To Chris, who read it first

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Epilogue

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Chapter One

Bruce McLennan, Scottish laird and master of all that lay in his sight, stood on the edge of a deep, wide, square pit. It was dug into the top of a crag that stood next to a river. The men who had dug it were standing around it, filthy, tired and covered with sweat. There were over a hundred of them, all tenants of the laird’s, and it had taken them two months to level the hilltop and dig the pit in one corner. All the work had been done with picks and shovels, and the spoil carried away in big baskets and cast down the hill. From a distance it looked as if the hill had been decapitated, with the pale blood of the inner ground flowing down its sides.

Bruce McLennan stared down into the newly-excavated depths. At the moment there was just a hole in the ground. But he could already see a dungeon.

He could imagine it lined with big blocks of stone. He could imagine iron rings in the walls, to which prisoners could be chained. He could imagine the huge wooden door with iron panels and hinges and lock, and a heavy brass key. He could even foreshadow a man, languishing down there in the raw depths, his prisoner – helpless, wretched, defeated – chained to the wall, not just a symbol of conquest but a real man, one he hated with his whole heart. Or what was left of it, for this villain had destroyed all that was precious and love-filled in the life of McLennan, leaving him a hollow man burning for vengeance, but not headstrong enough to go after it until he was ready.

At the laird’s side stood Master Douglas of Berwick. This man had led the building of fortresses and castles in several parts of Scotland, England and Wales. Only Bruce McLennan’s considerable wealth had gained him the services of this master builder, who stood now at a rough table that had been set up for him. He was poring over a number of large pieces of slate, on which were scratched drawings that he and McLennan had made together. He alone knew McLennan’s intentions and the extent of his ambition for this project.

‘Foreman!’ McLennan shouted. ‘Where the devil are ye? Och, there y’are! Now then.’ He chose one of the slate-plans and put it into the work-stained hands of his main man. ‘Here’s how the dungeon is to look when it’s finished, do ye ken?’

The foreman took the drawing and stared at it. It was a good drawing. He could feel he was looking down into the finished chamber, as if he were a bird flying above it, or rather, since of course it would have a ceiling, a spider crawling over it. A faint shudder passed across his shoulders. It would be a fearful place to be locked into.

‘Aye, sir.’

‘And here,’ McLennan produced more slates, ‘are the plans for the castle.’

The first plan showed a bird’s-eye view of an imposing square structure with a courtyard, or ward, in the centre. In this was a well – a vital adjunct should the castle ever come under siege. At the corners of the ward were four round crenellated towers (the dungeon would be underneath one of them), linked by walls with battlements, a main gate with two massive U-shaped gatehouses, a small postern gate that led down to the river, and a deep-dug moat in front, to be crossed by a ramp and drawbridge.

The next plan showed a side elevation, with very narrow windows, like slits, so arrows could fly out but couldn’t so easily fly in. A third, fourth and fifth gave a lot of detail, showing many rooms: a great hall, stables, storerooms and servants’ quarters, all to be built against the inside of the thick walls. The foreman stared at these in admiration. It would be an exciting and difficult project, even for an experienced engineer like himself.

It would need many workers – hundreds, possibly over a thousand. Digging was just the start of it! They would need quarriers to bring the stone for the building; stone masons to build the mighty walls, many feet thick, with skins of mortared stones packed with rubble between; blacksmiths to make and mend iron tools; plumbers to create cisterns and latrines; and carpenters to make scaffolding and later, the floors, for the castle would have two storeys. In addition there would have to be hundreds of unskilled labourers.

‘Any questions?’ barked his master.

‘Aye, m’laird. How are the needful workers to be found? Where are they to live?’

McLennan picked up another plan from the pile of slates on the table.

‘Ye see where my house is, down there below?’ He pointed to a large timber-framed manor house at the foot of the crag. ‘It won’t stand alone for long! Men will come when they are offered good wages, cheap homes and farmland, and my protection against danger. While the first levelling and digging is going on, ye’re to send men as far afield as Edinburgh to recruit. Word will spread! By the time I get back from my travels, I’ll lay there’ll be a small town where my house is, and farms and hamlets besides, all over my land.’

‘Ye plan a journey, m’laird?’

‘Aye. A long, long journey,’ replied McLennan drily. He glanced at the master builder at his side. ‘And that’ll please you, Master Douglas, I dunna doubt! Ye’ll have a free hand, without me here to nag and interfere with ye. As for you, Foreman,’ he added, ‘dunna think because the cat’s away, the mice can play. I’ve engaged some overseers to make sure no one slacks.’

The foreman bit back a retort. It irked him sometimes that this man, as lowborn as himself, and lower, should have such power over him. Especially now, since he was so sorely changed from the man he had been once. Not that that was to be wondered at, after what had happened to him.

‘Will ye afford a wall around this – this township, m’laird?’

McLennan thought for a moment. ‘There’s no need for a stone wall. A wooden palisade with earth ramparts within will suffice.’

‘And if there should be a raid or any trouble while ye’re away, what then?’

‘We’re too far from the border for the English to come at us.’

‘I was thinking of a closer enemy,’ the foreman said under his breath.

There was a bad moment of silence. Then McLennan said, in an unnaturally quiet voice, ‘Lightning doesna strike the same place twice.’

The man had the sense to say no more on that subject. Instead he said respectfully, ‘I trust ye’ll no’ run into danger yourself, sir.’

‘I trust I will,’ returned McLennan obscurely.

The foreman thought he had misheard.

‘How long will ye be away, sir?’

McLennan lost patience and roared at him. ‘How the blazes d’ye expect me to know that? My plan is to travel to the far ends of the earth. Whatever I find there, I’m planning to see plenty of it, before I turn around and come back!’

The foreman looked at the plans again. When his laird flew into these sudden rages, it was better not to meet his eyes.

‘Sir?’ he ventured timidly.

‘Well?’

‘I see no chapel on the plans.’

‘That’s because there will be none.’

