Saxon: The Emperor's Elephant

by Severin, Tim

  Osric was patient with me. ‘A slave for now, and a valued singer. Jaffar is generous, and he’s more of a patron than a master. Last year he promised to give Zaynab her freedom as well as a present of money if she would continue to sing so beautifully. He says that the gift of freedom would remove the sadness from her voice.’

  ‘And Zaynab agreed to his proposal?’ A lump gathered in my throat as I asked the question. I already knew the answer.

  My friend regarded me with such profound sympathy that I realized he had guessed my feelings for Zaynab. ‘Yes, Zaynab has agreed. When she has her own house, she says, there will be room for me to live there if I wish.’

  I felt as if I had been punched in the stomach with all the wind knocked out of me. In a single moment I had lost my friend and companion since childhood, and the woman I dreamed of had passed out of reach.

  I could have wept with frustration and disappointment. I knew Osric well enough to know that he would not change his mind. I had no right to expect him to fall in with my own plans. Long ago he had ceased to be my slave or servant. He was my friend and now I should wish him happiness.

  What cut me to the quick was to be told that Zaynab saw her own future with no place in it for me or, perhaps, for anyone else. Given a choice, she preferred to be alone. For a bitter and savage moment, I felt betrayed. I loathed her for misleading me into a false dream. Then, with a great effort, I pulled myself together. I told myself that I should never have presumed on what Zaynab would wish. Her beauty and my delight in her company had been so overwhelming that I had projected onto her a desire for a loving partner that she did not share. Zaynab had not intended to deceive me. For whatever reason – her nature, her past experiences as a slave – she had built a wall around herself and was unattainable.

  Nevertheless, I was crushed. I knew that if I saw Zaynab again, it would tear me to pieces. At that moment all I wanted to do was to leave Baghdad as soon as possible. From somewhere in the back of my mind rose an image of bald, sweating Musa seated in his room in the royal library consulting his star books for Osric and me. He had predicted from the star conjunctions that the future held death and great happiness and a return. Walo had died, and Osric was finding happiness. I, however, would return to Aachen on my own and this time I would ensure that fewer obstacles and dangers were put in my path.

  *

  There was a strained silence between Osric and me as we left Jaffar’s palace. Neither trusted himself to speak without the risk of causing further disquiet. The steward brought us to the same lodging house in the Round City that we had occupied months earlier, and at the doorway I muttered something about needing to have some time to myself. I told Osric that I would join him later. Then I set out to walk the streets. My thoughts were crowding in on me – memories of Osric from my childhood, of when I was sent into exile, of campaigning with him in Hispania, and, most recently, the journey to the Northlands in search of white beasts. Osric had been with me either as guardian, companion or advisor – and always friend. He would no longer be a constant presence. I felt disoriented. The recollections of Osric mingled with painful visions of Zaynab. I struggled to stop myself from thinking of her but it was impossible. She was so easy to picture in all her loveliness. Zaynab was deeply entwined in my emotions and it would take months, maybe years, to disentangle her.

  It was late afternoon, and I walked for an hour or more, with these notions tumbling back and forth in my head. Eventually my footsteps brought me by chance to the tall double doors of the massive building that housed the royal menagerie. There it occurred to me to check on how Madi and Modi were faring. It would divert me from my inner turmoil. I went inside. The interior was just as I had remembered it – vast, smelling of hay, piss and dung, while muffled snufflings and other unidentifiable animal noises came from behind lines of closed doors to the stalls. I walked down the central aisle to where I had last seen the ice bears. The door to their pen was open. Their enclosure was empty.

  I turned away, intending to find a keeper to ask what had happened to the bears. But there was no one about.

  As I walked back along the central walkway I heard a gentle clinking sound. I stopped and went to look over the open upper half of a door to one of the larger stalls. A great grey elephant was standing in the straw. The sound came from a slim chain, polished from much use, around the ankle of its back leg. The other end of the chain was fastened to a metal hoop set in the wall.

  I was standing there, gazing in at the great animal and wondering why it had been tethered when I was conscious of someone standing at my shoulder. I half turned. It was Abram, the dragoman.

