streak still puts me off. Do you think we try hard to expunge our hunter past?”
Temujin was afraid to chew what hung out of his mouth. “Don’t know, dad.”
“Eat up. Enjoy,” Yesugei smiled.
He gulped.
“We have been here before. Borjigin have. Borjigin means Those Who Lived on Wild Fowl. Why do we boast of his time of misfortune? Because of his time of triumph. Out of his ordeal he hatched, a creature he mightn’t have been, Daft Bodonjar. He must be the Mongols’ example. Your name, now. I felt ambivalent on a trophy-name, but your mother told me the name stood for our survival, for our fight-back, for our inch of victory in the defeat.”
Temujin ate slowly, his eyes fastened on his father’s face.
“Boy, I have a secret to tell. If I tell you a secret, does that cut you off from your brother Jochi?”
“Jochi’s my comrade, but he’s a kid.”
Yesugei nodded.
Before he resumed Temujin jumped in, “Andas don’t have secrets. Do they, dad?” When Yesugei hesitated, anxiously, “He’d be pulled inside-out like a sleeve before he gabbed. We swapped our secrets. I know his.”
His father muttered, “I am too cruel to separate you from your friend. – Are you happy for me to talk to him, inspect his equipment, beforehand?”
“Yes, dad.”
“It’s a secret for your sake, my boy. If I have done at cross-purposes with heaven’s intentions – concealed an omen sent to Mongols – I thought of you, as a father does. There are others in the know: Bultachu Ba’atur, Uder Unan and Baqaji, and Lucky Telegetu of Jalaya. You remember him; he came when we cut your hair at six and he took his lock away. Do people talk to you, Temujin, about your entry into the world? I know Jochi has a crack or two.”
“He isn’t the only one. I have to hear a bit of smart-aleckry. Temujin Bloody-Hand, or the Fist of Fate.”
“From the other children?”
“Dear me, no.” The boy rejected this in wonderment. “The other kids never gave me grief. From Tarqutai Chief.”
Yesugei shook his head. “Have you any sense, yourself, of a fate?”
His mouth made an inaudible no.
“I took your omen to a tolgechi, who told me what the heavens above told her. I can’t say I was glad at heart to hear the task you have. In the very hour you came to us, your great-uncle Cutula was hewn by Tartar axes. Since him, no chief has stepped forward to take up the load he then laid down. Our chieftaincies, Temujin, in these days, I am sorry to say, go too often to men who have that perversion that is not the wish to be great, the thirst for glory, but is ambition. If the type I talk of saw their way, they would. They haven’t, because the Mongols are split, impoverished, at feud, infiltrated. We steal from one another, Temujin, to pay the tribute – that is true. It is a sad state of affairs. No-one has stuck his hand up, neither our public-spirited nor our most corrupt. But in that hour when you coincided with Cutula he handed you his baton. The great task, the heavy load: to be the Mongols’ khan. In your khanship we have been promised to win the battles that we lost.”
Across the fire, Temujin, perched on his feet with his knees either side of his ears, stared owlishly.
“Does this daunt you, boy?”
Now he blinked, a slow owl’s blink. “Us kids had our fortunes told. Mine was, Never first in arms, but never last in wisdom; not magnificent, but dear to the magnificent.”
“That was a piece of amusement. This is a tolgechi, who ascends the sky. You understand the difference.”
“Yes, dad,” he answered strongly. “I understand the difference. I meant...” But he didn’t say what he meant. Instead, with a stout air, he said, “No.”
“No?”
“It doesn’t daunt me. If I have my fate.”
Yesugei’s forehead puckered. Of course, he had set about to daunt his child. “Come here.”
For just a moment Temujin hung back. Then he scampered in between Yesugei’s knees.
“There.” Yesugei stroked his scalp, tender-skinned after a shave. “These are big affairs, but they are far, far off. You aren’t big, nor have to be. You are my boy Temujin, and that is your only, only fate, for years ahead.”
“Daddy,” he yelped childishly and wriggled into his coat.
Two peaks in winter white glowed against the sky, fifty flat miles apart, Frosty Mount to north, Flowery Mount to south. “In sight of the twin mountains we are in Ongirat. But a third of our journey yet to Olqunot. You’ll like Ongirat. Though that’s a silly thing to say. You like your mother, I suppose, and several of your aunts.”
“But I haven’t met a he-Ongirat. You wonder whether they have them.”