Now the man’s head did come up, and he looked at his master. Bruce McLennan towered over him. He had flaming red hair and a bushy red beard. His strong, bare legs below his kilt were planted apart; his arms, brawny and hairy as a pig’s flanks, were folded across his chest, compressing his plaid which blew back in the wind. He looked a mighty man indeed. Not one to cross – every man present knew that.

‘No – place of worship, m’laird?’

‘Not in my castle. If, outside it, ye feel the need for a church, ye can build one, but in your ain time and with your ain money.’

There was a tense silence. Was there a touch of blasphemy here? Many eyes went to Master Douglas, who was reputed to be a devout Christian; but if he had felt scandalised on first learning of this unheard-of omission, he showed nothing now.

‘How long have we to complete the work?’

‘Here is the only answer I’ll give ye,’ said the master. ‘When I choose to come back, my castle had better be standing up against yon sky, and my dungeon had better be below it. If not, I’ll hang the lot o’ ye from whatever ye have built. Do I make myself understood?’

There was a cowed silence around the dungeon pit. There was hostility in that silence, too, but it was lost on their master. Though once he had been different, now he cared nothing for their good opinion so long as they obeyed him. And obey him they must, for he was their liege-laird, and they his tenant-serfs, not much better than slaves.

Half an hour after the last workman had left the site, and McLennan had retired to his house to prepare for his journey, a young boy called Finlay McLean climbed up the disturbed and treacherous slope. The sun had set beyond the river and the lad had to grope his way forward and upward over the shifting ground in deepening twilight. Several times he lost his footing and slipped and slithered down several feet, and once he fell forward on his belly and had to dig his fingers into the loose soil and stones to stop himself sliding to the bottom of the crag.

Once he had gained the levelled top, he doubled up and ran to the edge of the dungeon pit. He feared the master might be watching from his window at the foot of the hill and see his silhouette. But when he reached the pit’s edge he knew he would be hidden from below, and he straightened up and stared downward into the darkening depths.

He couldn’t rightly see through the shadows to the bottom. He thought he might as well be looking down into The Pit as described by the priest in the course of his many warning sermons. Fin fancied if he stumbled over the edge, he would fall and go on falling till he reached that furiously burning region in the middle of the earth, where the damned were subject to unending torment.

Yet the curiosity that had brought him up here, held him.

He knew who this dungeon had been dug for. His name was Archibald McInnes, a name Fin had never heard spoken aloud, even by his father in his own home – a farmhouse two miles away – from where he came to work in the master’s stables. In whispers they spoke that name, and that name’s crimes, crimes that had changed a good man, a good laird, into one to be feared. The whispers told how the whole feud had begun, with a dispute over the border between the lands of the two lairds who were neighbours. How there had been a skirmish in which the neighbour’s nephew had been killed. And what followed, a tale too terrible to be told before a child; but Fin had heard it anyway, as children do who have their ears open on the brink of sleep when adults think they are over that brink, and speak more freely than they should.

A terrible tale. A dreadful happening, dark with blood and cruelty, a crime crying out for vengeance. Yes, thought Fin, shivering as he peered into the blackening depths as the sky darkened over him. If his master captured McInnes and brought him back here – as clearly he meant to, one day, when his castle was built and he had enough men owing him allegiance to be sure of success – the villain would deserve to be hurled down there, down, down, into the pitchy gloom, however deep it went, and never to be seen on the warm bright surface-earth again.

Fin was in the stables of the manor house a week later, on the day Bruce McLennan set off on his travels. He had not had the honour of grooming and saddling his horse. Robert the head groom did that. Nor was it Fin who led the animal out and handed the reins to the master. But it was Fin’s job to hold the opposing stirrup as the laird mounted. He had almost to swing on it to balance the master’s weight and keep the saddle from slipping.

McLennan didn’t notice the young tow-headed lad level with his heel as he swung himself into the saddle. He couldn’t know, as he scraped the boy’s knuckles with his boot, what a fateful role this grubby nondescript boy, staring up at him in awe, would play in his future. He left him behind as he left everything behind, and rode away without a glance back.

He’d had no one to say goodbye to. He had handed the keys of his house to Master Douglas. It was full of appalling memories and he was glad to be shot of it for ever. He wouldn’t need it when he came back. He’d have a castle to live in by then – a castle with a dungeon. The idea of it was like balm spread over a wound, in a place in his soul even deeper than the dungeon pit.

‘Do unto others!’ he thought fiercely as he rode. So said the scriptures. Aye. Do unto others as they have done unto you.

He rode down the length of the northern island that comprises Scotland, England and Wales, to its south coast. This took days – and several horses, for he was a hard rider. He put up at wayside inns when he found them, and when he didn’t he would camp outdoors. When there was a reasonable road (the best had been built by the Romans ten centuries before) and some moonlight, he would ride far into the night to put off having to sleep alone under the sky, or eat and drink without company to distract his mind.

Sometimes when he was sitting by a campfire on some desolate moor or under some ancient oak in the depths of a forest, memories would come back to him of his childhood in a modest croft on the island where his father was a fisherman and his mother spun sheep’s wool and wove cloth from it to sell. He remembered these two people he had loved, and his brothers and sister, and the happiness he had known as a wild young boy, torn between family affection and a driving restlessness. Sometimes he even thought he could smell the good smells of fish and the sea, of the steaming soap-vats in which his mother washed the wool; he would hear the sounds of young lambs in the spring bleating for the ewes, and feel the warmth of his bed with his brothers sleeping close to him while the peat fire made a glow on the low, whitewashed ceiling until it died away.

These pleasant memories had a double power. They let him relive his happy, humble childhood, and they made him proud, by contrast, of his present high position. It was not often a fisherman’s son rose to become a laird, owner of a large estate with command over several hundred tenant-serfs who owed him unquestioning loyalty. And he had earned this elevation, not merely inherited it.

He might have blushed to remember why he had resisted becoming a fisherman like his father – seasickness – but he had forgotten that. What he remembered was travelling south alone to volunteer in the King’s service against the English, who were striving fruitlessly but bloodily to subdue Scotland. He did the King great service, even saving his life on one occasion when he was thrown from his horse on the field of battle. What a piece of miraculous good fortune that the young McLennan had been nearby at that fateful moment. Nineteen years old, strong and quick and with the recklessness of a highland bull, McLennan had fought his way swiftly to his monarch’s side, and carried him over his broad shoulder to safety while the horses trampled and neighed and the swords clashed around him… For this action, the King had rewarded him royally with land and gold, and put him in the way of a beautiful highborn wife.

