Caravan To Xanadu

CHAPTER 12

THE COURT OF KUBLAI KHAN

Before sundown of the day preceding the event, crowds began to gather on the causeways allotted to them. By midnight something like fifty thousand crammed the outer galleries of the great hall while thousands more, hopeless of any glimpse of the glory, lined the avenues kept open by the guards down which would walk princes, barons, and ambassadors on their way to their posts of honor. There was almost no sound. The people were grave of face and manner as though gathered in the temples of their gods.

Not long after sunrise I took a stand behind one of the lines, and since the people were mainly of less stature, I could peer over their heads with little danger of being observed. Over a gorgeous robe of dark-red brocade decorated with golden tigers hunting silver cattle, I wore a barracan of light, rough wool. Under my headcloth, my hair was dressed in the Venetian fashion. I had shaped my mustache to resemble Nicolo’s and shaved my beard.

Back of me, Sheba, in white trousers and sleeveless jellick, watched over a bundle roughly triangular in shape, with six-foot sides.

It was the rule of the Court that when the Khan held durbar, even princes must dispense with their trains except for slaves bearing gifts. So when Nicolo and Maffeo came from the guesthouse, they had only four attendants. One was a tall Indian in handsome array belonging to Nicolo; he carried a bundle wrapped in silk that no doubt contained the fire-walker’s suit. Two Persian slaves of Maffeo’s bore cloth of gold and silver, Samarkand silk, and a rolled rug, a marvel of the rugmaker’s art said to be five hundred years old, that he had bought in faraway Kashgar. Wearing Chinese dress of profuse embroidery, Miranda brought up the rear. In her hand was a golden bowl covered with the identical piece of embroidery that the Arghum girl Araxie had given Nicolo for a place in our caravan, and which he had had in his saddlebag during our flight from ambush. The pattern of that story was as strange, I thought, as that of the needlework.

Despite their modest trains, the two ambassadors greatly impressed the watchers. The red, richly decorated robe of one set off the blue robe, fully as gorgeous, of the other; both towered over the nobles before and behind them and walked with a kingly stride no squat Tatar could attain; the like of their countenances had never been seen by most of the people; and the whisper sped like a rustle of wind that they were ambassadors from Frankistan, beyond the setting sun.

I waited until almost the last of the great folk having a rightful place in the hall were about to pass by. Catching my signal, Sheba removed the covering from Iskander’s horns and lifted them on her shoulder; I shed my barracan and headcloth. Then I fell in behind a Mongol lord and his gift-bearing slaves, and myself took stately strides. Sheba, long-legged as her kind and with a swinging gait inimitable this side of Africa, walked in my footsteps. She was raised to carry a jar of water weighing eighty pounds on her high-held head, so she made light of her burden, holding it with one hand.

Whatever admiration we succeeded in winning from the crowd, certainly we aroused more curiosity than the wildest bearded sheik from Kurdistan.

An usher met me at the door. I spoke in the Jagatai Mongol; and my voice was steadier than I had ever hoped.

“I am Marco-po, bringing a gift to the Khan. I wish to stand nigh to Nico-lo-po and Maffeo-lo-po, ambassadors from Frankistan.”

The usher bowed low and led the way into the vast hall. The horns towered high under even this lofty roof, but not one of the immense, silent, motionless throng turned his head an inch. On a carpet so deep and soft that I did not have to tread lightly to make no sound, I walked up an aisle through the throng for at least a hundred paces and was posted within ten paces of the base of a many-storied dais. On the lower floors sat the Khan’s brothers and sons and kinsmen on chairs of silver and enamel; on the next to the highest a woman of fifty or more, fat and no longer comely, occupied a silver-and-ivory chair amid a blaze of jewels. At the very top, at least twenty feet above the throng, an empty chair awaited an occupant. It was not so large as to dwarf a man of ordinary size, but it was of gold, inlaid with ivory, pearl, and jade, and studded with an uncountable number of diamonds, rubies, and emeralds in fabulous design.

