Saxon: The Emperor's Elephant

by Severin, Tim

  *

  By the tenth day of our journey along the Rhone it was evident that we were approaching the mouth of the great river. The current had become sluggish and the river had widened to nearly a half-mile from bank to bank. Far behind us were the prosperous farmlands; now we were passing through a flat, wild landscape of windswept marshes and lagoons. A few greyish-white humps, Abram told us, were piles of salt crystals scraped up by the inhabitants and awaiting collection. It was the only crop they could wrest from the waterlogged soil. Despite the lateness of the season, the weather continued fine and sunny with clear skies that produced spectacular sunsets. On just such an evening Walo and I stumbled on a discovery that obliged me to admit that the verderer’s son had reason to believe in the strangeness and variety of the animals.

  As was their custom, our boatmen selected an isolated spot to spend the night well away from the nearest settlement. They tied up our boats to the bank in an area thickly overgrown with tall bushes. Though it was difficult to get ashore, Walo and I managed to clamber onto the bank and found a faint path, leading inland. We followed it, Walo in the lead, until he stopped suddenly. He had seen something in the undergrowth. He veered off the path to investigate, then beckoned to me to join him. Lying on the ground in a small clearing was the body of a dead bird. From a little distance I thought it might be a swan. But as I drew closer, I saw that it was a bird unlike anything that I had remotely imagined. It was as if someone had joined the body of a large heron to the head and neck of a goose. The creature had once stood on very long sticklike legs and must have been nearly five feet tall.

  ‘I wonder what food it eats?’ wondered Walo aloud.

  I looked at him sharply, then remembered how he had immediately deduced from the terrible teeth in the mouth of the manticore that it was a meat-eater. The dead bird lying on the ground before us had neither the flat shovelling beak of a duck nor the stabbing lance of the heron. Its beak was over-size, a misshapen excrescence like a large bean that curved downward at the tip. At the top of the beak were two long slits like nostrils.

  ‘I don’t remember seeing it in the Book of Beasts,’ I said, ‘though surely it should be in it.’

  The most extraordinary thing about the animal was its remarkable colour. The body feathers were white shaded with a delicate pink that deepened in hue along the neck and towards the wing tips and tail until it became a bright, luxuriant red. The stilt-like legs were a shocking deep vermilion. The colours were so striking that even the most skilled painter would have had trouble in capturing its splendour.

  ‘Perhaps Abram can tell us more about it,’ I suggested. ‘We had better be getting back to the boats.’

  We were about to turn back when there came a confused, discordant clamour like the honking of many geese. It came from above us and I looked up. The tall bushes allowed a view of a small circle of sky. All of a sudden it was filled with the shapes of the strange birds, scores of them, gliding past on outstretched wings as they descended through the air, coming in to land nearby. They flew with necks stiffly outstretched and long legs trailing behind them. There was a glimpse of black underwings.

  ‘Quick! We must go and see. Maybe they will appoint a guardian to watch over them while they are on the ground, just like the cranes,’ Walo blurted, pulling at my arm.

  ‘They’re giant herons,’ I guessed.

  He shook his head. ‘A heron flies with a curved neck. They flew with their necks straight, like cranes.’

  He plunged off through the undergrowth, heading in the direction we had seen the birds descend. After some minutes we worked clear of the bushes and emerged on the rim of a broad lagoon. I caught my breath in astonishment. The lagoon was very shallow, no more than a few inches deep. Standing in the water on their weird stilt-legs were hundreds of the strange birds, clustered in a vast flock. They lifted their heads on their long, sinuous necks as Walo and I appeared, and turned to inspect us. A few had their heads buried underwater, and as they raised them, the water dripped from their glistening beaks. At that same moment the setting sun eased from behind a cloud and flooded the scene with reddish light. The slanting rays gave the birds’ plumage an unearthly glow, infusing them with every hue of red from pink to bright crimson. There was not a breath of wind and the still surface of the lagoon served as a mirror, doubling the illusion. It looked as if the entire spindly legged flock was about to catch fire.

