The Secret History of the Mongol Queens - Jack Weatherford [102]
Manduhai introduced the boy to the spirit of the First Queen and to the assembled crowd as the grand-nephew of her late husband. “By coming to your tent,” she said very clearly to the spirit of the First Queen, “I wish to make your descendant Great Khan even though he is still a young boy.”
Even if he trembled in fear in his oversized boots, merely by standing before the shrine of the First Queen and the assembly of Mongol nomads, Batu Mongke showed both tremendous bravery and total reliance on Manduhai, who guided him. Twice before in the previous generation, boys of his age had been proclaimed Great Khan, only to be murdered by their rivals before they could reach full maturity. Other fully grown men who bore the title were also ignominiously struck down and killed by the Muslim warlords who tried to control them. Any one of the new boy khan’s rivals for power might descend upon the unorthodox inauguration to seize Manduhai, but now that she had publicly proclaimed him Great Khan, any usurper would have to kill the young boy to make his own claim supportable.
Batu Mongke stood at the Shrine of the First Queen before the people who were supposed to be his subjects, and was acclaimed by Manduhai as the new Great Khan, but his battered body still bore the signs of ill treatment. Fortunately for him, the heavy Mongol boots of manhood not only increased his stature, but the thick, stiff hide that came all the way up to the knee formed an inflexible brace that served to hold him erect even if his knees weakened and began to buckle during the long public ceremony.
In his short but miserable life, he had cultivated a keen ability to discern other people’s motives and an intuitive recognition of their strategies in what they sought from him. In this life of betrayal and suffering, he had one attachment to one ally and guide, to whom he showed unswerving trust. Batu Mongke’s willingness to stand bravely and tall before all these dangers showed an extraordinary confidence in the judgment and guidance of the one person who had orchestrated this event.
He had little choice about relying on Manduhai, but he soon learned that, in her, he had found not only a savior but also a guardian and mentor. She would be the one person who remained loyal to him and protective of his safety and his political interests until the day she died. Though no one else in the mounted throng may have had the confidence in her ability to protect him and to unite the nation, he showed no sign of doubt in her on that, or any other, day in his life.
She perceived something in him that escaped the notice of others, and he found in her something that no one else could see. They had an understanding and faith in each other that seemed to surpass the limited views of those around them. Over the next thirty years, the two of them, like Qaidu Khan and Khutulun two centuries earlier, formed an indivisible if unlikely team, united by a bond that transcended generation and gender and which allowed them to achieve together what neither could have done alone.
Manduhai and young Batu Mongke shared something important. They were both totally alone in the world. Both had been taken from their places of birth by circumstances beyond their control, and both had to live without the vast kinship network so important in tribal society. In Mongol society, a person depended almost totally on kin to provide all the supports needed in life. No religious, market, or fraternal organizations existed outside of the kinship network. The most dreaded misfortune in life was to be without family. The tragic figure in Mongol mythology was always the orphan. Many songs and poems bemoaned the sad fate