Blood Red Sea

9

They began with a beating, the soldiers wearing heavy leather gauntlets, Nicholas and Hodge roped to the wall, naked but for loincloths.

‘There is no plan,’ said Nicholas yet again, hearing his words bubble malformed through the blood in his mouth. He spat. He had learned long ago that nothing makes you sicker than swallowing your own blood.

‘We had no plan,’ he said more clearly. ‘We are no spies, no allies of the Moors. You know as well as I that the word of that Abdul of Tripoli is worth less than a beggar’s purse. In the square here I saw a girl being beaten by two soldiers in armour, with pikes.’

‘Chivalry indeed,’ said Deza. ‘But it is only when such a treacherous people as those Moriscos are driven from Spain that our kingdom will be safe. Not until.’

‘Kingdoms and policy,’ said Nicholas. ‘These are not my interests. I saw a girl being beaten.’

‘A Morisco girl. An unbeliever, a Christ-denier and devil worshipper. These Moors are the enemy within. Their souls are dark, their very blood is dirty. And you went to her aid. A dirty Moorish whore.’

‘No whore. But your mother was.’

Not a wise thing to say. Hodge bowed his head and closed his eyes. Nicholas had often been unwise. Deza raised an eyebrow and the soldier hit him hard with a bunched fist. He managed to pull back a fraction as the fist connected, softening the blow. But only a little. It hurt very much. He drew himself back from the pain, as Stanley and Smith had taught him. The pain was very great, but it was there, look, there, in his left eye, his nose, his jaw, throbbing in his ribs and his belly. But he was not there. He, Nicholas, was here, safe and deep inside the bone cave of his skull, looking out. Aware of that pain there, but not part of it. Unaffected by it. He was somewhere else, something other.

When he came to his full senses again, Pedro Deza was standing in front of him holding something bright and gleaming.

‘And this?’ he said. ‘Concealed in the ingenious belt that held your britches up?’

It was the diamond necklace.

Nicholas could not help but smile as he told the truth. ‘I took it from the treasure chest of a corsair captain as his galley was sinking.’

‘You have a romantic imagination,’ said Deza. ‘But I think you were carrying it to pay for a large shipment of arms and munitions from Africa to the Spanish coast, to help England’s Moriscos allies.’

‘You have a fine imagination too, kind sir,’ said Nicholas. ‘It’s a fake.’

The jester was quite unbroken.

One of the soldiers asked about the machines. Deza considered briefly and then shook his head. ‘It is enough for today. Throw them back in the cells.’

The machines tomorrow, perhaps. But there was much here he did not understand. Though all they had told him so far was mere fairy tale, and the diamond necklace looked real and was damning evidence, yet Pedro Deza had been interrogating men long enough to know the liar from the truth-teller. And in this one’s quiet and steady voice, to his puzzlement, he heard nothing but truthfulness.

They were unmanacled and shoved through the barred door. They lay on the floor of the cell, trying not to move. Everything throbbed. There was no Abdul.

‘I will meet him again, I swear,’ said Hodge. ‘And when I do-’

‘I wonder,’ said Nicholas. His mouth was so swollen his voice sounded strange and slurred to him.

‘Wonder what?’

‘If he really told Deza such lies. Or if Deza himself was inventing. He is more cunning than a fox.’

Hodge breathed out. ‘I hate lies.’

Nicholas started to feel about, and to his surprise found the stub of candle still set in its own melted wax on the stone flags.

‘Strange,’ he muttered.

In the blackness he could feel a trail of candlewax leading away from the source into a far corner. Yet the floor did not slope.

He followed the little ridge of hardened wax until his fingers encountered a hole in the far corner, and within, his fingers closed on. . a fire-steel.

With the candle lit, he explored again, and in the same shadowy hole, barely large enough for a mouse, he found something else.

‘What?’ said Hodge, voice tight.

Nicholas turned back and smiled as well as his face would allow. ‘If this was a romance, it would be a key, or a bag of food at least. But this is no romance, it’s the life of mortal men. So instead what we have here is’ — he held up a tiny bottle, barely longer than his forefinger, popped out the cork and sniffed — ‘what smells like truly filthy Spanish grape spirit.’

