Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [89]
ON THE MORNING of the hunt, the royal party proceeded along a road leading in a southerly direction from Cambulac toward the hunting grounds. Barons and lesser officials traveled on horseback, or walked, while Kublai Khan loomed over all atop one of his four elephants, which were adept at working their way through narrow passes. Befitting his station, he sat within an enclosure (“a beautiful wooden room,” Marco calls it) decorated with the finest silk and beaten-gold ornaments. Kublai rarely strayed from his luxurious perch, Marco confides, because of the painful gout from which he suffered. All the while, twelve barons accompanied him, together with twelve attractive women. “There is no amusement in the world equal to it,” Marco sighs.
Shielded by the drapes surrounding his private chamber, Kublai Khan conversed with his guests, as barons and knights rode alongside, acting as spotters. Whenever they saw cranes or pheasants overhead, they immediately cried out, “Sir, cranes are passing.” At that, Kublai flung back the curtains and let loose his gerfalcon.
Looking up, Kublai and his minions squinted to see the streamlined creature streaking like a meteorite across the heavens, tucking its wings and diving until a hapless crane or other bird took notice and vainly tried to elude its attacker. The falcon’s speed always won out, and as the two creatures collided, the falcon sank its razorlike talons into its stunned and helpless prey, engaging it in an intricate airborne dance of death. Locked in their fatal embrace, the birds plummeted to earth, and hunters galloped toward the spot where they fell to recover the falcon as it ravished its prey.
Lolling atop his elephant, Kublai Khan savored the spectacle of avian combat. “It is a very great amusement and a great delight to him,” Marco attested, “and to all the other barons and knights who also ride round the lord.”
FATIGUED from his hours of sport, Kublai Khan sought refuge amid the “beautiful and rich” tents and pavilions where his barons, knights, and falconers, together with their wives and concubines, numbering as many as ten thousand, congregated. Some of the tents were large enough to shelter a thousand knights, and each, regardless of size, had its door opening “toward midday,” in accordance with Mongol custom.
The largest tent connected to the khan’s private lodging, which consisted of two halls and a chamber. Marco left a sumptuous description of the furnishings of Kublai Khan’s splendid dwelling on the remote plain: “Each hall has three posts of spice wood very well worked. They are all covered outside with lion skins that are very beautiful, for they are all striped with black and with white and with red. They are so well arranged that [neither] wind nor rain nor anything else can hurt those inside nor do harm to that skin, because they keep it off very well. And inside those halls and rooms they are all lined with ermine and with sable skins. These are both the most beautiful furs and the most rich and of greater value than any furs that may be…. The skin of the sable, as much as may be lining for one man’s robe, is worth two thousand bezants of gold,…and the Tartars call it in their tongue ‘the king of skins.’…The cords that hold the halls and the room are all of silk. They are of so great value and cost so much, these three tents, that a small king could not pay for them.”
But Kublai Khan was no “small king.” He was the emperor of the Mongols, the most powerful ruler alive.
IN FALCONRY, Marco Polo found striking similarities between East and West. In both cultures, falconry had been the sport of the nobility for more than a thousand years. A “swift dog and a splendid hawk,” as one ancient Western phrase has it, were the perquisites of a well-equipped gentleman. Kings and commoners in Asia and Europe alike thrilled to the sight of a bird of prey soaring across a grassy plain as hunters below rode furiously toward their quarry.
Holy Roman Emperor Frederick