Caravan To Xanadu

CHAPTER 9

THE FALLEN GOD

The caravan of my once belonging lingered at the scene of my overthrow for fourteen infinite days.

When it finally formed for the march southeast to Kanchow, I had abandoned any notion of false boldness, and had set my will against flight, whether of body, mind, or spirit. So I took a place behind the merchants, in front of the baggage camels where the head dragoman was wont to ride his pony. The rest of my arrangements were as simple and cheap as I could make them. Sheba and I together had loaded our single camel and she would take charge of him on the road, an easy task for a desert girl like her. I expected to buy our food at the road stalls and eat with the cameleers. Thus I hoped to escape all the drover, baggage wallah, and servant hire—provided, of course, Nicolo permitted the arrangement.

As to this outcome, I was in grave doubt. The terms of my membership in the company specified that I travel in good style for face’s sake, a condition that had gone by the boards. He had once refused to let me accompany the caravan in a lowly capacity and his memory, like mine, was long. While waiting in aching hope to hear the trumpet, I was bleakly ready to have him send word for me to take my camel, my female slave, and myself out of the line.

He did not. Slowly we went our way out of the gate of the caravanserai, down narrow crooked streets, through the great portal in the Wall. By now my joyful wonder was being slaked by hindsighted acumen; I could tell why I had been spared as convincingly as a Paduan lawyer. Nicolo did not want to be seen kicking a man when he was down—especially a fellow Venetian and an acknowledged kinsman. But it would not be like Nicolo to go further than this—and the fact fetched up short the vaunting that so often follows a lucky event. He would not treat me better because some knaves and fools whispered that I was his son; instead it would cause him to treat me worse. Nicolo would play the gentleman in his fellow merchants’ sight only at his own convenience and whim. Too well he knew the gains from his fame for ruthlessness.

No doubt he wanted Sheba to continue in Miranda’s attendance. The road stayed lonely and the land harsh; and his prize would be happier, eating and sleeping better, and hence in better fettle when he brought her to the Court of Kublai Khan. This factor would remain in my favor all the way to Peking, but it carried no great weight. And to curry not his favor but his neglect, I had taken one step that instinct told me was on the right track. I had begun it the day following my fall, a fortnight before this departure.

The less I looked like Nicolo, the better he could stand the sight of me. He wore a fine mustache, with shaven jaws and chin. I too had grown a mustache, perhaps to irritate him, and on account of some dim perception of distant events, I did not want to shave it off; but I had started to grow a small, shapely beard. By now it had altered the aspect of my countenance and made me look older. I stopped dressing my hair in the Venetian fashion favored by Nicolo, and my wearing plainer clothes differentiated us still more.

Walking in the dust and begrimed by it, I was generally less conspicuous than before. Eating the cheap, rough food of the cameleers and sleeping by their dung fires, I managed to stay almost altogether out of Nicolo’s sight. I did not believe that this truce with him, if I could call it that, could last long; actually he was granting me quarter for a little while for his own uses. Yet for four days he gave every impression of ignoring my existence.

In those four days much happened inside me. I did not know exactly what it was or what good or ill it would bring me. Walking the road was in itself mildly pleasurable, my body being equal to much harder work, my lungs liking the thin, cool air, my brain calm after its late storm, and my heart warmed by the companionship of my clean-striding, quick-handed slave girl. It came to pass that I found a certain fellowship with the cameleers. I had lost so much face that the remnants were not worth spitting at—they themselves would not gain face by insolence to me—and since I was no longer a poor master but had proved their match as a man I even gained a little face of a kind they prized. As for getting caught in thievery, why, I had paid the fiddler.

In the afternoon of the fourth day we came to Kanchow, the ancient walled capital of Kansu, a city heaped with great abbeys and thronged with immense idols. The word flew over our rest ground that Nicolo and Maffeo had been invited to feast with the Khan’s Governor, and presently I saw them, bejeweled and bedizened, mounting their horses to ride in state to his palace. Perhaps I was inadequately hidden among the cameleers and other pedestrians of plain dress, for Nicolo fixed his large eyes on my face. Perhaps he had merely waited our arrival at a new scene to settle matters, for he spoke in an undertone to Maffeo, then came riding toward me.

