A great light came into her face. She imitated my gestures of dismissal, and looked questioningly at me, and I nodded definitely. She held the paper, still gazing at me, and made as if to tear it up—though she did not—and I nodded even more definitely, to assure her: that is correct, the slave deed no longer exists, you are a free woman. Tears came into her eyes, and she stood up and let go the paper and let it flutter to the floor, and gave me one last questioning look: there is no mistake? I made a wide, sweeping motion to indicate: the world is yours, you are free to go. There ensued one frozen moment, during which I held my breath, and we simply stood and regarded each other, and it seemed an interminably long moment. All she had to do was gather up her belongings again and take her leave; I could not have prevented her. But then the frozen moment fractured. She made two gestures that I
hoped
I understood—putting one hand to her heart, the other to her lips, then extending both to me. I smiled uncertainly, and then I gave a happy laugh, for she threw her small self against me, and we were embracing as we had done the night before—not passionately or even amorously, but gladly.
I silently thanked and blessed the Khan Kubilai for having given me that yin seal. This was the first time I had ever used it, and behold, it had put this darling girl in my arms. It was truly amazing, I thought, what the simple impress of a mere carved stone on a piece of paper could accomplish … .
And then, abruptly, I let go of Hui-sheng and turned away from her and threw myself on the floor.
On the way down, I had a flashing glimpse of her startled little face, but there was no time to explain or apologize for my rudeness. I had been suddenly possessed of an idea—an outrageous and maybe even a lunatic idea, but a most enthralling one. It might have been Hui-sheng’s own refreshing touch that had stimulated my wits to think of it. If it was, I would thank her later. Right now, sprawled on the floor, I ignored what must have been her great astonishment, and anxiously began pawing through the litter of oddments I had emptied from my packs. I found the pai-tzu plaque I had decided to return to Kubilai, and the list of engineers’ names I wanted to give him, and—yes! there it was!—the yin seal engraved Pao Nei-ho, which I had taken from the Minister of Lesser Races just before his execution, and kept ever since. I seized upon it and gleefully regarded it and stood up clutching it, and I think I sang some song words and danced a few steps. I desisted when I realized that Hui-sheng and my two new servants were staring at me with wonder and dubiety.
One of the maids waved toward the door and said hesitantly, “Master Marco, a caller asking to see you.”
I sobered immediately, for it was Ali Babar. I felt ashamed that he had found me capering, as if I were light of heart when he was bereaved and grieving. But it could have been worse; I should have felt more guilty if he had entered while I was embracing Hui-sheng. I strode to him and clasped his hand and drew him in, murmuring words of greeting and condolence and friendship. He looked terrible. His eyes were red from weeping, his great nose seemed to droop even more than usual, and he was wringing his hands, but that did not keep them from trembling.
“Marco,” he said in a quaver. “I have just been to the Court Funeralmaster, seeking to look one last time at my dear Mar-Janah. But he says he has, among his store of the departed, not any such person!”
I should have anticipated that, and averted his going, and saved him the bewilderment of that announcement. I knew that executed felons did not go to the Funeralmaster; the Fondler disposed of them himself, without sacrament or ceremony. But I said nothing of that, only said soothingly, “Doubtless some confusion caused by the turmoil of the court’s return from Xan-du.”
“Confusion,” mumbled Ali. “I am
much
confused.”
“Leave everything to me, old friend. I will make all straight. I was just this moment about to do that. I am on my way to make various arrangements pertaining to this matter.”
“But wait, Marco. You said you would tell me … all the how and the why of her dying … .”
“I will, Ali. As soon as I return from this errand. It is urgent, but it will not take long. Do you rest here, and let my ladies attend you.” To the maids I said, “Prepare for him a hot bath. Rub him with balms. Fetch for him food and drink. Every kind of drink, and as much as he will take.” I started out, but then thought of something else, and commanded most strictly, “Admit no one else to these chambers until I am back again.”
I went, almost running, to call upon the Minister of War, the artist Master Chao, and by good fortune found him not occupied with either war or art so early in the day. I commenced by saying that I had heard of the accident which had taken his lady, and that I was sorry for it.
“Why?” he said languidly. “Were you among her stable of stallions?”
“No. I am merely observing the decencies.”
“I must thank you. It is more than she ever did. But I imagine you did not come visiting for that only.”
“No,” I said again. “And if you prefer bluntness, so do I. Are you aware that the Lady Chao died by no accident? That it was so arranged by the Chief Minister Achmad?”
