Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [2]
In disgrace, Andrea Dandolo lashed himself to his flagship’s mast and beat his head against it until he died of a fractured skull, thus depriving the Genoese of the satisfaction of executing him.
THE SCALE OF the victory astounded the Genoese forces, who marveled at their good fortune as they led the captured Venetian galleys to a grim reckoning in Genoa.
Among the thousands of wretched captives was Marco Polo, nobleman of Venice.
FOR THE NEXT four weeks, the Genoese fleet with its captive vessels proceeded on a generally southerly course, and then turned west, under the heel of Italy, and finally north toward Genoa, where the vessels arrived on October 6, 1298. Marco Polo’s galley was towed into the harbor stern first, her sail luffing in the breeze, her banners askew, and her commander in shackles.
Further disgrace awaited Marco Polo on land, where, according to some accounts, he was immediately confined to the Palazzo di San Giorgio. Despite its grand name, the structure had grim associations for Venetians because it was built (in 1260) from stones the Genoese had shamelessly stolen from the Venetian consulate in Constantinople. The result was a vulgar monument to Genoese military superiority, complete with ornamental stone lions taken from the original, the lion being the symbol of Venetian power, now tamed by her chief rival.
Stung by the indignity, Venetians claimed that prisoners starved here, while the Genoese maintained that they were well fed and well cared for. The truth probably lay somewhere between the two. Prisoners wandered around the palazzo at will, and even sent for luxuries from home. Prominent detainees, such as Marco Polo, occupied apartments in which their beds were surrounded with curtains made of rich fabrics; it is possible that servants ran errands for them. Life in captivity consisted of tedium rather than cruelty, but it stretched on for years.
Even in these degrading circumstances, Marco Polo kept his wits about him. As a Venetian commander, he was treated with deference. He made himself known throughout the prison, and then Genoa, as a teller of sensational tales of his travels in Asia, just as he had in Venice prior to his capture. He was able to attract attention and elevate his circumstances until he became regarded as a phenomenon. Displaying the same ability he had deployed to survive in the Mongol Empire and in India, he charmed and ingratiated himself with strangers. Eventually, the Genoese, his natural enemies, came to hold the distinguished and entertaining Venetian in high regard. “The whole city gathered to see him and to talk to him, not treating him as a prisoner, but as a very dear friend and greatly honored gentleman, and showed him so much honor and affection that there was never an hour of the day that he was not visited by the most noble gentlemen of that city, and presented with everything necessary for his daily living,” wrote Giambattista Ramusio, a Renaissance scholar who composed one of the earliest accounts of Marco Polo’s career.
Freed from the constraints of his mundane commercial responsibilities, Marco did not merely survive in jail, he thrived, metamorphosing into a middle-aged male Scheherazade who earned his keep with tales of his adventures, and especially of the Mongol ruler Kublai Khan. The Venetian claimed to have seen him with his own eyes. “Messer Marco,” Ramusio wrote, “beholding the great desire that everyone had to hear of the things of the country of Cathay and of the Great Khan, and being forced with great weariness to begin his story all over again each day, was advised that he ought to put it in writing.”
AS HE LANGUISHED in the Palazzo di San Giorgio, Marco encountered a prolific writer of Arthurian romances named Rustichello of Pisa, a favorite of King Edward I of England. The Genoese had captured the writer years earlier, on August 6, 1284, in the Battle of Meloria, while