Looking down from his high seat, he addressed me in an impersonal tone.

“Our invitation from the Royal Governor is an official one to bearers of the golden tablet of the Khan,” he said. “Now that we are approaching the frontier of Cathay, it carries far more weight than in the hinterlands ruled by subject kings beyond his immediate control.”

I had noticed this. Until now the tablet had been largely a token of honor and Nicolo had rarely employed its latent powers. Now it was turning into an Aladdin’s lamp.

“While the authority and the safe-conduct it betokens are vested only in Maffeo and me, in practice they pertain to our property and trains and even to fellow travelers whose interests march with ours and whose missions benefit the Khan,” Nicolo went on. “Obviously it must not be employed for an offender against the Khan’s law. The murmuring of the people would surely reach the ears of the Governor and thus probably the Imperial Council. But your manner lately indicates you’re aware of this.”

“Yes, signor, I am.”

“Of course you know too that since the terms of our agreement are not being kept, you can no longer claim membership in the company.”

“I resigned it, sir, when I lost my goods and my horse.”

“I take it you still wish to go to Peking.”

“Yes, and to find employment there to help to mend my fortunes. I think I could be useful to a merchant wishing to import Occidental goods, and perhaps could obtain a fellowship at one of the universities in astronomy and geography. In due course, I could find my way back to Europe.”

“I think that’s a sensible course. As ambassador to the Khan, I might prevail upon some official to find you a post. Also, I’m not averse to your traveling with the caravan in your present capacity, provided Sheba can continue to serve my slave girl Linda. At Peking I’ll decide whether to present Linda to the Khan or to keep her for my own delight; then you can sell Sheba or make other use of her. Meanwhile I’ll do more than quarter her; for her services you may quarter with my bailiff. However, there must be one clear understanding.”

I inclined my head and waited.

“Make no further call upon me of any land, and do not ask me to present you to the Khan.”

“I agree to that, and considering the trouble I was in, I think it would be very dangerous for me to come near him.”

I spoke unvarnished truth, and Nicolo knew it. His great eyes shone and his big hand loosed the rein. As the gray stallion bore him off, large and effulgent in the sunlight, I became lost in reverie. It came to me that Nicolo was better satisfied with his victory than at first. It was more nearly complete than he had realized or, which amounted to the same thing, I was more easily broken than he had believed. Now he was wondering whether he need expose himself to danger, no matter how slight, to deal me some sort of coup de grace. It seemed to me that he was willing to wait for that, even to let Fate finish me off, meanwhile throwing me enough crusts to keep me from any act dangerous to him. Too harsh treatment might drive me to a deed of revenge. Certainly it would cause unwelcome comment among other merchants.

Was there only so small a hole in his coat, or had he Achilles’ heel?

2

Tonight Nicolo would ride five miles from the caravanserai to the Governor’s palace. My thoughts made a little turn that I often forbade them and lighted on Miranda. It would be a victory for me just to lay eyes on her—for I was rid of the folly and frailty that would make it out a defeat—and I needed a victory sorely. I thought it lay in something more than brooking his will. I had not seen too clearly lately, and I thought she would do my eyes good.

I had calculated the risk of entering her quarters and found it outweighing my hope of gain when Sheba, crossing the courtyard, tossed her chin at me. I followed her into my cell.

“My Lady Linda has gone to the Nestorian temple for her soul’s sake,” she told me. “There’s no one there now but some old priests chanting before the altar, and she said she had something to tell you if you’ll come and hear it. And she said that there was no sin in using the temple as a house of assignation, because the Nestorians were heretics, and anyway she forswore Christianity when she became a slave.”

“Tell her that if she can so beat the Devil around the bush, so can I. I’ll come as soon as you’re out of sight.”

