I needed a hundred and fifty more. The merchants told me they would allow that much on my Nubian slave girl, one of whom would put her in his harem.
“What price would you set on my red mare?”
There fell a sharp silence and at least one of the appraisers, a horse-trading Marwari from the Indian city of Bikaner, looked embarrassed. That question seemed to bring home to several listeners how low I had fallen.
“Why, I’d pay the same sum out of hand,” the horse dealer said. “But Christian, a man who calls himself a merchant can’t walk in the dust!”
“I think he can, if he must. Before, when I sold a slave girl to buy transport, I came on ill fortune.”
“By Saint Thomas and Saint Theodore,” a Nestorian jeweler broke in, “it may be you needn’t part with either.”
“I don’t read your riddle,” I answered.
“Those horns there. Unless I’m mistaken they’re off the great wild ram of the Pamir, and the largest I’ve ever seen. I’m a collector of curios of varied sort and sometimes I indulge myself in the way of cost. Suppose I offered you a hundred dinars. Couldn’t you scratch up the extra fifty you need from some of your other gear?”
“No, sir, I don’t think I can.” In truth I had fifty dinars left in my purse, but these must be hoarded against my turning beggar on the road.
“Mark you, there’s no ready market for trophies of the chase. That pair of horns could gather dust in my kiffir for twenty years without an offer of twenty dinars to take them off my hands. But I’ve taken a fancy to them—you’ve had your full share of trouble—and by God, I’ll give you the hundred and fifty you need to get you clear.”
He looked at his other listeners, not at me, giving the effect of waiting their comments on a deal already closed. Actually his ear was pricked up for my reply.
Instead of making any, I looked back and far and high to a scene of the great Pamir. I stood on a narrow ledge on the naked rock with what must be a pearly heaven, so pure as it was, gleaming above me, and Gehenna yawning below. The great ram had fled from me to his retreat, but now he returned to do battle. He wore his great horns as proudly as Kublai Khan wore the crown of Tatary. As the clean-loosed arrow plunged deep in his breast, he rose to his full height and brandished them in the air. Then he fell and looked at me awhile with lifted head, which at last sank down.
His name was Iskander, the Persian form of Alexander, whose power and glory rivaled that of Kublai Khan.
“I thank you kindly,” I heard myself saying, “but I’ll sell the nag.”
The jeweler spat on the ground and walked away. The horse trader went to look at his new mare and the crowd lost interest in me. I thought that the last stripe had been laid on.
Only a moment later a stir passed through the two rows of squatting magicians. Suddenly their master stood up and held his staff aloft.
“Hear ye all!” he yelled. “Tonight we’ve seen an alien in our land deal fairly before our gods even though his own kinsman might take harm therefrom. He’s known as Nicolo Emir, and an ambassador to our Khan. Since he did not protest the judgment, already too light, we present him the suit of dragon skins that our gods have returned to us, so that he too may walk safely through fire.”
I felt in the middle of an evil dream. This was an unbelievable thing, yet I found myself accepting it without surprise, almost without anger at the gods, and with only a further withering of my spirit in the bleak cold that is the climate of such dreams. Surely the magicians would not risk their fire-walking secret by giving the mineral garments to an alien—yet I saw their master humbly lay them at Nicolo’s feet. . . . A servant carried them to his quarters. He handed another servant two pieces of torn fabric that had once counted so much; and he and Maffeo exchanged smiles as the man brought them to me.
Don’t let him have it, Marco my son, or I can’t rest in my grave.
There came a remembered pain across my brows, but it soon passed. The seized camels were being laden with the confiscated goods; presently some yellow-robed youths whom I had not noticed before, probably neophytes in the monastery, led them out the gate. As the magicians rose to leave, they looked like a band of ragamuffins instead of great necromancers, mystic priests of the Swasti. They were behaving with circumspection, the watching merchants thought. . . .
Then our attention was drawn to the smoky murk overhanging the fires. Countless small black forms had come out of the dark and darted back and forth uttering mouselike squeaks. Thousands flew in frantic circles narrowly missing our heads, or skimmed low over the fires, or cut elaborate figures as in a dance of fiends. Their squeaking became an ear-piercing agony and their rank smell turned our stomachs and their numbers sickened our minds.
It was only a vast swarm of bats. Since they did not weigh ten to a pound, hundreds of them could cling under one loose robe. But perhaps some strange accident caused them to be abroad in this unseasonable weather. Presently they vanished and their horrid outcry grew dim and died away.
When again we lowered our sick gaze, the magicians had gone.
CHAPTER 9
THE FALLEN GOD
The caravan of my once belonging lingered at the scene of my overthrow for fourteen infinite days.
When it finally formed for the march southeast to Kanchow, I had abandoned any notion of false boldness, and had set my will against flight, whether of body, mind, or spirit. So I took a place behind the merchants, in front of the baggage camels where the head dragoman was wont to ride his pony. The rest of my arrangements were as simple and cheap as I could make them. Sheba and I together had loaded our single camel and she would take charge of him on the road, an easy task for a desert girl like her. I expected to buy our food at the road stalls and eat with the cameleers. Thus I hoped to escape all the drover, baggage wallah, and servant hire—provided, of course, Nicolo permitted the arrangement.
As to this outcome, I was in grave doubt. The terms of my membership in the company specified that I travel in good style for face’s sake, a condition that had gone by the boards. He had once refused to let me accompany the caravan in a lowly capacity and his memory, like mine, was long. While waiting in aching hope to hear the trumpet, I was bleakly ready to have him send word for me to take my camel, my female slave, and myself out of the line.
He did not. Slowly we went our way out of the gate of the caravanserai, down narrow crooked streets, through the great portal in the Wall. By now my joyful wonder was being slaked by hindsighted acumen; I could tell why I had been spared as convincingly as a Paduan lawyer. Nicolo did not want to be seen kicking a man when he was down—especially a fellow Venetian and an acknowledged kinsman. But it would not be like Nicolo to go further than this—and the fact fetched up short the vaunting that so often follows a lucky event. He would not treat me better because some knaves and fools whispered that I was his son; instead it would cause him to treat me worse. Nicolo would play the gentleman in his fellow merchants’ sight only at his own convenience and whim. Too well he knew the gains from his fame for ruthlessness.
No doubt he wanted Sheba to continue in Miranda’s attendance. The road stayed lonely and the land harsh; and his prize would be happier, eating and sleeping better, and hence in better fettle when he brought her to the Court of Kublai Khan. This factor would remain in my favor all the way to Peking, but it carried no great weight. And to curry not his favor but his neglect, I had taken one step that instinct told me was on the right track. I had begun it the day following my fall, a fortnight before this departure.
The less I looked like Nicolo, the better he could stand the sight of me. He wore a fine mustache, with shaven jaws and chin. I too had grown a mustache, perhaps to irritate him, and on account of some dim perception of distant events, I did not want to shave it off; but I had started to grow a small, shapely beard. By now it had altered the aspect of my countenance and made me look older. I stopped dressing my hair in the Venetian fashion favored by Nicolo, and my wearing plainer clothes differentiated us still more.