“Humph,” said the captain. “The knights seldom even bother to do that any more. They are all of different orders—Templars and Hospitalers and whatnot—so they much prefer to fight among themselves … when they are not scandalously disporting themselves with the Carmelitas and Clarissas.”
The chaplain winced, for no reason I could see, and said petulantly, “Sir, have a regard for my cloth.”
The captain shrugged. “Deplore it if you will, Pare, but you cannot refute it.” He turned to speak to my father. “Not only the troops are in disarray. The civilian population, what there is of it, consists entirely of suppliers and servitors to the knights. Acre’s native Arabs are too venal to be inimical to us Christians, but they are forever at odds with Acre’s native Jews. The remainder of the population is a shifting motley of Pisans and Genoese and your fellow Venetians—all rivals and all quarrelsome. If you wish to conduct your business here in peace, I suggest that you go straight to the Venetian quarter when we debark, and take lodgings there, and try not to get involved in the local discords.”
So we three gathered our belongings from the cabin and prepared to debark. The quay was crowded with ragged and dirty men, pressing close around the ship’s gangplank and waving their arms and jostling each other, crying their services in Trade French and any number of other languages:
“Carry your bags, monsieur! Lord merchant! Messere! Mirza! Sheikh khaja! …”
“Lead you to the auberge! The inn! Locanda! Karwansarai! Khane! …”
“Provide for you horses! Asses! Camels! Porters! …”
“A guide! A guide speaking Sabir! A guide speaking Farsi! …”
“A woman! A beautiful fat woman! A nun! My sister! My little brother! …”
My uncle demanded only porters, and selected four or five of the least scabrous of the men. The rest drifted away, shaking their fists and shouting imprecations:
“May Allah look upon you sideways!”
“May you choke while eating pig meat!”
“ … Eating your lover’s zab!”
“ … Your mother’s nether parts!”
The seamen unloaded our portion of the ship’s cargo, and our new porters slung our bundles on their backs or shoulders or perched them atop their heads. Uncle Mafio commanded them, first in French, then in Farsi, to take us to the part of the city reserved for Venetians, and to the best inn there, and we all moved off along the quay.
I was not much impressed by Acre—or Akko, as its native inhabitants call it. The city was no cleaner than the harbor, being mostly of squalid buildings with the widest streets between them no wider than the narrowest alleys of Venice. In its most open areas, the city stank of old urine. Where walls closed it in, it smelled even worse, for the alleys were sinks of sewage and swill, in which gaunt dogs competed for the pickings with monster rats, abroad even in full daylight.
More overpowering than Acre’s stink was its noise. In every alley wide enough for a sitting rug to be spread, there were vendors, shoulder to shoulder, squatting behind little heaps of trashy merchandise—scarves and ribbons, shriveled oranges, overripe figs, pilgrims’ shells and palm leaves—every man of them bellowing to be heard above the others. Beggars, legless or blind or leprous, whined and sniveled and clawed at our sleeves as we passed. Asses, horses and mangy-furred camels—the first camels I had ever seen—shouldered us out of their way as they shuffled through the garbage of the narrow lanes. They all looked weary and miserable under their heavy loads, but they were driven by the drumming sticks and bawled curses of their herders. Groups of men of all nations stood about conversing at the top of their lungs. I suppose some of their talk dealt with mundane matters of trade, or the war, or maybe just the weather, but their conversations were so clamorous as to be indistinguishable from raging quarrels.
I said to my father, when we were in a street wide enough for us to walk abreast, “You said that you were bringing trade goods’ on this journey. I did not see any merchandise put aboard the
He shook his head. “To have brought a pack train’s load of goods would have been to tempt the innumerable bandits and thieves between us and our destination.” He hefted the one small pack he was carrying at that moment, having refused to relinquish it to any of the porters. “Instead, we are carrying something light and inconspicuous, but of great trading value.”
“Zafran!” I exclaimed.
“Just so. Some in pressed bricks, some in loose hay. And also a good number of the culms.”
I laughed. “Surely you will not stop to plant them, and wait a whole year for the harvest.”
“If circumstances require, yes. One must try to be prepared against all contingencies, my boy. Who has, God helps. And other journeyers have traveled on the three-bean march.”
“What?”
My uncle spoke. “The famed and feared Chinghiz Khan, grandfather of our Kubilai, conquered most of the world in exactly that slow-marching manner. His armies and all their families had to cross the entire vast extent of Asia, and they were far too numerous to have lived off the land, whether by pillaging or scavenging. No, they carried seeds for planting, and animals fit for breeding. Whenever they had marched to the limit of their rations, and beyond the reach of their supply trains, they simply stopped and settled. They planted their grains and beans, bred their horses and cattle, and waited for the harvest and the calving. Then, again well fed and well provisioned, they moved on toward the next objective.”
I said, “I heard that they ate every tenth man of their own men.”
“Nonsense!” said my uncle. “Would any commander decimate his fighting men? He might as sensibly command them to eat their swords and spears. And the weapons would be about equally edible. I doubt that even a Mongol has teeth capable of chewing another warrior Mongol. No, they stopped and planted and harvested, and moved again, and stopped again.”
My father said, “They called that the three-bean march. And it inspired one of their war cries. Whenever the Mongols fought their way into an enemy city, Chinghiz would shout, ‘The hay is cut! Give your horses fodder!’ And that was the signal for the horde to go wild, to plunder and rape and ravage and slaughter. Thus they laid waste Tashkent and Bukhara and Kiev and many another great city. It is said that when the Mongols took Herat, in India Aryana, they butchered every last one of its inhabitants, to the number of nearly
“The three-bean march sounds efficient enough,” I conceded, “but intolerably slow.”
“He who endures, wins,” said my father. “That slow march took the Mongols all the way to the borders of Poland and Romania.”
“And all the way to here,” added my uncle. We were just then passing two swarthy men in clothing that appeared to be made of hides, much too heavy and hot for the climate. To them Uncle Mafio said, “Sain bina.”
They both looked slightly startled, but one of them responded, “Mendu, sain bina!”
“What language was that?” I asked.
“Mongol,” said my uncle. “Those two are Mongols.”
I stared at him, then turned to stare at the men. They were also walking with their heads turned, looking wonderingly back at us. The streets of Acre teemed with so many people of exotic features and complexions and raiment that I could not yet distinguish one kind of foreigner from another. But those were
“Those are Mongols?” I said, thinking of the miles and the millions of corpses they must have tramped across to get to the Holy Land. “What are they doing here?”
“I have no idea,” said my father. “I daresay we will find out in good time.”
“Here in Acre,” said my uncle, “as in Constantinople, there seem to be at least a few persons of every nationality on earth. Yonder goes a black man, a Nubian or an Ethiope. And that woman there is certainly an Armeniyan: each of her breasts is exactly as large as her head. The man with her I would say is a Persian. Now, the Jews and Arabs I can never tell apart, except by their garb. That one yonder has on his head a white tulband, which Islam forbids to Jews and Christians, so he has to be a Muslim … .”
