Saxon: The Emperor's Elephant (34 page)

We walked for perhaps a quarter of a mile further, crossed a small bridge that spanned one of the canals that provided the citizens with water, and found ourselves confronted by a
thirty-foot-high wall, topped with battlements. It needed no imagination to see why the caliph’s residence was called the Round City. The great wall trended away on each side in a smooth
curve, a circular design unlike anything I had seen before.

Abram noted my reaction with a knowing smile. ‘Not like Rome with its conventional straight walls, is it?’ he said. ‘Caliph Mansour himself drew the initial outline of Baghdad
in the ashes of his campfire. He sketched a circle, then jabbed his pointed stick in the centre. That spot, he told his architects, was where they were to put his palace so that he could be in the
middle of all that was going on.’

I was finding the dragoman’s air of superiority irritating but had to admit that the great wall was impressive. The base was a full fifteen feet thick, and we passed through the iron gates
of an imposing brick archway into a hundred feet of open space – a killing ground. Beyond was an inner wall, even higher and thicker than the first, and a second iron gate. If the city mob
did riot, they stood little chance of gaining access to the royal household.

Once through the second gate we turned to our left, still following the bear cage on its trolley, and continued along the line of the inner wall past a long arcade of shops and stalls that, I
presumed, supplied the needs of the palace staff. Ahead was a high, square building that I took to be an immense warehouse. Gatekeepers held open broad double doors and we went inside. The smell
made me catch my breath. It was like walking into a vast, stuffy stable. Behind the familiar mix of dung and hay there was something else – sour, pungent and fetid. Large windows set high up
pierced the thick walls. Shafts of sunlight illuminated a long central passageway floored with wood blocks, and on either side a long line of heavy wooden doors. Instantly, I was reminded of the
place where we had kept our animals inside the Colosseum.

An extraordinary sound made me jump: a shrill trumpeting blast, part squeal, part bellow. Just ahead of me one of the doors creaked open a few inches, pushed from the inside. A loose chain
prevented the door from opening any further. Out from the crack slithered a thick grey serpent. It waved in the air, menacingly. I jumped back with a frightened yelp.

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.

His tone caused a twinge of anxiety. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I had a look into some of the other stalls while you were helping Walo. There are animals in them that I have never seen before, animals so extraordinary that I wouldn’t have
believed they could exist.’

‘What sort of animals?’

‘One of them must be the animal our friend the Nomenculator thought was the unicorn.’

My heart sank. After all my searching for the elusive unicorn, it was already to be found in the caliph’s menagerie.

Osric’s next words were more reassuring. ‘It does have a single horn. But that’s the only resemblance. It’s greyish black, like the elephant you saw, and not white, and
no one would ever call it graceful. More like a stout ox or a very large boar with a wrinkled and armoured hide. The horn is a pointed stump growing on its nose. Not a unicorn’s long spiral
spike.’

My friend had also learned that the building we were visiting was not the only place where the caliph’s exotic animals were housed. ‘The keepers told me that there are at least two
more similar buildings, as well as kennels, stables and mews for his hunting birds,’ he told me.

‘Did they say what other animals are kept?’ I asked him.

‘Wolves, several creatures whose names I didn’t recognize, and thirty lions.’

I looked at him in utter disbelief. ‘Thirty! That’s impossible.’

Osric made a slight, helpless gesture. ‘I know. It does make our gift of strange animals seem trivial. But I’ve no reason to doubt what the keepers told me.’

‘I’d need to see those thirty lions with my own eyes before I’d believe them,’ I said grudgingly.

‘Maybe we will. I was told that when the Caliph wishes to impress an important visitor the lions are brought out and put on display. The keepers stand in a double line, each with a lion on
a short chain. The visitor has to approach the caliph, walking in the aisle between them.’

‘But where could so many lions have come from?’ I said.

‘From rulers in India,’ Osric replied. ‘Along with elephants. There are at least two dozen elephants in the royal collection. Only a handful are kept in the building we
visited. Others are in an open-air park.’

‘And next you’re going to tell me the caliph already owns a dozen ice bears,’ I said.

Osric smiled. ‘He has bears of all sorts, large and small, brown and black. But there’s not a single white bear in all of Baghdad.’

