Walo giggled. He had noticed a comical human figure in the picture. A man dressed as a hunter was shown standing behind the rump of the bonnacon, his face was wrinkled in disgust. ‘Why’s he holding his nose?’ he asked.
‘According to the book, when the bonnacon is chased, it runs away at great speed deliberately shooting quantities of dung from its backside. The dung has a ferocious smell and burns anyone it touches.’
There was a furious outburst of barking from the tethered dogs. One of them had slipped its collar and was snapping and snarling at its neighbour. Walo jumped to his feet and ran off to deal with the situation.
Osric stretched and yawned. ‘I’ve never seen Walo so animated. The pictures in the book draw him out. Perhaps you should show more of them to him when you have time . . .’
He waited until I had closed the bestiary and carefully wrapped it back inside the stiff linen cover, then added, ‘Have you checked our pages from the Oneirokritikon for the meaning of those elephant dreams that have been troubling you?’
‘There’s nothing,’ I answered, rather more abruptly than I intended.
Osric and I had agreed that our fragments from the Book of Dreams were too valuable to leave behind in an empty house in Aachen. They were hidden in the outer, double folds of the same heavy linen wrapper that protected the bestiary.
Osric frowned, searching his memory. ‘Dreams of elephants were mentioned somewhere. Maybe in the complete version of the book. I remember translating them. What precisely have you been dreaming?’
‘Mostly, that I was riding on the back of an elephant. But sometimes the animal is trying to stamp me into the ground,’ I told him.
My friend thought for a moment. ‘If I remember correctly, to dream of riding on an elephant means you will meet someone of great power and influence, a king or an emperor.’
‘That sounds promising,’ I said with more than a touch of sarcasm. My vivid dreams were not only worrying. They meant that I had been losing sleep. ‘Maybe we will get to meet the caliph in person. What about the dream of being attacked by an elephant?’
Osric ignored my ill humour. He was serious. ‘If the elephant succeeds in crushing the dreamer, it foretells an early death. But if the dreamer evades the attack, it means the dreamer will face great danger yet escape with his life.’
‘I wake up before the dream elephant squashes me to pulp,’ I said. His words left me uneasy, and at that moment I felt the sudden sting of a biting fly on my neck. I reached up and slapped it. My hand came away with a tiny smear of blood and, despite my outward bravado, I wondered if it too was an omen.
My friend glanced across to where Walo had succeeded in calming the quarrelling dogs. ‘Did anything come of your dream of Walo with those wolves and the bees?’ he asked.
It was my chance to tell Osric that the bees foretold Walo’s death. But I shied away from admitting that earlier I had kept the truth from my friend. Instead I described how the sight of Walo in Kaupang seated between the ice bears in Ohthere’s bear pen was the fulfilment of my vision.
Osric heard me out in silence. ‘And now? Does anyone else appear in your elephant dreams? Like Walo with those wolves?’
‘Abram. I see him climbing onto the carcass of a long-dead elephant and delving through a slit in the grey skin. Then he pulls out great long white bones.’
A look of relief crossed my friend’s face. ‘Surely that dream is about the past, not the future. It’s about the death of the elephant that Abram was bringing to Carolus.’
There was a sudden flicker in the air as a bat swooped over the dying fire in pursuit of a flying insect. The night was drawing in. Though the air was still warm, I shivered. ‘I think I’ll stay in the tent after all. It’ll save me from the midges,’ I said as I got to my feet.
I made my way back to the tent, carrying the bestiary; something was nagging at the back of my mind. I crawled into our tent, slipped the book inside my saddlebag, and was fastening down the flap when, all of a sudden, I had a faint recollection that the Oneirokritikon did offer an explanation about elephant bones: someone seen extracting the bones from a dead elephant in a dream meant that the person would make a great profit from an endeavour. I racked my brains, wondering how the prediction might make sense. Then, in a flash of understanding, I knew: Abram was using our embassy as an opportunity to line his pockets. That explained the six laden pack ponies on the day he met me on the road outside Aachen, and the extra waggons hired for the overland journey to the Rhone. Our dragoman was carrying his own private trade goods, buying and selling as we travelled. As I tied the final knot in the leather lace, I wondered what items Abram was carrying that were so profitable. I decided I would not ask. If Abram wanted to keep his business dealings a secret from me, that was his affair. The dream of Abram and elephant bones was an omen. If he was to make a great deal of money from our journey then that, in turn, implied that our embassy would be a success.