“I must thank him. It is more than he ever did for me before. Have you any notion why he took such an abrupt interest in tidying up the disarray of my small household?”
“He did not, Master Chao. It was purely in his own interest.” I went on to tell of Achmad’s use of the Lady Chao’s official yin for the disposal of Mar-Janah, and the several preceding and subsequent events. I did not mention Mafìo Polo, but I did conclude by saying, “Achmad has threatened also to make public certain paintings done by you. I thought you might be averse to that.”
“It would be embarrassing, yes,” he murmured, still languidly, but his keen glance told me that he knew what paintings I referred to, and that they would be embarrassing to the Famiglia Polo as well. “I take it that you would like to interrupt the Jing-siang Achmad’s suddenly headlong career of destruction.”
“Yes, and I believe I know how. It occurred to me that if he could employ someone else’s signature to covert purpose, so could I. And I also happen to be in possession of another courtier’s yin.”
I handed the stone to him, and I did not have to tell him whose it was, for he was able to read the name from it. “Pao Nei-ho. The former and impostor Minister of Lesser Races.” He looked up at me and grinned. “Are you suggesting what I think you are?”
“The Minister Pao is dead. No one really knows why he had insinuated himself into this court, or whether he ever really used his office to the subversion of the Khanate. But if, all at once, a letter or a memorandum were found, bearing his signature, concerning some nefarious intention—say, a conspiracy somehow to defame the Khan and upraise the Chief Minister—well, Pao is not around to disown it, and Achmad might have a hard time refuting it.”
Chao exclaimed delightedly, “By my ancestors, Polo, but you show certain ministerial talents yourself!”
“One talent I do not possess is an ability to write in the Han character. You do. There are others I could have applied to, but I took you to be no friend of the Arab Achmad.”
“Well, if all you say is true, he did relieve me of one burden. But I still groan under his lading of others. You are right: I would happily join in deposing that son of a turtle. Except, you overlook one detail. You are proposing a
real
conspiracy. If it fails, you and I have an early appointment with the Fondler. If it succeeds—even worse—you and I are in each other’s power forever after.”
“Master Chao, I desire only vengeance against the Arab. If I can hurt him in the least degree, I care not if it costs me my head—tomorrow or some years hence. Simply by proposing this action, I have already put myself in your power. I can offer you no other surety of my bona fides.”
“It is enough,” he said with decision, and got up from his work table. “In any case, this is so wondrously grand a jest that I could not refuse. Come here.” He led me into the next room, and whisked the cover off the tremendous map table. “Let us see. The Minister Pao was a Yi of Yun-nan, which was then under siege … .” We stood and looked at Yun-nan, which now was dotted with Bayan’s flags. “Suppose the Minister Pao was trying to aid his home province … and the Minister Achmad was hoping to dethrone the Khan Kubilai … . We need something to link those two ambitions … some third component … I have it! Kaidu!”
“But the Ilkhan Kaidu rules way over yonder in the northwest,” I said dubiously, pointing to the Sin-kiang Province. “Is he not rather remote to be involved in the conspiracy?”
“Come, come, Polo,” he chided me, but with high good humor. “In this sin of perpetrating a lie, I am incurring the wrath of my revered ancestors, and you are putting at peril your immortal soul. Would you go to Hell for a merely feeble and pusillanimous lie? Have you no artistry, man? No sweeping scope of vision? Let us make it a
thundering
lie, and a sin to scandalize all the gods!”
“It should at least be a believable lie.”
“Kubilai will believe anything of his barbarian cousin Kaidu. He loathes the man. And he knows Kaidu to be reckless and voracious enough to enter into any wildest scheme.”
“That is true enough.”
“So there we have it. I shall concoct a missive in which the Minister Pao privily discusses with the Jing-siang Achmad their mutual and secret and culpable conspiracy with the Ilkhan Kaidu. Those are the picture’s main outlines. Leave the details of its composition to a master artist.”
“Gladly,” I said. “God knows you paint believable pictures.”
“Now. How will you have come to be in possession of this highly volatile document?”
“I was one of the last to see the Minister Pao alive. I shall have discovered the paper while searching him. As I really did find the yin.”
“You never found the yin. Forget that altogether.”
“Very well.”
“You found on him only an old and much-creased paper. I shall make it a letter which, here in Khanbalik, Pao wrote to Achmad but had no chance to deliver, because he was forced to flee. So he simply and foolishly carried it with him. Yes. I shall rumple and dirty it a bit. How soon do you want this?”
