The Emperor's Elefant

Chapter Nine

Almost as quickly as it had arrived, the flood departed. Had I not seen it for myself I would never have believed that a river could switch so rapidly from untamed ferocity to placid calm.

‘Rivers are like those serpents that swallow a deer or calf entire,’ Abram explained to me. It was two days later and our little flotilla was gliding between banks thick with willow and poplar. In bright morning sunshine the swallows swooped and scythed over the silk-smooth, shimmering surface of the river, snatching up insects. Where the river divided around large islands it isolated patches of untouched wilderness, and the undergrowth along the bank teemed with wildlife. There were glimpses of otters, and startlingly bright blue streaks as kingfishers launched from low-hanging branches and sped away. All manner of small water creatures swam across our path, drawing out their telltale ripples.

‘The prey becomes a bulge inside the serpent,’ the dragoman explained. ‘The bulge passes along the serpent’s length as the beast digests. The crest of a flood is the same. It enters the head of the river and travels down its valley, swelling then subsiding.’

‘It’s difficult to imagine a creature so gross,’ I said. The current was carrying us along at a rapid walking pace, and the boatmen only had to use their oars occasionally to keep us on course. The drama of the bridge seemed like a distant memory.

He laughed. ‘When we get to Rome I’ll show you a picture of Adam and Eve being expelled from Paradise. I think the artist had the same serpent in mind.’

‘What else can I expect to see when we get to Rome?’

The banter left his voice. ‘More important is what you don’t see.’

‘You sound like Alcuin.’

The dragoman was serious. ‘In Rome the serpents don’t swallow their victims. They strike with poisoned fangs. The city is a snake pit of intrigue, conspiracies and plots. Everyone is waiting for Pope Adrian to die and then . . .’ He shrugged expressively.

I recalled Alcuin’s warning that the pope was very old, and that no one knew who would replace him. ‘And what sort of man is Pope Adrian?’ I asked.

The dragoman shook a small purse out from his sleeve. The movement was so deft that I blinked in surprise. He noted my reaction and grinned. ‘In my profession a discreet coin dropped quickly into a ready palm solves many a problem.’

He took a coin from the purse and passed it to me. ‘Here’s Pope Adrian for you.’

The portrait on the papal coin was very stylized: a man’s head and shoulders, shown full face, the eyes staring boldly forward under some sort of cap or crown. Oddly, the upper lip of the face wore what looked like a short, trim moustache. Around the edge was written ‘HADRIANUS P P’ in raised letters.

‘I presume that “P P” is short for “Pope”,’ I said.

Abram chuckled. ‘In Rome the joke is that it means “in perpetuity”. Pope Adrian is as hardy and tough as they come. He’s already sat on Peter’s throne for close on two decades, longer than anyone before him.’

I handed back the coin. ‘If you remember, Alcuin gave me an introduction to the man who works for the pope as his Nomenculator. His name is Paul.’

‘A very useful contact. By the time we arrive in Rome, we won’t find any ship captain prepared to take us onward from Italy until next sailing season in spring. I strongly advise that we spend the winter in the city. The Nomenculator can help us find suitable accommodation. His office gives him considerable influence.’

I should have been disappointed by the thought of the long interruption to our journey. But the prospect of spending several months in Rome and seeing its fabled sights was something I looked forward to.

Abram’s next words dampened my enthusiasm. ‘Don’t expect too much of the city itself. The place has been falling to pieces for centuries. It’s a wreck.’ He got to his feet. ‘By contrast you’ll find that travelling through Burgundy by water is a pleasure.’

