Caravan To Xanadu

CHAPTER 1

THE OLD ARAB

I am Marco Polo, a Venetian. Although there have been other appendages to my name at various times, some of no small honor, thus I declare myself before the world and history, my name and my degree.

I declare too, with the same largeness, that there is no city in the world like my native city. When I was twelve years old—old enough to marvel over my father’s and mother’s and my own conjunction in this happy spot—I went alone into San Marco’s church, walked with bent head lest my eyes be dazzled or made proud by its manifold glories, and on my knees gave humble thanks for the great boon. And on this occasion I did not slip a petition or two into the offering. Although my heart was ever bursting with desires, many of them springing from great needs, by the strong grip of my will I muted every one.

In my inward heart, Venice was something more than the wondrous city of my nativity. All men knew she was the Bride of the Sea—made so by a mystic bond of which the ceremonies of Ascension Day were only the acknowledgment—and I, a boy of twelve, largely undistinguishable from a thousand urchins along the lagoon, held her to be my foster father and mother. My earthly father had sailed away before I was born, and I had never laid eyes on him. My own beautiful mother had died before I could talk plain, when only with my hungry lips and arms could I tell her of my love. Would then the Sea’s Bride, ever gay and tender, deny my plea made with tear-filled eyes between sleep and waking in the full black tide of night, such a scene of advent as most mortals visit sometimes in their lives?

I did not find the answer until another midnight, when at risk of a public flogging, if not a burning, I mounted all four of the great bronze horses brought from over the sea when Venice was newborn, and which stand on the outer gallery of the church—I believed what came into my heart that night. I still believe that some mystic relationship between the spirit of the city and my spirit—if it were only a lad’s love born of loneliness—shaped in no small part my future fate.

Why not begin my chronicle with an event of that same year? I was well grown for my age, with the big hands and feet that foretell large stature among men, and if I were ever noticed in a crowd of boys, it was because of the peculiarity of blue eyes going with black lashes, eyebrows, and hair and olive skin. Of themselves they were no novelty. Blonds were seen every minute or two on the Rialto. Still, they were not as common as in Genoa. I suppose the reason was that the latter city lies in the shadow of mountains, while our merry, highborn lady plays in the sun.

In Venice, even rainy days are gay. On the day in question, the sky was bright as a steel mirror brought from Damascus. But it was not in respect to the warm weather that I wore a flimsy shirt and tattered breeches and no more. The poor rig spared my better turnout, itself no fine array God wot, in fact hand-me-downs from my cousin Leo. Besides, in the part of the city for which I was bound, rags that could not hide purses were healthier than robes, less conspicuous, and lighter to run in. It was a part of the city that I greatly loved—it was my college, which I would not swap for Padua—and when I went there I shed all vestiges of respectability along with my cares.

By the da Lorenzo canal, a high-smelling backwater of the lagoon, I joined four of my playmates on a mighty voyage. Our argosy was only a big skiff owned by the fisherman father of one of our crew, and our adventure was to go as near as we dared to a very strange ship newly come to anchor. She had only threescore oars, but very tall masts. While she could not run as fast as our centipede galleys when the wind failed her, when it blew fair I thought she could outfly them as an albatross does a gull. Her wings were folded now, but they must be as big as an albatross’s in proportion to her body, longer and sharper than any vessel’s I had ever seen.

“Now what do you reckon she is?” asked Felix the fisherman’s son, my best friend. We were resting on our oars a cable’s length distant.

“She’s a vile Infidel, and you can lay to that,” another answered.

“I’ll tell you what she is. She’s a zebec.” And my authoritative tone did not betray the wildness of my guess.

“How did you know?” one awed fellow asked.

“My papa and my uncle fought with them in the Sea of Marmara. They’re the swift war galleys of Algiers.”

