Читать книгу Caravan to Xanadu, A Novel of Marco Polo - Эдисон Маршалл - Страница 11

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How could I go about raising one thousand gold bezants? It was not as hard a task as raising a sunken ship out of the sea, or as easy as to raise the Devil out of Hell—it would require amazing luck, but not a miracle. My best chance, I thought, was to find a speculator who would hazard twelve hundred or so—the difference to be spent in trade goods—on the long shot of a twentyfold return. The Polo name was well regarded on the Rialto. Should Nicolo succeed in taking it from me, I would still be half a gentleman, because my mother’s family, the Carpini of Perugia, were impoverished but noble—indeed they outranked the Polos several steps. I knew some tricks that might impress a potential investor with sporting tastes—some of them of real value in navigation, others of an alchemical sort, such as invisible writing, which Venetians would think just the thing for swindling uncouth heathen, but which actually were better known in Islam than in Christendom. As for my age, most scions of merchant families made their first ventures at sixteen.

Much and perhaps all depended on my allowance of time. In this regard, I had one great stroke of luck—the appointment of one hundred learned priests to follow the Polo brothers to Cathay must await the election of a new Pope to succeed Clement IV. If this were not delayed, it was still unthinkable that the vast business of their assemblage and dispatch could be completed this year, so Nicolo had set next spring as a starting date.

The news of the brothers’ return caused a great flurry on the Rialto. They were received by the Doge, who professed more than a passing interest in the enterprise, and they dealt with Papal Legates and other great folk, who promised their support of the great mission when the throne of San Pietro was again filled. Meanwhile the pair had moved into the Casa Polo, the mansion where I was born. Hence came worthies and adventurers of all sorts, every one itching for Oriental treasure; and my uncle Zane and his son Leo buzzed about like bluebottle flies around a dunghill.

Yet I was soon impressed by a momentous fact. This flurry was like choppy waves on the lagoon rather than rolling billows. The Venetian people did not begin to grasp the significance of what Nicolo and Maffeo had done. I could hardly believe it of my gay, bright-eyed, quick-minded fellow citizens, and even Mustapha Sheik could not explain it fully. It appeared that their horizon spread no further than Denmark to the north, Portugal to the west, the High Altai to the south, and the eastern shores of the Caspian to the east. Beyond this was Vagueness washed by the Ocean Sea. Regardless of all reports to the contrary, they chose to believe that the remainder of the land was ruled by a stupendous Christian monarch, Prester John. If Nicolo and Maffeo had brought back chests of jewels as big as walnuts, the toe of a roc, a live unicorn, and a monkey without a tail, they would have rocked the town. But they had nothing to show but a bag or two of coins and a quaint-looking gold tablet bearing outlandish marks.

Not that our business men disbelieved the story—or so they proclaimed. It could be true as Gospel for all they knew. Polo was a good name, and some fishermen off Brindisi had seen a mermaid only a month before. But with bandits on land and pirates at sea, tempests, rocks, jerry-built boats, import duties, wages out of sight, and the Genoese bastards to top off all the rest, their policy was to retrench rather than expand. For their part, and not to mince the matter, any merchant who sent a bottom beyond Alexandria or the Crimea should wear a cockscomb.

In one part of my mind and heart, more passionate and less logical than the rest, I rejoiced at this dubiosity. I did not want any rush to join the venture, lest I lose out on its great prize or be left behind. But always I fetched up against the adamant fact that the fewer folk who became aroused, the less my chance of finding a financier.

Mustapha Sheik had given me quarters in his house to be closer to the moneylenders of Spinalunga. Actually, the Jews were far more likely to risk capital in an enterprise of this kind than the Christians—I did not know why, unless they were more cosmopolitan in outlook and more learned. I began going to them, and in almost every case was cordially received and eagerly heard. Most were reluctant to refuse outright and several delayed the decision; yet with the passing weeks I found not one who would risk one hundred bezants, let alone a thousand. One of the major reasons was the revival of the Saracen power after its late defeat—they feared that Constantinople and even Jerusalem might be retaken. Another argument gave proof of the Jews’ grasp of Oriental affairs, but this was no comfort to me—that there was a great deal of rivalry between the descendants of Genghis Khan for the overlordship, and this might break into open war.^[5] A third difficulty, and perhaps the greatest, proved that the Jews were equally informed on the keyhole chitchat of Venice. Why did not my own father and uncle pay my way, or advance me the moneys out of my patrimony?

