Corsair (15 page)

I
N THE DAYS
that followed, Hector discovered he enjoyed the tasks set for him. He relished the challenge of deciphering faded or incomplete notes scribbled down by unknown shipmasters, then arranging the snippets of information into a coherent form which – the Captain told him – one day might take on the shape of a map or chart. He learned to read his master’s writing, even though the captain had the disconcerting habit of using both the flamboyant diwani script of the court and more ordinary workaday lettering in the same sentence. Within a fortnight Hector also understood enough spoken Turkish to follow the captain as his master worried his way through the jumble of information accumulated in his archives over the years. At random Turgut would select a document from the chest and read it out, often hesitating as he tried to remember what exactly he had meant to record so many years ago. It was Hector’s job to correlate that information with the material he had already extracted from the logbooks of the shipmasters. As the days passed and Hector showed more and more of his ability, Turgut Reis gradually slipped into the habit of treating him more like a talented nephew than a possession he had bought at auction.

O
NE MORNING
Hector was alone in the captain’s library, poring over the salt-stained pages of a Dutch sea captain’s logbook, when his attention was distracted by a glint of light reflecting from a bright object on one of the cabinet shelves. Feeling in need of a break from his work, he strolled over to investigate. A shaft of sunlight was shining on a thin brass disc about as broad as the palm of his hand and inscribed with Arabic writing. There were four similar discs, one of which was cut away with a series of strangely shaped holes. It was obvious that the discs had been made to fit neatly into the face of a circular instrument made of heavy brass lying beside them on the shelf. He was standing in front of the cabinet wondering about the device, when Turgut Reis entered the room behind him and said, ‘That was given to me by my father’s father, peace be upon him. After you become a Muslim, you may one day be glad to own such an instrument yourself. Here, let me show you why.’

Picking up the instrument, Turgut brought it up to his eye. Hector saw that attached to the back of the device was a small brass bar with a peephole at each end. This bar could be turned on a pivot. ‘You hold it like this,’ said the captain, squinting through the peepholes as he moved the bar gently, ‘and take a sight on the star you have selected. It is like taking aim with a musket. The alidade, which is the name we give this bar, measures for you the angle to the horizon.’

He turned the instrument over, and showed Hector the numerical tables inscribed on the back.

‘If you have fitted the correct discs you can read off the time when the sun will rise and set wherever in the world you are, which stars and constellations will be in the night sky overhead, and the times they will rise and fall. That way you will know the qibla, the true direction of the kaaba in Mecca, and so you will be able to say your prayers in the right direction and at the right times.’

‘A sailor on the ship that brought me to Algiers could tell which direction we were travelling and about how far we had come by looking at the night sky,’ murmured Hector. ‘He said there was much more to be learned from the stars.’

‘He spoke the truth,’ answered Turgut, ‘and, by Allah’s will, it is the people of the True Faith who enriched our understanding of the marvels of the firmament. Let me show you something else.’

He went to another cabinet and lifted out what looked like a round paper lantern, and rotated it carefully in his hands. ‘See what is written on the surface.’ On closer inspection, Hector saw that the lantern was made of parchment stretched on a fine mesh of copper wire. The surface bore dozens of pictures. He recognised a bear, the figures of several men, a creature which was part goat and part fish, another in the shape of a crab. It took a moment for him to realise that they were the signs of the zodiac and the constellations.

‘It is a map of the heavens,’ said the captain. ‘I bought it many years ago from a merchant who was selling curios. The Sultan himself owns many such items – they are called celestial globes by those who study such things – and the Sultan’s are far more substantial. One is an immense ball of pure marble carved to show the forty-eight constellations and more than one thousand and twenty-five stars. But this one, though humble, is important to me. Look closely.’

Hector examined the figures on the globe. Each picture was drawn to enclose a group of stars. But it seemed to him that the stars were so scattered and irregular that it took a great deal of imagination to see how they defined the figure. But the captain was speaking again, his voice animated.

‘The salesman told me that one of the great scholars of the north – I believe he was a Dutchman – drew this star map more than a hundred years ago. It encompassed everything he knew about the heavens, all that he had learned from his reading and his years of study. The moment I saw it, I knew I had to buy it. Because I noted that when the Dutchman came to write down the names of the buruj, the constellations, he used the language and writing of the men whose wisdom he had acquired – the language of the holy Qur’an. See, here he has written Al Asad Buruj for the constellation shaped like a lion; and here is Al Akrab Buruj, the insect with a deadly sting in its curved tail.’

