At our neighbor’s fondamento hung the gondola in which I had borne Miranda on a silver sea. On her little deck was a piece or two of hand baggage, and impatiently waiting to take me to the ship was Arturo, her regular gondolier, lent to me for the occasion. The window told me that the weather was favorable for sailing—somewhat bleak for this time of year, a gray sky lighted here and there by shrieking sea gulls, and a sharp wind out of the Carnic Alps, but that wind drove down the Adriatic in the way we wished to go; and with a little tacking we could clear the shoals of the Foci del Po before another sun.
“Many winds have made whitecaps on our sea since you brought me my medicine that day,” Mustapha said.
“It was a lucky day for me.”
“I wonder if it was. In my case, there can be no doubt. The potion I bade you bring was for my aching head, but you brought another for my old and lonely heart. I could not pay you for it, even with lore. And lore is a strange mistress. Once we start to enjoy her, we can’t get enough of her. When we cohabit with her, she insists on bearing children that are inclined to be unruly, and cause us trouble. If she hides away from us, we will search the world——”
“Master, it’s by no motive as noble as the seeking of knowledge that I’ll set sail,” I broke in with painful truth.
“That I know. But except for the knowledge I helped you gain, you would not set sail. And now the time has come to make you a parting gift. Look in the chest.”
I did so, and brought forth an astrolabe of a model and a perfection of workmanship I had never seen. Showing off a little for my master, I explained to Miranda the essentials of its use. Figuring the arch of the sky as one hundred and eighty degrees, I could measure with this instrument the altitude of the North Star. This rose or fell as we traveled north or south: thus we could determine our degree of longitude, and by measuring other stars we could get a rough idea of our degree of latitude.
“With this, you can never be quite lost,” Mustapha told me. “Although you may suspect that you’ve passed the outmost rim of the world, by making your calculations you will know that the distance between you and home is measurable in miles. With more nearly perfect instruments, which time will bring, you could discover the exact number. Perhaps that number known in some distant age will not be quite as terrifying as the rough estimate you will make before the year is out—provided you live and do not turn back. I have a strange feeling that the world is as large as Eratosthenes calculated.[11] And it’s a sphere hung and probably revolving in the midst of the heavens—make that the basis of all your orientation, or you will sink in a bog of error. But Marco my son, in all its unbelievable expanse, it is yet one world. The same sun causes sap to flow in Italy as in Cathay; the same moon sails the sky, the same stars burn in ineffable and eternal mystery. It cannot be but that the great seas interflow. The waves that rock your ship off the Spice Isles are made of water drops that have been blown in spray on the beach of Rimini. The rain that falls in your face might have come—and in the passing of the ages I believe it did come—from your own Lake Trasimeno.”
“It will be cold rain and lonely to hear,” Miranda said quietly after a long pause.
“I’m more afraid of the blown sand of the desert,” I said.
“Remember, it is all part of our world, the birthplace and dwelling place of man. What a strange habitation! Consider the brooks that meet and form streams, and the streams that join to make rivers, and the rivers winding in divine grace to their mother the sea. We know of the Danube, the Dnieper, the Don, the giant Volga, but is it true that beyond these is one that dwarfs them all? If so, there will be men like you venturing forth in boats or casting nets. They may vary from you slightly in form and face and color of skin, but they are men as sure as God exists, and I am sure of God because He made them. Take the far-flung steppes of Tatary, the wandering sands of the Kara Kum, and the wasteland of the Gobi that may be wider than Spain. Yet you will find them there, bravely battling the hell of heat or the deadly cold, watching their herds, building their tabernacles, hunting, fishing, daring, living. Is it true that north of India there are mountains snow-cloaked halfway down their sides under the burning sun? If so, you will find man’s tracks along with those of wild sheep, the wolf, and the bear. How can man live on the slopes of these colossi, beside craters belching fire, and in the track of avalanches, harried by winds that scream like lost souls in Hell and blow the snow in blinding, freezing clouds? Yet he does. He has found a way. He has acquired knowledge and cunning and craft whereby he can parry the cruel blows of nature.”
Mustapha paused to collect his thoughts. The beauty of his face was incomparable except with that of solemn seas or skies of stars. When he spoke again, his voice had the beauty of a great singing of all the people on some memorial day.
“Marco, it is well that we join hands with them. We have much to teach, so much more to learn. By common talk, by trade of good things, and by the fellowship of humanity itself, all the more thrilling because of our slight diversions from one another, men’s lives will be better, wars will cease, hate will die, scorn will be drowned in the sea, and God’s purpose—as far as I can see it with my weak eyes—will be fulfilled. And the first task is the opening of the roads. Not by men who go with noble aim, but by adventurers seeking gold or fame or just the burning, brimming cup of utmost life. It comes to me you are one of them. I had an inkling of it long ago and I dreamed of it in great joy. It is for that that I can bear to see you go.”
His throat worked, then he leaned back, spent. I rose and went to a cubby and brought forth a parting gift for Miranda. It was a lute, one as fine as she had played in the house of Simon ben Reuben. She gave me one great proud glance, then, without our asking, tuned the strings and began to play.
The room became brimful of lovely sound as with light from a magic lamp.
Beggarman O beggarman, out on the lea,
Did you pass a bold knight of high chivalry?
I gave him a kiss, I gave him a flower.
For he’s my true lover, Young Rob o’ the Tower.
I sat beside her, feeling as though the music came partly from me. Her hands were mine by some mysterious projection, their movements in harmony with the strange stirrings of my soul; her lips were mine by an old bond and they shaped the song as they had shaped a kiss she gave me. I was looking at her for the last time. That glance would hold a few minutes more, then, unless by some strange stroke of fate, I would never see her with waking eyes again. The word “desire” means “from a star,” and she had come to me as strangely as one star to another in the deeps of the sky. Her face and small, proud form were cast in beauty.
Of late, that beauty had increased. The change did not wholly derive from my own clearer sight; there had occurred a delicate transfiguration. Was its cause such a common thing as love?
I love you, Marion Redvers, daughter of a great house, who should be mistress of Castlebrook. I love you, blue-eyed waif.
I fear he’ll not wed you, fair maiden of Devon,
He died in the battle and rode on to Heaven;
And gifts that you gave him in sweet unbless’d hour
Will fetch you to Fire, not to Rob o’ the Tower.
The song, the melody, that particular shape of beauty, died away. And at that moment there rose Mustapha from his seat, tall, brown, his black eyes tear-wet, the skin drawn tight over his facial bones in augury of death.
“I’m going now to my gulphor, Marco my son, and I’ll bid you farewell.”