The merest roll of my eyes disclosed Nicolo and Maffeo on my right hand. They too stood like statues, but they had not failed to see me and identify me. Maffeo appeared bewildered. Nicolo had turned white with fury. I was glad of its intensity, because no man can think straight and act with discretion when torn by such passion. I could not look at Miranda without turning my head, but I was deeply aware of a golden haze that was her hair.

Ghosts gathering in the Halls of Death, awaiting the entrance of their terrible king, could not have stood more motionless and mute. The silence held for a period difficult to estimate—I thought it was fifteen minutes but perhaps it was not even five—and was at once thrilling and agonizing. Then the notes of a hidden flute floated into it and lightly breached the silence as a waking bird’s first call breaks the profound hush of dawn.

Other flutes began to sound in harmony with the first, and then massed zithers, harps, dulcimers, and violins from behind a long fretwork in alabaster. It must be that our hearts swelled with the swelling music, for every face I saw was strangely lighted; and as the trumpets came in with their mounting peal of exultation, louder and louder blaring of triumph beyond measure, the hair lifted on my head and my flesh turned to ice and fire.

Then, underneath the wild and savage symphony, we heard the low beat of kettledrums. Slowly they gave more voice to their cruel pride; they were the stirrers of men’s blood, the inciters to kill. Soldiers marched and horses charged to their reverberant beat; they were a mighty echo to the pulse of fury throbbing in warriors’ veins; they boomed forth the final glory, the glory of battle.

It is by battle that I conquered and my sires conquered before me. It is by battle that all these softer glories light on my head and shine forth unto you. I am Kublai, the grandson of Genghis, the brother of Mangu, and I hold by the sword.

For me the world was made.

The paean was rising to a terrible crescendo when a door behind the throne opened, and onto the dais came a being too effulgent to be a mortal man. While no one breathed, he seated himself in his golden, bejeweled chair, placed his scepter on a stand at his knees, and laid his hands, one on top of the other, on his breast.

He had only one follower—a Siberian tiger, with rich fur and heavy ruff, big as an ox. He yawned, showed his big fangs and red gullet to the crowd, then dropped down at his master’s feet.

The paean ended with a crashing chord. Then there came a voice as though from Heaven, filling the vast room.

“Bow and adore!”

All subjects and sojourners to the Khan’s Court—the queen and the princes and every human being in the room except slaves that were counted as chattels and whose very lives were prostrate—dropped to their knees and smote their heads four times upon the floor.

2

Head down with the rest, so reduced from man’s heights and so lost among the swarm of suppliants that I was hidden from enemy eyes and need not fear making any mistake or attracting the least dangerous attention, I took some bearings as though I had an astrolabe in my hand. I could see no immovable stars, but I thought of Mustapha . . . Miranda . . . Simon ben Reuben . . . Sheba. I remembered a throne of stone where I had sat last night that would outlast the wonderwork of gold and jewels before which we bowed down. When I rose again, I felt in my right mind.

Still I must not look to the right or the left, but it was not against the Khan’s law to look at the Khan. The glitter and gleam and godlike luster that played about him was the effect of a long coat of gold with collar, cuffs, frontpiece, and hand-breadth belt of square-cut, close-set jewels, diamond buttons, low-brimmed hat covered and ablaze with rubies, pearls, and diamonds, set off by the painted wall behind him and the throne of massive gold with its fabulous adornment. It must be that the blue Chinese lamps were so placed that they set fire to all the jewels—each burning with its separate flame to make a multicolored conflagration dazzling the eyes and putting the mind in shadow, because the big tiger crouching at his feet looked gaudy beyond nature. Under all this was a man. He was a man as surely as I was one, and as Sheba was a woman and as red Roxana that I had ridden had been a mare. He was a man of medium height, over sixty years old, rather stout, with a big, rather coarse nose, heavy jowls, and slanted, narrow, magnetic eyes. Genghis Khan and most of his sons had had blue eyes and fair skins and fairly heavy beards. Kublai was brown-skinned and wore only a wisp of beard.

Presently he spoke in Jagatai Mongol in a clear, warm, quite pleasant voice. I had heard that sounding boards had been built into the room and did not doubt that it carried to the inner galleries.

