At the far end of the gallery, we were ushered into a room and the chamberlain and his assistants silently withdrew, closing the door behind us and leaving us alone.
Osric and I exchanged glances. We had stepped into a jewellery box. Panes of coloured glass in the ceiling illuminated gorgeous silk hangings covering the walls. Underfoot the thick carpets were richly detailed with intricate patterns of blossoms and fruit. Gold leaf had been applied to every exposed surface. Here the scent of rosewater was almost overpowering. Directly in front of us hung a curtain that divided the room in half. The fabric was gauze so fine that the slightest draught set it swaying. Daylight filtered through it, yet by a clever trick of the weave it was impossible to see what lay the other side.
I guessed we had been brought into one of the upper rooms of the palace with a window overlooking the Tigris. I strained my ears, trying to catch the sounds of the river when – bewilderingly – through the curtain came a succession of whistles and liquid trills. I recognized the song of a nightingale.
Osric and I stood facing the curtain, waiting politely for whatever might happen next. Several minutes passed. I wondered if someone was observing us secretly and I dared not turn my head and search too obviously for a spyhole. The birdsong stopped, then started again, then stopped. There was no other sound, no movement. Presently, the curtain in front of us swayed minutely, the barest tremor. I heard a faint rustling sound. Another pause followed. Finally, an unseen hand or some hidden mechanism drew back the curtain in a single, smooth movement.
The other half of the room was even more opulent. Matching mirrors extended from floor to ceiling on the side walls. They were positioned to angle the daylight pouring in through the window arch on the further wall and direct it onto hundreds of precious stones sewn into the fabric of the wall hangings. The gems caught the light and glowed in all their brilliance – amethyst, ruby and emerald. The cloth itself shimmered with gold and silver thread. Suspended from the ceiling by a silk cord in one corner was a golden birdcage. The drab brown of its occupant, the nightingale, made the surrounding colours appear all the more sumptuous.
Directly in front of us the floor level was raised to create a platform and oblige us to look upwards. There, reclining on two bolsters were two boys. I recognized one of them immediately. He was Abdallah, Caliph Haroun’s son whom I had seen in Jaffar’s garden. Something told me that the other boy was his half-brother, Mohammed the Crown Prince. Both were much the same age and identically dressed in long black surcoats and tightly fitting trousers, and both wore black turbans. While Mohammed’s turban had a diamond brooch in the shape of a starburst, Abdallah’s turban bore no decoration.
For a long moment we stared at one another without a word being said. Then, making me jump, one of the mirrors swung to one side and became a door. Through it stepped a tall, handsome and well set-up man about thirty years old, whose light complexion contrasted with a neatly barbered black beard some four or five inches long. He wore no jewellery but his long black silk gown was open at the front to show an under-robe of grey silk with discreet bands of embroidery at the collar and wrists. On his head he wore the same style of tall black felt hat as Osric and me, though his hat had a black turban wrapped around it, the free end hanging down his back. The two youngsters promptly sat up straighter on their cushions. Even without that hint I would have known that the man who had entered the room was their father, Haroun al Rashid, Prince of the Faithful, Caliph of Baghdad and Allah’s Shadow on Earth.
Beside me, Osric immediately sank to his knees and pressed his forehead to the ground. A heartbeat later I followed his example, almost letting slip the bestiary I was clutching. We stayed kneeling until a quiet voice told us to rise. Getting to my feet, I found that the caliph had sat down between his two sons, only a few paces from me, and was scrutinizing us closely.
‘You must be Sigwulf,’ he said to me. ‘Abdallah did not tell me about your eyes.’
I realized that the sunlight coming in through the window behind Haroun was falling full on my face.
‘The great Iskander also had eyes of different colours,’ Haroun continued. ‘He, too, was a great traveller.’
My mind had gone blank. I knew he was talking of Alexander the Great and I tried desperately and unsuccessfully to recall what I knew about the extent of Alexander’s journeys. I stood there tongue-tied and feeling foolish.
Abdallah came to my rescue. He leaned towards his father and whispered something.
‘My son tells me that you have a book to give us.’
This was safer ground. My mind began to clear. ‘Your Magnificence, it is but one of the presents that my master Carolus, King of the Franks, sends you in return for your great generosity in the gifts you despatched to him, for which he thanks you.’
I realized that I was gabbling and forced myself to slow down. ‘There are other items he hopes will please you – bears, birds of prey, specially selected -’ I was still so flustered that I only just stopped myself from mentioning that the animals had been chosen because they were white.
Fortunately, the caliph cut across me. ‘Nadim Jaffar has told me about these and Mohammed and Abdallah have been to see the bears. They are indeed remarkable.’ He leaned forward slightly. ‘The book . . . ?’ he prompted.
It was clear that the caliph was in a hurry. I presumed that he was taking a short break from his official duties to hold this private audience, and was doing so to please Abdallah who had reported on the meeting in Jaffar’s garden. Certainly Abdallah was listening closely to everything being said as if he owned the interview.
‘Your Magnificence,’ I blurted, hurriedly unwinding the black cloth from around the book, ‘it cannot compare with the splendid volumes in your royal library, but King Carolus hopes that it will be of some interest.’
Abdallah scrambled to his feet. He came across the platform and I handed him up the book. He took it back to his father, and then sat down beside the caliph, who opened the cover. On Haroun’s left, the other son, Mohammed, leaned in to look more closely.
There was silence as the caliph slowly turned the pages, pausing from time to time to study a particular illustration. At one point he stopped for several moments, then looked up at me, and turned the book around so that I could see the picture.
‘What is this bird?’ he asked. He looked down again, and slowly and carefully read out: ‘ “c-a-l-a-d-r-i-u-s.” ’
With a shock I realized that Haroun al Rashid had deliberately not looked at the Arabic translation that had been prepared long ago in Aachen. He was testing out his knowledge of Western script. I was dumbfounded. The contrast with Carolus could not have been greater. In Aachen, I had watched the King of the Franks looking through the pictures in the bestiary. He could write no more than a few words in his own language and struggled with reading the simplest phrases. In Baghdad, his counterpart, the Commander of the Faithful, could recognize a foreign script and, with close attention, even make out the letters.
On the page that Haroun then held out to me were two pictures. The upper one showed a man with a crown on his head. He was lying on a bed and looked very ill. At his feet a white bird vaguely like a magpie was perched on the bed frame, behind it an open window. It was clear that the bird had flown into the room and settled there. The bird was staring at the crowned man. The lower picture was identical except that the bird, instead of staring at the man, had turned its head and was looking away.