*

The next ten days proved how right he was. We came to a region where mile after mile of vineyards extended up the flanks of the hills that overlooked the valley. It was the season for the grape harvest, and the farmworkers – men and women – toiled in the warm sunshine among the rich greens and browns of the vines, stooping to cut the fruit, then carrying it in wicker baskets to waiting carts. Most of the crop was then tipped into huge open-topped wooden casks set up close to the river landing places. Here barefoot men were trampling the grapes until the juice ran off into barrels that were then rolled onto waiting barges. More families were on ladders in the orchards, plucking plums and peaches, quince and mulberry, while their more agile children clambered into the branches to shake down the ripe fruit. Amid such bounty it was easy to obtain the supplies we needed for the animals. Every riverside town had its own market where Abram’s servants purchased all we required, and we discovered that the ice bears were as happy to eat fresh rabbit as well as catfish and trout. Well fed, the animals settled down. The dogs were much calmer, and the ice bears spent much of each day asleep. By day, Walo took the thick cloths off the cages of the gyrfalcons so that the birds could preen and bask in the sunshine, and then covered them over for the night. By now he had them so well trained that, even from the moving boat, he could exercise them. One by one, he would let them fly free and, after a little while, bring them back to his hand holding out a titbit of fresh meat. Only the aurochs remained sulky and dangerous. It rolled its eyes if anyone came near, and thrust and battered with its great horns against the sides of the enclosure.

In the evenings, an hour or two before sunset, we would moor to the riverbank, as it was too perilous to use the river in the darkness and risk striking the occasional rocky shoal. We picked isolated locations to avoid attracting crowds of curious onlookers who might come to stare at creatures they had never seen before. Twice Abram asked us to stop within walking distance of a large town so that he could go ashore and spend the night with his fellow Rhadanites. From them, he told us, he could learn what we might find when finally we reached the sea.

Gradually the river grew in size. Large tributaries added not only their waters but also an increasing number and variety of river craft. We encountered ungainly rafts of timber floating down from the forests, barges loaded with great blocks of building stone, and scores of vessels bearing casks and barrels of wine. The river had become a great artery of commerce, and the bridges were high and wide enough to accommodate the traffic. We passed beneath their arches without incident now that the water level had dropped. On good days a breeze from the north allowed our boatmen to spread simple square sails and increase our speed. My spirits were lifted by the welcome sound of water chattering and lapping under the blunt bows of our ferries as we pressed onward. In such carefree conditions, Abram, Osric and I would exchange places on the different boats. Abram and Osric spent long hours talking together quietly, sometimes in the Saracen tongue. I joined Walo and his ice bears, keeping him company, for I wanted him to feel at ease in these strange, new surroundings.

It was always a challenge to find a way of engaging Walo’s attention. He seldom spoke to others and kept to himself, passing the hours in his own special world, apparently in a half-daze. Yet he must have been taking note of what was going on around him because, like a shutter briefly being thrown open, he would come out with a sudden perceptive remark. He was at his happiest and most alert when dealing with our animals and that, in turn, provided me with a means to draw him out of his isolation: he loved to hear more about the exotic creatures depicted in the Book of Beasts. Whenever I joined him on the boat, I would sit beside him on the deck leafing through the pages until he pointed to an illustration that caught his interest. Then I would read out the information written underneath. In nearly every case the animal was as unknown to me, as it was to him.

‘What’s that lion with a man’s face?’ he asked one hot afternoon. Our boats were passing low gravel cliffs where the river had undercut its bank. Sand swallows had burrowed into the cliffs, and a cloud of the small brown and white birds whirled over our heads as they made their way to and from their nests.

‘It’s called a manticore,’ I told him, reading the accompanying text.

‘Those great teeth must mean it is a meat eater,’ Walo commented.

The creature had the head of a man attached to the body of a lion. The artist had drawn a human face with a straggly beard and a wide open mouth armed with sharp fangs. The staring eyes were a cold blue but all the rest of the animal had been coloured blood red.

I quoted the text: ‘The manticore has three rows of teeth and eats human flesh. It is very active and can leap great distances. No one can out run it. Its voice is like a whistled melody.’

Walo was intrigued. ‘I would love to see such a wondrous creature, even if it is dangerous.’

‘But you would not want to come too close,’ I said. ‘Apparently the manticore can shoot poisoned spines from the tip of its tail.’

Walo detected the note of scepticism in my voice. ‘Surely the book is telling the truth.’

‘We’ll never know. It says that the manticore lives in India, and we are only going as far as Baghdad.’

I could sense Walo’s disappointment. His grasp of geography may have been non-existent, but he had a simple, direct shrewdness. ‘We can test the truth of the book. Read out what it says about an animal we know, then we can judge whether it is right.’

