Thomas B. Costain · 1945 · global

Thomas B. Costain's 1945 bestseller. Walter of Gurnie, the illegitimate son of an English baron, flees Oxford after the riots of 1273, and - fired by hearing Roger Bacon on the wonders of the East - pawns his inheritance and sets out with the archer Tristram for Cathay. They cross the Mongol empire by caravan, and only one of them comes home.

1. 1
   Oxford

   Walter is a scholar at Oxford when the riots of 1273 make England impossible for him - and a lecture by Roger Bacon on what lies east turns a flight into an expedition, undertaken with a longbowman and very little money.

2. 2
   Antioch

   At Antioch the overland trade begins and the two Englishmen attach themselves to a caravan bound east - where Walter first sees Maryam, the half-English girl the book calls the Black Rose, running rather than travelling.

3. 3
   Maragha

   Through Persia to the Ilkhanate, where Mongol rule is administered by scholars and astronomers - and where the caravan's pidgin, its politics and its casual violence teach Walter how far he now is from any protection.

4. 4
   Kashgar

   The Silk Road proper, oasis to oasis along the desert rim, months at the pace of camels - and the trio fall in with Bayan of the Hundred Eyes, Kublai Khan's general, after Tristram outshoots the Mongol archers at a contest.

5. 5
   Kinsai

   Kinsai is the Song capital, the richest city on earth, where Walter is sent as an envoy and told he will be a guest for life - and the escape costs Tristram his life and Walter the girl, whose boat drifts away.

6. 6
   Bombay

   The long way home begins by sea from the Indian coast, alone - carrying the knowledge he went for: gunpowder, printing, paper money and the workings of an empire nobody in England believes exists.

7. 7
   Venice

   By the Red Sea and the Egyptian crossing to the Mediterranean and the Venetian galleys - the same channel by which everything eastern reached Europe, and by which Walter re-enters a world that will not quite believe him.

8. 8
   Marseilles

   Ashore in Provence and north through France, a returning traveller with a fortune and a story - and the growing certainty that what he has lost in the East outweighs anything he is bringing back.

9. 9
   London

   Edward I receives him for what he carries rather than who he is, and the barons' England he fled has quietly become another country - and Walter must choose between the woman he left and the one the sea took.