The Towers of Samarcand (26 page)

‘And is it the greatest?’

‘When it’s finally finished, perhaps. It’s certainly had the finest artists brought in to work on it. Here you’ll find the world’s best architects, masons, glaziers, scientists, astronomers, calligraphers, silk-weavers …’ She ticked them off on her fingers, one by one.

They had come to the top of a rise and beyond it was an immense walled garden with a small city of tents within it. Around the tents were meadows and trees and water with animals in between. The scent of flowers wafted up to meet them. They were looking into the Garden of Eden.

Khan-zada was pointing. ‘That’s Temur’s tent,’ she said, indicating a pavilion in the centre that was built as a castle, with turrets and battlements of silk. To either side of its entrance stood caparisoned and painted elephants with towers on their backs. ‘They say he has three obsessions these days: China, Samarcand and those elephants. He got them from Delhi. He loves each and every one of them.’

Luke looked at her, remembering something. ‘Tell us about Delhi.’

‘Delhi?’ said Khan-zada quietly. ‘It was very terrible. More than a million slaughtered.’

The shock took his breath away. It was an unimaginable number. ‘
A million?
’

‘So I’m told,’ she replied. ‘Temur marched an army of a hundred thousand over the mountains and up to the gates of Delhi. Nasir ud-din brought out his elephants, ninety of them with poisoned scimitars on their tusks and flame-throwers on their backs. Do you know what Temur did? He had his men dig trenches and tethered camels to the front of them with dried grass on their backs. When the elephants charged, Temur’s men set light to the camels’ backs and the animals rushed forward in their panic. The elephants were terrified. They turned and charged back into the Indian troops, trampling them. The battle was won.’

‘What happened then?’ asked Matthew.

‘He entered the city in triumph and the elephants were made to kneel before him and he chose thirty for his army. Then he stayed in the city to celebrate his victory with an enormous banquet, leaving orders that his army be left out on the plain.’ She paused. ‘But there was an incident. His wives wished to see the city and had left the gates open. Some of Temur’s army entered and began to loot. Then the whole Mongol army rushed in and so began three days of murder, rape and destruction.’

The Varangians looked down on a paradise that held, within it, a man more terrifying than any they’d heard of. None of them could find anything to say. So Khan-zada continued, nodding towards the crowds of people moving between the elephant sentinels: ‘He’s holding audience. We should go down and make ourselves known.’

The Varangians rode behind Khan-zada and Shulen. They were dressed as gazis and held pennanted spears aloft as would a bodyguard. Khan-zada wore a tunic of dazzling silver and
had a gold band around her head while Shulen was dressed in blood-red. They looked a magnificent pair.

When they reached the gate of the garden, Khan-zada called out to the men guarding it: ‘I am the Princess Khan-zada and I wish to see my father-in-law immediately.’ She removed a ring from her finger and gave it to their captain. The man took it, bowed and disappeared. Luke wondered if his friends’ hearts were tapping out the same frenzied tempo as his own. He wiped the palms of his hands on his deel.

Nikolas, who was by his side, whispered: ‘I’ve just remembered something: the omen.’

‘What omen?’ whispered Matthew, who was on Luke’s other side.

‘That Temur was born with blood in his hands. Did you know that?’

Luke, looking directly ahead, whispered: ‘How exactly does it help us to mention that now, Nikki?’

The Varangian shrugged. ‘I just thought of it, that’s all.’

Khan-zada and Shulen were looking up at the elephants. Their faces were painted in stripes of green and henna and their eyes had crude eyelashes etched like sunrises into their foreheads. They looked like elephant courtesans. The towers on their backs were of intricately carved wood and had velvet draped from their sides. Inside them musicians played.

After some time, the captain returned. He was a handsome man, now out of breath. ‘The Emir is seeing the ambassadors from China and Castile, highness. He asks that you enter and await his pleasure. Your guard and the woman will remain here.’

‘No, they will accompany me,’ Khan-zada said in a voice that did not expect the conversation to continue. She dismounted
and handed her reins to a guard. ‘My guard will deliver their weapons to you and they will enter the garden behind me.’

The captain glanced at the three Varangians, seeing their long, fair hair above gazi clothes. His eyes travelled down to Luke’s sword and then back to Khan-zada. ‘Of course, highness.’

