scanty pastureland: a corridor of tawny steppe running between the Tien Shan — ‘the Heavenly Mountains’ to the north — and to the south the feared Taklamakan, the desert ‘You Enter and Never Return’ in the language of the Uighur, the wild, nomadic local people.
The days passed in a blur of repeated rituals. First, after a scanty breakfast of dried apricots and leathery strips of dried mutton, loading up the camels — evil-tempered, shaggy brutes with two humps; then, several hours plodding through steppeland relieved occasionally by stands of pine or willow, the haunt of wolves and wild boar; a midday meal followed by an extended rest period against the hottest part of the day; and another march in the late afternoon till camp was pitched an hour before the setting of the sun.
There were occasional breaks in the monotony of the journey: stopovers at the towns which punctuated the Silk Road — Turpan, Korla, Kuqa, Aksur, each with its colourful market filled with noisy crowds, and traders selling everything from spices and harnesses to rock salt, skins, and cummin. Once, they witnessed a game of
At last they came to the oasis town of Kashgar, where the route divided — one path leading north and east for Samarkand and Persia, the other south for India. Taking the northern route, the caravan struck up a treeless valley into the Pamir Mountains, a bleak wasteland of barren crags and stony defiles, dominated by the distant, towering mass of Mush-taq-ata*, its snow-clad peak soaring above a tangle of saw-toothed ridges. Here, animals had grown huge as a defence against the cold — outsize yaks, sheep with five-foot horns, a dread species of enormous bear.
One night, the caravan, camped on an alluvial plain beside a glacial lake, was disturbed by a commotion in the camel lines. Rushing to the spot, the merchants were confronted, in the flickering light of the camp fire, by a horrifying sight — a bear of vast size attacking the tethered beasts, two of them reduced to shredded corpses. Standing on its hind legs, the creature, jaws agape revealing rows of vicious fangs, reared high above the terrified camels; even as the merchants looked on in helpless horror, another beast was clubbed down, half-decapitated by a blow from the monster’s paw armed with razor claws. Breaking loose, the remaining camels charged off into the night, their frantic braying fading at last into silence.
The bear now turned its attention to the men who, retreating to the fire, managed to fend off its furious lunges with blazing brands. At last, as though satisfied with the carnage it had wrought, the creature abandoned its attack and lumbered on its way.
In the morning, the shocked and devastated merchants recaptured three of the six fugitive camels (of the others two had fallen into a gully and broken their necks; the third was never found) and recovered what could be salvaged of their scattered merchandise — much of which was damaged beyond repair. Cacheing this, they bade farewell to the two monks and sadly turned their faces to the east, intending to return when they had built up another caravan in China.
The two monks now faced the daunting prospect of crossing the high Pamirs alone. Weeks later, starving, exhausted, and suffering from frostbite, they staggered into Samarkand as penniless beggars, having been relieved en route by bandits of their funds (but fortunately not their staves). In the bustling metropolis they were able to join another caravan bound for Persia, their medical skills enabling them to earn their passage money. The remainder of the journey, through Transoxiana, Turkestan, and Persia to the Euxine coast where, at the great new Roman port of Petra Justinianopolis* they took ship for Constantinople, was uneventful. A year almost to the day since leaving China, they disembarked at the quayside of the Golden Horn.
The mission proved an unqualified success. Under the close and expert supervision of the monks, the eggs were hatched at the proper season by the heat of dung, and a thriving industry was rapidly established, soon producing silk of a quality to equal China’s, but costing infinitely less than the imported cloth.
* The Indian navigator.
* Ceylon/Sri Lanka.
* Mount Kongur.
* Formerly just Petra, it was renamed and extended after being captured from the Persians, who had occupied Lazica. (See Chapter 23.)
THIRTY
With this sign, you shall conquer
At Damian’s wine shop in the harbour area between the Bosphorus and Golden Horn, the talk was all about a terrifying crisis that had suddenly, it seemed, blown up out of nowhere. A barbaric horde of mounted nomads originating from the steppes of Central Asia had crossed the frozen Danube, swept through the Balkans into Thrace, looting and killing as they went, smashed through the Long Walls* (damaged in a recent earthquake), and were even now advancing on the capital itself. Daily, panic-stricken refugees crowded into the city, creating a major problem for the authorities to lodge and feed them, and sapping the morale of the citizens.
‘They say the Huns have crossed the river Athyras,’ declared a burly coppersmith. ‘Christ, that’s less than twenty miles away.’
‘They’re not Huns, you know,’ corrected a youth from the University, ‘slumming it’ in Damian’s with some of his fellow students. ‘They’re Kotrigurs — led by one Zabergan, their chief.’
‘Same difference, mate. Slant-eyed yellow bastards, with these ruddy great pigtails down their backs. They eat Roman babies for breakfast, so I’ve heard.’
‘And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death!’ bellowed Scripture Simon. ‘And Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with — ’
‘Shut it, Simon,’ sighed the bartender. ‘There’s a noggin on the house with your name on it — but only if you keep your trap shut.’
‘What’s the emperor doing about it — “Cottigers” did you call them?’ grumbled a pot-bellied carpenter with sawdust in his hair. ‘That’s what I’d like to know.’
‘Nothing, chum,’ commented a brawny porter. ‘Bloody nothing. Oh, he can sort out Italy and Africa but when it comes to us poor sods at home — doesn’t want to know, does he? Too taken up with this latest religious wheeze of his to bother about the likes of us.’
‘Aphthartodocetism — that’s the new doctrine you’re referring to,’ pronounced the student, smirking knowingly at his friends.
‘Aphtha — ; what the hell’s that when it’s at home?’ growled the porter.
‘Aphthartodocetism holds that the body of Christ was incorruptible — ergo, His sufferings were only apparent.’
‘Well!’ exclaimed a floury-armed baker. ‘Sounds to me like something the Patriarch’ll take a dim view of —
Keen amateur theologians, like all Constantinopolitans, the patrons of Damian’s immediately became engaged in passionate debate about the merits or otherwise (mostly otherwise) of this latest theological dogma,
