The Emperor's Elephant(103)

‘You must be Sigwulf,’ he said to me. ‘Abdallah did not tell me about your eyes.’

I realized that the sunlight coming in through the window behind Haroun was falling full on my face.

‘The great Iskander also had eyes of different colours,’ Haroun continued. ‘He, too, was a great traveller.’

My mind had gone blank. I knew he was talking of Alexander the Great and I tried desperately and unsuccessfully to recall what I knew about the extent of Alexander’s journeys. I stood there tongue-tied and feeling foolish.

Abdallah came to my rescue. He leaned towards his father and whispered something.

‘My son tells me that you have a book to give us.’

This was safer ground. My mind began to clear. ‘Your Magnificence, it is but one of the presents that my master Carolus, King of the Franks, sends you in return for your great generosity in the gifts you despatched to him, for which he thanks you.’

I realized that I was gabbling and forced myself to slow down. ‘There are other items he hopes will please you – bears, birds of prey, specially selected –’ I was still so flustered that I only just stopped myself from mentioning that the animals had been chosen because they were white.

Fortunately, the caliph cut across me. ‘Nadim Jaffar has told me about these and Mohammed and Abdallah have been to see the bears. They are indeed remarkable.’ He leaned forward slightly. ‘The book . . . ?’ he prompted.

It was clear that the caliph was in a hurry. I presumed that he was taking a short break from his official duties to hold this private audience, and was doing so to please Abdallah who had reported on the meeting in Jaffar’s garden. Certainly Abdallah was listening closely to everything being said as if he owned the interview.

‘Your Magnificence,’ I blurted, hurriedly unwinding the black cloth from around the book, ‘it cannot compare with the splendid volumes in your royal library, but King Carolus hopes that it will be of some interest.’

Abdallah scrambled to his feet. He came across the platform and I handed him up the book. He took it back to his father, and then sat down beside the caliph, who opened the cover. On Haroun’s left, the other son, Mohammed, leaned in to look more closely.

There was silence as the caliph slowly turned the pages, pausing from time to time to study a particular illustration. At one point he stopped for several moments, then looked up at me, and turned the book around so that I could see the picture.

‘What is this bird?’ he asked. He looked down again, and slowly and carefully read out: ‘ “c-a-l-a-d-r-i-u-s.” ’

With a shock I realized that Haroun al Rashid had deliberately not looked at the Arabic translation that had been prepared long ago in Aachen. He was testing out his knowledge of Western script. I was dumbfounded. The contrast with Carolus could not have been greater. In Aachen, I had watched the King of the Franks looking through the pictures in the bestiary. He could write no more than a few words in his own language and struggled with reading the simplest phrases. In Baghdad, his counterpart, the Commander of the Faithful, could recognize a foreign script and, with close attention, even make out the letters.

On the page that Haroun then held out to me were two pictures. The upper one showed a man with a crown on his head. He was lying on a bed and looked very ill. At his feet a white bird vaguely like a magpie was perched on the bed frame, behind it an open window. It was clear that the bird had flown into the room and settled there. The bird was staring at the crowned man. The lower picture was identical except that the bird, instead of staring at the man, had turned its head and was looking away.

‘A caladrius, Your Magnificence,’ I explained, remembering the text written below, ‘is a bird that can foretell whether a king who is sick will live or die. If the caladrius looks at the patient, the sickness is drawn into the bird. It then flies up into the sun and is burned away and, with it, the sickness. But if the caladrius looks away when he sees the ill king, then death is certain.’

Haroun’s expression did not change. He turned the book around in his hands and continued to look through the pages. I wondered if I should have been more tactful in my explanation, then thought to myself that a translator in the royal library would eventually produce a full translation of the text written below the pictures, and that the caliph might see it. It was wiser to be honest.

The caliph reached the end of the book, and looked up at me again. ‘Many of the animals shown here I recognize. Some are already in my collection. But others are not.’

On his right the young Abdallah looked pleased, doubtless glad that he had told his father that it might be worth looking through the book I said I was carrying.