The Journeyer - Jennings Gary - Страница 27

It was a new sensation for me, too. Inside Doris, I was held as tightly as in a tender fist, far more tightly than I had been in either of the other two females with whom I had lain. Even in that moment of high excitement, I realized that I was disproving my onetime ignorant assertion that all women are alike in their private parts.

For the next while, both Doris and I made many different noises. And the final sound, when we stopped moving to rest, was her sigh of commingled wonder and satisfaction: “Oh, my!”

“I think it was not painful,” I said, and smiled at her.

She shook her head vehemently, and returned the smile. “I have dreamt of it many times. But I never dreamed it would be so … And I never heard any woman recall her first time as so … Thank you, Marco.”

“I thank you, Doris,” I said politely. “And now that you know how—”

“Hush. I do not wish to do anything like that with anyone but you.”

“I will soon be gone.”

“I know. But I know you will be back. And I will not do that again until you come back from Rome.”

However, I did not get to Rome. I have never been there yet. Doris and I went on disporting ourselves until nightfall, and we were dressed again and behaving most properly when Ubaldo and Daniele and Malgarita and the others returned from their day’s excursion. When we retired into the barge to sleep, I slept alone, on the same pallet of rags I had used once before. And we were all awakened in the morning by the bawling of a banditore, making unusually early rounds because he had unusual news to cry. Pope Clement IV had died in Viterbo. The Doge of Venice was proclaiming a period of mourning and of prayer for the Holy Father’s soul.

“Damnation!” bellowed my uncle, slapping the table and making the books on it jump. “Did we bring bad luck home with us, Nico?”

“First a Doge dies, and now the Pope,” my father said sadly. “Ah, well, all psalms end in glory.”

“And the word from Viterbo,” said the clerk Isidoro, in whose counting room we were gathered, “is that there may be a long deadlock in the Conclave. It seems there are many feet twitching with eagerness to step into the Fisherman’s shoes.”

“We cannot wait for the election, soon or late,” my uncle muttered, and he glowered at me. “We must get this galeotto out of Venice, or we may all go to prison.”

“We need not wait,” my father said, unperturbed. “Doro has most capably purchased and collected all the travel gear we will need. We only lack the hundred priests, and Kubilai will not care if they are not chosen by a Pope. Any high prelate can provide them.”

“To what prelate do we apply?” demanded Mafio. “If we asked the Patriarch of Venice, he would tell us—and with reason—that to lend us one hundred priests would empty every church in the city.”

“And we would have to take them the extra distance,” my father mused. “Better we seek them closer to our destination.”

“Forgive my ignorance,” said my new maregna, Fiordelisa. “But why on earth are you recruiting priests—and so many priests—for a savage Mongol warlord? Surely he cannot be a Christian.”

My father said, “He is of no discernible religion, Lisa.”

“I would have thought not.”

“But he has that virtue peculiar to the ungodly: he is tolerant of what other people choose to believe. Indeed, he wishes his subjects to have an ample array of beliefs from which to choose. There are in his lands many preachers of many pagan religions, but of the Christian faith there are only the deluded and debased Nestorian priests. Kubilai desires that we provide adequate representation for the true Christian Church of Rome. Naturally, Mafio and I are eager to comply—and not alone for the propagation of the Holy Faith. If we can accomplish this mission, we can ask the Khan’s permission to engage in missions more profitable.”

“Nico means to say,” my uncle said, “that we hope to arrange to trade between Venice and the Eastern lands—to start again the flow of commerce along the Silk Road.”

Lisa said wonderingly, “There is a road laid of silk?”

“Would that it were!” said my uncle, rolling his eyes. “It is more tortuous and terrible and punishing than any pathway to Heaven. Even to call it a road is an extravagance.”

Isidoro begged leave to explain to the lady: “The route from the Levantine shores across the interior of Asia has been called the Silk Road since ancient times, because the silk of Cathay was the most costly merchandise carried along it. In those days, silk was worth its weight in gold. And perhaps the road itself, being so precious, was better maintained and easier to travel. But in more recent times it fell into disuse—partly because the secret of silkmaking was stolen from Cathay, and today silk is cultivated even in Sicily. But also those Eastern lands became impossible to traverse, what with the depredations of Huns, Tartars, Mongols, marauding back and forth across Asia. So our Western traders abandoned the overland route in favor of the sea routes known to the Arab seafarers.”

“If you can get there by sea,” Lisa said to my father, “why suffer all the rigors and dangers of going by land?”

He said, “Those sea routes are forbidden to our ships. The once pacific Arabs, long content to live meekly in the peace of their Prophet, rose up to become the warrior Saracens, who now seek to impose that religion of Islam on the entire world. And they are as jealous of their sea lanes as they are of their current possession of the Holy Land.”

Mafio said, “The Saracens are willing to trade with us Venetians, and with any other Christians from whom they can make a profit. But we would deprive them of that profit if we sent fleets of our own ships to trade in the East. So the Saracen corsairs are on constant patrol in the seas between, to make sure we do not.”

Lisa looked primly shocked, and said, “They are our enemies, but we trade with them?”

Isidoro shrugged. “Business is business.”

“Even the Popes,” said Uncle Mafio, “have never been unwilling to deal with the heathen, when it has been profitable. And a Pope or any other pragmatist ought to be eager to institute trade with the even farther East. There are fortunes to be made. We know; we have seen the richness of those lands. Our former journey was mere exploration, but this time we will take along something to trade. The Silk Road is awful, but it is not impossible. We have now traversed those lands twice, going and coming. We can do it again.”

“Whoever is the new Pope,” said my father, “he should give his blessing to this venture. Rome was much affrighted when it looked as if the Mongols would overrun Europe. But the several Mongol Khans seem to have extended their Khanates as far westward as they intend to encroach. That means the Saracens are the chief threat to Christianity. So Rome ought to welcome this chance for an alliance with the Mongols against Islam. Our mission on behalf of the Khan of All Khans could be of supreme importance—to the aims of Mother Church as well as the prosperity of Venice.”

“And the house of Polo,” said Fiordelisa, who was now of our house.

“That above all,” said Mafio. “So let us stop beating our beaks, Nico, and get on with it. Shall we go again by way of Constantinople and collect our priests there?”

My father thought it over and said, “No. The priests there are too comfortable—all gone soft as eunuchs. The gloved cat catches no mice. However, in the ranks of the Crusaders are many chaplain priests, and they will be hard men accustomed to hard living. Let us go to the Holy Land, to San Zuane de Acre, where the Crusaders are presently encamped. Doro, is there a ship sailing eastward that can put us in Acre?”

The clerk turned to consult his registers, and I left the warehouse to go and tell Doris of my new destination and to say, to her and to Venice, goodbye.

It was to be a quarter of a century before I saw either of them again. Much would have changed and aged in that time, not least myself. But Venice would still be Venice, and—strangely—so would Doris somehow still be the Doris I had left. What she had said: that she would not love again until I came back-those words could have been a magic charm that preserved her unchanged by the years. For she would still, that long time later, be so young and so pretty and so vibrantly still Doris that I would recognize her on sight and fall instantly enamored of her. Or so it would seem to me.