“It doesn’t look like a building occupied by a family out of favor,” Jaufre said, inspected the elaborate carvings on door and columns.
Johanna wiped her sweaty palms on her tunic, that same tunic made of the raw silk dyed black that her father had brought back from his last trip to Kinsai. It showed its many leagues: Cambaluc to Terak, Terak to Talikan, Talikan to Baghdad, Baghdad to Gaza, Gaza to Venice, and the doorstep of her grandfather’s house. She wore the tunic now like a badge of honor.
They gathered behind her, her fellow travelers, her compatriots, her friends. Her family. With them at her back she could do anything. Even knock on her grandfather’s door.
She stepped forward, raised the large brass knocker and rapped the wood with it twice, three times. The sound echoed beyond the door. After a few moments footsteps were heard. The massive door swung back.
She and Jaufre had seized the few calm moments at sea to use Captain Gradenigo and those of his crew amenable to bribes to amass a rudimentary knowledge of Italian. What she said now had been carefully rehearsed, over and over and over again.
“Good afternoon,” she said. “My name is Wu Johanna, late of Cambaluc in Everything Under the Heavens. I am looking for Ser Marco Polo. Is this his home?”
The man who had answered the door was obviously a servant, and an upperclass one if the quality of his clothing and the loftiness of his manner were any indication. “It is.”
He offered no further encouragement. Nonplussed, she said, “Well, I’m glad we have found the right place.” He did not return her smile and she lost interest in further politesse. In a manner even loftier than his own, she said, “Could you please inform your master that his granddaughter wishes to speak with him?”
“Ser Polo lies on his deathbed,” he said. “And the occupants of this house have no time to spare for ragamuffins off the street purporting to be relatives.”
And he shut the door in her face.
The Land Beyond
Book III of Silk and Song
—
Dana Stabenow
1
Venice, December, 1323
The best that could be said about winter in Venice was that the colder temperatures suppressed the smell of the canals. There was, however, no known advantage to the constant fogs that lay heavily on the Laguna Veneta, ghostly tentacles of which slithered up the canals to enfold the city in a chill embrace that no hearth fire however large could ease. After nearly two years spent traveling the Road, most of the journey spent in dry desert country where a day without a hot sun glaring down just meant that night had fallen, it took some getting used to, especially in the location Johanna currently occupied.
Which was the minuscule square fronting Ca’ Polo, with lesser buildings crowding the sides. She had found an alcove created by the uneven joining of two of these, bought a dark, hooded cloak that enveloped her head to foot and melted into the shadow created there, from where she observed the comings and goings of the Polo family. By the end of each day the encroaching fog had soaked her from shoulder to knee. It was a wonder she hadn’t come down with inflammation of the lungs. More irritating still, watching the house had been productive of very little in the way of information. Her grandfather, Marco Polo, lay on his deathbed, but that much she had heard from the supercilious steward who had closed the door in her face the day they had arrived in Venice.
The two older Polo daughters and their husbands were the first people she identified, though she only saw them once and each couple for the exact amount of time specified by duty and no more. They arrived by private gondola, attended by personal guards, wore sumptuous clothes that shouted their worth from across the square and wooden pattens on their richly embroidered shoes to keep their feet up out of the mud. They were not noticeably grieving as they left.
She didn’t see anyone who looked like the third daughter, Moreta. She didn’t see the wife, Donata, either, but that was more understandable.
Summarily dismissed from the door of Ca’ Polo, the second order of business on that day of their arrival in the Jewel of the Sea was to look for lodgings for the company, man and beast. Johanna found North Wind and the other horses stabling across the lagoon in Marghera, a brief boat ride away so that she could still see him and ride him every day. The farmer never raised so much as an eyebrow at Johanna’s dressing in trousers and riding astride, and for that alone she would have paid him twice the silver penny he had asked for his fee.
