The Emperor's Elefant

Chapter Seventeen

AFRICA

*

Sailing to Zanj had a marvellous, dream-like quality. Each day seemed to repeat as if time was turning back on itself. Dawn brought a horizon, sharp and clear and infinitely distant, from which the sun rose into a sky where a scattering of puffy white clouds were all moving in the same direction as our ships. Far below, our little company of half a dozen trade vessels ran across a sparkling sea of the deepest blue. A favourable wind, fine and steady from the north-east, filled the huge cotton sails and our crew scarcely needed to touch the ropes. The breeze tempered the heat of the noonday sun so the deck was never too hot to the touch, and the air retained its pleasant warmth long after dusk. Sunsets were dramatic. A tremendous golden-orange glow suffused the entire sky, changing to the colour of pale parchment that diminished and retreated as darkness spread in from the east. Then the moon rose and laid a silver-white path across the black undulating surface of the sea. Wherever one looked upward, the heavens were alive with a multitude of bright stars.

In such idyllic conditions I fell in love with Zaynab.

On the third morning of the voyage, not long after sunrise, I was standing near the mainmast with Walo and waiting for the cook to hand us our breakfast of dates, bread and water. There was a sudden light slap as something struck the sail and fell close to where Zaynab was seated on the foredeck where the anchors were stowed. There was flapping and wriggling on the planks. Walo ran forward and I watched as he picked up what seemed to be some sort of small fish. He turned to Zaynab and must have asked her a question for she pulled back the shawl that covered her head and leaned forward to look at what he was holding. As Zaynab would be unable to understand Walo’s Frankish, I walked across to interpret.

‘Is it a fish or a bird?’ Walo was asking her. I looked down at what he had in his grasp. The creature had a fish’s body, six or seven inches long. There was a fish tail and a fish head, with round startled eyes.

Walo gently took the fin on the side of the fish between his finger and thumb, and pulled. Out swung a wing.

‘Our name for it is “fish that flies”,’ said Zaynab.

Walo pulled open the second wing. The web between the bones was so fine and delicate that the light shone through it.

‘Is it in the book?’ he asked, turning to me.

‘I can check,’ I said uncertainly, my voice sounding odd in my ears. Zaynab’s shawl had slipped down around her shoulders. Her dark hair was long and lustrous, piled above her head and fixed with an ivory comb. She wore tiny diamond studs in her small, shell-like ears, and the curve of her slender neck was so soft and perfect that it made me want to reach out and stroke it.

‘What book is that?’ she asked me, looking up. Her eyes held mine for a moment, and I felt a tingling shock. Never before had I met with an expression of such gentle kindness framed with beauty, yet tinged with melancholy.

‘A Book of Beasts. It’s a list of animals . . . with their pictures,’ I blurted. Suddenly I wanted to keep the full attention of this remarkable young woman with the cinnamon-coloured skin. ‘I’ll show you.’

Light-headed, I hurried aft to collect the bestiary and brought it to her. With Walo looking on, I opened the cover and leafed through the pages. I made a deliberate effort to keep both my hand and voice steady.

‘Here’s a fish with wings!’ I announced, then read out, ‘ “The serra or saw fish. Also known as the flying fish. Named from the sawtooth crest on its back. It swims under a ship and cuts the ship in half . . .’ My voice faltered. The insignificant little fish in Walo’s hand was never likely to damage a ship’s hull. I felt foolish.

Zaynab ignored my confusion. ‘Is there a picture?’ she asked.

I turned the book around and showed her. The artist had drawn a dragon-like animal emerging from the depths of the sea. It was very large, almost the same size as the ship it was menacing. The sailors aboard the vessel looked terrified.

‘It does have two wings,’ said Zaynab gently.

I was grateful that she had not laughed aloud. Her tactfulness only added to her attraction.

‘Maybe the writer was muddled,’ Zaynab murmured. ‘In Zanj I remember being shown a big fish that had a long flat nose with a row of sharp teeth on each side, just like a saw. Maybe that is the fish that cuts up ships.’

I found myself gazing at her hands holding the book. Zaynab’s fingers were slim and graceful, and she had drawn patterns on them in dark blue ink, whorls and curlicues that merged and flowed onto the palms of her hands and to her wrists. By comparison the artwork in the bestiary seemed clumsy and inept.

She noticed my rapt attention and gave me a demure smile, eyes cast down, as she handed the book back to me and tucked her hands out of sight beneath her shawl.

From behind me came a shout from the cook. He was summoning Walo and myself to collect our food. Hurriedly, I cast about for an excuse to speak with her again. I said, ‘There are other animals in the book about which I know little, and which you may have encountered in Zanj. Perhaps I can consult with you again.’

‘I would like that,’ Zaynab replied. ‘Maybe you can also tell me about the countries and peoples you have seen.’

*

That night Zaynab surprised all the crew in a way that none of us could forget.

At twilight it was Sulaiman’s custom to find himself a spot on deck where he had a good view of the vault of heavens, as he called the sky. There he took measurements of the stars as they emerged.

‘Try it for yourself,’ he said to me, handing me the little wooden tablet on its cord that he had shown me in al-Ubullah. ‘Place the end of the cord between your lips, stretch out the cord, and hold the lower edge of tablet on the horizon. Select a star, and see how high the star measures against the tablet’s side.’

‘What’s the reason for the string?’ I asked.

