Again he shrugged. ‘It is common knowledge. Adrian may already have obtained an undertaking from Carolus to support a member of Adrian’s family as the next pope.’
‘That’s pure supposition,’ I objected.
‘People in Rome have vivid imaginations, particularly when they are hatching plots.’
‘But I still don’t see how that affects our embassy,’ I said.
Abram halted and turned towards me, his dark eyes searching my face. ‘What if someone wants to send a warning to Carolus, to encourage him to stay clear of Roman politics? What would be a good way to do that?’
I felt a faint shiver of apprehension as I saw his meaning. ‘Harm his embassy.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Abram, you’re becoming as devious and mistrustful as those Roman conspirators you just spoke of,’ I said, keeping my voice light though I remained uneasy. ‘We can’t look for enemies lurking down every alleyway.’
We continued our walk in silence as I thought over what the dragoman had told me. Despite myself, I looked around. It was dusk and the light was rapidly fading. What was it that Paul had said about not walking the streets unescorted after dark? I quickened my pace, glad to note that we were in a street lined with inns. A party of men was coming towards us, and they turned into the doorway just ahead of us. By their dress they appeared to be foreign pilgrims. They had been drinking and were talking loudly, laughing and joking with one another. With a sudden jolt I recognized their speech. They were talking together in my mother tongue: Anglo-Saxon.
I waited until we were well out of earshot before I said, ‘Those men back there. They were from England.’
‘That was a boarding house for English pilgrims. They pay a very low rent to stay there, thanks to a donation from one of their kings some years ago.’ There was enough light for me to see Abram’s expression change as he realized what lay behind my comment. His eyes narrowed. ‘Is this something to do with that coin you showed us the other evening? The one from King Offa?’ he asked.
‘I hadn’t realized that some of his people would be here in Rome.’
It was Abram’s turn to reassure me. ‘Now you’re the one who imagines plots and conspiracies round every corner! Dozens of your countrymen make the pilgrimage to Rome, especially to witness the Christmas celebrations.’
We walked on but I was unable to shake off the unwelcome idea that even in Rome I was within Offa’s reach. The prospect of spending three more months in Rome had lost its appeal. The sooner we were on our way to Baghdad, the happier I would be.
*
The months dragged by. January and February were cold and dreary with slate-grey skies. A week of incessant rain caused the river to overflow and flood the low-lying parts of the city. The water rose above head height, obliging the residents to move to the upper floors as the Nomenculator had described. The Colosseum escaped the worst of the inundation, though there were days when several inches of standing water in the arena meant that the animals could not be exercised. They stayed in their stalls and were well looked after. Walo’s feeding the ice bears with vegetables along with meat and fish, as Paul had researched, was a success. Modi and Madi thrived, and of course were very happy in the winter cold. The gyrfalcons also stayed in good condition and one morning Walo came to me, grinning with delight, to report that one of the dogs had given birth to a litter of four puppies. Two of them were pure white so we had more than we had started out with from Kaupang. The remaining pair had black and brown markings and, after they had been weaned, Walo made a present of them to the stable-hands who had the unpleasant job of cleaning out the aurochs’ stable. That creature remained as bad tempered as ever.
Word had spread about our exotic animals and at exercise times there was usually an audience to watch them. The ice bears attracted by far the most attention. Entire families would sit in the Colosseum’s former spectator seats as Modi and Madi padded lazily around the arena, and I was obliged to post attendants to stop children throwing stones to provoke them. Various members of the Roman nobility also came to inspect and admire the white gyrfalcons, watching Walo exercising them. The birds looked even more spectacular than usual as they circled high above the great bowl of the Colosseum. Our visitors’ reaction to the sight of the surly aurochs, drooling, snorting and rolling its eyes angrily, was always the same: awe tinged with fear. Our benefactor Paul once paid an hour-long visit to see the animals, but after that we rarely saw him. His butler had found us a local cook and a house servant, so when Abram suggested that he and his three attendants move away to live with a Rhadanite family I agreed. It meant that the four Rhadanites could have their food cooked in their own style and observe their dietary laws. There were many days when Protis was away, visiting his friends in Rome, and Osric and I would tour the city’s sights. We would either arrange to meet up with Abram as our guide or we would rely on a small book written for pilgrims that I had bought from a peddler in the porch of St Peter’s Basilica. It listed the shrines of a bewildering number of saints. We dutifully joined the queues lining up to see their tombs or to inspect sacred relics. Invariably, when we emerged from a dark crypt into the daylight or stepped out from the doors of a church, it was to be pounced on by hawkers and street vendors offering to sell us medallions and pilgrim badges.
By early March I was beginning to believe that Abram’s fears of an attack on our embassy were unfounded, so routine was our life in Rome. One evening after a fine sunny day that showed the first signs of spring, Osric and I returned to our lodgings footsore and weary, and rather later than usual. All the houses were shuttered and dark. Walo had gone to bed, and there was no sign of our servants, so I presumed that they had left and gone to their own homes. Osric and I headed to our separate rooms. I lay down in my underclothes for it promised to be a very cold night under the clear skies, and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. Some time later, I awoke to the barking of dogs. I lay still in bed, listening. Several households within the Colosseum kept dogs as pets and as watchdogs. At night they often barked or howled at one another, and made sleep difficult. But the noise that awoke me was different. I recognized the distinctive high short yaps of the dogs we had brought from Kaupang. It was the sound they made when wildly excited. The noise was close at hand, which was odd. The dogs were always locked up for the night in their kennel deep within the stabling behind the arena, and any noise should have been muffled. My first thought was that Walo might have failed to confine them. I got up, pulled on some clothes and went out of my room and opened the front door of the house to see what all the noise was about.
The sight that greeted me was puzzling. The house we occupied was built on a former spectator terrace so I was looking down into the floor of the arena only fifty paces away. There was not a breath of wind. Above the jagged rim of the Colosseum hung a bright three-quarter moon. It bathed the scene in a cold light, strong enough to cast deep black shadows across the tiers of terrace seats opposite me. The white dogs should have been in their kennel. Instead, they were out on the sand of the arena, barking frenziedly, running about in circles, dashing in, then retreating quickly as they harassed something invisible within the deep shadow under the high far wall of the arena. The dogs had cornered an intruder. From where I stood I noted that one leaf of the heavy double door into the rooms where the animals were kept was ajar. It occurred to me that a thief had come to steal the gyrfalcons. I hurried down the steps leading into the arena, about to call off the dogs. Then something in the far shadow moved. I came to an abrupt halt and the hair on the back of my neck rose. Out from the blackness stalked the aurochs. The spectral moonlight made the black shape of the beast more menacing than ever. The barking rose to a crescendo as one of the bolder dogs dashed in to nip at the aurochs’ hocks. The aurochs swung its head downwards and sideways and hooked upward with its horns. A pointed tip must have grazed the dog’s flank for I heard a high yelp of pain and the dog fled. The aurochs trotted forward into the centre of the arena and stopped there, swinging its head from side to side, looking for its next victim.