But when his proud recollections reached this point, McLennan seized hold of them and slammed a door on them, a door as thick and ironbound as the one he had ordered for his dungeon.

At last he reached the south coast. He wandered from port to port in growing impatience, haunting the quayside taverns, hungrily watching and listening. But he could only hear of ships sailing to ports in Europe. They were not what he wanted.

Then his luck changed. He had drifted up to the Port of London. Most men from the north who had never before seen the biggest town in the islands would have spent hours and days exploring the bustling streets, some grand, some vice-ridden and squalid, yet offering much entertainment… But McLennan was single-minded. He made straight for the dockside and there, in a cheerful tavern reeking of stale ale and unwashed bodies, he met a common sailor who had heard the stories he himself had heard.

‘Ho, yus, Marco-Polo-land! Chi-na, they call it. It’s a rare place, they say! But you can’t sail all the way there,’ he went on, when McLennan had stood him some ale. ‘You’d have to do as he did, the Venetian, sail to St. Jean d’Acre, the port of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, or to Constantinople – that’s in Turk-land, I been there! – and after that you must go by land. A year’s journey, they say, or more if the weather’s against you, along the road the silk comes by.’

‘Silk? What’s that?’

‘Wot, ain’t you heard of silk? I ain’t never seen it, but they say it’s the most wonderfullest stuff in the world,’ the sailor said.

‘Is it food?’ asked McLennan.

The man blew his ale out in a spray of laughter. ‘Course not, it’s not for eatin’! It’s for wearin’! But you’ll never feel the touch of it on your back. How they make it’s a secret – it’s not something that grows from the ground. I heard a venomous spider spins it, and only them that’s immune to its poison can harvest it. It’s that rare and costly, only royalty, or highborn lords and ladies, can buy it! It has to be brought a journey of ten thousand miles, they say, across land where no civilised man can live, for it’s all desert and icy mountains, and the way plagued by tribes of the fiercest riders and fighters in the world.’ He lowered his voice and put his mouth close to McLennan’s ear. ‘Ain’t you never heard of the Mongols and Tartars?’

McLennan shook his head. His heart was beating with excitement. This was what he had dreamed of. A dangerous venture that would shut out the past and truly test his mettle!

‘They’re the most monstrous cruel men God ever made,’ the man continued in a whisper, as if a Mongol horde might even now ride into this dingy tavern and slaughter the drinkers. ‘They’ve conquered all the lands of the east! Chi-na, too. They rule it now, and the Chi-na men can like it or lump it. ’Tis said they’ve the best army since the days of Rome. Nay, better! They fight on horseback, and each man rides as if him and his horse were one beast. As to their natures—’ he grimaced. ‘Say no more! If a town resists ’em, they wipe it out, down to the last man, woman and child!’ And he made a throat-cutting gesture, accompanied by a graphic squelching sound. ‘And that’s their best weapon, for after a few massacres of that sort, none dare stand against them, so they’re unbeatable!’

McLennan closed his eyes suddenly. Throat-cutting was a horror very fresh in his memory. But he set his teeth and opened his eyes again, speaking more sharply than he had meant. ‘How can I get to the Turk city you named?’

‘Plenty of ships going there, it’s one of the great ports for the spice and gem trade,’ said the sailor. ‘See that captain over there? His ship’s bound for the Mediterranean on tomorrow’s tide. If you’ve money enough, go ask him if you can be his passenger.’

McLennan was canny. He didn’t want to pay too much. He waited till the captain of the ship bound for Constantinople was reeling drunk to approach him and strike his bargain.

The voyage was long and dangerous, but McLennan didn’t mind danger. He liked it. He’d lived with danger all his life, and he never felt fully alive if he was completely safe. Besides, the thrill of fear drove out thoughts.

What he didn’t like was rough seas. In the Bay of Biscay, off the coast of Portugal, there were violent storms that threw the ship about like a cork; its crew had to struggle against wind and waves, holding on to lifelines on deck, and lashing themselves to the yards, and even so, two were swept overboard. Passengers were ordered to keep below decks.

At first this infuriated McLennan, but he was soon forced to remember he was a bad sailor. It humiliated him to be brought low with seasickness. After bouts of vomiting he would lie groaning on his hard bunk, cursing this half-forgotten weakness.

But when the sea wasn’t rough, he spent a lot of time standing at the ship’s rail, dreaming of the foreign land which was the goal of his journey.

How, in his distant Scottish home, had he heard of this exotic place? Some time ago a wandering pedlar had called on McLennan. He had but one arm, and the smell on him of foreign parts, and while he showed his wares, he hinted he’d been to sea as a pirate, and dropped more hints of fabulous tales he could tell.

McLennan, not usually welcoming to strangers, paid the man to spend a few days with him, so that he could listen to his traveller’s tales, and his imagination had been inflamed by the sheer strangeness of what the pedlar described. Venturing to a place so outlandish would be like escaping his own world into another: a country on the other side of the world that was said to be more advanced than any nation in Europe, where lords – the equivalent in rank of McLennan – lived in incredible splendour, with scores of wives and servants, surrounded by priceless objects of unearthly beauty; where they spoke an indecipherable language, and wrote it in pictures; where the men had hair to their waists, and the women tiny feet no longer than a man’s finger, and where food never sampled in the west was eaten from dishes so fine you could see the light through them.

Of course everything the pedlar told him might be lies… But McLennan was determined not to die without seeing this place of wonders, if it truly existed.

The ship docked at last in Constantinople and McLennan disembarked, glad to feel the solid ground under his feet. Had he been less obsessed with the faraway country of his dreams, he would have lingered longer to explore the great Mohammedan mosques and magnificent palaces, roofed in gold and walled with beautiful painted tiles, and the crowded markets full of strange smells and stranger goods. But he’d heard the journey would take a year and cover ten thousand miles – and so there was no time to delay.

