The Pirates of the Levant (12 page)

'He isn't one of them,' said Alatriste. 'I think, as he says, he doesn't belong anywhere.'

'And what about that story he told us about how his tribe used to be Christians?'

'It's possible. You've seen the cross on his face. And last night he was telling me about a bronze bell that they kept hidden in a cave. The Moors don't have bells. It's true that in the time of the Goths, when the Saracens arrived, there were people who refused to convert and took refuge in the mountains. It may be that the religion was lost over the centuries, but other things remained. Traditions, memories. ... And he does have a gingerish beard.'

'That could be from his Christian mother.'

'It could. But look at him; he obviously doesn't feel that he's a Moor.'

'Nor a Christian, damn it.'

'Oh, come now, Sebastian. How often have you been to mass in the last twenty years?'

'As little as possible,' Copons admitted.

'And how many of the Church's commandments have you broken since you've been a soldier?'

Copons gravely counted them off on his fingers.

'All of them,' he concluded sombrely.

'And does that stop you being a good soldier to your King?'

'Of course not.'

'Well, then.'

Diego Alatriste continued studying the Moor Gurriato, who was sitting with his feet dangling over the side of the galley, contemplating the sea. This, apparently, was the first time the Moor had been on a ship, and yet despite the swell that had been buffeting them ever since they left behind the cross of Mazalquivir, his stomach had remained steady, which could not be said of some of the other men. The trick, it seemed, was to place some saffron paper over the heart.

'He's certainly not one to complain,' said Alatriste. 'And he adapts well too.'

Copons grunted. 'You're telling me. I just vomited up some bile myself.' He gave a crooked smile. 'I obviously didn't want to take
that
with me from Oran.'

Alatriste nodded. Years before, he had found it difficult to adjust to the harsh galley life: the lack of space and privacy, the worm- and mouse-eaten, hard-as-iron ship's biscuits, the muddy, brackish water, the cries of the sailors and the smell of the galley-men, the itch and discomfort of clothes washed in salt water, the restless sleep on a hard board with a shield as pillow, one's body always exposed to the sun, the heat, the rain and the damp, cold nights at sea, which could leave you with either congestion or deafness. Not to mention the sickness

when there was bad weather, the wild storms and the dangers of battle, fighting on fragile boards that shifted beneath your feet and threatened to throw you into the sea at any moment. And all of this in the company of galley-men, hardly the noblest of brotherhoods: slaves, heretics, forgers, criminals condemned to the lash, bearers of false witness, renegades, tricksters, perjurers, ruffians, highwaymen, swordsmen, adulterers, blasphemers, murderers and thieves, who would never pass up the chance to throw dice or shuffle a greasy pack of cards. Not that the soldiers and sailors were any better, for whenever they went on land — in Oran, they'd had to hang a man to teach the others a lesson — there wasn't a chicken run they didn't plunder, an orchard they didn't pick clean, wine they didn't filch, food or clothes they didn't steal, a woman they didn't enjoy, nor a peasant they didn't abuse or kill. For, as the saying goes: Please God, leave the galley to some other poor sod.

'Do you really think he'll make a soldier?'

Copons was still looking at the Moor, as was Alatriste. The latter shrugged.

'That's up to him. For the moment, he's seeing a bit of the world, which is what he wanted.'

Copons gestured scornfully in the direction of the rowing chamber and then tapped his nose. Given the stench from all that humanity crammed together, among coils of rope and bundles of clothes, not to mention the stink from the bilge, it would have been hard to breathe were it not for the wind filling the sails.

'I think "seeing the world" might be a slight exaggeration, Diego.'

'Time will tell.'

Copons was leaning on the gunwale, clearly suspicious.

'Why have we brought him with us?' he asked at last.

Alatriste shrugged. 'No one brought him. He's free to go wherever he likes.'

'But don't you find it odd that he should have chosen us as his comrades, for no apparent reason.'

'Hardly for no reason. And you don't choose your comrades, they choose you.'

He continued looking at the
mogataz
for a while longer then pulled a face.

'Besides,' he added thoughtfully, 'it's still a little early be calling him our comrade.'        

Copons considered these words, then grunted again.

'Do you know what I think, Sebastian?' said Alatriste after a pause.

'No, damn it, I don't. I never know what you're thinking'

'I think something in you has changed. You talk more than you used to.'

'Really?'

'Yes, really.'

'It must be Oran. I spent too long there.'

'Possibly.'

Copons frowned, then removed the kerchief he wore round his head and wiped the sweat from his neck and face.

'And is that good or bad?' he asked.

'I'm not sure. It's different.' 'Ah.'

Copons was scrutinising his kerchief as if it held the answer to some complicated question.

'I must be getting old, I suppose,' he muttered at last. 'It's age, Diego. You saw Fermm Malacalza. Remember what he used to be like — before?'

'Yes, of course. I suppose his pack grew too heavy for him. That's what it must be.'

'Yes.'

*******

I was at the other end of the ship, near the awning, watching the pilot comparing quadrant and compass. At seventeen, I was a bright, curious youth, interested in acquiring all kinds of knowledge. I retained that curiosity for most of my life and later it helped me make the most of certain strokes of good fortune. As well as the art of navigation, of which I gained a useful if rudimentary grasp while on board ship, I learned a lot of other things in that closed world: everything from finding out how the barber tended wounds — they didn't heal as quickly at sea, what with the damp air and the salt - to a study of the dangerous varieties of humankind created by God or the Devil. I began these studies in Madrid as a mere child, continued them in Flanders as a schoolboy, and completed them on the King's galleys as a graduate, where I encountered the kind of men who might well say, like the galley-slave in these lines written by Don Francisco de Quevedo:

I'm a scholar in a sardine school, And good for nothing but to row; From prison did I graduate, that university most low.

