Under Chinese cultural protocols, a new dynasty demonstrated legitimacy and heavenly favor not only by seizing the government and taking control of the country but also by receiving the formal surrender of the defeated dynasty. Nothing short of this official surrender could mark a legal and final conclusion of the Yuan Dynasty. If Manduhai would only perform this public ritual and kowtow to the Ming emperor in a lavishly staged ceremony, she would be guaranteed a life of luxurious ease. She might even be admitted into the emperor’s harem as a concubine and have her every need catered to by a phalanx of eunuchs. If she sought to live alone, they would provide a pampered widowhood for her, with a household of servants and retainers. She could even take a husband if she pleased. Comfortably within the cocoon of the Chinese elite, she would never have to endure another worry or responsibility so long as she lived.
She had to choose quickly: the handsome Mongol noble, a fierce Muslim warlord, or a pampered Chinese widowhood.
Une-Bolod certainly presented the most compelling case. “I will light your fire for you,” he said in his proposal of marriage sent by messenger to Manduhai. “I will point out your pastures,” he promised. The reference to the fire meant that he would give her sons by which to start a new dynasty. For a woman with no male heir, the offer must have seemed tempting, but she showed no hesitation in emphatically rejecting his offer.
“You have a tent-flap I must not raise,” she responded to Une-Bolod. “You have a threshold I must not step over.” To make sure that he did not think she was merely being coy, she added firmly, “I will not go to you.”
The people around Manduhai in the Mongol court knew of the proposal, and they knew of precedent by which she should marry the popular, dashing general. Manduhai asked the people for their advice to her.
“It would be much better for all of us,” the first person answered, presenting a simple and practical reason that the nation needed a fully grown man. It will be better for the nation “if you would accept the proposal of Une-Bolod.”
The second speaker disagreed, with a longer and more profound explanation. For Manduhai to marry outside the lineage of Genghis Khan, even if it were to a descendant of his brother, “your path will grow dark.” With such a marriage, she would no longer be the queen. “You will divide yourself from the people, and you will lose your honored and respected title of khatun.” If Manduhai would devote her life to the Mongol people without thinking of personal comfort or benefit, she was told, she would follow the white road of enlightenment for herself and her nation.
Manduhai thought about the responses for a moment, and then she turned to the one who recommended that she accept Une-Bolod’s proposal. “You disagree with me just because Une-Bolod is a man and I am only a widow,” she charged. Growing angrier as she spoke, she said, “Just because” I am only a woman, “you really think that you have the right to speak to me this way.”
Queen Manduhai raised a bowl of hot tea and flung it at the head of the supporter of this marriage. Manduhai had made the first independent decision of her life. She had decided not to marry any of her suitors. She was the Mongol queen, and she would make her own path.
It was the Year of the Tiger.
PART III
Wolf Mother
1470–1509
Queen Manduhai the Wise, recalling the vengeance of
the former khans,
set out on campaign.
She set in motion her foot soldiers and oxen-troops, and
after three days and nights she set out with her cavalry.
Queen Manduhai the Wise, putting on her quiver
elegantly,and composing her disordered hair,
put Dayan Khan in a box and set out.ALTAN TOBCI § 101
Family of Manduhai Khatun and Batu Mongke Dayan Khan
10
The White Road of the Warrior Widow
MANDUHAI WISHED TO RULE, BUT NOT ONLY DID SHE have no experience, she had no army. All the soldiers were loyal either to their respected general Une-Bolod or to Ismayil Taishi, the highest ranking official in the government.
Yet Manduhai had one thing they did not have—a baby boy. This was not her own child; he was the abandoned infant of the Golden Prince. He was the only living male descendant of the bone of Genghis Khan, the son of the jinong and the heir of the Great Khan.
The boy’s name was Batu Mongke, son of Bayan Mongke and Siker. The child was born in the South Gobi—one of the most sparsely settled areas of the Mongols’, with broad expanses of rocky steppe essentially void of vegetation except sparse clusters of grass. The harsh area, however, was not hostile to herding. With easy movement, the herders could take their animals from a place with no grass into one where the rain fell.
A thin ribbon of mountains, known as the Three Beauties (Gurvan Saikhan Nuruu), slices through this part of the Gobi. The mountains form the tail end and the most southeastern extension of the larger Altai range. Here they gradually disappear into the gravel and sand of the Gobi. On an otherwise flat terrain, their relatively modest-sized peaks seem lofty and dramatic; they climb high enough to snag some of the moisture passing overhead in the winter. These snows melt in the summer and run into ravines and small brooks that make this area an ideal place for herding animals. Mountain springs provide water during the summer, and the canyon walls block the Arctic winds in winter. The ravines and canyons form a labyrinth that offers quick protection to the local residents from intruders or passing armies. A network of goat tracks across the mountains connects the larger canyons with one another.
Although sparsely inhabited, trade routes crisscross the area, keeping it from being truly isolated. The vast open area of the Gobi connects the northern part of the fertile Mongolian steppe with the southern part of the plateau in China’s Inner Mongolia. Similarly, the mountains moving toward the northwest connect the area into the more fertile expanses of western Mongolia.
With his father murdered and his mother kidnapped, Batu Mongke passed from hand to hand. His mother, Siker, now the wife of Ismayil, in time had children and created a new family with her husband, seemingly without regret for the husband or the child she had lost.
At first, Batu Mongke apparently lived alone with an otherwise unknown old woman referred to as Bachai of the Balaktschin. In her extreme poverty, she seemed barely able to survive by herself and proved either unable or unwilling to care for the infant. In an exceptionally harsh and sparsely populated environment such as the Gobi, a child is more dependent on its mother or other caretakers than children growing up in a benign climate surrounded by people.