‘So that the tablet is always the same distance from your eye. That makes the readings consistent,’ he answered.

‘Which star should I choose?’

‘On the voyage to Zanj the best is Al-Jah. You Franks call it the North Star.’ He gestured over the stern of his ship. ‘Al-Jah is fixed in the heavens. The further south we sail, the lower in the sky it is seen.’

‘Even a child could use it,’ I said after I experimented with the device.

‘Now, yes. But when we reach the land of Zanj we will no longer see Al-Jah. It will have sunk below the horizon. Then I must use knowledge of other stars, where they are in heaven’s vault at each season, to find my position.’

I gave him back the little wooden tablet and, choosing my moment, asked, ‘How did you know that Zaynab was to be our interpreter?’

‘I was the captain who brought her from Zanj when she was first sent to Caliph Haroun. I have followed her career ever since.’

‘There must be other slaves in the royal household, just as beautiful.’

‘None who can also sing with such sweetness.’ His voice softened. ‘I heard her sing just once on that first voyage, such a sad song. I’m told that is why Jaffar bought her from the caliph, for her singing.’

‘Do you think she would sing for us?’ I asked.

‘Perhaps.’

Zaynab was the faintest of shadows where she sat away from the rest of us, on the small foredeck where the anchors were stowed. On an impulse I made my way over to her and asked if she would sing. When she made no answer I went to where the crew were clustered near the cook’s charcoal box, talking among themselves. I asked them to be silent. For a long interval there was nothing but the creak of the rigging and the sound of the waves washing along the sides of the vessel as our ship shouldered south. Then Zaynab began to sing. She sang a dozen songs, some plaintive, others filled with longing, one that spoke of quiet joy, and we listened to her, enchanted. My spine tingled when I recognized her voice. It was Zaynab who had been singing among the trees when Osric and I had visited Jaffar in his exotic garden.

When finally her voice faded away, no one spoke. We were left with our own thoughts. The sky seemed infinitely far away, a velvety blackness scattered with myriad bright points of stars. Our vessel was suspended below it in a great dark void and no longer part of the real world. Into that brief lull burst an unnerving, eerie sound – a sudden heavy puffing and grunting and splashing. It came from all directions and from the darkness around the ship.

Walo cried out, ‘Sea pigs! They came to listen!’

I recalled the picture in the bestiary where a shoal of fish clustered around a ship on which a man was playing a lute. The sound of music, according to the text, attracted the creatures of the sea.

‘They’re not pigs,’ muttered Sulaiman who was standing beside me.

He sounded so disapproving that I felt I should defend Walo though he could not have understood what the captain had said. ‘Walo has seen a picture of fish with snouts like pigs. They root in the sand on the sea floor,’ I told the shipmaster.

Sulaiman was scathing. ‘Whoever made such a picture knows nothing. Those animals are the children of al-hoot, the largest creature that lives in the sea.’

I guessed he meant a whale. Turning to Walo, I translated what the captain had said.

Walo was stubborn. ‘They came to listen to Zaynab sing,’ he insisted.

I thought it wiser not to pass on his comment to Sulaiman. Instead I asked the captain, ‘If you don’t believe in sea pigs, do you think we are wasting our time seeking the rukh?’

The shipmaster thought for a long time before replying. ‘I don’t know what to think. Ever since I first went to sea I’ve heard sailors speak about the rukh. They repeat stories about the rukh just as they have tales of how al-hoot grows so big it is mistaken for an island, with earth on his back and plants growing there.’

‘But you don’t believe such yarns.’

Sulaiman laid a hand on my arm as if imparting a confidence. ‘When I come across a new island that I have never seen before, and it’s small and low, with a few bushes growing, I approach very cautiously.’

‘Then you are not so different from me or Walo,’ I told him. ‘Walo firmly expects to encounter the creatures whose pictures he has seen. I search for them because I believe there is a possibility that they exist. You hesitate to dismiss them as nothing but fantasy.’

The shipmaster chuckled. ‘The only reality is my promise to Nadim Jaffar that, in searching for the rukh, I will take my ship further than any navigator before me.’

*

As Sulaiman predicted, Al-Jah had sunk to the night horizon by the time we arrived on our trading ground, the coast of Zanj. During the twenty days to get there I had done my very best to hide my growing yearning for Zaynab, and I believed that I had succeeded. It required painful self-discipline because I was longing to get to know her better, to tell her how I felt, and explore any feelings she might have for me. Not a day passed but that I ached to be alone in her company. Yet this was impossible and dangerous, and I knew it would place her in a difficult position. She was the only woman aboard the ship and she had to keep her distance, treat everyone equally and receive the same respect in return. So I forced myself to keep all my conversations with Zaynab to a minimum, and always in the company of Walo as together we looked through the pages of the bestiary. I took great care to appear casual and unconcerned whenever Zaynab appeared on deck, and I never spoke a word to anyone about the effect she was having on me. Not even Osric could have guessed how difficult it was for me to conceal my emotions whenever I laid eyes on her, or the fact that my thoughts lingered on the way she walked or sat and, above all, on her smile, so unhurried and enchanting.