She kept her ears open while engaged in these homely occupations, and by keeping silent learned a good deal. Venice was ruled by a Doge, one Giovanni Soranzo, eighty-three years old, a leader with the majority of the merchants of Venice solidly in his camp. This appeared to be less due to the remembrance of the martial exploits of his youth, when he conquered Caffa during the last war with Genoa, than for the rare ability to keep the peace on the Middle Sea. As every marginally competent merchant knew, peace was good for business. In the eleven years since Soranzo’s ascension, Venice had made treaties with Byzantium, Sicily, Milan, Bologna, Brescia, Tunisia, Trebizond and Persia, which had greatly facilitated the movement, not to mention the security of sale goods. Doge Soranzo had also presided over the opening of trade with England and Flanders, which either inspired or was inspired by the building of a new kind of ship, called a merchant galley. It was wider and longer than existing ships, and was propelled by both sail and by 200 oarsmen. The oarsmen were free men, and armed, so that upon attack the galley could muster 200 more men to its defense. She went down to the Arsenal to see several upon the ways, and even saw one of them launched, and was impressed with the nimble way the craft took up the wind in its sails and its speed over water when it did.
Along with the rest of Venice they all spent extended periods down at the Arsenal, watching the galleys being built, and they never missed a launch. Jaufre wasted a good deal of time figuring the payload per galley, and came to the conclusion that it was roughly equivalent to that of six hundred camels. Respectable, he thought. Given a competent captain, favorable weather, and no war breaking out between any countries with coastlines, a trader could make a reasonably good living. Always supposing the ship didn’t sink. Remembering the rough passage from Gaza in November, Jaufre could only imagine that they did with a frequency that would put said merchant out of business and probably into the poorhouse, if not debtor’s prison.
In a month she and Jaufre and Shasha were roughly fluent in Italian, the lingua franca of the Middle Sea and Johanna practiced her fluency by sidling up to groups of Venetians and eavesdropping on their conversations. Whenever someone mentioned the name “Polo,” her ears pricked up. One day a group of lawyers were trumping one another’s stories of bad clients. Marco Polo had figured in several of those stories, either as claimant or defendant. It seemed that her grandfather was somewhat litigious in nature. She was smart enough during these intelligence forays not to draw attention to herself, drifting off when anyone looked her way, but gossip along with trade goods was the fuel that powered Venice, and it was amazing how much information she managed to acquire on the inmates of the Polo palazzo, or, as it was known more familiarly, Ca’ Polo.
Upon his return from Cambaluc, or Cathay as the Venetians would have it, her grandfather, his father and his uncle had had some problems re-establishing themselves in Venetian society. This accomplished, chiefly by the generous giving of fabulous gifts brought with them from the East, his father and uncle resumed their positions as merchants in good standing. Marco enlisted in the Venetian war on Genoa and was captured in the Battle of Curzola.
She asked Félicien where Curzola was. A visit to the Biblioteca Marciana and he reported back. “It’s an island in Dalmatia. There was a huge battle there twenty-five years ago, between Venice and Genoa. Venice lost.”
Johanna nodded. That much she’d gotten. “My grandfather was taken prisoner there. It’s where he wrote Il Milione.”
“Ah.”
“What?”
“He
didn’t write it, exactly.”
“What do you mean?”
“He dictated it. A man from Pisa, name of Rustichello, shared his cell. He wrote down your grandfather’s stories and published them in a book.” Félicien paused. “And then about a hundred others copied it and printed it, too.”
Johanna looked at him, and he held up his hands, palms out. “Don’t believe me, go look for yourself. Any bookstall will have a used copy, I promise you.”
Venice boasted on average one bookstore per canal, and that was just between bridges. No bridge itself was worthy of the name unless it bore at least one bookstall itself. She sampled a dozen between their lodgings and the Grand Canal and it was as Félicien had said, copies of her grandfather’s Il Milione were readily available, some in readable condition, many not, and all, it seemed, copied by a different hand and bound by a different publisher. Oddly, as many copies seemed to have been published in French as had been in Italian. “Of course,” Félicien said matter-of-factly. “French is the language of romances.”