“There’s a he for you, by his beard. Dead ahead and trotting towards us. I can tell he’s Ongirat, too: a waist unencumbered by weaponry.”
They stopped to greet him. A wrinkled old gentleman with a gossamer silvery beard from his chin, in chalky white felts but for red boots, wide, embroidered, the toe upturned; his cloudy grey horse had accoutrements in red and an ornate loop of a bit. He introduced himself as Dei Sechen of the Bosqur. None of this was name: dei is an endearment for an uncle, a sechen is a sage. Clan heads in Ongirat are titled Sechen, Temujin had learnt.
“It’s my lad I’m here for. We are come to find us a wife, aren’t we, Temujin?”
Temujin tucked in the corners of his mouth at the man.
“A big-limbed lad, and lively-faced. He has spirit and intelligence: fire in his eyes, light in his countenance.”
“I thank you, Uncle Dei.” Uncle my uncle, this was to say. “A kind verdict.”
Affably the old gentleman said, “Shall we ride on together, friend, and shorten the way? My way lies with yours.”
“You weren’t going...?” Yesugei turned his thumb back, the way the Ongirat had been going.
He crinkled up his eyes. “My way lies with yours.”
Temujin liked him, in spite of the quiz he put him through. He had been warned about the quizzes, when he fronted up for people’s girls. “Do we have a hope in your tribe?” asked Yesugei at the end of his interrogation.
“Forgive me. It’s the instinct, to try out their gaits, when a boy comes to us to woo.” Dei Sechen had a turn of speech oracular, old-fashioned and ornate; nothing Temujin didn’t hear in songs. Next he sang outright, about Ongirat and girls.
The tribe of the Ongirat from old times
Has depended on the beauty of our daughters,
Lived by the love of our granddaughters.
We do not compete with other peoples.
For you who are grown great figures in the world
We send our soft-face girls.
We harness to a Kazakh cart a he-camel of black, amble out
And seat them upon thrones at the side of kings.
We do not compete for mastery of peoples.
Up the step we hand our girls of shapely faces,
Sit them on the high fronts of the carts, hitch the dark camels;
Towards kings and khans our daughters drive;
We elevate them to the queens’ seats at your sides.
From old times the tribe of the Ongirat
Has had the countenance of queens to be our circled shields.
We live by the love of granddaughters,
Armoured only in the beauty of our daughters.
“Is ours not the way to live, friend Yesugei?”
As they jogged along Yesugei had half-closed his eyes to the lullaby, on the white glow of the mountains and the vast blue above. He laughed. “A noble way to live, Uncle Dei.”
“Last night I dreamt a dream, at dawn when true dreams come. Today I have ridden out in search of my dream and you find me on the quest. Thus it is I do not know which way I go.”
“A lucky dream?”
“Most fortunate, extravagantly fortunate. Mayhap, since I chanced upon you, you have an insight for me.”
“Why, I am no augur. But I’ll listen to a dream.”
“In m
y dream I saw a gerfalcon in flight, sheer white, with the sun and the moon in its talons. It flew down to me, as if I had cast the bird, and alighted on my glove with its trophies.”
“That is happy augury and no mistake.”
“Fabulous, and I awoke to know today is my fabulously lucky day. What is a person to do, but ride about like a tomfool until his luck drops into his lap?”
“I don’t know what else I’d do. Have you had a clue?”
“None. None, and the hours creep by.”
“I wish you advent of your fortune, Dei Sechen.”
A sigh wafted his gossamer beard. “The anticipation has tired me out. It’s noon and I need my noonday milk. You’ll quench your thirst with me? We aren’t far. There, we are in sight.”
Mount Frosty and Mount Flowery watered trees between them, thinly. In winter larches smoke from a chimney fluttered like grey leaves. “Dad,” whispered Temujin, “he is like an enchanter from a tale.”
“Temujin? I rarely know you rude.”
“I’m not rude, dad. But he attached himself, and he wants us to go home with him.”
“I don’t think he means to put us in a potion or turn us into pigs. He is a little wizardly, in the nicest way. I’ll watch out for you.”
“Me you, dad.”
“Right we are, then, boy.”
A neat fuel stack, both dung pats and dead branches; a tidy porch new-swept; a homely ger of rugs and cushions, pots and pans; the weaponry, if there was weaponry, not on the walls but stowed away. Dei Sechen talked of his fourteen children, their dispersal: his daughters gone to far tribes, his sons set up with flock and herd, summer and winter graze-grounds, the oldest the furthest away, with most time to get on his feet. “Of eight sons I’m left with only my otchigin at home.”