  *

  As soon as we got back to the boats, Walo insisted that I search the bestiary to make sure there was no illustration of the wondrous creatures.

  ‘Their picture must be there,’ he pleaded.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ I told him after I had checked every page. ‘A bird called a phoenix glows red. But that’s only at the end of its life just before it bursts into flames. Besides, it lives in Arabia.’

  ‘Maybe the birds we saw flew here from Arabia, like those cranes that I see flying high over my forest each year.’

  I was sorry to disappoint him. ‘According to the book, only a single phoenix is alive at any time and it lives for five hundred years. When it is ready to die, it builds a nest in the top of a palm tree and bursts into flames. From the ashes arises another phoenix, a young one. It too will live for another five hundred years.’

  Walo clung to his hopes. ‘What about the phoenix’s food?’

  ‘The book states that the phoenix lives on the perfume of frankincense.’

  ‘What’s frankincense?’

  ‘A sort of sweet-smelling gum.’

  Walo’s face lit up with a triumphant smile. ‘Then those big slits in the beak are nostrils. That’s how the bird takes its food.’

  Abram, who had been listening, came to my rescue. ‘They could have been huma birds,’ he said with a smile.

  Walo turned to him excitedly. ‘What are they?’

  ‘Huma birds are found in Persia. They glow like embers.’

  Walo was agog with anticipation. ‘Have you seen one?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. A huma bird spends its entire life high in the air, never coming to land. Great kings wear its feathers in their crowns. Some people call it a bird of paradise. It is claimed that whoever sees the huma bird, even its shadow, is happy for the rest of his life.’

  ‘I would be happy to see either a huma bird or a phoenix,’ announced Walo firmly. ‘If people speak of such creatures in Persia or Arabia, then they must exist.’

  A surly grunt from the aurochs reminded him that the great beast had not been given its evening feed, and he headed off towards its cage.

  Abram waited until I had put the bestiary away safely before he beckoned to one of his servants. The man clambered across from the adjacent boat, carrying the leather tube that contained the dragoman’s precious itinerarium.

  ‘It’s time for another decision about our route,’ Abram said to me, extracting the map from its container.

  ‘Then I think Osric should also hear what you have to say,’ I told him. I called out to my friend to join us. Osric, who had been trying his hand at fishing off the stern of one of the boats, laid down his rod and clambered across to where Abram had set up the little table.

  As he had done the last time, Abram unrolled the itinerarium only enough to show the section he wanted. ‘Note how the river we have been following divides before it reaches the sea. We are halfway along the eastern branch,’ he said, pointing to the map.

  ‘How much further to the sea itself?’ I asked.

  ‘Another two days, maybe less.’ His finger traced the thick line shaded in green that represented the coast. ‘We’ve come as far as is safe for our riverboats. On open water a sudden squall or large waves would quickly swamp them. So either we disembark and take the coast road towards Rome or we shift the animals onto a seagoing vessel and proceed to Rome by sea. The choice is yours.’

  ‘I presume the sea route is faster,’ I asked him.

  ‘Without question. Given a favourable wind we can be in Rome in less than a week. By road it co
uld take us almost two months.’

  I thought back to the voyage from Kaupang with Redwald. The ice bears, dogs and gyrfalcons had all adapted well to shipboard life.

  ‘I’m concerned about the aurochs,’ I said.

  The dragoman shrugged. ‘I’ve seen live cattle shipped. If they are fed and watered, they survive well enough.’

  Osric had been silent until now. ‘And the risk from Hispania?’ he murmured. ‘If we take the sea route, we may encounter ships of the emir of Cordoba. He would not want an embassy between Carolus and the Baghdad caliph to succeed.’

  ‘I’ve made enquiries along the river,’ Abram told him. ‘My contacts tell me that their trading voyages to Rome were trouble-free all summer. There’s been no interference by pirates or hostile ships.’

  I looked questioningly at Osric. He nodded. ‘Then we go by sea,’ I said.

  Abram glanced up at the sky. The sun had dropped below the horizon, and the last few shreds of cloud had dissolved. In the west the evening star was already visible.