The coast of Zanj brought me out of what was in danger of becoming a lover’s trance. The land was lush and exotic. It extended from a fringe of white surf across the sandy beach, then into dense groves of palm trees that merged to make a broad expanse of vivid jungle green. Many miles away loomed highlands where towering thunderclouds built up every afternoon, dramatic and threatening, only to dissolve and drift away. The people of the coast were striking in appearance. Tall and well-built, with wide shoulders and big chests, they had fleshy swelling lips and shaved their tightly curled hair at the front, leaving it to hang down at the back in long strands soaked in butter. Their only garment was a tanned hide or a length of cloth tied around the waist, and their skin was a rich black with just a hint of brown. Their bare-breasted women dressed in similar fashion, carrying their babies across their backs in a cloth sling. They wore broad ruffs of copper wire, and strings of scarlet beans as anklets, necklaces and bracelets. They lived comfortably, growing vegetables in small gardens close to their thatched houses, raising goats and a few cattle, and, of course, they fished. As soon as we dropped anchor, they came out in small boats to trade or coax us ashore. They wanted our enamel goods, filigree and fancy metalwork, weapons, mirrors, spices, silk and embroidered cloth, as well as the more humdrum sacks of dates. In exchange they offered items they had been gathering for months from the inland tribes: packets of gold dust, coloured pebbles and nuggets of veined rock to be cut and polished into gems, the spotted skins of pards that were greatly prized in Baghdad, and – above all – quantities of elephant teeth.

Here we parted company with the other vessels from al-Ubullah. They lingered at the anchorages to trade at leisure, while Sulaiman kept his promise to Jaffar and barely broke our journey. We took on water and fresh food, traded for half a day at an occasional stopover, and then – sailing alone – pressed ever southward. We sailed past chains of islands, fringing reefs, isolated outlying rocks tufted with bushes, and shallow estuaries where the shore was lined with dense masses of a tree that grew on spidery roots, half in and half out of the water, and which Sulaiman called gurm. Within another week we had reached the limit of the lands that Sulaiman already knew and, quite by chance, our captain’s purposefulness was rewarded.

To enquire about the rukh and griffin, we had made a cautious landing on a small strip of beach where a cluster of several dozen huts was half hidden among the ever-present palm trees. Two of Sulaiman’s sailors paddled us ashore in the ship’s boat. It was mid-morning on another hot, humid and sunny day, and there were just the three of us in the landing party – myself and Sulaiman with Zaynab as our interpreter. It was a struggle for me to keep my eyes looking ahead when I was so close to Zaynab, but I managed to keep my gaze on the beach, where a couple of small dug-out boats were drawn up at the water’s edge and a number of nets hung on stakes. The people themselves were timid, watching our arrival from a distance and standing well back as we set foot in the shallows. Zaynab called out a greeting and, hesitantly, four of them came forward. All men, they were barefoot and wore only loincloths. Slits in their ear lobes held small silver plates or ivory plugs. Zaynab explained that we came in peace and were in search of a great flying bird, large enough to carry away an elephant. She had to repeat herself several times before she was understood, and I tried to help by sketching a rough outline of a griffin in the sand, though without much success. The lion’s body could have been any four-footed beast with a tail, and the bird’s head was more like a chicken than an eagle.

The villagers examined my feeble attempt of a drawing, muttered among themselves, and then all of them shook their heads.

‘Ask if they’ve seen any trace of such an animal or even heard of it,’ I suggested to Zaynab.

She relayed my questions and again there was some sort of a conference, more animated this time. Then one of the men hurried back to the village. He disappeared inside the stockade and re-emerged holding something in his hand. When he came close enough for me to see what it was, my hopes soared. It was half of a very large hooked beak. Jet black, it had a sharp, cruel point.

I took it from the man, and turned it over to inspect more closely. Fully five inches long, it was much the largest beak I had ever seen, and as tough and hard as black glass. I could easily picture the sharp tip driving into flesh, twisting and ripping, hacking into bone.

‘Could this be a rukh’s beak?’ I asked Sulaiman, my excitement rising.

He did not answer me. He was staring at the object. ‘Ask where they got it?’ he said to Zaynab in a taut voice.

After a brief conversation, she replied, ‘One of the fishermen picked it up on the shore about a week ago. It was in an odd-shaped ball of something he thought was a piece of rotten fish. But now he’s not sure. Whatever it was, it had a bad smell and must have floated ashore when the wind was from the sea.’

I sensed that Sulaiman was hiding his eagerness, when he asked, ‘That lump of rotten fish – does he still have it?’

Zaynab was told that it had been thrown away because it stank. It was probably still on the village rubbish heap.

‘Can they find it for me?’ asked Sulaiman.

One of the men turned and shouted out to the onlookers. A lad broke away from the group and raced away, running behind the huts and out of sight.

We waited patiently until the boy returned, gingerly carrying in both hands a lump of something partly wrapped in leaves. It was the size of a man’s head and, judging by the lad’s wrinkled nose, it still had its unpleasant smell.

Sulaiman was not put off. He took the object and peeled back the leaves. To my eye it resembled a misshapen lump of greyish-black wax, soft and streaky. I caught a waft of its foul odour. It smelled like cow dung.

Sulaiman was not put off. He poked the unpleasant mass with his finger, then turned it over gently so that he could inspect it on all sides.

‘Tell our friends here that this is fish dung,’ he said to Zaynab. ‘I am willing to buy both the beak and the dung that surrounded it.’

The four men withdrew a short distance and stood talking. Finally the oldest of them came back to us, and through Zaynab told us that if we had fish hooks to sell, they would part with the beak for five hundred fish hooks and ten knife blades. Sulaiman could have the lump of fish dung for its weight in copper wire.

