‘My companion and I will be happy to provide what details we can remember,’ I replied. The librarian sounded mildly aggrieved that his normal routine had been disrupted.
‘Very good. I hope we will not take up too much of your time.’ Fadl ushered us into the shadow of the nearest portico. ‘I compliment you on your command of Arabic,’ he said to me. ‘I had assigned a Frankish speaker and one of our best notaries. But I can see that the former will not be needed. That will make the task go more quickly.’
We passed close enough to a pair of scribes for me to hear the older man reading aloud in a language I did not recognize. It had odd, bubbling sounds like water emptying into a drain.
‘How many languages can your interpreters understand?’ I asked the librarian.
‘They’re translators, not interpreters,’ Fadl corrected me with a touch of pedantry. ‘A good deal of our work here is the transcription of texts written in foreign languages and their scripts. We turn them into Arabic or Syriac. If the subject matter is judged to be very important, we make multiple copies for our library holdings.’
‘What language is most in demand?’
‘Greek,’ he replied without hesitation. ‘Last year we sent a deputation to Byzantium to buy classical medical texts. His Magnificence was most generous with the necessary funds, as was Nadim Jaffar, though his taste inclines more to philosophy.’
It was an unexpected insight into the interests of the head of the barid. ‘Your deputation was well received in Byzantium?’ I enquired.
The librarian blinked at me in mild reproof. ‘There is no reason why not. Numerous Greeks live and work here in Baghdad and throughout the caliphate.’
I decided to let the matter drop. Alcuin had given me to understand that Baghdad and Byzantium were enemies, that their troops launched raids across the common border, and from time to time there was outright war. Perhaps this was another area where Alcuin was misinformed.
The librarian was speaking again. ‘We produce a large number of original texts ourselves, in particular in the fields of astronomy and astrology. We consider those subjects to be the pinnacle of learning.’ He nodded towards an old fellow who was sitting by himself in a shady corner of the portico. He had dozed off, his head slumped forward on his chest under the weight of an enormous turban that threatened to undo itself at any moment. ‘Yakub is one of the leading authorities on planetary movements. He has been correlating observations at our own Baghdad observatory with the predictions in Indian texts.’
It crossed my mind that Yakub had been staying up late at night observing the planets, for he did not stir as we skirted around him and went through a door into a large, high-ceilinged room. Bookshelves lined the walls, and deep niches were piled up with scrolls. A row of small unshuttered windows allowed in light and air, but the place had a still, dead feel to it.
The only occupant of the room was a man who looked more like a heavyweight wrestler than a scholar. He heaved himself up from where he had been sitting in front of a low desk. Everything about him was oversize, from his barrel chest to his massive, entirely bald head. He did not wear a turban and there were beads of sweat on his shiny scalp.
‘Musa will take down your story,’ said the librarian. ‘If you need to take a break during your narration, please do not hesitate to say so.’ He stalked out of the room, closing the door behind him.
Musa waved us to cushions placed near his desk and when we had sat down, he took his place behind the desk, pen in hand. ‘Perhaps you could begin with a description of King Carolus’s palace,’ he suggested.
It took the rest of the morning to repeat the tale I had recounted to Nadim Jaffar the previous evening. Osric helped me out. We took it in turns to describe all that had happened, each filling in details that the other had forgotten or overlooked. This time I also told of the attack on me in Kaupang, the sinking of Protis’s ship and the young Greek’s death in the Colosseum. Osric and I had agreed that a complete record of our journey should be written down and held somewhere safe, in case a further, possibly fatal, accident occurred, and the barid might wish to investigate.
Occasionally, Musa would interrupt, usually to ask us to repeat a place name or check that he had each episode of the journey in the correct sequence. When, finally, he had finished writing and had laid down his pen, he leaned back and stretched his meaty arms. ‘You seem to have survived an unusual number of narrow escapes. Didn’t Carolus consult with astrologers before sending you on such a hazardous venture?’ he commented.
‘As far as I am aware, there are no astrologers at King Carolus’s court,’ I replied.