The Grand Cham (Lamb, Adventure magazine)/Chapter 10
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THE TOPAZ RING
IT WAS as if Clavijo and his party had been snatched up by a hurricane. They were swept down from the gorge called the Gate of Shadows, swept out to the south upon the high, rolling steppe of Iran where the receding hills of Mazandaran showed purple against the sky to the north.
Beyond these same hills, farther to the north, stretched the Sea of Sarai—the Caspian—about which Clavijo had permitted his tongue to wag and which he had never seen, although Michael Bearn had bitter knowledge of it.
The Tatars halted for nothing, except a snatch of sleep at the hamlets of sheep-herders or the bare walls of a Moslem khan by a caravan track. They, so Gutchluk explained by signs, were anxious to leave the borderland of the Turk behind. Not on their own account, for the men of the sultan were dogs, but to safeguard the precious persons of the ambassadors.
So they passed over the dry grass of Iran, away from the clay valleys and the groves of the land that was called Kuhistan, in Persia, and many interminable lines of clumsy camels they saw passing over the steppe at night, and many ant-like bodies of Tatar warriors mounted on shaggy ponies inimitably swift of foot. And Clavijo and his people marveled. The Tatars had swung to the right and were journeying now toward the setting sun.
But they saw naught of the city with brazen walls or the gold trees or the fountains of wine of the earthly paradise that Clavijo had called Cathay.
“Hic ignotus sum quia passuum,” quoth Bembo the jester blithely three weeks later. “Here we are the barbarians, and the barbarians are the great lords and signors. Lord Gutchluk quarters us i' this penthouse and furnishes us a live ox, that we, poor Frankish outlanders, may eat in our cage like the hunting-leopards I saw dragged past i' their leash this day at time o' mass.”
They were, in fact, at a serai where a huge fire glowed over which the Tatars roasted the pieces of animals whole. The serai was almost the only building in what seemed to the travelers to be the encampment of a limitless army. For two weeks they had been kept waiting, in the midst of this army.
Bembo was like a man born anew. Gutchluk and the other Tatars had treated him respectfully, for he bore himself boldly and had clad his person in new finery from the stores.
“The mummery is on, i' faith,” grinned the jester. “Aye, each buffoon of us has his part to play. Behold Signor Dominus, the consul-general Clavijo—the great lord-treasurer, provveditore, Soranzi—likewise Rudolfo, the lord-general and master of armies. And most of all, behold Bembo, the wise councilor, the privy coz, the whisperer of kings. Without him, my hearties, the rooks would be emptying your eye-sockets back in yonder Inn o' the Skull.”
Clavijo frowned.
“Tamerlane will see us this noon,” he said. “We have been kept waiting long.”
“Aye, verily. The delay measures our importance i' the eyes o' these gentlefolk. Two days agone Lord Gutchluk and a baron who looks like a prince of Eblis took our gifts to the king, along with the camels of a khan of Karabak and the painted giant beasts with a tail where their nose should be—the beasts that are gifts from a lord of Khorassan. Now our turn has come and you must lie cleverly or be fed to the beasts, see you?“
“We can say we are an embassy from Venice.”
“Nay, San Marco forbid. Firstly, the council, hearing that we who are mere voyagers have usurped ambassadorial rôle, would slit our throats. Secondly, there would be no need o' that, for Tamerlane would have us tied to the ground for his giant beasts to walk upon.”
Bembo smiled at the consternation written in the Spaniard's face.
“Signor Gutchluk,“ he explained, “confessed to me not an hour since that recently certain merchants of Venice penetrated so far as Damascus and endeavored to sell nostrums and false sovereign waters i' the fashion o' mountebanks, and to claim exemption from taxes and gifts as is their wont. The Tatars threw them into the river. So, my cousins, we can not be Venetians for the word rings so ill i' the ears of these barbarians as the Venetian nostrums i' their bellies.”
They were silent at that, looking blackly at the man whose tale had brought them—Soranzi, Rudolfo, and the injured Gian—hither.
“I tell you,” swore Rudolfo, “that Bearn has betrayed us. Why else is he escaped here hence with a whole skin, leaving us to damnation?”
Michael's departure from the Gate of Shadows had puzzled the Tatar guards as well as Rudolfo. The warriors had searched for him briefly without result and had then pressed on to their army. What mattered it to them if one of the Franks chose to part company with them, so long as the chief ambassadors, as they considered Clavijo and Rudolfo, and the all-important gifts remained?
“He will return to us this night or the morrow,” asserted Bembo stoutly. “He pledged it me the night he left us. Who are we that we should know his comings or that which he seeks in this land?”
“’Twere wiser, methinks, to question who he is.” Rudolfo strode surlily back and forth in front of the clay platform by the fire on which Bembo squatted.
So pliable is human nature that Clavijo and Soranzi had come to look upon the condottiere as a possible protector in their plight. At least they feared the Tatars—who seemed to them like animals—more than they feared Rudolfo, now that Michael had vanished.
