. But always the thought that somewhere out there was a Mongol horde on the move – not the tame Turghiz settled pastorally around the Aral, but the cruel and all-conquering warrior Turks from the unknown interior vastness of Asia.

On the fifth day the morning began like any other; the vast blue bowl of the heavens cloudless, nothing moving. Then the hazy line of the horizon became imperceptibly stippled, restless, followed by a subliminal rumble – the beating of thousands of hooves, louder and louder. Out of the dust a broad wall of riders appeared, spreading out to the right and left, an unstoppable torrent.

Hearts thudding, Nicander and the others dismounted and waited for what must come.

The flood parted each side of them in an appalling thunder. Brutish, swarthy-faced riders with lank hair, wearing long coats and upcurved boots surged around them.

Ringed by the horses, edgy and fidgeting after their gallop, one man vaulted out of the saddle. He swaggered up, stopping a few yards in front of them and barked something.

Nicander shook his head with incomprehension.

The man threw an order over his shoulder and in one fluid movement a hundred bows were readied and aimed.

He snarled at them again.

In the last moments of life granted to him Nicander turned to gaze on Ying Mei’s precious face – but was dumbfounded to see her begin striding forward, proudly carrying her staff. Looped on it was the ornamented yak-tail her father had given her.

She stopped in front of the Mongol, raised the staff high and proclaimed the words of an imperial court admonishment that they be allowed free passage.

The man’s eyes opened wide in astonishment, first at the yak-tail, then at her slight figure. The moment hung then he motioned the bows down. He made a curious gesture across his chest with a slight bow of his head and indicated the four should remount.

However, as his warriors took station on each side it was clear they were meant to follow.

It was a ride of some hours. Late in the afternoon a sight few had ever seen unfolded before them: on the gentle grassy slopes ahead was a vast nomad city of densely packed yurts, lines of wagons, tethered oxen, and on the outer fringes, flocks of sheep and goats.

The dominating rise in the centre was covered by an inward-facing rectangle of large yurts decorated with flags and pennants.

They were led forward to the most ornamented one of all where a number of richly robed Mongols stood on each side of the entrance.

By this time there were hundreds of onlookers, agog to see what would happen to these brazen intruders.

A majestic figure in green satin emerged from the grand yurt. All around bowed low until a lordly wave released them.

Their captor scurried forward and prostrated himself, reporting in a staccato series of grunts.

The grand figure came forward. It seemed prudent to bow low as well, and when Nicander looked up again a statuesque woman, in turquoise silk and with a headdress of gold and pearls had appeared by the figure’s side.

He spoke, gesturing to Ying Mei’s yak-tail.

‘He asks your origin, your business.’ It was the woman, speaking in perfect Chinese.

Ying Mei, in faultless courtly phrases, answered that they were innocent and harmless travellers and were perplexed by their treatment.

The woman smiled coldly. ‘I knew you were Chinese, my dear. You speak to the Wei princess Chang Le as was, and this is my Lord Bumin, Khagan of the Gokturks, who you’d do well to fear.’

Nicander froze. A Chinese princess, sacrificed in years past to seal some barbarian alliance.

She was either for them… or against. Only Ying Mei could…

‘You know why you were brought here and not slaughtered outright?’

‘No, Your Highness.’

‘You flaunt the sign of an ambassador.’

‘It was given to me by my father who trusted that the mighty Khagan would respect it and allow me free passage.’

‘The penalty for falsely going under the sign is to be torn asunder by four horses!’

‘Is the great Khagan so fearful of we few that he must forbid us his realm? That he needs to-’

‘Enough!’ She drew away to one side and beckoned Ying Mei. ‘Come here, child!’

The two spoke together for some time and the noble lady returned to her husband, whispering something in his ear.

He held up his hand and in ringing tones made a pronouncement.

Nicander tensed at the answering roar but saw that the princess had the glimmer of a smile on her face.

Relief rushed in – but why had they escaped?

Ying Mei hurriedly explained that Princess Chang Le had extracted a promise from her to get a reassuring message back to her family in China. In return, she had reported that they were indeed ambassadors, from a mysterious kingdom over the mountains to the east to one in the west, where she, like her, was to be wed. They had been set upon by brigands and rather than turn back begged the great Khagan for his protection.

A small polished bronze plate was produced with jagged lettering incised upon it. ‘This is a diplomatic pass of sacred power,’ Princess Chang Le told them solemnly. ‘Whenever a Gokturk sees this, in the name of the Khagan Bumin he is enjoined to render all assistance to you. You’re free to go on your way!’