“You have said little to me, Robert Adams, except to request more information about my lands.”
I understood then my error. “Curiosity brought me to Africa, that and the desire to learn more about the world we live in,” I told him.
“To what end are you, a Christian, curious about this part of the world?”
I thought for a moment before replying. “For two reasons,” I said. “First, to establish commerce, if possible and if it seem profitable, between my country and yours. The second reason is entirely personaclass="underline" to see, with my own eyes, wonders.”
He turned and conducted me quickly down the corridor to the room where we had dined and pondered maps of my far-off homeland. “You have seen a wonder tonight,” he told me. We took leave of one another, and two of the Sultan’s armed soldiers escorted me to the street, where I was left to walk alone to the house of Ibn Faleiha.
I had indeed seen a wonder, I realized, though I did not understand what I had seen. Was this winged creature some sort of person no one in Europe had yet encountered—except, perhaps, in mythology? I thought of centaurs, griffins, the chimera. Had such creatures once existed in Mediterranean regions, withdrawing to some hidden African country, now allied with the Mussulmen? Was our mythology based, after all, on truth? This wife of the Sultan’s was not, however, a creature familiar in our mythology, unless the descriptions of one of them had become corrupted in Europe after centuries without contact.
Whatever the case, the Sultan of Agadez evidently regarded the creature as sentient, since he had married her. I determined to learn more about her and her kind before leaving: indeed, I soon realized that such knowledge might be crucial to the safety of my own land, perhaps even to all of Europe. The Sultan’s evident plans for sacking London were perhaps not the joke I had at first thought! Allied with an army of winged soldiers—the fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons of creatures like she the Sultan had shown me—the sacking of even the king of England’s own palace might not be farfetched. I cursed myself for the imprudence I had shown not only in talking openly and truthfully about the capital city of my nation, but also in drawing a map of it. I would mark it falsely in the future, were the leather straps that tied it ever loosened and that map laid in front of me again.
Such were my thoughts as I walked the dark streets to Ibn Faleiha’s. After I lay in bed, I could not stop thinking and find rest. I imagined winged armies descending on London from out of Africa, carrying fire and stones to hurl down upon our homes, businesses, and ships, firing deadly arrows from so high up that our finest marksmen could not strike them in return, kidnapping our wives, sisters, and mothers through the windows of their very bedrooms and flying off with them to fates we could only ponder with horror.
I woke sick to my stomach, a common event for me in Africa, though I had been spared all illness so far in Agadez. I could only attribute this illness to my gloomy thoughts of the previous night; the realization of my evident imprisonment and, perhaps, mortal danger; and the shock of seeing a living creature out of mythology. Abdullah cursed the Saharan dews to which I must have been exposed during my late night walk from the Sultan’s palace to Ibn Faleiha’s, but I had felt no dew. The night had seemed hot and dry to me.
I found myself unable to keep down food or water, though I made repeated attempts knowing, as I did, that I soon needed health and strength if Abdullah and I were to escape from Agadez, escape now being, I believed, our only hope.
Because of my illness, I put off Ibn Faleiha’s lessons in written and spoken Arabic that we had been prepared to resume. He had never ceased being fascinated that a Christian should want to learn to write and perfect the speaking of the language of the Mussulmen. I decided, however, to mention the Sultan’s wife in order to learn what Ibn Faleiha knew of her and her people.
“You have seen her?” he asked, his voice angry at once.
“The Sultan showed her to me,” I said.
“He captured her during one of his forays against brigands. The imams would have put her to death at once, but the Sultan not only forbade it, he married her, planning to ally this land with her inhuman kind, though nothing has come of that, Allah be praised.”
But if such an alliance were achieved, the military advantages seemed obvious. Ibn Faleiha claimed to know nothing of her origins, and he would speak of her no more.
In the afternoon, a messenger again arrived from the Sultan, and I was again summoned to the Sultan’s dinner. I sent word that I was ill, but the messenger soon returned saying that I must attend the dinner, ill or well, so I went. As before, the Sultan and his three advisors met me with paper, pen, and ink and once again requested that I draw them a map of London. “Where is last night’s map?” I asked. “I will add detail to it.”
“Draw us a new map of the same places,” the Sultan commanded, and I had no choice but to draw something. Their open mistrust alarmed me. Clearly they were asking me to duplicate last night’s map so that they might compare my two efforts. I could only imagine the consequences to me if they discovered major discrepancies. “Be certain to draw the course of the river you spoke of last night,” the Sultan continued.
I picked up the pen, sick at heart. My choices then seemed simple and few: betray my country or incur the swift wrath of the Sultan of Agadez. Betray England I could never do, so I determined to attempt to draw the Sultan’s attention away from London. I quickly sketched in the parks and major streets, as I had done the previous night, then Buckingham Palace, “the king’s winter residence,” I said, as if to myself.
“Where is the summer?” an advisor immediately asked.
“In the mountains of Wales,” I lied. “Our winters being exceptionally short, the king moves his capital during spring, summer, and fall to—” There I paused briefly to invent the name of a nonexistent city, “to Utopia,” I said, the title of Sir Thomas More’s book being the only name for an imaginary capital that occurred to me.
“Tell us of this Utopia,” the Sultan said.
And I did. When I drew the map of it, I memorized its details, since I fully expected to be asked to duplicate everything, including the two great rivers that join in the heart of my fictitious city, the massive government buildings, the palaces, the parks, and, since my audience would not believe that any king ruled from an unwalled city, its great wall and fortifications.
The Sultan and his advisors seemed extremely pleased with my stories and maps. When they judged that I had drawn enough for one night, an advisor carefully rolled the maps and tied them with leather straps. Then, as before, the Sultan clapped his hands, and servants brought food: kouskous, this time; another roasted goat and—a great surprise—wine. The various aromas nauseated me, though I had enjoyed these same foods, if not the heretofore unavailable wine, on many different occasions throughout my travels in Africa. I ate small portions slowly, though no one seemed to notice or care, the wine commanding most of the Sultan’s and his advisors’ attention. I knew of the Mussulman’s supposed prohibitions on drinking alcoholic beverages, but every man there drank freely and made no excuses for the wine. I certainly did not think it prudent to question their disregard of their faith’s scruples.
The hour was late, but we drank and ate, then drank more. The Sultan and his advisors became aroused and jovial. “We shall have music and dancing!” the Sultan said. He clapped his hands, spoke to the eunuch who approached, and presently a flutist and drummer seated themselves in an alcove and began playing an exotic, rhythmic music. The eunuch hurried a veiled woman to the arched doorway. She stood there reluctantly and attempted to turn to leave, but the eunuch would not let her. He spoke to her in low tones. I heard none of the words, but he seemed to urge her to an apparently unpleasant duty.