Blood Red Sea

12

Don John had been listening for the last minute or more, silent in his gold-braided lambskin cabin slippers. Behind him was the venerable Don Luis de Requesens, looking anxious.

Smith stood, and Don John stood eyeball to eyeball with him though only half his width.

‘Pray continue,’ he said softly. He was quite expressionless but for a certain blaze in his eyes, six inches from Smith’s. ‘Don’t mind me.’

Smith did not flinch. He had faced worse in his time than an offended prince. ‘He might just yet. . pull us all together.’

It was impossible to tell Don John’s mood. His gaze flicked between Smith and Stanley. ‘Which is the better swordsman of you two?’

‘Smith, by a whisker,’ allowed Stanley. ‘Though he’s a clumsy great oaf in every other respect. The gallant Hodge here delivers a hefty blow, and the thin lad Ingoldsby knows a trick or two.’

‘I may tup my social inferiors,’ said Don John, ‘I do not duel with them.’

‘My father was a Knight of St John, as you are,’ said Nicholas angrily.

‘I am a Knight Commander Grand Cross,’ snapped Don John, ‘and of the royal blood.’

‘My father always said there are noble births and noble hearts, and the two do not always coincide.’

Don John smiled thinly. The lad had fine spirit, and now his blood was up.

‘Stand!’ Don John moved out on to the deck.

Nicholas’s anger abated. ‘It has been a long day, Your Excellency, and I am very weary.’

‘Not as weary as you were at times upon the walls of Malta.’

Nicholas looked rueful. ‘That is true. But I still don’t see why I should be punished for my comrade Smith’s. . intemperate speech.’

Don John had already drawn his Toledo blade and was swishing it through the night air. Then he vaulted lightly on to the gangway and thrust once or twice at the standard post.

‘To duel with a prince of the Habsburgs is hardly a punishment,’ he said. ‘More of an honour. Then come, let us exchange a few passados.’

‘Sire,’ said Stanley, ‘the moon is thin, and the stern lanterns give barely the light of a glow-worm. It is dangerous to duel in such darkness.’

‘He is right, Your Excellency,’ put in Don Luis de Requesens. ‘Do you think this is entirely-’

‘Danger,’ said Don John — cut, cut, guard, thrust — ‘is the salt and pepper upon the tedious meat of life.’ He raised his blade and kissed the cold steel to his lips. ‘And absolute fearlessness is the surest sign of a true nobleman. . along with eighteen different varieties of pox. In guardia!’

‘Give me your sword,’ hissed Nicholas.

‘Don’t be a fool,’ said Stanley quietly, standing between him and the table where the sword still lay. ‘Though he’s still wearing his cabin slippers, and I’ve never seen him wield a sword before, he’ll have had the finest fencing masters in Europe since the day he first walked.’

‘He’ll not kill me.’

‘What if he divests you of an eye?’

‘I’ve got another.’

The boy moved with his usual lightning speed, ducking under Stanley’s outstretched arm, snatching the sword from the table and spinning away before Stanley had time to stop him.

It was the first time he had held a good blade in years. He swished and whipped it, felt the weight and the counterweight, the fine balance, and the sinewy strength in his lean arm. How quickly it came back. And the thrill too, the fierce delight. He began to feel alive again. As if the darkness were clearing and a hot sun burning instead.

He drew up before Don John.

‘Good fellow,’ said the Prince. ‘Ingoldsby, eh? There’s gold in that name.’

‘That there is,’ said Nicholas.

In the shadows behind them, around the mainmast and along the side walkways above the sleeping rowers’ heads, the Real’s mariners had gathered to watch the fight. Sicilians, Sardinians, Marseillans, Andalusians. It was forbidden for them to look the royal prince in the eye, but they might be quiet spectators at this lunatic dancing duel. Noblemen, they muttered among themselves. All loons and inbred crackbrains.

The two swordsmen made a quick bow, and then all was a flurry of flashing blades and metallic rings. Their skill was astonishing. Neither Nicholas nor Don John dealt much force, but such was their speed that their blades were a blur. It was evident immediately from their different styles that Stanley had spoken the truth. The prince fenced with a kind of schooled and fluid perfection, showing mastery of every style, every move and stroke. The unexpected riverso, the dancing schivar di vita, the flamboyant and frankly pointless guardia alta, sword held high above his head like a matador about to slay the bull.

