Читать книгу Caravan to Xanadu, A Novel of Marco Polo - Эдисон Маршалл - Страница 14

I got my Infidel into the gondola and Felix pushed off. No longer did we look the part of a Venetian lordling and his rascal—our faces, hands, and garments were smeared with jail filth—nor smell it either, unless I missed my guess. So there was nothing to stop us from heaving together on the oar. Truly our fat duck cut the water on the way to the rendezvous. Her owner, the voluble gondolier, had never raced her so fast to get to a fire.

When we came up to the Grazia da San Pietro, not one of her crew would lay hand on the lazar. Only by help of a rope passed around his waist was I able to hoist him aboard. My first thought was to leave the gondola adrift, but since our course lay toward San Paolo’s bridge, I decided to tow her for a little so the stink would get out of her and her jocund owner could retrieve her before he cast too many curses on our heads. She slowed our passage only a minute or two before I cut her loose. Now the breeze would ground her within a cable’s length of her destination.

I got two pieces of worn sail out of a cubby. One I spread on the hard boards for Haran-din to lie on; with the other I covered his pale, wasted form. It was a poor bed at best, I thought; but perhaps he could not feel its hardness beneath his rotted bones. If he needed no covering against the cool breeze and the cold splashings, at least it shielded him from our sight. But perhaps he was as insensible to this as to the rest, and the mercy was wholly ours.

As I thought of this, a sudden weakness came upon me, and I leaned against the rail, my eyes streaming tears. At last I must lean over, ghastly sick. Still I did not seem lowered in the estimation of the oarsmen, rough, lewd, hard-bitten fellows though they were. Not one of them glanced at me; instead they talked quietly to one another above their stroke.

The ship sped, and soon we were well away. The moon set, and still no bell towers clanged an alarm, and only owls and bats could find us in this close dark. Surely we could rest our fears till sunrise provided the rowers did not rest their arms; and by then I hoped we would be seven leagues out on the Adriatic—perhaps much farther if Neptune gave us a fair wind and tide. If so, we would be out of danger except for provost galleys set on our track. Since there was no indication that our means of flight had been discovered, we had every prospect of a clean escape.

No great danger lay in Captain Vico. He had not seen my face and had laid himself open to a beheading on the charge of receiving bribes. The guards we had laid out had had only dim looks at us in the fetid gloom.

The ebb tide had turned back soon after our setting forth, and now before a southeast wind was making into the Gulf of Venice with far more power than usual. And this was the wind we had most hoped to be spared, since it was directly contrary to our course. It was rising a little with the tide. While there was not the slightest sign of a brewing gale, our rowers were hard put to it to make headway. This would have roweled our nerves even on a lawful journey, with no gnashing of teeth behind us. Our destination, Zara, lay nearly sixty leagues beyond Chioggia—two days’ sail in the best of weathers. Now, as the dawn cracked, we had barely cleared the shoals off the mouth of the Adige.

I had hoped we would be a speck in the great glittering blue of the Adriatic long before this, instead of, as Felix put it, two shouts and a halloo from port.

“There’s a ship on our larboard stern,” I told him.

He peered a good ten seconds. “I don’t make her out,” he answered. “Are you sure she’s not a low-hanging skean of mist?”

“I’m sure. And her course is due east.”

Felix looked flabbergasted. “What kind of eyes have you, to make out a sail I can’t?”

Well, Mustapha Sheik had told me they were the sharpest he had ever seen on man, woman, or child.

“She’s close-reefed,” I told him, trying to get back part of the capital I had lost tonight. “From her lines, I’d call her a bireme.”

Meanwhile the light was clearing with that glorious rush of first spring dawns. Felix flung salt water from a draw bucket into his eyes, then rinsed it out with fresh water.

“I can see her now,” he told me. “But I couldn’t if you hadn’t showed me where to look.”

“I doubt if she can see us. We’re against the shore and she’s against the morning. If you hug a little more on a south’ard course we may give her the slip.”

He called orders to that effect. Meanwhile I got a spying tube—a hollow stick which, pressed against the eye socket and peered through, cut off all dazzling light and usually assisted vision.

“She’s a bireme of about forty benches,” I reported. That meant twenty on a side, each with two oarsmen. “Her high castle and long beak show she’s a fighter. If she isn’t a marine provost I’ll eat her pennant.”

“What would she be doing out here this time of day?” Felix asked, wide-eyed.

“She might be attending to her duty, chasing rovers and smugglers. On the other hand she might be looking for a heathen smuggled out of a lazar house.”

“By our Blessèd Mary, if someone saw us get off the gondola, our heads’ll roll in the Piazzetta before another tide!”

“That’s a lot of trouble for the state to go to for one Infidel leper,” I told my comrade when my head had cleared. “Still there’s no proof we’ve been seen. The provost marshal’s first thought would be that his own tribe stole him, on a holy venture, so he’d send out a galley to look for a zebec or a dhow. However, for lack of either, she might search every boat that journeys east.”