I turned the pages until Walo pointed to an illustration of a flock of half a dozen tall birds standing in a group. They had long necks, pointed beaks like herons and stilt legs. The nearest bird was standing on one leg and gripping what looked like a round stone with the other foot, holding it up from the ground.

‘Cranes!’ exclaimed Walo. ‘Flocks of them pass over my forest every spring, high in the sky, but they do not stop. They must be travelling to their summer home in a place I do not know. In autumn I see them as they return. Going back the way they came.’

‘Their Latin name is Grus,’ I said, reading. ‘They travel large distances, flying very high so that the leader can see the lands to which they are going.’

Walo nodded approvingly.

‘When the leader is tired, he changes places with another in the flock. As they fly, they post some of their number at the end of the line to shout orders and keep the group together.’

‘I’ve heard them calling to one another in the air. The voice is like a bugle,’ said Walo triumphantly. ‘You see the book tells the truth.’

‘But what about the crane in the front of the picture,’ I said, ‘the one holding something in its claw? The book says that when a flock of cranes rests at night, one of their number stands guard. While the others sleep, he stays awake, holding up a stone in his claw. If he falls asleep, the stone drops and awakens him.’

Walo thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know about that. But why shouldn’t it be true? Let’s check on another creature that we both know. How about a wild boar?’

I found the relevant illustration. The picture was certainly accurate, a pig-like creature with a curly tail, cloven hooves, dangerous-looking tusks and a malevolent expression as it charged across the page. Even the colouring – a greyish black – was correct.

‘The Latin name is Aper, and it is named for its ferocity,’ I read. ‘The boar is very rough when mating, and before they fight with one another, they rub their skin against the bark of trees to toughen it.’

‘I’ve seen boars doing just that,’ Walo confirmed. ‘In the forest you find places where the bark has been torn away. Boars also prepare for battle by whetting their tusks, sharpening them against trees.’

‘That is what the book also says,’ I admitted. ‘The book claims, too, that a boar eats a plant called origanum to cleanse its gums and strengthen the tusks.’

‘That I didn’t know,’ said Walo, looking over my shoulder as I turned the page to look for another familiar animal.

As luck would have it, the next page had an illustration of a large serpent. For a moment I wondered if this was the same sort of snake whose picture Abram would show me in Rome. But the man was not Adam, for he was fully dressed and there was no sign of Eve or an apple tree, and the serpent’s home was a hole in a barren-looking hill that did not resemble the fertile Garden of Eden. The serpent body tapered to a pointed tail and, oddly, the creature had curved itself around and thrust the tip of its tail into its own ear. The artist had drawn a face on the snake, and the animal was grimacing, clearly in distress.

‘That man is calming the serpent,’ said Walo at once.

It took me a moment to see what he was talking about. A little distance from the snake a man was playing a stringed instrument. I recognized a viol from Carolus’s banquets when musicians entertained the king.

‘The asp, or serpent,’ I read out, ‘kills with a venomous bite. When an enchanter summons an asp out of its cave with incantations or music, and it does not want to go, it presses one ear to the ground and covers the other ear with its tail.’

I paused and took a second look at the picture. ‘Surely that’s a fable,’ I said. ‘Serpents don’t listen to music.’

Walo looked at me reprovingly. ‘If ice bears do, why shouldn’t serpents be the same?’

I returned to the book. ‘It also says that there are many kinds of asp, and not all are harmful. The bite from one kind kills by causing a terrible thirst; another that is called the prester asp moves with an open mouth, and those it bites swell up and rot follows. Then they die. The bite from a third kind of asp brings on a deep sleep from which the victim never awakes. That one is called the hypnalis and it is the asp that killed Cleopatra the Queen of Egypt who was freed from her troubles.’

‘We’re going to Egypt, aren’t we!’ breathed Walo eagerly. ‘Wouldn’t it be magnificent if we found a hypnalis. I could play my pipe to lure it from its hole.’

The sun’s glare was giving me a headache and I closed the bestiary and replaced it in its wrapping. If only I had paid closer attention to what Walo had just said, our journey might have turned out very differently.

*

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 could 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.