They walked through the gate and into the garden and soon were within the maze of lesser tents that surrounded Tamerlane’s. Khan-zada walked fast, her head erect, ignoring the stares and bows of the men they passed. Then they entered Tamerlane’s tent.

Inside was a universe of silk which stretched around them in imitation of the world outside. Above, it was a summer’s day with feathered clouds spread across an acre of blue silk. Holding it up were tent poles the size of trees and painted as such, with green foliage spreading at their tops to support the weight of the ceiling. The tent was filled with Mongols and they parted to let Khan-zada and Shulen pass, bowing deeply as they did so. The men were short and broad and their narrow eyes narrowed further to study the tall, fair strangers that came behind.

Khan-zada led them through to the other side where the tent opened on to a garden of fruit trees and shade amidst which walked deer, peacocks and pheasants. There was a pool at its centre where lotus leaves stroked the water’s surface. Carpets were spread out by its banks on which women lay against cushions. A gentle slope rose on the other side and at its top stood a wooden dais surrounded by richly dressed men and a group of boys of various ages. The dais was of carved mulberry wood and had a low rail around its sides. It was empty save for some cushions and a folding lectern bearing an open Koran. Above it was a canopy of white silk, held up by tasselled
poles, on which inscriptions had been painted in the shape of birds around a ship in sail. In front of it, on a low table, was a chessboard.

Khan-zada led them to the shade of a tree where they could see without being seen. ‘He has yet to arrive,’ she whispered. ‘But his family is here. The women on the carpets are his wives and sisters. The man next to the throne is Shahrukh, his third son who was born during a game of chess. His name means “king-knight”.’

Luke looked at the chessboard. Its pieces were made of jade and exquisitely carved but there were too many of them. ‘What sort of chess does he play?’

‘His own kind. He’s invented a new version which he calls “the Great Game”. It’s played with more pieces over a hundred squares. He plays it with my sons.’

‘Which are your sons?’

‘Next to Shahrukh.’ She was pointing. ‘That is Mohammed Sultan and that Pir Mohammed. Are they not handsome?’

Luke looked at the brothers. They were certainly handsome. They wore richly embroidered deels that ended above boots of red leather. Jewelled swords hung low by their sides, their scabbard tips resting on the ground. Both were bearded and had long ponytails. Mohammed Sultan was the taller and had the bearing of one who expected to rule. He held his head high like his mother.

Luke saw several younger versions beside them looking up with reverence. ‘And the boys beside them, who are they?’

‘His great-grandsons. The younger ones he lets read the messages from the ambassadors. You will see.’

‘Who are the other men?’ he asked. ‘The men around the throne?’

Khan-zada raised herself on tiptoe to take them all in. Then she spoke: ‘The one in the green turban is Mir Sayid Barakah, Temur’s spiritual adviser; on his right is his greatest general Burunduk and beside him the genius Omar Aqta. He is the court calligrapher and five years ago he set all of the Koran on to a signet ring and gave it to Temur. Is that not wonderful? The others are astronomers, scholars, generals and viziers. I forget their names.’

Luke touched the ring on his own finger, feeling the tiny indentation of script beneath his thumb. He wondered again why Plethon had given it to him.

A silence fell upon the garden broken only by the peacocks. Heads had turned towards the other side of the garden where another tent opened on to it. Then there were two drumbeats and everyone fell to their knees.

Eight men of identical height appeared carrying between them a carpet. On it sat an old man and, beside him, a monumental turban. The garden had gone very still and the carpet seemed to float the distance to the throne. Then, on a nod, the old man was lowered on to the dais and the cushions, lectern and turban set beside him.

Temur, Sword of Islam, Lord of the Celestial Conjunction, Conqueror of the World, was among them.

Tamerlane
.

At last.

Luke stared at the man. He stared at a face that was scarred by time and battle and burnt by countless seasons. He looked into cold, milky eyes, half-closed beneath eyebrows thickened with paint, which stared straight ahead of him. He looked at a beard that was cut short and streaked with grey and stood proud from a neck knotted with ancient muscle. He looked at
shoulders that were broad, at immense forearms, spotted with age, that bulged forth from his tunic. Here, before him, was the terror of the world and he was old and nearly blind.

Tamerlane lay back against the cushions, his hands folded at his groin. On his fingers were rings, one larger than the rest.

