Читать книгу Caravan to Xanadu, A Novel of Marco Polo - Эдисон Маршалл - Страница 9

The great consternation created in our company by my father’s words caused a long, heavy, almost breathless silence. I was deeply grateful for it, because it gave me time to rally my faculties and act. The action was in my head, but it was no less positive than many by my hands, and hardly less violent. I forced my thoughts through a welter of hopes and fears, weaknesses and strengths, to a sure conclusion. I was quite certain that I need never question it in the future.

Certainly to us, and perhaps to himself as well, my father, Nicolo Polo, had told a black lie.

My father’s gaze was fixed on my face. I did not return it—my instinct was to refrain from any act of defiance. He was red in the face, his stunned hearers white. The silence stretched for second after second and I wondered if I would be the one to break it. I did not wish to and looked to my aunt Flora.

She remained aghast, but out of the corner of my eye I saw a sudden darkening of the dull-white face of my uncle Zane.

“God’s wounds!” he burst forth like a thunderclap.

“Oh, my lord!” cried his wife.

“What’s this you’re saying?” Zane persisted, turning with great energy to my father. “That Marco’s your wife’s bastard? Then what of the message you sent him in the secret writing?”

A perverse impulse to laugh aloud swept me from head to heel, but I contained it, and only a gasp came out.

“What secret writing?” my father demanded in a loud voice.

“In your last letter to Flora. You spoke of your dear son Marco—how you’d make him your heir——”

“By my saints, we’ve all been bitten by tarantulas! I sent no secret writing. Would I endow the living monument, the very witness, to Lucia’s infidelity and my own pain?”

“Then it was the Devil’s work. It was a wicked enchantment, to ruin me, worked with the Devil’s fire. Flora swore to the handwriting. On the strength of it I’ve spent God knows how many lire on Marco’s care.”

“Was it signed and sealed before an officer of the Court?”

“No it wasn’t, and why should I expect it to be, when ’twas sent from some heathen land? You’d never told us of his bastardy. You let us go on thinking he was your own——”

“When I left here—and it was the cause of my leaving—I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone of the disgrace. I was not even sure that Lucia was with child—she swore she wasn’t. After I had gone, I dared not write the truth, for only a fraction of my letters reached you—most of them were rifled and no doubt read by rogues and rival merchants.”

“That may be, but I’ll have my money back, fair weather or foul.”

“Uncle Zane, I’ll pay you every dinero,” I said.

My voice was more firm than I dared hope. To my surprise, it worked another silence, not as explosive as the other, but more strained. Aunt Flora looked deeply distressed and my father tense. There was malice in Leo’s eyes. He was not sure that the secret writing was the Devil’s work.

“I’ll fetch the letter, Papa, if you’ll give me leave,” he said.

“I think that would be best,” my father said gravely.

In a moment it was in his hands. He looked at it with knitted brows, then called for a lighted candle. After he had toasted it a moment, he examined it carefully, reread the doctored writing, and put it down.

“It’s not the Devil’s work,” he told Zane. “Only a clever trick.”

“Who’s the trickster? By heaven, he should hang!”

“It’s someone who’s acquainted with alchemy—Arabian, most likely—or who knows someone of that ilk.”

“Uncle Nicolo, Marco has been seen hundreds of times at the house of an old Arab in Spinalunga,” spoke up my cousin Leo.

“Then I don’t think we need search much further for the forger. However, I am seeing the offense in a little different light than at first. The truth is—and I admit it freely—I’ve not dealt altogether fairly with Lucia’s son Marco. The sin was wholly on her head, not in the least on his, yet it has been visited upon him in no small measure.”

“I’m not sure that I follow you, Brother Nicolo,” said my uncle Zane. His polite tone did not mean that he had forgotten the small sum I had bilked him of, rather that he remembered the vast sum to accrue to my father from his coming venture.

“Pardon me a moment. Marco, did your mother confess to you, before she died, that you weren’t my son? Did she boast of it, I’d better say? ’Tis true you were hardly four years old, still it’s possible that you’d remember.”

“No, your Honor, she didn’t.”

“And the notion never entered your head?”

“No, sir. How could it?”

“Then of course you were puzzled and hurt that I made no mention of you in my letters. Finally you succumbed to temptation to forge a mention, for your pride’s sake——”

“Not only for pride’s sake,” my uncle Zane broke in, “but for silver grossi spent on his back and belly.”

“I’m myself partly at fault for not making the situation clear both to him and to you,” my father admitted handsomely. “I’ll demand no punishment for the forgery, and I’ll go further than that. We’re taught to return good for evil. Before I leave, I’ll try to find a place for Marco in the establishment of some merchant. I think it won’t be difficult, if I throw business his way.”

My father had spoken firmly and with quite a manner. Even when quoting the great Christian maxim, not a trace of butter greased his tongue. He was so great an adversary that I marveled he should be one at all—what was there about me, a youth not yet sixteen, to attract his zealous attention? Since eagles do not hawk at flies, obviously it was the fruit of some old passion, and hence, of course, a weakness. But he would need a hundred weaknesses to reduce him to my fair match—or I must gain a hundred strengths.

