Caravan To Xanadu

CHAPTER 6

THE STRANGERS

Little slave girl met midway on the ocean sea of sands, are you Miranda of England? Unless you give me a sign, I cannot know.

Not that my common sense rebels. It hammers within my head that although she and I have been parted for four summers, and that parting came to pass halfway across the world, all that time and all that way she too could have been bound for the Court of Kublai Khan. Does he not collect the rarest and most beautiful things on earth?

Thousands of his agents comb all Asia for the most beautiful virgins, slave or free. Could I wonder that Paulos Angelos or that some later buyer, discovering he had obtained a pearl perhaps beyond price, aspired to set her among her peers to his great gain? She and I started for the Levant within a few days of each other. Would it be a miracle that on the only eastward highway between the Tien Shan and the Kunlun Shan, we twain should meet again?

If this slave girl is Miranda, I went searching for her in the moonlit waste when she thought that her rendezvous was with Death. But was this strange encounter out of keeping with the pattern of my life and fate? Still, I cannot believe unless I am given a sign. For I kissed her good-by forever, put her out of my life, buried her among my lost memories and effaced her grave.

“Why man, your eyes are full of tears!”

This was Nicolo’s voice, breaking into my reverie, its tone mainly curious but holding the merest trace of suspicion.

“They’re full of dust from my ride and the lamplight burns it in.” I wiped them on my kerchief.

“Now take a good look at my new jewel, and tell me who got the best of it, you or me?”

Nicolo’s eyes were bright with happiness. I believed he had an inkling that his triumph was even greater than he knew. They were also extremely alert, but I did not fear self-betrayal as I made my search. I was used to guarding my countenance in his sight.

But Miranda was not so practiced. If this was she, she had known me at first glance; she had been expecting all these months and years to meet me again; if she had been in hearing of my voice when I came up to her caravan, she had recognized me then. The fact that she sat so still, with only a slight rise of color easily caused by the visit of strangers, argued that she was not Miranda. My dry eyes caught differences more marked than I had at first thought. Miranda could look like this after such a journey in space, time, and event, but so could many other maidens of her coloring, features, and form of equal beauty. Miranda was nearly twenty now, while this girl looked about eighteen. I had long ago put Miranda away because she had become the concubine of some prince, nobleman, or goldsealed merchant; I had divorced her phantom from my bed and her wraith from my board. Yet Nicolo had spoken of his new prize as a maiden. . . .

My heart cried that this was Miranda, but it had lied to me before. I asked a bold question in the Venetian tongue.

“What is her nationality, Signor Nicolo?”

“I haven’t inquired into that, as yet. She’s not a blonde Hun, as they are called—Kaffirs and the like from the Hindu Kush—and I doubt greatly if she’s any sort of Circassian. My best guess would be she’s a White Russian or even an Eastern German. But I’ve got the strangest sort of feeling, which my common sense denies, that she’s English.”

“What language does she speak?”

“She knows a few words in Turki-Persian. She didn’t respond to any other that I tried.”

“And you say Baram bought her to sell to Kublai Khan?”

“You seem greatly astonished by it, Marco. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you so taken aback.”

“She’s rather old to be a virgin, is she not?”

“She told Baram that she was, and he believed her. He’s no fool, and I believe him.”

“What is her name, signor?” And my heart stood still.

“He calls her Linda.”

Miranda . . . Linda. One might have derived from the other, but actually they were no more closely related by sound or letter than Maffeo and Marco.

“Signor, I don’t deny that the girl has beauty of an odd, wistful sort,” I said, my heart drumming my side. “No doubt it will be more marked when she puts on weight——”

“And when she has bathed,” Nicolo broke in, sniffing as he smiled. “So far she’s had only a little oil to remove the dust from her face and breast. They were covered with it when Baram showed me her—yet I was overjoyed by the gift. I believe I would have given my second-best balas ruby for her as she stood.”

“The ruby would bring about two thousand dinars, I believe.”

“Perhaps I’m bewitched, yet I’d lay you a hundred bezants that my eyes are as open and my business judgment as sound as ever in my life.”

“I would have chosen her myself, had I been given the choice of gifts. I see in her a pearl of first water, worth more as she stands than the sapphire. What do you see in her?”

“One of the most beautiful girls on earth.”