“I am returned to my beloved Xanadu Keibung, and I greet you all.”

No voice bade us prostrate ourselves, so we all stood still.

“There is one here who is about to undertake a long journey in my name—even unto the city of Budapest, which my cousin Batu razed to the ground thirty years ago, and whose king pays tribute to Toghon Khan, my viceroy and kinsman, lord of the Krim Tatars. Although there are many here of greater office, he has served me well, and since he will be gone from me for many a moon, it is fitting that I greet him before all the rest. Caidu of Wanchuan, you are welcome here.”

I heard his greeting to the grizzled Tatar in only the shell of my ear. I need take no hints as to the procedure of acknowledgment and gift-giving, as I heard it discussed all the way from Koko-Khotan. An inkling of what would come next made the blood rush to my head. . . . Now the royal stewards were taking Caidu’s offerings from the hands of his slaves and he was prostrating himself with tears rolling down his cheeks. . . . Now the Khan was speaking again.

“This day of departure of my ambassador to my Western kingdoms is the day of return of my ambassadors from beyond my Western kingdoms—even from the Court of the Christian Pope, Lord of Frankistan. They have been gone for nigh ten years. They have crossed and recrossed the whole habitable world. It comes to me they have served me faithfully, whether or not their mission was crowned with success. Although there are many here of greater name and place, it is fitting that I greet them only next to my departing servant Caidu. Maffeo and Nicolo, the older and younger brothers Polo, I make you welcome.”

Nicolo and Maffeo took one pace forward. I heard the Khan ask them in turn of their missions, and listened to their studied replies. This was a mere formality—the letters they had brought from the Pope and other ambassadorial business would be taken to the Imperial Council. Then in respect to Maffeo’s seniority, the Khan addressed to him first the imperial utterance that told the main business of the durbar.

“My servant Maffeo, you have my leave to make offerings to the Khan.”

“Great Khan, they are only tokens of my fealty,” Maffeo answered, “and I lay them humbly at your feet.”

The polite procedure was for Maffeo’s slaves to continue to hold the gifts until the Khan dismissed him, whereupon the stewards took charge of them. In this case, the Khan asked to see the antique rug and admired it. I did not think his interest in it was more than lightly passing. I believed he was far more interested in Nicolo and the gifts he brought. When his Chiah, an exalted secretary in Mongol courts, had informed him of the ambassadors’ return, likely he had forgotten Maffeo but remembered Nicolo. He was the kind of strong, cunning, intensely ambitious man who took a king’s eye. . . .

It was coming now. The chessmen were set out, the players had disposed of lesser matters, the contest was about to begin. It was Nicolo’s move.

“My servant Nicolo, you have my leave to make offerings to your Khan.”

“Great Khan, the only considerable gift I bring is a token of fealty from the King of Kerman, entrusted to my hands for delivery to you. With it lie some trifles that are beneath your attention but which I hoped would set off the king’s offering for the greater pleasure of your sublime eyes.”

“The slave girl may walk to the foot of the dais so I may see the gifts.”

It was the slave girl that he wanted to see, for her pale golden hair was more beautiful and more precious than all the cloths of gold in the whole pageant. It was the slave girl that he looked at mostly as she came and stood at the foot of the dais—and he must be an epicure beyond any in the world, for he had seen and sorted over thousands of the most beautiful girls that had ever breathed. Yet he took a cursory glance into the golden bowl.

“Your slave may return to her place. And truly the balas ruby is a handsome jewel, well set off by the smaller rubies, turquoises, and jade.” He moved his arm slightly, and the sleeve with its cuff of close-set diamonds, rubies, and emeralds fell back to reveal a diamond bracelet crowned with a ruby like a coal of fire. It was of the hue called pigeon-blood and as big as a pigeon’s egg.

“In this bundle are garments of a strange nature and use,” Nicolo said. “They consist of helmet, a robe, mittens, and boots, and their wearer can walk unharmed through fire or stand in fire until his breath gives out. They were given to me for a service done the priests of the Swasti at your Imperial Highness’s city of Suchow.”

