The Emperor's Elephant(93)

The grey snake heard me and turned in my direction, reaching out towards me. I shrank away, shuddering. The head of the serpent was horrible. It had no eyes. Instead there were two slimy holes and above them a short fat finger that was moving up and down as if questing for me.

Abram guffawed. ‘Don’t be afraid. He’s just curious,’ he told me.

‘What is it?’ I blurted, still keeping well back from the serpent that now curled up and was withdrawing itself back through the gap in the door.

‘You’ll see in a moment,’ he replied, grinning broadly.

A little further on, the upper half of one of the doors was open. When we came level, I looked inside, and caught my breath. I was looking at the animal that I had longed to see – a live elephant. My only mild disappointment was that it was not quite as large as I had expected. The animal swayed gently on thick grey legs and flapped huge ears with ragged edges and patches of mottled pink skin. Then it reached up with the long flexible nose that I had mistaken for a serpent and felt inside the hay net hanging on the wall. It tore off a wisp and, curling back its trunk, put the hay into its mouth. It stood there, chewing meditatively and watching me with tiny, bright eyes. The creature was as wonderfully strange as I had imagined. I looked on, delighted.

‘Walo needs our help. We’d better hurry,’ said Abram.

Ahead of us the team hauling the bear cage had stopped in front of an open door. Walo was waving his arms, arguing with the overseer of the slave gang. I looked around for Osric who had been acting as Walo’s interpreter and saw that my friend had been distracted. He had found another half-open door and was peering over it at whatever creature was kept inside.

I hurried forward to help Walo. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘They want to put my bears in there,’ he said, casting an unhappy glance into what looked like a perfectly ordinary stall. It had clean straw on the ground, and a large tub of water. The only drawback was that the stall was ill-lit and gloomy.

Walo was very distressed. ‘Modi and Madi are very weak already. If they are put in there, they are likely to die. They must have fresh air.’

I translated what he had said to a small, grey-haired man who had appeared from further down the central aisle. I guessed he was the chief keeper of the menagerie.

He gave Walo a sympathetic glance. ‘Tell your friend not to worry,’ he said to me, ‘we’ll open shutters and allow fresh air to circulate as soon as the sun goes down. At this hour it is too hot outside for us to do that.’

I translated his words to Walo but failed to calm him. ‘It would be better if the bears were taken outside, somewhere in the shade,’ he insisted.

The head keeper saw that Walo was still troubled. Stepping past him and into the stall, he beckoned to Walo to follow him. Then the older man walked around the stall, patting the walls with the palm of his hand and repeating something in a soothing tone.

‘What’s he trying to say?’ Walo pleaded with me.

I asked the head keeper to repeat himself, because what he had said was impossible.

But I had not misheard.

‘He wants you to know that the walls are hollow, and they will be filled with ice.’

Walo gaped at me, his eyes wide with disbelief. ‘With ice? How can that be?’

I relayed the question to the keeper and was told that great blocks of ice were brought down from the mountains every winter and stored underground in straw-lined pits within the Round City. The purest ice was kept for cooling the drinks served to the caliph, his senior ministers and their guests. The lesser grade was used just as he had shown within the palace itself. Certain rooms in the palace had hollow walls that were filled with ice and, when that was not possible, trays of ice were placed where the breeze would carry the cold air into the rooms.

‘This stall is constructed in the same way,’ explained the keeper. ‘We use it for sick animals who need to be kept cool in the summer. The caliph takes a keen interest in his menagerie and we are permitted to take from the ice stores when necessary.’ He gestured towards Walo who was still looking dazed. ‘If your friend wants, he can stay close by. There’s a dormitory at the end of the building where the keepers sleep when they are on night duty. He can find a bed there and I will make arrangements for food to be brought to him.’

I was longing to see more of the elephant and other exotic animals, but our escort from the barge was growing impatient.

‘What would Carolus think if he saw Baghdad for himself – how big it is?’ I remarked to Osric as we went back out into the street, leaving Walo to watch over the ice bears.

‘I’m more concerned about what the caliph will think of the animals we have brought him,’ Osric replied in a low voice.