The moon did not cease her waxing and waning, the whole host of stars moved a little with the seasons, and the planets seemed to wander where they listed, although their courses were as inexorably fixed as the very sun’s. I could hardly believe that half a year had passed since my father’s return—and afterwhile, a full year. On the day of his return, I had known myself for a man. After sixteen, I walked and talked so that no one doubted it. Another summer’s end found me seventeen and no nearer Cathay than the last summer; but neither, thank God, was my sire.

The Legates were uncommonly slow at electing a new Pope. The Polo brothers worried over their repute with Kublai Khan; he might easily be led to think them scoundrelly adventurers who had had no intention of obeying his sublime commands. This anxiety preyed upon them all the more in the gathering quiet of the Casa Polo. The portico no longer swarmed with would-be wanderers to the world’s end. Captains of galleys had stopped vying with one another in offering their services, and the Doge had graver business on his mind. The return of the two travelers from very Cathay had begun to look like a nine-day wonder. When they passed a knot of merchants on the Rialto, sometimes there was elbowing, and even winks, behind their backs. But if sometimes Maffeo turned and looked, Nicolo never did.

Fall winds blew and bit, and the wild geese returned. The brothers determined to set forth in mid-April, new Pope or no. Meanwhile my doors of hope were closing one by one. Only one, always the widest and the brightest, still stood wide.

“Marco my son, how much would you risk for a thousand pieces of gold?” asked Mustapha Sheik when the mid-March morning sun burst through the casement glass and ensilvered his long beard.

“I’d lay my life on the toss of a coin and grievous sin on my soul,” I answered.

“The risk to your skin is not that heavy in the venture I’m thinking of, but it’s far from light and my belly faints at the thought. There are those who’d say your soul’s risk would be even greater, but with all due respect to Christian dogma, I think it will come through unscathed. And for the love of Allah, don’t hang on my words as though they were a life line thrown to you in a sinking ship. If you don’t get to go with the Polo brothers, what will you do?”

“I’ll take service with a merchant, the best I can get, and wait till my ship comes in.”

“Will your heart be broken?”

“No, only cracked a little.” But my errant Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.

“Do you know that if I had the gold, I’d put it in your hands, not to spare you a cracked heart, but as an offering to Allah—God, you say—for my sins?”

“I don’t ken you, master.”

“Why should you? It’s a matter between Him and me. It’s the light I see, which may be a will-o’-the-wisp, yet I must believe it for my soul’s sake. I want you to go, Marco Polo. To that end, I’ll lend you a hundred bezants, which will pay what you owe to your uncle Zane and furnish you for the thing I have in mind. You can repay the sum, if the chance comes, to the School of Averroës in Morocco.”

“If I live long enough, I will.”

“I’ve been pondering the matter since leaf fall. A month ago, you could as well pine for a roc’s egg, as did Aladdin’s bride, as for help from me. A fortnight past, I saw hope glimmering dimly at the bottom of the well, but I had no bucket to go down. As late as a week ago, the difficulties of the venture loomed so great, and the danger so deadly, that I couldn’t bring myself to broach the matter to you. Now one of the dragons guarding the treasure has been given a bone to gnaw. Even so, many dragons remain, and perhaps the treasure itself is as visionary as the pot of gold at the rainbow’s end.”

Mustapha Sheik spoke calmly, as was his wont. But his eyes, so black in contrast with his beard, glimmered like jet.

“Bismillah!” I cried, like a good Moslem.

“In the city of Medina I knew slightly a merchant of the common name of Haran-din. He had become rich by buying and selling slaves. On one of his voyages he was captured by a Venetian and himself sold as a galley slave. Being much too old for the labor, he expected to be thrown to the sharks within a twelve month, but no such mercy was vouchsafed him. Within two moons a patch of skin on his hand showed silvery as the moon. So he was delivered from his bench and put in the lazar house of Chioggia. In a few weeks more, perhaps in a few days, he will be freed from there also, by a more kind delivery, but one he won’t welcome in that place.”

“Death?” I asked.

“Truly. But he doesn’t want to meet him there. He wants the appointment to be in Zara, on the shores of Hungary, across the Adriatic from Rimini.”

“Why there, Mustapha Sheik?”

He was always patient with my questions. “Because in Zara there is a Mohammedan mosque containing a relic from Mecca. You may ask how it comes there, in a Christian state. Because Stephen, the king, wedded a Cuman woman, whose people swore to become Christians, but who are half Mohammedans, half pagans. When those leaning toward Allah desired to raise a temple, he gave them leave. Haran-din prays that he may kiss this relic, a stone fixed in the walls, which once lay upon the Hill of Mercy, and which touched the Prophet’s foot when he shouted ‘Labbeyka!’ unto God. And he sent me word that whoever brings him forth into the light and bears him to Zara and enables him to kiss the stone before he dies, him he will make his heir.”