  ‘There’s a certain season of the year when a male elephant is dangerous,’ he said quietly. ‘They become difficult to handle, treacherous even. That dark matter oozing from near his eye and then down his cheek is a sign.’

  He gazed over the door thoughtfully.

  ‘Will you be accompanying the new mission to Aachen?’ I asked him.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Another of my people will act as dragoman. While you were away, I’ve been building up my commercial contacts in the caliph’s empire. There’s a fortune to be made here.’

  I looked back at the elephant. It was standing swaying gently on its feet, the ears fanning slowly.

  ‘Was the first elephant that Haroun sent really white?’ I put the question casually and waited for an answer.

  There was a long silence.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ Abram said.

  ‘Because there was only your word that it was white. No one in Aachen ever saw it, and Nadim Jaffar didn’t seem to be aware of the fact.’

  Abram did not reply. He reached into the pocket of his gown and pulled out a dried seed. He prised the shell open with his fingernails and popped the kernel into his mouth, then held out the empty husk on his outstretched palm. The elephant shuffled its great feet in the straw and took a few paces until it reached the end of its chain. Then it reached out with the long snake-like trunk and, very delicately, picked up the tiny offering. The trunk curled back and the beast placed the shell into its mouth and the jaws moved.

  ‘I was waiting for you to understand,’ he said quietly. I caught a faint whiff of a familiar smell on his breath.

  ‘On the voyage back from Zanj our captain Sulaiman had a great liking for those same seeds that you chew on,’ I said. ‘He told me they come from India.’

  The dragoman was unflustered. ‘That is correct. They sweeten the breath.’

  ‘Those are the same shells that I found under the benches in the Colosseum on the morning after Protis died.’

  Abram waited for me to go on.

  ‘I had many hours on the voyage back from Zanj to think about that sequence of mishaps that so nearly destroyed the mission,’ I said. ‘As far back as Rome I realized that someone was deliberately trying to prevent it succeeding.’

  ‘And what did you conclude?’ the dragoman was gently mocking me.

  ‘That, whoever it was, was remarkably well informed – wherever we were. It couldn’t have been Osric or Walo, which left only you or your servants. Also, on the two occasions when the aurochs was set free – in Rome and in the desert – the dogs didn’t bark. They knew the person or persons responsible.’

  ‘And when was the start of this campaign against you and your mission, do you suppose?’ Abram asked. He was supremely self-possessed.

  ‘In Kaupang,’ I told him. ‘Though the attempt to kill me there didn’t fit the pattern. I hadn’t even met you at that time and I couldn’t see how you might be responsible. Only later did I recall a remark that a shrewd sea captain named Redwald made to me. He warned me that money has a long reach. On another occasion Osric said something similar.’

  The dragoman allowed himself a knowing smile. The elephant was again reaching forward with its trunk, begging this time. Abram extended his arm and allowed the tip of the trunk to thrust up his loose sleeve, exploring. When the trunk withdrew, the elephant tasted in its mouth wh
at it had found, rejected it, and then the trunk stretched out in my direction.

  It seemed natural to accept what it was the creature was offering. I put out my hand. The end of the trunk turned up and I saw something shiny and held in place by the fingerlike tip of the animal’s nose.

  Something small and damp dropped into the palm of my hand, and I was looking down on a familiar coin – a gold dinar.

  I admired the dragoman’s sense of theatre. ‘You didn’t need that conjurer’s trick,’ I said.

  I took out my purse and found the dinar from Kaupang that Redwald had given me as a memento. As I anticipated, it was the twin of the coin that Abram had produced. Both bore King Offa’s name. ‘You were the paymaster who arranged the attack on me in Kaupang.’

  A brief flicker of regret appeared in Abram’s eyes. ‘For that I apologize. I had not yet met you by then. Had that been the case, I would have considered a different, less violent course of action.’

  I made a point of sounding incredulous. ‘You were behind all those other incidents, and yet you did not wish to harm me.’

  ‘Neither you, nor your companions. After I met you, I had no wish to hurt you, certainly not to cause your deaths. I tried to thwart the mission without anyone being killed.’

