It was difficult not to think of the last time they had met in that place, with Mongke full of life and plans and the world before them. Much had changed since then and Kublai’s heart broke to think of it.
‘So tell me, brother,’ he said, ‘now that the war is over, were you in the right, or was I?’
Arik-Boke turned his head slowly, his face growing mottled as he flushed in slow anger.
‘I was in the right …’ he said, his voice grating, ‘but now you are.’
Kublai shook his head. To his brother, there was no morality beyond the right of strength. Somehow the words and everything they revealed infuriated him. He had to struggle to find calm once again. He saw some gleam of triumph still in Arik-Boke’s eyes.
‘You gave an order, brother,’ Kublai said. ‘To butcher the women and children of my men in the camps around the city.’
Arik-Boke shrugged. ‘There is a price for all things,’ he said. ‘Should I have allowed you to destroy my tumans without an answer? I am the khan of the nation, Kublai. If you take my place, you will know hard decisions in turn.’
‘I do not think it was a hard decision for you,’ Kublai said quietly. ‘Do you still think it was carried out? Do you believe the captain of the Guard would murder defenceless women while their children hung around their legs?’
Arik-Boke’s contemptuous expression faded as he understood. His shoulders dipped slightly and some of the spite and anger seeped out of him, making him look worn and tired.
‘I trusted the wrong man, it seems.’
‘No, brother. You
‘You are
‘You’re wrong, brother, but it doesn’t matter now,’ Kublai replied. He walked to the copper doors and thumped on them with his fist. ‘I have an empire to rule, one that has grown weak under your hand. I will not fail in strength or will. Take solace in that, Arik-Boke, if you care about the nation at all. I will be a good master for our people.’
‘And bring me out each month to parade me in my defeat?’ Arik-Boke said, his face flushing once again. ‘Or shall I be exiled for you to show the peasants your famous mercy? I know you, brother. I looked up to you once, but no longer. You are a weak man and for all your fine talk, for all your scholarship, you will fail in everything you do.’
In the face of his brother’s spite, Kublai closed his eyes for a moment, making the decision with a wrench that felt like ripping the scab from a wound. Family was a strange thing and even as he felt Arik-Boke’s hatred battering at him, he still remembered the young boy who had swum in a waterfall and looked at him in simple adoration. They had laughed together a thousand times, grown drunk and shared precious memories of their parents. Kublai felt his throat grow thick with grief.
Uriang-Khadai and Bayar entered the room once more.
‘Take him outside, general,’ Kublai said. ‘Orlok, stay for a moment.’
Bayar took his brother into the corridor, the shuffling steps somehow pitiful.
Kublai faced Uriang-Khadai and took a deep, slow breath before he spoke.
‘If he hadn’t ordered the death of the families, I could spare him,’ Kublai said.
Uriang-Khadai nodded, his eyes dark pools. His own wife and children had been in the city, at his home.
‘The tumans expect me to have him killed, orlok. They are waiting for the word.’
‘But it is your decision, my lord. In the end, it is your choice.’
Kublai looked away from the older man. There would be no comfort from him, no attempt to make it easier. Uriang-Khadai had never offered him the weak way and he respected him for it, as much as it hurt. Kublai nodded.
‘Yes. Not public, Uriang-Khadai. Not for my brother. Put aside your anger if you honour me and make his death quick and clean, as much as it can be.’ His voice grew rough as he spoke the last words.
‘And the body, my lord?’
‘He was khan, orlok. Give him a funeral pyre to light up the sky. Let the nation mourn his passing if they will. None of that matters. He is my brother, Uriang-Khadai. Just … make it quick.’
The summer sun was warm on the back of his neck as Kublai sat in the gardens of the palace, his son Zhenjin beside him. In the distance, a black plume of smoke rose into the sky, but Kublai had not wanted to stand and watch his brother’s funeral. Instead, he rested with closed eyes, taking simple pleasure in his son’s company.
‘I will be going on to Xanadu in a few days,’ Kublai said. ‘You’ll see your mother again there.’
‘I’m glad I had the chance to see this city first,’ Zhenjin replied. ‘It is so full of history.’
Kublai smiled. ‘It isn’t history to me, boy. It’s my family and I miss them all. I rode with Genghis when I was younger than you, barely able to stay on a saddle.’
‘What was he like?’ Zhenjin asked.
Kublai opened his eyes to find his son watching him.
‘He was a man who loved his children and his people, Zhenjin. He took the Chin foot off the throat of the nation and made us look up from the struggles of tribes. He changed the world.’
Zhenjin looked down, playing with a cherry twig in his hands, bending it this way and that.
‘I would like to change the world,’ he said.
Kublai smiled, with just an edge of sadness in his eyes.
‘You will, my son, you will. But no one can change it for ever.’
HISTORICAL NOTE
There are few surviving details of Guyuk’s khanate. It is true that he brought an army to attack Batu in his own lands, after Batu failed to give his oath at a quiriltai, or gathering. We know that Batu was warned by Sorhatani and then Guyuk died in a manner unknown, with the armies in sight of each other. People do just die at times, obviously, but as with the death of Genghis’ son Jochi, some endings are a little too fortuitous to believe the official record. I should add that there is no evidence that Guyuk was homosexual. I needed to explain how he fell out with Batu on the return from Russia - a detail missing from the historical record. As he was khan for only two years and died conveniently early, I was thinking of him as a similar character to England’s Edward II, who
Guyuk’s death cleared the way for Mongke to become khan, beginning a conflict within the Mongol nation as the forces of modernisation, as represented by Chin influence, struggled against traditional Mongol culture and outlook. Mongke was supported by Batu, who owed Sorhatani his life.
Mongke was about thirty-six when he became khan, strong and fit, with good years ahead of him. It is true that he began his reign with a gathering at Avraga, then a slaughter of the opposition as he cleared house, including Guyuk’s wife, Oghul Khaimish. She was accused of sorcery.
Mongke began his khanate with a push outwards, reestablishing the Mongol war machine in all directions. He ruled from 1251 to 1259, eight years of expansion and slaughter. His brother Hulegu went west to crush the Islamic world, while at Mongke’s order, Kublai was sent east and south into Sung China. Their mother Sorhatani died in 1252, more than seventy years old. In her life, she had ruled Mongolia in her own right and seen her eldest son become khan. A Nestorian Christian herself, she had her sons taught Buddhism and established mosques and madrasa schools in Islamic regions. For the breadth of her imagination and reach, she was simply the most extraordinary woman of her era. It is a pleasure of historical fiction that I sometimes come across people who deserve books all to themselves - Julius Caesar’s uncle Marius was one. Sorhatani is another. I have almost certainly not done justice to her.