I was still holding the strange beak, and Sulaiman made me give it back to the villagers. ‘I’ll pay four hundred fish hooks for the beak and the dung, no more,’ he said, wrapping the leaves around the foul-smelling mass and placing it on the sand.

It took at least an hour to conclude the haggling, and Sulaiman settled for 450 fish hooks for the beak and a length of embroidered cloth for the lump of fish dung.

‘You paid a generous price for the beak,’ I observed to Sulaiman as his men paddled us back out to his ship, the trade completed. ‘Does that mean you’re prepared to believe in the existence of the rukh?’

He nudged his foot against the rancid lump, again wrapped in leaves, in the bottom of the little boat. ‘This is what I paid for.’

‘What is it?’

‘Phlegm!’

I thought I had misheard.

He cackled with glee. ‘Al-hoot coughs it up, though others claim it emerges from the creature’s backside.’

‘When it’s fresh and soft like that, it smells bad,’ the shipmaster explained, ‘but leave it in the sun for a week and it hardens and changes to a dark yellow, and the smell improves. Apothecaries in Basra pay a fortune for it to use as medicine and,’ here he smiled, ‘I will carry it in person to Baghdad and present it to Nadim Jaffar. He’s one of the richest men in the caliphate and will reward me handsomely, then keep part for himself and sell on the remainder to his friends.’

He prodded the evil-smelling mass with his foot again. ‘That’s the largest piece of it I’ve ever seen. A double handful will pay the entire cost of this expedition and will still leave an excellent profit.’

I failed to see what use the fastidious nobleman would find for a stinking ball of fish phlegm. ‘What does Jaffar need it for?’ I asked.

‘His perfume makers will melt it down, tiny morsel by tiny morsel, then add it to fragrant oils – rose, jasmine, all the flowers you can imagine. Just a few drops and their scents will be enhanced and last for many days.’

I thought back to my visit to Jaffar’s garden, to Haroun’s palace, and to a dozen other reception rooms in the Round City. Everywhere the air had been heavily perfumed. It was little wonder that the whale phlegm was so much in demand.

Sulaiman clutched the precious package to his chest as we clambered up the side of the ship, leaving me to show the strange beak to Osric and explain where it came from.

‘If that’s a rukh’s beak, how did it finish up floating ashore encased in whale phlegm?’ was his cautious reaction.

Walo, by contrast, was thrilled. He inspected the vicious pointed tip of the beak and assured me that it came from a large, flesh-eating creature that hunted other animals for meat. For him, there was now no doubt that we were closing in on a griffin or rukh.

*

The character of the coast changed as we sailed south. The vivid green of the woodland and jungle gave way to drier, more open countryside covered with sun-scorched grasslands, scrub and thorny trees. A brown, dusty haze frequently obscured what lay further inland. We noted that the people in these parts preferred to live in large settlements located on the bald hillcrests and they surrounded their villages with tall stockades. It gave an impression of a mistrustful, more dangerous place. Each night Sulaiman anchored as far offshore as possible for fear of being attacked. It was, of course, too risky to sail along an unknown coast in the hours of darkness. Our captain also showed the first signs of unease about the weather, frequently looking up at the sky or gazing out to the horizon. I asked what was troubling him and he told me that we were now close to the limit of the area where we could rely on favourable sailing conditions. To justify his fears, the winds were fitful, sometimes dying away entirely, and – more worryingly – once or twice they turned to the south, in the direction we were headed. Sulaiman warned that unless we came across the rukh very soon, we would have to turn back.

Our next landing was again to replenish our store of drinking water. All morning our helmsman steered as close as possible to the coast while the youngest and nimblest member of our crew perched on the great spar of the mainsail, high above the deck. Soon after midday, he called down that he could see a stream trickling down the face of a low cliff, leaving a stripe of green against the rock. The nearby beach appeared to be deserted. Sulaiman ordered the sails lowered, and we dropped anchor. Our sailors paddled cautiously ashore in the ship’s boat. We watched as they scouted the beach and then one of them returned to say that it was safe for the watering to begin. Osric, Walo and I helped to lower the empty earthenware jars into the boat and then went ashore ourselves.

With more than forty jars to fill and transport back to the ship, the men would be busy for a while. There was still no sign of the local inhabitants, so I suggested to Osric and Walo that we explore a little distance inland. A narrow gulley offered a way up from the beach and we made a short climb that brought us out on an expanse of open, rough country covered with tall, coarse grasses, parched and yellow. Rocky outcrops rose like small islands in the sea of grass, and here and there were stands of flat-topped trees, their branches offering patches of shade in an otherwise empty landscape.

Walo was the first to see it. He was looking towards a grove of leafy trees when a movement caught his attention. He gulped with excitement and pointed, his whole arm shaking. I looked in that direction and could only see something small and dark, flicking back and forth beside a tree trunk. I mistook it for a bird. My gaze travelled upward and I caught my breath. High in the branches something else moved, a head. I stared transfixed, unable to credit what I was witnessing. Beside me, Walo and Osric kept stock-still, not daring to move and equally astonished. A bizarre-looking animal now moved from behind the tree and into full view. It stood on four very long slender legs that were totally ill matched. The front pair were so much taller than the back ones that the creature’s body sloped downwards, ending in a cow-like tail with a tuft constantly flicking back and forth to ward off the flies. But it was the neck that made the creature so outlandish. Unnaturally thin and long, the neck alone was the height of two men and ended in a deer’s head almost twenty feet above the ground.

