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MY father greeted me with joy, and then with condolence when I told him why I had returned to Khanbalik without Hui-sheng. He started somberly to tell me that life was like a something or other, but I interrupted the homily.
“I see we are no longer the most recently arrived Westerners in Kithai,” I said, for there was a stranger sitting with my father in his chambers. He was a white man, a little older than myself, and his garb, though travel- worn, identified him as a cleric of the Franciscan order.
“Yes,” said my father, beaming. “At long last, a real Christian priest comes to Kithai. And a near countryman of ours, Marco, from the Campagna. This is Pare Zuane—”
“Padre Giovanni,” said the priest, pettishly correcting my father’s Venetian pronunciation. “Of Montecorvino, near Salerno.”
“Like us, some three years on the road,” said my father. “And very nearly our same route.”
“From Constantinople,” said the priest. “Down into India, where I established a mission, then up through High Tartary.”
“I am sure you will be welcome here, Pare Zuane,” I said politely. “If you have not yet been presented to the Khakhan, I am having audience with him shortly, and—”
“The Khan Kubilai has already most cordially received me.”
“Perhaps,” said my father, “if you asked, Marco, the Pare Zuane would consent to say a few words in memory of our dear departed Hui-sheng …”
I would not have asked him anyway, but the priest said stiffly, “I gather that the departed was not a Christian. And that the union was not according to the Sacrament.”
So I rudely turned my back on him and rudely said, “Father, if these once remote and unknown and barbaric lands are now attracting civilized arrivisti like this one, the Khakhan should not feel too forlorn when we few pioneers take our departure. I am ready to leave whenever you are.”
“I expected you would be,” he said, nodding. “I have been converting all the holdings of the Compagnia into portable goods and currencies. Most has already gone westward by horse post along the Silk Road. And the rest is all packed. We need only to decide on our mode of travel and the route we shall take—and get the Khakhan’s consent, of course.”
So I went to get that. First I presented to Kubilai the Buddha relic I had brought, at which he expressed pleasure and some awe and many thanks. Then I presented a letter which Bayan had given me to carry, and I waited while he read it, and then I said:
“I also brought back with me, Sire, your personal physician, the Hakim Gansui, and I am eternally grateful for your having sent him to care for my late lady consort.”
“Your
“Not at my behest, Sire. I am satisfied that he did what he could. And putting him to death would not bring back my lady or my unborn son.”
“I commiserate, Marco. A lovely and beloved and loving lady is indeed irreplaceable. But sons?” He gave a casual wave, and I thought he was referring to his own considerable brood of progeny. But he made me start when he said, “You already have these half a dozen. And, I believe, three or four daughters besides.”
For the first time, I realized who were the page boys that had replaced his former elderly stewards. I was speechless.
“Most handsome lads,” he went on. “A great improvement in the sightliness of my throne room. Visitors can rest their gaze on those comely young men, instead of this aged hulk on the throne.”
I looked around at the pages. The one or two within earshot, who had probably overheard that astonishing revelation—astonishing to me, anyway—gave me back timid and respectful smiles. Now I knew where they had got their lighter-than-Mongol complexions and hair and eyes, and I even fancied I could see a vague resemblance to myself. Still, they were strangers to me. They had not been conceived in love, and I would probably not recognize their mothers if we passed in a palace corridor. I set my jaw and said:
“My only son died in childbirth, Sire. The loss of him and his mother has left me sore of soul and heart. For that reason, I ask my Lord Khakhan’s permission to make my report on this latest mission of mine, and then to request a favor.”
He studied me for a time, and the age-eroded wrinkles and channels of his leather face seemed to deepen perceptibly, but he said only, “Report.”
I did it briefly enough, since I had really had no mission except to observe. So I gave my impressions of what I had seen: that India was a country totally worthless of his acquisition or least attention; that the lands of Champa offered the same resources—elephants, spices, timber, slaves, precious gems—and much nearer at hand.
“Also, Ava is already yours, of course. However, I have one observation to make, Sire. Like Ava, the other nations of Champa may be susceptible to easy conquest, but I think the holding of them will be hard. Your Mongols are northern men, accustomed to breathing freely. In those tropical heats and damps, no Mongol garrison can endure for long without falling prey to fevers and diseases and the ambient indolence. I suggest, instead of actual occupation, Sire, that you simply install submissive natives as your Champa administrators and overseeing forces.”
He nodded and again picked up the letter I had brought from Bayan. “The King Rama Khamhaeng of Muong Thai is already proposing just such an arrangement, as alternative to our demanding his unconditional surrender. He offers all the produce of his country’s tin mines in continuing tribute. I think I shall accept those terms, and leave Muong Thai nominally an independent nation.”
I was pleased to hear that, having conceived a real fondness for the Thai people. Let them have their Land of the Free.
Kubilai went on, “I thank you for your report, Marco. You have done well, as always. I should be an ungrateful lord were I to refuse any favor in my granting. Make your request, then.”
He knew what I was going to ask. Nevertheless, I did not care to ask it baldly and abruptly: “Give me leave to leave you.” So I began in the Han manner, with circumlocution.
“A long time ago, Sire, I had occasion to say, ‘I could never slay a woman.’ And when I said that, a slave of mine, a man wiser than I realized, said, ‘You are young yet.’ I could not then have believed it, but I have recently been the cause of the dying of the woman most dear to me in all the world. And I am no longer young. I am a man of middle age, well along in my fourth decade. That death has caused me much hurt and, like a wounded elephant, I should like to limp away to the seclusion of my home ground, there to recover from my wound or to languish of it. I ask your permission, Sire—and I hope your blessing—for the departure from your court of myself and my father and my uncle. If I am no longer young, they are already old, and their dying should also be done at home.”
“And I am older yet,” said Kubilai, with a sigh. “The scroll depicting my life has been wound much farther from the one hand to the other. And every turn of the scroll’s rods reveals a picture with fewer friends standing about me. Someday, Marco, you will envy your lost lady. She died in the summer of her life, not having to see all that was flowery and green about her turn brown and dwindle and blow away like autumn leaves.” He shivered as if he felt already the gusts of winter. “I shall be sorry to see my friends Polo depart, but I should be ill repaying your family’s long service and companionship if I whined for its continuance. Have you yet made any travel arrangements?”
“Of course not, Sire. Not without your permission.”
“You have it, certainly. But now I should like to ask a favor. One last mission for you, which you can perform on your way, and it will make easier your way.”
“You have only to command it, Sire.”
“I would ask if you and Nicolo and Mafio could deliver a certain valuable and delicate cargo to my grandnephew Arghun in Persia. When Arghun succeeded to that Ilkhanate, he took a Persian wife as a politic