“Of what are they made?” the Khan asked after a brief pause.

I had already observed the band of fifty tattered foul-faced magicians squatted on the floor to the left of the dais—very plainly a mighty power in the Court. Now I turned my gaze from the Khan’s countenance to glance at them again. They had straightened their bent backs a little with the effect of so many cobras towering to strike. When Nicolo spoke, I had no doubt that he had flicked his eyes in the same direction.

“Great Khan, the wise doctors in Frankistan would believe that they are made of the skins of salamanders, which reptiles are said to be immune to fire. The magicians of the Swasti give out that they are the skins of dragons killed by sorcery. I will not gainsay them, although time may reveal them to be of some other substance.”

“I’ve never seen a dragon, unless I count the great crocodiles of Hind worthy of that name,” the Khan remarked. “I believe the garments to be made of a noncombustible fiber found in my High Altai, and which my couriers use as packets for most precious writings, lest they be destroyed by fire.”

Nicolo did not move except to catch his breath. He had been compromised by his own blunder in the opening, but he kept his countenance and his air of loyal subjection to the King of Kings.

“Doubtless that is so. I would wish that a portion of this offering be used to make a packet for carrying a pronouncement of overlordship and protection from the Great Khan to the kings of Frankistan. Now I plead to make one more trifling offering. It is of the slave girl Linda who was just now at the foot of your sublime throne. She comes from England, an island at the outer rim of the habitable world, and there she would be counted of noble blood. It is my fond hope that since not many maidens of her sort have ever been seen in these portions of your realm, you will accept her, if only as a curiosity, to keep or dispose of at your pleasure.”

A change came over the Khan. Every soul in the great hall perceived it. The advantage that I had not earned, that I had not foreseen in my fondest dreams, had been short-lived.

“From England, say you. My brother Mangu Khan spoke to me of England as the birthplace of the great Richard. Is it near to Budapest?”

“Near according to the expanses of your imperial realm, somewhat far by the thinking of Christian kings. But there is trade by way of Germany between the countries, and their kings exchange envoys.”

“I consider the maiden Linda very personable and I accept her with pleasure. And now I believe you have another petition to make to me. If it is what I think—to present a young man in whom you take pride—I grant it before it is asked.”

There fell a brief pause in the smooth, unhurried flow of events. Everyone sensed it, and perhaps no few sensed more than that, and perhaps there were hearts other than Nicolo’s, Miranda’s, Sheba’s, and mine that stood still.

“No, Great Khan, I have no petition to make now,” Nicolo answered in a clear voice.

“You have not?”

“No, Great Khan.”

“My servant Maffeo, have you?”

“No, Great Khan.”

A puzzled line appeared between the Khan’s brows.

“No subject or sojourner in my realm is denied the right to make offerings at my open durbar, and it comes to me that the slave girl of the young man standing near you has been long burdened by a heavy gift.” The Khan turned his eyes on mine. “What is your name and abode?”

“I am Marco Polo of Venice,” I answered in Jagatai Mongol, taking one step forward.

The Khan noted the use of the courtly tongue, not commonly learned by sojourners.

“Are the great horns held by your slave an offering to me?”

“Yes, Great Khan.”

“What are they? I have never seen their like.”

“They are the horns of the wild sheep called argali, found in your Imperial Majesty’s most high realm, the Great Pamir. This pair is the largest I or the people of the country have ever seen.”

“How did you come by them?”

“I followed the ram to his high ramparts and slew him with bow and arrow.”

“Why, that was good hunting! But perhaps the ram was burdened from carrying such heavy horns.”

“No, they were his crown, in which he took great pride. He bounded over crevices and climbed cliffs that to the eye looked sheer, his ewes and their lambs behind him.”

“The lambs could follow their mothers to the heaven-jutting crags of the Pamir?”

“Yes, Great Khan. They are born there, and on their first day they must follow where their mothers lead.”

“Now that is a wonder. To what use do the rams put their great horns?”

