It was the middle of the night when Captain Toba returned, in company with the leading columns of the authentic Mongol army, but I was still awake at that hour and glad to see them. Some of the blood with which I was caked was my own, and some of it was still flowing, for I had not emerged entirely undamaged from my private contest with the Yi. That warrior had given me some cuts on the hands and forearms, which I had hardly noticed at the time, but by now were quite painful. The first thing the army troops did was to erect a small yurtu for a hospital tent, and Bayan made sure that I was the first casualty attended by the shaman physician-priest-sorcerers.
They cleaned my cuts and anointed them with vegetable salves and bandaged them, which would have sufficed me. But then they had to engage in some sorcery to divine whether I might have sustained internal injuries not visible. The chief shaman set upright before me a knotted bunch of dried herbs that he called the chutgur, or “demon of fevers,” and read aloud to it from a book of incantations, while all the lesser physicians made an infernal noise with little bells and drums and sheep’shorn trumpets. Then the head shaman tossed a sheep’s shoulder bone onto the brazier burning in the middle of the tent and, when it had charred black, raked it out and peered at it to read the cracks the heat had produced. He finally adjudged me to be internally intact, which I could have told him with a lot less fuss, and let me leave the hospital. The next casualty brought in was the Wang Ukuruji, to be sewn back together and made presentable for his funeral the next day.
Outside the yurtu, the darkness of the night had been considerably abolished by the light of many tremendous camp fires. Around them, the troops were doing their stamping, leaping, pounding victory dances, and yelling “Ha!” and “Hui!” and liberally sloshing all onlookers with arkhi and kumis from the cups they held while they danced. They were all rapidly getting quite drunk.
I found Bayan and a couple of the just-arrived sardars, still fairly sober, waiting to present me with a gift. On the army’s march south from Ba-Tang, they told me, its advance scouts had routinely swept every town and village and isolated building, to rout out any suspicious persons who might be Yi soldiers passing as civilians to get behind the Mongol lines as spies or agents of random destruction. And, in a run-down karwansarai on a back road, they had found a man who could not give a satisfactory account of himself. They produced him for me, with the air of giving me a great prize, but he looked no such thing. He was just another dirty, smelly Bho trapa with his head shaven and his face clotted with that medicinal brown plant-sap.
“No, a Bho he is not,” said one of the sardars. “A question was put to him which contained the name of the city Yun-nan-fu, in such a way that he had to repeat the name in his reply. And he said fu, not Yun-nan-pu. Further, he claims his own name to be Gom-bo, but he was carrying in his loincloth this signature yin.”
The sardar handed the stone seal to me, and I duly examined it, but it could equally well have said Gom-bo or Marco Polo, as far as I could tell. I asked what it did say.
“Pao,” said the sardar. “Pao Nei-ho.”
“Ah, the Minister of Lesser Races.” Now that I knew who he was, I could recognize him despite the disguise. “I remember once before, Minister Pao, you had trouble speaking out plain and clear.”
He only shrugged and did not speak at all.
I said to the sardar, “The Khan Kubilai commanded that, if this man was found, I was to slay him. Will you have someone see to that for me? I have already done enough killing for one day. I will keep this yin to show to the Khakhan as evidence that his order was obeyed.” The sardar saluted, and began to lead the prisoner away. “One moment,” I said, and again addressed Pao. “Speaking of speaking—did you ever have occasion to whisper the words, ‘Expect me when you least expect me’?”
He denied it, as he probably would have done in any case, but his expression of genuine surprise and bafflement convinced me that he had not been the whisperer in the Echo Pavilion. Very well, one after another, I was diminishing my list of suspects: the servant girl Buyantu, now this Minister Pao … .
