He put his hands on my shoulders and kissed me between the eyes. Then a door closed behind him.
“Then, Miranda, it’s time I said good-by.”
“Full time,” she answered.
“Why did you tell Paulos Angelos that he could sell you for twice the price I asked for you? Otherwise he wouldn’t have bought you.”
“You’ve no right to ask me, but I’ll answer. I wanted him to buy me.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to be chosen.”
“I don’t understand that.”
“Why should you?”
“For him to choose you as a slave to sell, or some buyer to choose you to keep?”
“Both of them.”
“Did you tell him the truth?”
“That’s not your lookout, but I’ll answer that, too. I told him the truth. Someone will pay that for me, and I’ll be worth it. He shall have my body and the joys of it and they will be greater joys than you can yet imagine. If I can give it to him, he shall have my love.”
“You knew I loved you.”
“Yes, but you didn’t choose me.”
“Do you know that I’ll love you greatly and forever?”
“You told me so, and I believe you, and my heart tells me so.”
“I want you to be happy.”
“Since I’ve fallen so low, it will take very little to make me happy. Anyway, I’ll strive for happiness.”
“Will I be happy? I bid you prophesy.”
“No. If you’d chosen me, you would be happy, but at what price?”
“Won’t even being a king in Cathay make me happy?”
Miranda laughed softly. “You can never find happiness now. You sold it for what you thought was a just price. It comes to me that every human being has one fair chance to buy it, one fair chance to sell it, and neither will ever come again. But Marco, you are doomed to wander over the face of the earth in this life and perhaps in the life to come.”
“Will you love me all that time?”
“You’ve no right to ask, but I’ll answer just the same. Yes, I’ll love you always. Now I’m done with prophesying, and my heart aches.”
“Tell me one more thing. Will I ever see you again?”
“We’ll see each other in dreams.”
At that instant Dasa, Mustapha’s servant, clapped his hands once, then drew aside the curtain.
“Young master, there is a marriage in the city, the bridegroom being a cousin of Arturo the gondolier, and he has left his post.”
“No matter. I’ll row the gondola myself, and leave it at the quay where hung Our Lady of Salvation.”
Dasa bowed and withdrew.
“You sang so beautifully,” I said to Miranda. “Will I ever hear your voice?”
“I’ll sing to you in your dreams.”
I looked at her, and this was the rendezvous I had with sorrow and loneliness. In its crying to her, my heart forgot to be proud.
“Have I lost the right to kiss you good-by?”
“Yes, but I’ll kiss you good-by.”
She came and put her arms around my neck and her lovely mouth against mine. I felt her whispering:
“When you lie cold and lonely, call me, and I’ll come.”
Doors closed behind me. I unfastened a rope from an iron ring. I mounted to the platform in the stern and dipped the long oar.
I could have headed straight into the lagoon but instead I rowed past our little quay. Then out on the balcony came my beloved, her eyes glimmering with tears, her lute in her white hands. The sunlight glistened on her flaxen hair.
She sang to me of a little maid of Devon and her lost lover. I stroked in time with the music, long, strong strokes, and the boat bore me swiftly on my way. When I was too far for notes to carry, I still saw her, her hand raised in identification and salute. And the music seemed to linger in the little cabin, as though I were taking it with me across the world, to be my companion always.
BOOK TWO
CHAPTER 1
TOWARD THE RISING SUN
Nicolo Polo, Maffeo Polo, and I, Marco Polo, traveled eastward.
We rode a well-armed merchantman down the Adriatic Sea, across the Ionian Sea, out along the Mediterranean Sea past Crete, past Cypress, at last to Acre, the great Christian stronghold that Richard the Lion-Hearted had conquered from the Infidel on the Lebanon coast. Other merchants took passage on the same ship, some servants followed Nicolo until he should replace them and send them back, yet the stars looking down knew we were alone. Our navigator estimated the distance at two thousand miles, which might be thrice the wild-goose flight from Venice to London.
From in and about Acre to the great port of Aegae two hundred and fifty miles up the Syrian coast, we three had company. The new Pope had not been able or else had not seen fit to appoint one hundred wise churchmen to carry Christian beatitudes to the Cathayan multitudes, but he had sent two, Nicolo and Guglielmo, worthy friars both. But at Aegae, at the mouth of the caravan road whose gut led to India, there came word of Tatar raids athwart our path. His Holiness had chosen the two friars on account of their wisdom. This wisdom caused them to turn back. Nicolo, Maffeo, and I went on alone.
To my sorrow, we did not pass the great Capital of Trebizond, on the southeastern shore of the Black Sea. Its royal family were esteemed the most beautiful human beings in the world. All the kings of Christendom and the Sultans of Islam vied for their tall, fair-haired, black-eyed daughters. But the fly in the ointment was—or so we were assured—that the sons were born with short tails that their robes of sable and ermine could hardly conceal. Mustapha Sheik would have doubted the tale of tails, although he would not have denied it without proof. I needed no proof to know that if it were true, the regal tailbearers made no real effort to hide their odd distinction, and indeed took pride in it as Satan does in his cloven hoofs. Only common men fear departure from commonality. The uncommon spend their whole lives, by and large, proving their condition.
The caravan road eastward fetched us to the south of Trebizond, through Sivas and Erzinjan. The great lords of these noble cities paid tribute into the hands of short, swart, button-nosed collectors, and some of it at long last poured into the coffers of Kublai Khan, halfway across the world. Our caravan moved on, a little southward now, losing track of the marches we had made since our friars turned back—thirty or suchlike—and did not trouble to dream of the count ahead. We passed some thousands of loaded camels every day, their backs piled high with silks, satins, brocades, rugs, musk and spikenard and spices, swords and armor for everlasting wars, ebony and ivory, gold and silver, amethysts and amber and jade. Wild-eyed captives of all colors and tongues walked in chains, while slave girls rode in curtained litters. These last were mainly veiled, but sometimes the veils were lifted by quick sly hands or perhaps wind played the wanton, revealing the arresting beauty of fair-haired Circassians or the beautifully molded brunette faces of the daughters of Persia, or sometimes ivory-skinned, slant-eyed maidens whose nation I could not name.
Swinging a little southward, we crossed a mighty range of mountains, cold as the moon on a winter night, absolute cold, it seemed, where the last warmth in the last tree heart had died away, and the green waters of the rock-bound lakes looked frozen to their depths.[12] Here the snow drifted before the moaning wind, or was blown in eerie clouds, and except for that moaning and the hiss of the frozen snowflakes there was no sound. But we could bless the bitter weather, for only we and silent, lean gray wolves dared venture forth, while the wild Kurds, whose very name was Wolf in the Tatar tongue, almost as hairy and more cruel, must hang by their hidden fires instead of raiding our caravan. And out of those white passes we came down onto a wide brown plain, where the wind was bleak and biting but the winter sun gave forth a perceptible glow, and where grapes grew in summertime, and sweat ran off men’s faces as it did in the vineyards of Lucania.