Little slave girl that I found on the mountain, must I deny you still? Yes, if only in self-protection. For if you are Miranda, what then? I have found you only to lose you again. And this time I have lost you not to some unknown whose face I cannot see; this face resembling mine, except it is aglow with triumph over your possession, is one I know full well. And it must be that I loved you more than I knew, for it is not true—my heart denies the evil prompting—that I would rather see you dead.

If you are Miranda, will you acknowledge me? Why should you, when I have only got my deservings? When I sold my sweetheart slave, it may be the deal was fair, but I drove away the little ghost who tried to come to me, and shut your love and beauty out of my heart. Except for that blindness and crassness, I would have guessed your destination and looked for you along the road. I would have asked a lavishness from the gods, so when I answered a cry in the night, I would have expected to find you. I have been a measly trader instead of a nobleman, or I would have put more faith in fate.

“Are you considering her as a gift for the Khan?” I asked, my voice holding well.

“If she’s as beautiful as I believe, she’d be a fitting gift.”

“She would have to be flawless as well. No doubt you know that even a small mark—an unsightly mole or scar anywhere on the body—bars a maiden from consideration for the Khan’s harem.” And my heart flung into my throat with reborn hope.

“Everyone knows that.”

“Why not look well? If there’s only a slight disfigurement, I’ll take her off your hands and you can buy something from Baram’s stock as a gift for the Khan. I’ll hold the lamp for you.”

“I don’t think it would give you much pleasure until she’s bathed and fattened. Anyway, she’s rather frail to expose to a room no warmer than this. Still, I can tell fairly well.” Nicolo turned to the Nubian girl and spoke in Turki-Persian. “Help the Lady Linda off with her coat and tell her to stand.”

Actually the room was quite warm. It was to my eyes that Nicolo was not willing to have the girl exposed. I wondered if he were surprised by or was even conscious of deeply submerged jealousy, seemingly so needless. It was proof to me that almost all intelligent men have a sixth sense, but often it does not explain its impartings.

“To hear is to obey!” the Nubian girl replied.

Then she addressed her mistress in a base Arabic, larded with Ethiopian words, which most Nubian slaves employed. By cutting corners and jumping over the jargon, I understood her well enough, and so did the white slave. This could come about in a few weeks in each other’s company. Miranda had known a few Arabic words when I first met her.

“Is he trying to sell me to the young loon, do you think?” Linda asked.

“Be careful. They may speak our tongue.”

“They are both Franks, to judge from the sound of their talk. But the older is richer and stronger and I hope he’ll keep me.”

Meanwhile she was slipping out of her padded coat.

“Did you catch what she said, Marco? It was a corrupt Arabic.”

“I got part of it, and I’ll tell you later.”

Clad in a shift of diaphanous silk, the white slave rose gracefully to her feet. Only her face that had been veiled from the sun and wind and lately cleaned and her throat, shoulders, and breast were of a luminous whiteness I thought I had seen before; the rest of her body was gray with dust. I thought she might attempt some sort of apology for this, but she did not—nor would Marian Redvers of England. The wasting of her flesh was more severe than I had at first perceived. Her ribs stood out, her hip bones were plainly outlined under the taut skin, and her gaunt legs looked unseemly long. I felt my throat tighten and almost fill.

“Why are you so frail?” Nicolo demanded in Turki-Persian. “You couldn’t have lost that much flesh in these few days.”

“I think it’s the wasting sickness,” she answered quite distinctly, “and I will soon die.”

“If she dies, I’ll wish he’d given me a Badakhshan mare instead,” Nicolo told me in Venetian.

“I’d take a chance on her recovery,” I replied. “What would you sell her for?”

“Why? Do you want to buy her?”

“I have a yellow jewel, but your jest of having one too doesn’t hold water. This girl’s white as a pearl except for her hair. Pearls are lucky for me, but Mustapha Sheik cast my horoscope and told me I must never wear a topaz or any yellow jewel. I can’t see any mark on her, but you are deceiving yourself if you think she’s worth giving to the Khan, and if you’d given the second-best balas ruby for her, you’d repent it. But I’ll make you an offer here and now, and if her back is striped or she has any other disfigurement disqualifying her for the Khan, I’ll stand by it.”

“What is your offer?”

“The yellow sapphire and two hundred dinars to boot.”

“That’s handsome enough. But since she’s a free gift and I have nothing to lose——”

“You’d better not refuse until you look at her back.”

