Of the various leading officers mentioned by my hosts, the only name I recognized was that of the Ilkhan Kaidu. So I asked if they had ever been led in battle by the Khakhan Kubilai whom I hoped to meet in the not too distant future. They said they had never had the high honor to be directly under his command, but had been fortunate enough to glimpse him once or twice at some remove. They said he was of manly beauty and soldierly bearing and statesmanlike wisdom, but that the most impressive of his qualities was his much-feared temper.
“He can be more fierce even than our fierce Ilkhan Kaidu,” said one of them. “No man is eager to raise the wrath of the Khakhan Kubilai. Not even Kaidu.”
“Nor the very elements of the earth and sky,” said another. “Why, people call out the name of the Khakhan when it thunders—‘Kubilai!’—so the lightning will not strike them. I have heard even our fearless Kaidu do that.”
“Truly,” said another, “in the presence of the Khakhan Kubilai, the wind does not presume to blow too strongly, or the rain to fall harder than a drizzle, or to splash up any mud on his boots. Even the water in his pitcher shrinks fearfully from him.”
I commented that that must be rather a nuisance when he was thirsty. That was a sacrilegious remark to make about the most powerful man in the world, but no one present raised an eyebrow, for we were all quite drunk by then. We were seated again in the yurtu, and my hosts had gone through several flagons of kumis, and I had imbibed a goodly amount of their arkhi. The Mongols will not ever constrain themselves to have just one drink, or let a guest have just one, for when the one is downed they exclaim:
“A man cannot walk on one foot!” and they pour another. And that one foot requires another, and that another, and so on. The Mongols go even into death still drinking, so to speak. A slain warrior is always buried on the battlefield under a cairn of stones, and he is interred in a seated position, holding his drinking horn in his hand at waist level.
The day had given way to darkness when I decided that I had better stop drinking or risk qualifying for interment myself. I climbed to my feet and thanked my hosts for their hospitality and made my farewells and took my leave of them, while they cried cordially after me, “Mendu, sain urkek! A good horse and a wide plain to you, until we meet again!”
I was not on a horse, but afoot, and therefore staggered somewhat. But that excited no comment from anybody, as I weaved through the bok and back through the Kashgar gate and through the scented streets to the karwansarai of the Five Felicities. I lurched into our chamber, and stopped short, staring. A large, black-garbed, black-bearded priest stood there. It took me a moment to recognize him as my Uncle Mafio and, in my fuddled condition, all I could think was, “Dear God, what depth of depravity has he sunk to now? Uu?”
3
I slumped onto a bench and sat grinning as my uncle preened piously in his cassock. My father, sounding peeved, quoted an old saying: “The clothes make the man, but a habit does not make a monk. Let alone a priest, Mafio. Where did you get it?”
“I bought it from that Father Boyajian. You remember him, Nico, from when we were here last.”
“Yes. An Armeniyan would probably peddle the Host. Why did you not make him an offer for that?”
“A sacramental wafer would mean nothing to the Ilkhan Kaidu, but this disguise will. His own chief wife, the Ilkhatun, is a converted Christian—at least a Nestorian. So I am trusting that Kaidu will respect this cloth.”
“Why? You do not. I have heard you criticize the Church in utterances that verge on heresy. And now this. It is blasphemy!”
Uncle Mafio protested, “The cassock is not in itself a liturgical garment. Anybody can wear one, as long as he does not pretend to its sanctity. I do not. I could not, if I wanted to. Deuteronomy, you know: ‘An eunuch, whose testicles are broken, shall not enter into the Church of the Lord.’ Capòn mal caponà.”
“Mafìo! Do not try to justify your impiety with self-pity.”
“I am only saying that if Kaidu mistakes me for a priest, I see no need to correct him. Boyajian gives it as his opinion that a Christian may employ any subterfuge in dealing with a heathen.”
“I do not accept a Nestorian reprobate as an authority on Christian behavior.”