Just then a black-bearded man on the deck, with a naked waist and a great, hooked sword, saw us and shouted something in an unknown tongue. At once a half-dozen of his fellows came pouring from the castle—tall, brown, some half naked and others fantastically dressed—yelling and gesticulating with what seemed extreme fierceness. My companions were so frightened that they were snatching up their oars, intending to run before the ravening crew launched their longboat.

I was somewhat less frightened, less because of a bolder heart than because of a cooler head. These bearded sunburned sailors were the wildest I ever saw loose on a ship deck, but I had seen men of their dress and complexion chained together after galley fights on the eastern seas. I could not believe that they had brought their war vessel into the lagoon without the consent of the harbor master, or would dare shed Christian blood in sight of the Lion of San Marco. Their shouts sounded more frantic than ferocious, and their beckonings might indicate distress.

“I don’t think they’ll hurt us,” I told my mates. “Let’s go up——”

“And have ’em snatch us aboard and clap us in irons?” one of them screeched, desperately plying his oar.

“They’ll whack off our stones and sell us for harem slaves,” added Felix, the lively witted fisherman’s son.

One of the turbaned crew was holding up a small, bright object that I took for a silver coin, meanwhile clapping his other hand on his heart. This did not cinch my decision as much as a passion that had mastered me before—extreme curiosity. I had more of it than any boy I played with. I would take greater hazards to have it gratified.

“If you won’t come alongside, I’ll swim for it,” I said.

My friends looked glum and Felix shook his head.

“I’d go with you, Marco, if this was my boat,” he told me. “But it’s my father’s boat.”

At that I slipped overboard into what I thought would be warm water. It seemed to have chilled as by some treason of nature. Only devilish pride, for which more sinners have died than saints have for piety, kept me stroking. The ship began to loom high and sinister. My heart lay so heavy it was a wonder I did not sink. Saracens were notorious slave-catchers—bold as sharks—and it was told on the Rialto that they performed Satanic ceremonies with Christian children. . . .

Yet my leaden arms kept flailing, and suddenly I became aware of a splendid victory.

With joyful faces, two of the Infidels threw down a rope ladder. Others held out hands to give me a lift—all were exclaiming pleasure and praise. One cried “Bravo!” quite like a Venetian, strutting the accomplishment before his fellows. This last touch of nature did more to reassure me than all the rest.

When I had soared over the rail, the men gathered about me, their faces sober now, while their leader tried to tell me something. I could not understand a word of the heathen lingo, but he shouted and sweated like a Christian; and when he was struck by an idea and beckoned me to follow him down a dim hatch, I did so without much fear. He led me into an incense-scented room lighted by an oil lamp. I became aware of a great heap of multicolored rugs, and then of a human form. The flickering light revealed a brown, bony face, snowy eyebrows and beard, and white raiment.

“Mustapha Sheik?” my guide called in a reverent tone.

“Yea, Kemal Capudan,” the old man answered feebly.

After a brief conversation, the lamp was brought so that the gaffer could see me better. Thereby I discovered the most wonderful face that my eyes had ever lighted on, though I could not tell where its wonder lay. Although he wore no gold or jewels and his garments appeared to be white cotton and the only indication of luxury in the room was his heap of rugs, I believed that he was as great a lord as the Doge of Venice.

“So you’ve come to help me,” he said in my native tongue. “What’s your name?”

“It’s Marco Polo, your Honor.”

“Your speech is not in accord with your habit. Of that, I must know more later. Marco, we’re anchored here by the sufferance of the harbor master, under orders that no man leave the vessel until certain papers are issued by the Council. Meanwhile I have come down with an old sickness, and without my medicine—our store of it was stolen at Malta—my good mariners are afraid I may succumb. I will not, but almost wish I might, so great is my pain.”

“If you’ll tell me what it is and give me the money, I’ll get you some.”

“We call it bhang, or hashish, and savants know it as Indian hemp. But I fear it will be hard to find in Venice.”