“It’s true she might be striped. Many owners wouldn’t like her aloof ways.” Then in Turki-Persian: “Turn around, Linda.”

The slave girl turned impassively.

“No whip has been laid on her,” I said. “Of course if a Saracen wanted to teach her a lesson, he’d give her the kurbash on the soles of her feet—but I’ll risk that too.”

“You might be sorry if——” Nicolo turned again to his chattel. “Linda, lift each pretty little foot in turn and let me look at it.”

The girl did so, first the left, and as my heart stood still, the right. . . . In an instant more I would hear him speak and she would be mine. . . .

Then my head rocked with pain and my belly sickened and cold sweat bathed me from head to foot. On the sole of the girl’s foot black with dust there was no red crescent burned in with a branding iron.

“She’s without mark and her aloof ways are only a sign of high birth,” Nicolo was saying.

Although rallying now, I did not dare speak.

“I’ll set no price on her,” he went on, “and if I don’t present her to the Khan, I’ll keep her for my own.”

I nodded, and aware of his searching gaze, I turned as calmly as I could look at the Nubian girl.

“You puzzle me greatly, Marco,” Nicolo remarked.

“In what way, signor?” I asked, steadying my voice.

“You’re not your usual self, or else some very strong feelings have taken hold of you.”

“If you’ll pardon me, both are true. Chasing ghosts on the desert is an unnerving experience. Also I was taken enough with the white pearl to make an offer for her—and now you’ve refused it. I find myself tempted——”

“To a black one?”

“How did you know?”

“I saw your gaze wander.”

“She has delicate features and a beautiful form. Do you own her too?”

“No, although I intended to buy her to serve Linda. And I agree with you, she’s fine to look at. Baram said her Nubian name is unpronounceable, but he calls her Sheba. As a good Mohammedan, he’s as well acquainted with the story of Solomon as we Christians and I relished the pleasantry. I’d venture her rich brown skin is very like the famous queen’s.”

“You promised me first choice of his goods, and if I buy her, she could remain in attendance on Linda except at such times as I summon her to my pavilion.”

“That would be entirely satisfactory. If you’ll authorize me to offer one hundred and fifty dinars, I’m fairly certain Baram will accept.”

“You can go as high as two hundred. I could certainly get that for her in Cathay.” Then I fixed my gaze on a leather case in a corner of the tent. “If she can play a Persian lute—and many Nubian girls play well—I can get more.”

“The instrument belongs to Linda, I believe. Baram mentioned her as a good singer and musician.”

“I’d like to hear her if only to get the zither playing out of my ears.”

Nicolo opened the case. My eyes began to start, sure that they would see the Grecian lute I had given Miranda on the day of our parting; then they darkened in fear of Fate and the gods. The instrument was indeed a Persian lute, and I knew my lute was rift.

“Will you play it for me, Linda?” came Nicolo’s quiet voice, speaking in Turki-Persian.

“Yes, my lord.”

Nicolo put it into her hands. Her attendant had not cleaned them in the fragmentary toilet making and their dirt touched me almost as much of their gauntness and seeming frailness. But with movements bold and strong she plucked the strings.

I heard the opening chords of an almost forgotten melody. Then the maiden Linda began to sing in a language I could neither speak nor understand, although I knew it was her native tongue. It was a ballad of her own country that Miranda had translated into my native tongue and sung to me long ago. Her voice was low and glimmering with beauty and the words came soaring out of the past, across the mountains and deserts, back into my heart.

Pikeman O pikeman, red from the fray,

Did you pass a bold knight in battle to-day?

He promised to wed, I gave him a flower,

O fetch him to me, my Young Rob o’ the Tower.

I fear he’ll not wed you, fair maiden of Devon,

He died in the battle and rode on to Heaven;

And gifts that you gave him in sweet unbless’d hour

Will fetch you to Fire, not to Rob o’ the Tower.

2

In the business that followed, Nicolo represented both Maffeo and me while we stayed in the background. He had met several of Baram’s kinsmen during a stay in Bukhara on the earlier passage; over cups of long-stored sherbet, he got us better bargains than we had hoped. In addition to the Nubian girl, Nicolo bought for me silk stuffs, mainly gold and silver brocades, to the amount of a thousand dinars. The quantity was as much or more than I could have got in Bukhara for the same sum; in effect it had been transported free across fifteen hundred miles of mountain and desert. If I did not make a thousand dinars’ profit, I would miss my guess.