“Had you rather accept Kaidu’s decree? Confiscation, or worse? Look, Nico. He has Kubilai’s letter; he knows that we were bidden to bring priests to Kithai. Without any priests, we are mere vagrants wandering through Kaidu’s domain with a most tempting lot of valuables. I will not claim that I am a priest, but if Kaidu supposes it—”
“That white collar never protected anybody’s neck from a headsman’s ax.”
“It is better than nothing. Kaidu can do as he pleases to ordinary travelers, but if he slays or detains a priest, the ripples will eventually reach Kubilai’s court. And a priest whom Kubilai sent for? We know that Kaidu is temerarious, but I doubt that he is suicidally so.” Uncle Mafio turned to me. “What do you say, Marco? Observe your uncle as a reverend father. How do I look?”
“Magnissifent,” I said thickly.
“Hm,” he murmured, regarding me more closely. “It will help, yes, if Kaidu is as drunk as you are.”
I started to say that he probably would be, but I fell suddenly asleep where I sat.
The next morning, my uncle was again wearing the cassock when he came to the karwansarai’s dining table, and my father again began berating him. Nostril and I were present, but did not participate in the dispute. To the Muslim slave it was, I suppose, a matter of total unconcern. And I stayed silent because my head was hurting. But both the argument and our breaking of our fast were interrupted by the arrival of a Mongol messenger from the bok. The man, dressed in splendid war regalia, swaggered into the inn like a newcome conqueror, strode directly to our table and, without any courtesy of greeting, said to us—in Farsi to make sure we all understood:
“Arise and come with me, dead men, for the Ilkhan Kaidu would hear your last words!”
Nostril gasped so that he choked on whatever he was eating, and began to cough, meanwhile goggling his eyes with terror. My father pounded him on the back and said, “Be not alarmed, good slave. That is the usual wording of a summons from a Mongol lord. It portends no harm.”
“Or it does not necessarily,” my uncle amended. “I am still glad that I thought of this disguise.”
“Too late to make you doff it now,” muttered my father, for the messenger was pointing imperiously toward the outer door. “I just hope, Mafio, that you will temper your profane performance with priestly decorum.”
Uncle Mafio raised his right hand to each of the three of us in the sign of benediction, smiled beatifically and said with utmost unction, “Si non caste, tamen caute.”
The mock-pious gesture and the mock-solemn Latin play on words were so typical of my uncle’s mischievously cheerful bravado that I—even feeling as sour as I did—had to laugh aloud. Granted, Mafio Polo had some lamentable shortcomings as a Christian and as a man, but he was a good companion to have standing by in an uneasy situation. The Mongol messenger glowered at me when I laughed, and he barked his command at us again, and we all got up and followed him from the building at a quick march.
It was raining that day, which did not do much to lighten my mal di capo, or to make more cheerful our trudge through the streets and beyond the city wall and through the packs of yapping and snarling dogs of the Mongol bok. We hardly raised our heads to look around until the messenger shouted, “Halt!” and directed us to pass between the two fires burning before the entrance to Kaidu’s yurtu.
I had not been near it on my previous visit to the camp, and now I realized that this was the sort of yurtu which must have inspired the Western word “horde.” It would indeed have encompassed a whole horde of the ordinary yurtu tents, for this was a grand pavilion. It was almost as high and as big around as the karwansarai in which we were residing; but that was a solidly built edifice, and this was entirely of yellow-clayed felt, supported by tent poles and stakes and braided horsehair ropes. Several mastiffs roared and lunged against their chains at the south-facing entrance, and on either side of that flapped opening hung elaborately embroidered felt panels. The yurtu was no palace, but it certainly overshadowed the lesser ones of the bok. And next to it rested the wagon which transported it from place to place, for Kaidu’s pavilion was usually moved intact, not dismantled and bundled. The wagon was the most huge I have ever seen anywhere: a flat bed of planks, as big as a meadow, balanced on an axle like a tree trunk and with wheels like mill wheels. The drawing of it, I learned later, required fully twenty-two yaks hitched in two wide spans of eleven abreast. (The drafters had to be placid yaks or oxen; no horses or camels would have worked in such close proximity. )