But the next day I found that Pao was still alive. The whole bok woke late, and most of its people with aching heads, but all of them immediately set to preparing for Ukuruji’s sepulture. Only the shamàns seemed to be taking no part in the preparations, now that they had readied the funeral’s centerpiece. They sat apart, in a group, with the condemned Minister Pao among them, and they appeared to be solicitously feeding him his breakfast meal. I went in search of the Orlok Bayan, and asked in annoyance why Pao had not been slain.
“He is being slain,” said Bayan. “And in a particularly nasty way. He will be dead by the time the tomb is dug.”
Still somewhat testily, I inquired, “What is so nasty about letting him eat himself to death?”
“The shamans are not feeding him, Polo. They are spooning quicksilver into him.”
“Quicksilver?”
“It kills with cruelly agonizing cramps, but it is also a most efficacious embalming agent. When he is dead, he will keep. And he will retain the color and freshness of life. Go look at the Wang’s corpse, which the shamans also filled with quicksilver. Ukuruji looks as healthy and rosy as any bouncing babe, and will look so throughout eternity.”
“If you say so, Orlok. But why accord the same funerary rites to the treacherous Pao?”
“A Wang must go to his grave attended by servants for the afterlife. We will also be killing and entombing with him all the Yi who emerged from the disaster yesterday—and a couple of Bho women survivors, too, for his afterlife enjoyment. They may get handsomer in the afterlife; one never knows. But we are giving special attention to Pao. What better servant could Ukuruji take into death than a former Minister of the Khanate?”
When the shamans adjudged the hour to be auspicious, the troops did a lot of marching about the catafalque on which Ukuruji lay, some afoot and others on horseback, with commendable dash and precision, and with much martial music and doleful chanting, and the shamans lit many fires making colored smokes, and wailed their foolish incantations. Those performances were all recognizably funerary of aspect, but some other details of the ceremony had to be explained to me. The troops had dug for Ukuruji a cave in the ground, right at the edge of the avalanche rubble. Bayan told me the position was chosen so it would be unnoticeable to any potential grave robbers.
“We will eventually erect a properly grandiose monument over it. But while we are still occupied with the war, some Yi might sneak back into this valley. If they cannot find the Wang’s resting place, they cannot loot his belongings or mutilate his corpse or desecrate the tomb by making water and excrement in it.”
Ukuruji’s body was reverentially laid in the grave, and about it were laid the fresher cadavers of the newly slaughtered Yi prisoners and the two unfortunate Bho females, and close beside Ukuruji was laid the body of the Minister of Lesser Races. Pao had so contorted himself in his death agonies that the proceedings had to be briefly delayed while the shamans broke numerous of his bones to straighten him out decently. Then the burial detail of troops set up a wooden rack between the bodies and the cave entrance, and began to affix to it some bows and arrows. Bayan explained that for me:
“It is an invention of Kubilai’s Court Goldsmith Boucher. We military men do not always scorn inventors. Regard—the arrows are strung so they aim at the entrance, and the bows are hard bent, and that rack holds them so, but on a sensitive arrangement of levers. If grave robbers ever should find the place and dig into it, their opening the tomb will trip those levers, and they will be met by a killing barrage of arrows.”
The gravediggers closed the entrance with earth and rocks so deliberately untidy that the tomb was indistinguishable from the nearby rubble, at which I inquired:
“If you take such pains to make the tomb undiscoverable, how will you find it when the time comes to build the monument?”
Bayan merely glanced to one side, and I looked over there. Some troopers had broug
ht one of their herd mares on a lead rein, closely accompanied by her nursling foal. Some of the men held to the lead rein while the others dragged the little infant horse away from its mother and over to the grave site. The mare began to plunge and whinny and rear, and did so even more frantically when the men holding the foal raised a battle-ax and brained it. The mare was led kicking and neighing away, while the buriers scraped earth over the new body, and Bayan said:
“There. When we come this way again, even if it is two or three or five years hence, we have only to let the same mare loose and she will lead us to this spot.” He paused, and champed his great teeth thoughtfully, and said, “Now, Polo, although you deserve much credit for the victory here, you did it so thoroughly that there is no plunder for you to share in, and I think that deplorable. However, if you care to continue riding with us, we shall next assail the city of Yun-nan-fu, and I promise that you will be among the high officers who are let to take first choice of the loot. Yun-nan-fu is a large city, and respectably rich, I am told, and the Yi women are not at all repulsive. What say you?”
