Tim Severin - The Emperor's Elefant

A thin veil of light cloud covered the sky, and the sensation of facing out across an empty sea towards a hazy and indistinct horizon played tricks on my mind. It seemed that I was adrift in a great, limitless void. There was only the undulating sea swell ahead, the steady rhythm of the vessel’s movement beneath me, and an infinite, trackless space across which I was scarcely moving. I felt isolated and detached, free of my day-to-day existence and from whatever lay ahead on my new endeavour. Next winter I would be twenty-nine years old. No longer was I the naïve and inexperienced youth who had arrived at Carolus’s court. I had matured and grown more worldly wise from all that had happened to me, and it would be normal to have put down roots. Yet I continued to feel like a stranger among the Franks in spite of Carolus’s generosity and favour. I was still unsettled and restless, and always hovering in the background were my strange dreams and visions. They came without warning and though I had learned to be very wary how I interpreted them as omens of the future, they still disturbed me.

I looked back to where Redwald stood stolidly at the helm. Every so often he glanced up at the sail or looked out across the waves, his gaze watchful and calculating. He knew his ship intimately, how she handled in a seaway, how she responded to every shift of the wind, how best she carried her cargo. To that knowledge he added his vast experience of the sea to hold the cog steady on her course. Here, I thought to myself, was an example that I should follow. I knew myself far better now than ever before, and the time had come for me to have more confidence in who I was. I should be more purposeful, more open.

I reached up behind my head and unfastened the lace that held my eye patch in place. With a flick of my wrist I tossed it overboard.

*

Absorbed in my thoughts, I stayed on the foredeck until a noticeable chill in the evening air eventually obliged me to seek a less exposed spot towards the stern. I rejoined Redwald to find that the shipmaster had covered his thinning hair with a shapeless woollen hat almost as grubby as his worker’s smock. He immediately noticed my missing eye patch.

‘The crew will have to think up a different nickname for you,’ he said with an amused smile.

‘Why’s that?’ I asked. I had expected him to react with dismay when he saw that my eyes were different colours. Mariners were supposed to be superstitious.

‘They’ve dubbed you “Odinn”.’

My own father had been a follower of the Old Ways so I was familiar with the story. The god Odinn sacrificed one eye for a drink at the well of knowledge and wore an eye patch afterwards.

‘What are they calling Osric and Walo?’ I enquired.

‘ “Weyland” and “the troll”,’ he replied.

It was a cruel jibe: Weyland was the crippled smith to the old gods.

‘I hadn’t realized that Frisians follow those quaint beliefs,’ I retorted sourly. Neither my father’s paganism nor the devout Christianity of men like Alcuin appealed to me. As far as I was concerned, trying to make sense of my own strange dreams and visions was enough.

‘Just sailors’ humour. But you’ll want to be careful in Kaupang about mocking the old gods.’

I sensed there was something more to his warning. ‘You seem to be worried about what will happen when we get there.’

Before answering he reached up under his hat to scratch his scalp. ‘Kaupang is the outer fringe of the civilized world. There’s no law there, and none wanted. People resent outside interference, particularly when it comes to religion.’

‘So they suspect that anyone sent by Carolus is either a spy or a missionary.’

‘Let’s just say that Carolus is not popular.’

‘Then how do you manage buying gyrfalcons there for the king?’

‘I work through a middleman. It was several years before I had his confidence.’

I spotted the trap Redwald was setting. He was determined to have his usual commission on purchasing gyrfalcons for Carolus’s mews master. I decided it was easier to fall in with his plan.

‘Then I’ll depend on you to buy the birds after I’ve selected them. You can do the bargaining and I’ll provide you with the money.’

He gave a satisfied grunt and tilted back his head, checking the sky. Streaks of high cloud were beginning to form, their pink undersides catching the last rays of the sun, now below the horizon.

‘We could be in for a bit more wind later tomorrow,’ he observed.

‘Does that mean we’ll have to seek shelter?’

He shook his head. ‘Safer to stay away from a lee shore. Besides, the wind will push us along nicely and keep us clear of any pirates who might be watching from the coast.’

I looked back in the direction we had already come. There was nothing to be seen except a darkening expanse of the grey sea flecked here and there with a breaking wave. Suddenly the cog felt small and very isolated and vulnerable, and that made me ask, ‘Redwald, what gods do you pray to in a storm?’

He chuckled. ‘Every god that I can think of. But that doesn’t stop me from doing everything possible to keep my ship afloat.’

The wind, though blustery, stayed fair for the next three days while Redwald steered his chosen course without any sight of land. In response to my questions he told me that he took the direction of the waves as his guide, together with the angle of the sun and stars whenever the clouds allowed. But it was a mystery to me how he managed to calculate so accurately the distance we had covered. Late one morning, he gestured over the bow and announced casually that we would be at Kaupang next daybreak. I looked in that direction but saw nothing. Another couple of hours passed before I made out a narrow dark smudge just discernible against the hazy line where a grey overcast sky met a sullen-looking sea. It was our landfall. Judging by the crew’s lack of any reaction, they thought this feat of navigation was unremarkable. They made minor adjustments to the set of the sail, and then went back to the everyday routine of repairing worn tackle and hauling up buckets of water from the bilge and tipping the contents overboard.

Slowly the cog wallowed towards the coast. It was a raw land, rugged and desolate. Thick, gloomy forest covered dark hills that rose gradually towards a range of mountains whose bald peaks were purple-grey in the far distance. As we drew closer, it was possible to make out the jumbled boulders of a rock-bound shore without any sign of human activity. The wind had already eased to a soft breeze and in the late afternoon it died away completely. The cog was left becalmed, the big sail sagging. We were perhaps a long bow shot from the shoreline, and I supposed the vessel had come to a complete halt. But watching more closely I realized that the cog was caught in some sort of current. She was being carried sideways towards a spit of land where the swell heaved and broke on a hidden reef, each surge and retreat sucking back the foam in whorls and patterns. Unnerved, I turned to look at Redwald, for it seemed to me that the cog must drift helplessly onto the rocks.

‘Is it far to Kaupang?’ I asked, trying to hide my alarm.

‘Just around that point,’ he answered calmly.

He seemed utterly unconcerned by our situation and I wondered if he had noticed a gathering grey murkiness out to sea. To add to our troubles, a fog bank was beginning to form.

An hour dragged by and there was nothing to do except observe the shoreline slowly edging past. Behind us the fog bank grew thicker, swallowing up the sun as it sank towards the horizon. Now the mist was oozing towards us. The first wisps arrived, cool and moist, caressing our faces. In a very short time it had wrapped itself around us and we could see no more than a yard or two in any direction. It was like being immersed in a bowl of thin milk. From where I stood beside the helm I could see no further than the mainmast. The bow was totally invisible. When I licked my lips, I tasted fresh dew. The fog was settling. I shivered.