The Emperor's Elephant(8)

Carolus’s initial boyishness had been replaced by something almost conspiratorial, as if he was about to share a secret with me.

‘Besides learning how to look after an aurochs, you will procure some other animals as my gifts for the caliph Haroun,’ he said.

‘At Your Majesty’s command,’ I answered. There was no mistaking his tone of voice; this was an order and I had no choice in the matter. He had no need to remind me that I was an exile from my homeland and depended on Carolus for my entire existence. I was completely at the king’s disposal.

‘Alcuin told you that the elephant that died was near-white? And that white is the royal colour in Baghdad?’

‘He did, Your Majesty.’

The king opened the book. ‘Besides a pair of live aurochs, I have decided to present the caliph with a selection of different and interesting animals, all of them white.’

There was a note of self-congratulation in his voice. I sensed that what he was about to say had not been discussed with Alcuin beforehand. It made me all the more attentive and a little uneasy.

The king was turning the pages of the book, searching for something. From where I stood I could tell that the pages were covered with coloured pictures though, as they were upside down, it was difficult to work out exactly what they were.

‘The caliph has his own menagerie at his Baghdad palace.’ Carolus had a slight frown on his face and was talking to himself as much as he was addressing me. ‘Alcuin informs me that his animal collection is a wonder of the world. There are strange beasts from countries as far away as India and beyond.’

He was finding it difficult to locate the right page. He reached the end of the book and began to search through it from the beginning again.

‘I must send animals that he does not already have. Animals that will amaze him, and flatter him because they, too, are white. Ah! Here is one!’

He turned the book around and held it out to show me.

The book was a bestiary, a volume where the artist had drawn pictures of strange and remarkable animals. The illustration that the king had selected was of an ice bear.

‘Imagine the effect when Haroun sees a bear that is white, and so big and powerful!’ said Carolus triumphantly. ‘He will understand that in the north we have creatures every bit as remarkable as his tigers and lions.’

I swallowed hard, my mouth had gone dry. ‘Your Majesty, if I understand correctly, your wish is that I take an ice bear to Baghdad, as well as two aurochs?’ A worrying image had surfaced in my head. An animal accustomed to ice and snow would die from heat on the way to Haroun’s capital. An ice bear would never survive the trip.

‘Not a single ice bear, Sigwulf. A pair of them,’ muttered the king. He was already leafing through the pages of the bestiary again. He quickly found what he wanted, and again held up the page for me to see.

‘And at least two of these. More, if you can get them.’

This time it was a drawing of a bird of prey. The artist had accurately sketched the elegant pointed wings, the neat head and fiercely hooked beak. He had tinted a bright yellow eye and the grey talons, but left the sleek body uncoloured so that the bird was off-white on the page except for a very light sprinkling of dark speckles.

Now I was on firmer ground. There were several such birds already in the royal mews. The Franks knew them as gyrfalcons or vulture falcons, and prized them so highly that their use as hunting birds was restricted to the king himself and his most senior lords. I felt a mild sense of relief, imagining that gyrfalcons were unlikely to suffer from the heat in the same way as an ice bear. Only one thing made me hesitate. The plumage of the gyrfalcons I had seen on their perch blocks in the royal mews ranged in colour from silver-brown to a bird that was nearly black. I had never seen one that was as white as the illustration on the page, and I wondered where I could find white gyrfalcons.

The king provided the answer. He loved his hawking and was very knowledgeable about his birds of prey.

‘Sigwulf, my mews master will give you the names of the traders who deal in vulture falcons. You’ll buy only pure-white birds from them. You’ll have ample funds.’

‘Where will I find these traders?’ I ventured to ask.

‘Far in the north.’ Carolus’s reply had the vagueness of a monarch who expected his orders to be carried out. ‘Whether gyrfalcons or ice bears, it’s all the same. The further north you go, the whiter are the creatures. They match the ice and snow.’

But the king had not finished. He was already leafing through the bestiary once more, and this time he found what he wanted near the opening page.

‘And while you are getting the ice bears and falcons, I want you to track down this creature for me.’ He held up the page.