Swords From the West (43 page)

The dark blood flooded into the young Breton's face. Around the three a circle of Rudolfo's men and sailors had gathered, scenting a quarrel. The gleam of torches lighted the scene. He wondered if the others had expected the condottiere to challenge him.

Rudolfo was not the man to be forced into a fight that he had not anticipated beforehand.

And then Michael heard an exclamation from one of the seamen. A strange whirring filled the air. Shrill squawking resounded on all sides.

One of the torches was knocked to the deck by a fluttering, animated ball that leaped and bounded among the men. The deck of the Nauplia in a moment was full of poultry. Hens, roosters, ducks and guinea fowl dashed about underfoot and overhead.

"Ten thousand devils!" Rudolfo struck viciously at a fat pullet that collided with his face. The spectators, the tensity of the quarrel broken in a flash, started running about, clutching at the flying meat.

It was each man for himself and the best dinner to the quickest. The torches were soon darting into every quarter of the deck, leaving Michael in semidarkness. Clavijo was leading the angry Rudolfo away.

A grotesque figure rose from the deck at Michael's elbow-a misshapen, stained, and grimacing form clad in striped raiment.

"Master," cried Bembo, "the field is mine. My light cavalry, released by a purloined key from their storage prison, have scattered our foes. Come, good master, let us make good our retreat! "

In the shadows of the bow Michael sat down on his bundle and laughed, more than a little provoked.

"A fair night, cousin mine," chattered the jester, taking this as a good omen. "Give me thanks for carrying you bodily away from the demons o' the sea. Black Rudolfo would ha' cast you overside as easily as I could suck an egg. Marry-the sight of eggs turns my belly for I lived upon them, hidden in the hold with the fowls for three days and two nights. Then, not an hour since I was awakened by a shouting as of the foul fiend, whereupon the roosters crowed, thinking it was day. Master, a soldier crawled into my castle, in the dark, and I thought the pirates held the ship and I was to be ripped open without the services of a confessor. Pompa mortis! Oh, the trappings of death!"

Bembo shivered and looked around anxiously at the tranquil moonlit sea.

"But, forsooth, the big soldier thrust his thatch through the window of the hold and bawled to the other vessel to stand off, that the plan had been changed, and it was useless to attack the galliot. A brave lad, thought I, to bid the pirates mend their ways and be gone. Verily he was a potent bully, for the miscreants gave back and left us in peace. So I-being sorely athirst from fear and hen's feathers and bad eggs-I climbed to the roof o' this house and saw Rudolfo about to spit you, whereupon I ran back for my winged allies."

"Was the man you saw in armor?"

"Armor, quoth'a, verily so. When his face was i' the window I saw a steel cap as big as a bucket. Master, chide me not for coming. Nay, no voyage that was ever brewed could make me leave the good man who shared his wine and meat wi' me; nor would my curiosity leave me in peace until I learned wherein this voyage differed from other voyages, as you said."

Michael arranged his pack for a pillow and laid his sword close to his left hand. The jester blinked at him from shrewd little eyes, the great head turned to one side, like a dog's, questioningly.

"A ship, Bembo," murmured the Breton, his eyes closed, "a harmless pilgrim galliot, beats off an attack by well-armed raiders because-a soldier calls secretly to the foe from below decks. One of Rudolfo's men. A dagger is thrown from behind the mast. Feed your curiosity with that and let me sleep."

It was a leaner and dirtier throng that lined the rail of the Nauplia when that good galliot entered the dark waters of the Golden Horn and anchored off the crowded shore of Constantinople after the storms of the Aegean that followed the attack by the pirates.

And when Clavijo and his party re-embarked for Pera and the Black Sea in a small Venetian trading galley, Mocenigo was no longer with them. The young count, Clavijo explained to Bearn, had found paradise enough in the Hippodrome and palaces of the emperor, and women to his liking. The departure of the others had been hurried by the insults of Moslem warriors who thronged the waterfront.

Michael said nothing but sought out Bembo, who was sitting on a chest on the jetty, eyeing the preparations for departure.

"The first of us has fallen by the wayside, Bembo," he observed gravely. He had been apprehensive about the jester since Bembo bobbed up as a stowaway, but had not reproved him. "Will you not follow his example and remain here?"