“To no use, Great Khan, except to butt rival rams. They are an endowment from God to show their sovereignty of the cliffs and crags and snows of the High Pamir.”

“I am pleased with the offering and the instruction.” He cast his narrow imperious eyes on Nicolo. “There is a curiosity in my mind which I wish to relieve. How came this young man to be at your side?”

“No doubt he asked the usher to post him there, although against my will.”

“Why against your will? He bears the same family name as you and your brother Maffeo, and he is a Venetian. Isn’t he of your blood?”

“No, Great Khan. He is the bastard son of my wife by a wandering jongleur. I suffered him to join our caravan until he desecrated the temple of the Swasti in your city of Suchow.”

The squatting magicians had listened until now with blank faces and empty eyes. At this last they turned their red-rimmed eyes on me with ineffable malevolence. But they were very strangely and wonderfully rebuked. The tiger lying at the Khan’s feet raised his immense ruffed head, so beautifully adorned to be so terrible, fixed his green eyes on the magicians, and uttered an ominous growl.

Only for a few seconds did I give way to the fond belief that my saints or very Providence had moved in my behalf. Such believing would comfort my heart but dull the edge of my mind. I wanted no comfort now, only the clearest eyes and the most powerful thought of all my days. Realizing this, it came to me instantly that the tiger had smelled rage and hatred on the magicians, which he took to be dangerous to his master.

“In what way did he desecrate it?” the Khan asked in deep gravity.

“By stealing a suit of fire-walkers’ garments.”

“Was he punished?”

“Too lightly, Great Khan. He paid a fine of nine times the head magician’s valuation of the garments.”

“What was that valuation?”

“Five hundred dinars, which many thought much too low.”

“It is a very strange story, but you are my accredited ambassador, and our time grows short.”

He looked to a mighty lord in a richly bejeweled gown—a South Chinese, I thought—standing among the nearest to the dais with six slaves loaded with gifts. But before he spoke, I raised my hand.

The Khan saw it. He looked from me to Nicolo with searching eyes and back to me. The arrest of a thousand breaths was like a silence that lies under all the silences we know, and the tiger sprang to his feet. And then when I thought that I would not be acknowledged and the scarf would be put about my throat and my eyes darkened, the Khan slowly raised his scepter and leveled it at my breast.

3

“Great Khan, I seek justice at your hands and in your sight.”

“What is your complaint?”

“My name and honor have been defamed in your hearing and the hearing of this company. I was conceived by Lucia, the noble wife of Nicolo Polo, at a time when they cohabited; and by the law of Venice and in the judgment of all men who look fairly upon our faces, I am his son.”

The Khan raised his head a little and spoke to the multitude.

“It is the law of the Mongol that if a charge of bastardy is made by a husband against his wife’s child, and the child or the wife contests the charge, the burden of proof is on its maker. If it can be shown that the husband and wife cohabited later than twelve months prior to the child’s birth, the husband must produce unimpeachable evidence of the adultery, or the charge is dismissed. For the women of the Mongol are not chattels, but keepers of the houses and the mothers of warriors.”

A long gasp filled the hall like the vagrant wind.

“Such a charge has been made in my very hearing and refuted there. So the truth must be established before any other business is done.” The Khan turned to me.

“Can you prove that Nicolo and your mother Lucia cohabited in the period specified?”

“Not in this Court, Great Khan. Those who had personal knowledge of it are far away. But the charge of bastardy was not made until Nicolo returned from his first journey here with sons by a later wife. No one in Venice had ever doubted that I was his son. And before your eyes there is a maiden, once my slave in Venice, and lately Nicolo’s slave, who has heard folk speak of him as my father.”

“By the law of the Mongol, even a slave may give testimony. Linda, did you hear such report?”

Miranda stood tall and answered in a clear voice, for she was Marian Redvers, daughter of Sir Hugh Redvers of England.

“Sire, the noble Jews who had care of me before I became Marco Polo’s slave never doubted that he was Nicolo Polo’s son.”

