How many mortal eyes looked up, wide with wonder, over this vast earth! On how many populous lands undreamed of in our geography did the stars look down!
Mustapha Sheik was a disciple of Ptolemy, the great Alexandrian of eleven hundred years before, who in turn had developed the theories of Eratosthenes, the ancient Greek who had proved, to Mustapha’s satisfaction, that the world was a sphere twenty thousand miles in circumference.[7] Ptolemy’s great book almost forgotten in Europe and banned by the Church, had been translated into Arabic about the time of Harun al-Rashid; known as the Almagest, it ranked with the sacred Koran in the old man’s sight.
The way that ships went down and came up from the sea, and the shape of what must be the shadow of the world thrown sometimes on the moon, had convinced all thoughtful people that the world was spherical. Still, I was not able to grasp it—the idea of us humans walking about on the outside like a bee on a thrown ball even when the sphere was upside down addled my head. Although I had scoffed volubly at the vulgar view of the world’s being a disk, in the center of which lay the continent islands, surrounded by the Ocean Sea, truly it seemed the more reasonable of the two. Even so, I had come to realize a fact still barely glimpsed by many learned doctors of Padua—that the habitable world was many times as wide as exploration had shown.
Nicolo and Maffeo Polo’s journey had been up and down, around and about, yet they had dared estimate the crow-flight distance from Venice to Kublai Khan’s Court at six thousand miles. Great God, that was close to ten times the straight shoot to very England! To contemplate such a journey almost unjointed my backbone with ice-cold thrills.
My wild hopes and fears were interrupted by soft sounds in the anteroom to Mustapha’s chamber. Miranda had been wakened by the close warmth and was tiptoeing about, causing me to thrill with guilty excitement. Listening as sharply as a wolf and with wolfish wickedness, I perceived that she had gone to a narrow casement through which Mustapha often gazed to wonder and puzzle over that most constant of all the heavenly host, Polaris, the North Star.
Imagining her there, gazing toward England, redeemed me. My heart warmed, I made my stealthy way into the passage, where, by drawing a curtain, I had clear sight of her in the flooding moonlight. She was wearing a knee-length shift ghostly in the silver luminance. In all the windows of the moon’s gazing there was no other shape so lovely and so wistful. Of all the beautiful textures on which the bright beams fell, the silks and satins of night-frolicking lords and ladies, the plumage of birds, and the deep soft fur of sables in the cold forest, none was as beautiful as her flaxen hair.
I called her name softly, so as not to frighten her. She turned and looked at me and I had a sense almost of enchantment.
“Would you like to be steering by those stars on the northward course?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I’ve come too far and seen too much ever to go back.”
“Even in England can you find the North Star by the pointers in the Great Bear?”
“The Great Bear? Do you mean Charlemagne’s Wagon? We children used to call it the Big Dipper. Long ago.”
“It’s a clear and wonderful night, Miranda. Would you like to go boating?”
She hesitated, a faint and dreamy smile curling her lips.
“I would like to,” she answered at last, “and if it’s my fate, I will.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I’ll be like the Mussulmans from now on—the bravest of them. I’ll fight for what I want, but whether I win or lose, I’ll look my fate in the face.”
I had her put on a cloak over her bare arms and unstockinged legs in case we were seen by ramblers. Then we crept away to a light gondola belonging to a rich neighbor and free to our use. I at the long oar, she seated queenly in the cabin, we slid across the silver sheen of the lagoon.
If we were looking for privacy, it was everywhere. The curfew had rung long since, the watch kept to the alleys and the canals, and the ships slept at their anchor ropes like tethered camels on the desert. When I dropped my iron in five fathoms, we could expect a mermaid to come alongside sooner than a mortal and all sight of our boat was lost in shimmering moonlight. I came and sat beside my English girl.
“It was a short journey,” she remarked.
“That’s because you didn’t pull an oar.”
“It may save you from going on a much longer journey.”
“Is it your fate to say that?”
“I said it, so it must be. I wouldn’t think that Fate would bother about little things, but perhaps she must. I said it to be fair with you. The moonlight—and the silence—and you and I away from everyone might make you forget what’s best for you. Or what you think is best for you.”
“What do you think?”
“It would be best for you to take me and keep me.”
“How would I get to the Court of Kublai Khan?”
“We would get there somehow.”
“We? I can’t believe it. What’s the next best thing?”
“To take me, keep me a while, and then sell me for a dairymaid as I told you.”
“What’s the advantage of that? I couldn’t sell you for half what I need.”
“Perhaps your greatest need is for me. I feel in my bones that’s true. And if you sell me for a farm wench, you may be able to buy me back when you find out the truth. Maybe I’ll have had a stable-boy lover, or even the householder, but they won’t have hurt me any. If I disappear in a great house, you can never find me again. If you could, perhaps we would both be so ashamed——”
“I don’t understand you, Miranda.”
“Why should you, Marco?”
“Who ever heard of a slave calling her master by his Christian name?”
“You’ve made free with my lips and tongue. Mine can at least make free with your Christian name.”
“Why shouldn’t I understand you? Women are known to be of more shallow mind——”
She laughed loudly and heartily and had to wipe her eyes.
“Besides that,” I went on, “I’m not sure you’re not a downright liar”
“What lies have I told?”
“It was at least an evasion when you said your native island was somewhat larger than the Rialto.”
I could see no advantage, and perhaps some disadvantage, in thus prompting her to talk about her home and childhood, yet I could not resist doing so.
“It wasn’t as big an evasion as you think. My home was an island separated by a narrow strait from the English coast. It’s not as cold as most of England. It almost never snows there. Many birds stay all winter. The water is quite warm.”
“Are the people mostly fair—like you?”
“They were originally Jutes—a very blond people from what is now Denmark. But we’re all English now, even the dark Cornish.”
“In what kind of house did you live?”
“A small house—compared to my cousins’ by the brook. It’s a long way from here—and the years are long. The girl who lived there—the one you asked about—must have died and been buried at sea.”
“I take you in her stead—my slave girl Miranda. And since I took a great risk in obtaining you, it may be I’ll enjoy you as much as I can, short of marring your value.”
Except for a slight lowering of her head, she made no answer.
“I bid you lie across my lap, your breast against mine.”
The awkwardness of her arriving at the position, if it were not pretense, indicated that it was new to her. I remarked as much.
“It’s quite new, my lord,” she told me when she was settled.
“I would have thought the swains in England would have taught it to you.”