Now we saw other caves, many of them half-hidden by the crags, overhanging more than half of the inner rim of a bowl hewn by a giant stonecutter out of the solid rock. And in the bowl was as strange a spring as ever flowed.
The water did not well up continuously but burst up with enormous force at such rapid intervals that the ear could hardly distinguish the separate explosions. No doubt gushings and splashings and the continuous and compound echoes from the rocks and the ice caves almost filled the fleeting silences between the claps, to cause an undulating roar. But to the eye the ejaculations were distinct, and their effect on the mind was awesome in the extreme. They did not take the form of upbursting geysers, instead they lifted the whole body of water in the bowl in the shape of a giant mushroom that constantly overtowered the rim and which swelled out, rose several feet, and diminished again with each pulsation. Only a small fraction poured out to form the stream. And the underground river heaved up by the earth’s convulsions must be abysmally deep, for the rocks throbbed in time with the bursts, and we felt that their terrible central sound rose from far below us.
We walked nearer and took our stand on a crag from which we could look down into the crater. Its walls had been scoured and polished by the upheaving flood, and now we could hear another sound under or running through the terrific undulation. It was of stone bounding against stone. The only explanation I could conceive was that boulders and rock fragments were hurled up by the exploding waters and struck against the crater walls.
And now Miranda’s sharp eyes made a strange and thrilling discovery. Farther around on the crater rim was a seat carved out of solid rock, affording an open view of the heaving waters and their plunge into the chasm. Its lofty position and its shape of grandeur told us both in the same instant that it was a throne.
Miranda said something I could not hear. Smiling strangely then, she took my hand, and together we walked the short distance, and climbed the little rise that brought us to it. And here the uproar ceased to hurt the ears and stultify the brain, I did not know why unless, striking an adjacent cliff, it ricocheted in the form of echoes.
I knew it was not bravado, or even Miranda’s expectations, that caused me to sit on the throne. When I did so, she nodded her head slightly, and I realized the beauty in her face.
“Will you sit here?” I asked when, after a moment, I had risen.
“I don’t need to.”
“Do you think I’m the only one except the Khan who ever sat there?”
“Of course not. Kublai Khan didn’t carve it himself. The sculptor he’d appointed tried it plenty of times.”
“I think he had the sculptor strangled.”
“He may have, but that didn’t change it. And squirrels have climbed into the seat, and birds have lighted there.”
“Why did you have me meet you in the ravine?”
“I thought it would help you in what you intend to do.”
“Have you any idea what it is?”
“I’ve tried not to think. But Nicolo told me last night that you’d been seen in the old clothes market and you were trying to raise money for a journey. I think if the journey is to be only a mile from the market, it is going to be difficult and dangerous.”
“You still haven’t fully answered my question. You said you thought it would help me but you didn’t say why you wanted to help me—why you did help me.”
“Because when you were in desperate need of money, you didn’t sell Sheba.”
“No, I didn’t.” I spoke only because she stood waiting.
“Will you tell me why?”
“No, I can’t, because I don’t know. All I know is, I’m going to make the trial—take the journey you spoke of—without selling her, or not at all.”
“Not even as a last resort?”
“No.”
“Did you succeed in raising money any other way?”
“I had a little over twenty dinars and Pietro lent me five more.” And she returned my smile.
“Yet you’re going to make the trial?” she asked.
“Yes, the best I can.”
“Marco, do you remember when you took me from the house of Simon ben Reuben, he gave me a mezusah? That was a little gold shell to wear around my neck, containing the promises of his God.”
“I remember it well.”
“He got it himself just before I left, then spoke to me in a low voice. If ever I was in great need, I was to open it and get something out of it. Once I did open it. It was not when you were about to sell me—that was on your soul, not mine—but long after that, in the city of Bukhara. I saw what it was and put it back. I thought of the old Jew and all he stood for and I decided my need wasn’t as great as I had believed. I believed that someday there would come a greater one.”
I did not speak and only bent my head.
“I was right. It came when I lay awake in the middle of the night. So I opened the mezusah and took out what he’d given me. Cup your hand.”
I did so. She laid in it a diamond of the worth of two hundred dinars. The dying moon made it cast an inch-long luster on my palm.
CHAPTER 12
THE COURT OF KUBLAI KHAN
Before sundown of the day preceding the event, crowds began to gather on the causeways allotted to them. By midnight something like fifty thousand crammed the outer galleries of the great hall while thousands more, hopeless of any glimpse of the glory, lined the avenues kept open by the guards down which would walk princes, barons, and ambassadors on their way to their posts of honor. There was almost no sound. The people were grave of face and manner as though gathered in the temples of their gods.
Not long after sunrise I took a stand behind one of the lines, and since the people were mainly of less stature, I could peer over their heads with little danger of being observed. Over a gorgeous robe of dark-red brocade decorated with golden tigers hunting silver cattle, I wore a barracan of light, rough wool. Under my headcloth, my hair was dressed in the Venetian fashion. I had shaped my mustache to resemble Nicolo’s and shaved my beard.
Back of me, Sheba, in white trousers and sleeveless jellick, watched over a bundle roughly triangular in shape, with six-foot sides.
It was the rule of the Court that when the Khan held durbar, even princes must dispense with their trains except for slaves bearing gifts. So when Nicolo and Maffeo came from the guesthouse, they had only four attendants. One was a tall Indian in handsome array belonging to Nicolo; he carried a bundle wrapped in silk that no doubt contained the fire-walker’s suit. Two Persian slaves of Maffeo’s bore cloth of gold and silver, Samarkand silk, and a rolled rug, a marvel of the rugmaker’s art said to be five hundred years old, that he had bought in faraway Kashgar. Wearing Chinese dress of profuse embroidery, Miranda brought up the rear. In her hand was a golden bowl covered with the identical piece of embroidery that the Arghum girl Araxie had given Nicolo for a place in our caravan, and which he had had in his saddlebag during our flight from ambush. The pattern of that story was as strange, I thought, as that of the needlework.
Despite their modest trains, the two ambassadors greatly impressed the watchers. The red, richly decorated robe of one set off the blue robe, fully as gorgeous, of the other; both towered over the nobles before and behind them and walked with a kingly stride no squat Tatar could attain; the like of their countenances had never been seen by most of the people; and the whisper sped like a rustle of wind that they were ambassadors from Frankistan, beyond the setting sun.