The Journeyer

by Gary Jennings

  “If you know the value of these cods, messieurs, you will tie them behind your own testicles, and wear them there, hidden for safekeeping during your journey.”

  My father gave sincere thanks for the gift, and my uncle made a drunkenly fulsome speech of gratitude that might have gone on endlessly, except that he got to coughing. I did not realize how really precious that gift was, and how untypical of the clerkly Hampig, until my father told me later that the value of the three cods full of musk was easily equal to what we had spent that day in the bazàr.

  When we made our last bows to the Ostikan and left the dais, his son came lurching along, to join us at our cloth. It was of course quite far from the dais of honor, down among some barbarous-looking lesser guests, perhaps some poor country relations. Kagig, who was by then as drunk as anyone else in the hall, told us he wished to sit with us for a while, because his soon-to-be bride resembled us more than she did him or any of his people. Being a Circassian, Seosseres was fair of skin, he said, with chestnut hair and features of incomparable beauty. He went on at great length about her beauty: “More beautiful than the moon!” and her gentleness: “Gentler than the west wind!” and her sweetness: “Sweeter than the fragrance of the rose!” and her various other virtues:

  “She is fourteen years of age, which may be somewhat overripe for marriage, but she is as virgin as any unpierced and unstrung pearl. She is educated and can talk well on a number of subjects about which I, even I, know nothing. Philosophy and logic, the canons of the great physician ibn Sina, the poems of Majnun and Laila, the mathematics called geometry and al-jebr …”

  I think we listeners were rightly doubtful that the Pshi Seosseres could be so sublime. If so, why would she be willing to marry an uncouth Armeniyan with liver lips and no back to his head and a dedication to keeping his toenails safe from sorcerers? And I think our dubiety must have shown in our faces, and Kagig must have seen it, for he finally got up, staggered from the hall and clumped upstairs to fetch the Princess from her sequestered chamber. When he dragged her down, hauling on one of her wrists, she was trying maidenly to hold back, yet trying also not to put up an unwifely show of fight. He brought her into the hall and stood her in front of the company, and stripped off the chador that covered her face.

  If all the guests had not been occupied with the viands before them, and most of them sodden with drink, probably someone would have prevented Kagig’s act of boorishness. The girl’s forced entry certainly caused a muttering in the hall, loudest and angriest among her male relations. Several Muslim holy men covered their faces, and several Christian elders averted theirs. But the rest of us, while we might deplore Kagig’s breach of good behavior, were able to be pleasured by the result of it. For the Pshi Seosseres was indeed an outstanding representative of her famously handsome people.

  Her hair was long and wavy, her figure breathtakingly superb, her face so lovely that its light adornments of al-kohl around the eyes and red berry juice on the lips were quite unnecessary. The girl’s fair skin blushed pink in her embarrassment, and she only briefly let us see her qahwah-brown eyes before she lowered them and kept them lowered. Still we could gaze upon her unblemished brow and long lashes and perfect nose and winsome mouth and delicate chin. Kagig held her standing there for at least a full minute, while he made clownish bows and gestures of presentation. Then, as soon as he let go her wrist, she fled the hall and disappeared from our sight.

  The Armeniyans, it is said, were once good men and valiant, and did dauntless deeds of arms. But in our time they are but poor simulacra of men, and good at nothing, unless it be drinking and bazàr-cheating. So I had heard, and so the Ostikan’s son demonstrated. I do not mean his exposure to the male banqueters of his bride-to-be; I mean what happened afterward.

  When Seosseres had gone, Kagig flopped down again at our cloth, between me and my father, and looked around with a self-satisfied smirk, and asked of all within hearing, “What did you think of her, eh?” The girl’s male relations sitting nearby responded only with black looks; other men in our vicinity merely murmured respectful remarks of praise. Kagig preened as if they had been complimenting him, and proceeded to get even more drunk and even more vile. His continued eulogies on his Princess began to dwell less on the beauty of her face than on the attractiveness of some other parts of her, and his smirks became open leers, and his liver lips drooled. Before long, he was so besotted with wine and lust that he was muttering, “Why wait? Why should I wait for old Dimirjian to croak words over us? I am her husband in all but title. Tonight, tomorrow night, what difference … ?”