“I wish you’d told me sooner, Mustapha Sheik. Now the time grows short.”

“It would have grown long if you had undertaken the venture even a week ago. A warden, Captain Vico, knew that Haran-din had secret wealth, but it was useless to torture him because the malady was so far advanced that he could no longer feel pain, and that is the nature of this most strange and awful affliction. He knew too that Haran-din had conspired to escape, whereby to dispose of his treasure, so he laid a cunning trap to kill anyone who stole his way to the prison bars. But Haran-din gave him a jewel that a certain Jew had kept for him, wherefor this Vico promised, on the forfeit of his soul to be burned by demons through eternity if he breaks faith, to leave open an outer gate at such a time as to circumvent the outer guard. Thus only the inner guard will remain to be eluded, which Haran-din declares would not be difficult for a resolute, resourceful, and cunning man.”

“If so, why doesn’t the warden arrange for a confederate to deliver Haran-din and so share in the reward?”

“Because Haran-din will trust only another Mohammedan or a Jew, with whom Captain Vico has no dealings and whom he himself would not trust.”

“Why won’t Haran-din trust a Christian?”

“Because he believes that a good Christian would free him from the lazar house only to let him die in some odor of sanctity, in a last attempt to save his soul, and the common run of Christians would not dare touch his leprous hand.”

“Am I neither one?” I asked with a grin.

“You’re a most mongrel mixture of good and bad, to my soul’s joy.”

“Do you think he’ll trust me?”

“I’ll put a mark on your hand that he will trust.”

“And I must touch Haran-din’s hand?”

“You must clasp it, for the way is long and dim, and he is nigh blind. You may cover it with a cloth, but that will only assuage your horror of it, not reduce the danger of contagion.”

“I’ll defy the inner guard with a merry heart, as well as other perils of the way, but that danger chills me to the marrow of my bones.”

“I too am chilled to the dried hollow of my old bones, but take comfort in the belief—well-nigh the knowledge—that the dreadful chance is far less than most Christians believe, and for this one exposure would hardly be one in ten.”

As I heard the thrilling words there had been visions before my eyes, and these had half eclipsed my view of the speaker’s face. It came clear to me now, and suddenly my joy in him clutched at my heart like the deep-toned wondrous music of San Marco. He was very old, I thought, and his beard was as white as the snow that sometimes blows on the northeast wind off the Julian Alps. The bald spot on his crown was hidden under a black cap, but his head was like an old crag half covered with snowdrift. While the parchment of his face was rich with secret writing, its drawn look now, and the strange brilliance of his eyes, told me that he had just fought a grievous battle—and he had won. But I dared not speak of it yet.

“One in ten!” I cried. “Why, that’s nothing.”

He shook his head as though his voice had failed him, and tears stood in his eyes.

“Even if it turns out rainbow gold, I’ll not be sorry I chased it at that rate,” I said quickly.

“I don’t think it is. Unless his malady has deranged his mind—and one of its most awful attributes is enduring sanity to the very last—he wouldn’t lie to me who has broken bread with him, and eaten salt. He writes me that he has one jewel left. It was paid him on an old debt a year ago, and put in the charge of a certain Jew dwelling in Spinalunga. It is a pearl among pearls, he told me, and if it were shown to a connoisseur buying for a king, it should bring one thousand bezants, if not more.”

I thought for a time that I could get out of asking him my final question, since it would hurt his thin old throat to answer it. It was forced upon me because we loved each other.

“Mustapha Sheik, why do you tell me of this, knowing that if I win my prize or lose my life, we will be parted?”

“What choice do I have, Marco? Have you forgotten how you came on our ship? My mariners told you I was sick—you saw the terror in their faces, and for all you knew I was stricken with the Black Death—yet you went into my darkened cabin and ministered to me.”

“But I didn’t come for that. I wish I had, but I came only—I don’t know why I came!”

“I think I know what compulsion brought you there, and I wouldn’t have it changed. It’s the same that will help to bring you to the earth’s ends, if you live. Yet you ministered to an old and ailing Infidel. Now the wheel has turned full circle, and you must do so once more, and as a beginning, not an end. It is like the repetition, in reverse, of a figure in a wondrous weaving. And the weaver is Fate.”