Corsair (11 page)

‘The technician wants me to assist him until his arm has healed,’ said Hector. ‘He seems a decent fellow.’

‘Then if I were you, I’d make myself as useful as possible to that powder man,’ advised Dan without hesitation. ‘It will mean that you have to spend less time swinging a sledgehammer or crawling through the sewers with the city work gang. Just make sure you learn the usanza.’

‘What’s that?’ Hector asked. He bit hungrily into a piece of raw squash.

‘It means custom or habit in the lingua franca. My own people the Miskito have something similar. Our elders who guide us – we call them the old men council – tell us how it was in the old days and they insist we follow the ancient customs.’

He broke off another piece of squash and handed it to Hector.

‘It is the same here in the bagnio. The rules and regulations have built up over time and you learn them by watching others or following their example. If you break these rules, the Turks will tell you that it is against usanza and therefore a fantasia. That means it is unacceptable conduct – and you will be punished. The system suits our masters. The Turks want everything to remain as it is, with them in control. So Jew must remain Jew, Moor must stay Moor, and there is no mixing between different peoples. The Turks go so far as to refuse to let any native-born Algerine become an odjak. Even the son of a Turk and a local woman is forbidden from joining the janissaries. To become an odjak you must either be a Turk from the homelands or a rinigato, a Christian who has converted.’

‘I find it strange,’ said Hector, ‘that foreign slaves are given an opportunity denied to the local people.’

Dan shrugged. ‘Many slaves do take the turban. It is said that there are only three ways of getting out of the bagnio: by ransom, by turning Turk, or by dying from the plague.’

CONSUL MAARTIN was finding mercer Newland a bore. He was beginning to wish that his dragoman had not been so adroit with his bribe to the Dey’s office. The tubby English businessman had been released into consular care on the very same day as the slave sale, and for more than a month Consul Martin had been enduring Newland’s tedious company while waiting to hear back from London about his ransom. The consul had given the cloth merchant a room in his house, and it was only common courtesy to invite him to dinner from time to time. Unfortunately the mercer had no interesting conversation to offer and held very entrenched opinions, so the invitations, which had originally been once or twice a week, had now lapsed. Consul Martin, however, made an exception when he finally got news that an official government delegation was on its way from London to Algiers to deal with the hostage question. Martin presumed that whoever was raising money in London for Newland’s ransom would take the opportunity of sending the payment with the government delegation.

‘One hopes that the delegation from London will have a fair wind for their voyage here, Mr Newland,’ said the consul, rolling a small pellet of bread between his fingers. It was the last morsel of a flat loaf of particularly delicious local bread. When on his own, the consul adopted the Turkish style of eating, reclining on cushions on the floor. But when he had Christian guests, he kept a more normal service with table and chairs. However, he drew the line at serving hearty meals of roast meat and potatoes. He and his guest had just eaten a delicious lamb kebab and homous. ‘The weather in the Mediterranean is very unpredictable. So there’s no way of knowing exactly when the envoy will arrive.’

‘Have the terms of my release been finally agreed, do you know?’ asked the mercer bluntly.

‘That I can’t say. The envoy is on government business and his official duty is to arrange the ransom of ordinary English captives, not men of substance like yourself.’ The consul watched Newland preen himself at the compliment. ‘But it is to be expected that your own principal – I think you said it was Mr Sewell of Change Alley – will take advantage of this delegation to conclude the matter of your own release. If all goes well, you should be travelling back with the envoy himself.’

The mercer adopted his usual self-important tone. ‘I hope that the negotiations over the ordinary captives, as you call them, will not delay matters.’

‘That is difficult to predict. Unfortunately there is a history of the Algerines demanding high ransoms, and the envoy arriving with insufficient funds to meet them. Inevitably a period of offer and counter-offer follows until a final arrangement is agreed.’

‘Could you not point out to the Dey and his bandits that I, and the others, should never have been taken prisoner in the first place; that our kidnap broke the terms of the treaty between our countries? You should insist.’

Inwardly the consul grimaced. The thought of insisting on anything with the Dey and the odjaks was counterproductive as well as dangerous. ‘The Algerines enjoy bartering,’ he commented blandly. ‘They feel cheated if there are not some negotiations.’

‘Then the bartering should be done by men who are used to it, to men of affairs,’ Newland asserted. ‘We would get a better outcome.’

‘I’m sure that the local intermediary who acted on your behalf, the Jew Yaakov, was very skilled in his negotiations,’ reassured Martin.

‘But the treaty, the treaty. The Algerines cannot be allowed to get away with ignoring their treaty obligations.’

The consul thought to himself that Newland, if he had not been so self-opinionated, should know by now that the Dey and the divan made and broke agreements as it suited them. He wondered if he should point out to Newland that many a merchant would vary or break a trade agreement if he could do so without being sued and it was to his advantage. Yet Newland was expecting the Algerines to behave differently when, in fact, their slave-taking was merely a matter of business. In the end the consul decided not to provoke the mercer.

