But I had business elsewhere.
Three days from today the Khan would hold durbar in the great hall of the palace. My own plans for that day were hardly worthy of the name: they amounted to one simple stroke, the results of which would depend on how well it was delivered, on circumstance, and on how close was my guess at the characters of Nicolo and Kublai Khan. I might be prevented from dealing it at all. That was in the lap of unknown gods and hence no immediate burden on my mind. My poverty would impair my preparations, but making the best of it brought me to the town’s old-clothes market, busy enough, but where no one ever smiled.
I was looking for a robe of a certain color and kind. I did not care how thin it had worn, provided it would hold together for one wearing—after that, I could get along without it, will I, nill I. Finding nothing barely suitable among these sorry relics of better days, I was cursing my own low spirits when I felt them take a sudden lift I had caught sight of my former copemate and fellow night-hawk, Pietro the Tatar. He was treating himself to lichi nuts from a street vendor and had not seen me yet. Instead of avoiding him, I raised my voice enough to attract his attention. Although the gains would be small at best, I thought to give him good news to take to his master.
At once he came strolling toward me, his eyes glistening. I affected chagrin at being seen in the ill-smelling resort of misfits, human and cloth.
“I take it you’re about to sell your old turnout, to fit yourself anew,” he said.
“I have a few winter garments that I can spare, now that summer’s come,” I answered. “But the prices paid at this raghouse are too low.”
“I doubt if you can do any better in the town.”
“I suppose I’ll have to let them go. I need a little money to dress Sheba for the slave market. With the hundred and fifty dinars that she’ll bring, I can lay in camel wool to sell in Shengking. There are several eastbound caravans that I can join.”
“Aren’t you going to offer her to your—to Nicolo Emir?”
“I thought he wouldn’t want her, if he gives the white slave girl to the Khan.”
“Why, he might take her anyway. He couldn’t lose very much on her.”
“I’m not going to ask him for any favors.”
“Why don’t you wait to see if he keeps the Frank Linda for himself? I heard him tell Maffeo malik that he hasn’t decided yet. If he does, he’ll probably pay you two hundred for Sheba. Anyway, you ought to see the durbar. I’ve asked our beadle to find me a stand in the outer gallery, and he can do the same for you.”
“Someone might recognize me and cry me for a thief. You were lucky that night—but I wasn’t.”
“My Tatar face didn’t stand out like yours did. And although you had nothing to gain by implicating me, some men would have done it anyway. If there’s any little favor I can do you——”
“I won’t want the place in the gallery, but I thank you anyway.”
“Is there anything else? You’ve had a lot of misfortune—I’ve prospered moderately—and if a dinar or two would help you dress Sheba——”
“Five dinars would help me a great deal, and I’ll repay them after I sell her.”
“Why, I’ll lend them to you gladly.” He handed me the five gold coins. “And I’m sorry you’ll not see the great sight.”
“I suppose Nicolo will cut a fine figure.” This was merely to make an assurance doubly sure.
By nature cruel, and sharing all his master’s triumphs, he relished my bitter tone.
“I suppose he will. He’s bought a new robe of ceremony. His servant took it into the sunlight to look for moths, and several of us saw it.”
I had been enjoying the game and had considered it merely that—to raise my spirits rather than make gains, although the five dinars was a windfall and if Nicolo had a last lingering doubt of my abjectness, Pietro’s gleeful report would set it at rest. Suddenly, though, it had proved of immense importance, and I had to guard my countenance from his sharp eyes.
“Why, I thought he’d wear his blue brocade with the golden pheasants.”
“This is dark-red brocade, of ankle length, with heavy golden eagles and silver deer, very large and splendid. It cost four hundred dinars.”
“Four hundred? If he’d given them to me, he’d have never missed them, and I could have kept my horse and my longbow and now Sheba.”
But I need not dissemble a deeply anxious face. The fear that had never lifted from me, awake or asleep, these last few days—never intense but ever dismal as a dull toothache—was of the failure of one straight, bold stroke aimed at Nicolo. Now I must face the likelihood of not being able to deliver it at all.
I had cause to remember some folk wisdom Miranda had learned from an old hostler in England:
For a nail rusted through the mare lost her shoe;
So she slid on a crack and fell and broke her back;
So her rider walked late where robbers lay in wait;
So dying unshriven he went not to Heaven.
O the wailing he did on the Devil’s hot grid
For iron worth a penny when thrift he hadn’t any.
2
If my mare lost the race it would not be by my lack of thrift. I spent the following morning searching for an accouterment I lacked, combing all the ground that offered the least hope. But the merchants would not rent to me any rig that would suit me well—they were suspicious of poorly dressed aliens with thin purses, especially when the town thronged with fly-by-nights—and what I could buy for my last handful of gold fell sorely short of my need.
I wished I could find a shrill-laughing, hand-waving Jew of the kind that owned pawnshops in Venice. Not that his heart might be softer than these quiet Chinese, but he would be more of a cosmopolitan and have more imagination. For some strange reason, no Jews had ever found their way to Xanadu.
The least sorry substitute for my requirement that I had money to buy turned up in the stock of a Bengali tailor. It was of ankle length, not badly worn, and made of brocade, although of inferior sort, but the wrong color, dull-looking, and without decoration. Still I paid a piece of gold to have the dealer hold it until tomorrow noon; unless Fortune turned her wheel to bring me something better, I was resolved to take it, make the best of it, and play the game. I was an adventurer and this was my great adventure. When my lips turned down at the corners in an evil sneer, I knew that I would risk everything to win.
At my cheap, mean, but private room at the caravanserai I found Sheba completing the task I had set her and her shining eyes signaling exciting news. After guarding against eavesdroppers, she spoke to me in a husky whisper thrilling to hear.
“If it’s your wish, Miranda will meet you tonight.”
“When and where?”
“At the third hour after midnight, three hundred of your long steps above the bridge in the Khan’s park.”
A cold thrill ran over my skin, the same as on the haunted desert, and I had to guard both my countenance and my voice.
“You misunderstood her. She meant three hundred paces on one side or other of the bridge along the road—her saying ‘above the bridge’ probably means toward the town——”
“No, master. She meant up the chasm of the stream.”
“But that’s forbidden to all except the Khan and his barons. I heard the people say it’s the most sacred——” I stopped to wonder at that word.
“His barons don’t go there. They wait for him on the rim. Not even his queens can go with him there. The people say he goes to meet the ghost of Genghis Khan and take counsel from him. So it’s the safest place you can find.”