Blood Red Sea

13

They were awoken eventually by Smith hammering on the door and bawling, ‘The day is half gone, you slovenly slug-a-bed tosspots! Up on deck and show me your swordplay, girls!’

They came up to find that Abdul of Tripoli had indeed been allowed on board, if he agreed to sit down below with the galley slaves during the day, sleep on deck at night, and keep silence throughout.

Again, he agreed.

‘Interesting,’ said Stanley.

Hodge exchanged a few minutes’ thrust and parry with Smith, and then gave Nicholas the blade. Nicholas danced round Smith and nearly tripped over a coiled rope. Smith grinned through his black beard. Nicholas parried, another parry, locked his blade with Smith’s and then flicked it aside and, so fast that it surprised even him, had the point of his sword pressing just under Smith’s chin. Smith froze.

Stanley clapped and hooted. ‘He moves like a snake still, this English galley slave! Fra John, you are fairly skewered!’

Smith batted Nicholas’s blade away with his bare hand and shot his own back home in its scabbard. He stumped away to the taffrail.

‘Well,’ said Stanley pityingly, looking after him, ‘he is nearly eighty now.’

Nicholas gave the blade back to Stanley and said quietly, ‘One of the saddest things about being taken by the damned corsairs was that they also took my sword. The sword of Bridier de la Gordcamp, remember?’

‘I remember. Never a knight more gallant. He died as any man would wish to die.’

And then there were shouts from the mariners, the creak of oars back-rowing over the anchor, and the great quadruple hook lifting off the seabed and rising up to the cat-head, where two barefoot urchins tied it up. Then each bank of oars rowed against the other, the galley slowly turned, and they headed out to open sea.

As they rounded the cape and felt the first Atlantic gusts come up behind them and buffet them on the right, another cry sounded from the master. The great square sail came down from the mainmast. The oar slaves below were slackened off so as not to tire them, yet still they surged forward with that fine wind off to starboard and stern. The blue sea swelled and their hearts swelled with it.

‘To Sicily! And the last crusade!’

Yet once they had passed Gibraltar and were into the quieter waters of the Inland Sea, the mainsail sagged again and it was oar power once more that drove them.

‘It seems an antique way of moving a ship, after all,’ murmured Nicholas.

‘It is,’ said Stanley. ‘Antique galleys upon an antique sea, barely changed since Homer’s day. The future is sailing ships, and the Atlantic winds, westwards, ever westwards.’

‘But we are aboard this handsome but lumbering vessel, as haughty as Cleopatra,’ said Smith. ‘Lumbering and slow. We’d move much faster in something small and light, well sailed, sleeping on deck with nothing unnecessary. But for Don John of Austria to voyage in such a humble craft, without his wardrobe of six chests of suits. .’

Nicholas grinned, but Smith looked grim. ‘Meanwhile the Turk still builds his three galleys a week, his land army swells with recruitment across his vast empire, his Janizary regiments train without ceasing, his cavalry champ at the bit. And soon the Ottoman cannon will roar once more, and Cyprus fall to ruin.’

Just at that moment the drumbeat changed, and the sweating oar slaves were slowed still further. Energy must be conserved, if they were to reach Alicante at all without running out of fresh water.

‘Another advantage of sails,’ said Stanley. ‘You don’t have to keep feeding and watering them.’

Smith had goaded himself into impatience. ‘Devil take it!’ His great hands gripped the rail as if he’d squeeze it into splinters. ‘Too slow, too late, always too damned late. Cyprus will be done for by the time we hove into view. Like the Valley of Siddim, nothing left but smoke and ruin.’

Stanley said nothing. He glanced over his shoulder and there was Don John himself at the admiral’s position, standing resplendent in a new suit of burnt orange with trimmings of Tyrian purple. His hat was like something Hermes would wear in a fancy Italian painting, made of orange felt with a white egret feather. Was he really to lead them to victory against those massed armies of Ottoman veterans? Stanley’s heart felt heavy with foreboding. Throughout the pages of history, it was commanders like Don John — vain and inexperienced, little trusted by their men and desperate for personal glory — who had led their own armies to destruction.

And time was desperately short, every day counted. Yet Don John seemed to regard it all as a leisurely exercise in style and. . sprezzatura. Entertaining though he might be to dine with, was he really a Caesar, a Hannibal, an Alexander?

Cyprus stood in urgent need of relief, the sun burned, summer was moving on, and La Real cruised eastwards with as stately a grace as if they were going to a Christmas wedding in Alexandria.

After watering at Almeria, and again at Alicante, they began the crossing to Sardinia and thence to Sicily.

There was a thin mist one morning and then from the lookout above there came a cry of ‘Galley to the south!’

Don John was up at the admiral’s position in a trice, demanding more detail.

It was a lean Barbary corsair by the look of her, a low black shape upon the twinkling, blinding, sun-spangled sea. No more than a galliot really, with perhaps — the mariners strained their salt-wrinkled eyes — twenty oars a side? At the most.

A mile off? Less.

The instant she became aware of this huge flagship moving in stately fashion over the sea, appearing with horrible suddenness out of the thin morning mist to the north of them, flying both Hapbsurg and Spanish standards and bristling like a fortress with cannon and saker, the Barbary captain of the galliot was screaming at his slaves to head her round and make south.