Nicolo and Maffeo bought all the remainder of Baram’s offerings for five thousand dinars.

With some bought camels and hired tenders transporting our new goods, we set forth in the biting cold of midnight. I did not seem to look twice at the curtained fitter, heaped with felts, atop an old, shaggy, perfectly trained riding camel belonging to Nicolo. I was deep in wonder, which is a deeper thing than amazement or astonishment.

We had traveled about two hours when the shape of a horseman showed on the moonlit road behind us. To behold such a figure, silent and solitary in this empty waste, flung our hearts into our mouths; he was very Death coming to summon us, for all we knew. But before long he had turned into a common-looking fellow named Zurficar we had seen at the rest ground. Some fashion of Tatar calling himself a Turk, and bound for Inner Mongolia, he had taken a puny captain’s position in Baram’s caravan. It developed that he had been torn between his desire to continue his journey and his desire to turn back with his chief. The former urge prevailed upon him shortly after our departure, whereupon he set out to overtake us. So however ordinary he might look, he was of extraordinary courage, or he would not have journeyed that road of bones alone in the dead of night.

Nicolo’s face lay in shadow as he spoke to him, and from his voice alone I got the impression that he took no pleasure in the addition to our company, and even lacked a little of his usual self-mastery. However, when Zurficar explained that he had served the Great Khan in Mongolia and knew the country fairly well, the cold shoulder warmed.

The night waned, the cold dawn cracked, the pale sun rose, the genial warmth turned to heat. Just before noon we came to a good well, one of the best on the road, the waters cool from underground seepage from distant mountains, and abundant not only to slake the thirst of man and beast, but to wash hands and faces and a few clothes, and even the bodies of us three merchants and the slave girls. The camp stilled in the early afternoon and remained hushed until early night. When I had wakened and eaten, I sent word by Nicolo’s servant for Sheba to come to my tent.

I had had it pitched well away from any other, which had caused the cameleers to exchange nods and winks. To reply to their jests I got out my ram’s horns and posted them beside the entrance, and since these were the largest they had ever seen, the men roared with mirth; perhaps it was a good healthful human sound that I thought God liked to hear, and perhaps the desert demons stopped their evil occupations to listen and snarl with hate and perchance tremble with fear.

I lighted a small palm-oil lamp. The flap of my doorway jerked, and I drew it aside. Sheba, wearing a barracan of gaily striped cloth, threw back her facecloth and raised her hands to her bowed head.

“You may take your ease,” I told her in the Arabic of Oman.

She understood me and squatted on the felt floorcloth. I paid her no more attention for a matter of ten minutes, partly so she could familiarize herself with my appearance and the surroundings, partly to provide the silence that any lecherous cameleer, eavesdropping in the dusty dark, might well expect. Then I blew out the lamp and coming close to her, spoke in hushed tones.

“Sheba, do you know why I bought you?” I asked.

“Effendi?”

I reworded the question, employing the simplest forms and words. She tossed her chin in a sign of understanding and pleasure.

“I do not know, but I guess.”

This meaning I derived from the girl’s bewildering mixture of base Arabic with some Nubian language. Still I did not switch to Turki-Persian, in which she had appeared fluent: I wanted her to make a habit of mind of addressing me in this dialect, so if ever she spoke unwisely in others’ hearing no harm would be done. By patience on both our parts and Sheba’s quick ear and tongue, we were soon getting along without much trouble.

“What was your guess?” I managed to ask.

“You want me to carry secrets between you and the Lady Linda.”

“Did she tell you so?”

“When I asked her, she said it might be so, but it would bring no good to anyone, and likely harm.”

“What made you suspect it?”

“She told me of a lover she had had in—in some city in Frankistan—and that we might meet him on our journey. When I saw your face, I believed you were the one. When I could look into Lady Linda’s face, I was almost sure.”

“What did she say when I sent for you tonight?”

“I beg not to answer.”

“You must answer. You are bound to me, now.”

“I remain bound to her as well. Lord, she told me if you desire me for your concubine, to give and take every pleasure that I could, for the road was long and lonely, and we might soon all be dead, and she was sorry that I had been made to attend her all the way from Samarkand.”

“Do you think she spoke from her heart?”

“How could I doubt it, effendi? She told me that she had begged you to take her virginity, and instead you took a thousand pieces of gold; but since I was not a virgin, and you had no sum to lose, you might be more yielding.”