It was then that I thanked my patron saint and namesake, San Marco, for knowing so well the city that he guards. Among my favorite resorts were the apothecary shops, with their strange wares. Now and again I had eked out pocket money by selling toads, snails, glowworms, and snake eyes, and even more gruesome objects.

“Doubt not I can find you some, your Honor,” I told him.

The piece of gold that he handed me was not as beautiful in my sight as his brightening face. The quest of the medicine became a glorious emprise. The fleet pike would be hard put to it to beat me back to the boat.

2

Returning to the zebec with the medicine in my pocket, I had no lack of stout henchmen. They rowed our four-oared argosy under the very sail of the Infidel and watched with round eyes what seemed the adventure’s end. Eager hands reached down. To the hand I took for the captain’s I entrusted the potion; when I showed him six silver grossi I had received in change, his jubilant cry of “Backsheesh!” told me I could keep them. This was a word known to every lad frequenting the quays, an importation from Egypt and the Levantine coast meaning “commission” or “gift.”

My companions were thrilled enough by the rich gift, but I had them tarry awhile in the hope of some greater happening. My reward was the return of the swarthy captain to the deck and a glorious halloo across the water. At my answering shout, he pointed to the sun. Three times he swept his arm westward to indicate the passage of three days—common sign language among the polyglot people of the port—then beckoned from me to the ship. My comrades looked at me as though I had come in to a fortune.

At dawn of the fourth day a bumboat captain who claimed to know Arabic brought me alongside the zebec. After a little wait, the ship’s longboat bore Mustapha Sheik to Spinalunga Island across the bay, where I witnessed a strange scene of farewell. While he stood tall in a white robe of mourning, flanked on each side by a servant, one after another of his followers bowed down before him, weeping. It was not hard to guess that he was going into exile for the remainder of his days. No doubt he had been banished from Islam, and the zebec had ventured our waters solely to transport him here. If Spinalunga were his chosen instead of enforced abode, I thought it a good choice: the Venetian Jews dwelt here by law, among them many patriarchs whose noble faces resembled his, and who could be his friends.

Truly I should have wondered at his journeying westward instead of eastward from his native deserts. The answer lay, as time revealed, in his curiosity regarding Western Europe and what he called its waking from a long sleep. He thought that the last years of his life could be spent more interestingly in Venice than in any other city available to him.

I helped his servants install him and his goods in a small but worthy house facing the lagoon, and ran some of his errands. He gave me golden Torpini dates, rarely seen in Venice, pomegranates, and melons, and told me I could come another day. On that day I was allowed to look at some of his treasures—books with bejeweled covers, illuminated scrolls, and instruments that I thought must be for alchemy but instead were for studying the stars. These things fascinated me, suggesting distant lands and mysterious lore, but no more than the old man himself with his wonderful lean face and living eyes. I kept coming back. I was always sure of his welcome and the visits were exciting in ways I could not name.

He was never loath to put down his manuscripts or lay aside his calculations to answer my questions, and the day came soon that he questioned me carefully as to my history. I told him that my father, Nicolo Polo, had departed for Constantinople with his elder brother Maffeo about six months before my birth. According to their letters to their half-sister Flora, they had lived in the Venetian quarter there for six years, buying and selling goods. Then they had gone to Sudak in the Crimea, and on eastward to a city called Bolgary, where they were living the last my aunt had heard.

“Bolgary?” Mustapha Sheik echoed in a wondering tone.

“It’s on a river called the Volga.”

“Well I know. Marco, that’s a very long way. Have you any notion how long?”

“Not a very clear notion.”

“By crow flight I would guess it as close to two thousand miles. But men may not follow the flight of the crows, and by caravan road the distance is nearer three thousand miles. Do your father and uncle have to go that far—amid such ready dangers—to make their fortunes?”

“According to the last letter, they found their way homeward blocked by warring tribesmen and were making for another city named Bukhara.”

Mustapha looked more thoughtful than before. “Has your father sent abundant moneys for your support?” he asked.

