The Emperor's Elephant(121)

‘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 what 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.’