I did so, but at first barely glanced at the two female slaves, both veiled, at a kneeling bench in the rear of the small nave. I was surveying the whole scene, which I had not done with sufficient care in the case of a heathen abbey at Suchow, or perhaps I would have been in a different fix. Indeed Mustapha Sheik had tried to teach me that lesson long years ago.

Above the altar was a large silver cross, its center and four ends adorned with jewels. The altar was bedecked with a cloth of gold in which pearls had been worked to make holy pictures, and lighted by an elaborate lantern with eight wicks. Three priests wearing haircloth tunics and black wool-lined jackets crouched before it, performing ceremonies in the warmth of a charcoal brazier. Presently I discovered that besides this and their warm robes, they had another way to fight the devil-sent cold. At first I could hardly believe my eyes, these being some sort of Christian clergy, but their singing and chanting out of tune, and their falling against one another and their difficulty in getting up and down, left no room for doubt. Presently one of them reached for a ewer behind the altar, quaffed deeply, and passed it to his mates.

The lantern light almost died away before it reached the two girls, then gave the illusion of reviving. They too were warmly clad, and anyway they were used to cold weather by now. I was startled to remember that this was March, and the fourth year of my journey was almost done.

Almost four years ago I had laid eyes on Miranda for the first time. When I looked toward her now, she raised her veil so I could see her face as plainly as the dim light allowed. “This is what you’ve lost,” the act told me, a strange, proud act which like so many proud things, was deeply sad. It’s what I’ll win back, my heart’s surge answered. But I was always the braggart. . . .

I came and sat beside her, wonder-stricken. She waited while I gazed upon every aspect of beauty now revealed, and yearning wracked my heart and lust stormed my brain. Then she spoke quietly in the Venetian tongue.

“As I feared and warned you, you’ve been brought low.”

“That’s true.”

“I sent for you to give you another warning.”

“I’ll thank you for it, and it may be I’ll heed it better than the other.”

“You don’t matter to my master any more, and as long as that’s true, he’ll not harm you. So be careful what you do that might make you count with him again.”

“Are you speaking for my profit, your own, or your master’s?”

“I’m duty-bound to speak for my master’s profit when it conflicts with yours or mine; but I don’t think it does in this case. If he’d kill you, he’d commit a most awful sin and have to make terrible atonement. I know him better now, and there’s not the slightest doubt that you’re his son.”

“Perhaps he knows you, at last, and the water of giving you to the Khan is already over the dam.”

“Well, it isn’t.”

The twisting went out of my throat and the roughness from my voice.

“Do you want him to give you to the Khan? When I asked you that before, you said you were so deeply enslaved that his will was yours.”

“I’ve thought it over since then and have decided I want him to give me to the Khan for his good and mine too. He doesn’t need me like you needed me. He’s already a giant in strength—his great ambitions are sure to be fulfilled. But that fulfillment will come quicker if he becomes the Khan’s favorite. For what is a suit of fire-walkers’ garments—even a fireproof mineral woven into cloth—compared to me?”

“There must be a hundred great beauties hoping to be queens of the Khan who feel the same.”

“I didn’t send for you to quarrel with. I saw that you are desperate and in danger of making some fatal mistake. Remember, he can kill you now with impunity—except for punishments from beyond the earth—for any story he tells, the judges will believe, you being a confessed thief. He could have had you killed in Suchow, but he’s always torn between getting rid of you entirely and bringing you to heel. One’s easy and the other’s hard, and he likes hardship. Also, he was never able to bring your mother to heel, and that would make it a double satisfaction.”

“Truly, you know him better than you did, and you talk plainer.”

“I’m no longer an English child who fell in love with a Venetian bravo. But your gods made you save me from the desert—to punish you, I think, for casting your pearl away—and so I’m telling you the truth.”

I did not boast again. I looked her in the eyes and said, “I know it.”

“I’d like to tell you something else, and have asked permission of my saints, but whether they’ve granted it I don’t know.”

“What have they to do with it?”