“He hasn’t sent any. We supposed he wasn’t able to do so with safety. My aunt Flora’s husband, Uncle Zane, looks out for me some. He expects to be repaid with interest when my father comes home rich.”

“Your father could have sent money, if he knew the means. There are Jews in every city as far as Bukhara who’ll warrant the payment of moneys by fellow Jews in any other city, and their only fee is its use in the periods between. But I suppose your father wouldn’t trust them. Has he promised to recompense your uncle?”

“No, your Honor, he’s never mentioned it.”

“What has he written you on the subject?”

“I’ve never heard from him.”

“Never? Then surely he has sent you greetings in his letters to your uncle and aunt.”

“He has sent greetings to their son Leo, but has never mentioned me.”

“Perhaps he doesn’t know that his wife bore him a son.”

“Uncle Zane has referred to me in several letters—asking what to do for me. My father never replies.”

“Your uncle Zane must love you, to continue with your care——”

“He doesn’t love me and Aunt Flora cares very little about me. They give all their love to Leo. Uncle Zane has no money except what came with Aunt Flora, and the Polo name still carries too much weight with him for him to turn me out. But I cost him almost nothing and I’m away all day.”

“That affords you time to come here, for which I’m glad.” Mustapha Sheik had me bring him a cup containing a liquor of bhang, sipped from it, and set it aside. In reply to his further questions I told him that my mother had been above my father in name and had brought him a fair dower, most of which he had taken with him to Constantinople. She had died of fever when I was not quite four years old. Her maiden name was Lucia Carpini and she had come from Perugia, between Florence and Rome.

Something I had said had aroused the old Arab’s intense interest. I could not see it in his face but felt it in his silence and stillness.

“Marco, do you remember her fairly well?” he asked.

“I remember loving her beyond all the world, and thinking that the world had ended when she died.”

“Did she ever speak—or did you ever hear—of Friar Johannes Carpini? He too came from near Perugia.”

“I think—I’m almost sure—that he was my mother’s uncle.” Then there came a mild aching above my eyebrows that I had felt a hundred times before. Trying to bring some vague, very early memories into focus always brought the pain, and often the mere thinking of my mother.

“That valiant old man went farther than Bukhara. It’s to him that we owe final proof of the most important political fact of our century.”

“Political” was a big word for a boy of twelve, but I would not let him know it. “What is it, Mustapha Sheik?”

“Of course you’ve heard of Prester John, whom folk believe to be the greatest of Christian kings, ruling half the world.”^[1]

“I’ve heard that he’s king of seventy-two kings, and is waited on by seven of them at a time. When he goes to war, thirteen crosses twenty feet high, made of solid gold and jewels, are carried before him, each guarded by ten thousand horsemen and a hundred thousand footmen. In front of his palace is a mirror two hundred feet tall——”

“The more learned in Europe know now that he doesn’t exist. If he’s not made up out of whole cloth, he was a minor king in Africa, and a Coptic Christian. But the most learned—a handful of geographers at the universities of Islam and Christendom—know of a real wonder hardly less than this imaginary one. They found it out from the journal of old Johannes Carpini.”

“Is it a secret?” I asked. “If it’s not, I entreat you to tell me.”

“The greatest secrets in the world are open to those who’ll listen and believe. I think your own mother could have told you this one, if Friar Johannes was indeed her uncle. There was a real king, Kuyuk Khan, greater and richer than legend makes Prester John. He was followed by Mangu Khan, and now by Kublai Khan. Kublai has no magic mirror and no giant crosses precede him into battle, but fully a thousand kings, great and small, pay tribute to his throne. His treasures are beyond counting. His empire is many times larger than that of Rome in all her glory. His subjects number Allah alone knows how many hundred million. He’s greater than all the kings in Europe rolled together—and yet no European has ever seen his face.”

“It may be my father will see him.” And my neck prickled fiercely.

“It could well be. And for that glory, he may be blinded, or be killed, or bring home such riches that the very Doge would seem a beggar in comparison.”

