Corsair (20 page)

Hector tore his gaze away from the sight of the dead reis and looked towards the big sailing ship. The crew were brailing up the sails, slowing their vessel now that she was at a safe distance from the crippled galley and could manoeuvre. Even as he watched he saw activity on the high stern deck. Men were clustering around the light swivel cannon mounted along the rail, the perrier guns which could send hails of small shot and sweep a deck clear of men.

‘Leva! Leva!’ Again Dunton was roaring and gesticulating. He leapt up on to the main spar and frantically began unlacing the sail ties. Farther forward, the braver and more experienced sailors on the crew were hastily uncoiling the main halyard where it had been stowed, and laying it out along the catwalk. Those overseers still on their feet began to push and shove men into position where they could begin to raise the sail. A tall, thin Algerine with a wild look in his eye began to chant a work song, and incredibly some sense of order and discipline returned as perhaps a score of those not wounded began to haul on the great rope and the massive mainyard slowly began to rise.

The spar was dangling some ten feet in the air when there came another crash of cannon, the loudest yet. This time it was not the irregular thump and report of individual guns, but the ragged roar of a broadside. At point blank range the warship’s gunners could not miss. The broadside struck the stationary galley amidships, and broke her back. Men and oars were flung into the water. The bow and stern both tilted upward as the mid section of the venerable hull began to sink under water. The sea rushed in on the benches and Hector heard the desperate screams of the slave rowers still chained to their benches and unable to escape. The stern deck slanted under his feet, and sick at heart he watched Turgut’s corpse slip down and come to rest against the rail, itself already half under water.

Shocked and dazed, he grasped at a splintered post. Then, as the stern section began to roll over, he was washed into the sea.

As he came back to the surface, he realised that something had changed. The sounds of firing had nearly stopped, though the air was still thick with gun smoke. He coughed and choked. Something nudged against his shoulder, and he clutched at it blindly. He found he was grasping the canopy from the galley’s stern deck. Air had been trapped within the cloth so that it had risen to the surface, and was bobbing, half submerged. Steadying himself with one hand on the makeshift raft, Hector looked around.

The captain’s bloody death had distracted him from thinking about Dan’s fate, but now he scanned the mess of flotsam and wreckage, trying to spot his friend. The bow section of the galley was almost gone below the surface, and he saw only the heads of a few strangers nearby. Dan had disappeared. Closer to hand he glimpsed a face that was familiar. Thirty yards away was Dunton. He was clinging to a small piece of floating wood which was insufficient to keep him afloat. Every few seconds Dunton would submerge, coming back to the surface with panic in his face. ‘Here! Here! Swim over here!’ Hector called out. Dunton heard him, and twisted round to face him. Again he half-disappeared and was spitting water as he came back to the surface. ‘I can’t!’ he gasped. ‘I cannot swim!’

Hector had learned to swim during his summers on the Irish coast and now he slid into the water and struck out for the English sailor. ‘Here, hang on to me,’ he gasped as he reached Dunton. ‘I’ll tow you back.’

Dunton was floundering desperately. ‘It won’t work. That slave ring on my ankle pulls me down.’

‘Come on!’ snarled Hector. ‘Hold on round my neck. You can do it!’

With a sudden lunge Dunton abandoned the sinking flotsam and grabbed on to his rescuer. Hector clenched his teeth and began to swim, trying to regain the raft. The effort was enormous. However hard he swam, he was making little headway. Dunton was a dead weight on his back, pulling him down. Hector took great mouthfuls of air and knew that his strength would soon ebb away. He swallowed a mouthful of seawater, gagged, and for a moment he thought that he too would drown. Squeezing his eyelids shut to clear his eyes of the salt water he looked ahead, trying to judge how far he had come. He was still not halfway to the makeshift raft. ‘I said you could not make it,’ whispered Dunton behind his ear, and then – miraculously – the sailor’s grip relaxed and Hector found himself swimming free. He glanced over his shoulder and had a last glimpse of Dunton as he slipped under the water.

Even without the English sailor on his back, Hector was at his last gasp when finally he reached out and touched the floating canopy. Pulling himself up on its slippery wet surface, he lay there panting. Dimly he was aware of other survivors from the disaster who approached the raft. Once or twice he felt the canopy shift beneath him as they too heaved themselves on to its surface. He lay with his eyes closed, utterly spent and still in shock from seeing the captain meet his death. The captain had bought him in the same way as a farmer buys a promising colt at auction, yet Hector could only remember Turgut’s kindness, his compassion, and the words of encouragement when his protégé had faced his sunnet – ‘Don’t be afraid. It happens at once, and is a wonderful thing as Allah has wished. Praise be to God.’ Hector hoped that the same was true for the manner of Turgut’s death.

Abruptly a hand was seizing the collar of his loose shirt, and he found himself dragged off the canopy, then hauled bruisingly over the edge of a small boat, and dumped into its bilges. A voice said in English, ‘We’ve got another of the bastards.’ Someone knelt on him painfully and tied his wrists behind his back. A short while later he was pulled to his feet and then half lifted and half thrown up the side of a ship where he found himself on a steady, dry deck. Swaying with exhaustion, he kept his eyes down and watched the salt water trickle out of his clothes and make a wavering line across the planks. He felt wretched.

