Glancing now at these animals, I had such a feeling: I had come to this place on a quest for herons, only to find myself beset with mules.

I took six ducats from the purse at my belt, where I kept the stock needed from day to day, and displayed them on my open palm. The moon was high now, its light reached every corner of the yard, and the silver coins gleamed as I held them out. "Six ducats," I said. "Not a kharruba more."

They did not know the Arabic word but they understood my meaning well enough and this time the talk among them was of the briefest. As I had shrewdly thought might be the case, the sight of the coin was more than they could withstand. They were poor and ragged, they lived without knowing what the next day would bring. The price they had set on the mules had been in the nature of a dream; the night had brought them dreams of wealth already – why not one more?

There and then the sale was agreed and the ducats handed over. I was pleased for a while with my own sagacity, and the decisive gesture with which I had won them over. But then it came to me that I had after all paid somewhat more for the beasts than they were really worth, moreover there was nothing in the world I could do with them but leave them with this miscreated innkeeper.

"I make you responsible for these animals, purchased in the King's name," I said sternly to him. "You will be held to account."

He gave me a ruinous grin but said nothing. I knew beyond question that he would sell the beasts then give them out as having died or strayed. I was heartily sick by now both of him and them, and it was a relief to get clear of his foul-smelling yard.

By the time we had reached the harbour and roused the captain and told him to treat his passengers kindly and got them on board with their instruments and their bundles, the moon was over the sky and there was a feeling of dawn soon coming. I was tired but my mind was active, I had no inclination for sleep, nor desire for any company but my own at this quiet time before daybreak. I told Mario and Sigismond that they could share the room I had paid for or sleep in the yard, as they liked. If that pig of an innkeeper was asleep they could shout till they woke him.

I would keep to myself a little, wait for the day.

As I look back on it now, this choosing to walk abroad, alone and in unfamiliar surroundings, when I was carrying money belonging to the crown, was a sign in me of disaffection, of desire for change. It is true that not many were stirring at such an hour, true also that I had not full trust in my guards when we were in deserted places together.

But the chanceries of the palace, no matter in which you served, schooled you to guard against mishap, however remote the chance of it, and this then became a rooted habit – one which I broke that night on no more than a whim. I knew that if anything went amiss with the purchase of the birds, I would be called to account. It might be that Yusuf would protect me and I would keep my place, but it would count against me in future – in his mind too. I had been a success in the Diwan of Control, baulking at nothing that was given me to do, even things that might be thought base or unworthy if it were not that they were done in the King's service. But one thing botched could outweigh all this and tip the scales against my succeeding to Yusuf's place when he became Grand Chamberlain. And I wanted this, as I have said, wanted the wealth and state of it, the release from bad roads and bad inns and purse-carrying.

Nothing untoward occurred, I saw no one. With daylight I returned to the inn, where I was served by the innkeeper's wife with bread and cheese and thin ale. Then I slept for perhaps an hour, in my chair as I sat there. Waking, I found Mario and sent him back with our mules.

Afterwards, my two men once more at my shoulders, I mounted the steep streets until I was above the town, looking inland to where the marsh people would come from. They would come sometime in the morning, having set off the evening before on news of my arrival, and travelled through the night. They would not arrive much before noon, I thought; they would be on foot, encumbered with the caged birds. I found a place where there was a ruined house, part of the stone terrace still remaining, and sat down here with my back against a broken wall. There was a view of the plain below, and the road they would come by.

I was content to wait quietly here. It was a cloudless morning, there were gulls wheeling above on the seaward side, from somewhere close by there came the sound of goat bells. The dancing of the night before came back to me as I sat there, the firelight and the moonlight, the strains of that wild music, sad and fierce at the same time, the languorous sway of the bodies, the quick-stepping feet, the strange moment of shuddering before the body was stilled again and that rippling of the belly began.

I remembered the gleaming arms of the one I had watched – I had watched only her, it now seemed to me. That posture of the body savage in its pride, that suffering look about the mouth, dissolving in joy when she smiled. Straight shoulders and a deep curve from the waist to the hips.

Then at the inn, loud-voiced and bold-eyed, people used to contempt, careless of it. Outcast people. Ararat, where the ark came to rest for mankind to be saved, and where giants lived in old times. Was she beautiful of face or not? I could remember only the mouth and the smile…

I was still thinking of this girl in a rather sleepy fashion when the sun rose clear of the hills and I saw a flash of white in the distance, where the road descended, like a swift signal one might make with some bright surface of metal held up to the sun. It came again, then again, then there were many, and the first of the men came into view at the point where the road finished its descent and curved round into the open plain.

They had come earlier than I expected. They walked in single file, the caged birds hanging from yokes that went across their shoulders, two on either side, as far as I could make out, and swaying with the motion of their walking, so that the newly risen sun elicited flashes of light as rapid as blinking from their breasts and wings. I counted twelve men, and as they came into the sun they were robed in splendour by the birds.

The splendour was less, however, both in the men and in the birds, on closer view, at the harbour where I went down to wait for them. The cages were made of thin cane and they were tall, to accommodate the long, slender legs, with their black shanks and yellow toes. But they were narrow, the herons could not turn, they were forced to stay in the one position, hunched and dejected. The men were like spectres, pale and hollow-eyed, and I took this to be the result of the marsh-sickness that people speak of, that comes from dwelling constantly in the flooded lands, among the mists that rise there.

At the harbourside the scene was one of great confusion. There were mules tethered there also, for what purpose I knew not – my visit to this town was plagued by mules from beginning to end. Disturbed by the swinging cages and the people milling round, these beasts began to bray and shift about, and one or two of them kicked back in that spirit of indiscipline and revolt that descends on mules at certain accursed moments. The tortured sounds they made and the clatter of their hooves on the stone disturbed the birds and they tried to flap their wings but could not, and first one then another set up a desolate wailing sound, wulla-wulla-wulla, like the loud grief cries that Arab women make when they raise their heads and let the sounds come from far back in the throat. To add to this, the birdcatchers were thronging round me with their feverish faces, clamouring for my attention, telling me how particularly fine these birds were, what pains it had cost to trap them.