“This one?” I gasped. “You have made other pictures like this?”
“Well, not identical to this. The last one was entitled ‘Kubilai Is Mightiest of Mongols Because He Partakes of Yin to Augment His Yang.’ It showed him on his knees before a very young, naked girl, his tongue lapping from her lotus the pearly droplets of her yin juices, while she—”
“Porco Dio!”
I exclaimed again. “And you have not yet been dragged off to the Fondler?”
Mimicking my outcry, he said cheerfully, “Porco Dio, I hope not to be. Why do you suppose I continue in this artistic whoredom? As we Han say, it is my wineskin and my rice bag. It was to have such pictures that the Khakhan honored me with this ministry-in-name-only.”
“He
wants
these made?”
“He must have whole galleries hung with my scrolls by now. I also do hand-fans. My wife paints on a fan a superb design of zhu-gan cane or peony flowers and, if the fan is unfolded in the usual direction, that is all you see. But if the fan is flirtatiously flicked open the other way, you glimpse an erotic bit of dalliance.”
“So this—this sort of thing is really your main work for Kubilai.”
“Not only for Kubilai, curse it. By his decree, I am as biddable as the banquet-hall jugglers. My talent is at the command of all my fellow ministers and courtiers. Even you, I should not be surprised. I must remember to inquire.”
“Imagine … ,” I marveled. “The Khanate’s Minister of War … spending his time painting vile pictures … .”
“Vile?” He pretended to recoil in horror. “Really, you wound me. Subject matter aside, they are, after all, from the supple hand of Chao Meng-fu, Golden Belt Master of Feng-shui.”
“Oh, I do not denigrate the expertness of them. The artistry of this one is impeccable. Except—”
“If this one distresses you,” he said, “you should see what I have to paint for that degenerate Arab, Achmad. But go on, Elder Brother. Except, what?”
“Except—no man, not even the great Khakhan, ever possessed a masculine red jewel like that one in the picture. You certainly made it vividly red enough—but the size and the veining of it! It looks like he is ramming a rough-barked log into her.”
“Ah, that. Yes. Well. Of course he does not pose for these portrayals, but one must flatter one’s patron. The only male model I employ is myself, in a looking glass, to get the anatomical articulations correct. However, I must confess that the virile member of any male Han—myself unhappily included—would hardly be worth a viewer’s looking at. If it could be discerned at all in a picture of that size.”
I started to say something condoling, but he raised his hand.
“Please! Do not offer. Go and show yours, if you must, to the Armorer of the Palace Guard. She might appreciate its contrast to her husband’s. But I have already been shown one Westerner’s gross organ, and that will suffice. I was nauseated to see that the Arab’s unwholesome red jewel, even in repose, is bald-headed!”
“Muslims are circumcised; I am not,” I said loftily. “And I was not about to volunteer. But you might sometime like to paint my twin maidservants, who do some wondrous—” I paused there, and frowned, and inquired, “Master Chao, did you mean to say that the Minister Achmad
does
pose for the pictures you paint of him?”
“Yes,” he said, making a face of disgust. “But I would never show to you or to anyone any of those, and I am certain Achmad will not. As soon as a painting is finished, he even sends away the other models employed—away to far corners of the empire—so they cannot make gossip or complaint hereabout. But this I will wager: however far they go, they never forget him. Or me. For my having seen what happened, and having made permanent record of their shame.”
Chao’s former cheerfulness had all dissipated, and he seemed disinclined to talk further, so I took my leave. I went to my chambers, thinking deeply—and not about erotic paintings, much as that work had impressed me, nor about the Chief Minister Achmad’s secret diversions, much as they had interested me. No, I went pondering on two other things Chao had mentioned while he was speaking as Minister of War:
Yun-nan Province.
The Yi people.
