Читать книгу Caravan to Xanadu, A Novel of Marco Polo - Эдисон Маршалл - Страница 7

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Meanwhile I passed my fifteenth birthday and my sixty-eighth inch. I weighed one and a half quintal, as we weigh fish, and was shooting up and filling out to the dismay of my mother’s tirewoman, who let out my clothes, and to the consternation of my cousin Leo, who feared I would outspan him at this rate. Going on sixteen, I must soon present new evidence of my father’s prosperity, my uncle making many countings of the moneys he had spent on me. By now it would be an easy thing to go to sea. Any galley captain who saw me shoot a bow would gladly hire me as a castle guard, not so much for my hits as for the doleful misses of most archers, and because I was quick. But in all likelihood this would still be a fatal thing as far as my ambitions were concerned.

Late in the month of May, I was watching the unloading of a wondrous cargo from Alexandria. Besides the more common riches of the Orient—bales of carpet, bolts of cloth, chests of spices, and stacks of sandalwood—there were live peacocks for the gardens of great villas on the mainland, pet monkeys for children and harlots, snakes for apothecaries, and talking and singing birds. I hardly noticed a dirty bireme docking an arrow cast distant. A ship’s clerk told me it hailed from Acre with a cargo of dressed leather. When two gentlemen disembarked and walked by, I gave them my second-best attention, and intended to make it short.

Instead I began to regard them with growing curiosity. They boasted very little gold and no jewels at all and were dressed very plainly compared to the dizened roosters I most admired, although the cloth was black velvet of no mean price. Their faces were more tanned and weathered than those of most rich merchants, who lie in their cabins in rough weather and sit under pavilions in good. But these were faces to mark and remember long.

The older had a long nose, a square jaw, and wide, thin, straight lips, all suggesting severity. His hair and beard were a sandy red, and his eyes blue. The younger face was as handsome, in a manly way, as any I had ever seen. The eyes were large and brilliant, of hazel color I thought, the nose high-bridged as a Spanish duke’s and finely chiseled, the mouth at once strong and voluptuous. He wore no beard, only a fine brown mustache. With this quite noble countenance and high-held head went a large, fine body of impressive stature and native grace. It did not surprise me that the handful of ladies accompanying their lords or fathers in visiting the ships put on their prettiest airs, while the bawds and serving wenches gazed wistfully.

Behind the younger man walked a youth of about fourteen and a younger boy, both handsome and elegantly dressed. Since he looked far too young to be their father, I took it that they were sons of the older gentleman.

Although their differences were more conspicuous than their similarities, I could not doubt that the two men were brothers. Their eyes, though different in size and brilliance, were set exactly alike, and there was no gaiety in either pair. Instead there was a firmness or an imperiousness such as I had rarely seen.

Intent on their business, they did not return my glance, and soon disappeared in the crowd. I tried to pay them no more mind, only to yield at last to overweening curiosity. When a Dalmatian pikeman disembarked from the same ship and swaggered off toward a wine shop, I accosted him.

“Friend, will you tell me who were the two gentlemen in black velvet?” I asked. “I think I’ve seen them somewhere before.”

“Why, they’re Venetian merchants, brothers to each other, returning home after a long journey.”

“How long a journey? I’ve heard of some that lasted five years.” And I had not given my heart leave to beat so fast.

“I didn’t hear ’em say, but they’ve been to countries so far away you’ve never heard their names.”

Not long ago I would not have missed this chance to boast.

“I’ve heard of Armenia and Persia—and a city named Bukhara.”

“Why, they’re just a stone’s throw compared to where those gentlemen came from, and it’s called the Celestial Kingdom of Cathay. Their name is Crispi—Giovanni and Roderico Crispi—and if you ask ’em, they’ll give you a monkey without any tail.”

With a droll look and a rolling walk, the Dalmatian went on his way.