But more important than this flamboyant display, there was a steady blaze in his eyes which showed he meant to win. Yet Nicholas, schooled only in the bloody hand-to-hand fighting on the walls of Malta, and whatever backstreet skirmishes he had survived since then, matched him cut and thrust. It was his speed which saved him. He could see each blow coming in and block it without any apparent difficulty. But that speed of movement could not be long maintained on so still and sultry a night. They broke off after a mere minute or so, both panting and heated.

‘More wine!’ called Don John. ‘Well watered!’

They threw back their goblets and tossed them empty to Smith and Stanley.

‘In the name of Mohammed and his thirteen fat wives,’ said Don John, slashing and flexing his blade again, eyeing its edge, ‘but you make quite a satisfying opponent.’

They resumed. Thrust, parry, thrust, parry, lock blades, apart. And then Nicholas, roughly schooled as he was, made a half-turn and executed an entirely unorthodox blow that succeeded only by virtue of surprise. His blade cut Don John across the upper right arm, a long though shallow cut. Don John stopped and took a backward step. He did not glance down for a second at the wound, nor clutch it with his hand, look pale and aghast, or even remotely surprised. He stood and bled gently upon his white satin shirt, and raised his eyebrows.

‘Good tap, begad. I did not see that coming. What blow do you call that?’

‘My best,’ said Nicholas. He risked a smile. ‘The passado alla braggadocio.’

‘New to me.’

‘I just made it up.’ He raised his blade in guardia.

Don John smiled too. This English commoner Ingoldsby was quite a fellow.

‘Sire,’ called Don Luis de Requesens. ‘You must desist! This is madness!’

Don John gave no sign of hearing him. ‘I had best finish you quickly before you cut through my sword arm altogether, Don Niccolo. For Christendom is lost without me, you know.’

And with that the prince pressed forward hard, unrelenting now, all his years of experience showing. He wrong-footed the boy with a move called a ballestra, one of his favourites, a bewildering mix of feint and hopping lunge. He used the layout of the deck against him, had him stumbling back against the rail, and then with an extraordinary looping movement of the wrist, seemed to wrap his sword in a spiral round Nicholas’s and flicked it free. The blade arced away over the opposite rail towards the sea.

‘Catch that,’ drawled Don John, not looking back.

Stanley was already hurling himself across the deck, trying to catch the sword at the last instant before it went overboard, even if the tempered steel did cut into his palm. He failed, and the sword vanished. He gave a groan. That was no mean weapon.

Don John meanwhile had the point of his sword at the boy’s throat.

‘Don Luis!’ he called. ‘A gold ducat for the first mariner to dive down and fetch that blade for Fra Eduardo here.’

‘But sire, ’tis three or four fathoms down, and inhospitably dark.’

‘A gold ducat!’ Don John turned to the mariners in the shadows. ‘From my own princely purse.’

It was a month’s wages. The mariners eyed each other. The moon was no more than a splinter. They’d have to grope around on the sandy seabed like blindworms. But the sea was warm, and a ducat was a ducat.

There was a splash as half a dozen of them promptly went over the side.

Don John returned his sword to its sheath. Nicholas rubbed the dent in his throat.

‘Not ineffectual,’ murmured the prince. ‘Though clearly schooled in the Duelling Academy of the Backstreet Gutter. Yet that very lack of schooling can sometimes spring the winning surprise. As in chess.’ He fixed his eyes on the boy. ‘You honour your father. Who is dead. Am I right?’

Nicholas frowned. ‘How did you know?’

‘You referred to him in the past tense.’ He added with a certain gentleness, ‘Besides, it is obvious. I honoured mine also. I sometimes think that sons honour their fathers more in death than in life.’

Then he turned away and said with his usual drawl, ‘We dine at eight.’

‘You need that cut stitched, sire,’ said Smith.

‘Indeed I do. Wouldn’t want me dying of poisoned blood, now, would we, Brother? For then who would lead Europe to victory over the Terrible Turk, if not this whoremonger bastard in white velvet. Hm?’

Smith bowed low, perhaps to hide his smile.

The prince retired to his cabin.

Stanley smacked his mighty fist into his palm, eyes shining.

A dripping mariner had just come up the ladder with a very fine sword in his hand.

