Читать книгу Tamerlane: The Earth Shaker - Harold Lamb - Страница 6

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The chronicle tells us of Timur’s bride that her beauty was like the young moon, and her body graceful as the young cypress. She must have been about fifteen years of age, because she had been allowed to ride to the hunts with her father. Her name was, hereafter, Aljai Khatun Agha—the Lord’s Lady Aljai.

At that time the women of the Tatars went unveiled. They knew nothing as yet of the seclusion of harim, sanctuary. In the saddle, from an early age, they accompanied their lords through the varying fortunes of journey and campaign and pilgrimage. Being children of conquerors, they had their share of pride, and the vitality that comes from life in open country. Their great-grandmothers had had the care of all the family property, including the milking of camels and the making of boots.

The Tatar women of Timur’s day had property of their own—marriage portions and gifts of their lords. Wives of the greater nobles were mistresses of separate establishments, having quarters of their own in the palaces and individual groups of pavilions on the march. Unlike their sisters of Europe they did not occupy themselves with the embroidery frame or the tapestry or rug loom. They were companions of warriors, their duty the care of their young children; they took their place at the banquets of rejoicing, and, if their lord’s enemies prevailed over him, they were part of the spoils of defeat.

Princess Aljai came down from her home on the northern border escorted by her kinsmen and slaves. She presented herself before the Kingmaker, and there for the first time she saw the face of the man who was to be her master—the lean and bearded face of Timur who had come in from an excursion with the bahaturs to be present at his wedding.

“Thy fate is written upon thy forehead,” the learned men had said to her, “and alter it thou canst not.”

For the Kingmaker and his lords the wedding was simply an occasion for feasting, but for this daughter of the powerful Jalair^[1] clan it was the first day of her destiny. She was not present when the agreement was read before the Muhammadan judges and the names of witnesses written down, as the Koran ordained.

Her preparations were otherwise. She bathed in rosewater, and her long, dark tresses were washed first in oil of sesame then in hot milk until they gleamed as softly as silk. Then she was dressed in a gown of pomegranate red, embroidered with gold flowers. The gown was sleeveless, like the over-robe of white silk stiffened with cloth-of-silver—the robe that, trailing behind her, was borne in the hands of her women.

Over her slender shoulders fell the mass of black hair. Black jade pendants hung from her ears, and her head was made splendid by a cap of gold cloth, silk flowers covering its crown, and heron’s plumes sweeping back upon her hair.

So clad, Aljai advanced among the carpets where sat the Tatars—for the moment the girl drew their eyes. And again when she changed her dress and came back in different colours. Even her clear olive skin was tinted white with rice powder or white lead. A blue-black line was drawn over and between her eyebrows with woad juice.

While the men mixed spirits with their wine to get drunk the quicker and Aljai walked between them, impassive of face, erect and frightened, the Kingmaker scattered fistfuls of pearls among the throng, and at his summons the nakars thundered—the bronze-bound saddle drums that were the summons to rejoicing or war.

“Upon the twain,” cried Zain ad-Din, “be the peace of God, the one God!”

It was then the hour for gifts, not to the bride but to the assembled Tatars. Kazgan rose and went from group to group; his slaves carrying khalats, court coats. To some were given scimitars, to others girdles of price. For Kazgan, a Tatar of the old stock, was no niggard. And, besides, he knew the advantage to himself of mutual good-will.

While the nobles and warriors lay, contented and more than a little drowsy, on the carpets in the sun-flecked shade of the oak and willow groves, story-tellers came and squatted among them. Guitars strummed plaintively, and mellow voices recited well remembered tales—the listeners marking with appreciative ear the familiar inflections and gestures. They knew the stories as well as the tellers and would have felt cheated if a phrase had been altered or left out of the interminable, droning narratives. From time to time, remembering their manners, they gulped loudly, to show their appreciation of the feast.

Daylight faded and slaves appeared bearing torches. Lanterns were hung along the bank of the river and under the trees. Fresh leather platters of food were laid among the guests who exclaimed gutturally at the sight of smoking quarters of young lamb, and haunches of horses and barley cakes soaked in honey.

Once more Aljai passed among them, this time not to return. Timur led a white Arab charger over the carpets, a smooth-paced horse of racing blood, silk caparisoning hanging over its saddle down to the ground. Upon the charger he lifted Aljai, and led her away to his own pavilion.

Here, apart from the guests, her women had come to help her out of her head-dress and train. With them they had brought the chests of her belongings. They smiled when they felt her trembling under their hands when they took from the girl her outer robe, leaving her standing in her slippers and in the sleeveless gown and the heavy veil of her long hair.

