I awoke the next day, in the afternoon, in a bed in my father’s chambers, with a head that I almost wished
had
been lopped off by the Fondler. The last thing that I clearly remembered of the banquet was the Khakhan’s roaring to the Wang Chingkim, “See to this young Polo! Appoint him separate quarters of his own! And servants of twenty-two karats!” That had sounded fine, but to be given immobile metal servants, even of nearly pure gold, did not make much sense, so I assumed that Kubilai had been as drunk as was I at the time, and Chingkim, and everybody else.
However, after my father’s two women servants had helped him and me to get up and get bathed and get dressed, and had brought us each a potion to clear the head—a spicy and aromatic drink, but so heavily laced with mao-tai that I could not force it down—Chingkim came calling, and father’s servants fell down in ko-tou to him. The Wang, looking as if he felt much the way I did, gently booted the two prostrate bodies out of his way, and told me he had come, as ordered, to conduct me to the new suite prepared for my occupancy.
As we went there—no far distance along the same hall that my father’s and uncle’s quarters opened onto—I thanked Chingkim for the courtesy and, seeking to be polite even to a minor functionary assigned to serve me, I added, “I do not know why the Khakhan should have ordered you to see to my comfort. After all, you are the Wang of the city, and an official of some small importance. Surely the palace guests should be a steward’s responsibility, and this palace has as many stewards as a Buddhist has fleas.”
He gave a laugh, only a small one, not to jar his own head, and said, “I do not object to being given a trivial duty now and then. My father believes that a man can only learn to command others by learning himself to obey the least command.”
“Your father seems to lean as heavily on wise proverbs as mine does,” I said companionably. “Who is your father, Chingkim?”
“The man who gave me the order. The Khakhan Kubilai.”
“Oh?” I said, as he bowed me through the doorway of my new quarters. “One of the bastards, are you?” I said offhandedly, as I might have spoken to the son of a Doge or a Pope, nobly born, but on the wrong side of the blanket. I was looking with appreciation at the doorway, for it was not rectangular in the Western style or peaked to an arch in the Muslim fashion. It and the others between my various rooms were called variously Moon Gate and Lute Gate and Vase Gate, because their openings were contoured in the outlines of those objects. “This is a sumptuous apartment.”
Chingkim was regarding me with somewhat the same appraisal I was giving to the suite’s luxurious appointments. He said quietly, “Marco Polo, you do have your own peculiar way of speaking to your elders.”
“Oh, you are not that much older than I, Chingkim. How nice, these windows open onto a garden.” Truly I was being very dense, but my head, as I have said, was not at its best. Also, at the banquet, Chingkim had not sat at the head table with Kubilai’s legitimate sons. That recollection made me think of something. “I saw none of the Khakhan’s concubines who looked old enough to have a son your age, Chingkim. Which of last night’s women was your mother?”
“The one who sat nearest the Khakhan. Her name is Jamui.”
I paid little attention, being occupied in the admiration of my bed-chamber. The bed was most lovelily springy, and it had a Western style pillow for me. Also—apparently in case I should invite a court lady to bed—it had one of the Han-style pillows, a sort of shallow pedestal of porcelain, itself molded in the form of a reclining woman, to prop up a lady’s neck without disarranging her coiffure.
Chingkim went on chatting idly, “Those of Kubilai’s sons who sat with him last night are Wangs of provinces and ortoks of armies, things like that.”
For summoning my servants, there was a brass gong as big around as a Kashgar wagon wheel. But it was fashioned like a fish with a great round head, mostly a vast mouth, and only a stumpy brass body, for resonance, behind its wide opening.
“I was appointed Wang of Khanbalik,” Chingkim prattled on, “because Kubilai likes to keep me near him. And he sat me at your table to do honor to your father and uncle.”
