of milk. Clotted cream and crust of cream, sour cream and cream with honey, smooth yoghurt and stiff yoghurt, crisp curd biscuit and curds-and-whey, mild cheese, aged cheese and a whiffy cheese from years ago, a flagon of fermented milk and a jug of milk distilled. “Here’s a turn-out for the time of year and a woman on her own.”
“An old-fashioned welcome.” Mengetu rubbed his hands together and stepped right in. “And no damned dog.”
Through his distraction Yesugei thought, don’t the foxes get at the food?
They sat down at her hearth to wait. Noikon poured the ayrag. With the last cup in the stack, as he poured for himself, he said suddenly, “Hey. Seven cups. One for each of us.”
Daritai, who loved him dearly, said, “The arithmetic.”
“How about her arithmetic?”
“It’s uncanny. Try the cream.” He licked his fingers. The others had their fingers stuck in the dishes or stuck in their mouths. Yesugei ingested more of his fingernails. Though none of them went for the black milk they loosened up as if they had – they laughed and grew loud, while he remained uptight, until he wondered what she put in her cream. Not that he was cynical. In the ghosts’ underground, whether you are there by accident, by seizure or by voyage, you must neither eat nor drink or you can never leave. Fraudulent shamans had been known. So had shamans who were wolves in a sheep’s fleece, whose clients become their victims, who, when left alone with the sick, devour their souls.
She came in.
She was in costume, from her gilt horns to her tapestry tails. She had shells from the sea, verdigris coins from history, flint arrows from antiquity. These things about her gave her free voyage in the heavens and the earth, but the eyes are where to see the shaman’s universal sympathy. Azjargal was young but she had weary eyes, weary and sad with the weight of the world, and brave for the sake of the sad of the world. She was a shaman. They loved her at first sight and she them.
Laughter was quenched and they stared, with their fingers in the dishes. Now only Yesugei had the gumption to get on his feet and greet her. “It is I, Azjargal, who come with question for you. I am Yesugei.”
As the focus of those eyes he stood, and his hard heart lay down arms.
“Ask me your question, Yesugei. Eat and drink, Yesugei’s friends.” Next to him she sat and gave to him her vast and almost physical attention.
Strangely, this didn’t inhibit him, but the contrary. There spilt out of him the story, the story and whatever got attached: the horrors of Bor Nor, his attitudes, the fact he was only here at Bultachu Ba’atur’s nudge.
“Yet through your fears, my love,” she said with quiet fervour to him – shamans use endearments – “you have had the courage to come, to put your trust in me. The sky spirits knew your brave faith, who told me what I know.”
“Shaman, what do you know?”
“Last night, as I flew in the upper atmosphere, I met a sky spirit in swans’ down and lambs’ wool whose face to my eyes was as a handsome image in a steel mirror. Once, he told me, I was Ulun Ghoa’s lover; from my loins sprang the Borjigin. Tomorrow one of mine is to come to you with a question, but he dwells in doubt. Say to him, yes, the child has speed in his blood, wind in his heart.”
Yesugei began to beam, began to wince.
“For he came to life on the hoof, at the gallop.”
The others’ laughter made a come-back, in squawks and chortles. They found this hysterical, or the cream had gotten into them; and Mengetu no better than the rest. Yesugei eyed them, and wondered who invited them. “That I didn’t tell you. – Did I?” he consulted them.
They attempted to sober up. “No, you certainly didn’t.”
Daritai. “If you did, you certainly shouldn’t.”
The shaman spared his friends only an indulgent glance of mild amusement and went on, intimately to Yesugei as if they were alone. “I’ll tell him, I said to the handsome spirit, if that is the answer to his question. No, he smiled, that isn’t his question; go on. My goose and I flew on. Beyond the moon we flew, we saw the stars like crests of waves on the sea. I was stopped by a spirit in gilt-bronze armour whose face to my eyes was as the blur of a fire on a hot day. He told me, I live in the sphere of the sun and I have an interest in Temujin. The blood in his hand was the blood of Bor Nor, whose thirst he is sent to slake. The blood of Bor Nor? I said, the blood of our dead that cries? Glad is this news to me. Tell his father the news, he said.”
Yesugei knit his brow and hung on.
