by Chad Brecher
It has been whispered that just after Genghis Khan died in his sleep, one of the soldiers emerged from the wilderness of the world. The man was thin and weak. His eyes were wide and wild, having been consumed by a troubled mind. Upon learning that his master had died, the soldier fatally collapsed, succumbed by the sorrow of this loss. Before he passed, he revealed the location of the garden as his master had desired and left this world with a final clue: the sky has fallen…lift it to enter.
The body of the Great Khan was transported in secret to this location. It is rumored that all those souls unfortunate to cross the path of this somber procession were slain. Such care was undertaken to ensure that the burial site would remain hidden that the bearers of the body were put to the sword until only a small group of the most faithful followers of the Great Khan remained and knew the location. Even the horses that bore the body were killed to prevent them from returning to the site. These followers pledged their lives and the lives of their descendants to the protection of this holy site.
Having an unending curiosity, I, Messer Polo, embarked on a journey of my own to discover that place where life began and life ended. I traveled to the ends of the Khan’s lands in search of the garden. I listened to the diverse inhabitants of the Empire and tread carefully through myths and legends. I hung the golden piazza around my neck and bore the weight of it in order to be provided passage and provisions through lands off limits. And after years of searching, I finally approached the gates of the Garden and saw the flaming eyes of the cherubim. I stopped. The fiery sword of the guardians would strike down those that trespass. The Garden was only for the righteous. I thought what a twist of fate for the Great Khan to journey so far only to return to the Endless Sky.
I traveled back to the court of Kublai Khan with fragments of my journey hidden in my clothing and constructed a map in secret to the garden. But with time, there were shadows in the court who stirred. They held true power and were those whom suspicions were greeted with the edge of a sharpened blade or poisoned tip of an arrow. I don’t know how it was that I survived that time. The Lord himself must have interceded on my behalf to prevent my slaughter.
During a trip to Kara-Khoto on behalf of my master, Kublai Khan, a chance encounter with a white monk traveling in a caravan provided an opportunity. He was from a Camaldolese monastery on San Michele and as fortune had it he was a map-maker himself. I told him of my voyage and prayed for his confidence. He agreed to take the map and keep this knowledge safe within the walls of his order.
As the death of Kublai Khan neared, an occasion arose to leave the land of the Tartars and the court of the Khan. When I returned to Venice, the secret of the garden burned inside of me. May the Lord forgive me; I could not confide this knowledge to His Holiness in Rome. I would be responsible for a calamity worse than the Crusades. Take heed of Merv.
The map-makers will remember the path when the world is finally filled in. It is as constant and elemental as the winds that guide the sails and blow across the plains eastward…always eastward.
59
The kitchen was silent as Alex finished reading and placed the handwritten translation upon the table. The stainless steel teaspoon that was resting precariously on the edge of the saucer jiggled slightly, cutting through the heavy silence like a wind-chime. Alex glanced at the faces of his colleagues and found them stone-faced, as if soaking in by osmosis the significance of what they had just heard.
A thunderous clap broke the solitude and all eyes turned to Clay.
“I knew it! I knew it all along. Polo found it. Who’s the crazy one now?”
“Jury’s still out, Redmund,” Ellie cynically replied. “It all sounds a bit like a fairy tale to me, as if Marco was reading too many tales of King Arthur or Alexandrian romances. It doesn’t seem we are any closer to figuring out where this so-called Garden of Eden is located. After all this, Marco couldn’t be a little more specific? I mean we were nearly entombed for eternity trying to get a hold of this fourth book and we’re left with another mystery. Where do we go from here?”
“We find this map, of course.” Clay tapped his finger on the table for emphasis. The teaspoon finally toppled off the saucer with a clang.
“Oh, that’s all. And how do you plan on doing that?”
“That’s what you two are here for,” Jonas challenged.
Alex remained silent as the three began to argue. He reached for a piece of paper and turned it over, exposing the blank side. He withdrew a pen from his pocket and traced out the symbol:
“It’s beginning to make sense.”
The three continued to quarrel.
“It’s beginning to make sense,” Alex repeated in a louder voice. The three stopped their debate and turned to Alex. They looked down at the symbol with confusion.
“What makes sense, Alex,” Ellie asked softly, her face flushed.
“What do you think of when you see this symbol?”
“It looks like a key to me.”
“I would have to agree with you. We need to put it in the context of where it was found. It was hidden at the bottom of the box Ellie found in Mosul, the one with the diamonds.”
Ellie reached into Alex’s leather satchel, removed the box, and placed it before them. Alex picked it up and showed it to each of them.
“What has confused me for so long is the cross associated with the key. It seemed incomplete, as if someone forgot to extend the horizontal beam of the cross to the left. But what if it was never meant to be a cross? If you turn the symbol on its side…” Alex flipped the paper ninety degrees until it was lying vertically.
“It’s a symbol for a TO-map.”
“A what map?” Jonas asked.