‘Is he blind?’ whispered Luke.

Khan-zada nodded. ‘Almost. But you’ll see him look often at that ring. When it clouds, he believes that the man before him is telling lies.’

Luke looked at the ring, a colossal amethyst that rested in Tamerlane’s lap like a giant tear.

Tamerlane was dressed in a long belted tunic with short sleeves and peacock fans traced in silk across its red surface. He wore a cloak swept over his shoulders that was clasped at the neck with the three circles of his earthly kingdoms worked in gold. On his head was a domed crown from which sprang a horsetail fashioned out of strands of silk.

Nikolas let out a low whistle. ‘Look at the size of that ruby.’ He was looking at the jewel set into the turban beside Tamerlane.

Khan-zada whispered: ‘It’s from the King of Ceylon, the one his ancestor wouldn’t sell to Kublai Khan. The turban is also his shroud. It is sixty feet long and goes everywhere with him in case he dies while travelling.’

One of the grandchildren, a boy of perhaps twelve, had walked to the front of the dais and knelt down on one knee. He opened a scroll and read. ‘The ambassadors from the Sultan in Cairo and the King of Castile bring you gifts, lord.’

Temur beckoned the boy to come closer. ‘And the Chinese? What does the Ming Emperor bring me?’ he asked, peering at his grandson. He was smelling him too, his lips working as his nostrils dilated, an old animal testing his senses. His voice was
like raked gravel, deep and dry and cracked with use.

The boy glanced at the older men beside the throne. When he spoke again, his voice was clear. ‘They bring you a demand. The Ming Emperor demands that you acknowledge vassalage to him.’

For a time, no one spoke and even the peacocks seemed to wait.

Then Tamerlane laughed, a terrible sound rising from deep inside him. ‘Bring all the ambassadors in.’

The gifts arrived first. A jornufa from the Sultan of Cairo, perhaps brother to Bayezid’s, and an ostrich from the court of Castile, both led by grooms carrying chests. Behind them came the ambassadors in the finery of their nations, each man carried at his armpits by two guards as was the custom for all foreigners approaching the throne. The watching Mongols laughed.

‘Why do they laugh?’ whispered Shulen.

‘Do you see that man there amongst the Spanish envoys, that one of our race who is dressed in the fashion of Castile?’

Shulen nodded.

‘His name is Mohammed al-Cazi and he was sent back to Spain to learn their ways three years past. It seems he has learnt too well. He looks ridiculous.’

The ambassadors were set down in front of the throne and had begun to arrange themselves. The envoy al-Cazi was looking at the ground, his face crimson. Tamerlane was shaking his head. He grunted: ‘You are all the wrong way round.’ He lifted a hand, its back a mosaic of veins. ‘Where are the knights Clavijo and Sotomayor from Castile?’

One of the Spaniards stepped forward and sank to his knees. He was dressed in a pourpoint of black double-cut velvet and around his neck hung a chain of gold with a unicorn at its end.

‘Welcome back, Clavijo. How is my brother King Henry?’

Luke saw Tamerlane wince as he levered himself forward from his cushions to look more closely at the ambassador. He was in pain.

The Spaniard lifted his head. ‘His Majesty is well and rejoices in the continued health of his brother Temur,’ he replied in Turkic.

Tamerlane looked down at his ring. Then he pointed at the Spaniards. ‘But you are in the wrong place, Clavijo.’ He looked over to where the Chinese ambassadors stood. ‘You men from the Ming? You should be behind the Spaniards. Move there.’

Before the Chinese could give each other a glance of surprise, they had been lifted again and taken to the rear of the Spaniards. One of them rose to speak.

‘Down!’ roared Temur, thumping the side of the dais so hard that the wood shook.

The Chinese sank to their knees and five pig-tailed heads went to the ground. The only sound was the heavy tide of Tamerlane’s breathing.

‘Tell your master Hongwu this,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘Tell him that Temur Gurgan sets the King of little Castile above him in his estimation. Tell your Ming emperor that he is but a pawn to me, a slug. Tell him that China ceased to deserve tribute when the last of Kublai’s line left the earth. Tell him that the only reason he has not been crushed yet is because I leave the easiest task to last. Tell him that my only wish is that he should live to see the shame heaped upon him by my army.’