  I gave a snort of disbelief. ‘I find that difficult to believe.’

  ‘I managed to delay and divert the mission. I took it by a longer route, downriver to the Mediterranean and not over the mountains directly into Italy. I was hoping that something would go wrong, an accident that would make you abandon the mission.’

  ‘Yet when an accident did happen and that raft hit the bridge, you risked your life to save the boatman who had been thrown into the water,’ I said.

  He gave a slight shrug. ‘I repeat: I didn’t want anyone to be killed because of me.’

  My scepticism must have been very apparent because he added, ‘Think back to when Protis’s ship foundered. My plan was for the animals to drown, and your companions to get safely to shore. I overlooked the fact that ice bears can swim, and the aurochs too.’

  I stopped him there. ‘That was something else that puzzled me. I couldn’t understand how you arranged for the ship to sink.’

  He arched a mocking eyebrow. ‘My people have excellent contacts along the river, and I sent ahead. Protis’s ship was delayed for repairs and while it was in dock, the carpenters were paid to drill some holes in the hull and plug them with wax. An old technique, used by unscrupulous shipowners. They then claim the loss of a cargo that they never loaded, but had stolen.’

  ‘And the wax comes loose and the ship sinks?’ I said.

  He grinned. ‘But not fast enough. That was why I volunteered to swim overboard and put the canvas in place. It gave me a chance to knock out the last of the wax plugs.’

  I found myself losing patience with his smug responses. Clearly Abram had anticipated this conversation. ‘You say that you didn’t want to hurt us,’ I snapped. ‘Yet Protis died in the arena. I presume your servants let the aurochs go free – and then the lions killed that poor wretch in the desert.’

  ‘I truly regret Protis’s death,’ said Abram, and he sounded as though he meant it. ‘I never thought he would be so foolhardy, or that his head would be so filled with the heroics of the ancient Greeks.’ He paused. ‘As for that poor wretch in the desert, he had no reason to run off into it.’

  I looked down at the two coins in my hand. ‘These tell only part of your deceit.’

  Abram grinned at me mischievously. ‘Then explain to me the rest of it.’

  ‘Offa might pay to have me killed, but he had no reason to wreck Carolus’s embassy to Haroun.’

  This time I had managed to throw him off balance. His eyes narrowed. ‘Go on.’

  ‘So you set up another suspect. Those men who attacked me in Kaupang were also paid in Byzantine gold. I was shown a gold solidus. On our journey here you reminded me repeatedly that the Greeks are at war with the caliphate, and would do anything to stop an alliance between Aachen and Baghdad.’

  I closed my fist and shook the two gold coins together so they clicked softly. The elephant had remarkably acute hearing. He flapped his ears and the trunk came questing again towards my hand, then withdrew as I kept my hand clenched.

  ‘Yet here in Baghdad I find that Greeks work for the caliph, and Arabs go to Constantinople to buy books. They are not at daggers drawn, as you had me believe,’ I said quietly. ‘Then I thought back to Christmas Day in Rome when I saw Pope Adrian with my own eyes as he went in procession in St Peter’s Basilica. He had a look of absolute self-belief, arrogant and implacable. I judged him to be someone who stopped at nothing to protect his Church.’

  The dragoman was absolutely motionless. He did not contradict me.

  ‘It occurred to me that Adrian, more than anyone, has reason to be alarmed by an alliance between Carolus and Haroun, between the Christian king and the Commander of the Faithful. That would be the worst of all possible worlds for the pope.’ I chose my words with care. ‘The Nomenculator said to me that everything in Rome has its price. That all is self-interest. I remember his exact words, “We Romans have little loyalty to the past when it suits us.” ’

  I had Abram’s full attention now. ‘In Rome you knew about the inner workings of the papal office and Adrian and his ministers. That struck me as odd for someone who is a Radhanite. This is what I think is the truth – you passed through Rome on the way north with Haroun’s gifts for Carolus. Pope Adrian offered you a large sum of money to make sure that the alliance between Carolus and Haroun never materialized. You became his creature.’

  The dragoman cocked his head on one side. ‘Truly, Sigwulf, you have a vivid imagination. Next you’ll claim I killed the elephant in my care.’

