Walo clung to his hopes. ‘What about the phoenix’s food?’
‘The book states that the phoenix lives on the perfume of frankincense.’
‘What’s frankincense?’
‘A sort of sweet-smelling gum.’
Walo’s face lit up with a triumphant smile. ‘Then those big slits in the beak are nostrils. That’s how the bird takes its food.’
Abram, who had been listening, came to my rescue. ‘They could have been huma birds,’ he said with a smile.
Walo turned to him excitedly. ‘What are they?’
‘Huma birds are found in Persia. They glow like embers.’
Walo was agog with anticipation. ‘Have you seen one?’
‘I’m afraid not. A huma bird spends its entire life high in the air, never coming to land. Great kings wear its feathers in their crowns. Some people call it a bird of paradise. It is claimed that whoever sees the huma bird, even its shadow, is happy for the rest of his life.’
‘I would be happy to see either a huma bird or a phoenix,’ announced Walo firmly. ‘If people speak of such creatures in Persia or Arabia, then they must exist.’
A surly grunt from the aurochs reminded him that the great beast had not been given its evening feed, and he headed off towards its cage.
Abram waited until I had put the bestiary away safely before he beckoned to one of his servants. The man clambered across from the adjacent boat, carrying the leather tube that contained the dragoman’s precious itinerarium.
‘It’s time for another decision about our route,’ Abram said to me, extracting the map from its container.
‘Then I think Osric should also hear what you have to say,’ I told him. I called out to my friend to join us. Osric, who had been trying his hand at fishing off the stern of one of the boats, laid down his rod and clambered across to where Abram had set up the little table.
As he had done the last time, Abram unrolled the itinerarium only enough to show the section he wanted. ‘Note how the river we have been following divides before it reaches the sea. We are halfway along the eastern branch,’ he said, pointing to the map.
‘How much further to the sea itself?’ I asked.
‘Another two days, maybe less.’ His finger traced the thick line shaded in green that represented the coast. ‘We’ve come as far as is safe for our riverboats. On open water a sudden squall or large waves would quickly swamp them. So either we disembark and take the coast road towards Rome or we shift the animals onto a seagoing vessel and proceed to Rome by sea. The choice is yours.’
‘I presume the sea route is faster,’ I asked him.
‘Without question. Given a favourable wind we can be in Rome in less than a week. By road it could take us almost two months.’
I thought back to the voyage from Kaupang with Redwald. The ice bears, dogs and gyrfalcons had all adapted well to shipboard life.
‘I’m concerned about the aurochs,’ I said.
The dragoman shrugged. ‘I’ve seen live cattle shipped. If they are fed and watered, they survive well enough.’
Osric had been silent until now. ‘And the risk from Hispania?’ he murmured. ‘If we take the sea route, we may encounter ships of the emir of Cordoba. He would not want an embassy between Carolus and the Baghdad caliph to succeed.’
‘I’ve made enquiries along the river,’ Abram told him. ‘My contacts tell me that their trading voyages to Rome were trouble-free all summer. There’s been no interference by pirates or hostile ships.’
I looked questioningly at Osric. He nodded. ‘Then we go by sea,’ I said.
Abram glanced up at the sky. The sun had dropped below the horizon, and the last few shreds of cloud had dissolved. In the west the evening star was already visible.
‘When the air is still and clear like this in winter,’ he observed, ‘it heralds a vicious gale that blows up suddenly from the north. It rages down the valley, lasting for days, and whips up these waters.’
‘Then let’s hope we are snug in Rome by then,’ I said.
He flashed me a mischievous grin. ‘The gale has been known to come at any other times of the year as well. Let’s hope we come across a seagoing ship in the next few miles and can arrange a charter.’
*
The cargo ship moored against the salt jetty was nearly the same size as Redwald’s stout ship that had carried us to Kaupang. But there the resemblance ended. This vessel’s planking was grey and battered, the rigging sagged, and the mast had several splits and cracks bound up with rope. I supposed that she had been consigned to hauling humble cargoes of salt because of her advancing years. I doubted Redwald would have taken her onto the open sea, but Abram seemed relieved to see her.
‘I feared that the jetty was no longer in use,’ he admitted as our little flotilla tied up to the worn pilings of the dock. ‘I’ll go and find her captain and see if he’ll accept a charter.’
Eager to stretch my legs, I decided to go ashore myself and explore. The dock was a mean, poor place. There was no sign of any cargo waiting to be loaded, though spilled crystals of salt crunched beneath my feet as I walked across open ground towards a collection of small shacks. Several mangy-looking dogs slept in the hot sunshine, slumped against their door posts, and there was no sign of human activity. Flat countryside stretched to the horizon in every direction, bare and bleached. When I peered into the darkness of one of the huts, I found that it was abandoned and empty and there was a musty smell. I wondered where the occupants had gone and if they would ever return.
I jumped as a voice behind me said, ‘Protis here is willing to take us to Rome.’
I swung round to find Abram with a slightly built young man whose dark skin and jet-black hair spoke of Mediterranean ancestry. The faint line of a carefully trimmed moustache emphasized that he was not yet old enough to have grown a full beard.
‘Protis is the captain of the ship tied up at the dock,’ Abram continued. ‘He missed the last salt cargo of the season. Last-minute repairs to the hull delayed him.’
‘It was just a minor leak, and it’s now fixed,’ the young man asserted. His self-confident manner more than made up for his youthfulness. ‘Your dragoman tells me that you are looking to charter a vessel for the voyage to Rome.’
His Frankish had a heavy accent and he was visibly relieved when I answered in Latin: ‘You’ve seen the cage containing the big ox on our boat, can you get it aboard your ship?’
Protis drew himself up to his full height of scarcely more than five feet. ‘My ancestors taught the world how to use levers and pulleys. I can construct a machine to raise your beast in its cage and place it on my deck,’ he declared.
With a quick, amused glance in my direction Abram intervened, soothing wounded pride. ‘Protis’s people are Greeks from Massalia. They settled there before Rome was even founded.’
‘And,’ added the young captain, ‘the citizens of Rome would have starved time and again if my forebears’ ships hadn’t delivered the grain they needed.’
I refrained from asking how many centuries his own ancient vessel had been afloat. Instead I asked him to show me around.
Even to my inexperienced eye, the ship was barely seaworthy. There were a great many patches where the timber had been clumsily replaced. The ropes were frayed and whiskery with age, and the canvas sails were threadbare. I peered into the open hatchway and saw the glint of deep bilge water in the bottom of the hold. Several times during our tour of inspection, sailors, of whom there must have been at least a dozen, hauled up buckets of evil-smelling, dirty water and tipped them over board.
Finally, I took Abram to one side. ‘Are you sure the ship is safe? She seems to be ready to founder.’
‘We could wait here and hope for another vessel to show up. But that’s unlikely this late in the season,’ he answered. ‘And there’s no guarantee that the next vessel will be any better.’
I scratched at an itch on the back of my neck, one of many welts that covered every square inch of my exposed skin. The biting insects of the lower river were ferocious, far worse than anything we had suffered previously. They feasted on us, both day and night. We smeared ourselves in rancid fat from the ice bears’ food supplies, and our boatmen built smudge fires to discourage them, but it did little good. Our faces and hands were blotchy and swollen with insect bites. I flinched at the prospect of spending days being eaten alive while waiting at the dock for a vessel that might never come. As if in agreement, the aurochs let out an angry bellow. Bloody trickles ran down its flanks and neck, where it had been bitten by a local breed of voracious fly, the size of my thumbnail, which thrived on cattle.