They took turns pouring it down their throats. It tasted even worse than it smelt.

‘Filthy,’ said Hodge. ‘Filthier than Wagg’s cider brandy back home.’ He tipped it back again. ‘Stings like hell too.’

‘I think,’ said Nicholas, when they had finished and sat gasping, eyes watering, throats burning, ‘that Abdul of Tripoli, like all men, is maybe a mix of good and bad.’

Hodge belched and then gasped again. ‘Hell itself doesn’t belch out vapours like that from the lake of fire and brimstone.’

‘Keep away from the candle,’ said Nicholas.

He slept badly, had restless dreams. Once again he was in prison. Only twenty-two and doomed to die, the days and the years running by, time like a smooth evil river. His whole life would waste away in manacles, in jail or on a stinking galley. The sun came up and went down in the beautiful sky, white birds flying, wings translucent in the sun. Girls singing, combing their hair, the warm wine of life. . And here they lay, he and Hodge, rotting in another filthy dungeon. He dreamed there was a black monk in the cell with them, and the black monk was really Death. He raised his skeletal hands to bless them. Vivite, he said. Venio.

Live. I am coming.

He stirred. The cell was still dark but somehow he knew it was day, and there was someone with them. Not in the cell, but just outside the door. Someone rattling the bars.

‘Wake up, idlers and fools. Move yourselves!’ A girl’s voice, whispering harshly.

His eyes were clotted. He rubbed them and stared. It was Maria, from the wine shop. Maria de l’Adoracion.

‘You!’

‘Over here, fool. Unless you want me to throw you food like a dog.’

‘You brought us food?’

‘The more fool I for doing so.’

‘How did you get in?’

‘Persuaded the jailer.’

‘How?’

‘How do women usually. . oh, do not ask. Here. Bread. Watered wine in here. Some almonds and some oranges. It stinks in there.’

‘The lack of privies is a disgrace, in a tavern of this quality. We will complain to the landlord.’

‘You are such fools. Look at your faces.’

‘We cannot. No looking glasses either. A disgrace.’

He and Hodge slurped from the flask of watered wine.

‘You look terrible,’ said Maria. ‘So they are beating you?’

‘With enthusiasm. Can you help us?’

‘I? Don’t be ridiculous. You are in the dungeons of Pedro Deza. Pedro Deza is the Chancellor of Granada. He has personal audiences with King Philip himself. You have made an enemy of a very powerful man.’

She could have wept but she held herself. Soon they would be put to the torture, these two. Then they would either die, or emerge trembling into the daylight in another day or two, speechless, tongueless, and crippled for life. She had seen it before. Yet they still joked. Englishmen and fools. But she did not weep. Let them be ignorant of it a few more hours.

Nicholas chewed on the bread as best he could.

‘Your lip is bleeding.’

‘One kiss from you, and-’

She pulled a face of genuine disgust. ‘Kiss a dying man through the bars of a dungeon door!’

‘You are cruel.’

‘Cruel but fair,’ she said.

Nicholas couldn’t help but laugh.

‘And all for the sake of a Morisco girl, so I hear,’ she said. ‘What possessed you?’

He shrugged. ‘It seemed right at the time.’

‘You are a fool.’

‘Surely you mean a great and chivalrous hero, and conqueror of your beating heart?’

Then she seized his arm through the bars and held him urgently. ‘Do anything that they ask. Co-operate with Pedro Deza.’

‘Turn traitor?’

‘Just survive,’ she whispered. ‘Just survive.’

Then she was gone.

The hours of waiting were a torment, though they tried to remain calm. Both had a terrible sense of foreboding about today.

Then keys were rattling in the locks, and they were dragged out of the cell and along the passageway to a heavy wooden door studded with black nails. They heard the voice of Pedro Deza behind them.

‘Today, my English friends, we will hear the truth.’

‘You have heard the truth,’ said Nicholas. He could hear the pleading in his own voice, and despised himself for it. Yet he was very afraid now. Afraid of the excruciating pain of torture, but more of the way it sent a man mad, never to be sane again.