Johanna compared pages of a few of these diverse editions side by side and found very little uniformity of text between them. Some copyists appeared to have even inserted their own narrative, real or imagined, into her grandfather’s.
One thing was sure: Everyone in Venice had heard of Il Milione. It came as a shock to Marco Polo’s grand-daughter that almost everyone thought it was a fabrication from start to finish. Johanna, increasing her written Italian and French, was working her way through the fairest copy she could find of the earliest possible date of original publication, side by side with a French edition, and noted that the more fabulous of the tales her grandfather had been careful to begin with “Men say.” On the facts, facts she knew to be true from her own experience, he was unassailable, what was for sale where, local craft specialties and trading practices, regional social norms, distances between cities. He wrote of gunpowder, and spectacles, and coal, and paper money, all of which she had noticed were taking hold here in Venice.
“You have to wonder,” she said to Shasha that evening.
“What?”
“If my grandfather brought spectacles back with him. The recipe for gunpowder.” Johanna shrugged. “All of it. Everything he wrote about.”
It was a useful book for a merchant, Il Milione. But then, she thought, her grandfather was a merchant, after all.
And he lay dying at Ca’ Polo. It was common knowledge throughout the city that his wife waited only for the drawing of his last breath before dancing in the streets.
Because of course he had married. Of course he had. The fortune with which the Polos had returned had bought him a good match with one Donata Badoèr, daughter of a wealthy merchant. The midwife Johanna had this tale from over a mug of wine in a taverna off of St. Mark’s Square told her, “I delivered all three of their daughters. She told me after the birth of third one that he sold all of her dowry for himself.” The midwife, a stout woman with a red face, nodded emphatically. “There was a farm, and a house, and—” She waved an expansive hand and belched. “Property,” she said. “And he sold it, every bit of it. If you ask me, she never forgave him. I’d bet you a hundred ducats that she’ll do everything, short of holding a pillow over his face—” Johanna flinched but the midwife, busy with her wine, didn’t see it “—to see him out of this world as speedily as possible.” She belched again. “Traipsing back home after twenty years’ absence with a hatful of tales that would shame the devil himself. A liar, a braggart, and a fool, to think he would be believed when he came home. He probably spent the whole twenty years he was gone in Byzantium, collecting the stories of real travelers to try out on the gullible in Venice.” She snorted. “Although Venetians will believe anything. As Il Milione well proved.”
“Three daughters,” Johanna said indifferently, did the midwife but know it displaying an admirable hold on her temper.
The midwife eyed her empty mug. Johanna signaled for a refill and the woman drank half of it down in a single gulp. “Three daughters, yes,” she said, dabbing daintily at her mouth with the hem of her sleeve. “Fantina, Bellela, and Moreta. The first two are married.”
“And the third?”
The midwife drained her mug. “Moreta? They have yet to find her a husband. She still lives at home.”
Back in her shadowy corner across from the Polo residence, Johanna reviewed the information she had gleaned from a month’s worth of eavesdropping and bribery, and wondered after all if she shouldn’t just march up to the front door and try to force an entrance. Even being turned away a second time in ignominy would be better than standing in this thrice cursed fog. She shifted her sodden cloak in a vain attempt to find some part of it that was dry, and jumped at a noise that sounded like a muffled squeal.
She looked around to behold an urchin, her hair a mess of ink black curls clustering around a small face with a determined chin, a mouth pressed into a defiant line, and dark brown eyes, narrowed and glaring in an effort to project pugnacity and fearlessness. She couldn’t quite bring it off, and Johanna wondered what her own face looked like at that moment. She straightened her expression, not without effort. She touched the purse at her waist, containing her father’s book and the squared cylinder that was his bao. As always, the touch comforted her, and today it calmed her, too. “And who are you?” she said.
The chin came even more into evidence. “You’re standing in my spot.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“This is my spot. You can’t take it. I’m here all the time, and everyone who lives on this square knows me.”