“How far is Bukhara from the kingdom of Kublai Khan?”

“It’s within his kingdom, yet perhaps three thousand miles from his capital.”

“If my father doesn’t go there in five years, I’ll get there first.”

Mustapha Sheik beckoned me to him, put his hand on my forehead, and looked deeply into my eyes.

“Do you love your father?” he asked quietly.

“No, I hate him.”

“Because he abandoned you?”

“I don’t care about that. But it is well to know how he made my mother cry.”

“If his goal is the Court of Kublai Khan—and it may be, if he talked to the old friar—you can never catch up with him now. It would be five years or so before you could even start.”

“I’ll catch up with him, before I’m through, and go beyond him.”

“For the reason you just gave?”

“There’s another reason, if I could just remember what it was. It was something Mama told me the night before she died.” Suddenly the ache over my eyes almost burst my forehead. “It had something to do with two fires——”

The pain dimmed and the intense strain in Mustapha’s face slowly faded away.

“Five years,” he said quietly. “They are very few compared with mine, and you mustn’t grow impatient. If Nicolo Polo becomes the first Venetian to prostrate himself before Kublai Khan, his son Marco may be the first to stand at Kublai’s side.”

3

On my next visit, Mustapha Sheik showed me a curious object for measuring the height of a heavenly body above the horizon. It was called an astrolabe and was of ancient invention, although its use had been largely forgotten in Europe.

“From the roof tops of Medina the stars are most beautiful and bright,” he told me in explaining his possession of the instrument. “I longed to know them better, and to know their orbits and their influence on human affairs. To this end I studied what we call al jabr, a branch of mathematics wherein symbols such as x and y substitute for quantities, and the chords of circles as expounded by my great countryman, al-Battani. With the help of such sciences, and the simple device that you see, used in connection with the Toledo tables prepared by Arabian scholars, I could compute almost the exact place in the heavens that any wandering star would occupy at any given moment of the year.”

Since I had never heard of these sciences, his meaning was over my head, but it was as though I jumped like a dog and snatched it like a bone. There was something in his voice and presence that made me listen not just with my ears, but with my whole body.

“Then a great fact dawned on me,” Mustapha went on. “Men know the heavens better than they know the earth. So I turned to the science of geography, for which my groundwork in astronomy had prepared me. But for any larger grasp of the subject, I must know the discoveries of great travelers, living and dead. And they have been my study for many years.”

“Could I study them too?” I burst out. “Then when the time comes——”

“When the time comes! What would we do without that promise, that hope? Come just after sunrise, when I have prayed, every day for seven days. Then we will see.”

After that week of testing, he told me to come when I pleased and stay away when I pleased. I was not to forsake my companions or to skimp my sport, or to neglect the bright school of the quays and canals for the sake of his dim chambers. The upshot of it was that I came almost every day. The only reason that I knew was that I could not stay away. Usually I stayed four or five hours, and every minute of it was like following an unknown path through a breathlessly silent woods.

“Salem alicum (Peace be between us), my son Marco,” the old man greeted me on a summer day of our second year’s friendship.

“Alicum salem (There be peace between us), Mustapha Sheik!” I replied with punctilio.

The salutations were heard every day on the Lido, but not so some other expressions as we conversed. The truth was, we were talking in simplified Arabic. It seemed that I had picked it up from him almost unawares, as I might catch lice from a street mate; actually, as I now perceived, he had slipped it on my tongue like a lozenge. Now he served me a sticky sweet, most pleasing to the palate, golden dates stuffed with bitter almonds, and a sherbet of some sort, highly spiced and filling the room with sweet scent.

“What news of the Rialto?” he asked, when I had eaten my fill and more.

“A Genoese spy was found in a closet, eavesdropping on the Council, and beheaded in the Piazzetta,” I reported. “Two triremes of Luciano Veniero arrived last night, one from Jaffa, laden with gums and spices, and the other from Tarsus with a cargo of fair-haired slaves.”