The evasive Minister of Lesser Races, Pao Nei-ho, had also touched briefly on those subjects. I wanted to know more about them, and about him. But I did not learn anything further that day. Though Nostril was waiting for me, returned from his latest foraging among the domestic staff, he could not yet tell me anything concerning the Minister Pao. We sat down together, and I bade Biliktu bring us each a goblet of good pu-tao white wine, and she fanned us with a perfumed fan while we talked. Nostril, pridefully showing off how much his grasp of Mongol had lately improved, said in that language:
“Here is a juicy bit, Master Marco. When it was confided to me that the Armorer of the Palace Guard is a most promiscuous voluptuary, it did not at first intrigue me. After all, what soldier is not a fornicator? But that officer, it transpires, is a young
woman,
a Han lady of some degree. Her whorishness is evidently notorious, but is not punished, because her lord husband is such a poltroon that he condones her indecent conduct.”
I said, “Perhaps he has other worries that trouble him more. Let us then, in compassion, you and I, not add our voices to the general tattling. Not about that poor fellow, anyway.”
“As you command, master. But I have nothing to tell about anyone else … except the servants and slaves themselves, in whom you surely have no interest.”
True, I had not. But I got the feeling that Nostril wanted to say something more. I studied him speculatively, then said:
“Nostril, you have been extraordinarily well behaved for quite a while now. For you, that is. I recollect only one recent misdemeanor—when I caught you peeping that night at me and the girls—and I cannot recall any outright felony in ever so long. There are other things different about you lately. You are dressing as finely as all the other palace servants and slaves. And you are letting your beard grow. I always wondered how you managed to keep it forever looking like a scruffy two weeks’ growth. But now it looks a respectable beard, though much grayer than it used to be, and your receding chin is no longer so noticeable. Why the turnout of whiskers? Are you hiding from somebody?”
“Not exactly, master. As you say, slaves here at this resplendent palace are encouraged not to look like slaves. And, as you say, I simply wished to appear more respectable. More like the handsome man I used to be.” I sighed. But he did not elaborate in his usual braggart way; he added only, “I have recently espied someone in the slave quarters. Someone I think I knew long ago. But I hesitate to approach, until I can be sure.”
I laughed heartily. “Hesitate?
You?
Reticent of being thought forward? And to another slave? Why, even the kitchen’s trash-pile pigs do not hesitate to approach a slave.”
He winced slightly, but then drew himself up as tall as he could.
“The pigs are not also slaves, Master Marco. And we slaves were not always so. There used to be some social distinctions among some of us, when we were free. The one dignity we can exercise now is to observe those bygone distinctions. If this slave is who I believe her to be, then she was once a high-born lady. I was a freeman in those days, but only a drover. I would ask, master, if you would do me the favor of ascertaining who she is, before I make myself known to her, that I may do so with the appropriate formality of address.”
For a moment I almost felt ashamed of myself. I had commanded compassion for the cuckold Master Chao, yet laughed heartlessly at this poor wretch. Was I, like him, so ready to make ko-tou to class distinctions? But in the next moment I reminded myself that Nostril really was a wretch, of repellent nature and, as long as I had known him, doing none but revolting deeds.
I snapped, “Do not play the noble slave at me, Nostril. You live a life far better than you deserve. However, if you merely wish me to corroborate someone’s identity, I will. What do I ask, and of whom?”
“Could you just inquire, master, whether the Mongols have ever taken prisoners from a kingdom called Cappadocia in Anatolia? That will tell me what I wish to know.”
“Anatolia. That is north of the route by which we came from the Levant into Persia. But my father and uncle must have traveled through it on their earlier journeys. I will ask them, and perhaps I will not need to ask anyone else.”
“May Allah smile ever on you, kind master.”
I left him to finish his wine, though Biliktu sniffed with disapproval of his continuing to loll in her presence. I went along the palace corridors to my father’s chambers, and found my uncle also there, and said I had a question to ask of them. But first my father informed me that they were contending with some problems of their own.