“It is a generous offer, Orlok, and a tempting one, and I am honored by your kind regard. But I think I had best resist the temptation, and hurry back to tell the Khakhan all the news, good and bad, of what has occurred here. By your leave, I shall depart tomorrow, when you march on southward.”
“I thought as much. I took you to be a dutiful man. So I have already dictated to a yeoman scribe a letter for you to carry to Kubilai. It is properly sealed for his eyes only, but I make no secret of its highly praising you and suggesting that you deserve more praise than only mine. I will go now to detach two advance riders to leave immediately and start making ready your route for you. And when you depart tomorrow, I will provide two escorts and the best horses.”
So that was all I got to see of Yun-nan, and that was my only experience of war on land, and I took no plunder, and I had no chance to form any opinion of the Yi women. But those who had observed my brief military career—the survivors of it, anyway—seemed to agree that I had acquitted myself well. And I had ridden with the Mongol Horde, which was something to tell my grandchildren, if I ever had any. So I turned again for Khanbalik, feeling quite the seasoned old campaigner.
XAN-DU
1
IT was again a long ride, and again my escorts and I rode hard. But, when we were yet some two hundred li southwest of Khanbalik, we found our advance riders waiting at a crossroads to intercept us. They had already been to Khanbalik, and had ridden back along the route to inform us that the Khan Kubilai was not presently in residence there. He was out enjoying the hunting season, meaning that he was staying at his country palace of Xan-du, to which the riders would lead us instead. Waiting with them was another man, and he was so richly attired, in Arab-style garments, that at first I mistook him for some gray-bearded Muslim courtier unknown to me. He waited for the riders to give me their message, and then addressed me exuberantly:
“Former Master Marco! It is I!”
“Nostril!” I exclaimed, surprised that I was glad to see him. “I mean Ali Babar. It is good to see you! But what do you out here, so far from city comforts?”
“I came to meet you, former master. When these men brought word of your imminent return, I joined them. I have been given a missive to deliver to you, and it seemed a good excuse to take a holiday from toil and care. Also, I thought you might have some use for the services of your former slave.”
“That was thoughtful of you. But come, we will make holiday together.”
The Mongols led the way, the two advance riders and my two escorts, and Ali and I rode side by side behind them. We turned more northerly than we had been traveling, because Xan-du is up in the Da-ma-qing Mountains, a considerable distance directly north of Khanbalik. Ali groped about under his embroidered aba and brought out a paper, folded and sealed, with my name written on the outside in Roman letters and also in the Arabic and Mongol letters and in the Han character.
“Someone wanted to make sure I got it,” I muttered. “From whom did it come?”
“I know not, former master.”
“We are equally freemen now, Ali. You may call me Marco.”
“As you will, Marco. The lady who gave me that paper was heavily veiled, and she accosted me in private and in the nighttime. Since she spoke no word, neither did I, taking her probably to be—ahem—some secret friend of yours, and maybe the wife of some other. I am far more discreet and less inquisitive than perhaps I used to be.”
“You have the same perfervid imagination, however. I was conducting no such intrigue at court. But thank you, anyway.” I tucked the paper away to read that night. “But now, what of you, old companion? How fine you do look!”
“Yes,” he said, preening. “My good wife Mar-Janah insists that I dress and comport myself now like the affluent proprietor and employer I have become.”
“Indeed? Proprietor of what? Employer of whom?”
“Do you remember, Marco, the city called Kashan in Persia?”
“Ah, yes. The city of beautiful boys. But surely Mar-Janah has not let you open a male brothel!”