He soon learned there were inns called caravanserai where the traders gathered with their trade-goods so that they might travel together in greater safety. No one took this route alone. Here McLennan for the first time encountered the weird beast of burden called a gamal, bearing no more resemblance to a horse than that it had four legs and hair on its misshapen body. It was immensely tall with a hillock of flesh on its back, and its legs ended in big flat pads. It had foul breath and a temper worse than McLennan’s own, but it seemed that without these creatures no one could travel or transport goods over the terrain they had to cross.

So McLennan hired one, and took the advice of its owner – given during a visit to the market, in sign language – as to his likely needs on the journey ahead. He secretly hoped he would never be called upon to mount a gamal, as its height above ground, and its inhospitable hump, would surely make him as seasick as clinging to the poop deck of a ship on high seas.

Once again McLennan’s patience was tested. It took weeks for the caravan to assemble. But at last the party, consisting of about thirty men and as many gamal (or camels, as McLennan came to call them since he couldn’t pronounce the guttural language of his servant-guide) set off, the camels heavily loaded, the men on foot.

McLennan was lucky. There was a Portuguese trader among the men, a seasoned traveller called Afonso, who had made this journey once before and who spoke a little English. At first they could hardly understand each other, but Afonso was a talkative man; before a month of the journey had passed, they could converse, and better and better as the long days and longer nights passed.

The Portuguese spoke a great deal about his wife and children and to this McLennan deafened himself. He would sit by the campfire at night and stare into it and say nothing, trying not to listen, not to remember.

‘You have wife? Childs?’ Afonso kept asking.

McLennan clenched his teeth and made no answer.

‘You no find wife in Chi-na! No see womans there. Mans hide womans.’

‘Tell me about Chi-na, never mind the “womans”,’ McLennan growled.

He learned much about their destination, which the Chi-na men called the Middle Kingdom, thinking it the centre of the world. From this translation of its name came the nickname some travellers gave to its inhabitants – ‘Mi-Ki’.

‘Those Mi-Ki no like stranger,’ Afonso said. ‘Trader not all time behave well. Some cheat, some steal. Get drunk. Very bad. Now Mi-Ki think all mans from west bad. They call us devils from far—’

‘Foreign devils?’

‘Si. So best is, keep quiet, no drink, do trade, go home.’

‘I intend to stay,’ said McLennan. But Afonso didn’t believe him.

‘No one stay,’ he said.

‘Marco Polo did,’ thought McLennan. But he didn’t say it aloud. It might be just a rumour that the Venetian had become a member of some kingly court and stayed many years.

Another time, when McLennan had been regaling Afonso, as they trudged along the weary miles, with tales of his prowess in battle back in Scotland, the Portuguese gave him a sideways grin. ‘You like to fight?’

‘I like it well enough when I choose,’ McLennan answered.

‘Mi-Ki rule now by Mongol king call Kublai Khan. Most great ruler in all world.’

‘Aye, so I’ve heard.’

‘You like to fight Mongol? Then you show you great warrior!’

But McLennan knew when he was being mocked. He already understood that no one could beat the Mongols.

Nevertheless, through the hard journey across the wild desert regions of central Asia, McLennan began to dream of war and battle. Action. Action was what he had always needed and craved, ever since a night when he was held immobile, bound to a door that he had all but torn from its hinges in his frenzy.

Chapter Two

The journey took many months. And if it wasn’t ten thousand miles, often during the long months of travel it seemed like it. By the time they at last crossed the western borders of Chi-na, the Scotsman had to admit that his strength and endurance had been tested to their limits.

As they travelled on through the endless scattered farmlands of the north, McLennan saw little wealth and splendour, but much poverty and hard struggle for survival. The peasants of this vast land tilled it in the sweat of their faces, even more than his own serfs, though he was surprised to see that in certain ways their farming methods were better. Their fields were carved somehow into small, flat, irregular steps that followed the curve of the hills, to make the most of the land.

The peasants mainly kept their distance, except for a few that approached them to sell food, or to trade (these received short shrift from the cameleers, who had bigger game afoot in the cities). But McLennan saw enough of them to be amazed. He himself came from a mongrel race, descended from Picts, Britons, Vikings, Norman French and, far back, there was Roman blood. Some Scots were dark, some blond, some red-headed like him. They were of many shapes and sizes and casts of feature. All these, he thought at first, might have sprung from one egg—the travellers all had straight black hair, sallow skin, and eyes seemingly cut in half by their eyelids.

During the long journey, the travellers had eaten poorly, mainly meat and milk from the herds of the nomads they traded with in passing. But McLennan bore the simple diet stoically, feeding in his imagination on Afonso’s descriptions of the food in Chi-na, which he insisted was exotic, varied and delicious. And here – in primitive inns along the caravan’s route, where in the evenings they slumped exhausted with growling stomachs – here it was!

McLennan had never tasted such stuff. Little white grains was the bulk of it, with a few chopped vegetables half raw, some salt fish, some pig-meat, and occasional sauces that burned his tongue… He longed for a plate of porridge with honey and cream, some thick barley broth with chunks of fat mutton, good roast venison or beef in rich brown gravy, with bannock – real Scottish bread – to sop it up with.

Afonso mocked him. ‘You say you stay here? If Mongol no kill you first, you die of empty belly! You eat Mi-Ki food, my friend – is good!’ And he brought his bowl to his mouth and shovelled the stuff into it with two sticks, as the locals did. McLennan used his dhu – the short knife he carried in the top of his hose – to whittle a spoon, for which he was heartily laughed at.

How could he enjoy a place when he had no good meals to look forward to, and when his stomach was always either craving food or rejecting it? McLennan fell into a vile temper. He decided he hated this place. All these months of hard travelling to find a poor land full of peasants who ate disgusting things in a most idiotic manner! He kept his eyes on the ground and trudged on with the caravan, sullen, hungry and disappointed. Afonso tried to cheer him up, and when he failed, moved away and walked among the other men.