“Is he not leagued,, with these pagan demons?” demanded the Italian. “What will his coming avail us? Nay, we must trust to our wits to cut a way out of this coil. I have heard the Sultan of the Turks, whose power is not far from this camp, is a rich monarch, different from these beasts. How if we could”
He broke off as Bembo chuckled.
“So this is Cathay!” grinned the jester. “We must be bewitched, for we saw naught of Clavijo's golden city.”
The Spaniard winced.
“Your master swore we would be safe here,” he said uneasily. The coming ordeal of the audience with Tamerlane weighed on the three of them. Bembo alone was careless.
Having the gift of tongues, the jester had conversed in broken Greek with Gutchluk and his faith in Michael was strong.
“My master is a true man,” he insisted. “He said he would join us at Tamerlane's court at the first of the new moon. He will keep his word.”
Here they looked up as Gutchluk entered with another powerful warrior in black armor; the man Bembo had termed a prince of Eblis. The ambassadors were summoned by Tamerlane, who waited them.
They mounted and rode through the Tatar encampment, seeing on every hand nothing but horses, sleeping warriors, smiths who labored at smoking forges, herders who guided great masses of cattle hither and yon in the dust.
Then a vista of round tents opened before them. Some of these were on massive wagons; some bore standards of fluttering yaks' tails. It was a veritable city of tents.
Hard-faced men glanced at them casually; black slaves made haste to get out of their way. Once a line of elephants passed, hauling sleds on which were wooden machines of war, unknown to them.
It seemed to the cringing Soranzi that they had invaded a city of beasts. He heard a lion roar from the cages where Tamerlane's animals were kept. He saw giraffes, brought from Africa, penned in a staked enclosure. Yet his merchant's eye noted the barbaric splendor of gold-inlaid armor, jeweled weapons, costly rugs spread within the tents and women's cloaks fashioned of ostrich feathers.
What kind of monarch, he thought, ruled over this hive-like multitude of pagans?
TAMERLANE the Great, King of Kings, Lord of the East and West, extended a gnarled hand across the chess-board and touched his opponent's king.
“Shah rohk,“ he said. “The game is mine.”
He freed a long ruby from one bent finger and handed it to the man who knelt across the board from him—a silk-clad Chinese general who had come from the edge of the Gobi to pay homage.
Few could match wits even with fair success with the Tatar conqueror, for — (Timur the Lame) had fashioned himself a board with many times the usual number of squares and men.
Gathered about the board were princes of Delhi, amirs of Bokhara, and khans of the White and Black Tatars and the powerful Golden Horde that reached to the shores of the Volga. They were standing under a gigantic pavilion stretched upon supports taller than the masts of ships. Over the head of the conqueror hung silk streamers, swaying in the evening breeze, for the sides of the pavilion were open and the men within could look out from the dais on which they stood, over the tents of the army.
“Summon the Frank ambassadors,” ordered Tamerlane.
They came through one of the outer porticos of the purple pavilion—Clavijo and Soranzi and Bembo, each with his arms gripped on either side by a Tatar noble. They were worried and anxious, for they had ridden for six hours through the army that never seemed to have an end.
The custom of holding envoys by the arms seemed to them ominous. Clavijo stared at the kneeling Tatar, noting his big, bent shoulders, his massive length of body, his shaggy brows and hard eyes. Tamerlane, nearly seventy years of age, was near-sighted—a peculiarity that made his naturally fierce stare the more difficult to bear.
Soranzi blinked at the low table of solid gold on which the Tatar leaned and muttered under his breath as he tried to estimate the value of a blue diamond in Tamerlane's plain steel helmet.
“From whom do you bear submission and greetings to me?” demanded the monarch. His speech had to be translated into Persian and then Greek, through two interpreters.
Clavijo's broad brow was damp with perspiration. To gain time to think, he said that he did not understand.
“Then take those dogs of interpreters and lead them through the army by a rope thrust into their noses,” commanded the Tatar at once. “Bring others who are wiser.”
The two unfortunates threw themselves on their knees, and Clavijo paled. But Bembo spoke up, kneeling and crossing his hands on his chest.
“Great khan,“ he observed in Greek, “their words were clear; it was my companion, the dominus, who was dazed by the splendor of your presence.”
This, being interpreted by other mouths, satisfied Tamerlane and he motioned to the interpreters to continue.
“Franks,” he resumed, “I have taken your gifts. The cloth-of-silver and gold pleased me. From what king do you come, from the other end of the earth?”
Hereupon Soranzi could not restrain a murmur of anguish. The bales of cloth had been his personal stock in trade, now lost beyond repair. Clavijo bowed and at last found an answer.
“From the King of—of Spain,“ he replied.
“Good! I have heard of him. How is my son, the King of Spain? Is his health good? Has he much cattle and treasure?”
They stared at Clavijo, these Armenians, Tatars and Chinese. The Europeans were quite a curiosity—petty envoys from a tiny kingdom somewhere at the end of the world. They had come, so reasoned the Tatars, to bask in the magnificence of the Lord of the East and West.