“Ah, that reminds me,” Mustapha Sheik broke in. “I know you did not fail to notice the red-sailed merchantman with the high castle. What did you make of her?”

“Doubtless she was from England, laden with Cornish tin. One of her blond boatmen cried out on San Giorgio the patron saint of his nation, and I saw Sebastian Cussi, who buys tin for the Arsenal, making toward her in his pigeon-breasted gondola.”

“Truly her master used tin for ballast, but he also brought raw wool, salt meat, and timber. And what, think you, will he take in trade?”

“Why, if he’s wise, he’ll take weapons, and iron to make ’em—swords, spears, pikes, and halberts—and shields and armor. For his nation’s divided against itself, and King Henry fights his own lords.”

“The Jews tell me that peace will come before summer’s end, and they’re better prophets than the astrologers. I think the ship had best take glass to repair what’s broken, and wine to pledge new friendships, and finery for the newly rich.”

I would soon not be hearing such things from his lips, I was thinking. Mustapha’s lowered eyebrows formed a white bar as he peered at me.

“Has your uncle said any more about bonding you to the iron-master?” he asked.

“He’s made up his mind to it, the day after my fourteenth birthday. He didn’t tell me so, but my cousin Leo wouldn’t miss the chance.”

“Then he must be convinced, at last, that Nicolo will either never return or will come back a beggar. Marco, what we need is time——”

We had talked thus before. What made this conversation memorable was its interruption by a shout from the canal. We went to the door to find Pietro, a gondolier of my good acquaintance, stopping at our wharf with a fine swirl.

“Did you hear of Messer Veniero’s ragusey making port from Jaffa?” he called.

“Of course. What of it?”

“When the clerks unrolled a bale of carpets from Tabriz, there was a letter in ’em, addressed to your aunt Flora. They think it’s from your Pa amongst the Infidel.”

The letter was being taken to my uncle’s house, which for lack of any other I called home. It beat me there by about five minutes, but my aunt was so dithered by the sight of it—not three months since she had said Mass for her brothers’ souls—that she had not yet found the courage to open it. This she did featly at sight of me. Perhaps it contained news of a legacy.

It did not, or any other benison to me. I had not deigned to expect it. And in my heart was another thing, grown there since the last letter from Nicolo Polo, seemingly hard as a rock and like a rock foundation to a new structure of manhood. I did not want a message from him and would be weakened by it had it come. What I had hoped for was a boast of wealth whereby my uncle and aunt, mistaking me for his future heir, would provide for me better and leave me free from bondage.

The letter declared that he and his brother Maffeo had dwelt in the Tatar city of Bukhara nearly three years. Meanwhile the wars waged across their homeward paths had spread and fiercened, so they had decided to move on eastward, perhaps even as far as the Ocean Sea, in search of a roundabout but safer route to Venice. Many of their trading ventures had failed, whereby they found themselves in reduced fortunes. And this was the upshot of their hopeful voyage to Constantinople nigh twelve (at this writing) years before—separation from their loved ones and, unless their saints befriended them, death in an alien land.

I did not believe a word of it, but my uncle Zane did so, and found a moral to his liking. His dull, run-of-the-mill face flushed with self-righteousness.

“Well, Marco, after hearing this, I take it you won’t be so eager to go gallivanting on the seven seas.”

“It’s bad news, your Honor, truly.”

“I’ll hazard you’ll be glad to follow some other occupation, and with no more talk.”

When the moon had set—a favorite meeting time for the old astronomer and his chela—I told Mustapha the letter’s contents. He sat for a while clutching his bearded chin; then he came out on the roof top with me and began pointing out stars for me to name. I did not miss many, since he picked the largest and most beautiful. These were about thirty out of three thousand.