  And suddenly he unfolded himself from the pillows and staggered again out of the hall and lumbered loudly up the stairs. As I have said, the palace was of no very sturdy construction. So anyone in the hall who bothered to direct an ear—as I did—could hear what happened next. However, none of the other guests, not even the Ostikan or the Circassians who might have been most interested, seemed to notice Kagig’s abrupt departure or the subsequent sounds. I did, and so did my still sober father and our two frati. Listening carefully, I heard distant thumps and little cries and indistinct commands and thin protests and then some more thumps that became a regular and insistent pulse of thumps. My father and the friars rose up from the cloth, and so did I, and we all helped Uncle Mafìo get up, and the five of us made our salutations to the host Hampig—who was drunk and quite uncaring if we left or stayed—and we departed to our own quarters.

  We Polos spent the next morning in the bazàr again, and again accompanied by the steward Arpad. It was heroic of him to be still assisting us, for he clearly was suffering from the bibulous night before. But, headache notwithstanding, he performed capably as our hand-and-sleeve bargainer in another tedious series of interminable transactions. We bought saddles and saddle panniers and bridles and blankets, and had them and our horses delivered by bazàr boys to the palace stables, to be ready for our decamping. We bought leather water bags, and many sacks of dried fruits and raisins, and large goat cheeses sheathed against spoilage by heavy wax coatings. At Arpad’s suggestion, we bought a thing called a kamàl. It was only a palm-sized rectangle of wood strips, like a small and empty picture frame, with a long string depending from it.

  “Any journeyer,” said Arpad, “can determine from the sun or the stars the directions of north, east, west and south. You are going eastward, and you will be able to judge each day’s progress eastward by your traveling pace. But it will sometimes be difficult to judge how far north or south of due east you have gone, and that is what the kamàl can tell you.”

  My father and uncle made noises of surprise and interest. Arpad tenderly held his head in both hands, for it evidently hurt him when noises were made.

  “The Arabs are infidels,” he said, “and unworthy of respect or admiration, but they did invent this useful device. Here, you will have the use of it, young Monsieur Marco, and I will show you how. Tonight, when the stars come out, you face north and hold the kamàl up at arm’s length. Move it back and forth from your face until the lower edge of the frame rests on the northern horizon and the North Star sits just on top of the frame. Then tie a knot in the string so that when you hold the knot in your teeth the string is at such a length that you always hold the rectangle out at that same distance from your eye.”

  “Very well, Steward Arpad,” I said obediently. “Then what?”

  “As you travel eastward from here, the land is almost all flat, so you will always have a more or less level horizon. Each night, hold the kamàl out to the length of the string’s knot and position the rectangle’s lower bar on the northern horizon. If the North Star is still on the upper bar, you are due east of Suvediye here. If the star is perceptibly above the wooden bar, you have veered to the north of east. If the star is below that bar, you have wandered to the south.”

  “Cazza beta!” my uncle exclaimed in admiration.

  “The kamàl can do even more,” said the steward. “Put a tag marked Suvediye on that firs
t knot you make, young Marco. Then, when you reach Baghdad, do the same positioning of the rectangle away from or closer to your face, so that it just fits between the northern horizon and the North Star, and tie another knot in the string at that distance, and mark the knot Baghdad. If you continue to do that, making and marking a new horizon-knot for each destination as you reach it, you will always know—as you go on eastward—whether you are north or south of your last stopping place, or any of your previous stopping places.”

  Deeming the kamàl a most useful addition to our equipment, we gladly paid for it—after Arpad and the merchant had done their long bargaining and set the price at a laughably few copper shahis. We went on to buy numerous other things we thought we would need on the road. And, thanks to the Ostikan’s musk-cod replenishment of our budget, we even bought a few extra comforts and small luxuries that we might otherwise have done without.