‘A cameleopard,’ I breathed in wonder. It was everything that the Book of Beasts had promised, and more.

Swishing its cow-like tail, the cameleopard moved around the tree, grazing on its leaves.

‘Why does it not have the pard’s spots?’ asked Walo. The bestiary had stated that the cameleopard got its name because it had the body of a camel and the spotted skin of the leopard. Yet the pelt of this extraordinary creature in front of us had a bold network of white lines on a yellowy-orange background. The colouring had blended with the dappled shadows under the tree. It was little wonder that we had failed to see the cameleopard sooner.

Walo was beside himself with elation. He tugged my arm as he crouched down. ‘Come!’ he begged. ‘Let’s get closer!’

Bending double we crept through the tall grass towards the feeding animal. Soon we were close enough to see the animal’s long tongue licking out to twist off the leaves as it fed in the high branches. The creature swivelled its head towards us and the ears flicked out, listening. In place of large horns there were two short stumps on its head. ‘It’s a deer, not a camel,’ announced Walo.

The cameleopard caught sight of us and took fright. Suddenly it wheeled about and fled, kicking out the long, ungainly legs and running with a rocking motion. Its panicked flight startled other cameleopards that we had not seen. They had been hidden in a fold in the ground, and now they appeared as if by magic. First their heads and then their long necks rising from the grass as they ran up the slope. All of a sudden we were watching an entire herd of them galloping away over the grassland.

The spectacle brought to mind the Nomenculator’s story in Rome, of the timid animals that had been set loose in the Colosseum and hunted down by lions. Surely they had been cameleopards.

Walo was capering with delight. ‘We must catch one and bring it home with us!’ he cried. ‘We can dig a pit like the one in the forest and put down leaves for bait!’

He was thinking back to the day he had seen the aurochs taken in the pitfall. Despite the day’s heat I shuddered. I recalled seeing the aurochs gore his father to death.

For Walo the thrill of seeing a cameleopard wiped away the horror of that memory. He was beaming with anticipation. ‘Catching a cameleopard will be easy!’ he insisted.

‘We should go back to the ship and speak with Sulaiman,’ I said, ‘and ask him if it will be possible to transport a cameleopard aboard.’

We turned around and began to make our way back along the path in single file. Walo led, giving a little skip every few paces. At one point he turned to me, his face radiant, and said, ‘This is the land where the beasts in the book have their homes . . . cameleopards, hyenas and crocodiles. We are sure to find the griffin!’

He carried on a few paces further and came to an abrupt halt. ‘Look,’ he called back over his shoulder, ‘it is just as I said. All the beasts live here. There’s an asp.’

He was pointing at an indistinct grey shape lying beside the path, half hidden beneath a fallen tree trunk.

The hair rose on the back of my neck, and I backed away so suddenly that Osric bumped into me from behind. ‘Stay away, Walo!’ I urged him.

But he ignored me entirely. He stepped off the track and approached the grey shape. It moved, shifting and twisting on itself. It was a serpent, scarcely a yard in length, but gross and fat, the head smaller than the bloated body, its skin a pattern of chevrons, grey on black.

It was coiling back, deeper into the overhang of the fallen tree trunk.

‘You see! It retreats in fear just as the book says,’ Walo exulted. He felt inside his shirt and pulled out his little deerhorn pipe, the same one with which he had tamed the ice bears. He put it to his lips, and played the same three notes.

The serpent coiled again, retreating even further.

Walo turned to me with a triumphant smile. ‘The book was right. It fears the music.’

Despite my terror of the serpent, I half believed him. According to the Book of Beasts the asp dreads music. When an asp hears music it seeks to flee, and if that is impossible, it attempts to block out the sound, pressing one ear to the ground, and bringing the tip of its tail around and thrusting it into the other ear.

Walo blew a few more notes and – sure enough – the snake writhed and formed an extra loop, doubling back on itself, and its tail came near its squat, flat head.

I remembered how Walo had handled the little horned snake in the desert of Egypt and wondered if again he would show his uncanny skill with wild creatures.

He was moving closer, slowly and confidently, and playing the notes again. The serpent writhed as if in distress.

Walo took another step, bent forward and played the notes again. This time the asp reared up its head, and hissed loudly at him.

My blood ran cold.

Walo took another half-pace closer.

The asp was hissing constantly now, and its thick body was bloating and inflating, a grotesque sight. The flat head and upper part of its body began to rise from the ground. The mouth opened wide and pale, showing the throat. All of a sudden I knew that it was not about to thrust its tail into its own ear to try to block out the music. This was the warning of death.

‘Walo! No nearer!’ I begged him.

Walo ignored me and moved closer still. He was now within an arm’s length of the asp, still bending forward and playing the pipe. His shadow fell across the serpent.

The asp struck. It happened almost too fast for the eye to see; a gaping pale mouth, a glimpse of fangs, and the asp had bitten Walo on his leg.

Walo did not flinch. He stayed where he was, still playing the whistle.

The serpent struck again, viciously and twice more, each blow as lightning-fast as the previous one. Only then did Walo stagger. The serpent turned, and its evil gross body slithered away beneath the log.