  ‘When the air is still and clear like this in winter,’ he observed, ‘it heralds a vicious gale that blows up suddenly from the north. It rages down the valley, lasting for days, and whips up these waters.’

  ‘Then let’s hope we are snug in Rome by then,’ I said.

  He flashed me a mischievous grin. ‘The gale has been known to come at any other times of the year as well. Let’s hope we come across a seagoing ship in the next few miles and can arrange a charter.’

  *

  The cargo ship moored against the salt jetty was nearly the same size as Redwald’s stout ship that had carried us to Kaupang. But there the resemblance ended. This vessel’s planking was grey and battered, the rigging sagged, and the mast had several splits and cracks bound up with rope. I supposed that she had been consigned to hauling humble cargoes of salt because of her advancing years. I doubted Redwald would have taken her onto the open sea, but Abram seemed relieved to see her.

  ‘I feared that the jetty was no longer in use,’ he admitted as our little flotilla tied up to the worn pilings of the dock. ‘I’ll go and find her captain and see if he’ll accept a charter.’

  Eager to stretch my legs, I decided to go ashore myself and explore. The dock was a mean, poor place. There was no sign of any cargo waiting to be loaded, though spilled crystals of salt crunched beneath my feet as I walked across open ground towards a collection of small shacks. Several mangy-looking dogs slept in the hot sunshine, slumped against their door posts, and there was no sign of human activity. Flat countryside stretched to the horizon in every direction, bare and bleached. When I peered into the darkness of one of the huts, I found that it was abandoned and empty and there was a musty smell. I wondered where the occupants had gone and if they would ever return.

  I jumped as a voice behind me said, ‘Protis here is willing to take us to Rome.’

  I swung round to find Abram with a slightly built young man whose dark skin and jet-black hair spoke of Mediterranean ancestry. The faint line of a carefully trimmed moustache emphasized that he was not yet old enough to have grown a full beard.

  ‘Protis is the captain of the ship tied up at the dock,’ Abram continued. ‘He missed the last salt cargo of the season. Last-minute repairs to the hull delayed him.’

  ‘It was just a minor leak, and it’s now fixed,’ the young man asserted. His self-confident manner more than made up for his youthfulness. ‘Your dragoman tells me that you are looking to charter a vessel for the voyage to Rome.’

  His Frankish had a heavy accent and he was visibly relieved when I answered in Latin: ‘You’ve seen the cage containing the big ox on our boat, can you get it aboard your ship?’

  Protis drew himself up to his full height of scarcely more than five feet. ‘My ancestors taught the world how to use levers and pulleys. I can construct a machine to raise your beast in its cage and place it on my deck,’ he declared.

  With a quick, amused glance in my direction Abram intervened, soothing wounded pride. ‘Protis’s people are Greeks from Massalia. They settled there before Rome was even founded.’

  ‘And,’ added the young captain, ‘the citizens of Rome would have starved time and again if my forebears’ ships hadn’t delivered the grain they needed.’

  I refrained from asking how many centuries his own ancient vessel had been afloat. Instead I asked him to show me around.

  Even to my inexperienced eye, the ship was barely seaworthy. There were a great many patches where the timber had been clumsily replaced. The ropes were frayed and whiskery with age, and the canvas sails were threadbare. I peered into the open hatchway and saw the glint of deep bilge water in the bottom of the hold. Several times during our tour of inspection, sailors, of whom there must have been at least a dozen, hauled up buckets of evil-smelling, dirty water and tipped them over board.

  Finally, I took Abram to one side. ‘Are you sure the ship is safe? She seems to be ready to founder.’

  ‘We could wait here and hope for another vessel to show up. But that’s unlikely this late in the season,’ he answered. ‘And there’s no guarantee that the next vessel will be any better.’

