“The more learned in Europe know now that he doesn’t exist. If he’s not made up out of whole cloth, he was a minor king in Africa, and a Coptic Christian. But the most learned—a handful of geographers at the universities of Islam and Christendom—know of a real wonder hardly less than this imaginary one. They found it out from the journal of old Johannes Carpini.”
“Is it a secret?” I asked. “If it’s not, I entreat you to tell me.”
“The greatest secrets in the world are open to those who’ll listen and believe. I think your own mother could have told you this one, if Friar Johannes was indeed her uncle. There was a real king, Kuyuk Khan, greater and richer than legend makes Prester John. He was followed by Mangu Khan, and now by Kublai Khan. Kublai has no magic mirror and no giant crosses precede him into battle, but fully a thousand kings, great and small, pay tribute to his throne. His treasures are beyond counting. His empire is many times larger than that of Rome in all her glory. His subjects number Allah alone knows how many hundred million. He’s greater than all the kings in Europe rolled together—and yet no European has ever seen his face.”
“It may be my father will see him.” And my neck prickled fiercely.
“It could well be. And for that glory, he may be blinded, or be killed, or bring home such riches that the very Doge would seem a beggar in comparison.”
“How far is Bukhara from the kingdom of Kublai Khan?”
“It’s within his kingdom, yet perhaps three thousand miles from his capital.”
“If my father doesn’t go there in five years, I’ll get there first.”
Mustapha Sheik beckoned me to him, put his hand on my forehead, and looked deeply into my eyes.
“Do you love your father?” he asked quietly.
“No, I hate him.”
“Because he abandoned you?”
“I don’t care about that. But it is well to know how he made my mother cry.”
“If his goal is the Court of Kublai Khan—and it may be, if he talked to the old friar—you can never catch up with him now. It would be five years or so before you could even start.”
“I’ll catch up with him, before I’m through, and go beyond him.”
“For the reason you just gave?”
“There’s another reason, if I could just remember what it was. It was something Mama told me the night before she died.” Suddenly the ache over my eyes almost burst my forehead. “It had something to do with two fires——”
The pain dimmed and the intense strain in Mustapha’s face slowly faded away.
“Five years,” he said quietly. “They are very few compared with mine, and you mustn’t grow impatient. If Nicolo Polo becomes the first Venetian to prostrate himself before Kublai Khan, his son Marco may be the first to stand at Kublai’s side.”
3
On my next visit, Mustapha Sheik showed me a curious object for measuring the height of a heavenly body above the horizon. It was called an astrolabe and was of ancient invention, although its use had been largely forgotten in Europe.
“From the roof tops of Medina the stars are most beautiful and bright,” he told me in explaining his possession of the instrument. “I longed to know them better, and to know their orbits and their influence on human affairs. To this end I studied what we call al jabr, a branch of mathematics wherein symbols such as x and y substitute for quantities, and the chords of circles as expounded by my great countryman, al-Battani. With the help of such sciences, and the simple device that you see, used in connection with the Toledo tables prepared by Arabian scholars, I could compute almost the exact place in the heavens that any wandering star would occupy at any given moment of the year.”
Since I had never heard of these sciences, his meaning was over my head, but it was as though I jumped like a dog and snatched it like a bone. There was something in his voice and presence that made me listen not just with my ears, but with my whole body.
“Then a great fact dawned on me,” Mustapha went on. “Men know the heavens better than they know the earth. So I turned to the science of geography, for which my groundwork in astronomy had prepared me. But for any larger grasp of the subject, I must know the discoveries of great travelers, living and dead. And they have been my study for many years.”
“Could I study them too?” I burst out. “Then when the time comes——”
“When the time comes! What would we do without that promise, that hope? Come just after sunrise, when I have prayed, every day for seven days. Then we will see.”
After that week of testing, he told me to come when I pleased and stay away when I pleased. I was not to forsake my companions or to skimp my sport, or to neglect the bright school of the quays and canals for the sake of his dim chambers. The upshot of it was that I came almost every day. The only reason that I knew was that I could not stay away. Usually I stayed four or five hours, and every minute of it was like following an unknown path through a breathlessly silent woods.
“Salem alicum (Peace be between us), my son Marco,” the old man greeted me on a summer day of our second year’s friendship.
“Alicum salem (There be peace between us), Mustapha Sheik!” I replied with punctilio.
The salutations were heard every day on the Lido, but not so some other expressions as we conversed. The truth was, we were talking in simplified Arabic. It seemed that I had picked it up from him almost unawares, as I might catch lice from a street mate; actually, as I now perceived, he had slipped it on my tongue like a lozenge. Now he served me a sticky sweet, most pleasing to the palate, golden dates stuffed with bitter almonds, and a sherbet of some sort, highly spiced and filling the room with sweet scent.
“What news of the Rialto?” he asked, when I had eaten my fill and more.
“A Genoese spy was found in a closet, eavesdropping on the Council, and beheaded in the Piazzetta,” I reported. “Two triremes of Luciano Veniero arrived last night, one from Jaffa, laden with gums and spices, and the other from Tarsus with a cargo of fair-haired slaves.”
“Ah, that reminds me,” Mustapha Sheik broke in. “I know you did not fail to notice the red-sailed merchantman with the high castle. What did you make of her?”
“Doubtless she was from England, laden with Cornish tin. One of her blond boatmen cried out on San Giorgio the patron saint of his nation, and I saw Sebastian Cussi, who buys tin for the Arsenal, making toward her in his pigeon-breasted gondola.”
“Truly her master used tin for ballast, but he also brought raw wool, salt meat, and timber. And what, think you, will he take in trade?”
“Why, if he’s wise, he’ll take weapons, and iron to make ’em—swords, spears, pikes, and halberts—and shields and armor. For his nation’s divided against itself, and King Henry fights his own lords.”
“The Jews tell me that peace will come before summer’s end, and they’re better prophets than the astrologers. I think the ship had best take glass to repair what’s broken, and wine to pledge new friendships, and finery for the newly rich.”
I would soon not be hearing such things from his lips, I was thinking. Mustapha’s lowered eyebrows formed a white bar as he peered at me.
“Has your uncle said any more about bonding you to the iron-master?” he asked.
“He’s made up his mind to it, the day after my fourteenth birthday. He didn’t tell me so, but my cousin Leo wouldn’t miss the chance.”
“Then he must be convinced, at last, that Nicolo will either never return or will come back a beggar. Marco, what we need is time——”
We had talked thus before. What made this conversation memorable was its interruption by a shout from the canal. We went to the door to find Pietro, a gondolier of my good acquaintance, stopping at our wharf with a fine swirl.