“I promised them I would be a dutiful slave. To tell you this, perhaps I must break my vow. But I would be doing good, I think, while to remain silent would be doing harm.”

“It’s a hard choice that you’ll have to make yourself.”

“I thought of asking those three priests to help me decide, but look at them!” Just now they were singing Vexilla Regis Prodeunt at the top of their voices.

“Miranda, we’re a long way from home.”

“If I tell you, will you go?”

“Yes.”

“At once, not asking any questions?”

“Yes.”

“Baram was very kind to me and is a good, just man. I don’t want you to brood over his ingratitude to you and perhaps, if you get a chance, strike back at him. He didn’t know the truth about your going out to look for us that night—I didn’t know it at the time—but I’ve found it out since from an old camp tender who erects our pavilion. Baram believed that you went out on Nicolo’s orders and he was looking for us at the same time. If he had known that you went of your own will and at your own risk, against Nicolo’s advice and wishes, and that we all would have died except for you, he would have given you his most precious possession as a reward.”

“Instead he gave it to Nicolo?”

“Yes.”

“So Fate—I don’t want to say God—gave me a second chance to have you, but the chance went wrong?”

“It was partly your own fault, Marco. You should have looked for me in the caravan instead of going to your tent. You should have found me and claimed me. You might have known you’d be given another chance if you wanted it enough.”

“How could I know it?”

“At least you could have kept trying instead of giving up.”

“Maybe it’s written that after I’m punished enough, I can still have you.”

“I think if you did, you would only sell me again.”

“Miranda, how did Baram come to make that mistake?”

“Nicolo saw me and wanted me and lied. By keeping you away from Baram, he ran no great risk of his finding out the truth; anyway, he’s a bold man who takes risks. This one won.”

“Yes, it did. It won more greatly than I once could dream.” Made in this half-heathen church on this wintry day, here was my profession of faith.

“If you believe that at last, it’s too late.”

“You said I ought to keep on trying——”

“I take it back. But you’ll try something, and whatever it is, I don’t want you to be brought down to defeat and possibly death by treachery.”

That last word stopped my breath. I wondered if she were using the wrong word—that she meant something much less, such as trickery. Perhaps because of the drunken priests’ caterwauling, I had misunderstood her.

“Did you say . . . treachery?”

“Yes, and that’s the main reason I had you come here. You promised me you wouldn’t ask me any questions, but I don’t think you need to. I’m doing right when I say this. There’s no longer any doubt in my mind—I was confused before between letter and spirit.”

“When you say . . . what?”

“Don’t trust any more of your secrets to Zurficar the Turki-Tatar, whom you call Pietro.”

3

Mustapha Dey had once told me for the love of Allah not to hang upon his words as though they were a life line thrown to me on a sinking ship. It seemed that my ship was sinking now in a calm, cold, wine-dark sea of doom, and there was no life line thrown to me, no words in its stead, no Mustapha to fill the breach, no Allah to turn to at last. My spirit was as withered as all my laurels, I was bankrupt of hope as of pride, and every wind blew cold.

Instinct warned I must not act, speak, or make any irrevocable decision until again, if I ever could, I gained firm ground. I must peer out and keep guard like a rat in its hole, but must not myself be seen. And I dared not dull my mind with potions or enflame it with passions lest these injunctions fail.

This was not life, only its shadow. At least the man walking in the dust, keeping these rules like a slave, did not seem me, Marco Polo, bold, crafty, licentious, vindictive, willful, a man of deeds, a son of Venice. I had a bleak feeling of being depersonalized. It was as though I had dropped out of my identity when I had lost my way. I felt little, and perhaps my strongest feeling was in the form of an intimation of early, peaceful death. All my faiths had already died, it seemed—faith in Miranda’s innocence and even in her beauty, faith in the greatness of Mustapha, for had he not believed in me? And even faith in my mother’s trust to me, as sworn by her delegate on earth. So I could no longer be certain that I was Nicolo’s son. I no longer believed in it as I had believed in the uniqueness and the immortality of my soul. My resemblance to him might be extreme prenatal influence. Or was it a trick of the Devil to lay me by the heels?