  I scratched at an itch on the back of my neck, one of many welts that covered every square inch of my exposed skin. The biting insects of the lower river were ferocious, far worse than anything we had suffered previously. They feasted on us, both day and night. We smeared ourselves in rancid fat from the ice bears’ food supplies, and our boatmen built smudge fires to discourage them, but it did little good. Our faces and hands were blotchy and swollen with insect bites. I flinched at the prospect of spending days being eaten alive while waiting at the dock for a vessel that might never come. As if in agreement, the aurochs let out an angry bellow. Bloody trickles ran down its flanks and neck, where it had been bitten by a local breed of voracious fly, the size of my thumbnail, which thrived on cattle.

  ‘Very well,’ I said to Abram, ‘arrange the charter. Just make sure that we get on our way as quickly as possible.’

  Protis made good his boast when it came to devising a way of lifting the aurochs and its cage. He and his sailors took a short, stubby mast from near the bow and repositioned it to project out over the side of the vessel. With a complicated web of ropes and pulleys they succeeded in hoisting the great animal, still in its cage, and placing it on deck just behind the main mast. The ice bears in their cage followed soon afterwards and were set down on the foredeck. In another of the young captain’s inspirations he then had his men cut the smallest of our river ferries in half and one section brought aboard. His ship’s carpenter built up the sides with extra planks, blanked off the open end, and re-caulked the seams. It transformed the vessel into a water tank for our menagerie. Meanwhile Abram’s men had been scouring the countryside for supplies. Several cartloads of grass and fodder were delivered to the dock, along with crates of live chickens for the bears, gyrfalcons and dogs. When all was ready, Abram paid our river boatmen their final wages and the three remaining ferries towed Protis’s venerable ship out into mid-river. There, her large, threadbare mainsail was let loose to catch the breeze. We began slowly to head towards the waiting sea, looking and smelling like a farmyard and leaving a trail of hay wisps on the murky surface of the river.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘I’VE MADE THIS VOYAGE a dozen times, and never a problem,’ Protis boasted. We were standing on deck, side by side, and it was a splendid morning, the second of our sea voyage. The breeze was just enough to belly out the sail and the sun sparkled off a sea that showed a brighter, sharper blue than anything I had seen in northern waters. A flock of gulls wheeled and hovered alongside, attracted by the occasional splashes of water as our sailors dumped buckets of bilge overboard. Unsurprisingly, the hull of Protis’s ramshackle vessel was far from watertight.

  ‘I recall you saying that your family have been seafarers for generations,’ I remarked, making conversation.

  ‘As far back as any family in Massalia,
and proud of it. My parents named me after the city’s founder.’ Our youthful captain liked to chat, and once he got into his stride he was almost unstoppable. ‘The first Protis was from Greece, far back in the mists of time, a trader who dropped anchor in a sheltered bay along the coast. The daughter of a local chieftain fell in love with him, the two got married, and they and their people flourished. Massalia grew up around the same natural harbour. My family tradition is to name one of the sons after the city’s founder.’

  ‘So your father was also called Protis?’

  He nodded. ‘Though it brought him no luck. He went down with his ship in a sudden, bad storm when I was just a toddler. My grandfather taught me my sea skills. He’s now retired, of course. His eyesight’s gone.’

  That might explain the age of the vessel, I thought to myself. Protis had probably inherited it from his grandfather, a vessel put back into service after the family’s other and newer ship had sunk.

  ‘To lose one’s eyesight is hard for anyone,’ I sympathized.

  The young captain smiled sadly. He was obviously fond of his grandfather. ‘It’s the worst thing that can happen to a mariner. He needs good eyes. We make most of our voyages following the coast or sailing from one island to the next one already visible on the horizon.’

  He pointed away to our left. ‘Right now we are staying well off shore for safety, yet close enough so that I can keep in sight those mountains.’

  Judging by the number of other sails we had seen moving in both directions along the coast, it was how most captains navigated locally. Sailing from one port to the next in the Mediterranean did not appear to be as demanding as the conditions Redwald faced when finding his way from Dorestad to Kaupang.

  ‘Do we follow the coast all the way to Rome?’ I asked, trying to visualize what Abram’s itinerarium had shown.

  ‘There are one or two stretches where we lose sight of the mountains because the land is too low. At those places we will steer further off shore and take a more direct route to our destination.’