“A T…O…map. During medieval times, the world was depicted as a circle…an ‘O.’ Alex made a ring with his index finger and thumb. All humanity was contained within this circle. To provide some organization a ‘T’ was placed within the circle to act as a partition. The major rivers of the world composed the arms of the ‘T.’ The rivers were the Don, Mediterranean, and Nile. Above the horizontal portion of the ‘T’ was the Eastern world. To the left was the north, the right was the south, and the bottom was the Western world.”
Alex drew out a diagram of the TO map.
“This was how the world was depicted at the time of Polo. We’ve been searching for a map all along. The map is the key! It has always been the strangest thing about Marco Polo’s Description of the World. Here is a man that spent much of his life traveling throughout the world…a man who brags about his knowledge of the diverse lands and there’s not one map in his account. Every map one sees in a volume of the Description of the World is a product of an editor piecing together his travels through his writings. Many historians have postulated that there must have been a map but none has ever been found.”
“Why keep it a secret for so long? I just don’t understand the danger of releasing the details?” Jonas pulled up a chair beside Alex and sat down.
“He spelled it out in the fourth book.”
“I must have missed it.”
A branch rattled against the window. Alex thought of how best to start.
“Let’s take a step back, a step back to the time of Genghis Khan. Before Genghis Khan united the tribes of the steppes…”
Jonas held up his hand. “I think you’re going to have to give us the ‘Idiots-version’ of Genghis Khan, starting with what are the steppes.”
“OK, fair enough. We are talking about Central Asia. You know, the ‘stans. Places like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and also Mongolia. The steppes are the plains of Central Asia. They are vast landscapes, usually grasslands where few trees live, and the temperatures can fluctuate wildly from very hot to brutally cold. Nomadic tribes lived on these steppes, hunting for scarce resources and fighting amongst themselves. They were fierce warriors hardened by the elements. They were hopelessly divided, fractured by petty squabbles and jealousies. That was until a boy named Temüjin rose out of poverty t
o unite the tribes of the steppes.
“He became Genghis Khan or ‘oceanic sovereign’ and ruled with an iron grip. His people were the Mongols. Interestingly, many in the West referred to the Mongols as the Tartars after the name of a small tribe called the Tartas, who Genghis Khan subjugated. It was also a nice play on words, because Tartarus was the Greek version of Hell. Typically outnumbered, Genghis Khan was a master military strategist and led his people to vicious victories over far numerous opponents. Within a quarter of a century, the Mongols conquered more land than the Romans did in three to four centuries. Think of that for a second — in only twenty-five years. They were so powerful that the Western world shuddered in their armor at the threat of meeting the Mongols in battle. Many in the West felt that the rise of the Mongols spelled the beginning of the end for humanity and that the Mongols were surely the minions of Satan.
“Like most things, however, it was never that simple. Although they were a people who delighted in war, Genghis Khan also served to create an Empire of relative peace and stability in a land used to chaos. It was, after all, during precisely this time that the Silk Road flourished and commerce bloomed between the West and the East. The Mongol rule enabled caravans to travel safely along these routes. Indeed, it was what allowed the Polos to travel as freely as they did.
“Now, let’s imagine that the Garden of Eden had been found. It would be wondrous to be sure. Now imagine that it was located in enemy territory. Not just any enemy, but the most fearsome warriors this world has ever known. These warriors, after all, decimated the celebrated Templar knights of Georgia. Now imagine if the body of Genghis Khan were buried within this sanctified soil — the minion of the Devil within the land of creation. Psychologically, this could threaten the foundation of the Judeo-Christian faith — how could God allow such a sacrilege to persist? Then imagine the clamor to reclaim this land — a call not unlike that of the Crusades to free Jerusalem. How many Christians and Muslims were slaughtered during those campaigns? Keep in mind that the Mongols routed the powerful Muslim armies. Surely the Christians could be defeated easily. If Marco Polo had transmitted this information to the Pope, who knows what this world would look like today?”
“What did he mean by ‘Take heed of Merv’?” Ellie asked.
“Merv.” Alex grew quiet and nearly bowed his head. “Merv was the largest city in the world in the twelfth century, a virtual oasis within Central Asia…that was until it came up against the Mongol onslaught. In the early thirteenth century, the city of Merv boasted vast libraries, mosques, palaces, and observatories. It was a very prideful city and so when a small group of Mongols probed the perimeter of the city, they were captured, paraded within the walls of the city, and executed. Genghis Khan was not one to be disrespected. He returned with a larger force and quickly subdued the city. The artisans of the city were spared and made into slaves while the rest of the inhabitants were summarily killed. It is said that each Mongol soldier was responsible for the massacre of three to four hundred citizens. In fact, a noted cleric gave an account that a total of one million three hundred thousand people were slaughtered over a mere thirteen-day period of time.”
“One million three hundred thousand people? That’s crazy,” Ellie responded with her hand on her mouth.
“They literally wiped Merv off the planet. Look for it now. You won’t find much left.”
“I’m beginning to see Polo’s point of view,” Jonas acknowledged.
Clay began to pace around the kitchen. He leaned over a center island and ducked his head to avoid copper pans hanging from the ceiling from iron hooks.
“Well, we’ve established why dear old Marco decided to keep this all a secret but how do we find this map of his. It does not appear that we have much to fear from Genghis Khan or his troops now that he is long gone.”