“Did she speak in bitter jest?”

“No, effendi. She spoke quietly, with her small, beautiful smile.”

“Do you love her, Sheba?”

“She’s the beat of my heart.”

“Do you think she has the wasting sickness?”

“Has the slender-legged gazelle of the Libian Desert? She has made herself thin by much walking and little eating, so she can better endure thirst and hunger and great heat.”

“It is cold now, and she should fatten. Why did she tell the signor she had the wasting sickness?”

“I don’t know.”

“It was not that the signor might sell her to me?”

“I think not, effendi.”

“Why not? Has her love for me turned to hate? Speak truly, or I’ll lay on the kurbash.”

“She told me only that you did not call her, effendi, as you promised, and so I think her love for you died on the desert.”

“How could I call her——?”

Then my throat cords twisted, and I stopped. Miranda’s own words in farewell rang out of the past: “When you lie cold and lonely, call me, and I’ll come.”

I opened the tent flap and looked up at the dust-dimmed moon. It seemed that I said something to her without words—made some sort of promise without thought. Then I tied the strings and returned to my place.

“Did Miranda—the Lady Linda—tell you any of her history after the Greek Angelos bought her and before you knew her?”

“She spoke of it to pass the time. Angelos tried to sell her to a perfume buyer of Byzantium, but without success. Then he sold her to a Syrian slave dealer named Abu Kyr.”

“Did she tell you the price?”

“When I asked, she told me. Fifteen hundred bezants.”

“Angelos could have done better, if he had faith. What happened to her then?”

“Abu Kyr brought her to Isfahan, intending to sell her to the great Emir there. Instead he sought Baram of Bukhara, buying treasures to sell to the Great Khan and his couriers, and Baram bought her.”

“At what price?”

“When I asked, she told me. Two thousand bezants.”

“Then her boast was true.”

“Effendi?”

“At what price did Baram hold her?”

“I heard him say he would get three thousand bezants—or dinars—from a buyer for the Great Khan. This was before she got so thin.”

“Three thousand! One who owned her sold her for a thousand and thought he’d done well.”

“He was a blind fool, effendi.”

“Sheba, your mistress—but she’s not so any more except by my sufferance—bade you take pleasure in me and give me pleasure. If it is my desire, it is your duty as a slave. But if I do not command it, and leave it to your preference, will you do so or not?”

“I cannot, lord.”

“Why not?”

“Even though you have bought me, the Lilla Keiberia is still my mistress.”

“You said her love for me died on the desert.”

“But the dead walk sometimes. I have seen and heard them.”

“Without your meaning to, you’ve given me hope. No, I seized upon it and made it my captive, but you’ve fed it when it wouldn’t eat from my hands.”

“Is it like a lion cub, or a fledgling sand dove from a nest?” Sheba broke into a shout of laughter.

“The listeners about our tent will think I’ve done well. What will your mistress think?”

“Do you think she would deign to listen, effendi? Your hope is dove-frail if you know her no better than that.”

“You speak too boldly, but I’ll not reprove you, only give you an order. Arrange for her to meet me alone, as safely as possible, at tomorrow’s rest.”

“She won’t do it, effendi. She made a promise to her gods to be a dutiful slave.”

“In that case, arrange for my coming to her, taking her by surprise. Leave the tent flap untied and do all else for my ease and safety. Take pains, and let me know when all is ready. If you do your part well, I’ll give you Persian sweetmeats. If you fail, you may have only a half-measure of water on the next day’s march. If she cries an alarm, I will shield you if I can. Now you have my leave to go.”

Sheba rose and touched her forehead with both hands.

“Effendi, if I were not bound to her, I would ask for sweetmeats of another sort.”

With a deep-throated bubbling laugh, she vanished in the darkness.

3

The office I had given Sheba was no sinecure. We camped on a clay flat, shadowless except for heaps and crude windbreaks of sun-baked bricks, probably the rubble of some long-ago military post. Happily the well was deep, clean, and abundant, but its only help was to give her an excuse to stay up late, washing her own, her mistress’s, and her master’s clothes. It was by no means certain that Nicolo would stay in bed through any term of hours. To transport our new inlay of goods, we had bought some of Baram’s camels and hired their tenders; the newcomers had not yet settled down and required frequent surveillance. Also, Baram kept spies among the drovers.