“They’re all you’ll ever need for taking bearings,” he told me. “But my son, you could never win by running away to sea. Your brain must be as stocked with knowledge as your purse is stuffed with gold. The longer you follow, the less fit you are to lead—I want you trained for leadership before you leave my door. That will take, at the least, three years more.”

“Master, I want to adventure to the Court of Kublai Khan, not become a munshi in a school.”

“How will you go about winning his favor, which is the road to power and a key to his vaults?”

“Tell me, master.”

“Remember, he’s not only a mighty but a great king. Every word that has trickled out tells us that. All day and night he drives to extend and strengthen and prosper his prodigious empire—whereby he enhances his own godlike power.”

“Then he’ll want to know all the West can teach him that’s any good.”

“You asked me what you need, and I’ll tell you. It won’t pleasure you to hear it, but I’ll trow you’ll not give up. You know a deal about ships and markets, and something about stuffs. You’ve picked that up on the Rialto and the quays. You’ve read widely for your years in books useful to you, and I’ve taught you useful things. But what do you know of the science of war, as the great captains wrote it down? Are you yourself skilled with any weapon, wherewith to win the respect of your followers or save your own life? Since you could walk you’ve watched the glass blowers, the shipbuilders, and the armor makers; now you should learn some of the bedrock principles behind their skill.”

“I’ll do my best, if I can get out of going to work for the iron-master. And there might be a way to do it.”

“Marco, you are almost a young Arab, when it comes to craft——”

“If another letter would come, hinting of my father’s soon return heavy with gold as an English hooker with tin, and I was to be his heir, my uncle Zane would seat me ahead of his own son.”

“And now you’re wondering if I’m a good forger?” The black eyes glistened, to my great joy. “I confess to it, having had to change some books to better sense. But someday Nicolo Polo might find out the cheat.”

“What matter if he does? He won’t love me any less or leave me any poorer than before.”

“A new letter would be hard to believe on the heels of this one. Still, the idea’s right, if the method’s wrong. Do you think you could get hands on the present letter, deliver it to me for a night’s keeping, and return it to your uncle’s cabinet without his ever discovering the theft?”

“Why, ’twould be child’s play!”

“So was a Mongol lad’s hiding himself when his kinsman came to kill him. His name was Genghis, and out of it came terrible things. Then essay it, child, and take pains that you’re not caught.”

It was a good thing that I heeded him. The trick looked so easy as to need no forethought, and only at the last minute did I provide a spare exit from my uncle’s chamber, in case my plans went wrong. The balcony door, left open on such sultry nights, gave me easy entrance, and the watch lamp enough light. My uncle and aunt, naked in the bed, slept the sleep not of the just but of the good digesters, and despite their meanness looked as innocent as two white, fat pigs. I found the parchment in the top drawer of his escritoire, and I was making toward the balcony when a great gust of wind slammed shut the portal. Being warped by the rain, it could not be opened without kicks and blows and accompanying squeaks and groans.

My kinfolk wakened and carried on a brief, half-witted conversation about the weather. If they had had enough assiduity to arise and see about it, they would have caught me, not red-handed but red-faced, crouching behind the footboard. As it was, their mumblings died away, and I made my exit through an adjoining chamber whose inner bolt I had taken pains to slide. It would be a lesson to me in double safe-guarding for the rest of my life.

Mustapha Sheik mixed sal ammoniac with water, doctored the parchment,^[2] and schooled me in my part. I replaced it without mishap, and the sport began after the morning prayers.

“Uncle Zane, have you still got the letter from my father?” I asked, so gleeful over the game that I had no fear of giving it away, and hence could play it well.

“I haven’t got around to burning it,” he answered grumpily.

“Did you notice if it had a small ink blot about the middle of the parchment toward the left-hand side?”

“No, and why should I?”