At last they reached their destination. As the caravan drew to a halt, amid the noise and bustle of a busy marketplace, McLennan had no choice but to look about him. And his senses reeled. He saw so many new things at once that he couldn’t take them in. Crowds, colours, scents, strange structures seemed to whirl around him.

They were outside the gates of a city. There were walls – high, strong walls – and an open gate. But he didn’t look through it at first. He looked at things nearest. There were tents both drab and brilliant, and stalls, and cartloads of exotic goods set out; there were merchants of several races, shouting, waving their arms, showing their wares – trading. There were many caravans of camels, donkeys, horses, mules and the strange creatures he had seen on the high plains called yaks. There were the clamouring noises and smells of all these. But most of all, there were colours.

McLennan’s own world was full of drab greys, blacks, browns, duns… the purple of heather in flower and the blue of summer skies reflected in lakes were almost the brightest colours his eyes were used to. Now he thought of rainbows, jewels, paintings, flowers, the brilliant tiled alcoves of the Mohammedans… Still he could think of nothing to compare with what he could see here on every side. The Mi-Ki merchants were holding these colours as if they had control of the waves of some multi-hued ocean, swirling them, displaying them – shimmering banners and bales and curtains of some wondrous fabric.

He moved forward, irresistibly drawn, and tried to touch one of the miraculous sheets. It looked like spun gold. He felt his bad mood suddenly lift like a rising pulse of music, and his desire to venture and to explore returned to him in a surge. His hands reached out… The merchant let him touch, just touch with the tips of his fingers. Then he snatched it away – like gossamer it floated on the air, tantalisingly out of reach, a glittering gold membrane that flashed in the sun.

Filled with excitement and eagerness, McLennan sought out Afonso, who was already deep in bargaining with a pigtailed merchant whose cart was laden with colourful bales of the shimmering cloth.

‘Here’s where I leave ye, my friend!’ he said exuberantly. Thanks for your company.’

‘Where you go, Scotlander? Stay close. Caravan not wait. Soon, we turn and go back. We sell our goods, then buy what we want – tea, porcelain, teak, perfume, spice, bamboo!’ All these he said in the Portuguese tongue. The new words rolled themselves round McLennan’s head like an incantation, but one vital word Afonso knew in English.

‘Look! Silk!’ The very word was like a sigh of ecstasy. He spread a thin tissue of forest green with a golden band over his arm. ‘No hands!’ he said, scowling with mock fierceness at the Scot’s rough fingers.

McLennan had hardly touched the fabled silk and already he felt its magic. It was what he had travelled for – it stood for the allure of this new country. He was not going home yet!

‘Dunna wait for me,’ said McLennan. ‘I’ll no’ be returning yet awhile.’

Afonso stared at him in bewilderment.

McLennan unloaded from his camel the woollen sack that contained his few possessions. The Portuguese saw his mind was made up.

‘You will die,’ he said with a shrug. But he embraced him. ‘Go well. Good luck, my foolish friend. Sometimes in Lisboa I think of you. We no meet again.’

McLennan shouldered his bag and set off, through the great gates into the city. It was a city as different from London as a glittering comet crossing the sky is from the muddy River Thames crawling below.

It was built on a grid pattern. Roads led away in dead straight lines, with much traffic: men on horseback, horse-drawn chariots, people-carriers on two wheels pulled by men at a brisk pace. And hundreds of men on foot. The buildings were low, but well constructed, with beautiful green-tiled roofs that curved upward at the corners (like the shoes of the Turks!) and were richly decorated with painted carvings. Steps led up to raised platforms in front of the houses and of the eating places, where McLennan could see that much of the furniture – tables, chairs, lamps, vases, pictures – was of an extraordinary delicacy, made with a skill in craftsmanship that he had never seen before.

He glimpsed gardens, half-hidden among the buildings. Not plain earthy plots for growing vegetables and fruit, but beautiful areas created for leisure. There was a curious refinement about everything, even the people.

Here were city folk, so wondrous-strange they might have dropped from the skies indeed. They wore long colourful robes and round-toed, thick-soled footwear. Their long black hair was piled on their heads, and some wore elaborate headdresses. Their wide sleeves, in which they tucked their hands, looked as if they were covered with flowers; they walked with small, elegant steps, seeming to glide along like wheeled toys. All were men.

Out of nothing more than curiosity, he looked for the women. The ones he had seen in the fields did not have small feet, but he thought, ‘In the city, they’re more refined – perhaps here they grow the small-boned ones.’ However, no women were to be seen. McLennan was disappointed. He wanted to see how anyone could walk on feet the size of pears. But perhaps it was only a tale.

Away from the marketplace, he soon discovered that he did, indeed, strike fear and disgust, and perhaps even anger, into the hearts of these strange people, just as Afonso had said.

The children fled at the sight of him. Talk died at his approach, and men drew back from him, their faces blank but their eyes growing narrower still. He walked on, counting on his size and foreignness to protect him, doing nothing to arouse them against him.

He walked a long way, staring around him at the beautiful buildings and other fascinatingly unfamiliar sights. Suddenly he saw a group of men. They appeared to be marching; they wore something like a uniform – a sort of leather armour, headdresses that combined a head-wrapping and a pointed metal helmet, and swords worn stuck in their belts. These must surely be guards, or soldiers.

He decided to follow them. Not too close! They began to glance uneasily over their shoulders and walk faster and faster. He quickened his own pace. Before long they broke ranks and ran pell-mell. McLennan burst out laughing at the sight, and ran after them, shouting, ‘Wait for me! I’ll join ye!’ They ran far ahead and eventually scattered, and he lost them amid the low buildings.

One of them had drawn and then dropped his weapon. It was a sword, curved, with a square-ended blade and a heavy bronze handle, thickly embossed to give a good grip. McLennan picked it up and hefted it in his hand. He liked the feel of it, and it had a keen edge. He threw it in the air several times and caught it deftly, aware that he was being watched. He ignored this and walked on, swishing the curved sword, making patterns in the air.

Suddenly – in the space of a moment – he found himself surrounded. The soldiers (if that’s what they were) had regrouped and were on all sides of him, threatening him. Their swords, like the one he held, were drawn, and pointing at him.