This was Alchi, a half-grown-up lad, or young for his age as the hearth-child often is. Yesugei spoke on the hearth-child. “The staff of your father’s age. And busy enough for you, I expect, him a widower.”
“Oh, I have a lazy life of it. Don’t I, father?” answered Alchi. “There’s the fairy housewife for the work.”
Dei Sechen agreed. “My otchigin’s work is to see his old father isn’t lonely at his hearth, and otherwise, he hangs on the teat.”
“I do just what an otchigin ought. I cosset my father and draw the furs up over his knees.”
Now Dei Sechen crinkled and twinkled.
Yesugei smiled and tried, “Mine’s Temuge. A true otchigin: he knows he’s to be my crutch and my daily milk, and baits me like a blind bull. Knows he’s to inherit and acts as if he owns the ger. Fire tegin, in the original Turk, and he thinks he’s a prince. He’s three.”
“Three and known your otchigin?”
“Yes, he won’t be ousted from the station. My wife has done her bit for the Mongol cause.”
In at the door toddled a wee girl behind a very big cheese. “But here she is: the child of my age.” Dei Sechen’s face melted like butter on the stove. “My daughter Borte. Ten years.”
“Meet the fairy housewife,” said Alchi, and he softened up noticeably too.
Ten, going on twenty. Back to the larder and in she toddled with a thigh of wild donkey and shaved the stiff, half-frozen meat into the pot. When she had this at a simmer she took out her embroidery. Nomads have two opportunities for art: poetry and ornament; nothing a nomad wears, lives in or uses cannot be ornamental. Alchi wore a shirt from Borte’s hands, in a washed-blue that was a sky for a wild embroidery of birds. The felt on her lap, streaky ochres for a sunrise, was being stitched with more birds. Poetry and ornament are both for general hands (nothing isn’t on the steppe) but there are the true artists amongst us, whom spirits inspire. He might be watching one. Beyond the child’s unfinished technique there was the vision – not so far beyond either – in which she was rapt. In her spare time. While Yesugei had been here no-one else had lifted a hand; her father, her brother and the guests sat comfortably on their left felt boots, nibbled cheese and nattered. Just like home, only the ger manager was ten. Did she make the tack and mend the wagons too? Grown women did, and she’d better get used to it.
“My,” he commented to the father. “It’s true what they tell me, then: a girl grows up faster. You know, I haven’t much experience with girls. I have brothers, and until my angel at the end, I have sons. Quite why I’m entrusted with estimation of the girls of Ongirat, I can’t say. The husband-to-be’s no use to consult. – Where is the husband-to-be?”
“My otchigin took him out to see the horses.”
“There you are. That’s the interest he displays, with a fine specimen of a girl in front of him. A girl has to outshoot him or he doesn’t notice her.”
“A universal fault in boys, and why our girls include archery in their acquirements. Household skills, they know, won’t earn them points at that age.”
“Don’t tell me. Yours is a precision shot, on top.”
“I’d be a liar to tell you that. She quails from a live target and weeps over a kill. Uriangqot weep over their kill, in the waila ritual. That’s my Borte.”
“Not the proud hunter of that wild donkey, then.”
“But the hunters are not so callous as herders. Are they?”
“You are perfectly right, and you cite me Uriangqot tears. A Uriangqot hasn’t quite forgotten jargalant, and he no more thinks to eat his domestic stock than eat his neighbour. His elk’s a member of the tribe. And do you know, I grow more like him? Not through virtue. I’ve had to teach my boy butchery on other people’s sheep. Kill old Harry? I can’t afford to. Old Harry, who slept in my shirt when he was a lamb with a cough, whom I have struggled to keep a Mongol and not a Chinese sheep. Milk and wool, year in year out, are more value than a one-off treat of meat. When wealthy we gobble meat but we live amply on dairy. I don’t try to say we had grown luxurious, or complacent, or lost to the time of innocence. I don’t know what I try to say.”
Dei Sechen suggested, “Things change for our children. Our children’s lives are going to be different than yours and mine. We do not absolutely know they are going to be worse.”
“Even catastrophe isn’t without its upside. Is that an odd thing to say? I don’t mean we have learnt a lesson – Tangr knows what lesson, and one harshly taught. I don’t mean that. Just that we on earth can’t see the consequences. Few catastrophes have only bad consequences.”