‘Ti! Moristo? Mauro? Turco?’ a voice was asking aggressively. Someone was trying to establish his nationality, speaking in rusty lingua franca and standing so close that he could smell the interrogator’s foul breath. But Hector felt too tired to answer. ‘He’s not wearing an ankle ring. Must have been one of the crew,’ claimed another voice gruffly. Someone was fingering the qibla still hanging from its thong around his neck. ‘Look at this,’ said the first voice. ‘He’s an Allah worshipper all right. Saw this when I was in the bagnio at Tunis.’

Hector raised his head and found himself looking into the hostile face of a common sailor. A jagged scar running from the corner of his mouth to his right ear gave him a brutish look. Behind him stood a short, badly shaved man wearing a wig and dressed in clothing which had once been of fine quality but was now shabby and stained with grease spots. Hector took him to be a ship’s officer.

‘My name is Hector Lynch,’ he said, addressing the officer. ‘I am from Ireland.’

‘A Papist turned Mussulman, that’s droll!’ mocked the officer. ‘A bucket that has dipped twice into the sink of iniquity.’

‘My father was a Protestant,’ began Hector wearily, but his reply was cut short by the officer’s retort. ‘You’re a renegade and turncoat, whatever stripe of faith you were before. To be serving with Barbary pirates means you deserve to hang. But as you are worth more alive than dead, you will be kept in chains until we reach port. Then you will wish you had gone to the bottom of the sea along with your thieving friends.’

Hector was about to ask the ship’s destination when the sound of a hammer on iron distracted him. A little distance behind the officer, the ship’s blacksmith was striking off the ankle ring of a starved-looking galley slave who must have been rescued from the wreck of
Izzet Darya
. Standing next in line, awaiting his turn and dressed only in a loincloth, was Dan. The Miskito, Hector recalled, had been wearing his slave ring when he had joined the corso, and Turgut Reis had not ordered it to be removed. Clearly the warship’s crew had mistaken Dan for a slave they had liberated from the corsairs. Deliberately Hector forced himself to look away. Any sign that he knew Dan would betray his friend.

‘Take the renegade and put him with his fellow blackguards!’ ordered the officer, and Hector found himself pushed across the deck to join a group of bedraggled survivors from the galley; among them were several odjaks. As he stood waiting to be led away to the prison hold, Hector heard a cheer go up. The starved-looking man had been freed from his slave ring, and several of the warship’s crew were gathering round to slap him on the back and congratulate him on his liberty. As Hector watched, Dan stepped forward impassively and placed his foot on the blacksmith’s anvil. A few sharp blows and the blacksmith had knocked out the rivets from the ring, and again a cheer went up. But this time, the congratulations were cut short as the starved-looking man suddenly turned and, snatching at Dan’s loincloth, whipped it away so that the Miskito stood naked. Pointing at Dan’s circumcised penis, his accuser screamed, ‘Rinigato! Rinigato!’ and gave a vindictive whoop of triumph.

C
HEVALIER
A
DRIEN
C
HABRILLAN
, Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Stephen, was thoroughly satisfied with his day’s purchase. Through his agent, Jedediah Crespino of the well-known Tuscan banking family, he had just acquired thirty prime slaves for galley service. The slaves had appeared on the Livorno market unexpectedly and Jedediah had snapped them up. An English warship, the
Portland
, had sunk a large Algerine corsair off Sardinia, and pulled a number of her crew from the water. Naturally the
Portland
’s captain wanted to profit from his victory so he had landed his captives at what was the biggest slave market in the Christian Mediterranean, with the possible exception of Malta. Tall and aristocratic, Chevalier Chabrillan was a familiar figure in Livorno. Always immaculately dressed in the red uniform of the Order, he had a reputation as something of a dandy. Indeed observers had been known to remark that such a renowned galley captain had no need to take so much trouble with his appearance, always powdering his cheeks and parading the latest fashion in periwigs and buckled shoes. His celebrity as a warrior for the Faith, they said, was already sufficient to make him stand out. Chabrillan, they agreed, was a true heir to the days when the Duke of Florence had been able to send two dozen galleys under the flag of St Stephen to confound the Turk. And when the Grand Magistry had announced that it could no longer afford to equip and man such a large fleet, the Chevalier had offered to meet the costs of keeping his own vessel in commission, and had obtained permission to cruise in company with the vessels of the Order of St John of Malta. So his frequent appearances in Livorno were usually to buy and sell slaves or to negotiate the disposal of prizes.

Livorno was ideal for such transactions. Declared a free port by the Duke of Tuscany less than a decade earlier, it was now a thieves’ kitchen on a grand scale. On the waterfront and in the counting houses it was quietly acknowledged that the transactions of men like Chabrillan were best not investigated too closely. Ostensibly the galleys of the Orders were licensed only to cruise the sea in search of vessels belonging to ‘our enemies of our Holy Catholic Faith’, as Grand Master Cotoner in Valletta put it. Such vessels could be seized and sold, together with their crews and cargoes. And should a Christian ship be found to be carrying Muslim-owned goods, then the Order’s captain could impound only the goods but must release the vessel. Often, however, both goods and ship were confiscated, and on occasion the Christian crew themselves were held for ransom or even sold as slaves.

In such delicate traffic Livorno relied on its Jewish population. There were nearly three thousand of them, and they had been granted exceptional privileges. Here a Jew could own property, wear a sword at any hour, employ Christian servants and did not have to wear the Jewish badge. They also operated a complex network of commerce with their co-religionists in Tunis, Malta and Algiers. It was for this reason that Chevalier Chabrillan valued his connection with Jedediah Crespino so highly.