The Towers of Samarcand

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

SAMARCAND, SUMMER 1399

Without Shulen, Luke, Matthew and Nikolas were removed from the Garden of Heart’s Delight. Lost behind the magnified wonder of Shulen’s glasses, the Conqueror of the World had immediately forgotten the Varangians’ existence and it was left to his heir, Mohammed Sultan, to slip them discreetly from the tent and take them into Samarcand.

On their way into the city, they passed through the gardens of Paradise and Model of the World, through orchards and vineyards and a suburb called Delhi, until they reached a city under construction. For Luke, it was the opposite of Constantinople. The sun was setting and the workers gone, leaving behind a landscape crenellated with unfinished building, its gleaming stone fresh from the quarry, its mortar still wet to the touch. He thought of the dust that hung over Constantinople’s crumbling masonry and of what Ibn Khaldun had said about the rise and fall of empires.

Not yet.

As they came into the centre of the city, riding down a wide boulevard bordered by young plane trees and palms fronting shops selling an empire’s produce and pillage, the buildings turned from large to enormous, and stone became majolica. A sea of blue and gold broke over them from every direction, dome climbing on dome, minaret on minaret, and they rode on in silent stupefaction.

They were housed in a building that had been furnished for ambassadors. There were bedrooms and bathrooms and rooms with rich tapestries and pools where red apples bobbed beneath little fountains. They were given food and wine and the stuff to wash themselves and servants to attend them. But when they tried to leave, their Mongol guards shook their heads solemnly.

‘We are prisoners,’ said Matthew. ‘I had hoped for some sightseeing.’

They spent a week seeing Samarcand from a window, watching slaves from a hundred countries toil beneath the whip to create beauty on a scale unimaginable to men born in a small city on the edge of the sea.

With nothing to do but talk, they talked and wondered what had happened to Khan-zada and Shulen. Any question they’d had about Shulen’s contribution to their cause had disappeared with her performance in the Garden of Heart’s Delight. She’d given Tamerlane the gift of sight and his gratitude had saved them all. But they’d also witnessed the precarious nature of survival in the court of the Celestial Conjunction. Where was Shulen now? Was she safe from those new-seeing eyes?

As to their future, it was as opaque as it had ever been. They were in Samarcand but inside a gilded cage whose doors were locked. Would they still be there when Tamerlane marched north into China? Or would they be dead?

At last, one morning, they received a visit from Mohammed Sultan. The Prince entered smiling. ‘You are fortunate,’ he said. ‘You are to have some entertainment.’

Luke had risen from a couch where he’d been teaching Matthew to play chess. He bowed. ‘We can leave?’

‘You are invited to join the clans. My grandfather has announced a qurultay on the plain of Kani-gil outside the city. Five grandsons are to be married and there will be feasting for sixty days. You will be our guests.’

The Varangians exchanged glances. The Horde was to feast rather than march on China. That was hope.

‘Where is our friend, highness?’ asked Luke. ‘Where is Shulen?’

Mohammed Sultan was already turning. He stopped and looked around, a slight frown above the smile. ‘She is safe, Greek. Temur Gurgan has taken a liking to her. She is with him constantly.’

The Prince seemed about to say something more, but instead put a finger to his lips. He nodded. ‘We will talk more of this. Now you must come.’

Their horses were saddled and waiting for them outside, as was a guard of Mongols, richly armoured. The square was alive with excited people moving in the same direction. Children sat on shoulders with flowers in their hair and hats on their heads against the sun. The Varangians rode back down the boulevard they’d ridden up a week past. The traders on either side were shutting up shop.

‘Temur has ordered all trades within the city to go to the Kani-gil plain,’ the Prince explained. ‘They will serve the clans. You will see a second city built there within two days and this one emptied.’

They left the city and then the road and climbed to the top of a modest hill from where the plain of Kani-gil stretched out before them. It was an astonishing sight. The clans of the Chagatai Horde were indeed building a second city of tents, perhaps fifty thousand of them spread over the landscape, each in its own ordered street, with bakers and bath-houses in between. In the centre, in the meadows beside the great Zarafshan River, stood the imperial enclosure, a vast sea of silk and rope with gardens around. Mohammed Sultan pointed with his whip.

‘The big tent in the middle is Temur’s feasting tent. Around it are the tents of the royal family, the emirs, the sayyids, the shaykhs, the muftis, the kadis, each in their appointed place. There are ambassadors from Castile who will want to meet you. I will take you to them.’

They rode down the hill and entered a street thronged with people of all ages. A man selling meat from a cart was surrounded by Mongol women shouting and laughing. The air smelt of horse and Luke wondered if it ever left these people whose lives were joined to this animal between birth and death. They came to an open space in which a row of gallows had been erected. Mohammed Sultan turned in his saddle.

