Tim Severin - The Book of Dreams

‘Will you manage on your own?’ he asked.

‘Osric, three days ago I killed a man. I put an arrow right through him. Afterwards I would have preferred he lived a little longer, but only so I could beat some information out of him. I’m tougher now than when I left home, more cynical and suspicious. I will be on my guard.’

His eyes searched my face as he considered his reply.

‘Very well. I will stay here in Zaragoza,’ he said finally.

I reached across the floor to pull my saddlebags to me and rummaged inside them until I had found what I needed.

‘Osric, can you write in Frankish script?’ I asked.

‘My father made me learn it. I expect I could just about manage, though I’d be very slow,’ he said.

‘Speed won’t matter,’ I told him. ‘If you find out anything more about Ganelon’s plot, you must write and let me know. You will need this.’ I held up the little box containing the Caesar’s Wheel.

He limped across and took it from me.

‘I had wondered what this contained,’ he said, lifting the lid and glancing inside.

‘It’s a device for writing in code. I’ll show you how it works. If I’m going back to Frankia, I don’t need the wheel any more. I can report in person,’ I told him.

He raised his eyebrows questioningly.

‘I’ve been gathering information for Alcuin,’ I confessed.

He closed the lid and slipped the box inside his sleeve without comment. I felt guilty that I had not confided in him earlier that I was a spy. Worse, I realized that I had not given Osric the complete liberty I had intended. I still took it for granted that he would help me if he could.

I spent the sea journey to the Breton March lying on a pile of nets in the dank, foul-smelling hold of a Vascon fishing boat. The vessel pitched and rolled, and every time a wave crashed on deck above me the water dripped down through the deck planks. In the whirling darkness I dry-retched until I wished I would die.

The wali had warned that the voyage would be uncomfortable but he had understated the case.

‘The mountain Vascons are tough,’ he’d said, ‘but for sheer hardiness they are exceeded by the sea Vascons. They’ll set out from port in any weather if there’s profit in the trip.’ He should have added that he had paid the crew handsomely because the Bay of the Vascons, which we had to cross, is notorious for sudden storms and raging seas.

Husayn also arranged my travel across the Vascon lands which bordered Zaragoza. The guide who brought me to the ship took me through Pamplona, the region’s capital. The place showed all the scars of a fought-over frontier town with a battered city wall, stumps of broken towers like damaged teeth, and gates that had been repaired time and again. Conscientiously I made notes of these facts because I still regarded myself as a spy for Alcuin.

At voyage’s end, the Vascon fishermen set me ashore, wrapped in a sodden cloak, in a small, unnamed and deserted inlet on the Breton shore. They explained with gestures that I was to walk along the beach and around a headland to my left. It was a damp, drizzly morning, less than an hour after daybreak. Curtains of heavy mist drifted in from the sea, coating everything on land with a glistening wet sheen. Despite the dreary surroundings, I was very thankful to be finally off the ship, which hoisted sail and disappeared into the mist. I waited until the ground stopped tilting and swaying beneath me and then I set out in the direction they had indicated, slipping and sliding on the shingle, clutching the satchel, which contained the original Book of Dreams, my translation, and the purse of silver dinars the wali had pressed on me. All my other possessions, including my bow and sword, I had left behind with Osric and I had made him a present of the bay gelding.

I trudged round the headland, and there, immediately ahead of me, was a line of small boats hauled up on the shore and left upside down on wooden rollers to keep the rain out. Beyond them stood a row of fisherman’s shacks.

‘ Piv oc’h ?’ said a voice suspiciously.

A man dressed in a shapeless knee-length smock and a broad brim hat stepped out from behind one of the boats. He was short and broad shouldered. On his feet he wore thick wooden clogs. ‘ Piv oc’h ?’ he repeated, staring at me. He had eyes the same dull colour as the pebbles on the beach, and his face showed a week’s stubble. Drops of rain hung on his hat brim and ran in trickles off his smock. I realized that all his garments had been soaked in fish oil.

‘I am trying to get to the headquarters of Margrave Hroudland,’ I said in Latin.

The man regarded me warily, suspicion mingling with distaste showing on his face. I was not understood.

‘ Penaos oc’h deuet ?’ he said.

‘A Vascon vessel set me ashore, around that headland,’ I explained uselessly, pointing back toward the cliff.

The man jerked his head for me to follow him and led me towards the largest of the huts. He pushed open the rain-streaked plank door, and I found myself inside a single, cramped room, dark and smelling of wood smoke, dirt and fish. A woman, her tangled hair streaked with grey and wearing a grimy shawl, was seated on a stool before the hearth and stirring the contents of an iron pot. Three young children — all boys — looked at me curiously, their eyes teary and red-rimmed from smoke. They were barefoot and their clothes were little more than rags, though they looked sturdy and well-nourished.

The man spoke briefly in his own language to the woman. I presumed she was his wife. She rose to her feet and wiped her hands on her heavy skirt. I noticed a small wooden cross threaded on a leather lace around her neck.

‘My husband asks who are you and where are you from?’ she asked in Frankish, speaking slowly and with a heavy accent.

I chose to distort the truth.

‘I serve Alcuin of Aachen. He sent me to obtain a most holy book from the Saracens. I am bringing it to him for the new royal chapel.’ I unlaced my satchel and pulled out the Book of Dreams, handling it with great reverence.

The woman eyed the volume respectfully and crossed herself, though I noticed that her husband was more interested in trying to see what else was in the satchel.

‘I would be grateful for a guide and horses to take me as far as the headquarters of Margrave Hroudland. I can pay.’

A glint of avarice competed with the veneration.

‘How much?’ the woman asked.

I groped in the satchel, keeping the flap half-closed, until my fingers found the wali’s purse. I extracted three silver dinars and held them out on the palm of my hand. Like the stab of a heron’s beak, the woman’s hand darted out and scooped up the coins. She looked at them closely and for a moment I feared that the sight of the Arab script on them would make her suspicious. However, she dropped them into a pocket in her skirt.

‘My man will show you the way on foot. His name is Gallmau. We have no horses,’ she said flatly. She gave her husband his instructions, and then turned back to stirring the pot, ignoring everything else except to snap at her oldest boy when he made as if to accompany us.

I followed Gallmau out of the hut and into the fine, penetrating rain that had replaced the earlier drizzle. The breeze had also picked up. Small, white-capped waves were now rolling in and breaking along the beach where the boats were drawn up. I guessed that Gallmau would not be losing any fishing that day. He picked up a stout wooden staff that had been propped against his hut, and called to two small shaggy brown dogs crouched in the lee of a pile of driftwood. They jumped up and bounded over, their ears flopping. Gallmau started up the muddy path that led inland along the rocky course of a small stream that flowed down from the high ground behind the village. Ahead, the two dogs scampered enthusiastically, splattering mud, as indifferent as their master to the wet weather.