He sighed and looked pained. “Kashan is also famous for its distinctive kashi tiles, you may recall.”
“I do. I remember that my father took an interest in the process of their manufacture.”
“Just so. He thought there might be a market here in Kithai for such a product. And he was right. He and your Uncle Mafio put up the capital for the establishment of a workshop, and helped teach the art of kashi-making to a number of artificers, and put the whole enterprise in the charge of Mar-Janah and myself. She designs the patterns for the kashi and supervises the workshop, and I do the peddling of the product. We have done very well, if I may say so. The kashi tiles are much in demand as an adornment for rich men’s houses. Even after paying the share of the profits owed to your father and uncle, Mar-Janah and I have become eminently affluent. We are all still learning our trade—she and I and our artificers—but earning while we do so. Prospering to such an extent that I could well afford to take some time off to do this bit of journeying with you.”
He chattered on for the rest of the day, telling me every last detail of the business of making and selling tiles—not all of which I found compellingly interesting—and occasionally imparting other news of Khanbalik. He and the beautiful Mar-Janah were blissfully happy. He had not seen my father in some time, the elder Polo being also out traveling on some mercantile venture, but he had glimpsed my uncle about the city, now and then of late. The beautiful Mar-Janah was more beautiful than ever. The Wali Achmad was holding the Vice-Regency and the reins of government in the Khan’s absence. The beautiful Mar-Janah was still as loving of Ali Babar as he of her. Many courtiers had accompanied Kubilai to Xan-du for the autumn hunting, including several of my acquaintances: the Wang Chingkim, the Firemaster Shi and the Goldsmith Boucher. The beautiful Mar-Janah agreed with Ali that the time they had so far spent in wedlock had been, though coming late in life, the best time of both their lives, and worth having waited all their lives to attain … .
We put up that night at a comfortable Han karwansarai in the shadow of the Great Wall, and when I had bathed and dined, I sat down in my room to open the missive Ali had brought me. It did not take me long to read it—though I had to spell it out letter by letter, being still not very accomplished at the Mongol alphabet—for it consisted of only a single line, translating as: “Expect me when you least expect me.” The words had lost none of their chill, but I was getting rather more weary of their refrain than apprehensive of their threat. I went to Ali’s room and demanded:
“The woman who gave you this for me. Surely you would have recognized her, even veiled, if she had been the Lady Chao Ku-an … .”
“Yes, and she was not. Which reminds me: the Lady Chao is dead. I only heard of it myself a day or two ago, from a courier riding the horse-post route. It happened since I left Khanbalik. An unfortunate accident. Accord
ing to the courier, it is believed that the lady must have been chasing from her chambers some lover who had displeased her, and in running after him—you know she had the lotus feet—she tripped on the staircase and fell headlong.”
“I regret to hear it,” I said, though I really did not. One more off my list of suspect whisperers. “But about the letter, Ali. Was the lady who brought it perhaps a very large lady?” I was remembering the extraordinary female I had briefly seen in the chambers of the Vice-Regent Achmad.
Ali thought about it, and said, “She may have been taller than I am, but most people are. No, I would not say she was notably large.”
“You said she did not speak. It suggests that you would have known her by her voice, does it not?”
He shrugged. “How do I answer that? Since she did not, I did not. Does the letter contain bad news, Marco, or some other cause for despondency?”
“I could better decide that if I knew where it came from.”
“All I can tell you is that your advance riders arrived in the city on a day some days ago, heralding your imminent return, and—”
“Wait. Did they announce anything else?”
“Not really. When people asked how went the war in Yun-nan, the two would say nothing—except that you were bringing the official word —but their swaggering implied that the word would be of some Mongol victory. Anyway, it was in the night of that day that the veiled lady came to me with that missive for you. So, with Mar-Janah’s blessing, when the two men left again the next morning to ride back to you, I rode with them.”
The Journeyer Page 84