One man stepped forward, empty-handed. He stood in front of the big Scot and began to harangue him in the strange tongue. McLennan liked his courage. Besides, he quickly saw that he was outmanoeuvred and would have to yield, so he decided to do it with good grace.

He turned the sword till he held it by the blade, bent his left arm, and offered the handle to the man across his sleeve with a courteous bow and a smile.

‘Take what’s yours, my manny,’ he said. ‘I’ll no’ want to be fighting the lot of ye.’

The swordless man was taken aback. But when McLennan continued to offer him his sword, he reached out from as far away as he could and snatched it. As he drew it quickly across McLennan’s arm, the sharp blade sliced through his sleeve and cut his skin.

There was a gasp from the men standing menacing McLennan. Clearly they thought the sight of his own blood would send him into a rage. But McLennan merely laughed and parted the cloth to expose the wound.

‘First blood to you!’ he said. ‘Come, let’s be friends!’ And he smeared some blood on his right hand, to show his wound was nothing, and offered it to the other man.

They stiffened, crouched, held their swords at the ready. But the man he faced relaxed a little, and a faint smile crossed his face. It was probably mere nervousness, but McLennan, himself smiling as broadly as he could through his red whiskers, boomed, ‘So, smiling is something we share! Let’s see what else we have in common.’

He dropped his bundle and held up both hands to show he was unarmed. Then he gestured to his mouth as a sign he wanted to eat and drink. He folded his arms across his tattered plaid and waited.

After exchanging talk in undertones, they formed up again and marched away from him. He followed, marching in step with them.

Chapter Three

He attached himself to the troop of armoured men.

At first they were very suspicious, even afraid of him, and despite his gold, they tried many tricks to shake him off, but he would not be shaken. They were soldiers, as he soon discovered when they joined with others, who had left the city in marching order under an officer and, eventually, after some days of travel away from the city, they fought their first battle.

By this time McLennan had realised these were not the dreaded Mongols with their horseback charges and unbeatable tactics; nor were they a regular army, fighting the invaders. They were a rough sort of private troop belonging to some warlord, fighting random skirmishes against others of the same kind.

These people mostly fought hand-to-hand with spears and swords, using tactics to surprise the enemy. At first McLennan fought the way he always had. When the officer gave the signal, he would throw up his kilt to show he wore nothing under it and was completely unafraid, and charge towards the enemy uttering blood-curdling war cries. His main weapon was a heavy club which he swung around his head in circles as he ran. His comrades were, at first, more startled and shocked than the enemy. But after a couple of these forays, they began to see the use of him.

When the opposing soldiers saw this foreign giant with his fiery hair and beard, running at them showing his nakedness and screaming in a foreign tongue, they often turned and fled. If he caught up with them, they wished they had run away faster. This delighted McLennan, who would rejoin his new companions roaring with laughter, even when he was covered with blood, some of which was his own.

His fellow soldiers began to take care of him. They taught him some of their language, gave him the best sleeping places and the best food – such as it was.

In general, he relished the fighting, and didn’t mind the rough life; it suited him quite well. But he disliked being on a level with the other men, whom he felt himself far above, and never got used to the food, which, when the sauces were too full of the tongue-burn, made him ill. The only thing he liked to swallow – and which calmed his indigestion – was a hot brown drink made of small, dried-up green leaves. It didn’t compare to rye whiskey, mead or ale, but it cheered him and put warmth into his belly. This, he learned, was the ‘tea’ Afonso had mentioned. To his surprise, McLennan became quite addicted to it.

All the time, he kept his eyes open for new things – new ideas. These Mi-Kis had some very clever devices with which to attack forts or, on one occasion, a walled town. One was a construction of timber, bamboo and twisted rope, on wheels so it could be moved, which could hurl enormous stones against walls or even over them with tremendous force. McLennan had heard of clumsy, hard-to-move siege-engines, with unpronounceable French names, that threw rocks or even fireballs, but he had never actually seen one. He called this Mi-Ki machine a catapult-on-wheels and made a detailed sketch of it.

One day, in a lull in the fighting, McLennan and his comrades were in a town belonging to their particular warlord, where they were part of the garrison, and they visited a poor teahouse. It had a straw roof and an earth floor, but unlike many such places, it had tables and stools. McLennan stamped up the wooden steps and sat down.

The owner, a woman, ran and hid behind the kitchen screen, but the other soldiers shouted after her, ‘He’s all right! The foreign giant is with us!’ So she emerged and edged up to him cautiously.

‘Give me tea,’ McLennan said in his new language, and slapped the tabletop.

The woman went behind the screen. After a short time, a little girl came out with tea in a clay teapot as big as her head, and the usual unglazed cup with no handle. She walked to his table with a strange, hobbling gait and put them in front of him. She was trembling.

‘Pour!’ he said gruffly.

He glanced up at her under his eyebrows. She was only six or seven years old and he could see she was very frightened of him, but she did as she was told and didn’t run away, or flinch at his growl. McLennan swigged back the tea. It was very good tea indeed. He said, ‘More!’ She poured again, her thin, fragile arms trembling with the weight of the big teapot. The other men were watching. An idea – no, an impulse – was forming in McLennan’s mind. He looked at the child and saw that she was sturdy despite her small size, brave in her fear, and very obedient.

‘Fetch your mother,’ he grunted.

The little girl shuffled behind the screen, and soon the woman came out.

‘How many daughters you have?’ he said in the foreign tongue.

She seemed to have to count them. At last she held up nine fingers.

‘Sell me one,’ said McLennan.

The soldiers whispered in surprise. The woman stared at him as if she couldn’t take it in. ‘Which one do you want?’

‘That one,’ he said, pointing to the little girl who was peeping from behind the screen.

‘No,’ said the woman firmly. ‘Not that one.’

McLennan felt balked. He already knew that in poorer parts of this country the selling of daughters by poor families or widows was a common way to fight starvation – he had been offered girl-children before by wretched parents who detained him with desperate cries of ‘Good slave! Work hard!’ about children younger than this one.