“Then the only evidence so far given that might point to bastardy was Marco’s committing a crime unnatural in a man of high birth. Marco, what was your purpose in stealing the fire-walkers’ robes?”

“Great Khan, I intended to bring them to you. My mother’s uncle, Friar Johannes Carpini, who came to the Court of Kuyuk Khan, brought back a piece of the mineral fabric and left a letter telling its origin in the High Altai. If your Imperial Highness had not heard of it, I thought that it would be useful to your person and your subjects for fire protection.”

“Marco, did Nicolo know it was a mineral substance, not dragon or salamander skin?”

“He read the letter at my trial, Great Khan.”

“Nicolo, is that true?”

“Yes, Great Khan, but I was not altogether convinced.”

The Khan’s magicians did not look at him or at me, only crouched down with dead eyes.

“Marco Polo, the redress you made of forty-five hundred dinars was described by Nicolo as too light. Were you allowed to keep the garments?”

“No, Great Khan. They were taken from me by the magicians and given to Nicolo, who today gave them to you.”

“Why did the priests give them to Nicolo?”

“Because, they said, he had not entreated a reduction of my penalty, although I was a kinsman, a fellow Christian, and a Venetian.”

“How near did the fine come to taking your all?”

“I retained one camel, poor raiment, the ram’s horns, and my slave girl Sheba.”

“Not even a horse?”

“No, Great Khan.”

“Why did you not sell the slave girl and buy one?”

“I had sold my slave girl Miranda, known to you as Linda, to pay for my transport in Nicolo’s caravan, and I walked from Suchow to Xanadu in penance.”

“Yet you came to my durbar in handsome dress.”

“Miranda gave me a diamond that she had saved for bitter need. I sold it to buy this robe.”

“Marco, isn’t it true that you chose a robe that would call attention to your resemblance to Nicolo Polo?”

“Yes, Great Khan.”

“Then you knew he would deny you in my hearing?”

“I thought he would do so.”

“You wished that he would, believing that his denial would not be believed?”

“Yes, Great Khan.”

“You were right. My eyes and my mind and my heart declare you his son. It is my conviction that he lied to you, a great sin, or to himself, a great frailty.” The Khan raised his eyes to sweep the hall. “The charge of bastardy made by Nicolo Polo against Marco Polo remains unproven.”

Perhaps it was the little stir that moved through the throng, eloquent of their thrilling joy, that roused up the tiger. But his great emerald eyes fixed on Nicolo as though he again smelled hate. If so, it was impotent, and he dropped down again and licked his painted shoulder.

“Marco Polo, you are entitled to redress,” spoke the Great Khan. “I will not levy on my late ambassador, for he may be guilty only of an error in judgment in saying what he cannot prove. And since there have been passages between you and the slave girl Miranda that ill fit her as my slave, I now present her to you.”

“Great Khan, I am rich beyond my dreams and bound to your service in deathless gratitude, and I pray your leave to speak to my slave girl Miranda and receive her reply.”

“It is given, and I doubt not we will listen with cocked ears.”

“Miranda, I hereby set you free, and if it is your wish, I will beg that you be given passage in the caravan of Caidu, the Khan’s ambassador to Budapest, whereafter you may make your way to England.”

“Marco, I accept freedom as the price of my diamond,” Miranda answered instantly, “but instead of returning to England I wish to remain with you.”

“Then so be it,” the Khan declared in a resonant voice. “Marco Polo, I accept your service and will appoint you a task ere long.” With that he raised his hand to dismiss me from his attention.

I dropped on my knees and knocked my head four times upon the floor in the full kowtow to Kublai Khan, as though indeed for him the world was made. For I was Marco Polo, an adventurer from Venice, for whom no grain of corn or dust was made, but who by the same token must get on in the world, and who loved it with great passion. And beyond all this, he was a man of middle height, past sixty, stout, with a gross nose, who had sighed a little as he parted with his new slave girl; so I could not withhold my tears.

I saw him reach for the wine cup that stood on his stand. Then the notes of a hidden flute floated into the silence and lightly breached it as a waking bird’s first warble breaks the mysterious hush of dawn.