Daughter of Xanadu (33 page)

My foreigner. I ran to the Khan’s audience hall in the public part of the palace. A crowd of onlookers had gathered in one corner of the great courtyard. I could tell by the shrieks and murmurs that the dragons were at the heart of it.

Eagerly, I pushed in. Sure enough, I caught sight of a gold-toothed grin and heard Little Li speaking in accented Mongolian. “Careful! Not so close! They bites!” I guessed that Marco had taught him to speak Mongolian during their journey together.

I worked my way through the crowd until I reached the front. Little Li tossed a live mouse into one of the cages, and the dragon caught it in its long mouth, full of jagged teeth. A huge gasp rose from the crowd.

I looked behind and around Little Li but did not see Marco. “Little Li!” I called. “Where is Messer Marco?”

He smiled when he saw me. “They was here, Marco with father and uncle,” he called back. He pulled a child’s hand away from a dragon cage. “Could you get these people to stand back, lady? They no understand.”

“Stand back!” I shouted in Mongolian in my sternest voice. The women and children immediately pulled back, but the men looked up in curiosity, not used to obeying a woman’s voice. “The dragons will bite you if you get too close.”

I pushed my way through the crowd around the four cages, to stand near Little Li.

“Did Marco leave court?”

“Oh, yes. After the big meeting. Great Khan very happy.” Little Li picked up another mouse by the tail and tossed it
into a cage. The dragon snapped at it, missed, and chased it before snatching it. The crowd gasped and cheered at this show.

“Please, I have to know where Marco went.”

“That way,” he said, pointing toward the palace’s main entrance.

Marco had been in that very courtyard, with his father and uncle, and I had missed them. I ran through the gate, to the outer courtyard. This place was full of petitioners waiting to see the Khan. There were so many men—Mongols, Chinese, and foreigners—it was hard to pick out any one individual in the milling crowd, although I was sure I would recognize Marco’s reddish curls. I saw no sign of the elephants.

I rushed on to the main palace entrance and questioned the guard. He remembered seeing the dragons come in, but he had not noticed three foreign men leaving.

I felt light-headed. I ran out of the palace, onto the square, then along the avenue leading to the city’s west gate. I wished I had thought to get my horse. It was hard to push through crowds of people on foot. A cramp tore through my side, and I stopped to steady myself against a wall. I had to see Marco, as soon as possible.

When I arrived at the city’s west gate, a guard stopped me and would not let me exit. He had his orders: women from the palace were not to leave the city without a male escort. When I told him I was a soldier, he smiled in disbelief.

I stood at the gate a long time, watching people go into and out of the city. Everyone seemed to be carrying a lot of goods, either on donkeys or hanging from the two ends of a pole carried on their shoulders, as Chinese do.

Marco
, I thought.
Please. Come now. I’m here
.

“Emmajin Beki? Is that you?” A man’s voice came from behind me. I whirled around, filled with hope. There stood a tall, big-bellied Latin with pure white hair and beard. It was Marco’s uncle.

“Messer Maffeo!” I exclaimed. “Where is Marco?”

The old man smiled broadly under his huge beard. “He met with the Great Khan this morning, with great success.”

“Where is he now?”

“He was on his way back to our rooms.”

“Can you take me there? I must see him!” He paused.

“The foreigners’ section is not fit for a royal princess.”

“I command you.”

Maffeo Polo’s brow wrinkled with concern but he bowed his head. He offered me his arm in the Western way, and I took it. We walked out of the city and into the foreigners’ quarter. Seeing me with a male escort, the guard did not stop me.

I had thought the streets of Khanbalik were chaotic, but they were nothing compared to the ragged alleyways outside the city gate. Dirty, half-naked children ran about. Toothless beggars thrust their hands into my face. Poor women sold scraggly vegetables on blankets. Young women waved at men to lure them into brothels. I saw men with beards, hook noses, dark skin, and leering grins. The stink of urine and garbage was everywhere. Was this how foreigners lived just outside the greatest city in the world? I had seen nothing like it in my six months of travel.

Maffeo kept a firm grip on my elbow and steered me around aggressive beggars and vendors. Fortunately, he soon
ducked into a wooden doorway and shut the door behind us. We stood in the murky, stinky hallway of an inn for foreigners. Several men lounged on pillows on the floor, smoking a long pipe. Maffeo led me into a small empty sitting room. It was clean but simple. I sat down hard and took a moment to catch my breath. My senses had all been assaulted at once.

The old man sent a servant to fetch Marco from his room. I wiped the grit from my face and smoothed down my braids.
Stay calm
, I told myself. But how could I? I had not seen Marco for more than two months. Would he be distant again in this setting?

When Marco arrived, his bearded face and green eyes were the most welcome sight in the world. He had an eager look that matched my own feelings.

My whole body leaped toward him. It was unseemly. I had not planned it. But months of separation from him had made me hungry to touch him. A look of surprise and pleasure crossed his face before he folded me in his arms. Along with that smell of spice, I breathed in love and trust and confidence. How had I ever thought he was frightening?

Nothing else in life mattered more than being with Marco now. I did not know what would happen. But at that moment, I knew that we could not be separated again. He would help me find a way.

Marco’s uncle—so different from mine—quietly stepped out of the room and closed the door.

After a long embrace, Marco pulled back and examined my face. “You’ve changed.”

I smiled. Yes, after talking to my father, and to Chabi, and even to Tara, I had changed. I was calmer, more confident. Of course Marco would notice.

“Did you hear?” Marco grinned. “The Khan’s medicine is working!”

I nodded happily. “I saw him, too, recently. His feet are not so swollen.”

We sat down in the Chinese chairs. “The Khan said he was pleased with me. Right in front of my father and uncle. He promised us excellent goods to take home.”

