Free Silk Road by Colin Falconer Page A

people for Christ,’ William said.
    ‘We shall be lucky to save ourselves’ Josseran muttered and turned his horse from the grisly monolith.

XX

    T HEY CROSSED A great plain and villages of whitewashed clay. Occasionally they saw the ruins of a mosque or the solitary arch of a caravanserai, testament to the bloody passing of Chinggis Khan fifty years before. But finally the deserts were behind them. They followed a green river basin towards Samarkand.
    The caravan city was circled by snow-lit mountains. The ribbed domes of Mohammedan churches slept under silver poplars, the
Registan
a riot of bazaars within the dun walls of merchant warehouses and travellers’ inns. This city, too, had been rebuilt after the ravages of the Tatars, the sun-baked bricks of the madrassahs and mosques newly decorated with a faience of peacock blue and vivid turquoise that sparkled in the winter sun.
    Josseran stood on the roof of their
han
, watching the dawn slip its dirty yellow fingers over the multi-domed roofs of the bazaar and into the warren of arcades. The tiled dome of a mosque glittered like ice, the black needle of a minaret was silhouetted against a single cold star. The muezzin climbed to the roof of the tower and began the
azan
, the call to prayer. It echoed across the roofs of the city.
    ‘
Auzbillahi mina shaitani rajim, bismillah rahmani rahim . . .
’
    ‘Listen to them. They warble like a man having his teeth pulled,’ William said.
    Josseran turned around. The friar emerged from the shadows, like a ghost. He finished tying the cord of his cowled robe.
    ‘It is a hymn very much like our own plainsong,’ Josseran said. ‘It rises and falls and is just as melodious.’
    ‘Like one of
ours
?’ William growled.
    ‘You think it barbarous because you do not understand it. I have lived in the Holy Land these five years. It is a hymn they repeat everyday at dawn, the same words, the same harmony. They seek their god as we seek ours.’
    ‘They do not have a god, Templar. There is only one God and He is the God of the one and true faith.’
    Josseran made out the ungainly shape of a stork, nesting in the roof of a nearby minaret, a sight as familiar to him here as it was in Acre. He would miss the storks if he ever went back to France, he realized. Perhaps it is true, perhaps I have lived too long among the Saracen and I am infected with their heresies.
    ‘I only mean to say that they are not godless, as some believe.’
    ‘If they do not love Christ, then how can they be anything but godless?’
    Josseran did not answer.
    ‘We are a long way from Acre here,’ William went on, ‘but we shall return soon enough and I shall be forced to report on what you say. You would be wise to guard your tongue.’
    A pox on all priests, Josseran thought. And the thought occurred to him: perhaps I shall not go back, if God is kind. But then, when in all my years have I ever seen a merciful God?

XXI

    T HE COLOUR OF the lake changed from violet to black. The dark silhouette of the mountains in front of them faded against a leaden sky shot through with shafts of gold.
    He shivered inside his furs. Since they had started their climb out of the plains of Samarkand he had taken to dressing in the manner of the Tatars, in a thick fur jacket and felt trousers tucked into his boots. But he was still cold.
    His companions were unsaddling their horses. He turned away from his contemplation of the lake and joined them. He stroked Kismet’s muzzle, murmuring words of encouragement. Poor girl, he could see the outline of her ribs through her flanks.
    He turned to Juchi. ‘We have to cross those mountains?’
    ‘You must cross many more mountains and many more deserts before you reach the Centre of the World.’ He seemed to take a perverse delight in their discomfort. He himself seemed inured to all suffering. He must have buttocks as hard as cured leather, Josseran thought.
    ‘Your shaman,’ Juchi said, using the Tatar word for holy man,