“But I thought of you and your father’s heart and I said to the sun spirit, a father wants to know more. A father wants to know what his son is to be. A great captain? A famous baghatur? Chief of his tribe? More questions, more questions? he said to me. Go on, if you can stand the light. Up, up, we flew, to where the light grew too intense and I crouched and hid my eyes behind my goose’s wing. As soft as cloud, as clear as noon, quiet as a low wind, a voice spoke in my ear. Here I am, who govern the heavens. The Mongols must go years without a king and have hard times. But I have given them Temujin, him for whom your dead clamour, to right his people’s wrongs, to be his people’s king.”
From this blow Yesugei flinched, and gazed with a tragic face into the fire. It was what he had been afraid of.
“As I flew down to earth, I wept,” said Azjargal. “I didn’t know why. Whether sad tears for our dead or glad tears that God does not forget us, or whether the light hurt my eyes, or whether I felt the troubles of your father’s heart.”
Away from the tolgechi’s ger they rode in introspection, the father’s mood contagious. Until Daritai broke the spell and cracked his knuckles. “I don’t know about you, but I’m happy to hear those Jurchen are going to get theirs.”
Noikon tried to shut him up. “It’s no joke, Daritai.”
“It’s no bad news, either. I don’t understand why we’re gloomy.”
“Are you keen?” Noikon challenged him. “To step up, after the fates of the last two? – Not to fetch misfortune. Blest spirits avert. There’s a dearth of volunteers, have you noticed? As Bultachu said, next in has to unscramble our mess.”
“The idea is he’s to achieve our revenge, not come to a sticky end.”
Noikon shook his head. “I don’t know. Borjigin and lovers out of the sky?”
“Oh, that was just the interlude to make us laugh.”
“Do you believe her?” he put to him point-blank.
“It doesn’t matter whether I believe her. If what she tells me is to happen, happens – I’ll be happy.”
“There you are wrong, Daritai.” This was Uder Unan, serious, unlike himself. “Without our faith the shamans cannot fly. However much they wish to help us, they can do nought for us without us – have you never heard a shaman say?”
Impossible, thought Yesugei. Temujin, for the next twenty years, to listen to this? How to confuse a child. And he had other reasons, reasons that hatched with their feathers on, as if they had incubated in the bottom of his head. Gently he spoke up. “A boy is like to find such a prophecy a trouble to him, whether a true one or a mistake.”
“That I understand, brother. And there’s an argument for a touch of flippancy, if ever I heard one.”
“Nor do I disagree. He doesn’t need this business dumped solemnly on him. Our children, don’t they? have enough to grow up with. They grow up in the shadow of Bor Nor. Most robbed of their fathers. I have tried to imagine... in twenty years’ time, our children in their flower: what effect? What have we left them? Away from the negative, we have left them our traditions and example, the portion we have always left to our children. Cast back to when you sat with your chin on your father’s knee and he held up to you great examples from the past and taught you emulation, a fine emulation, to be worthy of those of your tribe, of your people. This I wish to do with my son Temujin. I wish to tell him of his grandfather, how he was a man scarcely to be matched, only boys dream. Boys dream. They dream of great example. Our fathers taught us emulation: to set your heart high on a
hero, try to be like him if you can. To your poor ability. No father – no father,” he stressed, “tells his child, you’re a cert to be a great figure one day.”
Mengetu took up his thread and went deftly where he was getting at. “Child kings exist. But they are foreign to us, I hope to remain foreign. It isn’t healthy, and doesn’t rear what we want in a king.”
“As my agha says. I won’t seed foreign vanities in my son and vices. I’ll teach my son to worship those he can dream to set his standard by. Do you understand?” he flung.
Lucky Telegetu assured him, “The lot of us understand, Yesugei. You want to keep this between ourselves?”
“That is what I ask, what I have to ask. I am sorry if this is a sign for the Mongols, I am sorry – I’ll beg Bultachu, too, to understand, my son comes first with me. I think of him, of his interests, ahead.”
“The interests coincide, Yesugei,” Mengetu said, “as we have agreed, if we want to make a king of him. If he’s to be our king, we need a Mongol. Mongols need a Mongol. Not a circus freak. Not an emperor. We elect kings – when they’re grown up. Attai, bless his spirit and God cradle him, was a bit on the young side for me. The tolgechi has told us our lad’s to be elected in the future. We’ll await the event.”
Baqaji put in, “There’s a funny trick with knowledge of the future: you’re not meant to act and twist things up. You’re almost