‘Back-row and turn about!’ called Don John.

‘We can’t possibly catch ’em, sire,’ said the master, ‘we’d need-’

Don John’s languid voice changed abruptly to a note of harsh command. ‘Follow orders, you impertinent rascal, or I’ll clap you in your own irons!’

The master followed orders.

La Real’s own one hundred and eighty slaves groaned and strained at their oars, three men to each huge oar, and slowly, slowly the great galley moved round, her stern swinging out and her prow coming to face south. Meanwhile Don John had also sent orders for the bow guns to be primed and ready.

Smith squinted over the blinding water and muttered, ‘This is going to be interesting.’

The moment La Real was in line, Don John shouted, ‘Fire the culverin!’

‘That’ll be a fine-judged shot if we hit, sire,’ said Stanley.

‘Then we had best judge it finely,’ snapped Don John.

There was a tense silence while the two twenty-pound culverin were swiftly loaded and rammed, back-loaded sabots or seals made of no more than papier mâché were wadded in behind the balls to trap the explosive gases, powder was precisely measured in and the slim, elegant fourteen-foot-long barrels raised at an angle of some thirty degrees and given a final sighting squint by the master gunner.

Then the smoking linstock was put to the touch-hole, and they roared.

The range was truly impressive, both covering some fifteen hundred yards.

One ball ploughed into the sea not far short of the fleeing galliot, but some way wide. The second hit ball hit the water only just off her stern, sending up a plume of water that arched high over the boat and soaked the captain and crew. They could hear the babble of voices across the sea.

The master gunner ordered reload.

‘Show me one of those bouncing shots over the water,’ said Don John. ‘The tiro de fico, don’t you call it? A Portuguese speciality.’

The master nodded. The first culverin was depressed again as low as it could go, cleaned and reloaded in lightning-fast time, under a minute, and then the gunpowder exploded once more. The ball shot low, almost hitting La Real’s own spur. It bounced twice over the water and then sank, not more than three hundred yards off.

They heard the master gunner ordering reload again.

‘Cease fire!’ called Don John. ‘Master gunner, report!’

The master gunner came back, a grizzled old hand far too proud to look discomforted by this inevitable failure.

But Don John had no interest in scolding him for failing at the impossible. Instead he looked thoughtful.

‘Rest the guns,’ he said. ‘Leave those pox-ridden pirates there to scurry back to their flea-infested hovel in Algiers. Tell me, master gunner, that tiro de fico there — it did almost shear off the spur, did it not? Or did my handsome eyes deceive me?’

‘It nearly did, sire. It’s not unusual. If you try to lower a gun, for a bouncing shot or a close one low into an enemy hull, it can happen.’

‘What does a spur do, exactly?’

‘Do? Well, it’s part of the ram.’

‘And do we ram much these days?’

‘Not much these days, no, sire. The Turk still does. Ram and engage. Like fighting a land battle at sea, you might say. Then they’ll swarm aboard ye with scimitars flashing. And unless you’ve got some bloody good soldiers or marines of your own aboard-’

‘Or Knights of St John,’ said Smith.

‘Or knights, for instance, aye — then you’re pretty much dogmeat to ’em.’

‘But if we don’t ram, we. . what?’

‘Well, your Spanish galley or your Genoese will hope to return fire and hole ’em before they come close. But in the end it’s going to come to a musket and sword. The Turk still likes his bow and arrow too. Fast shooting.’

‘So ramming is. . what, old fashioned?’

‘You could say, sire.’

‘Then why do we have rams and spurs if they only get in the way of the guns?’

‘I couldn’t say, sire. I don’t build the galleys, I just fire the guns.’

‘Quite right. Good man. Now back to your station.’

Stanley observed the master gunner closely as he stumped back fore bandy legged. He looked as if he thought this ludicrous peacock of a prince might not actually be such a stupid bugger after all.

‘Guns will come to rule the world,’ said Don John crisply. He turned to Smith and Stanley, sweeping off his hat and running his hand back over his smooth-combed hair. For the first time, they saw in his expression something of the steely decisiveness and leadership of the true military commander. It was there, after all, under that peacockery and orange velvet. Even the men could see it.

Don John said, ‘We need more guns. It’s all going to be about guns.’

Only five days later they came into the great harbour of Messina in Sicily and the slaves at last lay back from the hated oars.

Nicholas squatted down and looked under the awning where they sat slumped below in the shadows, the stench indescribable. The boatswain went around loosening their manacles. Several of them were too sick or exhausted to stand, but the rest would be marched off the galley under close guard, and fed and watered on the quayside like cattle. La Real herself would be carefully sunk by two or three feet, the sea allowed to flow through her and wash away the accumulated bilge, and then stopped and refloated. After that she might smell just bearable, when the slaves were driven back on board again and manacled once more to the benches.

Nicholas’s heart went out to them a little. He had been there too.

Hodge near by him muttered, ‘I hate it. That men should be treated so, Christian or Mohammedan or worshippers of Baal himself.’

But it was the way of the world. And war galleys must be manned.

‘They may have their reward yet,’ said Don John behind them. Nicholas turned. ‘By Christmas, perhaps they will have heard their manacles sprung back from their limbs for the last time.’

Nicholas looked puzzled.

Don John just smiled.