Walo seemed disappointed rather than distressed. He had been wearing loose sailor’s trousers, and there were marks with patches of blood where the fangs had struck. ‘I should have played a different tune,’ he said meekly.

He was swaying, his face puzzled.

I ran forward as his leg began to crumple beneath him, and caught him as he fell. There was a ripping sound and I turned to see Osric tearing a strip of cloth from the hem of his gown.

‘We have to bind the leg tight and get him back to the boat as quickly as we can,’ said my friend. As a young man in Hispania Osric had been a student of medicine among the Saracens. In Hispania, too, there were serpents.

Together we helped Walo along the path, his arms around our necks. His injured leg was dragging on the dry earth.

On the beach we found that Sulaiman and his men had nearly completed watering.

‘An asp has bitten Walo,’ I told the shipmaster, near-panic in my voice, and he shouted to his boat crew to hurry to assist us.

We lifted Walo into the ship’s boat and brought him out to the vessel. ‘My leg is getting stiff. It hurts very much,’ he groaned as we laid him on deck.

Zaynab placed a roll of cloth beneath his head to make him more comfortable but her face was troubled.

While the crew were rigging a length of canvas to shade Walo where he lay, she took me to one side and asked me to describe the serpent. It took only a few words, and when I finished she turned away, tears filling her eyes.

‘Is there no cure?’ I asked.

She shook her head.

*

Walo’s death was painful and ugly. He was unable to move or bend the injured leg. A pale fluid mixed with blood oozed from the puncture holes where the serpent’s fangs had pierced. Within hours he was feverish and flushed. From thigh to ankle the leg began to swell, puffing up as if in imitation of the asp that had bitten him. The skin turned a nasty purplish-grey. The next day it burst, splitting like an over-ripe plum. A long weeping wound revealed rotting flesh beneath. That evening Walo lay with his eyes closed, taking shallow breaths, losing the fight for life. Yet he still clung to his belief in the bestiary. ‘That was a prester asp,’ he told me, his voice so weak that I had to lean closer to him. ‘If it had been the hypnalis, I would be asleep, like Cleopatra.’

He licked his lips and swallowed, struggling to speak. ‘I remember you read to me that the asp called prester moves with an open mouth, and those it bites swell up and rot follows the bite.’

A spasm of pain racked him and he reached out and clutched my hand. ‘The rare beasts are here! Take a young griffin from its nest and bring it home. Feed it meat, just like Madi and Modi.’ Those were the last coherent words he spoke.

We dug his grave at the foot of the low cliff close to the spot where we had filled the water jars. The hole was deep enough so that the wild animals would not reach his body, and we put him in the ground within hours of his passing. Sulaiman was urging us to hurry.

As we left the beach, the shipmaster drew my attention to the heavy swell now rolling in from the sea.

‘There’s a storm somewhere out there,’ he told me bluntly. ‘If it catches us on this exposed coast, we’ll be as dead as your friend back there.’

His words struck me as callous and I had to remind myself that on his voyages Sulaiman must have seen many deaths from accident, drowning and disease.

‘We should head back to al-Ubullah,’ I said. Until Walo died I had been prepared to give the bestiary the benefit of the doubt and was ready to accept its descriptions of outlandish creatures – after all, so many had come true. I blamed myself for not questioning the claim that music would tame the asp. Had I done so, Walo, whom I had brought on this venture, would still be alive.

‘I will gladly set a course for home,’ said the shipmaster. ‘I’ve already taken us further beyond Zanj than I had promised to Jaffar, but first,’ he nodded towards the south horizon where the sky was beginning to cloud over and show a peculiar colour, pearl grey with a hint of green, ‘I think, we must put our trust in the All-Merciful.’

The storm that enveloped us later that evening lasted for a full three days. Had the gale come from the east when it howled in on us, our ship would have been driven ashore and dashed to pieces. Fortunately, the wind and waves came from the opposite direction and forced us out to sea instead. Faced with such a tempest our crew could only lower the spars and sails to the deck, lash them securely, then crouch in shelter, seeking to escape the blast of the wind and rain. To stand and work on deck was impossible. Sulaiman made no attempt to steer a course. He surrendered to the supremacy of the storm and let his vessel drift where the gale pushed her. The ship rolled and pitched wildly, shuddering to the repeated blows of the great waves that marched down on us. We thought only of survival, bailing water from the bilge, trying to keep the hatches covered so that the waves that often washed across the deck did not pour into the hold, and staying afloat. When the wind eventually eased, leaving a lumpy, grey sea, we were wet, hungry and utterly exhausted. The cooking fire had long since gone out, and we were eating handfuls of dates clawed from the last remaining sack of them in the hold. Yet throughout the ordeal Sulaiman had squatted near the helm, needing only short naps to keep himself alert. Whenever I glanced in his direction, he looked to be calm and unworried. I understood why the crew placed their confidence in his judgement and experience, trusting him to keep them safe. I knew that I had failed to do the same for Walo.

On the fourth day, as the height of the waves eased and they began to lose their white crests, Sulaiman climbed up on the lowered mainspar and stood there, one arm around the mast. With more than deliberate care he scanned the entire horizon before dropping back onto the deck, and coming over to speak with Osric and me.

‘There’s land to the south-east,’ he said. ‘We’ll go there and find an anchorage.’