“Yesterday I listened to some sailors drinking in an inn, and one of them, who had been to Aleppo, told how the learned priests of St. Thomas write to one another in secret. He said the sign that the parchment contained hidden writing was an ink blot, its position on the page being a cipher too. If it was at the top, what they called the brain, the letter concerned scholarly matters to be read at leisure. If it was on the left side, called the heart, it dealt with loved ones. If on the right side, called the hand, it dealt with war. And if at the bottom, called the feet, it was a most urgent message, which the receiver must discover and answer in dire haste.”

“I trow ’twas a sailor’s yarn. How could a parchment contain hidden writing? Perhaps if it were split, then glued together——”

“It’s worked by some kind of enchantment, borrowed from Prester John.” The mere mention of this name, one to conjure with these hundred years, softened my uncle’s brain. “And when the parchment is heated, the invisible writing stands forth as boldly as though inscribed in India ink.”

“I never heard the like!”

“My lord, now Marco speaks of it, I do believe there is a blot of ink on Nicolo’s letter,” my aunt broke in. “I noticed it, thinking that his hand might be palsied. By your leave, I’ll fetch it.”

“Do so, wife, and let’s dispose of this hocus-pocus once and for all.”

My aunt’s hand shook a little as she handed him the parchment. There was a small blot on the left-hand side, as I had noticed and remembered on first reading. My uncle prided himself on being a Doubting Thomas, but he was patently shaken.

“No doubt a coincidence, but an odd ‘n, I do confess,” he remarked. “Now we’ll apply heat, as the sailor fellow said—go the whole hog, say I, in any venture—but if secret writing appears on the page, I’ll eat my surcoat. Amelia, bring flame to a candle.” This last was to a serving wench, whose eyes were bulging.

My uncle began passing the parchment over the flame as though toasting a herring. We could see how debonair he was—a man of the world who could relish a bit of nonsense—and he had a joke ready to crack as he turned up the heated side. Instead he well-nigh dropped the page.

“Great Beelzebub!” he burst out.

“What is it, my lord?” my aunt cried, and Amelia was crossing herself fast as if scratching fleas.

“There’s writing here, I tell you. It’s come out on the parchment like the handwriting on the wall. No doubt it’s the Devil’s work—it was fire, the Devil’s own element, that brought it out—but if holy priests can use it for their communings, so can our dear brother. Let me toast it a bit more.”

Meanwhile I did not grin even into my sleeve. Although Mustapha Sheik had explained the whole process, insisting it was no more magical than boiling an egg, still the sweat came out on me at sight of the writing, and chills ran down my spine. And now my uncle was able to read it, penned by Mustapha in a good imitation of my father’s hand. This he did between gasps, reading it in a quaking voice.

While it was a deal less sensational than I had wished—Mustapha Sheik had told me that credibility was the very soul of cunning—truly it caused great stir:

My dear sister Flora,

Be not saddened by the outward seeming. The truth is, I have prospered too greatly to dare risk the telling save in this secret way. Pray for my return, and expect the prayer to come true within four years. In the meanwhile, bid my son Marco, whom I have never seen, prepare himself for the place he must fill as my heir and successor.

May your saints protect you from all ill, and may you show yourself worthy by a pious life and by ceaseless love and obedience to your good husband.

Nicolo Polo

This last greasing had gone against my grain, but now I rejoiced at Mustapha’s wisdom. Of all largess, flattery was the cheapest and the most effectual, he said; and to scorn its employment in a good cause was a sign of either dim wits or of hidden shames. Also, the wise conqueror never took the last crust. One’s words to eat is not a dainty dish, and if my uncle gagged too painfully, he might make us trouble.

The trick succeeded so well that it scared me a little, lest it be used as balance against a later failure. My aunt moved me to a better room and my uncle bought me finer raiment. He would have engaged a good tutor for me if I had not proposed that I find my own at half the cost to him. The money went for books, some lessons of great use to a traveler, and a fine English bow such as had set Saracen teeth achatter in the Crusades. It was six and a half feet long, beautifully shaped of yew, and the weight to draw it into a full, beautiful, deep crescent was fifty pounds.

So I passed from primary school to college.