Saxon: The Emperor's Elephant (23 page)

‘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.

‘Very well,’ I said to Abram, ‘arrange the charter. Just make sure that we get on our way as quickly as possible.’

Protis made good his boast when it came to devising a way of lifting the aurochs and its cage. He and his sailors took a short, stubby mast from near the bow and repositioned it to project out
over the side of the vessel. With a complicated web of ropes and pulleys they succeeded in hoisting the great animal, still in its cage, and placing it on deck just behind the main mast. The ice
bears in their cage followed soon afterwards and were set down on the foredeck. In another of the young captain’s inspirations he then had his men cut the smallest of our river ferries in
half and one section brought aboard. His ship’s carpenter built up the sides with extra planks, blanked off the open end, and re-caulked the seams. It transformed the vessel into a water tank
for our menagerie. Meanwhile Abram’s men had been scouring the countryside for supplies. Several cartloads of grass and fodder were delivered to the dock, along with crates of live chickens
for the bears, gyrfalcons and dogs. When all was ready, Abram paid our river boatmen their final wages and the three remaining ferries towed Protis’s venerable ship out into mid-river. There,
her large, threadbare mainsail was let loose to catch the breeze. We began slowly to head towards the waiting sea, looking and smelling like a farmyard and leaving a trail of hay wisps on the murky
surface of the river.

‘I’
VE MADE THIS VOYAGE
a dozen times, and never a problem,’ Protis boasted. We were standing on deck, side by side, and it was a
splendid morning, the second of our sea voyage. The breeze was just enough to belly out the sail and the sun sparkled off a sea that showed a brighter, sharper blue than anything I had seen in
northern waters. A flock of gulls wheeled and hovered alongside, attracted by the occasional splashes of water as our sailors dumped buckets of bilge overboard. Unsurprisingly, the hull of
Protis’s ramshackle vessel was far from watertight.

‘I recall you saying that your family have been seafarers for generations,’ I remarked, making conversation.

‘As far back as any family in Massalia, and proud of it. My parents named me after the city’s founder.’ Our youthful captain liked to chat, and once he got into his stride he
was almost unstoppable. ‘The first Protis was from Greece, far back in the mists of time, a trader who dropped anchor in a sheltered bay along the coast. The daughter of a local chieftain
fell in love with him, the two got married, and they and their people flourished. Massalia grew up around the same natural harbour. My family tradition is to name one of the sons after the
city’s founder.’

‘So your father was also called Protis?’

He nodded. ‘Though it brought him no luck. He went down with his ship in a sudden, bad storm when I was just a toddler. My grandfather taught me my sea skills. He’s now retired, of
course. His eyesight’s gone.’

That might explain the age of the vessel, I thought to myself. Protis had probably inherited it from his grandfather, a vessel put back into service after the family’s other and newer ship
had sunk.

‘To lose one’s eyesight is hard for anyone,’ I sympathized.

The young captain smiled sadly. He was obviously fond of his grandfather. ‘It’s the worst thing that can happen to a mariner. He needs good eyes. We make most of our voyages
following the coast or sailing from one island to the next one already visible on the horizon.’

He pointed away to our left. ‘Right now we are staying well off shore for safety, yet close enough so that I can keep in sight those mountains.’

Judging by the number of other sails we had seen moving in both directions along the coast, it was how most captains navigated locally. Sailing from one port to the next in the Mediterranean did
not appear to be as demanding as the conditions Redwald faced when finding his way from Dorestad to Kaupang.

‘Do we follow the coast all the way to Rome?’ I asked, trying to visualize what Abram’s itinerarium had shown.

‘There are one or two stretches where we lose sight of the mountains because the land is too low. At those places we will steer further off shore and take a more direct route to our
destination.’

One of the sailors in the bailing team put down his bucket and came aft to speak with us. He said something to Protis in a language I did not understand and supposed was Greek.

‘Excuse me a moment,’ said Protis. ‘There’s something I need to attend to.’

He followed the man across the deck to the main hatchway leading down into the ship’s hold and I watched as he climbed down a ladder. Several minutes passed and then he reappeared. He was
looking perplexed.

‘Anything wrong?’ I asked.

‘Nothing to worry about,’ he answered airily. Turning to his helmsman, he gave an order. Our course altered slightly and the ship began to slant closer to the land.

‘Just a precaution,’ he explained to me. ‘The bailing crew are having difficulty keeping pace with the water in the hold.’

Half an hour passed and I stood with him in companionable silence, enjoying the warmth of the sun soaking into my body, the easy rocking motion of the ship beneath my feet and the sensation of
being carried effortlessly towards our destination. My reverie was interrupted by a shout from the bailing crew and this time there was no mistaking the alarm in the man’s voice.

Protis strode forward to the hatchway once more, kicked off his shoes, and again disappeared, for longer this time.

I could see that something was seriously amiss. The deck crew had gathered around the hatchway and were casting worried glances at one another. The lookout stationed in the bows abandoned his
post, and came back to join his companions.

I strolled forward and stood beside them. Peering down into the half-darkness of the hold I could make out several crew members up to their thighs in water. They were lifting up smooth round
stones the size of a large loaf from under the surface and setting them aside. I recalled what Redwald had said about a ship needing to carry ballast stones low down to keep her upright. The men
who had lifted the stones aside were also reaching down into the water, feeling around, then moving on to repeat the process nearby. Various odds and ends of loose lumber floated back and forth,
nuzzling up against their thighs. There was no sign of Protis. Suddenly he surfaced with a splutter, took a deep breath, and immediately dived down again. There was a brief glimpse of his bare feet
kicking at the surface, and then he was gone, swimming inside the belly of his own ship.