“She’s changed her course more southerly, and she’ll be sure to see us when the sunrise lights our oar blades.”

“Then we’d better be afishing, like honest men.”

So we heaved our two-hundred-pound hook to anchor in twenty fathoms. Two fellows ran out a short net as though to make a trial cast. Felix and I had already shelled the outer garments concealing our fishers’ dress, and with a grim look, he rolled up the foul rigs, fastened the bundle to a net weight, and tossed it overboard. The rest of us watched what might be a sea-dragon with eighty legs, who might come fishing for us.

From the hump on the dragon’s back there rose what looked like three stiff hairs. The number increased to a thick patch as more and more spyers mounted the galley’s castle.

“She’s seen us, but she’s keeping her course,” Felix muttered.

“Keep praying to San Pietro! If her master is an easy-going lubber, he’ll pass us by, but if he’s a veteran of Trepani——”

Then the color ran out of Felix’s face like red wine from a broken glass.

“God in Heaven, she’s veering this way!”

My face blanched the like, if the cold sweat beading there was any sign. My terror was quite likely greater because it spread further—it gave me eyes to see not only our arrest and ironing, but our behanding at Santa Croce, our dragging to the Piazzetta on the tails of horses, and our beheading between the pillars.^[6] If our lifting of Haran-din would be counted only theft of first offense, we would get off with a flogging and being branded on the hand. But the same eyes searched desperately for hope, and for this—in my great need—they turned cold and sharp.

“We’d better cut the anchor rope and run for it,” Felix gasped. “There’s a little mist blowing and if it thickens, maybe we’ll fade out.”

That would betray our guilt, and the chance of hiding did not seem one in ten. Still, we must be ready to run if we were not able to gull the galley captain into letting us pass.

“Call to the fishers to haul in, but free the fish under water, so they won’t gleam in the sun.”

“That’ll take time. What’s the sense of it? Why not let the net go?”

“To make it look like a water haul, so we’ll have an excuse to change grounds.”

But this could be our last trick. If the galley veered to intercept us, there was no risk too desperate to run.

Five minutes crawled away before the net was stowed and the dinghy made fast. Although the galley’s oarsmen were stroking at half-speed—as if she were making toward us only for lack of a better object—she loomed larger and looked fiercer than before. Truly she had not gained three cable lengths against the brisk wind and heavy tide, and was still a good league distant.

Felix ordered oars out. I had thought to request an easy gait, so as not to show fear, but thereby I would show fear of his refusal, which was enough to make him refuse in his present quandary. So with a faintness of heart concealed in a strong voice, I made it my command.

Then we watched like wild geese watching a distant fowler. Every rower’s head was turned at exactly the same angle as he bent to his oar. The shape that the galley showed us shortened with terrible slowness. She might be only giving a little way to the head wind.... Suddenly I scorned such wishwash, and knew well we were under chase.

“Now is the time for speed,” I told Felix.

But before he could give the command to the cockswain, there rose from the deck a wild, frantic cry.

“Wait, wait, for the love of God!”

All hands heard terror in the yell, but only I understood the language, and I could not begin to see its sense. If there had been a mist cloud on the water big enough to hide a rowboat I would have paid it no attention. Instead the sun was sucking up what little haze there was, the only clouds were scattered and bright, and there was no sign anywhere but of fair weather. It looked to be foul enough for us, after two or so hours’ run at desperate speed. I believed it would take a miracle to deliver us from capture, and why should we expect it? We were serving a foul Infidel against the Christian law. In spite of Haran-din’s pitifulness, no reasonable man would believe in the saint’s intervention in his behalf.

“Bid the men keep the same stroke for a moment more,” I told Felix.

I saw no revolt in his face and instead the dim glimmer of a hope. Perhaps he thought this silvery Infidel might work a charm.

“What is it?” I asked Haran-din. “Speak quickly!”

“Is a provost galley bearing down on us? I think the rowers said so.”

“Yes, and we must run.”

“What good to run with twelve legs against a hundred? Can’t you hide me?”

“There’s no hope of that.”

“Then show mercy in Allah’s name, and don’t let them take me alive!”

Hearing that, my heart banged my rib bones.

“Do you mean, Haran-din, that you want us to throw you overboard?”

“What is the good of that? I’ll float, and they’ll see me shining like a fish, and pick me up, and bear me back to my cell! Don’t you know my bones are eaten away and my flesh is all dry rot, light as cork?”

Horror came down upon me like a cold fog.

“Won’t you drown?” I cried.

“No, I can’t drown!” he yelled. “If I breathe water instead of air, still I’ll live. That is the way of us lepers—we can’t die by our own hands—it’s the curse of Allah, the great, the glorious! You must kill me before you cast me forth. And even then they’ll take up my body and bury it in filth.”

I had run to Haran-din’s side to help save his breath, and now Felix ran to me.

“What does he want?”

“He wants me to put my dagger through his heart.”

Haran-din caught the word “dagger” and raised a long wail.