The door swung open and they gasped. Within was a large, high-arched chamber, brightly lit with twenty or thirty flaming torches all around the walls. There was a table set with a jug and some beakers of coloured glass, and arranged in a rough circle, a number of machines comprised of strong wooden beams, ropes, manacles, weights and metal bars with their ends hammered into hooks and claws. High up on the wall at the far end of the chamber was a large wooden crucifix. Christ’s eyes were raised to heaven.

Both of them were pleading now, saying Please, please. Trying to keep their voices calm, as befits men, but desperate and afraid. Please, we have told you everything. Please, this is not needed. Please.

They were strapped into seats with rapid efficiency, and Nicholas found his right arm laid on to a thick oak board, manacled tight down. His fingers were splayed around some nails.

Above his hand hovered a long wooden arm with a lead weight at the end of it.

‘Please,’ he said again. ‘Let us talk.’

‘Let me show you this first,’ said Pedro Deza. He ordered the torturer to unlock his arm again.

‘Move your hand out of the way. Quickly now.’

‘I swear that my friend and I have told you-’

‘You see the wooden board there, where your hand was just lying? You see the holes and the gashes in the wood. And there in the gashes, the dark stains? That is blood, of course.’ He pointed up to the weight above. ‘No larger than an apple, but you see it is like an inverted pyramid.’ Deza spoke with soft admiration for his machines. ‘When we release this lever it will come down very fast and hard, and it will smash into the back of your hand, like this.’

He signalled to the torturer, and they pulled the lever. The heavy lead weight punched down into the wooden board and made a hole half an inch deep.

‘It both punctures and smashes at the same time, you see?’

‘I see.’

The weight was raised up again. ‘Now. Lay your hand down there once more.’

Naturally Nicholas struggled against it, but two of the torturers forced his arm back down and splayed his hand and manacled him tight.

Across the room, Hodge had closed his eyes.

‘Open your eyes,’ said another of the torturers, ‘and watch your friend.’ He touched a cold blade to Hodge’s cheek. ‘Or I will slice off your eyelids.’

Hodge knew he meant it. He opened his eyes. The tears ran down.

‘Aw,’ said the torturer. ‘There, there. Don’t cry. It’ll soon be over for him. Then it’ll be your turn.’

‘Eat shit,’ said Hodge.

The torturer grinned.

‘Look at your right hand,’ said Pedro Deza to Nicholas. ‘Thin but strong, with a nice scar or two, as befits a dashing Protestant agent and spy, in league with the Moors against Spain. I see some powder burns too. But alas, your hand is not strong enough. In perhaps — half a minute, shall we say? — this weight will slam down again, and this time it will not be bare board to meet it, but the back of your hand here. Look at the bones, delicate as chicken bones when you consider, when you compare the bones of a mortal man to a hard lead weight. And the soft flesh between. Most of all, the nerves and the sinews that make a hand strong. These will all be cut away and pulped by this machine. The first time will hurt very much. Then we will give you a sip of this special drink,’ he gestured over to the table with the coloured glass beakers, ‘to ensure that you remain conscious, though in great pain. In very great pain. Then the machine will smash down again, and again. Each time will hurt more than the last. By about the seventh or eighth time, you will have screamed yourself hoarse and no more sound will come from your throat. This will be a relief to us, as men’s screams can be very trying.

‘Finally the right hand that you knew so well and loved so much will be completely smashed. Nothing but a bloody mess of meat and bone. Little bits of it falling away over the side of the board there. Little chunks. Then we will gently take your left hand, and lay it down there and do the same. Then over here, there is a similar machine which will also pulp your right foot to nothing. Then your left foot. And you must understand: this is only the start. Yet it will be the longest hour of your life.

‘And so, one last time. Answer me these questions truthfully. What do you know of the Turkish war fleet? Where are they sailing? What did you ask of Abdul of Tripoli? What is your connection to the Moor in whose house you were found hiding? What was your code word, your name? What is the Moor planning? What are the names and residences of all his accomplices? And where is the current hiding place of Aben Humeya and Aben Farax?’

Nicholas shook his head, preparing himself. ‘I do not know.’

Pedro Deza waited a long time. Then he said, ‘I am not a cruel man. But I have a task to do. You understand this. We must get at the truth.’

He signalled to the torturer behind to release the lever.