"I would see the Grand Cham."

Michael looked at him and laughed.

"You will never see the Grand Cham."

"Well-" Bembo was surprised-"you must know, master, for you have traveled near Cathay. I would see the city and the gold palaces-"

"There is no city."

"Master? You have heard Clav-"

"Clavijo-" Michael's smile broadened into a wide grin-"Messer Ruy de Gonzales Clavijo is the greatest liar in Christendom."

Bembo gaped and glanced from the ship to the stores on the jetty and at the Breton as if doubting his senses.

"Clavijo, my good Bembo, is a man with one talent. Aye-a tongue. The sun never shone upon a greater liar. What he did not pick up at the waterfront of Genoa and Venice he heard related of the traveling monks. When that failed him he had his tongue, and wit to match. It made his fortune in Venice. Until the council took him at his own value, forsooth, and sent him to find the city that is a lie."

Michael chuckled at the memory. "When Clavijo by his own testimony was in Cathay I saw him among a throng of camp followers, fleeing along the Danube."

At this Bembo scratched his head vigorously. Then his eyes lighted and he leaped from the chest.

"Aye, master. Well, then, since this is a quest of folly, who should be the leader but a fool?"

When the galley cleared the Horn, Bembo stood beside the helmsman, a wooden sword stuck in his ragged girdle, his twisted legs planted wide, and his bearing as important as that of an admiral of the Venetian fleet.

And when, a month later, the party of explorers rode inland from Trebizond, Bembo took his place at the head of the column, mounted on a caparisoned mule.

"On, into terra incognita!" he cried, waving his wooden sword valiantly.

In fact Trebizond was the boundary of what we now call Europe. It was the eastern door of the fading Byzantine Empire, the last trade port of the Serene Republic of Venice, which had its bailio stationed in an arsenal on shore. The walled city, rising on rocks from this shore, was the home of Manuel the Second, almost the last of the Comneni-line emperors of Trebizond for generations.

Now they were bound, as Bembo had stated, into unknown territory-into blank spaces on Venetian maps. No one in Trebizond had been anxious to accompany them for it was known that the mountains to the south and east as far as the Salt Sea were occupied by tribes who paid tribute to a monarch of Tatary.

Soranzi and others of the party had taken this information as a good augury and were in high spirits. So also was Bembo.

"Come, my flock!" He jangled the bells on his hood. "Follow your bellwether. Ply your spurs, sound the timbrels! A fool is your leader, and folly your guide. Ride, my cousins in folly, and take him who first draws rein!"

Journeying to the southeast, they entered bare brown plains and passes that wound among stunted, rocky hills where the valleys were yet snowcoated and the air was chill. For the first time the voyagers were alone in a strange land. And stranger than the aspect of the country where isolated shepherds ran away at their approach and the inns were no more than walled spaces, where the animals could be picketed and fires lighted-stranger than this was the castle without doors.

The highway they had been following was no more than a trail from valley to valley. The castle overlooked this path from a barren cliffside up which wound a well-defined way cut in the rock.

Halfway up the ramp, as the travelers termed the road, they were halted by a ragged man on a shaggy pony who called to them harshly. Clavijo appeared to meditate on the meaning of the horseman's words, then shook his head. Michael, however, interpreted.

"The man is an Armenian. He says we are in the land of his lord and must pay the customary tribute. It would be best to do so."

Soranzi, who handled the expenditures of the expedition, demurred, and the rider retired, bidding them stay where they were. Presently a thin man clad in leathers and furs appeared in the roadway, followed by thirty or more even more ragged horsemen armed with bows.

At this Rudolfo swore and began to muster his mailed men-at-arms to the front of the column, when Michael checked him.

"This rider declares that he is lord of the castle, although he does not dare occupy it owing to the attacks of the Turks who are in the habit of raiding the country from the sultanate to the south. He says that he is very poor and a Christian-which, forsooth, is but half true-and needs money to carry on his fighting. What will you give him, Messer Soranzi?"

The merchant scowled, for besides the presents destined for the Grand Cham the only other goods in the caravan were his own large stock in trade from which he expected a profit of several hundred percent at the least.

"Tell the Moor," he commanded, "that we be merchants seeking the court of the Grand Cham. Travelers do not pay tribute at castles of the Grand Cham."