‘The fact is, Mr Newland, that when you and those unfortunate Irish were taken prisoner by the corsair Hakim Reis, the treaty was temporarily set aside. The Dey had announced in council that it was being suspended because too many ships were sailing under English passes to which they were not entitled, and that the English were abusing the terms of the treaty by selling their passes to foreign shipowners.’

‘So that rascal Hakim Reis was within his rights to take us?’

‘Technically, yes. The Dey and the divan had made their decision to abrogate the treaty some weeks earlier. They informed me that a state of war between our nations was being resumed, and I sent word to London to that effect. But there was no public announcement until the same week you were captured.’

‘News travels quickly in this part of the world if that corsair scoundrel was so well informed.’

‘Hakim Reis is an unusually successful and acute corsair, Mr Newland. He seems always alert to the most immediate opportunity. It was your misfortune to be in his path.’

‘And how long did this state of war continue?’ persisted Newland. The tone of his question indicated that he thought Martin was making excuses, and that he had failed to insist that the Dey met his obligations.

‘For less than two months,’ answered the consul, making an effort to keep even-tempered. ‘Last week I was summoned to the Dey’s palace and told that the treaty would be restored, on the orders of the Sublime Porte. That is an excuse the Dey uses often. He says one thing, then reverses his position, claiming that he has been overruled by the Sultan. But it does mean that the envoy from London will be warmly received and there is every likelihood that your own release is imminent.’

And not a moment too soon, he thought to himself.

T
HE INJURED
mining technician was the first to tell Hector about the rumour of a delegation from London. The two of them were at the quarry, weighing and mixing measures of gunpowder for a new set of blasting charges. The technician, Josias Buckley, seemed strangely unexcited by the news. ‘Aren’t you looking forward to going home?’ Hector asked, puzzled.

‘No, I won’t be going home as you call it,’ Buckley replied as he gently transferred another spoonful of the black powder from a barrel into a canvas pouch. ‘I’ll be staying here. This is where I’ve made my life.’

Hector looked at Buckley in astonishment. During his weeks as his assistant, he had grown to respect the man for his skill and the careful, patient way in which he had guided him in the art of handling explosives.

‘What about your family? Won’t they be missing you?’ Hector asked. He was thinking back, as he so often did, to what might have happened to Elizabeth.

‘I have no family left,’ replied Buckley quietly. ‘My wife and I never had children, and she was working at the mill when there was an accident. That was back at home in England, near two years ago now. She and a dozen others were blown to pieces. There was not even enough left of her to give her a proper burial, poor soul. Afterwards I decided I would seek my fortune here in Barbary. I imagined there would be a demand for gunpowder men like myself so I came here of my own free will. The beylik pays me a wage, and I share a house with others like myself, ordinary men who came here to find a new home. The Turks do not demand we change to their religion.’

They finished preparing the gunpowder and were carrying the mix over to the rock face where the work gangs had drilled out the holes ready to receive the charges. Hector noticed how the labourers moved away nervously as they approached. At the first of the holes, Buckley began to pour in the gunpowder. ‘Two pounds’ weight is about right,’ he said to Hector. ‘Make sure the powder is packed evenly. No lumps. Here pass me a length of fuse, will you?’

With the powder and fuse in place, he took a conical wooden plug from the sack which Hector had carried for him and, pressing it into the hole, began to tap it into place, the pointed end upward. The first time Hector had seen this done, he had dreaded an accident. But Buckley had reassured him that gunpowder would only ignite with a spark or fire, not from the blow of a hammer. ‘Now, lad,’ he said, once the plug was driven tight, ‘fill the rest of the hole with earth and chippings and tamp everything down so that it is nice and snug. But not too tight so that the fuse chokes off and doesn’t burn through.’

They moved on to the next hole in the rock to repeat the process, and Hector took his chance to ask, ‘Where was the mill where you worked before?’

‘In the county of Surrey where my family had lived for generations. Years ago we used to make up small quantities of gunpowder in our own house until the government regulations came in. Then the big mills took over, and the monopolists had their chance. The small family producers could not compete, so we went to work in the mill. Of course we got jobs straight away as we knew the trade so well. My father and grandfather and his father had all been petremen, as far back as anyone could remember.’

He saw Hector was looking bemused.

‘Petremen,’ he repeated, ‘that’s what they called the men who went round the country looking for saltpetre. They had authority to go into hen houses, barnyards, farm middens and take whatever scrapings they could find. Without saltpetre – and a lot of it – there’s no gunpowder.’

‘Sounds like Latin,’ said Hector. ‘Sal-petrae would mean “salt of stones”, so how come you found it in a hen house?’

‘There you go again. You’re too smart for your own good, what with all that education,’ answered Buckley, poking a wooden rod into the next drill hole to make sure that it was not clogged. ‘You find saltpetre wherever stale piss or dung has had time to ripen. Don’t ask me how. It’s said that the best piss for saltpetre comes out of a drunken bishop.’