The air favorable to the flight of rumors lay close to the ground, heavy with human scent, so Nicolo and Maffeo, riding high at the head of the caravan, were not likely to hear many. I did nothing to bring the story about him to Nicolo’s attention, let alone scotch it. Since the report of his world-spanning journey had caught the imagination of the pilgrims, there was a fair chance of its living on, gathering plausible detail as it spread far and wide, until it became current in Xanadu, where it might, through palace chitchat, reach the ears of the Khan. I took pleasure in fancying a devastating anticlimax to these sensations. . . . But I could not afford such empty dreams, and soon put them by.
2
The golden tablet and the fact of their long-belated returning to the Khan’s Court lent Nicolo and Maffeo large and genuine importance in official eyes. Three days out of Xanadu, a district chief appointed them a kind of beadle, to clear their way through the crowds and to determine precedence between them and other official parties. Thereafter the journey sped as in a dream.
These last days we traveled the road that the Khan took on his return from Xanadu in September; hence there were rest palaces for his use from ten to fifteen miles apart. The courier posts had been imposing enough, these were fit for the year-long residences of the second order of kings. Such noble edifices were preparing me, I thought, for the summer palace known as Xanadu Keibung. While it was neither as great nor as costly as the great palace of Peking, the drivers told me it was a pleasure dome not unworthy of the Great Khan.
Our last day on the road was the next to the last day of May according to Christian counting. By traveling late, our caravan could have entered the main south gate of Xanadu city, and Maffeo and Nicolo have gained admittance to a guesthouse on the palace grounds. Instead we stopped at sundown at a caravanserai three miles from the city wall, and before dawn flushed up, we took a leafy lane that led us in the general direction of the west gate. This was by the beadle’s arrangements. He was aware that the two had never seen Xanadu Keibung and had planned a pleasant surprise for them, he too being a gentleman of refined tastes. We followers were not forbidden a share in the treat provided we had the wit to appreciate it.
As we gained the crest of a high hill west of the wall, the sun heaved up in the east. Then I thought that our camels must gaze with a thrill in their dull hearts, and I would not wonder at them, only weep, if the dumb beasts knelt down.
When a jewel is mounted among lesser jewels by a cunning lapidary, they set each other off. Yet the central stone remains the subject of the invention and takes the eye first. So it was with the main edifice of Xanadu Keibung.[24] At this distance it gave the effect of a superably set gem infinitely magnified. It had the shimmer of a pearl and, as the sun mounted, the changing hues of an opal.
The eye looked close to discover the most obvious source of the illusion—the three wide-eaved roofs crowning the three retracting stories were of polished tiles of gold, silver, pearl, scarlet, azure, emerald, and every variant tint known to the rainbow; the pillars supporting these aglitter or agleam with precious inlay and lacquer; and the multicolored marble of the half-glimpsed walls. Its square dark-red terrace was about twenty acres in extent and set in what appeared to be a ring of turquoise three or four times larger, perfectly imaging the palace in all its manifold lights, and the forest at its rims. But this last was not magic. The Jewel is in the Lotus, so chant the Tibetan monks to infinitude. This jewel was in a lake.
Four marble causeways, green, blue, black, and white, led to the four entrances of the palace with the effect of an enameled cross. On one shore of the lake stood numerous double- and single-roofed mansions of noble state and dimension. These were the lodgings of some of the Khan’s kinsmen and guesthouses for visiting princes and other exalted folk. All of these, with their gardens, arbors, courts, and colonnades, and the lake itself with its solitaire and landscaped shores, were enclosed in a gleaming white wall, almost as high as the trees, fully a mile square. From this distance the fountains looked like white or rainbow-hued lilies, the rills like silver threads, and the seasonal flower beds, multicolored bridges, and canopied barges suggested fine inlay in a richly jeweled medallion. The effect of the whole extravaganza at close view we could only imagine.
Far out over hill and dale ran outer walls, enclosing, it seemed, the whole countryside. The inner enclosure was a mere fraction of this expanse, estimated by the beadle at sixteen square miles. They constituted the most beautiful park I had ever seen.
It lay generally between a high ridge, plumed with tall, dark pines, and a long loop of the sluggish, low-lying, slow-flowing Lan Ho, sometimes called the Alph, nearly half a mile wide at this reach. The upper landscape was wild and rugged in the extreme, with black forest and gray heath, cliffs, crags, and glimpses of a white cataract that appeared to burst full-grown well under the rimrock. It leaped down a deep-cut chasm at the bottom of a wooded glen, its roaring distinctly audible at this distance of at least two miles. Every interopening ravine had its singing brook to swell the violent stream, so when it debouched from the chasm, it was a young river, flowing boldly and with majesty. Where its banks began to level off, hardly a mile from its source, a towered bridge, pale gold in hue, spanned the shining waters. These lulled quickly and turned dark blue below the bridge, and took a winding course on to the Lan Ho.
A road from the town crossed the bridge, and to this and some adjacent ground, the people were given free access. Here they could enjoy entertainments the Khan provided, picnic, and watch the training of several hundred of his best gerfalcons kept in the park in mew.
Actually the main purpose of this park was to afford the Khan hunting and coursing on a small scale. The large buildings and pens that we glimpsed through the trees housed the birds, as well as the hounds and the hunting leopards belonging to his entourage. However, we were not to think that this walled enclosure of sixteen square miles, thronging with game, furnished even a considerable fraction of the Khan’s sport. To his great hunting camp on the Hwang Ho, he brought ten thousand giant mastiffs, as well as hounds, leopards, and hunting tigers. These and his hawks supplied the Court with one thousand head of game, whether beast or bird, every day of the winter months. The hawkers, dog-handlers, watchers, and kennel and mews men numbered thirty-five thousand. At least ten thousand of his barons and courtiers, with their slaves and trains, could lodge in luxury at this vast encampment, and follow the hawks and the hounds in their master’s wake.
An ample supply of game to furnish their fill of sport was provided by two short ordinances of the Khan. No other person in the vast province, not even the Royal Governor, was allowed to keep mews and kennels. If any person in all Cathay killed any wild animal or bird during the winter months, he was whipped to death.
The lower half of the park contained many beautiful woods, emerald-green meadows, fishpools, and meandering streams. Dreamy pavilions stood beside flower-banked ponds. But its prime feature was a smaller palace, crowning a hill, that seemed built of solid gold. This was a favorite retreat of the Khan’s during his stay in Xanadu, especially on hot and sultry nights; and although it could house a thousand souls, it was built entirely of giant canes covered with gilt. An equal wonder was that it occupied ground which only a fortnight ago had been empty. The entire structure could be taken down, loaded with its furnishings on several thousand camels, transported at the Khan’s whim, and re-erected—all in a matter of days. If one of his favorite concubines grew tired of the view from her window, he needed no Aladdin’s lamp to work a wondrous change.