I went home and began to wait. A good part of the waiting I spent in my chamber, shaping and fledging arrows, and in this I could take pride; but no small part of it I stood at a casement watching the entrance ways. I was fifteen and a half. Youths of like tender age had commanded galleys in bloody strife at sea. They had no fathers or mothers when the great catapults began to hurl quarter-ton stones. They stood or fell by their own manhood.

Several festooned gondolas passed our door. There was many a flurry of people on the bridge, but not two tall travelers, in black velvet, with their attendants. The long day died; twilight gave way to night; I supped, lay down, listened, and at last slept. My reason told me that the travelers’ names were Giovanni and Roderico Crispi. But in my dreams I wept....

“Master Marco, you’re white in the face,” said an old charwench who had served my mother. “I fear that one of those tall ships you love has brought you the plague.”

“I’m plagued if I know,” I answered, laughing like a loon.

But the sand ran on in the glass. A servant maid had turned it twice, thrice, four times, since the Angelus. She was very Cronus, I thought, he who had castrated his father and eaten his sons so he could never be overthrown. The shadow of the style moved across the sundial, and beneath it, deep-carven in the stone, was this terrible legend:

Every hour wounds. The last hour kills.

We sat down to our big, rich midday meal. I could not eat, but I showed a bright face when the porter blew his horn. There were visitors at the door. I felt nothing more in my heart and instead was rallying all my physical and mental forces, exactly, it seemed, as I did when I drew my longbow for a difficult shot. I was almost pleasantly conscious of coolness and steadiness.

“They are Venetian merchants, newly returned from the East, with their attendants, and they seek admittance to your Honor’s presence,” the servant said.

“Why, you may show them in, and welcome,” replied my uncle Zane. For the merchants of Venice were her true lords.

They came in, the older leading the way, and as he passed the threshold I saw that he did not fill the doorway as did the younger. Their eyes were set alike and both had an imperious look, but the older man’s, although less bright, were not as cold. He was the more rugged-looking, but not the strongest. Their surcoats and leg gear were dark-blue velvet; and in addition they wore mantles of ceremony, lined with red silk and fastened at the throat with gold chains. Most of their train remained in the anteroom, but the two handsome youths, richly and elegantly dressed, followed them still.

“Welcome, my lords, to my humble abode, and will you honor me by sitting at my board?” quoth my uncle Zane.

“Why now, we’ll not sit yet,” answered the younger brother with great courtesy, “but we may beg to do so, when we’re sure of our welcome. Zane—and I address you so by right—do you know me?”

I did not know him. He had addressed my uncle by right, he said, but there seemed to be something wrong. I had thought about it a hundred times since yesterday. I had always understood that Nicolo Polo, my father, was the younger brother of Maffeo Polo. Actually I could not remember being told so and very easily could have got the wrong impression when a little child and carried it all these years. That was the way of it, surely—because the younger of these two brothers was not old enough to have a son fifteen and a half, and hardly sons fourteen and twelve. In that case, it stood to reason that the older, plainer, less arresting man was Nicolo Polo.

He was the better man in the way of goodness than the younger man. He could have darkened my mother’s ways but not cracked her heart. He could have neglected me from sheer unwillingness to bear responsibility for me, not ignored me on purpose. If he were my father, not the other, I would be happier ... and safer....

“Why, there’s something familiar in your face——” So spoke Zane, my uncle, and now there was a pallor in his own face and a tremor in his voice.

The taller, youthful brother turned to my Aunt Flora.

“Lady, have I no resemblance to someone you knew?”

“Oh, you have,” she answered, so white and faint that I thought she might swoon, “but I dare not speak——”

“Be bold. If you miscall me, I’ll not be offended.”

“If you are who I think you are, you were barely eighteen when you left here, sixteen years ago. It would be no wonder that you’ve changed greatly. But you”—and my aunt turned to the older brother—“you will I address with a bold heart. Of you, I’m almost sure.”

“Who am I, Flora?”

“By blessed Jesus, who died for me, I believe you’re my brother Maffeo, as though risen from the grave.”

“And who stands beside me?”

“It must be Nicolo—and it is!”