  I smiled mirthlessly. ‘Perhaps so. The elephant died long before you reached Rome. If you remember, I did dream that you were extracting bones from a dead elephant. In the interpretation of dreams, this meant that you would make a great profit from an endeavour. Maybe it was an unfortunate coincidence, but it eventually made me question what you were really up to.’

  The dragoman smirked. ‘Sigwulf, I never thought you were a dream believer. How do you explain Haroun’s other gifts to Carolus – the mechanical clock and the other baubles? I delivered them safely.’

  ‘That was when you made your really clever move. You claimed falsely that the dead elephant was white because white was the royal colour in Baghdad. You charmed Carolus’s advisors with the idea that if there was to be a return mission to Baghdad it should take white gifts. You knew that would offend Haroun.’

  Abram appeared to regain his poise, and that brought me a twinge of worry.

  ‘Of course, Adrian has paid me well,’ he admitted, giving me a pleasant, relaxed smile. Then to my astonishment he leaned forward and gave me a friendly pat on the shoulder.

  ‘Sigwulf, if I were you, when you get back to Aachen, I wouldn’t tell Carolus or Alcuin that the Holy Father tried to wreck their foreign policy.’

  ‘Why not?’ I retorted. ‘Alcuin might be shocked, but Carolus is sufficiently worldly wise to accept that Pope Adrian’s priority must be the Church itself.’

  Abram gave me a look loaded with sympathy but a warning as well. ‘Kings also don’t like to be made to look stupid and ignorant.’

  The dragoman was all too sure of himself. Again I sensed that he had planned ahead and out-witted me. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked cautiously.

  ‘Think back to the day you met with Carolus and were given the mission to Baghdad. Do you recall that meeting?’

  I could remember every detail. ‘I had come back successfully from Kaupang, bringing the gyrfalcons, the white dogs and the ice bears,’ I said slowly.

  ‘And what did you give to him?’ Abram prompted.

  I thought back to the scene in the king’s apartments and Carolus’s reaction when I produced the horn of a unicorn. He had been like a child seeing a wonderful present.

 
‘I showed him a unicorn’s horn that Osric had bought in Kaupang for a princely sum,’ I said.

  ‘You told me that Carolus decided to keep it for himself, and not send it to the caliph,’ Abram replied.

  ‘That’s true. He was delighted. He was going to show it to his sceptical counsellors who doubted the existence of the unicorn.’

  Abram chuckled. ‘And how would the king react if he knew he had been tricked?’

  I stared at him. ‘The king is known to have a notoriously short temper,’ I said.

  ‘It would be very unfortunate, then, if he learned his precious unicorn horn is nothing more than a tooth. What is more, it is a tooth from a large, fat sea creature that’s more like a sea slug than a graceful deer.’

  I stared at the dragoman. The triumph in his dark brown eyes told me that he was telling the truth. His threat was real. If I revealed the pope’s plot to Carolus, Abram would make sure the king would learn that his precious unicorn’s horn was a fake. My own future at court would be ruined.

  I had to admire Abram’s audacity. He had shown himself to be a past master at double-dealing. In my present disenchanted mood I was entirely ready to accept that my only sensible course of action was to let matters lie where they were: I would go back to Aachen, not mention Abram’s treachery, and continue to pay lip service to the myth of the unicorn. It would be much the same as my clandestine arrangement with Osric to keep the secret of the so-called rukh’s eggs.

  ‘I agree to your terms,’ I said reluctantly, holding out my hand. ‘I will say nothing to Carolus or to Alcuin about Pope Adrian’s plot. In return, you will keep the secret of the unicorn’s horn.’

  Abram shook my hand. I turned on my heel and was nearly at the double doors on my way out of the menagerie when the elephant trumpeted angrily, either from bad temper or because he had been denied any further food. The hoarse sound echoed through the building and shattered my complacency like a physical blow. I heard again the aurochs in the pitfall bellowing in triumph over Vulfard’s crushed body. My stomach heaved at the thought that while others were dying, Abram had taken his chance to serve two masters and line his pockets.