“I
should
have given it to the Khan back when I first arrived at Xandu.”
“Never mind. You had no way of recognizing its significance. You have just now found it while unpacking your travel gear. Give it to Kubilai, saying most ingenuously, ‘Oh, by the way, Sire … .’ The very offhandedness will lend verisimilitude. But the sooner the better. Let me get right at it.”
He sat down to his work table again, and began busily to get out papers and brushes and ink blocks of red and black and other appurtenances of his art, saying meanwhile:
“You applied to the right man for your conspiracy, Polo, though I would wager much money that you do not even realize why. To you, no doubt, any two pages of Han characters look alike, so you are unaware that not every scribe can counterfeit another’s writing. I must now try to remember Pao’s hand, and practice until I can fluently imitate it. But that should not take me too long. Go now and leave me to it. I will have the paper in your hands as soon as I can.”
As I moved toward the door, he added, in a voice combining cheer and rue, “Do you know something else? This may be the crowning effort of my whole career, the masterpiece of my entire life.” And as I went out, he was saying, though still cheerfully enough, “Why could you not have conceived a work to which I could sign Chao Meng-fu? Curse you, Marco Polo.”
“IF all goes well,” I told Ali, “the Arab will be flung to the Fondler. And, if you like, I will petition permission for you to be present and
help
the Fondler put Achmad to the Death of a Thousand.”
“I should like to help put him to death,” mumbled Ali. “But help the hateful Fondler? You said it was he who did the actual ravagement of Mar-Janah.”
“That is true, and God knows he is hateful in the extreme. But in this case he was acting at the Arab’s bidding.”
I had returned to my chambers to find, as I had hoped, that the maidservants had plied Ali Babar with enough liquor to numb him somewhat. So, although he variously had gasped with horror, wailed with grief and moaned with regret, as I told him all the circumstances attendant on Mar-Janah’s demise, he had not indulged in the extravagant thrashing about and howling which most Muslims consider the only proper form of lamentation. Of course, I had not dwelt in detail on what last remnants I had found of Mar-Janah, or her last minutes of life.
“Yes,” said Ali, after a long, pensive silence. “If you can arrange it, Marco, I
would
like to be present at the Arab’s execution. Without Mar-Janah, I have not any other desires or anticipations to be realized. If only that wish is granted, it will suffice.”
“I shall see to it—if all does go well. You might sit there and beseech Allah that all does go well.”
Saying which, I got out of my own chair and knelt down on the floor again, to pick up and put away the litter of keepsakes. As I collected the various things—Arpad’s kamàl, the pack of zhi-pai cards, and so on—I got the curious impression that something was gone from among them. I sat back and wondered, what could that be? I was not missing the Minister Pao’s yin, for I had taken that away myself. But something was gone that had been there when I first emptied my packs. Suddenly I realized what it was.
“Ali,” I said. “Did you perhaps pick up something from among this mess while I was absent?”
“No, nothing,” he said, with an air of not even having noticed the litter on the floor, which in his stunned and preoccupied condition he probably had not.
I asked the two Mongol maids, and they denied having touched anything. I went and got Hui-sheng, who was in the bedroom putting her own few belongings carefully away in closets and drawers. I smiled at that; it indicated that she planned to stay, and for more than a brief while. I took her hand and drew her into the main room, and indicated the goods on the floor, and made questioning gestures. Evidently she comprehended, for she replied with a shake of her pretty head.
So only Mafio could have taken it. What was missing was the small clay phial at which he had exclaimed, “Is that not a memento of the charlatan Hakim Mimdad?”
It was. It was the love philter the Hakim had given me on the Roof of the World, the potent potion allegedly employed by the long-ago poet Majnun and his poetess Laila to enhance their making of love. Mafìo knew exactly what it was, and he knew it was unpredictably dangerous, for he had heard me berating Mimdad after my one horrible experience with the stuff, and he had seen me only warily accept from the Hakim a second little bottle to carry away with me. Now he had filched that phial. What could he want it for?
There came to me, with a jolt, some other words he had spoken this morning: “If necessary, I am prepared to prove my caring …” And when I jeered, “Go and get the Arab delirious with love!” he had said: “I can do that!”
Dio le varda!
