“I never heard the like!”
“My lord, now Marco speaks of it, I do believe there is a blot of ink on Nicolo’s letter,” my aunt broke in. “I noticed it, thinking that his hand might be palsied. By your leave, I’ll fetch it.”
“Do so, wife, and let’s dispose of this hocus-pocus once and for all.”
My aunt’s hand shook a little as she handed him the parchment. There was a small blot on the left-hand side, as I had noticed and remembered on first reading. My uncle prided himself on being a Doubting Thomas, but he was patently shaken.
“No doubt a coincidence, but an odd ‘n, I do confess,” he remarked. “Now we’ll apply heat, as the sailor fellow said—go the whole hog, say I, in any venture—but if secret writing appears on the page, I’ll eat my surcoat. Amelia, bring flame to a candle.” This last was to a serving wench, whose eyes were bulging.
My uncle began passing the parchment over the flame as though toasting a herring. We could see how debonair he was—a man of the world who could relish a bit of nonsense—and he had a joke ready to crack as he turned up the heated side. Instead he well-nigh dropped the page.
“Great Beelzebub!” he burst out.
“What is it, my lord?” my aunt cried, and Amelia was crossing herself fast as if scratching fleas.
“There’s writing here, I tell you. It’s come out on the parchment like the handwriting on the wall. No doubt it’s the Devil’s work—it was fire, the Devil’s own element, that brought it out—but if holy priests can use it for their communings, so can our dear brother. Let me toast it a bit more.”
Meanwhile I did not grin even into my sleeve. Although Mustapha Sheik had explained the whole process, insisting it was no more magical than boiling an egg, still the sweat came out on me at sight of the writing, and chills ran down my spine. And now my uncle was able to read it, penned by Mustapha in a good imitation of my father’s hand. This he did between gasps, reading it in a quaking voice.
While it was a deal less sensational than I had wished—Mustapha Sheik had told me that credibility was the very soul of cunning—truly it caused great stir:
My dear sister Flora,
Be not saddened by the outward seeming. The truth is, I have prospered too greatly to dare risk the telling save in this secret way. Pray for my return, and expect the prayer to come true within four years. In the meanwhile, bid my son Marco, whom I have never seen, prepare himself for the place he must fill as my heir and successor.
May your saints protect you from all ill, and may you show yourself worthy by a pious life and by ceaseless love and obedience to your good husband.
Nicolo Polo
This last greasing had gone against my grain, but now I rejoiced at Mustapha’s wisdom. Of all largess, flattery was the cheapest and the most effectual, he said; and to scorn its employment in a good cause was a sign of either dim wits or of hidden shames. Also, the wise conqueror never took the last crust. One’s words to eat is not a dainty dish, and if my uncle gagged too painfully, he might make us trouble.
The trick succeeded so well that it scared me a little, lest it be used as balance against a later failure. My aunt moved me to a better room and my uncle bought me finer raiment. He would have engaged a good tutor for me if I had not proposed that I find my own at half the cost to him. The money went for books, some lessons of great use to a traveler, and a fine English bow such as had set Saracen teeth achatter in the Crusades. It was six and a half feet long, beautifully shaped of yew, and the weight to draw it into a full, beautiful, deep crescent was fifty pounds.
So I passed from primary school to college.
CHAPTER 2
THE YOUNG FATHER
Meanwhile I passed my fifteenth birthday and my sixty-eighth inch. I weighed one and a half quintal, as we weigh fish, and was shooting up and filling out to the dismay of my mother’s tirewoman, who let out my clothes, and to the consternation of my cousin Leo, who feared I would outspan him at this rate. Going on sixteen, I must soon present new evidence of my father’s prosperity, my uncle making many countings of the moneys he had spent on me. By now it would be an easy thing to go to sea. Any galley captain who saw me shoot a bow would gladly hire me as a castle guard, not so much for my hits as for the doleful misses of most archers, and because I was quick. But in all likelihood this would still be a fatal thing as far as my ambitions were concerned.
Late in the month of May, I was watching the unloading of a wondrous cargo from Alexandria. Besides the more common riches of the Orient—bales of carpet, bolts of cloth, chests of spices, and stacks of sandalwood—there were live peacocks for the gardens of great villas on the mainland, pet monkeys for children and harlots, snakes for apothecaries, and talking and singing birds. I hardly noticed a dirty bireme docking an arrow cast distant. A ship’s clerk told me it hailed from Acre with a cargo of dressed leather. When two gentlemen disembarked and walked by, I gave them my second-best attention, and intended to make it short.
Instead I began to regard them with growing curiosity. They boasted very little gold and no jewels at all and were dressed very plainly compared to the dizened roosters I most admired, although the cloth was black velvet of no mean price. Their faces were more tanned and weathered than those of most rich merchants, who lie in their cabins in rough weather and sit under pavilions in good. But these were faces to mark and remember long.
The older had a long nose, a square jaw, and wide, thin, straight lips, all suggesting severity. His hair and beard were a sandy red, and his eyes blue. The younger face was as handsome, in a manly way, as any I had ever seen. The eyes were large and brilliant, of hazel color I thought, the nose high-bridged as a Spanish duke’s and finely chiseled, the mouth at once strong and voluptuous. He wore no beard, only a fine brown mustache. With this quite noble countenance and high-held head went a large, fine body of impressive stature and native grace. It did not surprise me that the handful of ladies accompanying their lords or fathers in visiting the ships put on their prettiest airs, while the bawds and serving wenches gazed wistfully.
Behind the younger man walked a youth of about fourteen and a younger boy, both handsome and elegantly dressed. Since he looked far too young to be their father, I took it that they were sons of the older gentleman.
Although their differences were more conspicuous than their similarities, I could not doubt that the two men were brothers. Their eyes, though different in size and brilliance, were set exactly alike, and there was no gaiety in either pair. Instead there was a firmness or an imperiousness such as I had rarely seen.
Intent on their business, they did not return my glance, and soon disappeared in the crowd. I tried to pay them no more mind, only to yield at last to overweening curiosity. When a Dalmatian pikeman disembarked from the same ship and swaggered off toward a wine shop, I accosted him.
“Friend, will you tell me who were the two gentlemen in black velvet?” I asked. “I think I’ve seen them somewhere before.”
“Why, they’re Venetian merchants, brothers to each other, returning home after a long journey.”
“How long a journey? I’ve heard of some that lasted five years.” And I had not given my heart leave to beat so fast.
“I didn’t hear ’em say, but they’ve been to countries so far away you’ve never heard their names.”
Not long ago I would not have missed this chance to boast.
“I’ve heard of Armenia and Persia—and a city named Bukhara.”
“Why, they’re just a stone’s throw compared to where those gentlemen came from, and it’s called the Celestial Kingdom of Cathay. Their name is Crispi—Giovanni and Roderico Crispi—and if you ask ’em, they’ll give you a monkey without any tail.”