“I’ll let it go at that, on the condition Marco pays me back out of his wages,” Uncle Zane replied. “Half of ’em to hand till the debt’s paid! Otherwise I’ll cry the cheat myself.”

“There’s still another condition.” My father turned to me. “You may no longer call yourself Marco Polo. You may take the name Marco Antonello——”

“I’ll not do that until the bastardy’s proved,” I broke in, greatly flurried within to be contesting him this soon, but surprisingly steady without.

This shot told far beyond my excited expectations. For an instant I thought I saw real hate gleaming in his eyes. It was not easy for him to control his countenance and then his voice.

“You’d best not doubt my word, young man,” he said.

“Either my doubting it or my believing it won’t change the law. The law is that if I was born while you and my mother were still married—and had opportunities to cohabit—I’m to be considered legitimate until proven otherwise. Any lawyer in Venice will tell you that.”

He had not expected me to know that point of law. Actually I took no great pride in it, since copulation is such a fascinating subject to youths of my age that we become remarkably well informed as to all its ramifications. What should make me justly proud was remembering it in this tight moment and making good use of it.

“I don’t believe I’ll have any trouble with the law. And if you’re thinking that you may come into a large sum of money by denying the truth, you’re fated for a disappointment. This letter states that Maffeo and I had lost a great part of our capital. A good portion of the rest was stolen from us by fire-worshipers who attacked us on the homeward journey and who would have killed us except for the golden tablet given us as safe-conduct by Kublai Khan. This the villains dared not touch, but they took the jewels he had given us, and all the money except what we had hidden in a bucket of camel’s milk. The remainder we have paid to moneylenders to take up the bond on my father’s house in San Felice.”

He was interrupted by an anguished grunt from my uncle Zane. Then he went on with lordly calm.

“It’s true that our prospects are bright for a great coup, but it won’t be realized for many years. So, to make it short, Marco—for I’ve already wasted too much time—I advise you to accept what I’m willing to do for you, and be grateful.”

“You said a post of profit with a favored merchant if I’ll forswear you as my father.”

“It amounts to that.”

“I’ll not give up my honored name unless you prove me a bastard. But I’ll address you as Signor Polo and renounce all claim on you for support or patrimony if you’ll grant one plea.”

“I’ll hear it, for what it’s worth.”

“You said that you and your brother Maffeo are returning to the Court of Kublai Khan with one hundred learned priests. Give me a place in the company.”

The proposal amazed him. The slight widening of his eyes indicated it had affected his superstitions in a way to dismay him too. But as his intelligence took hold, I thought he was glad I had made it. He was going to enjoy its rebuffing.

“You’re about sixteen, aren’t you?” Signor Polo said thoughtfully. “In my youth, that counted as a full man. But have you served an apprenticeship with any merchant?”

“No.”

“Have you ever been out of sight of the towers of Venice?”

“No, Signor.”

“Even if I would permit an unlearned and unexperienced young man to burden the company, where would you find the money to pay your way?”

“I’d go as an attendant on one of the holy fathers.”

“The journey of the fathers will of course be financed by Holy Church. Perhaps a few curates will accompany them, if the wherewithal can be found for ship and caravan transport, but what menial service they require will be furnished by the masters from stage to stage of the journey; and the luxury of attendants is not in keeping with their calling, as well you know. Anyway, I wouldn’t let any person claiming relationship to me or to my late wife work his way with us—a matter of what the Orient knows as izzat. In plain words, if you went with us, someone would have to pay your way.”

“If I can pay my own way, and I agree to renounce all claim on your estate, will you let me go?”

Signor Nicolo Polo could hardly hide his smile. “Traveling in good array, so as not to lose face for the company before the heathen?”

“Yes, Signor.”

“Let us all understand your proposal, Marco, to avoid future argument. By Venetian law, you reached the age of discretion when you were fifteen, and we are dealing before witnesses. Your agreement to renounce claim to my estate is given for my consent to join our party at your own expense. If you’re not able to find the necessary funds, it is not my lookout, and your renunciation still stands.”

I felt a dull pain across my forehead just above my eyebrows. If I could only remember a scene of just before dawn, as I stood by my mother’s bedside, and her frail hand enfolded mine and the lamplight guttered ...

“You’re asking a good deal, Nicolo, of Lucia’s son,” Aunt Flora broke in.

“He’s no kin of yours, my sister, or of mine. And he aspires to go to Cathay.”

“Will you give me till vespers tomorrow, that I may pray to my saints for guidance?” I asked.

“I’ll not refuse you that.”

“And I think you should tell how great a sum he would have to raise,” Aunt Flora prompted.

“He hasn’t asked me. I dare say he trusts that the pot at rainbow’s end will hold enough.”

“I do ask you, Signor Polo,” rose a taut, nerve-rasped, stubborn voice I hardly knew for my own.

“Then I’ll answer, although I fear it may shake your ambition. In round figures, say three thousand lire—a thousand pieces of gold.”