Michael grinned and spoke with the Armenian chief, who frowned in turn and responded testily.

"He says," announced the Breton, "that he knows naught of any Grand Chaco or khan except himself and the Turkish sultans and that if we are to travel in his land we must make him a present."

Clavijo and Soranzi argued the matter hotly and finally produced a piece of scarlet cloth and a silver cup. These the Armenian refused angrily, saying that he must have more.

Darkness was falling and a thin rain pierced the garments of the travelers uncomfortably. Soranzi shook his thin fists and chewed at his beard.

"And this dog calls himself a Christian! Well, give him a roll of Phrygian purple velvet from the lot we carry for the great Cham-"

"And a handful of gold from your own fat pouch, Messer Merchant," snarled Rudolfo, who was both cold and hungry. "A pox on your bartering!"

This brought a wail from Soranzi, but mollified the Armenian, who withdrew up the hillside with his motley army and his spoils. But the Venetians found that the horsemen had not remained at the castle. It was quite empty; moreover every door had been removed from its hinges.

When the beasts had been quartered in the courtyard and Michael with some of the soldiers had succeeded in lighting a fire in the great hall-not without difficulty-and after they had dined on cold mutton, cold bread-cakes, and wine, Clavijo, who had been very thoughtful for some time, spoke up-

"My friends, look yonder."

Rudolfo started nervously and they all stared at a sign on the stone wall of the hall, a cross, obscured by smoke, chiseled into the granite.

"That is a potent symbol of the Cathayans," nodded Clavijo, "one of the talismans of their alchemists. Aye, this castle bears evidence of their magic. Why is there no castellan? Where be the doors?"

As the men were silent, the snarling cry of a jackal came to their ears from the darkness and rain outside and Soranzi paled.

"Where vanished the knavish riders that we met?" continued Clavijo.

"To their tents, elsewhere," broke in Michael. "As for the cross, it is Christian in sooth. The doors were doubtless removed by the Turks who, the Armenian said, recently sacked the place and left orders that it was not to be defended again."

Clavijo shrugged, with a dubious smile. Since learning that Bearn had been a captive of the Moors, as he chose to call them, he had been careful to avoid discussion with the Breton.

"As you wish. But soon we will come upon the piles of human skulls. I suppose you would say there is no danger there." He shook his head in gentle reproof. "Now, sirs, I have a plan. Messer Soranzi seeks to avoid robbery. Methinks you all would fain live longer. So be it. I, who have mastered the dangers of the mountains and the sands and the Cathayans, I will go ahead from here alone."

Michael glanced at him searchingly and was silent.

"You will be safe here, sirs," continued the Spaniard, "under the potent protection of Rudolfo and his men. I have no fear. What I have done once can be accomplished again. Even though I may never return, I would prefer to press on from here alone. A score of swords and halberds will avail us little against the Cathayans. Better one should die than all."

"If I am not back by the first of winter, sirs, you can retrace your steps easily to Trebizond. By tying the mules, head to tail, in a fashion I wot well of, I can make shift to bear with me the gifts for the Grand Cham, placed in packs upon the mules."

Rudolfo, however, voiced a blunt negative.

"By the rood, sir, we have made a bond between us. We will go in a body or not at all."

This view was shared by Soranzi, who, despite privations and plundering, had hugged to his bosom the dream of fabulous profits promised him by his astrologer in Venice.

"Aye," put in Bembo seriously; "we will go in our bodies or not at all."

"I would fain see the bull-stag that you say is to be met with in Cathay," insisted Michael.

"A most curious beast, Master Bearn," observed Clavijo mechanically. "It has more hairs on its tail than a lion in its mane.*
The pagans in Cathay entrap the beast by setting a snare artfully between two trees so that when the taurus-which is the name bestowed upon it by Herodotus-passes between the trees, its tail is caught fast. So tender is the beast of its fine tail that it remains passive lest a hair be pulled out, when the Cathayans may easily make it prisoner."

"Yet, signor," added Michael, "they must take care in freeing it, for if they should sever the tail from the body by stroke of sword, the bull-stag would perceive that its valued member was lost beyond repair and would no longer feel constrained to quietude. I fear that many imprudent Cathayans have died unshriven because they cut off the tail of a taurus."