The Emperor's Elephant(30)

‘You are welcome,’ he said in a clear, sharp voice. I was relieved to hear that his speech was easy to understand.

‘Gorm suggested that we come to find you. He missed you at Kaupang’s market,’ I said.

‘I’ll come to Kaupang as soon as I’m ready,’ the trapper answered.

‘Do you know when that will be?’

‘Maybe this week,’ he answered. The sack he was still holding moved slightly. Something alive was inside. ‘After I have washed, we will eat, then talk.’ Without another word he turned and walked away towards the shed where I had seen the captive eagle.

A little while later as the light was fading, Ingvar brought out the iron pot and the tripod from his hut, lit a fire, and reheated the stew. He added onions from a bag, some herbs, and a dozen more of dried breasts of the unidentified little bird.

‘Rolf tells me that this is from a sea bird,’ I commented. The hot meat was even more succulent than it had been when cold.

‘I don’t know its name in your language. We call it a lundi. In flight it flutters its wings like a bat and, in summer, the beak is striped like a rainbow.’

He sounded like Ohthere with his liking for whale blubber, and I tried to recall if this bizarre-sounding bird had been pictured in Carolus’s bestiary. But I could not remember seeing it there.

Ingvar leaned forward and stirred the stew with a stick. ‘In the nesting season I travel to the coast and net the birds in the cliffs. Their flesh keeps well, is nourishing and light to carry, and is ideal for when I am in the mountains.’

‘Is that why you have a fishing net?’ I asked.

‘That net is for a different purpose.’

‘Gorm told me that you can supply him with white gyrfalcons.’

The trapper studied my face, his expression serious. ‘Is that why you have taken the trouble to find me in the mountains?’

‘I came to this country, hoping to buy white gyrfalcons.’

‘Then tomorrow, if the spirits favour us, you may have your wish.’

My tiredness vanished. ‘Tomorrow you will catch a white gyrfalcon?’

‘If the spirits wish,’ he repeated.

‘May I come with you to see how it is done?’

There was a long pause as he considered my request. ‘You are the first person who has taken the trouble to come to find me in the mountains. If you give me your word that you will be quiet and calm and not disturb our quarry, you may come with me.’

It was very like what Vulfard would have said.

Then the trapper took me aback by adding, ‘And it will do no harm that you are a seidrmann.’

‘What do you mean – a “seidrmann”?’ I asked.

‘Your eyes are of different colours. That is the mark of a man who is at ease with the Otherworld.’

*

Ingvar and I set out next morning while it was still dark, leaving Rolf to look after the horses. The trapper had insisted on an early start, saying that we must be in position by the time the gyrfalcons began to hunt. He was carrying the same small sack he had brought down from the mountain the previous day, and once again its contents moved and shifted with a life of its own. The climb up the ridge was a stiff one and I was embarrassed that Ingvar had to stop from time to time so that I could catch up with him. The result was that it was already full daylight by the time we reached a natural ledge some fifteen paces broad on the shoulder of the mountain. It was, according to Ingvar, the ideal site to trap a gyrfalcon. I was gasping for breath and my legs were shaking with fatigue as I stood there gratefully sucking in deep breaths of the clean fresh air, and gazing out to the blue-grey haze on the distant horizon. It was going to be a warm, windless day. Below me rank after rank of hills and ridges fell away to where, beyond view, lay Kaupang and the market. Without knowing quite why, I felt confident that we would add to the number of white animals for the distant caliph in Baghdad.

I turned to speak to Ingvar. He was gone. I was alone on the ledge. For an instant I was close to panic, remembering childhood tales of men who could dissolve themselves into thin air. Then I saw his sack. It lay on the ground at the foot of the rock face, still bulging and moving.

I waited for a few moments and – as unexpectedly as he had vanished – Ingvar reappeared, ducking out from a narrow cleft in the mountainside, its entrance hidden in such deep shadow that it was invisible from where I stood. He carried a couple of long, thin whippy lathes, a coil of stout cord, a ball of light twine and – I was interested to see – a length of the fine-mesh fish net.

He gestured at me to hurry in helping him clear away the pebbles and dust from the level patch where I was standing. When that was done, he hammered two wooden pegs into cracks in the rocky ground, about six feet apart. Lashing the two lathes end to end to make what looked like a long fishing rod, he threaded the rod along one edge of the net. Next he bent the rod into an arc and attached the ends to the two ground pegs. Finally, he fastened down the trailing edge of the net with heavy stones. Belatedly I understood what he was creating. It was a bow net. The wooden hoop would lie flat on the ground until he tugged on the cord and it would swing up and over, dragging up the net and trapping anything beneath it.