Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [65]
Having disposed of the preliminaries, Kublai Khan demanded to hear “what dealings” the brothers had had “with the chief Pontiff.” Marco says that Niccolò and Maffeo “explained to him well and skillfully with great eloquence and order all they had done, being heard with great and long silence by the lord and all the barons, who wondered much at their great and long fatigues and at their great perils.” When they concluded their account, they presented Kublai with the papal documents they had carried with them from Acre to Cambulac. The Mongol leader praised their “diligence” in accomplishing this superhuman task. But there was more.
With a Venetian flourish, “they handed him the holy oil that they had brought from the lamp of the Sepulcher of our Lord Jesus Christ from Jerusalem, which he had so much desired.” The gift, so difficult to obtain, had its intended effect. Kublai Khan received the magical substance with “great rejoicing and held it very dear and ordered it to be kept with great honor and reverence, and nothing was ever more dear or welcome than that.”
Next it was young Marco’s turn. His father and uncle formally presented the young man to the Mongol leader. “The Great Khan, when he saw Marco, who was a young bachelor of very great and noble aspect, asked who he was,” the reader is told. “‘Sir,’ said his father, Master Niccolò, ‘he is my son and your man, whom as the dearest thing I had in this world I have brought with great peril and ado from such distant lands to present him to thee for thy servant.’” One can imagine the youth’s cheeks tingling with apprehension at the formality and intimacy of the occasion, as well as its significance, for his father had just committed him to the service of Kublai Khan.
“May he be welcome,” said the Great Khan, “and it pleases me much.”
BOOK TWO
Asia
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Universal Emperor
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
WINNING KUBLAI KHAN’S approval marked the decisive moment in young Marco’s life; henceforth he stepped out of his elders’ shadow and emerged in his own right. His exuberant, questing temperament proved the perfect match for the emperor and empire. So it was that the greatest ruler on earth saw promise in a keenly observant young traveler from the mysterious West. Together they freed Marco from his Venetian constraints, and under the khan’s influence Marco began to evolve into the traveler remembered by history. For seventeen years, Marco Polo and Kublai Khan participated in a most unusual partnership as master and servant, teacher and disciple, and even father and son.
Marco declares that Kublai Khan held him “in great favor,” and enlisted him “among the other honored members of his household, for which reason he was held of great account and value by all those at the court.” The young Venetian, in turn, studied his unusual hosts. “While he stayed at the court of the Great Khan, this youth…, being of very distinguished mind, learned the customs of the Tartars and their language and their letters and their archery so well that it seemed a wonder for all,” he says with characteristic lack of modesty. Before long, he had learned “several languages and four other letters and writings.” Thus armed, he came to know Kublai Khan perhaps better than the khan knew himself, and to etch him in the Western consciousness for all time.
To Europeans, Kublai Khan, like his ancestors before him, was more of a demonic force than a person, and although Marco plainly stood in awe of the leader of the Mongols, he was also determined to give him a human face—itself an iconoclastic act.
“The great lord of lords, who is called Kublai Khan, is like this,” Marco begins. “He is of good and fair size, neither too small nor too large, but is of middle size. He is covered with flesh in a beautiful manner; he is more than well formed in all parts. He has his face white and red like a rose; the eyes [are] black and beautiful; the nose well made and well set.” The description