We had arrived at our destination, a substantial, high-walled building with an archway that opened into an interior courtyard. Our escort accompanied us inside and showed us to a set of rooms
along one side of the courtyard. The rooms were spacious and airy, and our baggage had already been brought from the barge and placed inside. There was very little furniture apart from a couple of
low tables, a scattering of large cushions embroidered with geometric patterns in red and green, and some expensive-looking carpets. The whitewashed plaster walls were bare but the doors and
windows looked out directly on a fountain playing in the centre of the courtyard. The drifting spray made a rainbow in the rays of the afternoon sun and the sound of the water gave an impression of
coolness.

Our escort informed us that a meal would shortly be provided and suggested that we might like to rest for a few hours. Later that evening, Osric and I would be taken to a private meeting at the
palace of Nadim Jaffar, who had expressed a wish to meet us.

‘Do you know anything about this Nadim Jaffar?’ I asked Abram as the escort withdrew.

‘Short of meeting with the caliph himself, you could not hope for a more promising introduction.’ Abram went across to the doorway and checked that he could not be overheard.
‘Jaffar is a member of Haroun’s inner circle. “Nadim” is a title given only to the caliph’s particular friends.’

‘And this Jaffar is influential?’

‘More than that. He is a senior vizier – a minister as well as being Haroun’s chief advisor. His family, the Barmakids, wield extraordinary power, second only to the
caliph’s himself.’

‘Why would he want to meet us so soon after our arrival?’

Abram frowned. ‘Jaffar is the head of the barid. Perhaps he intends to check on the reports that he has been receiving about us.’

‘And why weren’t you included in the invitation?’ I asked.

‘As your dragoman, I have no formal role now that we have reached Baghdad. Besides, Jaffar will have been told that you speak good Arabic, so no interpreter is needed.’

‘I would be easier in my mind if you accompanied Osric and me,’ I said.

Abram treated me to one of his enigmatic smiles. ‘I’m sure you don’t need my help to make a good impression on Jaffar, and that way you could get to meet Caliph Haroun
himself.’ He paused for a moment. ‘My only regret is that I won’t have a chance to see Nadim Jaffar’s palace. It is a byword for his opulent lifestyle.’

*

A decent interval after the call to evening prayer, our escort reappeared at our door. He walked with Osric and me to the bank of the Tigris. A private ferry was waiting at the
quay, manned by a crew of a dozen oarsmen. All three of us settled ourselves on the benches and our vessel was rowed out on the river as the pink tinge of the sunset seeped from the sky. We steered
directly for a row of blazing torches on the far bank, the reflection of their flames twisting and flickering on the water as we drew closer. The torches were fixed in brackets along a balustrade
to show a flight of marble steps. Our guide led the way as we disembarked and followed him along a path through a garden half hidden in shadow. Dozens of torches and lanterns, artfully placed, cast
their light on beds of flowers in full bloom. I marvelled at the effort and expense of growing such blossoms in Baghdad’s scorching dry summer. A hidden musician was playing a stringed
instrument so that the notes seemed to float through the leaves of ornamental trees that lined the path. When the music faded away, an unseen woman with a beautiful voice began to sing a gentle,
haunting song.

The pathway eventually brought us to an open space some twenty paces across. Here the ground was spread with rich carpets arranged around a shallow tiled pool. Pinpoints of light slowly revolved
and shifted on its surface. Tiny lamps of crystal, set on lily pads, were drifting at random; the lily pads themselves were crafted from thin sheets of beaten gold. A low tree leaned over the water
at the nearest corner of the pool. On a branch a kingfisher sat, peering down and poised to strike. Everything was so lifelike, down to the outline of each feather and leaf, that it took me a
moment to understand that both tree and bird were artifice. The tree was made of gold and silver, and the brilliant colours of the kingfisher were close-set arrays of gems, blue-green, burned
orange and azure. As I looked on, marvelling, the water beneath the bird’s perch swirled as if to tempt the kingfisher. A golden fish, a real one this time, broke the surface briefly and the
ripples spread. It was the movement of the fish, I now realized, which made the lights on the lily pads change position, for there was no breeze.