The prince reappeared precisely as the bell towers of Cadiz tolled eight.

His four fellow diners tried manfully to keep their expressions neutral as they stood and surveyed him. Don Luis de Requesens, appearing beside his lord and master, wore a look of ancient resignation.

‘A man who has just been cut in a duel,’ declared Don John, flicking his cuffs of finest Bruges lace, ‘should always dress his very finest. Just as a man should step up to the gallows wearing every pearl and ruby in his jewel box.’

He took his seat at the head of the table. All sat.

‘The Almighty has so ordained the lives of men to be a series of preposterous jokes and humiliations, for our sins. So we may as well laugh along with him, dressed in our finest, always maintaining our wit, our poise and our. . sprezzatura. “Nonchalance”, I think, is the best translation of that dancing Italian word.’

‘Intriguing theology,’ murmured Stanley.

Don John inclined his head gracefully. ‘And do we not look the part? Do we not look the very thing?’

The prince was now freshly shaved, his neat beard immaculate, his cheeks high coloured and smooth as an infant’s behind. He wore a pinked shirt of white satin, narrow-sleeved to the wrist and fastened with silver hooks, and then those flamboyant lace cuffs. Over this he wore a crimson doublet of a colour ordered precisely to match the crimson of his ship. The doublet was embroidered with cream-coloured flowers and gleaming pearls. He wore a hat rakishly on one side with a large feather, and a fresh posy of flowers with another pearl and a ruby at the sprig. His breeches, stockings and fringed garters were all white, and his shoes were so highly polished they could have served as a lady’s looking glass, had they not been so encrusted in gold buckles, sequins and precious stones.

‘Very fine, Your Excellency,’ said Smith gravely.

‘A picture of majesty,’ said Stanley with equal gravity, ‘and surely the terror of the Turk.’

‘We thank you,’ said Don John. He glanced cursorily over the dress of his aides-de-camp: much-darned linen shirts, worn breeches and scuffed leather boots. ‘Though I have my doubts, brother knights, whether you yourselves are the most perspicacious judges of fashion.’

As he raised his sardonic eyebrows, Nicholas realised that the prince really did have them plucked, arched high and thin over his pale forehead. Even for a simple dinner with this quartet of vagabonds and travel-stained knights, he had clearly powdered his face and touched a dab of rouge to his fine high cheekbones. Piss o’ the nettle, what a mincing cotquean! Yet he knew how to handle a sword, that was sure, and seemed to disdain all pain and fear. You could never judge a man by first impressions. And if you looked beyond the exaggerated courtliness, the absurd wardrobe, the peacockery, you saw that his dark eyes flashed and burned when he talked of crusade and war.

‘Don Luis de Requesens here, my devoted tutor,’ drawled the prince, ‘whose life’s work has been to raise me to virtue and righteousness’ — he smiled at the solemn old man — ‘what an abject failure you have been, incidentally, Don Luis. I mean, look at me. When I usurp the throne of Spain, I shall have Don Luis beheaded immediately, along with my beloved brother Philip. Secondly, I shall establish a large harem of dusky maidens in the Escorial, for my sole delight.’

‘You should not make such jests, sire,’ said Don Luis.

‘Very well,’ said Don John. ‘Let us forgo the harem. Aha. Here comes the soup.’

They dined in a soft breeze, the great galley barely rocking, candles in lanterns, moths fluttering around them, nightjars hawking over the coast. They made the most of the fresh fare from the markets of Cadiz while they could. There were sardines, Serrano ham, wheaten bread, spiced rice with raisins, the last oranges of the season, apricots, cherries. Soon enough they would be living on simpler fare.

‘Sea voyages,’ said Don John, ‘are bad for the complexion but excellent for the waistline. I tend to survive on wine alone.’ He sipped delicately. Nicholas couldn’t imagine him drunk. It would go against his perfect poise.

Then the prince raised his goblet. ‘To Cyprus!’

‘To Cyprus!’

Stanley set down his goblet again and said carefully, ‘You are. . coming with us to Cyprus, sire? In person?’

‘My brother will not stop me again,’ said Don John, his voice sharp edged.

‘But your mission is also a diplomatic one. To unite the Holy League.’