Nicolo ordered his new slave’s tent erected within thirty paces of his own. But because both were near the well, the seeming blow to my hopes might prove a boon. Sheba would go to her clothes-washing soon after nightfall. Nicolo should be sound asleep by then; and if he rose in the next hour, she was sure to see him in the light of her dung fire, in which case she was going to run to him with a loud cry of Shair Allah (The Justice of God)! By pleading for holy water to protect her and her mistress from night demons—we were never without a ewer blessed by Nestorian priests—she hoped to arrest him while I beat a quick, furtive retreat.

I had enjoyed the hatching of the crude but sound plan—actually, any working or mere plotting against Nicolo was joy to me—and I did not dwell on its quite possible if not probable uselessness. For instance, Sheba had told Miranda not to fasten the door ropes, since she would be close by and going back and forth. But if Miranda did fasten them, from nervousness, I could not expect to get in. If I succeeded in entering, I could not even guess how soon I must come forth.

The last dusk died in the seventh hour; the decaying, jaundiced moon would not rise until the tenth. When the coast appeared clear, I moved too swiftly to be oppressed by my thudding heart. The strings of the close-drawn curtain had not been fastened, but the thick dark I had counted on within held a pale, bluish-yellow globe around the jewellike flame of a taper. Miranda lay in its umbrage. I made out her shape and guessed at her white face and a ghost of highlight on her hair.

“Who’s there?” she asked in Turki-Persian. Her voice was low, not it seemed from stealth but by nature.

“Marco Polo.”

“If you are looking for Sheba, she’s at the well.”

“I know it—keeping watch.”

“What do you want?”

I started to say humbly, “Only to talk to you.” But that was a mere fraction of my wants and maybe the time was short, and maybe Fate would give me no more or less than that, so I spoke the one Venetian word that came upon my lips, springing there from my heart.

“You.”

She did not seem arrested or amazed.

“You can’t have me now, Marco,” she answered in the Venetian tongue. “It’s too late.”

“It’s not too late as long as we both live.”

She gave a muted laugh. I knew her by it as well as by her song.

“That might not be very long, if you’re caught here,” she said.

“If it comes to killing, Nicolo will die, not me.”

“You were always a great boaster.”

I knew her by her truthtelling, too.

“I have to be to win.” It was true, but I did not know why.

“It may come to that. You hate each other far more than I ever realized. I smelled it on both of you when he brought you into my tent to show me to you. That was an act of hatred on his part. This may be one on your part.”

“What may be?”

“Your coming here. You don’t want me any more. You wanted me only when you were young and innocent, and even then you wanted something more. You said you did, just now; but what you meant was, you want Nicolo’s slave girl. I don’t care about that, but is it fairly safe for you to come here? Don’t lie to yourself or to me.”

“Fairly safe, yes.”

“Are you taking into consideration that he’s even more cunning than you are—at least he’s far more experienced in cunning—and may have seen through our pretending the other night and may be sneaking up on us this instant?”

“If he had suspected we had been lovers, he would have tried to keep me from buying Sheba.”

Miranda laughed again, then her eyes grew big. “You still have a grain of innocence,” she told me in a different voice, utterly lovely in my ears. Then she paused, fought and won a little battle of some kind, and went on in the almost sprightly tone of a moment ago. “It’s just what he would do, Marco, to encourage you. And you know, if he wanted an excuse to kill you, catching you with me would afford him the best he could ever find.”

Deep inside my brain I felt a slight shock, as from the impact of an idea.

“Why, it would be a wonderful opportunity,” Miranda went on. “All the caravan men would applaud. They’re fanatical Mohammedans, and the killing of a purdah-breaker would exalt them to the skies. In their eyes it would earn Nicolo, an uncircumcised Christian, the right to go to Paradise. Your being his son would thrill them all the more. He tells everyone you’re not—only a relation of his wife’s—but of course they know different. The dimmest-eyed of the lot can see the resemblance.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Sheba sees everything, and I’m not exactly blind.”

“He wouldn’t like to kill me until we cross the Hwang Ho.”

“Then he won’t try to catch you before then. He’ll only make sure you do no damage to a slave worth three thousand dinars.”

I drew in all my thoughts and set them at one task. Presently they performed it to their best ability.

“Miranda, I don’t believe he suspects we know each other. I’ve seen no sign of it and many signs that he doesn’t. He’ll expect me to covet you and try to get you when I’m tired of Sheba, but he’ll not look for any stroke this soon.”