He half-glanced at the other men for guidance. Kai-fung, the closest he had to a friend among them – the one whose sword he had picked up, that first day – was grinning knowingly.

‘You want a servant? Pick another,’ he said. ‘For that one, she’ll want too much.’ He eked out his words with signs till McLennan understood.

The woman was clearly agitated. She went to the screen, pushed the little one out of sight and dragged out two or three more. They were older, and had stolid looks that promised stamina and cow-like obedience, but somehow McLennan didn’t even want to glance at them. What was special about the little one? Denied her, his impulse hardened into determination.

He brought out a packet of the strange paper money they used here, which he had been using for small purchases. The woman shook her head. Reluctantly, he fished out a gold half-sovereign.

When the widow saw the gleam of gold in the man’s big hand, her need overcame her reluctance. With tears in her eyes, she shooed the bigger girls out of sight and led the youngest out. Now the men laughed. They seldom laughed, and McLennan at once suspected he was being made a fool of.

‘Why laugh?’ he asked angrily.

They exchanged looks. Then Kai-fung pointed to her feet.

Until that moment, McLennan had never satisfied his wish to see a woman with small feet. He had almost forgotten the tales he had heard. But now he saw something that made him start upright, staring down.

Because she was still small, the smallness of her feet was not very noticeable, but still he could see that there was something peculiar about them. They looked not only smaller than one would expect, but strangely shaped.

He scowled down at them for a long time. The teahouse fell silent. The widow stood tensed, torn between desperate need for the gold and agonised reluctance to part with her youngest child. McLennan was thinking. He wanted her for a servant. She would accompany him wherever he went. If she was of the small-foot breed, why did she walk badly?

He glanced at Kai-fung. He nodded. Buy her, she is worth it. He knew something McLennan did not.

He looked at the child. She was tiny – doll-like, in her drab trousers and padded jacket frog-buttoned down one side. She had the usual straight black hair, cut across her brow and tied back, a round face, a mouth like a squashed berry. Her almond-shaped eyes were lowered. There was nothing, absolutely nothing about her that set her apart from thousands of other poor little Mi-Ki girls.

Yet, as he stared at her, trying to decide, she dared a glance up at him. There was a flashing moment when their eyes met. There was something – something that reminded him – but no. That was unthinkable. It must be something else that drew him. In any case, this was not a look that claimed kinship, but like that of a little animal in a trap.

In a second, without any more thought, his mind was made up. He straightened, slapped the gold coin on the table, and took the child by the arm. Some days before, he had pulled a water lily out of a pond in an idle moment to see how it grew. Her wrist felt like its stem. He led her out of the teahouse.

She had no time to say goodbye. She took nothing – almost nothing. At the last moment, one of her sisters, tears streaming down her face, rushed out from behind the kitchen screen and thrust into a fold in the child’s jacket – a pathetic parting gift – a pair of eating sticks. That apart, all the little girl carried with her were her mother’s last words, whispered to her as she almost pushed her on her way – pushed her lest she clutch her back.

‘Remember who you are.’

Whatever she had been before, now she was Bruce McLennan’s tea-slave.

Chapter Four

The child’s name was Mudan, which, translated, is Peony, the name of a flower. But McLennan never knew this. He didn’t need a name for her. He called her ‘You’ or ‘Girl’, in English or the new tongue. She had to hold tightly to her name in her memory or she would have forgotten it – forgotten who she was.

‘Wo shi mudan – I am Peony,’ she said solemnly over and over again in her head like a mantra – a sacred, continual prayer to the Buddha.

To be snatched from her life so suddenly was a shock. But she had been brought up to the understanding that as a girl-child, she was destined to be some man’s possession. She hadn’t expected it to happen yet – that was all. Nor, of course, had she ever dreamed she would become the common chattel of a foreign giant, and be taken away into a man’s world of roughness and war. It was very frightening, and for the first hours, her mind was a blank, except for the repetition of her name.

That night, when the soldiers were in their billet, McLennan threw some straw on to the floor beside his own pallet-bed and pointed to it. Peony, worn out, lay down on it obediently, drawing her knees up to her chest for warmth. Her feet again caught the Scotsman’s attention. The toes seemed to come to a point under her cloth shoes and the insteps were high – they really did look like pears. He beckoned to Kai-fung.

‘Why feet thus?’ he asked stiltedly, using the new words.

‘They are bound.’

‘What’s that?’

The other man knelt down and took the child’s cloth shoes off. McLennan saw her shrink and wince.

Under the shoes were strips of dirty cloth that wrapped each foot. They were tied very tight. McLennan scowled. ‘Who do this – her mother?’ Kai-fung nodded. ‘But why?’

With signs and simple words, Kai-fung tried to explain. The feet of some girls were bound tight to keep them small, to stop their growth. This made the girls, when they grew up, more desirable to men.

At last, McLennan understood, or rather, guessed. The woman in the teahouse, having many daughters, had bound the feet of the youngest in the hope that she would be worth a high bride price when she grew up.

He stared down at this deformed creature he had paid a gold coin for and felt anger burn inside him. He would not allow himself to feel pity for her – or to feel anything for her. She was spoiled goods. The mother, who had kept her other daughters natural and uncrippled so they could work, had sold him one that was only meant for decoration – who would be lame and good for nothing.

‘I don’t want her!’ he shouted suddenly.

‘You can’t take her back.’

‘She’s no good like this!’

‘In a few years you can marry her.’

‘What? WHAT?’ roared McLennan in a fury.

Kai-fung, seeing he had given offence, was silent.

‘Take them off,’ McLennan said. ‘Take those rags off her feet! Maybe they’ll grow if you unbind her!’ He said most of it in English. Kai-fung shook his head, stood up and went back to his pallet.

‘Then I will!’ roared McLennan.

He knelt down and started to unfasten the bandages.

The child curled up and began to utter sharp yelps of pain. McLennan ignored this. He was not gentle. He almost tore off the bindings that had made his bargain so bitter. But when he got the first foot free of them, he stopped cold, and his stomach turned over. He barely stumbled outside the billet before he vomited. Then, very slowly, he came back and continued. Hard as he was, and used to terrible sights, those little, tortured feet somehow froze his anger, though what replaced it in his heart would be hard to describe, for normal pity had been crushed there. He only knew it sickened him.

