Blood Red Sea

8

The day was still dark and rain-sodden when they were dragged out of the maze of dark passageways into the street. They were driven into the main square, now empty of fugitives. But as they passed by a wide puddle, Nicholas saw that the rain was mixed with blood. They crossed to the imposing courthouse, and were dragged down some narrow steps into a lower passageway, though a narrow iron gate, down more stone steps in air clammy with damp and decay, and finally thrown into a fetid dungeon. The iron bars clanged shut behind them and were triple-locked.

It was pitch dark and silent as the grave. Some other sense, perhaps hearing, perhaps smell, told them that dungeon was not large.

They lay still, twisted, chained and blind. After a while they rolled over on to their sides and tried to pull themselves against the damp walls. They lay and breathed. This was going to be bad. They could see absolutely nothing.

‘Dark as Egypt in the eighth plague,’ muttered Hodge.

All they could hear was each other breathing. And then another sound. A skitter of little paws.

‘Rats,’ said Hodge.

The skittering grew. More and more of them.

‘Shite,’ said Hodge, and tried not to think of the tales he had heard. Of men chained in dungeons, unable to move, while rats feasted on their hands, their feet, their faces. . He kicked out with his hobbled boots and the rats shrieked and trotted away. Then he could hear them coming back, chattering. Could picture them in the darkness, raising their narrow muzzles, noses twitching, scenting fresh meat.

Suddenly, from the other corner of the dungeon, not two body lengths away, there came a violent thump and the rats squealed and were gone. For now.

‘Who’s there?’ demanded Nicholas.

Silence.

‘Damn you, speak. How many of you?’

Water dripped from an overhang, a drop every few seconds. Nothing else.

‘If you don’t sing, I’m going to,’ said Hodge. ‘And you won’t like that at all.’

After a pause, a soft voice said, ‘I am Abdul of Tripoli.’

‘A goddam Mohammedan?’

‘As you say. You have any light?’

‘Of course we don’t have any light,’ said Hodge. ‘You think they gave us a tinderbox and a sirloin steak when they shoved us in here?’

After a while something rasped in the darkness, and to their astonishment a small flame appeared. A stubby candle was set on the floor, blinding them for a moment, and then as their eyes grew used to the light in this dark place, they saw a slim brown face beyond. He grinned.

‘Some of us come prepared.’

‘But you’re not chained!’ said Hodge indignantly.

‘And you are, I see. Pedro Deza must have caught two very big fish indeed.’

‘He’s got a surprise coming,’ said Nicholas. ‘What are you in for?’

‘For following my own business,’ said Abdul. His smile was very wide. ‘But I shall soon be free again. I am of too much service to Pedro Deza.’

‘You work for him?’

‘I work for whoever is the chieftain. Always keep an eye on the leader of the monkey pack.’ He ran his middle finger along an eyebrow in an enigmatic but expressive gesture. ‘When I am in the dungeons of Grand Inquisitor Pedro Deza, I work solely and loyally for Pedro Deza. Once I am free again — Pedro Deza can go and kneel beneath an aroused camel.’

‘You’re an Algerine, then?’

‘Abdul of Tripoli is also Abdul of the world!’ He rocked back and forth where he sat cross-legged, smiling delightedly. Maybe he’d been in here a long time. He certainly seemed keen to talk to someone. ‘You know that Abd’ullah means slave of Allah. But then when I am Greek I am become Petros Christodoulos, which is, in Greek, Peter, the slave of Christ. It is all one, you see, and means everything and nothing.’

‘So you’re a liar and a Judas.’

‘I’m a philosopher,’ said Abdul. ‘And a survivor. I have been whipped in Spain, whipped in Sicily, scourged in Jerusalem and stoned in the streets of Cairo. But I survive. And like an old dog, I have learned from my whippings. I laugh at other dogs who are too stupid to learn.’

He regarded the candle. There was plenty more to burn.

