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