I was examining a most marvelous lamp in my main room. It had two cylindrical paper shades, one inside the other, both fitted with paper blades inside their circumference, so that somehow the heat of the lamp flame made the shades slowly turn in opposite directions. They were painted with various lines and spots, and were translucent, so that their movement and the light within made the paints intermittently resolve themselves into a recognizable picture—and the picture moved. I later saw other such lamps and lanterns displaying different scenes, but this one of mine showed, over and over, a mule kicking up its heels and catching a little man in his backside and sending him flying. I was entranced.
“I am not Kubilai’s eldest son, but I am the only son born to him by his premier wife, the Khatun Jamui. That makes me Crown Prince of the Khanate and Heir Apparent to my father’s throne and title.”
By that time, I was down on my knees, puzzling over the composition of the strange, flat, pale carpet on the floor. After close scrutiny, I determined that it was made of long strips of thin-peeled ivory, woven together, and I had never before seen or heard of any such wondrous artisanry as
woven ivory.
Since I was already kneeling—when Chingkim’s words at last penetrated into my dismally dimmed mind—it was easy for me to slide prostrate and make ko-tou at the feet of the next Khan of All Khans of the Mongol Empire, whom I had a moment ago addressed as Bastard.
“Your Royal Highness … ,” I began to apologize, speaking to the woven ivory on which my aching and now sweating forehead was pressed.
“Oh, get up,” the Crown Prince said affably. “Let us continue to be Marco and Chingkim. Time enough for titles when my father dies, and I trust that will not be for many years yet. Get up and greet your new servants. Biliktu and Buyantu. Good Mongol maidens, whom I selected for you personally.”
The girls made ko-tou four times to Chingkim and then four times to us both and then four times to me alone. I mumbled, “I expected to get statues.”
“Statues?” echoed Chingkim. “Ah, yes. Twenty-two karat, these maidens. That grading system is of my father’s devising. If you will command for me a goblet of head-clearing potion, we can sit down and I will explain about the karats.”
I gave the command, and ordered cha for myself, and the two girls bowed their way backwards out of the room. From their names, and from what little I had glimpsed of them, Buyantu and Biliktu were sisters. They were about my own age, and far prettier than the other Mongol females I had seen so far—certainly much prettier than the middle-aged women who had been assigned to my father and uncle. When they came back with our drinks, and Chingkim and I sat down on facing benches, and the maids brought fans to fan us, I could see that they were twins, identical in comeliness and wearing identical costumes. I would have to direct them to dress differently, I thought, so I could tell them apart. And when they were undressed? That thought, too, came naturally to my mind, but I dismissed it, to listen to the Prince, who, after taking a long draft from his goblet, had begun to talk again.
“My father, as you know, has four wedded wives. Each in her turn receives him in her own separate yurtu, but—”
“Yurtu!” I interrupted.
He laughed. “So it is called, though no Mongol plainsman would recognize it. In the old nomad days, you see, a Mongol lord kept his wives dispersed about his territory, each in her own yurtu, so that wherever he rode he never had to endure a wifeless night. Now, of course, each wife’s so-called yurtu is a splendid palace here in these grounds—and a populous place, more like a bok than a yurtu. Four wives, four palaces. And my mother’s alone has a permanent staff of more than three hundred. Ladies-in-waiting and attendants and physicians and servants and hairdressers and slaves and wardrobe mistresses and astrologers … But I started out to tell you about the karats.”
He broke off to touch a hand tenderly to his head, and swigged again from his goblet before going on:
“I think my father is now of an age that a mere four women in rotation would suffice him, even well-worn wives who are also getting on in years. But it is an ancient custom for all his subject lands—as far away as Poland and India Aryana—to send him each year the finest of their newly nubile maidens. He cannot possibly take them all as concubines, or even as servants, but neither can he disappoint his subjects by refusing their gifts outright. So he now has those annual crops of girls weeded down at least to a manageable number.”
Chingkim emptied his goblet and handed it, without looking, over his shoulder, where Biliktu-or-Buyantu took it and scurried off.