“In that case, you may sit.”

“A slave girl giving leave to a Venetian merchant?”

“I’m the mistress of this pavilion.”

I bowed to her and sat down.

“You’ve grown from a child to a woman—from the great ladyship you were born to almost to a queenliness that perhaps you aspired to—in three and a half years,” I said.

“That’s one reason Signor Nicolo and I are going to join forces in the matter I mentioned.”

“What matter?”

“Making sure that you’ll do no damage to a slave worth three thousand bezants.”

I stopped and looked at her. My eyes had grown accustomed to the candlelight: it was no longer a pale blue-yellow globe hanging in pitch-dark but a diffused glimmer dimming away to vagueness. Miranda’s eyes were big and shining. In better weather, as Baram had expressed it, her gaunt face would regain all its former beauty, added to a new beauty I was discovering there, which had come upon her on the long road. I did not know its source or exactly where it lay. Like almost all real beauty, it was unanalyzable. On the night that I swam beside her to Sea Pig’s Wallow, I saw her amazing aliveness, expressed in physical grace, behind her quietude. Now I saw the same thing behind serenity, which is born of power.

I could believe now that she had rid herself of her ornamental flesh in order to travel light and better withstand hunger, thirst, and heat. When she needed it, she would put it back. And what remained was still beautiful and ineffably desirable. I could hardly breathe. . . .

“You’ve come to a new attitude toward your slavehood,” I remarked.

“I wondered if you’d noticed it.”

“How could I help it? It’s a far cry from your wanting me to keep you a while, then sell you as a farm wench.”

“That was before you cast me out.”

“Do you mean—before I sold you?” But I knew she did not mean that.

“No, I still forgot myself in love of you. But when you forgot me—and I knew it in my dreams—I knew I must quit you and look out for my own interests. Instead of a farm wench, working in the sun, I decided to be a queen ruling a palace.”

“When did that happen?”

“About two years ago. I belonged to a Syrian trader named Abu Kyr. He paid fifteen hundred bezants and hoped to sell me to the Emir of Isfaham for two thousand. The Emir would not pay it, and in the meantime I had heard of Baram of Bukhara, buying treasures to sell to the great Khan. I persuaded Abu to take me there along with some other things Baram might buy. Besides selling me for five hundred bezants’ gain, the journey profited him well.”

“Do you mean you had the ambition to be one of Kublai’s concubines?”

“No. I meant to be one of his queens.”

I could not keep my eyes from widening and some scales from falling from them.

“When you decided to go to his Court, the brand on your foot must have mysteriously healed.

“That would have taken a miracle. Miracles aren’t given to slave girls wanting to be queens—they’ve got to run risks, as Esther did. When Abu Kyr had brought me to Bukhara, Baram wanted to buy me for his main offering to the Khan—until he saw the brand. Then he said he couldn’t consider me for his venture, although Abu Kyr could make a fair profit on me in the market there. I asked Baram if he would take me provided I got the brand cut out without disfigurement. He said he’d gladly do so. I had already heard that the greatest physicians in the Mohammedan world, including amputators and trepanners, practiced their arts at the University of Bukhara.”

She spoke calmly, without haste. My wonder at her poise changed to alarm at her complaisance.

“Wait just a minute, Miranda.”

I stole out of the tent, afraid that the time had flown even faster than it seemed. The hush of sleeping men and beasts—not quite silence, yet without distinguishable sound—hung over the camp; its only breach was a splashing of water near the well in time with low, wailing song. Dust murk hid the stars and Sheba’s dung fire glimmered fitfully. I looked at my sand glass. Not half an hour had passed since I had entered Miranda’s door.

I approached Sheba from the direction of my tent. “Sall’ ala Mohammed (Bless the Prophet),” I told her in good Arabic.

“Al,” she answered without looking up—the accepted abbreviation of “Allah umma salli alayh! (O Allah bless him!).”

“Half an hour more?”

“If those zither players out on the desert don’t come for me. If they do, I’ll need holy water sure.”

I left her, went to my pavilion, and made my way through pitch-dark to Miranda’s.

“I was sorry to have you go,” she said, “but I hoped you wouldn’t come back.”

“Why?”

“You’ll make me so much trouble. But after a minute or two I wanted you back.”

“Why, again?”

