Tim Severin - The Book of Dreams

‘Just once, Your Majesty. I dreamed of treachery.’

The king pointed the half-chewed goose bone at me as though it was a sceptre.

‘Tell me.’

I described my dream and how I had consulted the Book of Dreams to interpret its meaning.

Carolus listened in silence.

‘This happened when you were staying with Wali Husayn in Zaragoza?’ he asked when I finished.

I nodded.

‘Thank you. I shall be on my guard.’

I began to edge away towards the curtain. I was still deeply disturbed by my vision of the king on horseback, crying blood. I knew I should not speak about it, at least not until I knew what it might mean.

‘One moment!’ he commanded suddenly.

I froze, wondering if he was about to cross-examine me.

‘My nephew is headstrong. If there’s to be any fighting in Hispania, he’ll be in the thick of it.’ It was a flat statement of fact.

‘I am sure he will acquit himself nobly, Your Majesty,’ I answered diplomatically.

‘And you? Do you know how to wield a sword as well as you can manage a bow?’

It seemed that Carolus had not forgotten the day I killed two royal stags. I thought it wiser to say nothing and waited for his next remark.

‘I am very fond of my nephew. I hope that you and your companions among my paladins will see to it that his enthusiasm does not lead him astray.’

I bowed my head obediently. The king had already reached out and was twisting the second leg off the goose carcass. It was clear that my interview was over, and I slipped gratefully out of the room.

Hroudland’s poor opinion of Eggihard’s military leadership was to bring near-disaster on the western army and on me in particular. When we entered the foothills of the mountains marking the border with Hispania, the count persuaded Eggihard that a detachment of picked cavalry should scout in front of the main column. Naturally Hroudland put himself at the head of this detachment. He took Berenger, Anseis, Gerin and me with him, in effect creating his own roving command. His motive became clear within days. Simply put, our advance unit had first choice of any plunder that lay in the army’s path. We ranged across the countryside and helped ourselves to any valuables in the towns and villages. We met little or no resistance from our victims, and each evening gathered at our chosen campsite and piled up the booty we had found that day. Though the booty was meagre it reminded me of the scene when King Offa’s troops had sacked my father’s great hall. So, whenever possible, I waived my share of any loot. My comrades thought I was behaving strangely. To them the chance for plunder was a powerful reason to go to war, and Hroudland had an impatient, hungry look as he presided over the division of the spoils. He always kept a tenth for himself declaring that his expenses as Margrave of the Breton March had left him in debt.

Understandably the villagers and townsfolk were glad to see the back of us when we moved on. Quite how unpopular we made ourselves was made evident to me one bright day in mid-May. By then we were advancing around the end of the mountains, with their foothills to our left. That morning, as our unit prepared to fan out across the countryside, Hroudland asked me to take a couple of troopers and investigate a low range of hills in the distance. He believed there might be a rich village hidden somewhere in that direction.

I rode off as instructed, the two cavalrymen trotting behind me. We were so accustomed to lack of resistance that all three of us left behind our cumbersome lances and shields. Our only weapons were our cavalry swords and daggers. Very quickly we left the cultivated land and came into an area where the soil was too poor to sustain anything but thin, scrubby grass and clumps of small thorny trees. We came across an occasional cattle byre built of dry branches but saw neither cattle nor people, and resigned ourselves to a long ride as the hills were some distance away. Gradually the land sloped upward and, riding along reins slack, we allowed our horses to go at their own pace. By midday it was uncomfortably hot in the sunshine and when we stopped to water the horses at a small pool of tepid water I removed my brunia, the leather jacket covered with metal scales worn by every cavalryman, and tied it to my saddle. I had already taken off my metal helmet. The two troopers did the same.

We remounted and jogged along, following the faint trace of a path through the bushes. We reached the hills themselves and the land closed in around us as the path led higher. Here the ground was bare of vegetation, and the track grew more and more stony, twisting and turning around the spurs of the hills. After some time, one of the troopers called out to me that his horse had gone lame. The animal had stepped on a sharp stone; the sole of the hoof was bleeding. We were deep in the hills and I told the trooper to turn round and begin walking his horse back to where we had watered before. His companion and I would continue ahead for another hour and if we found nothing, as seemed likely, we would turn back and rejoin him.

We rode on. Soon the road dwindled to little more than a footpath, obliging us to walk our horses cautiously in single file. To our left the hillside rose very steeply, a bare slope of loose scree and shale. It climbed at least a hundred feet to a ridge whose jagged outline reminded me of a cock’s comb. On our right the ground fell away equally steeply, dropping into a dried-up river bed. Here, the slope was dotted with boulders of every size and shape. They had broken away from the crest and rolled down the hill. Some had come to rest part of the way down, but most had tumbled all the way into the ravine below.

My companion was the more accomplished horseman, and as the path grew even narrower, he offered to take the lead. My own horse, a chestnut mare, had a nervous disposition and was reluctant to proceed.

After some twenty minutes of slow progress she lost her nerve entirely. She came to a halt, shivering and sweating, and would go no further. I kicked her hard in the ribs and shouted at her. She put back her ears, stiffened her legs and refused to budge. I kicked again and shouted even louder. My shout came back to me as an echo from the steep slopes all around. As the sound faded I heard a gentle clatter. Looking up and to my left, I saw that a small section of hillside close to the path had come loose and was sliding downhill in a thin trickle of gravel. The flow halted, there was a final rattle of the last few pebbles, and a brief silence. Then a sharp, much louder crack sounded. I shifted my gaze higher up to the cock’s comb of the ridge above me just in time to see a moderate-sized boulder break free and slip downward a fraction. It was about the size a man could encircle with his arms. It hung motionless and time seemed to stand still. In a heartbeat it began to roll, tumbling end over end. It gathered speed, first making small leaps, and then as it struck a rocky ledge it was thrown outward, bounced, and flew with even greater force, hurtling downward in a series of destructive arcs.

I shouted a warning to my companion, less than ten paces ahead. He had already seen the danger and put heels to his horse’s flanks. The animal jumped forward, and this action saved them. The boulder went spinning past them and crashed on down the hill.

‘Are you all right?’ I called out. I was struggling to control my mare. The animal had been terrified into action and was scrabbling with its hooves, lunging from side to side. I feared we would slip off the loose surface of the path and plunge to our destruction.

‘A near miss,’ came back the call, and the trooper gave a confident wave to reassure me. ‘We’ll be on safer ground soon.’

Underneath me the mare was still shaking with fright so I nearly missed the same ominous warning, a sharp crack and then the first thud as another rock, slightly smaller than the first, broke away from the ridge line and began its lethal descent towards us.