When he had bared her feet and made himself look at them, he spoke directly to her for the first time.

‘Ye’ll no’ be wearing those rags,’he said. ‘Your feet must heal and grow and that’s all about it.’

Of course she understood not a word of this. McLennan went on staring at her feet, curled under, the toes beginning to sink into the soles. They stank like something rotten. No wonder she had given him that look of something wounded and in a trap. Her own mother—!It had crossed his mind, seeing the beautiful things these people made, that they might be more scientific and civilised than his own, but now he changed his mind. He wondered if it was too late for the feet to right themselves, or if he had better not simply cut his losses and leave her here.

Half a sovereign! No. She belonged to him now.

He called the billet-woman who had brought them food earlier. He gave her paper money to wash Peony’s feet, rub them with ointment and wrap them loosely in clean strips.

He couldn’t sleep that night for the child sobbing in agony as the blood in the bound feet began to feel its freedom. At last he became distraught, for her cries awoke other cries he still struggled to forget, and he roused the whole inn by shouting at her like a madman, ‘Be quiet! I canna endure your mewling!’ She froze in terror and her sobs stopped.

Now Peony began to share with McLennan the life of a wandering soldier.

At first her feet hurt more unbound than bound, and she couldn’t walk at all. Grumbling fiercely, he had to carry her on his back, or pay another to carry her. Her feet had to be dressed and wrapped afresh each evening. The pain was so terrible that sometimes she tried to bind them again to stifle it, but her master wouldn’t let her.

‘They must mend,’ he kept saying. And as if obeying his will, little by little, they began to. After a few months she could walk again and he bought her new shoes and some new clothes, for her old ones were threadbare and she was growing out of them.

She became a kind of mascot to the other men. They at least were not dead to pity, and they were far from their own families, so they made a pet of her; but McLennan treated her as what he felt her to be – a slave, bought and paid for.

Even before she could walk again, he put her to work. She had to rub his leather shoes with pig-grease. When his clothes got too filthy or stained with blood, she had to wash them, kneeling beside the tub. When his beard grew too long, she had to cut it with the sharp knife he called a dhu. If she didn’t do this very carefully, he would roar at her and even try to strike her.

Usually she dodged his hand, but occasionally a blow landed. She accepted this so meekly that he felt an unaccustomed sense of shame, but he soon shook it off. She must learn to obey and do her work properly, to make up for her shortcoming.

Her main task was to brew tea for him. He liked tea in the morning, and with his meals. She noticed he didn’t enjoy his food. This was good for her, because she ate what he left. She was given no meals of her own. It didn’t occur to McLennan that a body so small needed more than scraps. But the other men fed her titbits when McLennan’s back was turned, so she had enough, and her feet began to uncurl and grow again. She still walked badly – her feet could never completely recover – but she could walk, and with far less pain than before.

Because she had had a hard life with nothing but bare necessities, none of this seemed very terrible to her. The worst thing – when the pain in her feet got less – was all the noise and the fighting, the blood and the raucous voices of the men, especially when they’d been drinking, all of which frightened her.

Of course she was terribly homesick for her sisters, and for the safe, simple life she’d known, but when she thought of her mother she had conflicting feelings. Her mother had been merciless about the foot-binding, telling her that she must bear the pain so that one day, when she had tiny, enchanting feet like lotus-buds, she could live the life of a rich man’s wife, and help them all.

In any case, as the small army moved farther away, she sensed that she was never going to see them again. In the nights, when she curled up in some corner on a pile of hay or even the bare ground, the tears would come. But now she didn’t let her master see them.

As for Bruce McLennan, sometimes as the weeks went by he caught himself glancing at her and wondering, ‘Why did I buy her?’ The only answer he allowed himself was, ‘At home I have servants. A laird should have someone to attend him.’ He had obeyed an impulse, the random, greedy impulse that makes a man buy something just because he can.

But why this one, why not some strong, big-foot girl or young lad who would be of more practical use? Deep down he sensed a dark mystery in it. Deep down, where his feelings lay as twisted and out of shape as the girl’s feet, was a connection between this little Mi-Ki and his children’s voices, cut short long ago. Now, instead of his own children, he owned the child of some other man, some dead foreigner whose children had, however wretchedly, survived. McLennan owned her and he could do as he liked with her. It was a warped way of expressing what could not otherwise be expressed – the fundamental loss that can never be made up, and so must be compared to something small and contemptible, not a loss at all. The fact that she was damaged goods somehow locked into that need.

There was one old soldier who tried to get to know the foreign devil with the round eyes and hair the colour of fire. His name was Li-wu and he was different from the others. He was something of a philosopher, both more learned and more curious than the other men. They just saw the foreigner as a sort of tame monster, a useful fighter. Li-wu wanted to know about him. And he was drawn through pity, but later fondness, to the little girl who attended him.

So he sat near them in the evenings and tried to teach the foreigner more words so they could talk. He even taught him some writing. Bruce McLennan found this interesting because he liked to draw, and Mi-Ki writing was like drawing pictures. He thought the characters were intriguing, but faintly absurd – why so many? Why did each ‘picture’ stand for an object or concept? Though scarcely literate in his own language, he knew his alphabet and that seemed to him a better system. But he learned, in order to save himself from idleness and boredom.

Peony watched this from her place at her master’s side. Sometimes she would copy the characters, drawing them with a pointed stick in the hard earth. When McLennan saw her doing this, he thought, ‘She’s not stupid,’ and felt better about his bargain. At times, when Li-wu praised her gently, he felt a sort of satisfaction. ‘I own her,’ he thought, ‘so I take some pride in her. That’s all.’ That made him feel at ease. It wasn’t as if he took any serious interest in her. But it disturbed him when he saw that Li-wu and the child had something like a friendship. He disliked it when she would smile up at the Chi-na man, and he would talk to her seriously in their own language and pat her shoulder.

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