“Just one thing,” said the Ilkhan, again using a tone of severity. “I am told by my Lady Ilkhatun, who is a Christian and should know, that Christian priests maintain a vow of poverty, and possess nothing of material value. But I am also informed that you men travel with horses heavy-laden with treasure.”
My father threw my uncle a look of annoyance, and said, “Some baubles, Lord Kaidu. They belong to no priest, but are destined for your cousin Kubilai. They are tokens of tribute from the Shah of Persia and the Sultan of India Aryana.”
“The Sultan is my liege subject,” said Kaidu. “He has no right to give away what belongs to me. And the Shah is a subject of my cousin the Ilkhan Abagha, who is no friend to me. Whatever he sends is contraband, subject to confiscation. Do you understand me, uu?”
“But, Lord Kaidu, we have promised to deliver—”
“A broken promise is no more than a broken pot. The potter can always make more. Have no concern for your promises, Ferenghi. Just bring your packhorses at this hour tomorrow, here to my yurtu, and let me see which of the baubles catch my fancy. I may let you keep some few of them. Do you understand, uu?”
“Lord Kaidu—”
“Uu! Do you understand?”
“Yes, Lord Kaidu.”
“Since you understand, then obey!” He abruptly stood up, signaling the end of the audience.
We bowed our way out of the great yurtu, and collected Nostril from where he waited outside, and we started back through the rain and the mud underfoot, this time unaccompanied, and my uncle said to my father:
“I think we did rather well, Nico, in concert there. Especially adroit of you to remember that Ling story. I never heard it before.”
“Neither did I,” my father said drily. “But surely the Han have some such instructive tale, among the many they do have.”
I opened my mouth for the first time. “Something else you said, Father, gave me an idea. I will meet you back at the inn.”
I parted from them, to go and call on my Mongol hosts of the day before. I requested an introduction to one of their armorers, and got it, and asked the man at the forge if I might borrow for a day one of his yet-unhammered sheets of metal. He graciously found for me a piece of copper that was long and broad, but thin, so it wobbled and rippled and thrummed as I carried it to the karwansarai. My father and uncle paid no attention as I carried it into our room and leaned it against the wall, for they were again arguing.
“All the fault of that cassock,” said my father. “Your being an impoverished priest gave Kaidu the notion of impoverishing us.”
“Nonsense, Nico,” said my uncle. “He would have found some other excuse, if that had not occurred to him. What we must do is offer him freely something from our hoard, and hope he will ignore the rest.”
“Well … ,” said my father, thinking. “Suppose we give him our cods of musk. At least they are ours to give.”
“Oh, come, Nico! To that sweaty barbarian? Musk is for making fine perfume. You might as well give Kaidu a powder puff, for all the use he would have of it.”
They kept on like that, but I stopped listening, for I had my own idea, and I went to explain to Nostril the part he would play in it.
The next day, a day of only drizzling rain, Nostril loaded two of the three packhorses with our cargo of valuables—we of course always kept them safe inside our chambers whenever we lodged in a karwansarai—and also roped my sheet of metal onto one of the horses, and led them for us to the Mongol bok. There, when we entered the Ilkhan’s yurtu, he stayed outside to unload the goods, and Kaidu’s guardsmen began carrying them in and stripped off their protective wrappers.
“Hui!” Kaidu exclaimed, as he started to inspect the various objects. “These engraved golden platters are superb! A gift from the Shah Zaman, you said, uu?”
“Yes,” my father said coldly, and my uncle added, in a melancholy voice, “A boy named Aziz once strapped them on his feet to cross a quicksand,” and I took out a kerchief and loudly blew my nose.
There came from outside a low, mumbling, bumbling mutter of sound. The Ilkhan looked up, surprised, saying, “Was that thunder, uu? I thought there was only a sprinkle of rain … .”
“I beg to inform the Great Lord Kaidu,” said one of his guardsmen, bowing low, “that the day is gray and wet, but there are no thunderclouds to be seen.”
“Curious,” Kaidu muttered, and put down the golden dishes. He rummaged among the many other things accumulating in the tent and, finding a particularly elegant ruby necklace, again exclaimed, “Hui!” He held it up to admire it. “The Ilkhatun will thank you personally for this.”
“Thank the Sultan Kutb-ud-Din,” said my father.
I blew my nose into my kerchief. The rippling rumble of thunder came again from outside, and somewhat louder now. The Ilkhan started so that he dropped the string of rubies, and his mouth closed and opened soundlessly—but framing a word I could read from his lips—and then said aloud, “There it is again! But thunder without thunderclouds … uu … ?”
When a third item caught his greedy eye, a bolt of fine Kashmir cloth, I barely gave him time to cry “Hui!” before I blew my nose, and the thunder gave a menacing grumble, and he jerked his hand away as if the cloth had burned him, and again he mouthed the word, and my father and uncle gave me an odd look.
“Pardon, Lord Kaidu,” I said. “I think this thunder weather has given me a head cold.”
“You are pardoned,” he said offhandedly. “Aha! And this, is this one of those famous Persian qali carpets, uu?”
Nose blow. Veritable clamor of thunder. His hand again jerked away and his lips convulsively made the word, and he glanced fearfully skyward. Then he looked around at us, his slit eyes almost opened to roundness, and he said:
“I was but toying with you!”
“My lord?” inquired Uncle Mafio, whose own lips were twitching now.
“Toying! Jesting! Teasing you!” Kaidu said, almost pleadingly. “A tiger sometimes toys with his quarry, when he is not hungry. And I am not hungry! Not for tawdry acquisitions. I am Kaidu, and I own countless mou of land and innumerable li of the Silk Road and more cities than I have hairs and more subject people than a gobi has pebbles. Did you really think I lack for rubies and gold dishes and Persian qali, uu?” He feigned a hearty laugh, “Ah, ha, ha, ha!” even bending double to pound his meaty fists on his massive knees. “But I had you worried, did I not, uu? You took my toying in earnest.”
“Yes, you truly fooled us, Lord Kaidu,” said my uncle, managing to subdue his own incipient merriment.
“And now the thunder has ceased,” said the Ilkhan, listening. “Guards! Wrap up all these things again and reload them on the horses of these elder brothers.”
“Why, thank you, Lord Kaidu,” said my father, but his twinkling eyes were on me.
“And here, here is my cousin’s letter of ukaz,” said the Ilkhan, pressing it into my uncle’s hand. “I return it to you, priest. Take yourself and your religion and these paltry baubles to Kubilai. Perhaps he is a collector of such trinkets, but Kaidu is not. Kaidu does not take, he gives! Two of the best warriors of my personal pavilion guard will attend you to your karwansarai, and they will ride with you whenever you are ready to continue your journey eastward … .”
I slipped out of the yurtu as the guardsmen began to carry out the rejected goods, and slipped around to the back side of it, where Nostril stood holding the metal sheet by one edge and waiting to flap it again whenever he heard me blow my nose. I gave him the signal employed throughout the East to mean “purpose accomplished”—showing him my fist with upraised thumb—took the piece of copper from him and trotted across the bok to return it to the armorer, and got back to the Ilkhan’s yurtu by the time the horses were reloaded.