The Mer- Lion (43 page)

Across the Channel to Calais they went, getting a preview of the reception planned for the English king and his entourage. From there, they leap-frogged to Le Havre and thence to Cherbourg and

on to Brest. Now, a long stretch of sea faced them as they worked their way, using both lateen sail and slave power across the Bay of Biscay. Finally, striking the coast of Spain to the east of La Coruna, they tacked close to shore and slowly made their way westward to the outermost tip of the Holy Roman Empire's landmass. At La Coruna, they took on water, and the passengers disembarked, ascending to the top of the Torre de Hercules. Don Federico was tempted to sail without them, so that he might squeeze on a few more tons of cargo to trade for candy wine on Cyprus. Only the fear of pirates made him sound the horn to summon the Hospitalers back to the ship. Those twelve fighting men might make all the difference in repulsing a pirate attack.

Once the
Annunciate
reached Gibraltar, a choice would have to be made: to take the fast, risky southern route or the safer, longer, northerly one to Cartagena, passing between Valencia and the Balearic Islands and up to Barcelona, across the Gulf of Lions to Marseilles, through the Ligurian Sea, keeping Corsica to starboard, down the boot to the tip and through the straits of Messina, thence due east to Greece and then south to Crete. Going this way would take twice as long, forcing a return trip during the fierce storms that lashed the Mediterranean from mid-November to April. The ship's captain, Don Federico, had tasted the winds of Solano, the hot, dust-laden winds that make men giddy and irritable and a crew almost unruly. It was not a pleasant choice.

On the other hand, the shorter route would take the
Annunciata
perilously close to the coast of Ifriqiya where Barbarossa laid up for the winter in Algiers, his fleet divided between his own capital and neighboring Tunis. Not before Tripoli, that fortress on the mainland under the protection of the Knights Hospitalers, would this merchant ship find friendly port.

Deliberately, Don Federico did not make up his mind. A word in his sleep overheard by one of his youthful bed partners and Barbarossa might be alerted. It was common knowledge that Barbarossa had his spies, even in English ports, plus a communications chain, stretching from one end of the Mediterranean to the other, that notified Algiers of departure date, destination, sailing plan, and most especially cargo manifest.

The
Annunciata's
cargo was a mixed one. The usual woollen
goods, and a few great barrels of Scots whiskey, an experiment. But most of the space below ship was taken up by weapons from the fine armament shops in and around London. And beggars—a large contingent of them.

Nothing pleased the captain less than the bunch of dirty, thieving beggars in his hold. He had reluctantly taken them aboard and agreed to drop them off at the first possible port only because their transport meant ready money and sailing clearance. The king's men had been eager to pay a nice sum to get these beggars out of England.

"Clap them in jail," suggested the captain, but the king's justice had demurred.

"We have need of our jails for traitors and criminals,.not beggars. Besides, they have friends among the people."

The ship was cramped. Jammed with cargo and sailors and slave-oarsmen and passengers. Only one cabin existed, and that, occupied by the captain and his two cabin boys, was small and roughly furnished. Even if the captain had offered it, the Hospitalers wouldn't have accepted, preferring to rig up clean-smelling quarters on deck.

Carlby didn't wait for their arrival in Malta to start testing his new recruits' knowledge of weaponry, languages, and religion—the three things they needed to know to succeed in the order. The serving brothers were no more adept at any of the three than he expected, except for Gilliver, whose knowledge of religion proved exceptional, and Fionn, who'd been well coached by Seamus in weaponry. As for the novice knights, he was gratifyingly surprised. Only in religion did he find them less than totally proficient; that and the Arabic tongue. The latter he set out to rectify immediately:

"You have an advantage, being Scots; many of the Arabic consonants will come easily to your tongue. Take
ra,
for example, it's rolled as you do your rs, not fricative as in English.
Kha
is another good one. It's sounded like the
ch
in
loch.
The only trouble is sometimes
kha
initiates a word. Try and say
loch
backward and you'll see what I mean.

"As in most languages, the commonest verbs in Arabic are irregular, but it has fewer than most. One thing you'll find confusing is that the verbs
have
and
be
do not exist. Also, verbs have no
tenses, only two forms which show completed or incomplete actions. Since my only goal is to make you able to understand and command the slaves rowing in our galleys, most of whom are Arabs, not to turn you into Arab scholars, we'll concern ourselves here only with the spoken language, not bothering with the written one. That's too confusing, for one reads and writes Arabic completely opposite to English—going from right to left. Numbers, however, go from left to right as ours do. Repeat after me:
affamsu
...
the sun;
albahru
...
the sea;
arrajulu
...
the man;
yadun
...
hand;
pay-nun
...
eye;
zamrun
. wine;..."

He found his pupils a mixed lot. Some, such as Angus and Ogilvy, would never command more than a passing knowledge of the tongue. Others, such as Drummond and Menzies, struggled hard and made slow progress. Cameron learned those words he thought would be beneficial to him, such as
beautiful, love,
and others that would work on women. De Wynter and Gilliver were the stars of the group, the latter because of his scholarly bent, the former seizing upon these studies as a narcotic to quell his troubled thoughts. Upon these.two, Carlby lavished much time, even going so far as to begin teaching them to read and write the Semite tongue.

During the course of the lessons, Carlby also taught them of the order and its troubled history. Once there had been nine Langues, or houses with a common tongue. However, the numbers of the order had dwindled to such an extent that several Langues had been forced to combine with others. The English one, for example, now also encompassed Scotland. The rivalry between those two nations created more than a few headaches for the Turcopolier, or "Pillar" of the English Langue.