“Each year,” he resumed, “as the maidens are delivered to the various Ilkhans and Wangs in the various lands and provinces, those men examine the girls and assay them like so much gold bullion. Depending on the quality of a maiden’s facial features and bodily proportions and complexion and hair and voice and grace of gait and so on, she is rated at fourteen karats—or sixteen or eighteen, as the case may be, and so on up. Only those above sixteen karats are sent on here to Khanbalik, and only those assayed at the fineness of pure unalloyed gold, twenty-four karats, have any hope of getting near the great Khakhan.”
Though Chingkim could not have heard my maid’s silent approach, he put up his hand and she arrived just in time to place the refilled goblet in his grasp. He appeared not at all surprised to receive it—as if he had naturally assumed it would be there—and he gulped from it and went on:
“Even those comparatively few maidens of twenty-four karats must first live for a while with older women here in the palace. The old women inspect them even more closely, especially their behavior in the nighttime. Do the girls snore in their sleep, or toss restlessly in the bed? Are their eyes bright and their breath sweet when they awaken in the morning? Then, on the old women’s recommendations, my father will take a few of the girls as his concubines for the next year, others to be his maidservants. The rest of them he apportions out, according to their karat grade, to his lords and ministers and court favorites, according to their rank. Congratulate yourself, Marco, that you suddenly rank high enough to merit these twenty-two-karat virgins.”
He paused, and laughed again. “I do not quite know
why
you do—unless it is your propensity for reviling your betters as Kalmuks and bastards. I hope all the other courtiers do not start imitating your style of address, and expect to emulate your rise to favor.”
I cleared my throat and said, “You mentioned that the girls come from all lands. Had you any particular reason for selecting Mongols for me?”
“Again, my father’s instructions. You already speak our tongue very well, but he desires that you achieve impeccable fluency. And it is a known fact that pillow talk is the best and quickest way to learn a language. Why do you ask? Would you have preferred some other breed of women?”
“No, no,” I said hastily. “The Mongol is one breed of woman I have not yet had an opportunity to—er—assay. I look forward to the experience. I am honored, Chingkim.”
He shrugged. “They are twenty-two karat. Near perfect.” He sipped again at his drink, then leaned toward me to say seriously, speaking now in Farsi, that the maids might not eavesdrop, “There are many lords here, Marco, and older ones, and very high-ranking ones, who have never yet received better than a sixteen-karat regard from the Khan Kubilai. I suggest you keep that in mind. Any palace community is an anthill teeming with intrigues and plots and conspiracies, even at the level of page boys and kitchen scullions. It will rankle many in this court, that a young man like you is
not
consigned to that grub-ant level of pages and scullions. You are a newcomer and a Ferenghi, which would make you suspect enough, but abruptly and incomprehensibly you have been exalted. Overnight, you have become an interloper, a target for envy and spite. Believe me, Marco. No one else would give you this friendly warning, but I do, because I am the only one who can. Second only to my father, I am the one man in the entire Khanate who need not be fearful and jealous of his position. Everyone else must be—and so must see you as a threat. Be always on your guard.”
“I believe you, Chingkim, and I thank you. Can you suggest any way I might make myself less of a target?”
“A Mongol horseman takes care never to ride on the skyline of the hills, but always a little way below the crest.”
I sat and considered that advice. Just then, there came a scratching noise from the hall door, and one of the maids glided away to answer it. I could not quite determine how I might stay off the skyline while resident inside a palace, unless perhaps I went about in a permanent posture of ko-tou. The maid came back into the room.
“Master Marco, it is a caller who gives his name as Sindbad, and urgently entreats audience.”
“What?” I said, preoccupied with skylines. “I am acquainted with no person named Sindbad.”
Chingkim looked at me and raised his eyebrows, as if to say, “Already come the enemies?”
Then I shook my head and got it to working again, and said, “Oh, of course I know the man. Bid him come in.”