“You chime in with my mood today, my guest Yesugei. Today dawn I dreamt of the sun and the moon. How can I believe the future is dark? Optimism isn’t often heard, but pessimism, I dare assert, won’t aid us.”
“An idiot optimist is not so unwise as a gloomy-guts. At least, I hope.” He gave a nod to the daughter, her embroidery on her lap. “Your daughter’s birds aren’t gloomy. In the blue sky or the sunrise. They have more a sense of freedom and of magnificence.”
“Ask Borte what Bor Nor means to her and she’ll tell you, the birds. The shores of Bor Nor are where our girls watch the blue-foot crane in courtship, our emblem of troth and true love. Borte embroiders on other themes, from the gamut of traditional themes, a few of them dark contemplations. But she always comes back to the birds, and her birds, no, never are gloomy. More in the way of effulgent glory.”
“Lively as they are, I can see why they might fly off the felt and into your dreams of a night, Uncle Dei. I can almost say she captures the light of the sky.”
He tipped his head. “Perhaps, yes, perhaps.” Very affably he asked him, “Are you no great believer in a dream, my friend?”
“Ah.” This caught Yesugei out. “It seems I am. My skeptical stance, I have to admit to you, has proved skin-deep in the past.”
His thoughts, of course, turned to Temujin; they had run on Temujin a while past. He had told him, and the other thing to do was see him to a wife. Why? To balance up, to put the other wheel on. From the start Yesugei hadn’t been altogether happy to dedicate his child to vengeance, no matter how deeply he felt the deaths at Bor Nor. Our children aren’t here
to fix our mistakes, but to have lives, lives we can’t guess at. Did Dei Sechen say that? Catastrophe and vengeance: one major wifely function is to pull you out of dark thoughts, in Yesugei’s experience, to commit you to life, too. That was Yesugei’s experience. How gloomy might he have been in these nine years without Hoelun? He’d have keeled over with gloom... with guilt. Temujin, he was determined, had a right to that other aspect of life – which determination lay behind this haste to get him wived. I am hasty, aren’t I? But I can feel I’ve put the other wheel on.
Why not a wife who, at mention of Bor Nor, thinks of the birds?
Hang on, Yesugei. There’s haste and there’s haste. Plump for the first girl you meet, they’ll laugh at you for a soft touch. Sees a girl, has his head turned. Merely on those grounds you can’t.
“Can I offer you mine for a trial run?”
He started. “A trial run?”
“You spoke of your inexperience with girl children. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander – I put your boy to the quiz. Get your measure to gauge them by. Borte’s at the age when she’ll have to stand up to an inspection. It’s a trial run for her too.”
To this Yesugei said, “Only sensible. Set me a high standard, else I’ll be putty in the hands. But your daughter’s on a schedule. Can she fit me in?”
The father launched them. “Tell the marshal of Kiyat where Kiyat got their name.”
Promptly she answered, “The Torrents. Qaidu gave them the name for a battle-deed in the defence of the Sacred Mountains, a charge down a spring-torrent gorge.”
“Try her on other tribes.” Dei Sechen went to have a snuff of air out on his porch, not to inhibit Yesugei in his inspection of his daughter.
Yesugei flipped a finger at her over his upright knee. “Qabturqas. Totem and tuq.”
She rattled them off.
“I give up. Tell me about you. Are you happy here with your father and his otchigin? They keep you on the go, you being the lady of the tent.”
Naively she told him, “My father says I am his daughter, his granddaughter and his wife in one, and that is how much he loves me.”
“Fair enough.”
Sincerely she told him, “A wife’s work is never done.”
“For a truth.” Unobserved by Dei Sechen he said what entered his head. “My aunt Galut Queen was about as put-upon as you in a war camp. Tell me, when your father has to give away his three-in-one, and hands you up onto a Kazakh camel-cart, where do you fancy to go?”
She plucked from the air, “Tibet.”
“Tibet? And what about Tibet entitles Tibet to you?”
“I don’t know any girls who have gone.”
“Neither do I. The yaks are out of Tibet, and Bultachu’s wife Prajna; but getting in? The Blue Turks wrote on their history-stones, we conquered north and south and east and west, but we never got into Tibet. And the T’ang have a similar lament. You’re an explorer, then, Borte? And your Tibetan boy? – because there’s a boy at the end of your travels, for better or for worse. What do you look for in him?”
“I’d like a boy you can talk to.”
“Talk to?” Yesugei scratched behind an ear. “I knew you’ve have high standards. What if he’s the King of Tibet’s boy – let’s call