“He gave the map to a Camaldolese monk,” Alex responded.
“Never heard of a Camaldolese monk.” Jonas scratched his head.
“It’s some sort of monastic sect. I’ll have to research it,” Alex announced.
“Polo didn’t just say ‘monk,’ he said ‘white monk,” Ellie added.
“I think that’s how it would be translated. It’s strange…the wording. Redmund, do you have internet access.”
“What am I, a barbarian?”
“I take it that is a yes.” Next to the key symbol, Alex wrote Camaldolese and white monk. “I guess we have some more research to do.”
“Why not go in?” Ellie wondered aloud.
“What’s that?” Alex asked.
“If Polo was at the gates of the Garden, why not take the final step? How could he resist?”
“It says in the fourth book that he didn’t feel righteous,” Alex responded and put down his pen.
Ellie looked at each of the members of their group. She kept silent but could tell that they were all asking themselves the same thing.
Am I righteous enough?
60
Ellie reached out and tilted the monitor of the laptop computer until she was satisfied.
“Is that O.K. for everyone?”
Jonas and Clay nodded as they inched their chairs closer to Alex, nearly pinning his chair against the desk. Alex glanced back over his shoulder with annoyance and shuffled his chair back and forth to create a pocket of wiggle-room. Ellie swiveled her hips along the edge of the desk, perched herself on the corner, and leaned in.
Alex’s fingers explored the plastic of the keyboard and typed “Calmaldolese” into the search engine. A new screen appeared, listing numerous sites. He toggled through the hits and finally settled on an online Encyclopedia of Catholicism. His eyes scanned through the content of the site, sifting through pages of minutiae.
“It says here that the Calmaldolese are a small sect of the Benedictine monastic order. The sect was founded in the eleventh century by an Italian monk named St. Romuald who was attempting to bridge the world of the hermit with the more community-focused world of monastic living — the coenobitic and eremitical. According to legend, St. Romuald was searching for a location to found a new hermitage in central Italy when he stumbled upon a count named Maldolus. Maldolus, it seems, had fortuitously fallen asleep in one of his fields and had a miraculous vision of monks dressed in white habits climbing up a ladder into the heavens.”
“White monks!” Clay exclaimed.
“So it seems. This count decided to donate a portion of his land to St. Romuald and aided in the construction of a new hermitage called Campus Maldoli in honor of its patron. This came to be known simply as Camaldoli and the sect eventually adopted the name Camaldoles. It says here that there are several congregations of Camaldolese still in existence, including small congregations in Italy, Brazil, Poland, India, France, and even the United States.”
“What about during Marco Polo’s time?” Ellie asked.
“Good question. There were essentially two congregations at that time from what I gather. The first was the mother ship — the Holy Hermitage near Arezzo, Italy, not far from where Maldolus had his fateful vision. The second was a congregation in Murano, Italy. It was founded in the early thirteenth century and consisted of a monastery on the island of San Michele between Venice and Murano. It would have been the one that Marco Polo would have been most familiar with as it can be seen from the banks of Venice.”
“This is a wonderful history lesson but I’m not sure how this is helping us.” Jonas frowned severely. “How are we supposed to figure out which monk Polo gave the map to?”
“What do you expect, ‘X’ marks the spot?” Ellie shot back.
“That would be nice, wouldn’t it, my dear?” Jonas smirked.
“Is there anything on that site that talks about cartography, map-making?” Clay tapped his finger against the LED screen, temporarily distorting the image and leaving behind a smudge. Alex grumbled as he attempted to rub away the fingerprint with his shirt sleeve.
“Let’s see…why don’t we try “Camaldolese and map…”
A list of sites popped up on the screen.
“What’s this?” The first site was a link to JSTOR and referenced a “mappae mundi by Camaldoles Fra. Mauro.” Alex clicked on the listing and was directed to the JSTOR site. He could see an image of the cover of the journal, Imago Mundi.
“What’s a mappae mundi?” Jonas asked.
Alex twirled back. “It’s from Latin. Mappa translates to cloth and Mundi to world. Roughly it is ‘cloth of the world’ or better ‘map of the world.’ It’s a term that came about sometime in the ninth century and is used in academic circles to describe medieval maps.”
“And this JSTOR site?” Jonas added.
“JSTOR is short for Journal Storage,” Ellie answered. “It’s an online system of archiving journals so that there will be a single database available to universities across the world.” She looked at Alex. “Do you need a login?”
“No, I’ll just access it through my account at the Met.” Alex quickly brought up the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s website, navigated through the library portal, and finally connected to JSTOR after typing in his login ID. A digitized image of the article on Fra. Mauro appeared from the journal Imago Mundi. The article, written in 1955, analyzed the role of Fra. Mauro in medieval cartography.”
“Who’s this Fra. Mauro?” asked Jonas.
“Friar Mauro was a Camaldolese monk who lived in the monastery of San Michel in the late fifteenth century. He was a famous cartographer who is credited with creating what many academics view as the crowning mappe mundi of medieval cartography.”