Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [17]
Acre served as a natural point of departure for travelers to the East such as the Polos, who mingled with the population of about fifty thousand, including Christian Crusaders, Muslim warriors, and Jewish merchants. To his astonishment, Ludolph found that nobles visiting the city “walked about the streets in royal state, with golden coronets on their heads, each of them like a king, with his knights, his followers, his mercenaries and his retainers, his clothing and his warhorse wondrously bedecked with gold and silver, all vying one with another in beauty and novelty of device, each man appareling himself with the utmost care.”
The Polo brothers found themselves outclassed by the other merchants in Acre, “the richest under Heaven,” according to Ludolph. “Everything that can be found in the world that is wondrous or strange used to be brought thither because of the nobles and princes who dwelt there.”
THE BROTHERS’ PLANS once again fell apart when they learned, a few months after the fact, that Pope Clement IV had died on November 23, 1268, at Viterbo. It seemed as if turmoil would trap the Polo company indefinitely. In desperation, notes Marco, they went to “a learned clerk who was the legate”—that is, the official emissary—“of the Pope for the Church of Rome in all the realm of Egypt. He was a man of great authority and was named Teobaldo of Piacenza.” On bended knee, the Polo brothers told the legate their entire fantastic tale concerning their goodwill mission to the pope commissioned by the Great Khan.
The legate expressed “great wonder at it.” To his credit, he believed that “great good and great honor” for all Christendom could come from the proposal. He counseled the anxious Venetians to linger. “And when there shall be a Pope, you will be able to fulfill your mission,” he assured them. The wait for the election dragged on, with no end in sight. Restless, Niccolò and Maffeo decided to slip back to Venice and then to return to Acre in time to complete their task in conjunction with Clement IV’s successor. Moving nimbly for once, they left Acre for the island of Negrepont (now Euboea), boarded a ship, and reached Venice at last.
MORE THAN sixteen years had passed since Niccolò and Maffeo Polo had last seen their home, sixteen years spent traversing the largest continent not once but twice, sixteen years during which they had lived by their wits, and come to enjoy the patronage of the most feared and powerful ruler on earth. Their journey had contained enough adventure for a lifetime, but for all its daring and accomplishment, it merely laid the groundwork for the celebrated expedition they would eventually take with young Marco.
Stunning developments awaited them. Niccolò learned that his wife was dead. Perhaps even more startling, she had left him a “small son of fifteen years who had the name Marco.” This was Marco Polo, a boy who had spent his entire life in Venice, had never known his father, and until Niccolò’s return had had every reason to believe that he was an orphan.
For two years, Niccolò and Maffeo languished in Venice, awaiting news of the next pope’s identity. It would be satisfying to assume that Niccolò, now a widower, spent time becoming acquainted with the “small son” he had never known to exist, but the record states otherwise. In short order, Niccolò remarried, and his new wife became pregnant.
ALTHOUGH MARCO had known nothing of his father or uncle, their adventures became deeply imprinted on his psyche and determined his entire future. He heard their tales of the Silk Road and of the Mongols, with their gers and koumiss. Most of all, he heard their accounts of meeting the