Daughter of Xanadu - Dori Jones Yang [35]
Strange. I could not imagine two Mongol warriors doing such a thing. To be knocked off his horse would be the ultimate humiliation for a Mongol. Still, Marco was finally talking about military practices. I nodded, encouraging him to continue.
His green eyes danced as he took on his storyteller voice. “Such matches attract many onlookers, with great excitement,” he said. “Colorful banners flutter in the breeze. Shields are displayed, with the symbols of different noble houses. The king and his royal family watch from a grandstand.”
He was captivating me, again, with his words. “Do women compete, too?” I asked.
“No. But the ladies of the court play an important role. Before each tournament, a knight will ask a royal lady for her favor. If she wants him to win, she will give him a scarf, and he will tie it to his sleeve when he competes. She will cheer for him to win.”
“Courtly love.” I had hoped to hear more about this hazardous idea.
“Courtly love.” Marco’s eyes brimmed with mischief. “In one of our best-loved tales, a king named Arthur is famous for his wise rule, like your Khan. His queen is a beautiful young woman named Guinevere. His finest knight falls in love with her.”
“He loves the queen?” That was treachery. “Our Khan would kill such a man.”
He lowered his voice, as if telling me something he should not. “It is not like love between a man and his wife. It is more like worship, or adoration, of a man for a lady.”
“A man worships a lady who is not his wife?” The idea seemed awful and alluring.
“Yes. The knight watches a royal lady with longing, but he knows he could never have her. One day, he hopes, she will smile at him. Then he will know she admires him.”
My insides shivered. I did not smile.
Marco’s green eyes seemed to glow. “Of course, it is an impossible love. The knight would never touch the lady unless she wanted him to.”
A frisson went up my back. “And if she refused his affections?”
“If he could not see her, he would weep and sigh. He would write poems about her, wishing he had the wings of a dove to fly back to her.”
What Marco spoke of sounded both risky and appealing. What kind of place was this Christendom? “He worships a lady.”
“Not like he worships God. Very different. But he loves and admires her from afar. His love ennobles him and inspires him to do great things, to serve her.”
“He would serve a lady?” Could love for a woman actually ennoble and inspire a man, rather than weaken him and distract him from his duty?
Marco grinned. “Let me show you how the knights do it.”
He looked around and picked a yellow wildflower, long-stemmed and lovely. Then he took off his hat and held it before his chest. He knelt and offered me the flower.
“O noble lady, your beauty and radiance blind me. I am at your service.” He looked up at me and I saw a teasing twinkle in his clear eyes, even as his voice took on a serious tone. “Please accept this flower as a token of my love.”
I was so shocked I didn’t know what to say. A man on his knees before a woman! Professing adoration and willingness to serve her! Women were meant to serve men, not the other way around. Then again, he was a lowly merchant, and I a member of the Khan’s Golden Family. Of course, he was just acting, showing me how others did it. Still, it was strange. It was wrong. Terrible, even. But it turned my head.
Marco looked up at me with an odd combination of admiration and playfulness. A butterfly lit on his shoulder. A slight breeze shook the yellow wildflower in his hand.
My heart was bursting in my chest. My ambition had always been to be a warrior, but this foreign notion, courtly love, appealed to something so deep in me I had not known it was there. My cheeks felt hot.
I couldn’t accept the flower.
“Very different from the Mongol tradition, no?” He broke the tension and stood. Then, as naturally as if I were his little sister, he tucked the flower behind my ear.
The touch of