The porter opened the caravanserai gates reluctantly. The rider was unusual.
Caravans rode on a relay. They loaded priceless porcelains and sensuous silks in crates, onto the humps of Bactrian camels, rode west for days or weeks to the nearest node on the Silk Road, stayed as long as it took for a collegial tea ceremony, haggled prices over a lively game of chess, then headed back east, their camels swaying under crates of sandalwood and blown glass.
But this rider was alone. He rode a black stallion. He wore a thick black riding cloak and cowl that obscured his face. When he dismounted, he walked as if under the burden of great age.
Since Marco Polo’s tales had spread like a brushfire throughout Europe 47 years earlier, the waypoints along the Central Asian steppe had seen a trickle of adventurers trying to cross the entire Silk Road. Many disappeared somewhere between Samarkand and Chang’an. Locals said they vanished within the echoes of a valley of the Hindu Kush, ambushed by a bandit’s blade or a woman’s hospitality.
This rider was continuing west. Had he already made the journey?
“Will you have tea?”, the porter asked.
The rider nodded.
The porter fluffed some pillows in the recess in the floor that encircled a fire pit, around which travelers lounged, discussed, haggled, and bragged into late hours.
“Please sit,” the porter gestured.
The rider gathered his riding cloak and folded himself gingerly down to the floor. He did not remove his hood.
A turquoise-turbaned Uzbek and his son who would be heading back west in the morning eyed the rider idly as they shared shisha from an ornate hookah. The man boisterously called out to the rider, “Salom, traveller”.
The rider nodded slowly. “Salom.” His voice was dry and raspy. He spoke as slowly as he moved.
“Where you come from?”
“Anywhere.”
The Uzbeks snickered.
The porter returned hauling firewood, a grill, and a large brass tea kettle. The fire soon blazed between the Uzbeks and the rider, wreathing his hood in flames.
The Uzbek persisted. “What faith you have? The Christ? Muhammed, peace be upon him? The Buddha? We are friend of all the faith in these land.” He gestured grandly and looked to his son for confirmation. The boy exhaled a cloud of shisha and nodded lazily.
“To none I profess but will hear any man confess.”
“Confess your sin, father”, the boy said.
The father squeezed his son’s knee. The boy shrugged.
The kettle began screaming. The porter hustled down into the recess and hoisted the kettle off the fire.
He poured for the rider, nervously avoiding his cowled gaze. He turned to the Uzbeks. “More tea?”
The boy nodded and leaned forward proffering a tin cup.
The porter poured and began to step up out of the recess.
The rider’s black sleeve clutched the porter’s pant leg. The porter shuddered.
“Sit with us”, the rider said.
“I need to prepare lamb for tomorrow.”
“Sit”, the rider said.
The porter sat next to the rider. The rider offered him a sip of his tea. The porter took it in both hands, drew it to his lips and blew off the steam.
The Uzbek asked the rider, “How long you have traveled?”
“A few months.”
“Where did you start the journey?”
“In the court of the Great Khan.”
The boy raised his eyebrows.
“But you are not Chinese, no?”
“No. Only a guest.”
“And where you are heading?”
“To the court of the Pope in Rome.”
“You are a messenger?”
“You could say that.”
The Uzbek man leaned in conspiratorially. “What is the message? I won’t tell anyone.”
“I cannot tell you. But it will be disseminated widely. You will hear it soon enough.”
“You are a priest then? Or a monk?”
“No. Only a traveler.”
The porter leaned forward. “What do you think of the Great Khan?”
“He is a mortal man.”
The Uzbek, his son, and the porter all laughed at this.
“The Mongols”, the porter said. “They ended a great dynasty of China. The Khans sit on the Dragon Throne. But they are horse riders. What do you think, traveler? Do they belong on the throne or in the saddle?”
“The line between civilisation and chaos exists only in the mind. A state can be tamed and groomed but it can buck and throw off its rider. Sitting a saddle and sitting a throne are the same thing.”
The men chewed their lips and considered this.
The Uzbek man asked, “The Khans, do they protect the Chinese? They are a settled people of rivers, agriculture, art, and poetry. How can horse riders lead them?”
“Culture exists in the hearts of the people, not in the reins of the state. But culture is fleeting.”
“How so?”
“Each generation sweeps away the one before. People preen for a moment that they know what it is to be alive. And then they fall away, replaced by their children who live to rebel against their parents’ culture. In a few generations no one will recognize their own culture.”