‘Can’t we set course for home?’ I asked. Walo’s death had affected me deeply. More than ever, I wanted to be finished with the voyage. My curiosity was at an end. No longer did I care if there was such a creature as a rukh or a griffin, and on the slim chance that it did exist, I did not have the stomach to go on with the quest when the lives of those precious to me were placed at risk: Osric and – of course – Zaynab. I would return to Baghdad and tell the caliph that Sulaiman had brought us further than any of us had imagined possible, and we had found nothing.

The old man shook his head. ‘We must check the ship for storm damage. Then we head for al-Ubullah.’

‘Where do you think we are?’ I enquired.

‘Tonight, if the sky clears so I can read the stars, I’ll have a better idea. My guess is that we’re off Komr or possibly WaqWaq.’

As far as I could recall, neither place had been mentioned when Musa had shown us the map in the royal library.

Sulaiman rubbed at the thin stubble of his beard. ‘Captains from al-Ubullah picked up reports of those places while trading on the coast of Zanj. I’ve not heard of anyone landing there.’

He frowned at the distant dark line on the horizon. ‘We need to find a gently shelving beach of clean, hard sand on which to beach the hull and check the stitching.’

I had forgotten that our vessel was held together with cords of coconut rope. ‘What about the inhabitants? Will they be friendly?’

The old man shrugged. ‘Maybe we’ll find the place uninhabited.’

*

The unknown land, whatever its name, showed a flat coastal strip fringed with grey-green gurm trees. To seaward their tangle of roots presented an impenetrable wall, each root thrust deep into the sucking ooze, and it was midday when Sulaiman eventually found a small crescent of sandy beach protected by a tongue of land. By then the gale was no more than an evil memory, and we made the final approach on a gentle breeze, gliding across water so clear that Sulaiman could judge his moment and run the keel of his ship gently into the sand. It was a moment of utter relief.

‘We wait here for two full tides,’ said Sulaiman, ‘to check and clean the hull, and we can stay longer if we decide on any repairs.’ He looked across at me. ‘That will give you and Osric enough time to explore inland if you wish.’

I declined without hesitation. ‘Osric and I will remain with the ship. I want no more accidents.’

If Sulaiman had not sent two of his sailors to gather firewood I would have kept my word. But we needed to light a fire to cook and most of our firewood had been washed into the sea during the gale. What we still had on board was soaking wet. So the two men were despatched even before the tide had ebbed and we were waiting for the water to recede and the ship to settle on the sand.

They returned after a short while, bringing back an object that they had stumbled upon in the undergrowth.

They gave it to Sulaiman, who walked across to where I was standing with Osric.

‘I think you should see this,’ he said to us. It looked like a fragment from a broken bowl, no larger than the palm of my hand. Dirty cream in colour, the dished side was smooth and the outer surface was slightly rough.

I took it from Sulaiman and was surprised how light it was, much thinner than the heavy earthenware pots we had seen in Ifriquia.

‘Whoever made this does fine workmanship. The people living here must be very skilled craftsmen,’ I told him.

‘My men found at least a dozen similar fragments, all lying close together,’ said Sulaiman. ‘They believe that they were not made by any human hands, and this frightens them.’

I looked again at the delicate pot fragment. ‘I think we should go and judge for ourselves,’ I said.

Guided by one of the sailors we walked up the beach and over a low ridge to find ourselves on ground overgrown with rough grass and straggly underbrush. The sailor stopped at the edge of a circular patch some four or five feet across. Here the grass had once been pressed down flat though now it was beginning to grow again.

Scattered on the ground were several more fragments of the bowls. Most were the same size as the sample I had been shown. Others were larger, seven or eight inches across.

‘What do they remind you of?’ asked Sulaiman softly.

It was Osric who answered. ‘That looks to me like some sort of nest. Those fragments are bits of bird shell.’

I felt a fool for not seeing the truth sooner.

I stooped down, gathered up several larger fragments, and tried to fit them together into a single piece. The egg that they would have formed was enormous, more than a foot in length.

I looked up at Sulaiman. ‘What do your sailors think?’ I asked.

‘They believe they are the eggs of a rukh,’ he said. ‘A small one, but nevertheless a rukh. That’s why they’re scared. They are frightened that the creature might suddenly swoop down on us and pluck us away.’

Oddly enough, I felt cheated. In my mind I had already abandoned the quest for griffin or rukh. To find signs of its possible existence was unsettling.

‘Other creatures lay eggs,’ I objected. ‘Crawling creatures like the crocodiles we saw on the banks of the Nile . . . and serpents.’ After seeing a snake kill Walo, the sight of the huge eggs had sent a shiver down my spine. ‘If these are serpent eggs then the animal is huge and very dangerous. We should leave this place undisturbed.’

Osric disagreed. ‘These are bird’s eggs, Sigwulf. Serpents, crocodiles, turtles . . . their eggs don’t have hard shells. If Walo was here, he would tell you the same.’

Mention of Walo jolted me. I knew what Walo would have done. He would have known immediately that they were eggshell fragments from a gigantic bird, just as he had known that the mysterious black beak found in the whale’s phlegm came from a meat-eating creature. If he had been with us, he would have been thirsting to find the creature and learn more. The thought made me ashamed of my own timidity. If already I were responsible for bringing Walo to his death in Africa, soon I would find it even more difficult to live with the knowledge that I had chosen to throw aside the chance to carry out his last wish.

Standing there holding the pieces of a huge egg, I made my choice: I would locate a nest still in use by a griffin or rukh, take a couple of fledglings from it, and bring them to Baghdad and Aachen for all to wonder at. No one else need be involved.