‘A mere bagatelle. My brilliant Machiavellian mind has already planned it. I will warn the Genoese that they risk being outshone by Venice if they do not join with us. I will tell Venice the same thing regarding the Genoese, and further intimate that they stand to lose Cyprus to Genoa, not to Constantinople, if it falls.’

Stanley and Smith looked nonplussed.

‘Diplomacy and a poetic imagination are closely allied,’ said Don John. ‘How to persuade my brother to commit the Spanish navy to the fight? I am still dwelling on this. I will conceive some noble lie. He thinks only of defence, like all cautious spirits. But he who stays within his own fortifications is lost.

‘The knights, of course, we can count on, and the Papal States are fully committed. But France is more and more divided within, and that foul old witch — beg pardon, I mean Her Majesty Catherine de’ Medici — is not entirely sympathetic to our cause either, I fear. The Turks are still outplaying us in diplomacy, as on every other front. Brilliantly setting us against each other.’ He broke bread. ‘Tearing us apart.’

‘The revolt of the Moriscos was — is — a cunning move,’ said Smith. ‘And we know Constantinople was behind it.’

‘And what a foul war that was,’ said Don John. His mocking lilt vanished. He took a sip of wine.

‘His Excellency was hit on the helmet by an arquebus bullet,’ put in Don Luis. He shook his head and clacked his teeth. ‘He simply took off the helmet and glared at it, and said, “Damn me, that dent has simply ruined the symmetry of the thing.”’

They smiled.

Don John said, unsmiling, ‘It was no true war. A campaign, against maids and children, against fugitive rebels. Moorish women fighting with nothing but daggers and dust. A civil war in all its ugliness. It made me sick to the stomach. You see why I long to face the Turk openly? Give me a clean war, a true enemy, a fight for good against evil. Any other war soon sickens the soul.’

‘We saw a Moorish family dying in the snow,’ said Stanley, his voice soft and low. ‘In the snowy passes of the Alpujarras. Their house had been burned out, the man killed, I think the woman and her daughter ravished. King Philip had lately given the troops the right to take booty. They had nothing.’

‘And so?’

‘And so — we found a wagon and took them down to Malaga. By the time we got there, all three children were dead of a fever. The mother went on alone to Morocco.’

Don John’s gaze was far away. ‘Hernando de Talavera, saintly archbishop of Granada, said that the Mohammedans ought to adopt our religion, and we ought to adopt their morals.’ He dipped some bread in his wine but did not eat it. ‘Christians drunk in the streets, women arguing with their men, orphans and widows uncared for. . and then enriching themselves at the expense of the expelled Moors. But this is the way of the world. Edward of England took the property of the Jews, did he not? Philip the Fair of France fell upon the treasures of the Templars. That fat villain Henry — begging your pardons, Englishmen — destroyed the monasteries for their gold. And in Muslim lands, of course, Jew and Christian have always been taxed and oppressed.’

He sighed and then became spirited again. ‘All a melancholy business. Trust not in the princes of this world. Except myself, of course. Let us talk no more of it. To Cyprus, and a clean war.’

He clicked his fingers to one of the servants and murmured something.

He turned back. ‘Now I shall play you a piece of my own composition upon the lute. A gallant love ditty, serenade, or amorous dirge addressed to my beloved Diana de Falangola. Or Ana de Toledo, or Maria-Theresa, or whichever really. They’re all much the same when they’re lying underneath you.’

Smith almost choked.

The servant handed over a beautiful instrument of finest Neapolitan make, inlaid — excessively inlaid, perhaps — with mother-of-pearl.

Don John stroked it with long, elegant fingers. ‘My own design,’ he said.

And then he began.

‘O mistress mine, now hearken to my sad plaint. .’

They listened with perfect politeness, and afterwards they applauded at length. Don John stood and bowed, and then, bidding them all a good night and good sleep, retired to his cabin.

Smith said, ‘I wonder if he knows any songs that cannot be heard?’

They went and stood at the rails, the four of them, and looked out across the harbour. The night was warm and sweet and there was night jasmine on the air.

‘Penny for your thoughts, Brother,’ said Stanley. ‘Well, a groat anyway. Let us not overvalue them. The devil knows, you’re no St Thomas Aquinas.’