When Suleiman the Magnificent had driven the Knights into the sea off the Isle of Rhodes, he had allowed the remnants of the order to escape, knowing they had no home and believing they would disband and never be a problem again. However, Charles V of Spain, the Holy Roman Emperor, listened to the Knights' pleas for help and granted them the Maltese Archipelago in exchange for their promise to defend Tripoli against the Ottomans. He also exacted the payment of one Maltese falcon each year, a formality which would continue to affirm the fact that Malta was under the suzerainty of Spain.

Thus it was that Philip Villiers de l'lsle Adam, the order's
Grandmaster, was able to issue a rallying cry throughout Christendom, calling for additional men to help the order build Malta into a powerful headquarters. And for the same reason, John Carlby had been in England trying to raise funds as well as manpower.

A genuinely religious man, Carlby believed with all his heart that God had made him one of the survivors at Rhodes. And now he believed just as fervently that Henry VIII had been used by God to the good of the order.

Normally, the
Annunciata
would have stopped to trade at Lisbon, the richest town in Europe, but that city had been nearly leveled by an earthquake the year before and disease was still rampant. Instead, Don Federico set sail for Cabo de Sao Vicente, the huge rocky plateau with red brown precipices rising sheer above the sea. After rounding this cape, the
Annunciata
had choice of ports: Sagres, founded by Henry the Navigator as headquarters for his explorations of the African coast
...
or Cadiz, the Gadir of the Phoenicians and Gades of the Romans, and the fortress-city guarding the river-route to Seville. Here, the beggars the ship carried might well be sold, as the Spanish were always in need of slaves. However, one of Don Federico's wives lived here, and to enter Cadiz might result in a lengthy delay.

Don Federico decided it would be wiser to head straight for the Straits of Gibraltar. Between the ocean and the inland sea run strong currents, and uncertain winds cause serious problems for sailing vessels; Don Federico ordered all canvas furled and the oars out.

Three of the serving men and Angus and Ogilvy suffered with seasickness, but the other companions were weathering the voyage reasonably well. De Wynter, himself an excellent sailor, tried to amuse himself with card games in his spare time. Tiring of these, he played games of dominoes with Gilliver and Carlby. Winning can grow boring, especially if one's opponents are not one's match. Carlby, seeing this, suggested he explore the nooks and crannies of the ship. "Now would be a good time to go below, before the hold gets so befouled with the stench of wet wool and dirty men that one can take no more than a few minutes without coming up for air."

The fetid air assailed de Wynter's nostrils before he reached the third rung of the ladder. He pressed on and came across the band of beggars chained to one another and to the masts and bulkheads.

Sickened at the sight, he was also fascinated by the hapless group who immediately tried to practice their wiles on turn

Among the group were dommers, who "swallowed" their tongues and pretended to be dumb. Others were truly deformed individuals, either born that way or deliberately mutilated by their parents so that they might beg. There were contortionists who could twist their bodies grotesquely. And one other—a pickpocket whom the king's constables had thrown in with the beggars, a short, wiry, monkey-faced man, to whom the others seemed to look for leadership.

"You there," de Wynter said to him. "What are you doing down here?"

"You addressed me, lord? John the Rob at your service." The man attempted within the confines of his chains to bow and scrape. "To answer your question, your good King Hal has sent us south for our health. But somehow the captain of this fine sailing ship did not get the message right. Instead of 'Land them in Spain,' he heard 'Hand them in chains.' Perhaps you could inform him of his error, milord?"

His followers tittered. Even de Wynter was amused by the cheek of this swarthy son of England. "Rest assured, I shall give him your message."

"Oh, we'll rest all right Nothing much else to do in this stinking hole. Fare you well, lord," John the Rob called after the departing Scot "Come back and visit us anytime."

The insolence of the man, his cheerfulness under such circumstances, the wry grin on his wizened monkey-face lingered in de Wynter's mind and later that day, he questioned the captain about the beggars.

"Why the chains, you ask? To save the ship from their thieving hands. They'd steal the bread right out of your mouth. I've seen their like before. The only way I takes them is chained hand and foot."

"But some are crippled." "The cripples are the worst"

"But where would they go? We're in the middle of the ocean." "They're like magicians, they'd disappear in thin air." Faced with such stupid stubbornness, de Wynter made up his mind to get the beggars freed. To this end, he broached Carlby.

"That hole is really foul. Aa absolute stink-hole. Perfect breeding ground for the pox. In fact, I would not be surprised if the smells coming from down there weren't the cause of Angus and Ogilvy's sickness."

The condition of a bunch of beggars bothered Carlby not at all. No man who had lived through a Moslem siege as he had at Rhodes would be bothered by man's inhumanity to man. But if the condition of the beggars should affect that of his new recruits, that was a different story. With de Wynter following on his heels, Carlby was off to beard the captain. A word from this martial churchman and the beggars were set free to clean themselves up, as well as the filth in the hole. Once clean, they were under orders to stay that way.

"And if I see one of you above deck, I'll clap you back in chains and, if you are able-bodied, set you to rowing," the captain threatened.

As the beggars hastily and loudly protested their good intentions, John the Rob caught de Wynter's eye and dropped him a wink. De Wynter was not surprised the next day to find the wizened little man standing alongside him as he leaned against the rail and watched the coast with its squares of white houses topped with colorful chimney pots.

"What are you doing up here?"

"Same as you, milord, admiring the view."

"I wouldn't think any view worth the risk of being rechained."

"No, nor of rowing. Look at those wretches, any one of them would gladly change places with one of us down in the hold. No, milord, not for any view—even of the Sultan's seraglio unveiled— would I risk rowing. But to say a word of thanks for your help
..."