I must run and find him and stop him! God knows I had ample reason to be disillusioned and disgusted with Mafìo Polo, and not to care a bagatìn what became of him, but still … he was blood of my blood. And any self-pitying or self-glorifying act of self-sacrifice he might make now was futile and unnecessary, for I already had a trap in preparation for the damnable Arab Achmad. So I scrambled to my feet —causing Hui-sheng again to regard me with mild wonderment. But I got only as far as the door, for there stood the happily beaming Master Chao.
“It is accomplished,” he said. “And so is your vengeance, the moment you show this to Kubilai.”
He glanced past me and saw the others in the room, and tugged me by my sleeve out of their hearing down the corridor. He took out from some recess of his robes a folded, wrinkled, smudged paper that truly looked as if it had had a hard journey from Khanbalik to Yun-nan and back again. I opened it and gazed at what looked to me—as all Han documents looked to me—like a garden plot much tracked over by a flock of chickens.
“What does it say?”
“Everything necessary. Let us not take time for a translation. I hurried with it, and so must you. The Khan is right now on his way to the Hall of Justice, where he is about to declare the Cheng in session. Many matters of litigation have accumulated to await his judgment. He is conscientious about such things, even to the delaying of his acceptance of Sung’s surrender. But if you do not catch him before the Cheng convenes, he will be occupied there, and later in negotiations with the Sung Empress. It may be days before you can get to him again, and in that time Achmad could be busy to your detriment. Go quickly.”
“The moment I do this,” I said, “I am putting not just Achmad’s fate, but mine also, irrevocably in your hands, Master Chao.”
“And I mine, Polo, in yours. Go.”
I went, after running into my rooms again to gather up the other things I had for the Khakhan. And I did catch him, just as he and the lesser justices and the Tongue were taking their seats on the dais of the Cheng. He motioned amiably for me to approach the dais, and, when I gave him the items I had brought, he said, “There was no hurry about returning these things, Marco.”
“I had already kept them longer than I should have done, Sire. Here is the ivory pai-tzu plaque, and your yellow-paper letter of authority, and a paper the late Minister Pao was carrying at the time of his capture, and this note of mine, which lists those engineers who so capably positioned the huo-yao balls. Since I set down their names in Roman letters, Sire, perhaps you would listen as I read them. I hope I can pronounce them correctly, and that you can comprehend them, for you may wish to reward those men with some mark of—”
“Read, read,” he said indulgently.
I did so, while he idly laid aside the plaque and the letter he had given me to carry, and idly opened and glanced at the paper the Master Chao had forged. When he saw that it was written in Han, he idly handed it to the many-tongued Tongue, and went on listening to me. I was struggling to comprehend my own not clearly legible list of scrawls, reading aloud, “A man named Gegen, of the Kurai tribe … a man named Jassak, of the Merkit tribe … a man named Berdibeg, also of the Merkit—” when the Tongue suddenly leapt to his feet and, for all his grasp of many languages, gave a cry that was entirely inarticulate.
“Vakh!” exclaimed the Khakhan. “What ails you, man?”
“Sire!” the Tongue gasped excitedly. “This paper—a matter of the utmost importance! It must take precedence over all else! This paper—brought by that man yonder.”
“Marco?” Kubilai turned back to me. “You said it was taken from the late Minister Pao?” I said it was. He turned again to the Tongue. “Well?”
“You might prefer, Sire—” said the Tongue, looking pointedly at me, at the other justices and the guards. “You might prefer to clear the hall before I divulge the contents.”
“Divulge them,” growled the Khan, “and then I will decide if the hall is to be cleared.”
“As you command, Sire. Well, I can give you a word by word translation at your leisure. But suffice it now to say that this is a letter signed with the yin Pao Nei-ho. It hints—it implies—no, it bluntly reveals—a treacherous conspiracy between your cousin the Ilkhan Kaidu and—and one of your most trusted ministers.”
“Indeed?” said Kubilai frostily. “Then I think it best that no one leave this hall. Go on, Tongue.”
“In brief, Sire, it appears that the Minister Pao, whom we all now know to have been a Yi impostor here, hoped to avert the total devastation of his native Yun-nan. It appears that Pao had persuaded the Ilkhan Kaidu—or perhaps bribed him; money is mentioned—to march south and fling his forces upon the rear of ours then invading Yun-nan. It would have been an act of rebellion and civil war. In that event, it was expected that you yourself, Sire, would take the field. In your absence and the ensuing confusion, the—the Vice-Regent Achmad was to proclaim himself Khakhan—”
The assembled Cheng justices all cried “Vakh!” and “Shame!” and “Aiya!” and other expressions of horror.