And tossed her a coin from time to time, Johanna thought. Beggars the world over had their pitches. The girl’s rough homespun cloak was worn and too short and her face and hands looked as if they had not seen clean water in days. “Ah,” Johanna said. “My apologies. You weren’t here, so I thought it was unclaimed.” She didn’t mention that she’d been here off and on for a month unmolested.
“It isn’t.”
“I see that now.” Johanna paused. The girl couldn’t have been more than eight years old, nine at the most. “Perhaps I could rent it from you.”
The girl scowled. “Rent it?”
“Yes.” Johanna searched her pockets and produced a silver coin whose place of origin she did not immediately recognize and which could have been a solidus, an aureus, a denari, a bezant, a florin or something else altogether, because making change in Venice was like that.
The girl snorted. “I take in double that most mornings.”
Johanna doubted it. “I’m sure you do,” she said nevertheless. “One now, and another like it at the end of the day.” And then, struck with an idea, she said, “And two more like it every day, if you will stand watch here and take note of everyone who comes and goes to Ca’ Polo. You know which one is Ca’ Polo?”
With infinite scorn, the girl said, “I know all the palazzos in Venice.”
“It is agreed, then? I will meet you here at vespers each day. You will tell me everyone who came and went through that door, and I will pay you two silver pieces.”
“For how long?”
“For as long as I say.” Among other advantages, having someone else watch Ca’ Polo would free up enough of her time so that she could get over to see North Wind more often. Unused to being pent up in a paddock, he was already getting restive, and made his displeasure known to her by dumping her off his back at least once per visit.
The girl hesitated. “Very well.” She snatched the coin from Johanna’s hand and ran, her wooden soles clattering over the cobbles and the surface of the bridge as she vanished from view.
The encounter nearly caused her to miss the man who slipped out of the door opposite, but not quite.
He was short, with bowed legs. He was dressed in the fashion of Venetian men, a sleeveless tunic buttoned over a long-sleeved chemise and loose-fitting breeches, but when the hood of his cloak fell partway back from his face she caught her breath. He had a heavy br
ow, narrow, uptilting eyes, a short, flat nose and golden skin. A long, wispy mustache clung perilously to his upper lip and trailed down both sides of his mouth.
He was a Mongol. He had the look of Deshi the Scout, dead in the same cholera epidemic that had taken her mother that dreadful year in Cambaluc.
He pulled up his hood against the rain and hurried off. She slipped from her corner and followed.
He made several stops, one at an apothecary, one at a bookseller, and one where he walked all the way to the Rialto bridge to seek out a particular sweets seller, from whom he purchased a quantity of small, hard candies flavored with lemon.
Halfway back to the palazzo, she waited until he had drawn almost even to a small taverna and increased her pace to catch up with him. He shot her a cursory look and halted in his tracks, staring at her with eyes slowly widening, as if in recognition.
“Steppe rider,” she said in Uighur, “you are far from home.”
Still he stared, and made no reply.
Very well, it appeared shock tactics would best carry the day. She squared her shoulders, raised her chin, and said, “I am the daughter of Shu Ming of Cambaluc, who was the daughter of Shu Lin, also of Cambaluc, and the wife of the Venetian traveler, Marco Polo. I believe you serve my grandfather.” She gestured at the taverna. “Shall we sit, sir? You must have questions. I know I do.”
She gave a polite bow and stepped forward. Perforce, he fell back, and soon found himself inside a snug room where a bright, crackling fire gave at least the illusion of warmth. Johanna saw them seated at the most private table in the darkest corner of the taverna, regrettably far from the hearth, and the alewife bustled forward with a clay pitcher of mulled wine, two battered but clean pewter mugs and a plate of bread, cheese and olives. Johanna tipped her lavishly, conveying with a jerk of her head the private nature of her business. The alewife, a diplomat in coif and apron, retired behind her serving counter and never looked in their direction again.
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