‘In Rome I’m a Christian, in Mecca a Muslim, in India I lie down in the dust and let the sacred cows walk over my prostrate body. I am all things to all men. And then Abdul climbs a hill in his imagination, as the sun sets, and looks down on the churches of Rome, the minarets of Mecca, the temples of India, and he sits back and laughs in the sun! He laughs at them down there, trapped in their gloomy churches and temples, while he sits high and free on the windy mountainside, a song in his heart like an uncaged bird. You wish me to sacrifice or swear devotion to any god? Willingly. Then let me go in peace, showing my bare arse to your gods as I go.’

‘You’re a blasphemer,’ said Hodge.

‘If it is blasphemy then God will punish me for it.’

‘He is right,’ said Nicholas wearily. ‘Perhaps he is a man with no soul.’

‘No, I have my soul.’ Abdul lowered his eyes and stared into the candlelight. He said again softly, ‘I have my soul.’

They heard the sound of footsteps in the passageway and Abdul cupped his hands around the candle flame. Then they heard a stertorous breathing and he took his hands away again.

‘My tubercular and tabefied friend Diego the Jailer!’

‘Tabefied?’ said Hodge.

‘Phthisic,’ said Abdul. ‘Marasmous. No hope for him, poor fellow.’

A gaunt, grubby figure with slumped shoulders and keys at his belt, Diego laboriously unlocked the door. Then he handed in a bundle of fresh candles, a large flask of water and, to Nicholas and Hodge’s astonishment, a wooden trencher steaming with some roast fowl. Abdul took them from him and sat down cross-legged again before the candle and began to eat. Diego locked up. Nicholas watched his movements closely.

‘Don’t even think of it,’ growled Diego through the bars, then hawked and spat. ‘Not a chance. There’s two soldiers at the end of this passage who’ll skewer you like hogs the moment you stick your head out of the cell.’

‘These two,’ said Abdul with his mouth full, pointing at them, ‘they escaped from Algiers prison three times.’

Now their jaws dropped open. ‘How in the devil’s name did you. .’

Abdul smiled infuriatingly and tore another strip of glistening meat from a slender bone. ‘I must say, this is an excellent bit of guineafowl. Well done, Diego. How is the girl?’

Diego ran his tongue over his black teeth. ‘Goes like a drunk mare,’ he said.

‘She is a generous-hearted soul. I owe her. And when do we expect. . His Excellency in town?’

‘Tomorrow, I heard.’

Abdul looked back at his two cellmates. ‘Don Pedro Deza will be in town tomorrow, and will then want to question you. Pedro Deza is a genius of his kind. He knows how to set one man against another. He could make a man betray his own mother. You should start praying to your god. Did he not once send an angel to rescue St Peter and St Paul in a similar predicament?’

‘If I had a fist free,’ said Hodge, ‘I’d lam you.’

‘But you have not. Which is why I shall continue to taunt you. But you should understand,’ he ran his finger round the trencher and sucked up the juices, ‘that there is teaching in my taunting. I may not love you as my brothers. But it would please me, nevertheless, if you were to avoid having every bone in your hands and feet broken by Pedro Deza and his ingenious machines. Before you die.’

Abdul slept for a while. Nicholas and Hodge bowed their heads but did not sleep. Their cellmate revived very suddenly and yawned and said, ‘I must be out of here in another day or two. It dampens my spirits.’ He looked at them sharply. ‘You are sure you have nothing to sell?’

Nicholas shook his head.

‘Even information?’

‘No.’

‘And there are things Pedro Deza, peace be upon him, would want to know of you?’

‘I suppose.’

‘But you are of heroic temper, and will resist telling him?’ He shook his head. ‘Pedro Deza knows how to make a man spill the innermost secrets of his heart. It does not take long either.’ He belched. ‘Mm, that was a lovely bit of guineafowl. Would you care to gnaw the bones?’

‘Up your arse,’ said Hodge.

