‘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.
It was a woodland scene. A beautiful maiden was seated beneath a tree laden with ripe fruit. The artist had shown her wearing a long, soft flowing gown and her hair hung loose around her shoulders. She looked exceptionally demure. There was an impression of grassy sward and bright flowers around her bare feet. In the background were low bushes. At the far left of the picture appeared the edge of a forest, and among the tree trunks lurked two men dressed as huntsmen. One was holding a spear, the other a rope noose. They were obviously hiding in ambush and about to pounce. Their intended prey was not the vulnerable-looking young woman, but a graceful four-legged animal that at first glance was either a young stag or a fine pure-bred horse. It was shown in the very centre of the composition, part kneeling and part lying on the grass and had laid its head trustingly in the young woman’s lap. This placed her in some danger because from the centre of the animal’s brow protruded a wicked looking spike, a single long horn with a distinctive spiral.
The animal was white.
A large blunt finger tapped the page. ‘Find me a unicorn.’
The king was so certain of what he wanted that I knew it would be wise to conceal my astonishment. Of course I had heard about the unicorn, just as I had heard about elephants. But I had never heard of anyone who had actually seen a living unicorn any more than someone who had seen a real elephant. Dimly I recalled my teacher telling me of a wild beast with a single horn that the Romans put on display in their circus games. As I looked at the vicious spike on the forehead of the creature in the picture it occurred to me that the same Romans also should have trained such an animal for war. It would have been at least as deadly as an elephant.
‘As Your Majesty commands,’ I said with a confidence I did not feel.
Immediately he detected the uncertainty of my response. ‘Is there a problem?’
I took a deep breath. ‘Your Majesty has mentioned that white animals are commonly found in the lands of ice and snow. Their colour matches their surroundings. But it seems to me from this picture that the unicorn lives in places where the climate is quite warm, a place of forests and flowers and fruit-bearing trees.’
Carolus took another look at the picture of the unicorn, and for a moment I thought he was about to change his instructions. But obtaining a unicorn was too close to his heart for him to abandon the idea entirely. ‘I admit that a unicorn will be difficult to obtain. By all accounts it is a notoriously shy and timid beast. So just one example of the animal will be sufficient. I don’t expect you to bring back two of them.’
I dared one last attempt to get him to re-consider. ‘Your Majesty, would not a professional huntsman have a better chance of capturing a unicorn? Someone like Vulfard?’
I had gone too far. The king brought down his heavy eyebrows in a scowl.
‘After Vulfard has secured the aurochs,’ I amended hastily.
The king regarded me for a long moment, and, despite the warmth of the room, I felt a sudden cold chill in the air. ‘I think you, Sigwulf, would be more suited than Vulfard for this enterprise. The unicorn has a weakness: it cannot control its animal passion. If it sees a young maiden, it will emerge from hiding and lay its head adoringly on the maiden’s lap. Then it can be taken.’
The goosebumps rose on my skin. I wondered how much Carolus knew about my affair with his daughter. This interview was getting more difficult by the minute, and it was time to leave the room. I bowed again and began to sidle towards the door. He stopped me with a single barbed phrase, ‘Sigwulf, there’s one more thing to discuss . . .’
I braced myself. This surely had something to do with Bertha.
‘Have you had any more dreams that I should know about?’ he asked.
I swallowed with relief. Carolus knew my dreams. They were strange and vivid and, if interpreted correctly, foretold the future. But interpretation was very difficult, often contradictory, and to help me I had used the Oneirokritikon, an ancient book on how to interpret dreams, written by a Greek named Artimedorus. The copy that had come into my possession was in Arabic and Osric had translated it for me. But less than twenty pages of our translation survived – the rest had been lost during the war in Hispania – and we kept them hidden beneath a floorboard in the house.
‘I’ve had very few dreams in recent times. Nothing of note,’ I answered truthfully.