‘The governor of the city is to be executed this afternoon,’ he said, ‘alongside some architects.’

Luke brought his horse up beside him. ‘What is their crime, lord?’

Mohammed Sultan shrugged. ‘The governor ruled badly while Temur was away in India. The people were taxed too much.’

‘And the architects?’

‘The portal for Temur’s new mosque was too small.’

Luke heard Nikolas whistle softly behind him. Tamerlane wanted his people to celebrate but only under the familiar shadow of fear. He looked to one side and saw a steaming wooden shed with its door ajar and men queuing for the bath inside. This was a strange world of fear and horse and sudden cleanliness. They came to the imperial enclosure and the Mongol guards at the entrance prostrated themselves as they recognised Mohammed Sultan. The gates were covered with plates of silver gilt ornamented in blue enamel. On one door was the image of St Peter, on the other St Paul.

‘The gates of Bursa,’ said Mohammed Sultan as they rode through. ‘Probably made by you Greeks when you had the city. Now they’re ours.’

It was hardly a boast. This was an empire that had sprung from nothing to the greatest in the world in twenty years, an accumulation of riches beyond anything yet seen in history. Luke stared at the helpless saints, strung up on their gilded hinges for heathen scrutiny, and remembered Plethon’s loathing for them, alongside relics and all the other paraphernalia of superstition. They arrived at a tent outside which two men were examining coats threaded with gold. When they saw Mohammed Sultan, they swept their hats from their heads and sank to their knees.

‘Please, Ruy González, Sotomayor,’ murmured the Prince as he dismounted, lifting the men to their feet. ‘I bring you friends.’

The Spaniards rose and bowed to Luke, who had also come down from his horse. They were small, dark men whose gathered hair was streaked with grey. They wore Spanish black and their demeanour was grave. The taller of the two turned to Mohammed Sultan. ‘Your grandfather has given us these robes. And horses too. We are indebted.’

Mohammed Sultan laughed. ‘But you must start drinking, Clavijo!’ He patted him on the shoulder. ‘Temur has noticed you never touch your wine at banquets. He wonders if Spain is full of monks.’

The man from Castile bowed again. He turned to Luke. ‘You will find it difficult’, he said, quite serious, ‘to keep up with them. They drink until they cannot stand.’

Mohammed Sultan had turned towards his horse. ‘Look after the Greeks, Clavijo,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Temur has decreed the suspension of every rule and law for sixty days. There will be more abandonment on this plain than you can possibly imagine. I suggest you put on Temur’s robes and let your own cloak your statue of the Virgin. Hide her from view. And from seeing.’ Then he mounted and rode away.

*

For sixty days, the Mongol horde feasted and drank and copulated on the plain of Kani-gil. There were no rules so anything was possible. Widows straddled teenagers, men went with men and the bath-houses were busy with the washing of exhausted bodies. It was a time of entire and absolute excess where the Chagatai counted themselves ill used if they were not drunk by noon. By day, there were acrobats and jugglers and tightrope walkers. There were games of daring where men jumped hurdles while others strung bows to fire at them. By night, there was endless feasting and enough wine and koumis to drown Samarcand and all its suburbs. This was the mirror image of conquest: immersion in wine instead of blood.

Luke, Matthew and Nikolas tried to keep up with it all. They spent their evenings eating and drinking their way through horse, mutton and wine, and afterwards did their best to avoid staying the night. Hardest of all was the need to keep sober enough to make their way home to their tent.

By day, and free of any guard, they could wander where they wished. But despite their deels and squirrel hats, they were never invisible. At least a head taller than the biggest Mongol, they attracted attention of the worst kind. Drunken Chagatai tried to provoke them into fights so in the end Luke decided that they should themselves become part of the entertainment.

One morning, they rose, put on their Varangian armour and picked a spot to engage in Varangian weapon practice. They fought with the sword, the axe and the lance and drew crowds of sore-headed Mongols to the spectacle. When they stopped, no one picked a fight with them again.

They saw little of the Spaniards. The envoys from Castile were serious men who wore their religion like armour. They had travelled six thousand miles for fifteen months, been shipwrecked and robbed, arriving at the court of Tamerlane unprepared for its scale and decadence. Clavijo and Sotomayor, the two ambassadors, spent their days trying to find ways to meet Tamerlane again, shocked to realise that their king, Henry III, was counted of lesser importance than the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt or even the King of Badakhshan.

At last the day of Tamerlane’s grandsons’ weddings arrived and the Varangians and Spaniards were woken early to be told that they would attend the feast to follow the ceremony. It was to be held in Tamerlane’s great tent with the Lord of the Celestial Conjunction present. They were given new robes of exquisite design and escorted to the banquet by giggling girls who offered to return to them later.