They salaamed to the young lord who came into the pavilion silently. He had eyes only for Aljai, and the serving women withdrew. Timur’s few followers, who had assembled at the tent entrance to salute their mistress, now closed the curtain and went off to their quarters.

That night Aljai, lying in the young warrior’s arms, heard above the distant rush of the river and the murmur of voices the harsh thunder of the drums.

She was the first of Timur’s possessions. She did not live long, but while she lived no other women shared her place at Timur’s side.

There is no doubt that from his twentieth to his twenty-fourth year Messire Timur found life very good indeed. He made a home for Aljai out of a wing of the tenantless white clay palace of the Green City. He adorned the dwelling after his own taste, with the carpets, the silver and tapestry work that was the fruit of his soldiering. His father gave him the family cattle and pasture rights.

Amir Kazgan appointed him Ming-bashi, commander of a thousand—colonel of a regiment, we would say. And Timur rejoiced in his thousand, feeding them well, and never sitting down to a meal without some of them at his side. In his girdle he carried a list of their names. Kazgan, a judge of warriors, allowed Timur and his thousand to lead the advance of the army.

Often along the Samarkand road Timur would ride to his home a day ahead of the main body, the white dust rising about his horses in the moonlight, to greet Aljai and to make ready a feast for the lords that came behind him. He relished the splendour of these banquets in the water garden of the Green City. When Aljai bore him a son, Timur named the boy Jahangir—the World Gripper—and summoned all the amirs of the Kingmaker to a festival. They rode in to honour Timur—except his uncle Hadji Barlas, and Amir Bayazid Jalair, ruler of his wife’s clan.

“Truly,” said the guests, “Timur is a son of the Gurigan, the Splendid.”

And the wild hill clans that had served Aljai’s fathers made up songs about the master and the mistress of the Green City.

Aided by Timur’s daring, Kazgan gained new victories in the western desert and the southern valleys, bringing back to Sali Sarai the Malik of Herat as captive. He had profited much from the unselfish service of the young Barlas warrior, and together they might have continued to grow in power, when a new dissension broke out among Kazgan’s amirs.

They demanded that the captive Malik be put to death and his personal property divided among them. Kazgan had given his word to the Malik that he should come to no harm, and when the amirs grew more insistent—the Malik was an old foeman and wealthy—Kazgan secretly warned his prisoner, and freed him when they were hunting south of the river on the way to Herat. It is not clear whether Timur was sent, as one account has it, to escort the Malik back to Herat.

In any case he was absent when his protector Kazgan was put to death. The Kingmaker was indulging his fondness for hunting, and was still south of the river unarmed with a few followers, when two chieftains who cherished a grievance against him attacked Kazgan and shot him down with arrows.

Timur heard of it and rode up in time to carry the body back across the river, and bury it in the forest of Sali Sarai.

Then, before trying to protect his own possessions, he swam his horse again south over the Amu river to join the officers of the Kingmaker who were pursuing the murderers into the mountains. One of the oldest of the traditions of the Tatars was that a man should not sleep under the same sky with the slayer of his kin. The two chieftains who had struck down Kazgan did not live long.

Hunted from ravine to heights, changing horses at each village, they could not shake off the Tatars who followed their tracks and cut off the avenues of escape. The murderers were caught on the upper slopes of the mountains and their lives ended in a swift flashing of swords. This done, Timur hastened back to his own valley. He found a new order of things.

When a ruler died in mid-Asia, his son might take the throne only if the late chieftain had left a well-founded dominion and the son were able enough to hold it for himself; otherwise, at best, there would be a council of the great vassals and a new ruler chosen. At the worst—more often than not—there would be a general struggle for the throne and the strongest would seize it. They had a proverb, these helmeted men—“Only a hand that can grasp a sword may hold a sceptre.”

Kazgan’s son made a brief attempt to take the reins of authority in hand at Samarkand, but soon fled, preferring life to dignity. Then Hadji Barlas and the Jalair prince appeared at Samarkand and claimed the overlordship of the Tatars.

Meanwhile, the other amirs retired to their various citadels and mustered their warriors to the standards, preparing to defend their own possessions and raid their neighbours. It was the old weakness of the Tatars—clan struggling with clan for mastery. With one accord they would have followed a leader strong enough to whip them into place. But Kazgan had fallen in his blood, and Hadji Barlas and Bayazid Jalair were not the men to bridle these unruly spirits.

In such a time of trouble Taragai, the father of Timur, died in his monastery. Most of the Barlas men had followed the Hadji to Samarkand. Timur was left solitary in the Green City with a few hundred warriors.

And then, having watched events from behind his mountains, the great Khan of the north appeared upon the scene. He came, remembering the rebellion of a generation ago, with a powerful host—as vultures flock together upon a fallen horse.

[1] See Note VIII, p. 260.