“Obstacles,” he said, “being thrown in the way of our mercantile ventures. The Muslims are proving less than eager to welcome us into their Ortaq. Delaying issuance of permits for us even to sell our accumulated stock of zafràn. Clearly they are reflecting some jealousy or spitefulness on the part of the Finance Minister Achmad.”
“We have two options,” muttered my uncle. “Bribe the damned Arab or put pressure on him. But how do you bribe a man who already has everything, or can easily get it? How do you influence a man who is the second most powerful in the realm?”
It occurred to me that if I told them what hints I had had of Achmad’s private life, they might profitably wield a threat to expose him. But on second thought I did not mention it. My father would refuse to stoop to any such tactic, and would forbid my uncle to do so. Also, I suspected that my hearsay knowledge was a dangerous thing even for me to have acquired, and I would not hand on the risk of danger to them. I made only one mild suggestion:
“Can you perhaps employ, as they say, the devil that tempted Lucifer?”
“A woman?” grunted Uncle Mafio. “I doubt it. There seems to be a deal of mystery about Achmad’s tastes—whether he prefers women or men or children or ewes or what. In any case, he could take his pick from the whole empire, excepting only the Khakhan’s prior choices.”
“Well,” said my father, “if he truly does have everything he could possibly want, there is an old proverb that applies. Ask favors of the man with a full stomach. Let us cease quibbling with the petty underlings of the Ortaq. Go direct to Achmad and put our case before him. What can he do?”
“From what little I know of him,” growled Uncle Mafio, “that man would laugh at a leper.”
My father shrugged. “He will tergiversate for a time, but he will eventually concede. He knows we stand well with Kubilai.”
I said, “I would be happy to put in a word with the Khakhan when I call on him next.”
“No, Marco, do not you fret about this. I would not wish you to compromise your own standing on our account. Perhaps later, when you have been longer in the Khakhan’s confidence, and when perhaps we have real need of your intercession. But with this situation, Mafio and I will cope. Now, you wished to ask a question?”
I said, “You first came here to Kithai and went home again by way of Constantinople, so you must have gone through the lands of Anatolia. Did you happen to traverse a place there called Cappadocia?”
“Why, yes,” said my father. “Cappadocia is a kingdom of the Seljuk Turki people. We stopped briefly in its capital city of Erzincan on our way back to Venice. Erzincan is very nearly directly north of Suvediye—where you have been, Marco—but a long way to the north of it.”
“Were those Turki ever at war with the Mongols?”
“Not then,” said Uncle Mafio. “Not yet, as far as I know. But there was some trouble there, which involved the Mongols, because Cappadocia abuts on the Persian realm of the Ilkhan Abagha. The trouble occurred while we were passing through, as a matter of fact. That was what, Nico—eight, nine years ago?”
“And what was it that happened then?” I asked.
My father said, “The Seljuk King Kilij had an overly ambitious Chief Minister—”
“As Kubilai has the Wali Achmad,” grumbled Uncle Mafio.
“And that Minister secretly connived with the Ilkhan Abagha, promising to make the Cappadocians vassals of the Mongols if Abagha would help him depose the King. And that is what happened.”
“How did it come about?” I asked.
“The King and the whole royal family were assassinated, right there in his Erzincan palace,” said my uncle. “The people knew it was the doing of the Chief Minister, but none dared denounce him, for fear that Abagha would take advantage of any internal dispute, to march his Mongols in and ransack the country.”
“So,” my father concluded the tale, “the Minister put his own infant son on the throne as King—with himself as ruling Regent, of course—and what few survived of the royal family, he handed over to Abagha for disposal as he wished.”
“I see,” I said. “And presumably they are now dispersed all over the Mongol Khanate. Would you know, Father, if there were any women among them?”
“Yes. The survivors may
all
have been female. The Chief Minister was a practical man. He probably slew every one of the King’s male descendants, so there could be no legitimate claimant to the throne he had won for his own son. The females would not have mattered.”