Inside the tent was more space than Luke had thought possible to embrace within silk. It was filled with long tables on which whole sides of horse and mutton steamed on plates ringed with coloured rice. To either side sat the captains of Temur’s army dressed in their finest deels. Behind them were tapestries, shag velvet screens and furs of ermine. Luke strained his eyes through the smoke to see to the end of the tent where raised daises, each at a different level, had been placed beneath an enormous dome. Upon them were empty thrones with low tables in front of each.

‘Where do we sit?’

Nikolas was looking down the long line of Mongols. There seemed to be no empty seats. Sotomayor gestured.

‘We sit at the end. In front of the daises. There will be seats for us.’

He began to walk forward. They had reached perhaps halfway down the tent when they heard a blast of horn behind them.

‘Kneel!’ hissed Clavijo, his hand pressing down on Luke’s shoulder. Three Varangians and two Spaniards fell to their knees. Luke glanced towards the end of the tent. Mongols had entered and lined up in front of the tables, their heads bowed, their hands pressed, palm to palm, in front of them. At a command, they fell to the ground. The tent had fallen silent.

There were more blasts and Tamerlane entered. He was dressed in a long robe of red and gold, lined with fox and open to a tunic of simple white cambric beneath. On his head was a crown girded with gems and against the white of his chest rested an enormous ruby. He shuffled past the tables, dragging his lameness behind him. As he approached, Luke dared to glance up. Tamerlane was frowning and his eyes, unencumbered by Shulen’s glasses, were bloodshot.

Behind Tamerlane came his eight wives, led by Saray Mulk Khanum, Bibi Khanum, oldest, largest and most senior of them all. It was for her that the biggest mosque in the world was being built, for her that its architects had been hanged on the plain of Kani-gil for not making its portal equal to her magnificence. She made an impressive sight. She was dressed in a tent-robe of blue Zaytuni silk, embroidered with gold circles, whose train was carried by fifteen ladies-in-waiting. By her side walked twenty more ladies supporting a headdress of a size that took Luke’s breath away. It was a mountain of pearls and balas rubies and turquoises at whose summit sprang a riot of coloured feathers, some bent to fall to her shoulders. Her face was a mask of white lead through which two tiny eyes blinked to right and left behind a veil of finest gauze.

After the Great Khanum came Tamerlane’s other seven wives, who were of varying size and age but all dressed in glittering attire. At their back was Shulen. As she passed Luke, she caught his eye and smiled. It was weak, but it was a smile.

Tamerlane settled himself into his throne on the dais, Bibi Khanum on his right, Shulen on his left. The other wives took their places on lower daises to either side. As Luke hurried to his seat, he saw Mohammed Sultan and Pir Mohammed sit amongst the other grandsons and their new wives further down.

There was another blast of horn and a gorgeously attired man, not of Mongol origin, strode down the length of the tent until he reached Tamerlane. Behind him came a trolley with something tall and cloaked upon it. Luke turned to Sotomayor for explanation.

‘The King of Badakhshan, ten days’ march from here,’ whispered the man from Castile. ‘Very rich. They mine precious stones there.’

The King had dropped to his knees and was gesturing to the covered shape behind. He stopped talking, there was a drumbeat, the cloak was removed and Luke’s breath left his body.

‘My God,’ whispered Nikolas.

It was a tree, about the height of a man, made entirely out of gold. Its trunk was as thick as a man’s leg and the fruit that hung from its many branches, beneath leaves delicate as paper, was emeralds and rubies and sapphires and every other gem imaginable. Dozens of little birds of gold and painted enamel crowded the tree’s branches, some with their wings spread ready for flight, some feeding on the fruit, some with their beaks open for song. It was extraordinary.

Tamerlane thought so. He’d risen to his feet and lifted a chalice in toast to the King of Badakhshan. Luke saw him drain the wine in a single gulp and then watched as Bibi Khanum lifted her veil and did the same. She let out a burp that carried to the other end of the tent. She patted her stomach and Tamerlane roared his approval and sat down.

Then the Conqueror of the World turned to his left and leant towards Shulen. He was whispering something into her ear and Shulen was shaking her head. At last she pointed at Luke and his heart missed a beat. Tamerlane was looking at him.

‘Come forward, Greek!’ Now he was beckoning him. Luke took a deep breath and got to his feet. The dome above him seemed to rise into eternity, the space around him stretch beyond horizons. He was among ten thousand Mongols and their master had called for him. He walked forward, past the King and his golden tree, past staring generals and emirs and shaykhs, until he stood at the bottom of the dais from which Tamerlane, Bibi Khanum and Shulen looked down. He felt light-headed.