Now Hector understood his master’s enthusiasm for the globe. It was true that instead of writing out the names of the constellations in Latin or his native tongue, the Dutch map maker of the stars had inscribed the names in Arabic. ‘And here! And here . . . and here!’ Turgut was pointing to the names of individual stars also marked on the globe. ‘Note the names he has given them: Rigel, which means “the foot” in the language of true believers; Altair is “the flyer”, and this star here, Alderbaran, signifies “the follower” because it appears to pursue that cluster of six stars in the constellation we call Ath-Thawr, the Bull.’

A memory stirred in Hector’s mind . . . of a market day back in Ireland when his mother had taken him and his sister into a fortuneteller’s booth. He had been no more than six or seven, but still remembered the shabby brown drape which served as a door. It had been spangled with stars and zodiacal signs.

‘Using this star map and the brass instrument with the discs you showed me, can someone predict the future?’ he asked.

Turgut hesitated before replying. ‘The instrument and the globe, used together, can be used to calculate the position of the stars at the moment of a person’s birth, and from that information it may be possible to foretell an individual’s destiny. But great care is needed. The Prophet, peace be upon him, cautions us, “Behold what is in the heaven and earth! But revelations and warnings avail not folk who will not perceive.” ’

He replaced the globe carefully in the cabinet and, turning back towards Hector, added gravely, ‘It is wiser to use these things for the true path of observance, even as the pilgrims of the haj rely on the stars to direct their paths across the trackless deserts and the seas.’

‘H
E’S A VERY DECENT MAN
,’ Hector told Dan when the two friends next met at the bagnio on their Friday rest day. ‘His steward told me that the captain never orders any of his servants to do any job that he would not be prepared to do himself. He said that Turks of the ruling class believe that the only people fit to rule, are those who have themselves served. The captain comes from one of the best families in Constantinople, yet he started off as a lad scrubbing slime off anchor cables as they were winched aboard the galleys. When he grew strong enough, he had to spend six months on the oar bench.’

‘My master is reluctant to sell me to your captain, even if I want to turn Turk,’ said Dan. ‘Since my bastinadoing, I’ve been given only the most unpleasant tasks in the masserie. My master seeks to add to that punishment.’

Hector looked around the bagnio’s grim courtyard and recalled his unpleasant experience with the lecherous kaporal. He had never seen his friend so glum.

‘If only there was some way you too could help out in the library,’ he said, ‘then you too would be transferred to live in the captain’s house.’

‘A library job is not likely when I don’t know how to read or write,’ Dan pointed out. ‘That page he wanted me to examine meant nothing. Just a lot of black lines and some pretty pictures poorly drawn. I could have done better myself.’

Hector looked at his friend questioningly. ‘What do you mean, “done better”?’

‘Those pictures of trees and fish were all very clumsy, and someone had tried to draw a bird you call a parrot. But it was not like any parrot I had ever seen. Wrong shape and the colours were all odd. That’s why I told the captain that I couldn’t recognise anything. Maybe I should have said there was a badly drawn parrot.’

‘You mean you could have produced a better picture of it.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then show me,’ said Hector, suddenly excited. He went to where one of the bagnio letter writers was squatting against the wall, waiting for clients. He paid for a sheet of paper and the loan of pen and ink and thrust them into Dan’s hand. ‘Draw me a parrot,’ he demanded.

Dan looked dubiously at the materials. The pen was cut from a goose quill, and the nib was frayed and blunt. The paper was dirty and slightly crumpled. ‘I wouldn’t be much good with these,’ he said.

‘Why not?’

‘I paint and draw on skin, not paper.’

‘You mean on vellum made from sheepskin, like the monks who taught me in Ireland.’

‘No. I make my pictures on human skin.’

For a moment Hector looked dismayed, thinking that his friend was about to reveal that the Miskito flayed human corpses to obtain their skins. But Dan’s next words reassured him.

‘I paint on living people. It is something that I learned as a youngster. There’s a jungle tribe who live inland from the Miskito coast and go around half naked, with their skins painted with pictures of birds and trees and flowers. When I was a boy the Miskito council sent me to them as some sort of hostage, while one of their youths came to live in my family. Their women folk are the artists. They spend hour after hour painting coloured pictures on the skins of their men. They think it makes the men look handsome and attractive. If the work is cleverly done, the pictures seem to come alive because they move as the muscles ripple. Because I was a stranger from outside the tribe, they indulged me and showed me how to make the paints and brushes.’

‘You had to make your own brushes?’

‘It’s not difficult. You cut a twig from a certain type of bush, chew the end until it is soft, and use that as the brush.’