“That’s the news you’ve been awaiting. Your father and uncle must be thrilled,” I said.

“They are.” Marco’s face turned serious. “But I’ve made up my mind. You said there was no way for you and me to be together. I understand that. Even so, I cannot leave you here. I will not return to Venezia. I have told my father and uncle already.”

I could see in his somber eyes his determination to stay here with me.

“Wait,” I said, remembering how I had pushed the Khan to let Marco return home. “You haven’t heard my idea.” I told him about my conversation with the Khan and my request to have him send me as an ambassador to the Pope.

Marco leaned toward me as I spoke, as if drinking in every detail. His eyes misted when he heard my proposal. “You would be willing to leave Khanbalik? And travel all the way to Christendom, to make sure that your homeland and mine can live in peace?”

“That is my highest dream,” I said.

“I am astounded.” Marco sat back. “What of that plan to invade Christendom?”

“The Khan is still in discussions with his kinsmen in Persia and Russia.” It was wrong of me to divulge such information, but I wanted to be completely honest with him this time.

Anguish showed on Marco’s face. “I wonder if the Tartar troops will get there before we do.” I knew he was imagining his beloved Venezia in ruins. After witnessing a battle, that image was even more vivid in my mind.

At that moment, though, instead of feeling despair, as I had so often, I could think only of hope and possibilities. There had to be some way we could prevent the Khan from sending our army to Marco’s homeland. “The Khan did not reject my plan. He said he would consider it. We need to think of a way to convince him.”

Marco’s forehead furrowed. “I have done everything I could,” he said. “With every word I have said to him, every action I have taken, I have tried to prove to him that we Latins are a friendly people, not a threat to the Empire. We’re not like the Burmese, who sent an army to invade your country.”

I moved from my chair and sat on his armrest, wrapping my arms around his shoulder. Normally, Marco had such an easy laugh, a ready smile, a clever idea. This time he was relying on me.

“We must think clearly,” I said. “We need to make a plan.”

He sat back and smiled at me, though his face was still sad. “I wish that the Khan would send the army to Burma instead of Christendom. It’s a much richer land than Christendom—and closer.”

I nodded. He was right. That made more sense.

“Maybe,” Marco said, “after the Khan hears my story about the battle of Vochan, he will decide to do that. After all, he would want revenge on the king of Burma for attacking the empire and killing his beloved grandson.”

Revenge
. The word jumped out at me. This plan was attractive, but it did not seem right. Saving Christendom at the expense of Burma? It was hardly compassionate. “Remember the people of Little Li’s tribe, in the dragon village?” I said. “They looked a lot like the Burmese.”

Marco nodded, chastened.

Thinking of the dragon hunt reminded me of Suren. I felt his dragon tooth, hot on the skin of my chest. I pulled it out.

“Suren,” said Marco, shaking his head in sadness.

“Suren,” I said, fingering the smooth surface of the tooth. “You know, I think the happiest moments of his life were hunting those dragons, with you and Little Li. You were like brothers.”

Marco smiled with his eyes. “He loved that.”

“Suren would not have wanted the Khan’s army to do harm to your people.”

“Did he say that?” Marco asked, his green eyes wide.

“No, he never questioned the Khan’s orders. But he would be horrified if our people attacked your homeland.”

Marco nodded.

“Yes,” I said, trying to think as I spoke. “It would be a testament to him, a lasting legacy, if we could find a way of living together in peace.”

Marco looked skeptical.

“Marco, you always have good ideas. What can you do to convince the Khan to send me to Christendom as his ambassador?”

Marco shook his head in wonder. “I will do anything I can to help. I can tell the story of the battle, and I will, in a way that makes you look strong and heroic—which is the
truth. But you are the one who needs to show the Khan that you can do this, that you can be forceful and persuasive as his representative. You must say something dramatic and convincing.”

He was right. But words had never been my strength.

Before I left, he held me close. His lips touched mine in a
bacio
that I had long anticipated. His gentle touch convinced me that somehow we would find a way. I didn’t want to leave him. I promised to see him at the Khan’s hunting camp after he told his story of the battle.

All the way back to the palace, that night, and the next day and the next night, I thought until my head hurt. This idea seemed even more improbable than my request, a year earlier, to join the army. But it was the only way Marco and I could be together.

I hoped that Chabi was persuading the Khan about my future. But it was up to me to prove my worthiness for this assignment. If I did not, Marco might have to return to his homeland without me, whether he chose to or not. One day I might hear that a Mongol army—one the Great Khan did not directly control—had destroyed Christendom. That image made me shudder.

M
y breath caught in my throat. On horseback, at the top of a rise, I looked out over a sight I had heard about but never seen: the ocean.

The water stretched along the horizon, as broad and endless as a Mongolian steppe, but blue-gray and glinting in the late sunlight. It was in constant motion—not like grasses in the wind, but like an earthquake, heaving up and falling back, crashing against the beach in white-capped waves. I searched the distance for the far shore and could see none. It was like no lake I had ever seen—roiling and alive, stretching to the end of the earth. I couldn’t believe anyone would ride on a boat of wood and trust such a seething mass of water. Baatar tossed his mane and whinnied, as if threatened.

The Great Khan’s hunting camp sprawled along the seaside at an area called Beidaihe, Northern Dai River, not far from the Chin Emperor’s Island. It was the largest encampment of tents I had ever seen, a sea of white dots stretching
from the water’s edge over hill after hill to the horizon. The Khan’s imperial flags fluttered lazily. Guards stood on duty around the perimeter of the camp. Within, the mood was high with the excitement of the hunt and the thrill of being away from home. It was a great escape for the men of the court, most of them military men. The end of this two-month hunting season was the highlight of each year for them.