“To triumph over you, partly. My story is one of triumph—you can’t help seeing that. Instead of disappearing in the house of some rich burgher or a palace of a prince, I’m almost to the Gobi Desert on the way to the Court of Kublai Khan. Your rejecting me made a woman out of me. Much more of one than if I’d become your concubine, or even your wife.”

“What’s the other part?”

“I think I’ve fallen in love with danger.”

“Why not? He’s been your companion for many a moon.”

“Not too great danger, you understand, only enough to be exciting. Tonight there’s just the right amount. The chance of murder or a duel to the death for you, but only a scolding, at worst a slapping, for me. I’d tell him you came to ask about Sheba—that she wouldn’t surrender to you—and tried to make love to me. I’ll say I couldn’t get rid of you without alarming the camp and bringing disgrace upon him——”

Her eyes gleamed in the candlelight. I had cast a pearl beyond price before swine. No, I had dropped it where the connoisseur, Nicolo, could pick it up.

“My time’s short. What about your foot?”

“Oh yes. I got Baram to take me to one of the greatest physicians, a disciple of Avicenna. He said I couldn’t cut out the brand without possibly laming me or certainly leaving a scar, but because it was on the sole of my foot, where the skin is thick and has great power to rebuild, in six months he could wear it off with drugs. Of course Baram couldn’t wait half a year, so I asked if I could take the medicine with me. That was possible, he answered, but its application would be a long, uncomfortable process, most awkward on the road.

“When he explained it a little more, I saw what to do. The drug was extracted from the root of a scrub with pointed evergreen leaves—it was similar to what we call barberry in England. It ate flesh away and was used for removing warts and wens. Then why couldn’t I put a little in my sandal and walk on it every day? He said if I mixed it with olive oil, it would destroy layer after layer of skin while new layers grew from inside. Baram could hardly believe it, but agreed to pay down sixteen hundred bezants for me, and to sell me at the great market at Samarkand if the medicine had no effect. If it worked, he would in due time send Abu four hundred bezants more. I walked all the way from Bukhara to Samarkand and most of the road to Hokand. That’s the real reason I’m so lean. With the burning and the walking, I wore the brand away.”^[21]

I saw her tramping that endless road under the sun and the moon. But a brand had been put on me that I could neither walk, work, nor pray away. I did not know what it was, and I could get rid of it only by conquering Nicolo, winning Miranda of England.

“I must go in one more minute. When can I come back?”

“Never.”

I laughed at her. She laughed too and wiped her eyes.

“Still, it’s no use, Marco,” she murmured earnestly. “I’m not going back in love with you, and I’m going to do nothing to interfere with my being a queen in the Court of Kublai Khan. And in that I have support so great that you’ll know I’ll stick to it.”

“The support of Nicolo?”

“Your mind runs on him. No, my saints.”

“Did your saints object to what we did before?”

“No, because I was your slave. But I’m not your slave now—I belong to Nicolo. You think we can still make love as we did before until you can get me back or make some other deal, but we can’t. Even if I wanted to, I’m still safe—I can still abstain. And that’s because of a contract I made with my saints.”

“What contract?”

“I told you once. When I tell you again, go. On that night, I wasn’t at all sure I could go into slavery. I had been burned and thought it would happen again and again until I told my secret, and so would be ransomed. So I promised that if I won, I would be a dutiful slave—a loyal slave.”

Miranda was speaking very quietly and her face was still, but I felt a force within her that I knew by no name but steadfastness. What else could I expect of one who had gone, not been led, three-fourths of the way from Venice to the Court of Kublai Khan?

“Do you realize what you’re saying?” I asked.

“Partly.”

“I’ve got to take you from Nicolo before he takes you himself or presents you to the Khan. And he won’t sell you.”

“I don’t think you can, when he has so much more power. But you have another course—to let me alone.”

“If he should die, I could make full claim as his heir. There’d be a will disinheriting me, but Maffeo would be glad to divide with me out here on the desert.”

“You told me once that if you kill him, you will fail in your venture and go to Hell.”

“I think he may meet his death trying to kill me. If I pick the time and place and provocation, it would be almost sure.” And that was the idea that had struck and lightly stunned my brain early in the visit.

“Your minute’s up and I want you to go.”

“I must go, but I’ll come back.”

“I don’t want you to and you have no right to.”

“What are your wishes to me? What is right out here on the desert? Ask the lion and the falcon and the snake.”