Smith showed his teeth. ‘I was thinking that this prince — for all his outlandishness, his courtly absurdity — he appeals to me more and more. Recall what he said about our lad Ingoldsby’s unschooled blows, and the element of surprise, the unexpected.’

‘And?’

‘I begin to think, though he is a very different man to Jean de la Valette, he may be our best hope to lead the Holy League against the Turk.’

‘With an extensive wardrobe, but little real military experience, except against the wretched Moriscos, and none whatsoever of naval command?’

‘Aye. Because it is, like an unschooled blow, so unexpected — it might just make sense.’

‘Credo quia absurdum,’ murmured Stanley. ‘As Tertullian said of our Christian faith itself. I believe it, because it is absurd.’

Then they saw a small boat coming towards them in the darkness.

Nicholas peered.

It was the Moor. Abdul of Tripoli.

‘You again,’ called Nicholas.

‘You know him?’ said Smith.

‘We shared a prison cell.’

‘Permission to come aboard?’ asked Abdul.

‘Denied,’ said Smith.

‘What do you want?’ asked Nicholas.

‘To sail east with you.’

Smith didn’t even reply, just laughed.

‘Why?’ asked Nicholas.

‘I want to get to Aleppo.’

‘Chained to the bench?’ said Smith. ‘As a volunteer oar slave?’ ‘Certainly not,’ said Abdul. ‘I am a man of fine sensibility, of delicate soul, I do not-’

‘Then find your own ship. We don’t take Moors.’

‘I know much that can be of use. I have travelled widely.’

Smith pondered. He knew the type.

‘He did leave us a flask of spirit in the prison cell,’ said Nicholas. ‘He did not betray us.’

Eventually Smith said, ‘You can tie up and sleep in your boat. You will know tomorrow.’

‘Do you have a blanket for me?’

‘No.’

Surprisingly, Abdul agreed, and curled up to sleep in the bobbing boat.

Smith said sotto voce, ‘He must really want to sail with us. I wonder why?’

Later there were just the two of them on deck, Nicholas and Hodge, and they were both a little drunk. The moonlight and the light of the swaying stern lanterns rippled on the gentle sea, and they looked out at the scattered lights of the great city, and then the darkness of the waterlands and the delta of the Guadalquivir. Beyond, the mighty ramparts of the towering Sierras, and the gaunt and austere tableland of Castile. It was very beautiful. Nicholas’s head swam with sweet Spanish wine and disbelieving joy. He could not only scent night jasmine on the air. He could scent adventure.

Here they were, aboard a princely galley, reunited with the two men he loved as he had loved his father. They were still young, and free again, and sound in wind and limb. His blood burned within him. Perhaps it was all a dream. Perhaps they would wake tomorrow morning and find themselves back in Pedro Deza’s dungeons, or on a corsair galley. But for now they were young, and the wine was sweet, and life was very beautiful.

‘Well, friend Hodge,’ he said, his eyes shining with a strange, mixed excitement. ‘Shall we sail into battle once more, for Christendom and the Holy Catholic Church? Shall we go east with Don John of Austria in one last glorious crusade, we two exiles and comrades-in-arms, to meet with the numberless Ottoman fleet sailing under the crescent banner of Islam?’

‘How much wine have you had?’

‘Shall we drown in far Orient seas, or shall we live to find glory and honour and the love of fair maidens, there beneath the burning Levantine sun, upon the fabled coast of Palestine? Shall we walk once more the streets of Holy Jerusalem?’

Hodge burped deeply. ‘Buggered if I know what else to do with myself. But for now I’m going to bed.’

Nicholas stood alone a while longer, his vision swimming with dreams of medieval chivalry in which he couldn’t quite believe. Surely the age of Crusades was past, the age of paladins, and lionhearts, and golden castles standing proud upon the shores of Outremer? But oh, that the ancient heartlands of Christianity — Alexandria and Antioch, Damascus, and Jerusalem itself, long since overrun by the savage Saracens — that they might yet be Christian again! And that he, Sir Nicholas Ingoldsby, Knight Grand Cross (but with a special clause remitting him from chastity), might yet ride into the Holy City, urbs Zion aurea, resplendent as Bohemond upon a white charger, gleaming with gold and crimson trappings, crowded around by dark-eyed, adoring maidens. .

He smiled to himself, drained the last of his wine and weaved his way down below, and slept for eleven hours.