Throughout the caravan’s fortnight stay in Kanchow and down the long road to Yungchang, I made no real effort to realize myself and shake off the waking dream. It seemed I was too stunned to know what had hit me. But perhaps my inertia was some sort of natural protection. Vulnerable in the extreme, perhaps I was trying, not intelligently but instinctively, to stay out of trouble.

At Yungchang the merchants bought musk and yak wool from the Koko Nor. The mountain breeze with its smells of spring was like a tonic to me, and I found myself tempted to give a gold bezant for the favor of a damsel of the town, white-skinned with rosy cheeks and raven-black hair, who dropped me a flower from a roof top. Miserliness made me refrain, but I had been pleasantly surprised to find myself once more a man in at least one respect, and instinctively I began to seek other signs. Still guarding every action and word, I set my thoughts free. When they had larked it awhile they were refreshed enough to undertake a hard problem.

Ever since the trial I had avoided Pietro, at first to save him loss of face and possibly from the contagion of misfortune, lately because I could not play the necessary part. During our stay at Yungchang, I dared to drink rice wine with him, and on our taking the road I sometimes walked beside him. I noticed that he took not the slightest interest in my general conversation—the hare was no longer worth the skinning—but if I said anything worth telling Nicolo, he became all ears, plus cold, glittering eyes. No doubt he loved the man as might a captured wolf.

We came to the summer capital of the subject king of Kansu at the foot of the Ala Shan. This was an immense castle on a splendid terrace, the main palace surrounded by armories and pleasure domes. Paying tribute to Kublai Khan, the king was permitted much of his former magnificence and the trappings, although not the scepter, of power; he dwelt in a luxury undreamed by Western potentates, with lackeys and eunuchs without end, a harem of five hundred chosen beauties from all over Asia, game parks, hawks and hounds, and, for his parades, a thousand snow-white camels from the famous stud of Ningshia. Before his surrender he had boasted too of five thousand pitch-black yaks, larger than the common kind and very fierce, but since they were ridden by crossbowmen in guarding the passes into his realm, giving Kublai no little trouble before he could break through, they had been taken away from him. In their place he had been given an equal number of white fallow deer.

The greater part of these pets had escaped or died, and the walled park where he had kept them had fallen into neglect. Few passed through the tumble-down gates, and one barren hill-top stayed completely forsaken for an odd reason. Here lay a colossus of perhaps greater dimension than any other in the world. It was called the Dead Buddha and had once stood here as the titulary deity of the land, towering over the king’s palace and visible—so legend had it—for a hundred miles. No swan, raven, elephant, or serpent was old enough to remember its raising; it was already ancient when Shih Huang Ti built the Great Wall ere Caesar conquered England. But within the memory of living man the ground under one side had sunk and the enormous idol leaned slowly over until it fell.

Its peculiar interest to me was that the vast form, probably built up slowly of clay, shimmered in the sunlight as though covered with gold leaf. So when the full moon covered the whole countryside with silver leaf, the hours that the malign influence of death was most high and the scene most forsaken, I had Sheba follow me there with a pair of scrapers. I thought likely we could scrape off enough gold before moonset to fatten my purse a little; in any case I hoped to practice some necromancy, which means to foresee the future through communion with the dead. Mustapha told me how he had visited the Great Sphinx under the midnight moon in the solitude of the Egyptian desert. He had asked her about the meaning of life and the mystery of the human soul, and some enlightenment had been given him. I did not seek answers to such vasty riddles, but I would like to know if some thinking I had done was straight, and if the path I had taken lately was the right path. There was nothing to stop Sheba, whose heart was Eve’s and whose wisdom was as the serpent’s, from acting as the oracle of the dead god.

