The cries in the hall redoubled:
“Pig!”
“Carrion!”
“Putrescence!”
And Kagig turned pale and his thick lips twitched, and for the first time in my knowledge of him he acted like a man. He showed genuine chagrin and he called for retribution as if he meant it, crying, “May the coals of Hell lie hot upon my head! I truly loved the beautiful Seosseres, and I have cut off her nose and her lips!”
6
MY father plucked at my sleeve, and he and I and my uncle slipped discreetly through the roiling crowd and out of the dining hall.
“This is not bread to my teeth,” said my father, frowning. “The Ostikan is in bad trouble, and any sovereign in trouble can make things trebly troublous for everyone around him.”
I said, “Surely he cannot blame us for anything.”
“When the head hurts, the whole body may suffer. I think it best that we get our horses loaded for a departure at first light. Let us go to our chamber and start packing.”
There we were joined by the two Dominicans, who spoke loudly of their nausea and disgust at what Kagig had done, as if only they of us all had sensibilities to be offended.
“Ho ho,” said Uncle Mafìo without humor. “These are fellow Christians. You have yet to meet some real barbarians.”
“That is what most disturbs us,” said Brother Guglielmo. “We understand that such horrendous cruelties are common practices in farther Tartary.”
My father remarked placidly that he had known of atrocities having been committed in the West, as well.
“Nevertheless,” said Brother Nicolò, “we fear that we could not competently minister to such monsters as you would have us go among. We wish to be excused from our preaching mission.”
“Would you now?” My uncle coughed and hawked and spat. “You wish to desert before we are even underway? Well, wish all you like. We have committed ourselves, and so have you.”
Brother Guglielmo said frostily, “Perhaps Fra Nico did not put it strongly enough. We are not asking your permission, Messeri, we are telling you our decision. The conversion of such raw savages would require more—more authority than we possess. And the Scriptures say: Turn away thy foot from evil. He that touches pitch shall be defiled with it. We decline to accompany you any farther.”
“You could not have supposed that this would be an easy or enjoyable mission,” said my father. “As the old saying has it, nobody goes to Heaven on a cushion.”
“A cushion? Fichèvelo!” boomed my uncle, thereby suggesting a unique use for a cushion. “We have paid good money to buy horses for these two manfroditi!”
“Calling us filthy names is not likely to persuade us,” said Brother Nicolò with hauteur. “In the manner of the Apostle Paolo, we do shun profane and vain babblings. The ship which brought us here is now preparing to sail on to Cyprus, and we will be aboard.”
My uncle would have blustered on, probably using still more words that sacerdoti seldom get to hear, but my father gestured him to silence, saying:
“We wanted emissaries of the Church to prove to Kubilai Khan the worth and superiority of Christianity over other religions. These sheep in priestly clothing would hardly be the best examples to show him. Go to your ship, Brothers, and God go with you.”
“And God and you go quickly!” snarled my uncle. When they had gathered up their belongings and left the chambers, he grumbled, “Those two merely seized upon our venture as an excuse to get away from the wicked women of Acre. Now they welcome this ugly incident here as an excuse to get away from us. We were bidden to bring a hundred priests, and we got two spineless old zitelle. Now we do not even have them.”
“Well, it is less hurtful losing the two than a hundred,” said my father. “The proverb says it is better to fall from a window than from the roof.”
“I can bear losing those two,” said Uncle Mafìo. “But now what? Do we go on? Without any clerics for the Khan?”
“We promised him we would return,” said my father. “And we have already been long away. If we do not go back, the Khan will lose faith in any Westerner’s word. He may bar the gates against all traveling merchants, including us, and we are merchants before anything else. We have no priests to take, but we do have enough capital—our zafràn and Hampig’s musk—that we can multiply it yonder into an estimable fortune. I say yes, let us go on. We shall simply tell Kubilai that our Church was in disarray during this papal interregnum. It is true enough.”
“I concur,” said Uncle Mafìo. “We go on. But what about this sprout?”
They both looked at me.
“He cannot return yet to Venice,” my father mused. “And the English ship is sailing on to England. But he could change at Cyprus to some vessel headed for Constantinople … .”
I said quickly, “I will not sail even to Cyprus with those two poltroon Dominicans. I might be tempted to do them some injury, and that would be a sacrilege, and that would imperil my hope of Heaven.”
Uncle Mafìo laughed and said, “But if we leave him here, and those Circassians start a blood feud with the Armeniyans, Marco may get to Heaven sooner than one might have hoped.”
My father sighed and said to me, “You will come with us as far as Baghdad. There we will seek out a merchant train headed westward by way of Constantinople. You will go to visit your Uncle Marco. You can either stay with him until we return or, if you hear that a new Doge has succeeded Tiepolo, you can take ship for Venice.”
I think only we, of all the people then inhabiting Hampig’s palace, even tried to sleep that night. And we slept but little, for the whole building kept shaking to the tread of heavy feet and the shouting of angry voices. The Circassian guests had all put on clothes of the sky-blue color they affect for mourning, but evidently they were unmournfully storming about the building, threatening to wreak some vengeance for the mutilation of their Seosseres, and the Armeniyans were as loudly trying to placate them, or at least shout them down. The turmoil was still undiminished when we rode out of the palace stable yard, eastward into the dawn. I do not know what finally became of the people we left behind there: whether the two craven friars got safely away to Cyprus, or whether the wretched Bagratunians ever did suffer any retaliation from the Princess’s people. I have never heard of any of them since that day. And on that day I truthfully was not worrying about them, but about staying in my saddle.
I had never in my life been transported by any conveyance other than water craft. So my father bridled and saddled my mare for me, and made me watch the procedure, telling me that I should have to do that job myself thereafter. Then he showed me how to mount, and the proper side of the animal from which to do it. I imitated his demonstration. I put my left foot into the stirrup, bounced briefly on my right foot, bounded high with enthusiasm, swung my right leg over, came down with a smack astride the hard seat, and gave a wild ululation of pain. Each of us was, as instructed by the Ostikan, wearing one of the leather cods of musk tied so that it hung under our crotch, and it was that that I thumped down on—and I thought for an agonized and writhing few minutes that it had cost me my own personal cod.
My father and uncle abruptly turned away, their shoulders shaking, to attend to their own mounts. I gradually recovered, and rearranged the musk pouch so it would not again endanger my vitals. Realizing that I was for the first time perched atop an animal, I rather wished that I had commenced with one not so tall, an ass perhaps, for I seemed to be teetering very high and insecurely far above the ground away down there. But I stayed in the saddle while my father and uncle also mounted, and each of them took the lead rope of one of the two extra horses, on which we had loaded all our packs and traveling gear. We rode out of the yard and toward the river, just as the day was breaking.