Tamerlane gestured to Shulen. ‘I have named her Jawhar-agha,’ he said, ‘which in your language means “Queen of Hearts”.’ He frowned then. ‘But you know this, Greek. You already have her heart.’

Luke glanced at Shulen, who was staring straight ahead with no expression on her face. She was simply dressed in purest white silk, high-collared, her jet-black hair falling unadorned to her shoulders. She seemed of a different species to Bibi Khanum.

Tamerlane continued: ‘She says she is married to you, which is unfortunate since I wish her to be my wife.’

Luke was too surprised to reply. He glanced at Shulen and then further down to where he saw that Mohammed Sultan had risen from the table.

‘You will divorce her,’ said the Lord of the Celestial Conjunction. ‘And I will take her to my bed. She has given me sight, read to me and salved my joints. Now I would bed her.’ He paused and turned his bloodshot eyes to Shulen, who continued to look into the distance, her lips set. Tamerlane’s knotted hand covered hers, one animal mounting another. ‘She has my favour.’

By now Mohammed Sultan was standing behind Tamerlane’s chair, stooping to speak into his ear. He spoke loud enough for Luke to hear. ‘Grandfather, the Holy Book forbids taking another man’s wife against their wishes. Is it wise to offend God?’

Tamerlane frowned. He drank and wiped the wine from his beard with the hand not covering Shulen’s. He wrinkled his nose as if a noxious smell had crept beneath it. He leant forward. ‘Do you have any objection, Greek?’ he growled. ‘I want Jawhar-agha to be my wife. Will you divorce her?’

‘No.’

Had he spoken? He had spoken. He had said no. He had denied Tamerlane.

‘No, lord,’ he amended, his heart pounding. ‘She is my wife before God. I will not divorce her.’

Tamerlane’s frown deepened. He shook his head suddenly as if trying to escape an unwanted thought. He opened his mouth but his grandson spoke first.

‘You will need God’s favour to conquer China,’ he continued quietly, his ear close to Tamerlane’s. ‘You will need his blessing to finally unite the kingdoms. Why risk it, Grandfather?’

Tamerlane blinked twice, his head slightly tilted to listen. He drank more wine.

Mohammed Sultan went on, speaking faster. ‘Think of it, Grandfather. The Chagatai here feasting with you. Persia. The Golden Horde. You have one more khanate to conquer to create an empire bigger than Genghis’s: China, the kingdom of Kublai Khan.’ He paused. ‘You are so close.’

Tamerlane was fidgeting with the sleeves of his robe. He was breathing hard, his breath escaping in short spasms. His great brow was ever more furrowed, sweat within its folds. He was thinking. At last his hand moved away from Shulen’s. He grunted and lifted his chalice only to find it empty. ‘Wine!’ he roared. A eunuch appeared with a pitcher. He gestured to Bibi Khanum’s cup. ‘And for her!’

Mohammed Sultan had taken a step backwards. He looked at Shulen who continued to stare ahead. He glanced at Luke and nodded. Then he turned to walk back to his seat.

Tamerlane leant forward again. ‘Why are you here, Greek?’ he growled. ‘Why are you at my court?’

Luke straightened. He’d not practised what he would say were Tamerlane to speak to him. His mind raced. He thought of all that Ibn Khaldun had told him. ‘Before you go to China,’ he said, summoning the words, ‘there is the Khanate of Persia’s conquest still to complete. Genghis’s grandson, Hulagu, went as far as the land of the Turks. You have to reconquer those lands, lord.’

Tamerlane squinted at him. ‘You are telling me where I should go, Greek?’

‘I say no such thing, majesty. But you should know that the tribes there are weary of Bayezid’s rule. You would be welcomed.’ He paused and glanced at Shulen, who was now staring at him. ‘You would be welcomed as the Sword of Islam.’

Luke’s heart was now beating faster than Eskalon’s at full stretch. He knew that his life was balanced as precariously as the tightrope walkers he’d watched this past month. He felt giddy with adrenalin, almost drunk.

Tamerlane said: ‘Bayezid is a tick that I’ll flick from my body when I remember to do so. Until then I will send him letters to anger him. It pleases me.’ He turned to Shulen. ‘Your husband is brave but foolish. Take him from my presence before I remove him from you.’

Shulen rose and came down from the dais, took Luke’s hand as a wife should, and led him through the silent tent, past the ambassadors and shaykhs and generals of Tamerlane’s army. And as they walked, the silence was broken as men dared once more to revel. Shulen turned to Luke, speaking from the corner of her mouth.

‘That was frightening. From now onwards, I am your wife. If Temur finds out the truth, we’re both dead.’