‘Why don’t you and your men carry on attending to the ship,’ I suggested to Sulaiman, ‘I will see if I can find a rukh’s nest that has got complete eggs in it, or even chicks, and be back by dark. Then we can decide what we should do next.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ Osric insisted. ‘Two people will cover more ground than one.’

The shipmaster did not argue. ‘If you’re not back by morning, my men will assume you have fallen victim to the rukh, and insist on leaving this place. I will not be able to prevent them.’

Without another word Sulaiman and his sailor headed back to the beach, leaving Osric and myself standing by the abandoned nest.

I gazed inland where the heat haze obscured whatever lay beyond forest-clad hills. I was thinking back to my search for the white gyrfalcons.

‘The griffin and the rukh are said to be like giant eagles. They build their nests among the mountain crags. Yet this creature lays its eggs on flat ground. That doesn’t seem right.’

‘Whether the creature flies or crawls or walks on legs, we would be wise to go cautiously,’ said Osric. ‘Let’s start by looking around for tracks.’

Together we began to search the area. It was mostly scrubland with a few clumps of stunted trees among the tangle of thickets and rough grasses. We had been searching for perhaps an hour, circling the nest and checking the ground, when we found a second nest. This time it was in use. A clutch of half a dozen huge eggs lay on the ground. The undergrowth around the nest had been pressed down by a heavy weight, and the nest was less than an arrow’s flight from a small lake. A well-marked trail led through the undergrowth towards the water. Several more tracks indicated that the creature patrolled around the margins of the lake, and that worried me. Thoughts of crocodiles and water serpents came into my head.

Osric went up to the nest and laid a hand on an egg. ‘It is warm,’ he said. ‘The parent cannot be far off.’

He crouched down, listening, then touched the egg again. ‘I think I detect something moving. I believe the eggs will hatch soon.’

A tight knot of fear gathered in my stomach. I was remembering the terror I had felt back in the forest when the aurochs had appeared behind Vulfard and me. ‘We mustn’t be caught between the beast and its nest. That could be dangerous,’ I said.

‘If it is a crawling beast that comes from the lake, then we would be safer if we were off the ground,’ Osric answered. He pointed to a nearby grove of trees. ‘If we can get ourselves up into one of those trees, facing the nest, we should be safe, and have a good view.’

We made our way to the grove and managed to find a tree into which we could climb ten or twelve feet off the ground. Branches and leaves partially blocked our view, but the path leading to the nest passed less than ten feet away.

For an hour or two we crouched among the branches, tormented by insects and growing increasingly uncomfortable as the branches dug into us. Lying in wait for the aurochs, beside Vulfard, had been damp and tedious but more comfortable. My shoulder wound began to ache again.

We heard the creature before we saw it. It was the sound of a large animal coming towards us through the underbrush, moving confidently, a little clumsily. Once or twice I thought I heard the sound of a heavy footfall.

We clung to the branches, peering down the track.

The creature stamped past, very close. Osric and I were nine feet off the ground, yet the creature’s head was on a level with us. It was massive. I held my breath in case it turned its head and saw us. The eyes were bright and beady and the beak was a heavy, pointed spear and sharp enough to do serious damage. The body was covered with a heavy coat of dark brown feathery bristles. A glimpse of the massive claws at the end of its two scaly legs, thicker than my thigh, made me shiver. Each claw was nine or ten inches long.

The animal reached its nest, and stood there, peering about as if seeking an enemy. Then, squatting backwards, it lowered itself down to cover the clutch of huge eggs. Even when the beast was seated, the head on the snake-like neck was five feet above the ground.

Osric and I waited for the creature to settle before we cautiously climbed down and crept away, keeping the grove of trees between the beast and us.

After we had gone perhaps two hundred paces, Osric turned and looked at me. ‘That was neither griffin nor rukh. It cannot fly,’ he said. The wings had been little more than stumps.

‘It’s not in the Book of Beasts,’ I said. ‘There’s a creature called an ostrich which it resembles. But it is nothing like as big and massive.’

‘What do we do now?’ Osric asked.

‘Nothing,’ I replied. I had already come to a decision as we were creeping away from the giant bird.

Osric gave me a look that was full of understanding. ‘You’re thinking of Walo, aren’t you?’

I nodded. ‘He was so certain that the Book of Beasts is correct and he died because of it. Today we’ve only learned that those huge eggs belong to a different beast, neither rukh nor griffin. That doesn’t prove that such creatures don’t exist somewhere else.’

My friend knew me well enough to understand what I had in mind. ‘So we report to Sulaiman that we failed to find the creature that laid the eggs.’

‘Exactly. Then the search for the rukh and griffin will continue, and even be encouraged. The sailors already believe they’ve seen rukh’s eggs.’

Osric considered before replying. ‘If we bring back news of that extraordinary creature we’ve just seen, Musa’s colleagues in the caliph’s library can add it to the Book of Beasts and from there it will spread far and wide.’ He treated me to a quick, conspiratorial grin. ‘But I agree with you: it is better that we encourage the search for the griffin in the hope that Walo’s trust will one day be justified. And I have a suggestion.’

I looked at him enquiringly. ‘What’s that?’

‘We return to that empty nest, gather up as many fragments of the eggshells as we can find, and bring them back to Baghdad. Let others draw their own conclusions.’