  Not until that afternoon did we see again any of the other participants in the previous night’s banquet. That was when we all gathered in Suvediye’s Church of San Gregorio for the nuptial mass. To judge from the haggard faces in the congregation, and an occasional subdued groan, most of the men were, like Arpad, still feeling the effects of their indulgence at that banquet. The bridegroom-to-be looked worst of all. I might have expected him to look satisfied or smug or guilty, but he merely looked more lumpish than usual. The bride-to-be was so heavily veiled that I could not see her expression, but her handsome mother and the various other female relations all exhibited extremely angry eyes glaring through the slits of their chador veils.

  The wedding went off without incident, and our two frati, almost unrecognizable in the garish vestments of the Armeniyan Church, ably supported the Metropolitan in his conduct of the service. Afterwards, the wedding party and the whole congregation trooped from the church to the palace again for another banquet. This time, of course, the female guests—all of them except the female Muslims—also were allowed to partake. Again there were entertainments: the tumblers with their music, and conjurers and singers and dancers. While the evening was yet young, the newly married couple—he looking pained and she looking more woebegone than even a bride of that lout should have looked—had their hands joined by the Metropolitan and, after he said an Armeniyan prayer over them, trudged away upstairs to their bridal chamber, trailed by some halfhearted rude jesting and cheering from the guests.

  This time there was enough noise in the hall—the musicians and dancers making most of it—that not even my inquisitive ear could catch any sounds identifiable as denoting the consummation of the marriage. But after a while there came a number of heavy thuds and something suspiciously like a distant scream, audible even above the music. And suddenly, there came Kagig again, his clothes disheveled, as if they had been once doffed and then thrown on again just anyhow. He came stamping angrily down the stairs and into the hall. He strode straight to the nearest jar of wine and, disdaining a cup, drained it to the vertical.

  I was not the only one who watched his entrance. But I think the other guests, astounded at seeing a husband deserting his bride on their wedding night, at first tried to pretend he was not there among them. However, he began loudly to curse and swear—or that is what the Armeniyan words sounded like to me—and none could ignore his presence. The Circassians again began to growl, and the Ostikan Hampig cried anxiously something like, “What on earth is wrong, Kagig?”

  “Wrong!” the young man exclaimed—or so I was told later; he was too distraught to speak anything but Armeniyan. “My new wife is revealed to be a harlot, that is what is wrong!”

  Several people ejaculated protests and refutations, and the Circassians exclaimed what was probably “Liar!” and “How dare you?”

  “Do you think I could not tell?” Kagig raged, as I was later told. “She wept all during the ceremony, behind her veil, for she knew what I was soon to discover! She wept when we went together to our chamber, for the moment of revelation was at hand! She wept as she and I undressed, for she was at the brink of her perfidy’s disclosure! She wept even more loudly when I embraced her. And at the crucial moment, she did not give the cry that must be cried! So I investigated, and I could feel no maidenhead in her, and I saw no spot of blood upon the bed, and—”

  One of Seosseres’ male relatives interrupted him, shouting, “Oh, mongrel dog of an Armeniyan, do you not remember?”

  “I remember that I was promised a virgin! Not your shouting nor her weeping can change the fact that she had been had by some man before me!”

  “You accursed defamer! You nothing!” shouted the Circassians, frothing from the lips. “Our sister Seosseres has never been near a man before!” They were all trying to get at Kagig, but other guests were holding them back.

  “Then she has made love to a phallocrypt!” Kagig shouted wildly. “A tent peg or a cucumber or one of those haramlik carvings! But that is the only kind of thing that will ever love her again!”

  “Oh, putridity! Oh, spew!” the Circassians bellowed, struggling against the holders-back. “Have you harmed our sister?”

  “I should have!” he grumbled. “I should have cut out her duplicious tongue and thrust it up between her legs. I should have boiled oil and poured it into the defiled hole. I should have nailed her alive to the palace gate.”

  At that, several of his own relatives seized him and shook him roughly, demanding, “Never mind that! What did you do?”

  He fought loose of them, and petulantly shrugged his clothes back into an approximation of place. “I did only what a cuckolded husband is entitled to do, and I shall sue for annulment of this mock marriage!”