My first study was of how the mighty had fallen. But as though the hand of the Devil had half-caught him in the Devil’s way, the god did not smash, and the only damage was a rift across the back of the head, strangely comparable to a fractured skull. His hand that had been lifted and open in some solemn admonition now thrust skyward as in a last spasm fixed by rigor mortis. His toes turned up. Between his feet was an animal of some kind, apparently a cat, tail down and legs in the air.

We paced the length of his corpse—fifty of my long strides. The other hand that pressed against the ground was fifteen feet long, and the foot a good twenty. When we climbed to his forehead to look into his face, we could not stand high enough to see it well; and the curl of the lips that had doubtless represented a blissful smile suggested the awful grin often seen on the faces of cadavers. The eyes were half closed, and their rims, never covered with gold leaf, had bleached white. I could lie along the slope of the nose, and if I had won Miranda instead of lost her, she and I could have made love on the broad of his chin. It was just what we would have done, if she were here with me instead of her bondwoman. It would have been the perfect act of defiance of the ravages of Time, the answer to Death.

I was wondering how many ingots of gold had been beaten eggshell thin to illumine the vast form. The chest was forty feet broad and thirty thick, the swollen belly a third again as gross, and the wall of the well-molded, deep-sunken navel had taken at least six square feet of gold leaf. But the god-makers of long ago had saved much yellow stuff, and labor as well, by substituting drapery for manly loins. If their motive was modesty instead of economy, I doubted if the god would like it any better.

I had once seen the complete skin, carefully flayed, of a tall man, and had judged its area in square feet to be his height multiplied by half his height. By this figuring, some ten thousand square feet of gold leaf had been used to adorn the god. But now he needed it no more than Mangu Khan the three hundred maidens of perfect beauty who had been buried with him.

But when I applied a scraper to the region of his belly, I found the leaf not eggshell thin but almost as intangible as sunlight. When I had scraped clean a square-foot patch, I had collected a teaspoonful of yellow dust as light as fool’s gold. It seemed likely that the leaf had been removed by other desecrators, and a gilt paint applied in its stead.

But my heart was light and my head strangely clear and my companion’s eyes intensely alive. It was as though I had been lost in the desert, but had come upon an ancient landmark, and with her help I could find my way back to the road that led to the Court of Kublai Khan.

“Sheba, when I told Zurficar, whom I call Pietro, of my desire to obtain a suit of the fire-walkers’ garments, I thought he was loyal to me,” I said. “But it may be he was loyal to Nicolo.”

“Is the moon shining upon us, or may it be the sun?”

“How can you be so sure?”

“My Lady Linda became sure on the night of the trial, but she didn’t tell me so, lest I tell you, and you strike in revenge while your wits were out and be whipped to death. She had surmised he was a spy on the fourth day out of Shakow, when Nicolo learned of your visiting her. The old gibbaleen who erects her pavilion told her that Nicolo and the Turki-Tatar had many meetings. But she didn’t know you’d put your trust in him.”

“When did she think Pietro became Nicolo’s creature?” I was dreading the path my mind was taking, but it could not turn back.

“On reflection, she thought it was the night of his joining the caravan. You remember he caught up with us on the road. Linda thinks he had discovered the lie Nicolo told Baram to cheat you out of the prize—for Tatars have ears like asses—and decided to follow him.”

“I remember Nicolo wasn’t pleased by his coming. And at the first hint of extortion——”

“Pietro threw no such hint. It was furthest from his mind. Remember, he’s a Tatar—he admires cunning and craft almost as much as cruelty. He saw in Nicolo both of these, and great strength besides. Linda believes he wanted him for his master as might a dog—to be faithful to him as a dog, and to fatten from his leavings as his reward. That too is like the Tatar. Why do Tatars bring higher prices than any other male slaves on the market?”

That had been true even in Venice. Once a Tatar knows his master, he is faithful until he is sold or death breaks the bond.

“I think he threw himself at Nicolo’s feet and was taken into his service,” Sheba went on.

“In that case, when Pietro made up to me it was on Nicolo’s orders.” Although the spring night was chill, I wiped sweat from my face.

