Walo nodded approvingly.
‘When the leader is tired, he changes places with another in the flock. As they fly, they post some of their number at the end of the line to shout orders and keep the group together.’
‘I’ve heard them calling to one another in the air. The voice is like a bugle,’ said Walo triumphantly. ‘You see the book tells the truth.’
‘But what about the crane in the front of the picture,’ I said, ‘the one holding something in its claw? The book says that when a flock of cranes rests at night, one of their number stands guard. While the others sleep, he stays awake, holding up a stone in his claw. If he falls asleep, the stone drops and awakens him.’
Walo thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know about that. But why shouldn’t it be true? Let’s check on another creature that we both know. How about a wild boar?’
I found the relevant illustration. The picture was certainly accurate, a pig-like creature with a curly tail, cloven hooves, dangerous-looking tusks and a malevolent expression as it charged across the page. Even the colouring – a greyish black – was correct.
‘The Latin name is Aper, and it is named for its ferocity,’ I read. ‘The boar is very rough when mating, and before they fight with one another, they rub their skin against the bark of trees to toughen it.’
‘I’ve seen boars doing just that,’ Walo confirmed. ‘In the forest you find places where the bark has been torn away. Boars also prepare for battle by whetting their tusks, sharpening them against trees.’
‘That is what the book also says,’ I admitted. ‘The book claims, too, that a boar eats a plant called origanum to cleanse its gums and strengthen the tusks.’
‘That I didn’t know,’ said Walo, looking over my shoulder as I turned the page to look for another familiar animal.
As luck would have it, the next page had an illustration of a large serpent. For a moment I wondered if this was the same sort of snake whose picture Abram would show me in Rome. But the man was not Adam, for he was fully dressed and there was no sign of Eve or an apple tree, and the serpent’s home was a hole in a barren-looking hill that did not resemble the fertile Garden of Eden. The serpent body tapered to a pointed tail and, oddly, the creature had curved itself around and thrust the tip of its tail into its own ear. The artist had drawn a face on the snake, and the animal was grimacing, clearly in distress.
‘That man is calming the serpent,’ said Walo at once.
It took me a moment to see what he was talking about. A little distance from the snake a man was playing a stringed instrument. I recognized a viol from Carolus’s banquets when musicians entertained the king.
‘The asp, or serpent,’ I read out, ‘kills with a venomous bite. When an enchanter summons an asp out of its cave with incantations or music, and it does not want to go, it presses one ear to the ground and covers the other ear with its tail.’
I paused and took a second look at the picture. ‘Surely that’s a fable,’ I said. ‘Serpents don’t listen to music.’
Walo looked at me reprovingly. ‘If ice bears do, why shouldn’t serpents be the same?’
I returned to the book. ‘It also says that there are many kinds of asp, and not all are harmful. The bite from one kind kills by causing a terrible thirst; another that is called the prester asp moves with an open mouth, and those it bites swell up and rot follows. Then they die. The bite from a third kind of asp brings on a deep sleep from which the victim never awakes. That one is called the hypnalis and it is the asp that killed Cleopatra the Queen of Egypt who was freed from her troubles.’
‘We’re going to Egypt, aren’t we!’ breathed Walo eagerly. ‘Wouldn’t it be magnificent if we found a hypnalis. I could play my pipe to lure it from its hole.’
The sun’s glare was giving me a headache and I closed the bestiary and replaced it in its wrapping. If only I had paid closer attention to what Walo had just said, our journey might have turned out very differently.
*
By the tenth day of our journey along the Rhone it was evident that we were approaching the mouth of the great river. The current had become sluggish and the river had widened to nearly a half-mile from bank to bank. Far behind us were the prosperous farmlands; now we were passing through a flat, wild landscape of windswept marshes and lagoons. A few greyish-white humps, Abram told us, were piles of salt crystals scraped up by the inhabitants and awaiting collection. It was the only crop they could wrest from the waterlogged soil. Despite the lateness of the season, the weather continued fine and sunny with clear skies that produced spectacular sunsets. On just such an evening Walo and I stumbled on a discovery that obliged me to admit that the verderer’s son had reason to believe in the strangeness and variety of the animals.