  Not just the Circassians, but also the Arabs and Armeniyans shouted at him every kind of filthy name and revilement. There was so much commotion and tearing of hair and beards and rending of garments that it was several minutes before anyone could collect himself to speak coherently and tell the detestable husband what, in his drunkenness, he had done and then forgotten. It was his father, the Ostikan Hampig, who, weeping, told him :

  “Oh, unfortunate Kagig, it was you who deflowered the maiden! Last night, on your wedding eve. You thought it would be clever and amusing to anticipate your husbandly rights. You went upstairs and forced her to bed, and you boasted of it afterward in this very room. It cost me dearly to persuade these her people not to slay you and anticipate her widowhood. The Princess is guiltless of any sin. It was you! You yourself!”

  The cries in the hall redoubled:

  “Pig!”

  “Carrion!”

  “Putrescence!”

  And Kagig turned pale and his thick lips twitched, and for the first time in my knowledge of him he acted like a man. He showed genuine chagrin and he called for retribution as if he meant it, crying, “May the coals of Hell lie hot upon my head! I truly loved the beautiful Seosseres, and I have cut off her nose and her lips!”

  6

  MY father plucked at my sleeve, and he and I and my uncle slipped discreetly through the roiling crowd and out of the dining hall.

  “This is not bread to my teeth,” said my father, frowning. “The Ostikan is in bad trouble, and any sovereign in trouble can make things trebly troublous for everyone around him.”

  I said, “Surely he cannot blame us for anything.”

  “When the head hurts, the whole body may suffer. I think it best that we get our horses loaded for a departure at first light. Let us go to our chamber and start packing.”

  There we were joined by the two Dominicans, who spoke loudly of their nausea and disgust at what Kagig had done, as if only they of us all had sensibilities to be offended.

  “Ho ho,” said Uncle Mafìo without humor. “These are fellow Christians. You have yet to meet some real barbarians.”

  “That is what most disturbs us,” said Brother Guglielmo. “We understand that such horrendous cruelties are common practices in farther Tartary.”

  My father remarked placidly that he had known of atrocities having been committed
in the West, as well.

  “Nevertheless,” said Brother Nicolò, “we fear that we could not competently minister to such monsters as you would have us go among. We wish to be excused from our preaching mission.”

  “Would you now?” My uncle coughed and hawked and spat. “You wish to desert before we are even underway? Well, wish all you like. We have committed ourselves, and so have you.”

  Brother Guglielmo said frostily, “Perhaps Fra Nico did not put it strongly enough. We are not asking your permission, Messeri, we are telling you our decision. The conversion of such raw savages would require more—more authority than we possess. And the Scriptures say: Turn away thy foot from evil. He that touches pitch shall be defiled with it. We decline to accompany you any farther.”

  “You could not have supposed that this would be an easy or enjoyable mission,” said my father. “As the old saying has it, nobody goes to Heaven on a cushion.”

  “A cushion? Fichèvelo!” boomed my uncle, thereby suggesting a unique use for a cushion. “We have paid good money to buy horses for these two manfroditi!”

  “Calling us filthy names is not likely to persuade us,” said Brother Nicolò with hauteur. “In the manner of the Apostle Paolo, we do shun profane and vain babblings. The ship which brought us here is now preparing to sail on to Cyprus, and we will be aboard.”

  My uncle would have blustered on, probably using still more words that sacerdoti seldom get to hear, but my father gestured him to silence, saying:

  “We wanted emissaries of the Church to prove to Kubilai Khan the worth and superiority of Christianity over other religions. These sheep in priestly clothing would hardly be the best examples to show him. Go to your ship, Brothers, and God go with you.”

  “And God and you go quickly!” snarled my uncle. When they had gathered up their belongings and left the chambers, he grumbled, “Those two merely seized upon our venture as an excuse to get away from the wicked women of Acre. Now they welcome this ugly incident here as an excuse to get away from us. We were bidden to bring a hundred priests, and we got two spineless old zitelle. Now we do not even have them.”