Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [139]
No matter how much Chinese culture he absorbed, Chinkim remained true to his Mongol roots. During one confrontation, he struck Ahmad so hard that the minister could neither open his mouth nor speak for a week. When Kublai asked how Ahmad had come to sustain his injuries, the Muslim was afraid to point the finger at the khan’s son, and pretended that he had fallen from his horse.
On another occasion, Chinkim attacked Ahmad in the presence of Kublai Khan, who, astonishingly, seemed to take no notice of the fracas.
By now, Ahmad was afraid for his life. To shield himself from Chinkim’s wrath, he pleaded with Kublai Khan to establish a high court of justice, in the hope that it would intercede. But Kublai refused, viewing the proposed body as a virtual duplicate of one already in existence.
Ahmad’s reign of bureaucratic terror lasted just a bit longer; he spent much of the next two years raising taxes to the breaking point and plotting to destroy his Chinese critics. If Kublai Khan ever suspected something was awry, he gave no indication; in fact, he promoted the feared Muslim minister again, this time to the position of vice chancellor. Ahmad was now more powerful than ever.
AHMAD DEFTLY PUNISHED his enemies in the Mongol court, but his rapaciousness sowed hatred beyond its confines. During an obscure military campaign in a northern province of the Mongol Empire, a Chinese soldier and ascetic named Wang Chu happened to encounter a Buddhist monk named Kao, who claimed to be skilled in magic. For a time, Kao marched with the Mongol army, but when his spells failed, he was mustered out. If not capable of working magic, he did demonstrate a flair for the macabre. To persuade the world of his death, he spread rumors and even killed a man, whose corpse he dressed as if it were his own. Once Kao and Wang Chu came together, they discovered their shared loathing for Ahmad, and they hatched a wild scheme to assassinate him.
Whether they acted alone or as instruments of a larger clandestine conspiracy remains an open question. The record suggests they were loners, but Marco insists that the Chinese whom Ahmad had oppressed “planned to assassinate him and to rebel against the rule of the city.” In Polo’s feverish retelling, Wang Chu emerges not as an ascetic but as a man “whose mother, daughter, and wife Ahmad had violated,” a man acting out the will of the Chinese, who despised Ahmad.
In the early months of 1282, the ascetic soldier and the devious monk conspired to insinuate themselves into Kublai’s court. Wang Chu worked up documents supposedly from Chinkim ordering him to report to the prince’s palace. It was all a deception, because Chinkim himself was nowhere to be found.
Next, Wang Chu approached Ahmad, bearing false reports of Chinkim’s imminent arrival at his palace. Ahmad and other dignitaries would be expected to greet him properly out in front.
Marco, drawing on unofficial sources and gossip, explains that they planned a much larger conspiracy: they were to signal with torches to others spread across the land to “kill all those who have beards, and make the signal with fire to the other cities that they should do the like.” Since the Chinese were beardless, those with beards would have been Mongols, Muslims, and Christians.
The two conspirators had raised a ragged little army of a hundred or so men to help carry out the plot. Under cover of darkness, they approached the palace on horseback, lighting their way with an impressive display of lanterns and torches. Occupying a prominent position in their midst, the monk Kao rode high on his horse, doing his best to impersonate Chinkim arriving at his palace.
At the same time, Ahmad was entering the city gate on his way to meet Chinkim and happened to meet a “Tartar named Cogatai, who was captain of twelve thousand men with whom he kept continual guard over the city,” according