From a distance, I contemplated the Moor Gurriato sitting impassively on the side of the ship, staring at the sea, and Captain Alatriste and Copons, who were still talking beneath the trinquet-sail at the far end of the gangway. I should say that I was still very shocked by our visit to Fermin Malacalza. He was not, of course, the first veteran I had encountered, but it had given me much to think about, seeing his wretched existence in Oran, poor and invalided out of the army after a lifetime of service, with a family to bring up and no hope

that his luck would change. For Fermin, the only future would be to rot like meat in the sun or be taken captive along with his family if the Moors ever seized the town. And depending upon one's profession, thinking is not always the most comfortable of pastimes. When I was younger, I had often recited these lines by Juan Bautista de Vivar, which pleased me greatly:

A soldier's time, so full of strife, Of war and weapons, fire and blood, May yet still teach us — by all that's good — To make the best we can of life.

Sometimes, when I would recite them to the Captain, I would catch an ironic smirk on his face; not that he ever said anything, for he was of the view that no one learns from being told. You must remember that when I was in Oudkerk and Breda, I was still very green, a young lad eager for novelty. What, for others, symbolised tragedy and life at its cruellest was to me a fascinating experience, part game and part adventure. Like so many Spaniards, I was accustomed to enduring miseries from the cradle up. At seventeen, however, more developed and better educated, and with my wits sharper, certain disquieting questions would slip into my head like a good dagger through the gaps in a corslet. The Captain's ironic smirk was beginning to make sense, the proof being that, after visiting Malacalza, I never again recited those verses. I was old enough and intelligent enough to recognise the ghost of my own father in that shadow of a man, and, sooner or later, in Captain Alatriste, Copons and myself. None of this changed my intentions. I still wanted to be a soldier, but the fact is that, after Oran, I wondered if it would not be wiser to think of the military life as a means rather than an end; as a useful way of confronting — sustained by the rigour of discipline, a set of rules — a hostile world I did not know well, but which I sensed would require everything that the exercise of arms could teach me. And by Christ's blood, I was right. When it came to facing the hard times that came later, both for poor, unfortunate Spain and for myself, as regards loves, absences, losses and grief, I was glad to be able to draw on all that experience.

Even now, on this side of time and life, having been certain things and ceased to be many others, I am proud to sum up my existence, and those of some of the loyal and valiant men I knew, in the word 'soldier'. In time I came to command a company and made my fortune and was appointed lieutenant and later captain of the King's guard — not a bad career, by God, for a Basque orphan from Onate — nevertheless I always signed papers with the words Ensign Balboa — my humble rank on the nineteenth of May 1643, when, on the plains of Rocroi, along with Captain Alatriste and what remained of the last company of Spanish infantry, I held aloft our old and tattered flag.

Chapter 5. THE ENGLISH SAETTA

We were sailing eastwards, day after day, across the sea known to those on the other shore as
bahar el-Mutauassit,
in the opposite direction from that taken by the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the gods of Antiquity and the Roman legions when they set sail for our old Spain. Each morning, the rising sun lit up our faces from the prow of the galley and each night, it sank behind us, in our wake. This filled me with pleasure, and not just because at the end of the voyage lay Naples — that soldier's paradise and bounteous treasure chest housing all of Italy's delights. No, when the galley, propelled by the rhythmic strokes of the rowers, slid across waters smooth as a blade of burnished steel, it seemed to me that the blue sea with its red sunsets and calm, windless mornings was weaving a secret connection with something that crouched in my mind like a sensation or a dormant memory.

'This is where we came from,' I once heard Captain Alatriste murmur as we passed one of the bare, rocky islands so typical of the Mediterranean. Perched on top of it, we could see the ancient columns of some pagan temple. It was a very different landscape from the Leon mountains of the Captain's childhood, or the green fields of my Guipuzcoa, or the rugged peaks of Aragon where Sebastian Copons' soldierly ancestors had been born and bred. Copons stared at the Captain in bewilderment when he heard him speak these enigmatic words. But I understood that he was referring to the ancient, beneficent impulse, which — via language, olive trees, vines, white sails, marble and memory — had arrived at far-off shores of other seas and other lands, like the ripples set in motion by a precious stone dropped into a pool of still water.

We had travelled from Oran to Cartagena with the other ships in the convoy and, having taken on fresh supplies in that city praised by Cervantes in his
Journey to Parnassus —
'We finally reached the port/ to which the men of Carthage gave their name' — we weighed anchor, along with two galleys from Sicily. Once past Cabo de Palos, we set sail east northeast and in two days we reached Formentera. From there, passing Mallorca and Menorca on our left, we headed for Cagliari, in the south of Sardinia, where we arrived, eight days after leaving the Spanish coast, safe and sound, anchoring near the salt marshes. Then, sails hoisted and with fresh supplies of water and dried meat, we passed Capo Carbonara and, taking a south-easterly direction, sailed for two days to Trapani in Sicily.

This time we kept a sharp eye open, with lookouts posted on the tops of the trinquet- and mainmast, because — this being the Mediterranean's slender waist and therefore a natural funnel through which all nations passed — these waters were full of ships travelling between Barbary, Europe and the Levant. We were on the watch both for enemy ships and for any Turkish, Berber, English or Dutch ships that we might capture. On this occasion neither Christ nor our purses was in luck, for we encountered neither foe nor easy prey.

Trapani, built right on the coast, is spread along a narrow cape and has a reasonable harbour, although its many reefs and sandbanks meant that our pilot was never without a curse on his lips or the sounding-lead in his hands. There, we parted from our convoy and continued on alone, rowing against the wind, until we reached Malta, where we were to deliver despatches from the Viceroy of Sicily and four passengers — Knights of the Order of St John who were returning to that island.