monarch, where she reared her children. That was why Toghrul scarcely knew a few of his brothers. “For example –” he signed the cross – “Tai Temur and Bull Temur. I’d have had trouble to point them out in a crowd. Does that mitigate the crime, Yesugei?”
“Blood and ashes, Toghrul. Am I to know?”
“You’re such a listener, I talk too much. And I’d not have you think poorly of me. I’ve come to a high estimation of you.”
“No, you haven’t.”
“I haven’t?”
“No, you just like me.”
“A bit of that. You know, when I cross myself, the gesture isn’t empty. If I’m frank – as I tend to be with you – I can’t see what I did as a crime, in the circumstances. But a sin? It is always a sin.”
“I understand the distinction.”
“It’s the first sin.”
“The first sin?”
“Cain slew his brother Abel and that was the first sin on earth. At times one can wish one wasn’t a Christian. It’s certainly the sin of choice for Turkic kings. Now, I mayn’t be the most deeply religious of men. I mean I am, but I haven’t got time. But I want to do the right thing. And that’s why I like you, Yesugei.”
“Why?”
“You are the right thing.”
“Say that again, I’ll call you outside.”
“Outside? Outside we get an audience. Keep my kingly dignity in mind. I’m not keen to try you, but if I have to – inside.”
They had grown intimate; Toghrul with a warmth of temperament, with milk in his veins, in the idiom. Yesugei began to tell him he liked him only after he loved him. How that happened he didn’t know. He enjoyed the competition. As for Toghrul’s side, he had a trillion old acquaintances, but he had to notch them on his tally-stick: loyals, disloyals, indeterminate. They had to kneel to him, and he cut a lonely figure as the only one on his feet... to an outsider’s eye.
One night, when Toghrul had black milk in his veins – and in front of an audience – he caught Yesugei’s neck in the crook of his arm. Like that he announced, “This is my friend Yesugei. He’s short, I know. But to me, he stands head and shoulders above God’s creatures on the earth. That’s why I have determined to ask him to do me the honour, and be my anda.”
Toghrul was drunk. The audience were drunk too. Public of him, but Yesugei had his chance to laugh him off. Postpone until they were sober. The old Turk kings used to ponder questions twice: once with the heart, in the heat of alcohol, again with the head, sober.
“I’ve struck him dumb, at any rate. I know I don’t deserve him.”
Sober, though, you’re most of the time too gutless; and the heart, said the old Turk kings, ought to weigh more than the head. Yesugei clapped his hands to the arm about his throat. “This tall friend of mine, who has no intelligible idea what he’s gotten into, I take for my brother-by-oath, and fuse my life with his.”
“Do you mean that, Yesugei? You’re as drunk as, and besides, I’ve got you in a throttlehold.”
“If you don’t sober up on the question, Toghrul, tomorrow, I won’t.”
“God bless you.” Damply he kissed the side of his head.
In his mother’s ordo Shadow Woods, across the Tola Gol from her Mongol tribe of Jajirat, Toghrul pitched his father’s and grandfather’s ger, of daffodil-yellow wool and gilt wood, where the vessels, except the cauldron, are of gold. Were, until he hosted Yesugei’s hundred and told them to keep their goblets. Royal, in the tribes, is a synonym for generous, and Toghrul proved he had the right stuff in him. He swore an ongoing gratitude: “Your service, Yesugei, to me, I vow to give again, unto the children of our children.”
On a perfect blue winter’s day Temujin crouched at knucklebones on the frozen Tola. A boy, likewise with his bag of knucklebones (no boy is a boy without) whizzed one across the ice to get his attention. Temujin peered up at him. “Do you want a game?”
By way of consent the boy drawled, “I don’t see why not.”
Over the game they glanced curiously at each other. From a distance Temujin had put the boy at six; up close he saw he was mistaken. Like forest people he had skin bone-ivory with near-black eyes, but he was Mongol by his style of hair. He had a pointy face. “What tribe?” asked Temujin, casual, as he tossed.
“Jajirat. You?”
“Kiyat. I’m Temujin. I’m eight.”
“I’m eight too.”
“Are you eight?”
“Don’t you believe me?”
“Yes.”
“Is your mother foreign?”
“No.” It embarrassed him to stick out, but he liked to be like his father. “My father’s like this.”
“Big for eight, aren’t you?”
“I guess.”
“I’m not. My name’s Jamuqa. I’m Mongol on both sides but I’m a throwback to our founder who was Adangqa Uriangqot. I’m strong for my size, but. Smart, too. I can back that up.”