“—upon which,” the Tongue resumed, “Yun-nan would declare its surrender and fealty to the new Khakhan Achmad, in return for an easy peace. Next, it seems also to have been agreed, the Yi would join with Kaidu in falling upon the Sung, and help to conquer that empire. And after all was done, Achmad and Kaidu would divide and rule the Khanate between them.”
There were more exclamations of “Vakh!” and “Aiya!” Kubilai had yet made no comment, but his face was like the black buran sandstorm rising over the desert. While the Tongue waited for some command, the ministers began passing the letter around among them.
“Is it truly Pao’s hand?” asked one.
“Yes,” said another. “He always wrote in the grass stroke, not the formal upright character.”
“And there, see?” said another. “To write money, he used the character for kauri-shell, which is currency among the Yi.”
Another asked, “What of the signature?”
“It looks to be genuinely his.”
“Send for the Yinmaster!”
“No one is to leave this room.”
But Kubilai heard and nodded, and a guard went running out. In the meantime, the ministers kept up a muted hubbub of argument and expostulation, and I heard one say solemnly, “It is too outrageous to be believed.”
“There is precedent,” said another. “Remember, some years ago, our Khanate acquired the land of Cappadocia by a similar ruse. A likewise trusted Chief Minister of the Seljuk Turki enlisted the covert aid of our Ilkhan Abagha of Persia to help him overthrow the rightful King Kilij. And, once the treachery was accomplished, the upstart allied Cappadocia to our Khanate.”
“Yes,” remarked another. “But happily there was a difference in those circumstances. Abagha conspired not for his own aggrandizement, but for the benefit of his Khakhan Kubilai and the whole Khanate.”
“Here comes the Yinmaster.”
Hurried along by the guardsman, old Master Yiu came shuffling into the Cheng. He was shown the paper, and had to squint at it only briefly before he pronounced:
“I cannot mistake my own work, my lords. That is indeed the yin I cut for the Minister of Lesser Races, Pao Nei-ho.”
“There!” said several of them, and “It is all true!” and “It is beyond question now!” and they all looked to Kubilai. He inhaled a great breath of air, and slowly sighed it out, and then said in a doomful voice, “Guards!” Those men snapped to rigid attention, and thumped their lances on the floor in unison. “Go and demand the presence here of the Chief Minister Achmad-az-Fenaket.” They thumped their lances again, and wheeled to march out, but Kubilai halted them for a moment and turned to me.
“Marco Polo, it seems that you have once again been of service to our Khanate—albeit inadvertently this time.” The words were commendatory enough, but, from the expression on his face, one would have thought I had tracked into the hall on my boots some dog dirt from the outdoors. “You may see it through to the close, Marco. Go with the guards and yourself utter to the Chief Minister the formal command: ‘Arise and come, dead man, for Kubilai the Khan of All Khans would hear your last words.’”
So I went, as instructed. But the Khakhan had not ordered me to return to the Cheng in company with the Arab, and, as it happened, I did not. I and my troop of guards arrived at Achmad’s chambers to find its outer doors unguarded and wide open. We went inside, and found his own sentries and all his servants gathered in attitudes of anxious listening and hand-wringing indecision outside his closed bedroom door. When they saw our arrival, the servants raised a clamor of greeting, and thanked Tengri and praised Allah that we had come, and it was some time before we could quiet them down and get a coherent account of what was going on.
The Wali Achmad, they said, had been in his bedchamber all day. That was not an uncommon occurrence, they said, because he often took work with him at night and continued, after awakening and breaking his fast, to deal with it while lying comfortably abed. But this day, there had begun to proceed from inside the bedroom some extraordinary noises and, after some understandable hesitation, a maidservant had pecked at the door to inquire if all was well. She had been answered by a voice recognizably the Wali’s, but in an unnaturally high and nervous tone, commanding, “Leave me be!” The unaccountable sounds had then resumed and continued: giggles rising to wild laughter, squeaks and sobs increasing to moans and groans, laughter again, and so on. The listeners —by then comprising Achmad’s whole staff clustered against the door—had been unable to decide whether the noises expressed pleasure or distress. In the course of what had now been some hours, they had frequently called out to their master and knocked on the door and tried to open it and peer in. But the door was fastened tight shut, and they were debating the propriety of breaking through it when fortunately we arrived and saved them having to decide.