“I am pleased with the offering and the instruction.” He cast his narrow imperious eyes on Nicolo. “There is a curiosity in my mind which I wish to relieve. How came this young man to be at your side?”
“No doubt he asked the usher to post him there, although against my will.”
“Why against your will? He bears the same family name as you and your brother Maffeo, and he is a Venetian. Isn’t he of your blood?”
“No, Great Khan. He is the bastard son of my wife by a wandering jongleur. I suffered him to join our caravan until he desecrated the temple of the Swasti in your city of Suchow.”
The squatting magicians had listened until now with blank faces and empty eyes. At this last they turned their red-rimmed eyes on me with ineffable malevolence. But they were very strangely and wonderfully rebuked. The tiger lying at the Khan’s feet raised his immense ruffed head, so beautifully adorned to be so terrible, fixed his green eyes on the magicians, and uttered an ominous growl.
Only for a few seconds did I give way to the fond belief that my saints or very Providence had moved in my behalf. Such believing would comfort my heart but dull the edge of my mind. I wanted no comfort now, only the clearest eyes and the most powerful thought of all my days. Realizing this, it came to me instantly that the tiger had smelled rage and hatred on the magicians, which he took to be dangerous to his master.
“In what way did he desecrate it?” the Khan asked in deep gravity.
“By stealing a suit of fire-walkers’ garments.”
“Was he punished?”
“Too lightly, Great Khan. He paid a fine of nine times the head magician’s valuation of the garments.”
“What was that valuation?”
“Five hundred dinars, which many thought much too low.”
“It is a very strange story, but you are my accredited ambassador, and our time grows short.”
He looked to a mighty lord in a richly bejeweled gown—a South Chinese, I thought—standing among the nearest to the dais with six slaves loaded with gifts. But before he spoke, I raised my hand.
The Khan saw it. He looked from me to Nicolo with searching eyes and back to me. The arrest of a thousand breaths was like a silence that lies under all the silences we know, and the tiger sprang to his feet. And then when I thought that I would not be acknowledged and the scarf would be put about my throat and my eyes darkened, the Khan slowly raised his scepter and leveled it at my breast.
3
“Great Khan, I seek justice at your hands and in your sight.”
“What is your complaint?”
“My name and honor have been defamed in your hearing and the hearing of this company. I was conceived by Lucia, the noble wife of Nicolo Polo, at a time when they cohabited; and by the law of Venice and in the judgment of all men who look fairly upon our faces, I am his son.”
The Khan raised his head a little and spoke to the multitude.
“It is the law of the Mongol that if a charge of bastardy is made by a husband against his wife’s child, and the child or the wife contests the charge, the burden of proof is on its maker. If it can be shown that the husband and wife cohabited later than twelve months prior to the child’s birth, the husband must produce unimpeachable evidence of the adultery, or the charge is dismissed. For the women of the Mongol are not chattels, but keepers of the houses and the mothers of warriors.”
A long gasp filled the hall like the vagrant wind.
“Such a charge has been made in my very hearing and refuted there. So the truth must be established before any other business is done.” The Khan turned to me.
“Can you prove that Nicolo and your mother Lucia cohabited in the period specified?”
“Not in this Court, Great Khan. Those who had personal knowledge of it are far away. But the charge of bastardy was not made until Nicolo returned from his first journey here with sons by a later wife. No one in Venice had ever doubted that I was his son. And before your eyes there is a maiden, once my slave in Venice, and lately Nicolo’s slave, who has heard folk speak of him as my father.”
“By the law of the Mongol, even a slave may give testimony. Linda, did you hear such report?”
Miranda stood tall and answered in a clear voice, for she was Marian Redvers, daughter of Sir Hugh Redvers of England.
“Sire, the noble Jews who had care of me before I became Marco Polo’s slave never doubted that he was Nicolo Polo’s son.”
“Then the only evidence so far given that might point to bastardy was Marco’s committing a crime unnatural in a man of high birth. Marco, what was your purpose in stealing the fire-walkers’ robes?”
“Great Khan, I intended to bring them to you. My mother’s uncle, Friar Johannes Carpini, who came to the Court of Kuyuk Khan, brought back a piece of the mineral fabric and left a letter telling its origin in the High Altai. If your Imperial Highness had not heard of it, I thought that it would be useful to your person and your subjects for fire protection.”
“Marco, did Nicolo know it was a mineral substance, not dragon or salamander skin?”
“He read the letter at my trial, Great Khan.”
“Nicolo, is that true?”
“Yes, Great Khan, but I was not altogether convinced.”
The Khan’s magicians did not look at him or at me, only crouched down with dead eyes.
“Marco Polo, the redress you made of forty-five hundred dinars was described by Nicolo as too light. Were you allowed to keep the garments?”
“No, Great Khan. They were taken from me by the magicians and given to Nicolo, who today gave them to you.”
“Why did the priests give them to Nicolo?”
“Because, they said, he had not entreated a reduction of my penalty, although I was a kinsman, a fellow Christian, and a Venetian.”
“How near did the fine come to taking your all?”
“I retained one camel, poor raiment, the ram’s horns, and my slave girl Sheba.”
“Not even a horse?”
“No, Great Khan.”
“Why did you not sell the slave girl and buy one?”
“I had sold my slave girl Miranda, known to you as Linda, to pay for my transport in Nicolo’s caravan, and I walked from Suchow to Xanadu in penance.”
“Yet you came to my durbar in handsome dress.”
“Miranda gave me a diamond that she had saved for bitter need. I sold it to buy this robe.”
“Marco, isn’t it true that you chose a robe that would call attention to your resemblance to Nicolo Polo?”
“Yes, Great Khan.”
“Then you knew he would deny you in my hearing?”
“I thought he would do so.”
“You wished that he would, believing that his denial would not be believed?”
“Yes, Great Khan.”
“You were right. My eyes and my mind and my heart declare you his son. It is my conviction that he lied to you, a great sin, or to himself, a great frailty.” The Khan raised his eyes to sweep the hall. “The charge of bastardy made by Nicolo Polo against Marco Polo remains unproven.”
Perhaps it was the little stir that moved through the throng, eloquent of their thrilling joy, that roused up the tiger. But his great emerald eyes fixed on Nicolo as though he again smelled hate. If so, it was impotent, and he dropped down again and licked his painted shoulder.
“Marco Polo, you are entitled to redress,” spoke the Great Khan. “I will not levy on my late ambassador, for he may be guilty only of an error in judgment in saying what he cannot prove. And since there have been passages between you and the slave girl Miranda that ill fit her as my slave, I now present her to you.”
“Great Khan, I am rich beyond my dreams and bound to your service in deathless gratitude, and I pray your leave to speak to my slave girl Miranda and receive her reply.”
“It is given, and I doubt not we will listen with cocked ears.”
“Miranda, I hereby set you free, and if it is your wish, I will beg that you be given passage in the caravan of Caidu, the Khan’s ambassador to Budapest, whereafter you may make your way to England.”