Temujin got an anxious crease in his brow. “You are like Uriangqot. They ride elk.”
“Hmm.” The boy tipped his head to the north bank of the river, to Jajirat. “Over there’s a tree I saw split right in half by heaven’s fire. It’s sacred now, and I was there. If I’d been climbing in the tree I’d have been zapped. Then either I’d be burnt to a crisp or I’d be a saint alive and have whatever I want. Do you reckon you’d have jumped out of the tree or took your chances?”
Underneath the usual challenge was the flesh of a question that for once Temujin did want to engage with. “It might happen too fast. If the tree has a spirit, the spirit might push you out in time, or keep you in.”
“Yes, but this tree doesn’t have a spirit. You have to know or you’re smoke. Who can’t think fast as a lightning bolt, or just an instant faster, he’s pretty dead pretty quick. And that’s not the point anyhow. The point is, is it worth the risk?” The boy’s pointy face, aslant, shone with the combat of wits.
He wasn’t six. If he fibbed about his age he fibbed the other way. Most wit engagements Temujin found glib. He didn’t win at glib, he wasn’t any use at blather, even banter wasn’t altogether his. Into flyte his heart wasn’t to be dragged by an ox, fleer he dug for in vain. This was a litany Temujin had put work into.
People, and boys the worst, are so much more intelligent than what comes out of their mouths. In an oral culture, to bridge that gap from mind to mouth is urgent, early work. But the idioms didn’t suit Temujin, or not those dwelt on at eight. He had a quick and lively mind, locked up in his skull. He too, like his kind, was a talker, only in difficult hatch. Jamuqa’s style wasn’t empty, and dimly Temujin thought, I can talk like him. I can talk to him.
With these thoughts dimly in him he was silently intrigued, and forgot to own that he had lost – which in boys is done by dumb indication, in poems is acknowledged just like a passage of arms.
The boy eyed him once or twice, in wait. Abruptly, and with his name attached, he up and said, “I tell you what, Temujin. If you want, I’ll take you to see my tree.”
Temujin didn’t know whether he took a lot of boys, or never a one. Cautiously, he wasn’t casual. “Yes. I’d like to come.”
“I have an hour.” A bit importantly he squinted at the sun. “That’s what I can shave off my chores.”
Temujin was after his opportunity to talk to him. “We can stay out and I’ll help you with your chores.”
“You can’t help.” In a brag he told him, “If I don’t do my chores my grannies flog me. And I can back that up with the welts.”
Temujin gazed at him. He had been meant to gawk, maybe to admire. Maybe to see how big and tough he was, since he got flogged. Temujin obliged him and observed, “I only knew soldiers got flogged.”
“You were wrong, see. I do. I have to be a chief, and that’s hard in hard times and softly nurtured ends up soft, and soft’s no use to us.”
“Are you going to be a chief, Jamuqa?” he asked him with respect.
“Jajirat’s in the stewardship of my gra
nnies. Other kids aren’t flogged, even in Jajirat. My grannies are right hags, and I don’t care if they hear me. I’m an only child, and if my grannies can quell the trouble and keep the family in, I’m to be chief after my father. My father,” he got to the specifics, suspicious, pugnacious, “Black Qadan.”
Temujin knew about Black Qadan. Every Mongol knew, every Mongol boy. How can he make friends? Boys must bad-mouth his father to him, as they heard their fathers do. That is why he is a little itchy. Temujin skittered a knucklebone. “Isn’t Toghrul Khan your cousin, then?”
The other boy’s eyes flitted about his face, like a bird hopping. “I’m to call him uncle for his age. Toghrul’s fairly decent.”
“My father Yesugei has just become his anda. They drank each other’s blood with dust of gold, exchanged their clothes and gave a precious possession. Toghrul gave a colt with a cream coat and white hair, who’s half-divine. There’s a mountain far in the west where you leave your mare and the divine sires visit her from the clouds. Their offspring have such thin skins they sweat in blood, but they are hot, like shamans who walk naked in the snow and swallow embers. The sires talk and their offspring can understand our speech. Toghrul’s colt has been led here slowly, when he was in womb and through his life so far. My father can’t compete, but he gave his last treasure and his best: a sword from his grandfather Khabul, a blade of Indian steel damascened. It’s a union...”
Jamuqa watched him.
“... for life,” he wound up lamely. This, the whole of this, was copy, but his mouth had run away