“And you have seen this? In China? Where they worship their ancestors?”
“I have seen it everywhere. Every human thing crumbles to dust.”
“What about something like … the pyramids? Aren’t they permanent?”
“A tomb in a pile of stones, slowly fading away? The people who built them are long gone.”
“Do you think the Khans are great warriors?”, asked the Uzbek man.
“Yes, they are expert merchants of death.”
“Genghis would use trebuchets to fling dead bodies into besieged cities to spread disease.”
“Indeed.”
“You know”, said the porter. “Some traders recently said a disease is growing in the east. A great plague. Some are calling it ‘The Black Death.’ Have you heard this?”
“I have heard this rumor”, said the rider.
“Well, I must prepare for the morning. I can show you to your room.”
“It’s not necessary. I’ll spend the night by the fire.”
“It gets cold.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Suit yourself.” The porter put the cup down and walked away.
The boy went to bed. The Uzbek spoke to the rider for a while, but couldn’t remember much of it later. He eventually retired for the night, leaving the mysterious black rider to his thoughts and the embers.
In the morning the Uzbek man rose to the scent of roasting lamb.
A caravan of Chinese traders entered the caravanserai.
“Salam alaikum!”, the Chinese traders bellowed to the Uzbek man.
“Ni hao ma?”, he shouted.
Handshakes and hugs ensued. The Uzbek man and his son played chess against the Chinese traders as they haggled. Lamb, tea, and baijou lifted their spirits. The Chinese agreed to take the blown glass that had been relayed from Europe and give the Uzbeks sheets of silk from Hangzhou to hump west.
Late afternoon approached as business concluded and the Uzbek man decided to stay another night.
He wandered around the caravanserai. He couldn’t find the mysterious black-hooded traveler.
The porter took dishes and cups away. He sniffled and wiped his nose against his sleeve.
“Have you seen the black rider?”, The Uzbek man asked.
“Who?”
“The man in the black cowl. The stranger. The traveler who was here last night.”
The porter gazed at him quizzically. “Are you feeling ok?”
He walked out to the stables. There was no black stallion. No sign of disturbed hay or horse turds. Only the dumb camels swaying and spitting.
He asked his son if he had seen him.
“We talked to the porter for a while last night, father. No other man was there.”
“Yes. Of course.”
He suspected they were performing a prank.
The following morning, the Chinese were heading back east. His son loaded the camels.
The Uzbek man was feeling woozy.
The porter’s wife emerged. “My husband is ill, but he wishes you a pleasant journey.”
As the Uzbek man saddled his camel, he felt dizzy. They clopped along the steppe trails. His armpits and neck ached. His throat was dry and raspy. His breath grew ragged. He felt he might topple off the camel by nightfall.
“Son, if I fall ill”, he swallowed painfully. “Lash me to the camel. We must continue on to the next caravanserai. There we can offload the silk and I can rest. If we stop out here I will die and you will lose the silk to bandits.”
“Don’t say that, father”, the son whined.
“Just get us to the next stop. No matter what.”
“Yes, father”, the boy said. Then he sneezed.
The Uzbek man swayed in the saddle. Wind gusts swept across the steppe. The wind felt like it had traveled from far north to slice through furs and flesh to chill the bones. Yet he was sweating.
He gripped the pommel of the saddle. How had he not found the black rider? How could no one else remember him?
He tried to recall their conversation after the porter had departed and his son had gone to sleep.
Giddy with sleepiness, the Uzbek man had told the rider of his tricks, such as packing the bottom layers of crates with lower quality goods.
The rider had seemed to age as night deepened. He spoke like a prophet. “You know not your date with destiny, only that you have one. You leave only your progeny, the value of the ideas you share, and your very bones in the earth. These are your legacy. Your life is over like that.” The rider had snapped his fingers. As he did so, his black sleeve slid down. The Uzbek man thought he’d caught a glimpse of two knuckles. In the firelight, they looked pallid.
“Well”, the Uzbek man had said. “I drink to your health.”
“And I to yours.”
They had shared a drink then. The Uzbek man wondered whether he had drunk from his own cup or the one that the rider had earlier handed to the porter.
Delirious in the howling vastness of the steppe, the Uzbek man now coughed into his hand. His palm felt greasy. He held it up to the setting sun silhouetted behind craggy peaks. It was red.
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