“Fool, that won’t kill me,” he howled. “A thousand daggers of pain and woe have pierced me in vain. You must beat me to death with clubs. Make sure that no breath of life remains before you cast me forth. Don’t cut off my head, because it will be lost, and belike it must search forever for my trunk, and then I can’t ever feast in Paradise!”

I looked up from the terrible face to the remorseless foe. So long a time had passed with me kneeling here that I expected to see her looming above our mast. Instead she was still no longer than my finger. Where she had been three miles away, now she was two miles, six cable lengths. Her oarsmen maintained their same steady pace.

“Will you help me kill him?” I asked my comrade.

“No. I can’t touch him. I’ll be hanged first.”

“Hearken, young noblemen!” Haran-din broke in. And now the horror that had engrossed me let go its icy grip, because the frenzy of his face and voice had given way to calm. He spoke in a low, even tone. I held my breath lest I miss one word. My skin crept in wonder.

“My great countryman, Mustapha Sheik, sent me your name, and I have put it in a parchment as your reward,” he told me. “If the Christians take me away alive, I charge you to burn it in Mustapha’s sight, or your hands that have touched me will rot away. So if you would have my jewel, my treasure, my white pearl worthy of a king’s throne, wield your club manfully, and with a right good will!”

White-faced, Felix plucked at my sleeve. “Are you going to kill him, Marco?”

“Yes,” I answered. “Be still.”

“I’ll wait, but don’t take too long. You must drop him over the starboard rail while the rowers screen you.”

“And for your comfort, Christian, know that I’m content to die here in the sun,” Haran-din went on. “It is written that those who fall on the road to Mecca come to the same glory as those who live to shout ‘Labbeyka’ on the Hill of Mercy. It is clean here, and warm. And—and though they find and carry away my body and feed it to swine, still my pearl in your hand will not lose its luster, although it will win you only half the glory that I wished for you.”

“What must I do—what must happen—for me to win it all?”

“By great cunning, save my body from their evil hands.”

I looked around as in a daze, intending to speak to Felix of this strange thing. Then my eyes fell on a common thing and my hair rustled up on my head.

“Tell the rowers to ship their oars and drift to a stop,” I ordered.

His eyes round as doubloons, he obeyed.

“Let half the rowers stand by the capstan, to screen what I must do.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Will you help me? If you will, it will take half the sin off my soul and mayhap we’ll both be saved.”

“I can’t lay hand on the leper for good or ill.”

“This is for good. I declare it before God or may He strike me dead! Get me three fathoms of rope, the strongest aboard.”

Felix uncoiled the inch-thick yellow serpent. It was made of new hemp and would hold a boat of this size in a heavy gale. When Felix had cut off twenty feet, the boat’s forward drift had checked and she had begun to lurch sideways in the wind.

“Haran-din, will you walk with me once more?” I asked.

“Yes, my son. Wherever you lead me.”

I took his arm and raised him to his feet and led him toward the bow. Without my asking, some of the rowers walked opposite him, screening him from the eyes of watchers on the approaching galley. Truly he did not need this shield, because distance hid him still, and they were careful not to touch him.

It was then that Haran-din guessed my intention. A last terror came into his face, dreadful to behold, but I thought it changed to glory and his half-blind eyes caught fire.

“Allah! Allah! Allah!”

I think it was only a second later that all my comrades made a like discovery in the same stopped breath. Only one of them spoke—a bow oarsman, new to the sea, crying “Mother of God!”—but there rose a sound like a long sigh, and every man stood still.

I began to fix the rope. As it looped about Haran-din’s shoulder, he freed his arm, brought forth a folded parchment that he had concealed under his tight-fitting cap, and handed it to me. Then he stood deathly still. I pocketed the parchment and went on with my work. Round and round went the rope, knot after knot I tied, until the rotted body could not possibly fall from the arms of its protector until it was utterly dissolved.

“Will any of you help me heave?” I asked, when all was ready.

No man spoke or moved. The only sound was the lapping of water against the drifting ship, and the shrill of the wind.

“Forgive us, comrade,” Felix said. “We can’t help you.”

It came to me then that I did not need them. Alone I lifted the great iron anchor with its strange rider. For a second I rested it on the edge of the bow.

“Farewell, Infidel,” I said. “May you find bliss in Paradise!”

“Farewell, Christian. May God be merciful to you in Hell!” Then his voice rose in a wild triumphant shout that rang through the heavens.

“Labbeyka! Labbeyka! Allah akbar!”

I thrust lightly against the iron. It fell with a great splash. Out ran the anchor rope with a rattling rumble—ten, twenty, thirty fathoms. It slacked, and I fixed the pin. The ship drifted half her length, then heaved in vain.

“He’ll lie quietly while the galley captain’s looking us over,” I told Felix in a queer, thin, shaking voice. “Then we’ll cut the rope and leave him to Allah’s mercy.”

“Why, ’tis Heaven’s mercy too,” Felix answered in almost the same tone. Then it deepened with resurgent power. “Fishers, spread your nets!”