Clavijo was very much afraid. He would have welcomed the sight of Michael Bearn's cheerful face. But he gathered assurance as he began to describe the splendors of Aragon, enlarging upon the great ships and towns of Spain.
At this, however, Tamerlane began to pay more attention to a topaz ring that he turned and twisted upon a sinewy hand.
Fearing that his tale was lacking fire, Clavijo began to exaggerate as was his wont, until he was boasting hugely. Tamerlane scowled under bushy brows, first at the speaker, then at the ring. Finally he held up his hand for the Spaniard to see.
“Behold, Frank, a magician's stone,” he said gruffly. “The topaz turns purple when any one lies to me. I always watch it and it has served me well.”
Superstitious, as all men of his time and race, Clavijo stared in dismay. Indeed his round face turned a very good shade of purple. His flow of words dwindled as he scanned the topaz and fancied that it changed color.
This might well have been due to the twilight that was falling upon the great pavilion.
“Frank,” observed the conqueror, “you come at a good time. My army is mounted for war against the Sultan Bayezid. He has preyed upon my subjects in lesser Armenia and I have offered him terms by which he may save his head. We will hear what he will reply.”
To hear the sultan who was the scourge of Christendom mentioned as Tamerlane might speak of a slave added fuel to Clavijo's active imagination.
“If there is a battle, you will see a goodly sight,” repeated the old conqueror. “Does my son the King of Spain fight battles or is he a dog of a merchant like the Venetians?”
Clavijo essayed a reply, glanced at the topaz ring which seemed to him to be now a deep purple indeed, and the last of his courage oozed from him. Breaking from the Tatar warriors who held his arms, he fell on his knees.
“Mercy, great lord,” he bellowed. “Oh, mercy. Grant me royal clemency if I have offended. Make me a captive, but spare my life!”
This being interpreted, Tamerlane smiled.
“Verily,” he said shortly, “the Frank is frightened by my face. Nay, Timur the Tatar has harmed no ambassador. Fear not, but join in our feast.”
He signed to the men who held the visitors. Soranzi, a-tremble with anxiety, took this to be a signal for their destruction. Without waiting for the speech to be translated, he flung himself at the Tatar's feet, embracing his slippers.
“O King of Kings,“ he cried, “my companion has lied, even as your wisdom has suspected. He is naught but a seeker after gold, disguised as an envoy. The gifts that pleased you were mine. I will pay more. Do not believe this traitor when he says that I am a merchant, for he is a liar”
Surprized by this outburst, Tamerlane turned to the interpreters with a scowl.
“Now the fat is in the fire,” sighed Bembo.
Tamerlane pulled at his thin mustache, his small black eyes darting from one to the other. He surveyed his topaz ring and grunted. There was something wolfish now in the stare of the Mongol warriors.
Rudolfo swore under his breath and Soranzi did not cease to moan his fear. Since the attack by the riders at the Gate of Shadows his dread had grown upon him. That afternoon he had seen captives of the khan hauled through the camp in cages, like beasts.
“The gifts were mine,” he repeated over and over, holding fast to the Tatar's slipper.
“Then you are not ambassadors sent to Tamerlane?”
“Nay.” Clavijo and Soranzi were answering in one breath when Gutchluk knelt and addressed his lord, saying that the Franks had purported to be merchants before their capture.
Tamerlane was a man who never minced words and hated deceit. He was about to speak when there was a bustle in the outer porticos. A man flung himself from an exhausted horse, crying—
“A courier for the khan!”
Those who had crowded about Clavijo and his party gave back at this, opening a lane between Tamerlane and the new-comer, barely visible in the half-light of evening, who bowed thrice and knelt before the dais.
“O King of Kings,” the horseman cried in Arabic, “I have beheld the answer of the sultan. He has struck off the heads of the Tatars' envoys and placed them at the gate of Angora. Thus Bayezid has made answer to you.”
The old Tatar's face grew dark and veins stood out on his forehead. He caught his sword from its sheath and swung it over the head of the unfortunate messenger who remained quietly kneeling.
Then the khan checked the sweep of his blade mid-way and stood staring out into the dusk, his face a mask of anger. Yet when he spoke, his words were measured and deep.
“Aye, there will be a battle.” He looked down at the courier. “You are a brave man. Take twenty horses and go, that your face will not remind me of the deed you bespoke.”
Replacing his sword, Tamerlane ordered that the army be ready to march on the morrow. For the first time Clavijo noted the great bulk of the Tatar and the fact that he was lame. In his youth, during an affray with the Seljuke Turks, Tamerlane had been beaten from his horse and cast to earth with three ribs broken and a mangled side.
Turning back to his chess-board, he observed the Europeans who still remained held by their guards.
“Come with my court, liars and merchants,” he said grimly. “Instead of jugglers and musicians, you will amuse me, for I will pass judgment upon you then.”