‘I do not know,’ said Abdul, ‘how men so foolish and ox-like and undiplomatic as yourselves ever survive long enough to breed.’

They were in front of Pedro Deza in less than two hours. They sat on wooden chairs in a lofty stone chamber — still chained at wrist and ankle. Two soldiers stood behind them. In front of them sat a man at a wide desk. He had a narrow, ascetic face, so white that it might have been powdered, and watery fish-eyes that blinked too rarely. He kept himself very still.

‘So,’ he recapitulated. ‘You come ashore under cover of darkness in Cadiz, blue-eyed English Protestants, and from Moorish Africa. English thieves. Your Queen Elizabeth has dealings with the Sultanate of Morocco, does she not? Because both she and Morocco are enemies of Catholic Spain.’

‘I do not know,’ said Nicholas. ‘But I repeat, we are Catholics, we did not come from Moorish Africa but from a sunken galley, and we are not thieves. You have seen our manacle sores and scars. Look.’

Pedro Deza remained quite expressionless. ‘What do you know of Cyprus?’

‘Cyprus?’

‘And of the great sea battle that is to come? The Turk is building new war galleys on the Bosphorus at the rate of three a week. Where will they sail?’

‘I do not know.’

‘Because you are mere humble vagabonds and thieves?’

‘We are no thieves.’

‘You have never stolen? What do you eat — air? Wandering vagabonds like yourselves, mercenaries, spies?’

‘Gentleman adventurers.’

Deza smiled. It was not a reassuring smile. ‘You tell me you have never stolen?’

Nicholas shrugged. ‘In the back streets of Algiers, when we fled through the alleyways with the manacles still on our wrists. Just like now. Yes, we stole.’

‘You escaped from the jail in Algiers? This is impossible.’

‘Not if you know how. We escaped three times.’

Deza laughed. A thin sound, more like a cough.

Nicholas said, ‘The first time we filed through the bars. The second time we started a fire. The third time we faked that we had a noisome fever. We rubbed our faces with plaster dust, played the delirious madmen.’

‘Then you were recaptured and put on the galleys? How long did you slave?’

‘Time is not counted there. But in all, it seems — two years.’

‘Two years a prisoner or a galley slave. And you are still alive, and not maddened?’

‘I wouldn’t say not maddened,’ said Nicholas drily. ‘But we still have a shred of reason in us. We had many adventures. Yet all we wanted to do after Malta was get home to England. I have an estate there, but it is in the hands of-’

‘You were at Malta?’

‘Six years ago. We were.’

Deza drummed his elegant fingers. He was getting impatient. ‘Now that caps your tall tale, Inglés. Only heroes were at Malta six years ago. The Knights of St John. It was the greatest, most heroic siege in history. And you tell me you were there. You fought there?’

‘We did.’

‘I have been to Malta. You lie.’

‘I do not lie.’

Deza leaned forward. ‘Be very careful what you claim, my friend. If you lie to Pedro Deza, he will find you out, as he has found out ten thousand before you. In the dungeons below there are machines that can break every bone in your hands and your feet. Crack them into shards like a nutshell under a hammer, and ensure you are still in your senses, though voiceless from screaming with pain.’

‘I don’t doubt that your machines are very efficient.’

Pedro Deza sat back. ‘So. Tell me about Malta.’

Nicholas looked sidelong at Hodge, then cleared his throat. Then he told Pedro Deza about Malta.

At first Deza took notes. After a while he laid down his pen and just listened. A long time later, he sat and stared in silence.

‘Truly,’ was all he said, shaking his head very slowly. ‘Truly.’

At last he stood. ‘Inglés, your tale is persuasive. But tell me this. Why did you ask your cellmate, Abdul, if he could get you back to Algiers?’

‘I did not!’

‘He tells me you did.’

‘That double-crossing bastard,’ cried Hodge, rising from his chair until cuffed heavily from behind.

‘Below with them,’ said Pedro Deza.