The Secret History of the Mongol Queens - Jack Weatherford [76]
To initiate the plan to rid himself of all the descendants of Genghis Khan, Esen erected two large adjoining gers under the pretext of sponsoring a feast and celebration. Under one of the gers, his men dug a deep hole and covered it over with a felt carpet. In the other, Esen waited to greet each of the nobles of the royal family. On the clever pretext of offering maximum respect to each guest, Esen ordered that they be brought into the feast one at a time beginning with the lowest-ranking individual and escorted by two members of Esen’s entourage. As each man entered, Esen stepped forward with a bowl to offer him a drink. At this moment all of Esen’s men began to sing very loudly in honor of the man while his two escorts strangled him, dragged his body into the adjoining tent, and threw it into the pit beneath the felt carpet.
The awaiting dignitaries outside the tent suspected nothing since the loud singing drowned out any screams or cries of the victims. The khan and most of his court met their death that night. Only the khan’s son, who was also Esen’s son-in-law, managed to avoid the trap when his servant warned him that he saw blood seeping from beneath the tent walls. Although he escaped a dramatic chase by Esen’s men, someone killed him soon thereafter. From this gathering and the accompanying campaign, it is said that, by 1452, Esen had killed forty-four nobles, thirty-three lesser nobles, and sixty-one military officers from the Borijin clan and its allies. After this bloody campaign a new saying arose that “nobles die when gathering, dogs die during drought,” and was often repeated as either a threat or a warning to the powerful.
Samur’s whole life had been devoted to restoring the Borijin monarchy, and now she and her grandson were divided. Although already an ancient lady, she prepared for one more battle before she could die, and this time her enemy was her grandson. He had killed nearly every male relative she had and almost destroyed the chance of restoring her clan to power. The struggle between grandmother and grandson came down to a fight to save the one last infant boy born to the Borijin clan.
Esen’s young and recently widowed daughter was about to give birth. If the baby turned out to be a boy, he would be Samur’s final hope of having a Borijin descendant who might possibly grow up to be khan. A son, Samur’s great-great-grandchild, could hold a direct claim to the throne as the legitimate descendant of Genghis Khan and the heir to his father and grandfather. It was a thin thread of hope, but Samur had successfully prevailed in equally desperate circumstances in the past.
Samur and the child’s mother, though many years apart in age, shared a common experience of becoming a young widow trapped in a set of political machinations over which each had little control. More than anyone else at the time, the two women seemed to keep clearly in mind the good of the larger nation rather than just their own careers or that of any individual person. Acting together across those generations, they not only saved the baby, they set in motion a long series of events by which women would play the dominant role for most of the coming half century; these women would eventually put the nation back on the proper path of unity and cooperation. But that journey would be a long and harsh one.
Inevitably, Esen learned of the pregnancy, and he moved quickly. He planned to force his daughter into a new marriage, after which her Borijin baby would be killed at birth. Samur helped her great-granddaughter escape and hide, and the young widow successfully gave birth to a boy. She named her baby Bayan Mongke, meaning “Prosperous Eternity.”
Esen, the boy’s grandfather, sent out a party of men to find his daughter and her infant to see what sex it was. He issued harsh orders to the men. “If it is a girl, comb her hair,” he instructed them. “If it is a boy, comb his throat.”
The mother recognized the execution party as it approached, and immediately discerned its purpose. Knowing that the men would