Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [169]
Nine months! They could only have wondered, with good reason, if they would ever see the great domes of San Marco, greet their wives, and resume their comfortable lives in Venice. During the endless layover, the Polo company endured a suffocating excess of hospitality and affection from their grateful hosts. Even when the weather cooperated, and political conditions permitted them to leave, the young woman whom they had escorted across China did not wish to see her guardians depart. Once more, the Polos found themselves pleading and making far-fetched promises to return in exchange for permission to leave. At last their wish was granted, but even then, “when these three messengers left her to return to their country, she wept for grief at their departure.” Perhaps she finally came to the realization that she had been the vehicle of their escape from the Mongol Empire. The unfortunate Kokachin, who had risked all to journey to this distant kingdom, died a short time later, in June 1296. Poisoning by a faction opposed to Kublai Khan is the most likely explanation for her untimely death.
As the Polo company prepared to depart, Quiacatu, in the spirit of Kublai Khan, bestowed a series of gifts, blessings, and burdens in the form of elaborate paizas: “four tablets of gold…two with gerfalcons and one with a lion and the other was plain, each of which was one cubit long and five fingers wide.” The tablets declared “that these three messengers should be honored and served through all his land as his own person, and that horses and all expenses and all escort should be given them in full through any dangerous places for themselves and the whole company.”
The beneficence of Kublai Khan was endless, even now. “Many times there were given them two hundred horsemen, and more or less according as was necessary for their escort and to go safely from one land to another. And this was very necessary many times, for they found many dangerous places, because Quiacatu had no authority and was not natural nor liege lord and therefore the people did not refrain from doing evil as they would have done if they had a true and liege lord.” The farther the Polos strayed from Argon’s kingdom, the less they could count on their paizas to protect them against brigands with no allegiance to Kublai Khan.
From this point on, they would have to fend for themselves if they were to survive the long voyage home.
IT WAS NOW 1294, with the Mongol New Year beginning in February. Kublai Khan was so weary and depressed that he shunned those who had traveled to the court to offer their greetings and good wishes for the coming year. His favorite general, Bayan, attempted to remind him of the great military victories they shared, but even he failed to revive the khan.
On February 18, Kublai Khan died at the age of eighty in the safety and comfort of his palace.
Two days later, a funeral caravan bearing Kublai Khan’s mortal remains slowly made its way from the palace north toward the Khenti Mountains. In keeping with Mongol custom, his burial place, believed to be near that of his grandfather, Genghis, was concealed amid the setting’s brooding majesty. No records describing it survive, nor has the site itself been located. It was a singularly subdued conclusion for an emperor noted in his lifetime for daring and excess.
Kublai’s chosen successor, Chinkim, had died years before. In his place, Kublai