“Yes, master.”

“At Shakow I asked Pietro about the fire-walkers.”

“He’d been waiting for you to ask him, master. Nicolo knew that you would as you came close to Suchow. You told Linda, long ago, that he’d guessed half the truth——”

“I heard it from his mouth. Did I think he’d forgotten, blind fool that I was? But I’d have thought my mother would have risen from her grave to warn me.”

“It’s not easy to rise from one’s grave, master. I think it can be done only by clutching the Devil’s hand.”

“A few days later I asked Pietro if he knew one of the fire-walkers. No, he did not—Nicolo was afraid I’d be suspicious of such good luck as that—but he knew an old priest who needed money to go home to the High Altai. It was a good story—Nicolo had coached him in it. And when we got to Suchow, behold the old priest was still there, but he couldn’t bring me the garments—I must go after them.”

“Have mercy on yourself, master, and let it go.”

“No, I want it to sting so bad I’ll never forget. Since Miranda—Linda—warned me against Pietro, I thought he’d merely told Nicolo of my plan—for a price—and Nicolo had warned the priests. But it wasn’t my plan—it was Nicolo’s. Pietro provided the fellow I met in the dark, and was Nicolo’s emissary to the abbey. The magicians were perfectly willing to set the trap for the price he offered. But I wonder if they kept their bargain to the last.”

“Do you think they took more than he promised them?”

“I think he may have promised them a thousand dinars or some such sum if they would agree to demand a greater fine than I could pay, then give him the stolen garments. I could have appealed to the Governor but certainly I would have been whipped in Tatar style. But they saved me from the lash to get more gold.”

“That last may not be true. It’s bad enough as it is.”

“Good enough, you mean.” I laughed loudly, as might a new-risen phoenix.

“You’ve gone mad, It’s this place—you and me, a white Venetian and his black slave girl, perched like sparrows on a dead giant——”

“No. I’ve just seen the truth.”

“You want to hate him, so you can kill him?”

“Not particularly. I want him to hate me—as hard as he can. I didn’t know until now that that’s his Achilles’ heel.”

I had no doubt of Sheba’s understanding the allusion. The tidal wave of Greek culture, long since receded, had washed all North Africa.

Sheba’s long black hands lay flat on her cheeks and as she gazed at me the moonlight picked up the porcelain-white of her eyes.

“Why?” she whispered.

“Because it’s an unreasoning, blind, and lying hate. It isn’t worth my hating in return. But I mean it to give me the victory.”

Sheba laughed wildly, sobered quickly, and wiped her eyes.

“We’re both mad!” she cried. “How will you win it? You have no gold, no power, no friend, only one camel and one slave and the horns of a wild sheep.”

“Answer one question. You have heard of the power and glory of Kublai Khan all your days, and you have a way of sifting people’s talk to find its gist. What kind of a man is he?”

“He’s not a man. He’s the King of Kings.”

“What do you mean by that? There’s a man underneath.”

“No. If there ever was, he’s ceased to exist. He’s not even a Tatar any more—he’s the Tatar’s god. He thinks, feels, breathes, lives what you read on the stone beside the road—Kublai Khan, for whom the world was made.”

“But he hasn’t conquered all of it, yet. There are kings in India who don’t send him tribute—kings in Europe who doubt his omnipotence.”

“He means that they shall, before he’s done.”

“How does he choose his viceroys and councilors and governors? By birth and blood, by favoritism, or by fitness for the office?”

“If his own son shows himself a fool, he builds him a palace to play in, but doesn’t let him command one troop of horse.”

“Then walk beside me in the dust for six hundred miles more. Invoke your witches and help me all you can. Then if I can still hear Mustapha’s voice—if I dare to mount again the four bronze horses of San Marco—if once more I can follow Iskander across the chasm——”

“If you can see the face of Miranda of England,” Sheba broke in, chanting in a glimmering voice.

“If I can do all these things—why, Sheba, I’ll play a game of chess with Nicolo.”