Blood Red Sea

15

The rugged outline of Crete lay ahead, with Cape Matapan to larboard, backed by the mountains of the Peloponnese. A fresh wind out of the north-east, the St John under oar only. The lookout called down. Something approaching.

‘More detail,’ said Romegas.

There was a tense silence while the lookout, a boy of fifteen, strained his eyes. The best lookouts were boys of eleven or twelve.

‘Squadron!’ he called.

Smith moved to the hatchway.

‘Black sails!’

Smith grinned. ‘Time to arm up, ladies.’ And he was gone below for his treasured Persian jezail, an elegant, long-barrelled weapon that those at the Great Siege said was the most accurate musket they had ever seen in battle.

Smith invariably retorted, ‘Depends who fires it.’

Stanley waited a while longer. A squadron. Knights disdained to turn and run, and Romegas would attack an entire armada single handed. The Turks feared him as they would a mad dog — but a mad dog with exceptional tactical intelligence. An entire squadron of enemy galleys was quite a challenge, nevertheless. They would need a plan.

‘Gunners to your stations!’ roared Romegas. ‘All guns primed and loaded. Crew at the munitions hatches, ready to serve the guns!’

‘Six!’ called down the lookout boy. ‘Six galleys under slow oar and sail. In a loose file.’

Romegas was squinting down his brass eyeglass, set on a tripod clamped to the rail. His hands shook badly. It wasn’t fear. Once his galley was capsized by a monstrous sea, and he was trapped underwater for twelve hours with his head in an air pocket. There was nervous damage. Men were supposed to grow more fearful as they grew older, and Romegas was past sixty now. But he still hadn’t learnt the meaning of fear.

His eyes strained. He prayed to God to give him better sight. God never answered that prayer. But the eyeglass would do. It confirmed that there were six galleys under oar, they were rounding Cape Matapan westwards and so heading for the Adriatic ports, and they weren’t Venetian. And something — a sailor’s deep, inborn sixth sense — could discern relaxation and relief in their very oar stroke. They were sailing into home waters.

There was more to be deduced. The squadron could see the St John of Jerusalem and vice versa. But they were not turning to attack, although so superior in numbers. Was that because they were heavily laden with booty, and only wanted to make landfall back in their pirate lair, Ragusa or Avlona?

‘The standard they fly!’ called Romegas. ‘Tell me it is a black standard with a white crescent!’

‘I cannot see, Captain.’

Romegas stroked his beard. ‘Then we will have to row closer.’ And he gave the order. The boatswain blew his whistle and the mariners got stirring, the helmsman leaning hard on the whipstaff to move the great stern rudder round a few perfectly judged degrees.

Smith came back up through the hatchway carrying his jezail in a roll of finest oilcloth and singing a psalm.

‘I shall give the heathen for thine inheritance, Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron, thou shalt break them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.’

‘I’ve heard crows sing sweeter,’ said Stanley. ‘Recite it rather than sing it, Brother, I pray you. You’ll bring Leviathan up from the deep with that caterwauling, and in a foul humour too.’

Smith sang on.

Nicholas and Hodge stood upon the larboard walkway near to where a pair of gunners were rapidly readying the verso, a small cannon that swivelled broadly left and right on its pivot and could deliver a hefty fistful of grapeshot at close quarters.

‘Remember our first corsair skirmish, Matthew Hodge?’ murmured Nicholas.

‘Well enough,’ said Hodge. ‘Considerin’ I got a blow to me poll that I never quite came right from again.’

The St John of Jerusalem was now rowing fast due north, towards the lead galley of the six, as if to hit it broadside. Which would also leave the St John’s own broadside exposed to the following five galleys. Lunacy.

‘Standard flies!’ cried the lookout boy. ‘Black standard with a white crescent.’

‘And on the forward ship,’ Romegas shouted up to him, ‘tell me there is a shaven-headed villain with a topknot, who still wears the tattered robe of a Dominican friar!’

The boy strained his eyes, swaying back and forth in the tiny netted crow’s nest as if that would help, then called back, ‘There’s a fellow in a long black robe, I think, looking our way. Cannot tell the style of his hair.’

Smith gave a strange guttural growl, and Romegas drummed his fists on the rail. ‘That dung-munching, idol-serving Gibraltar baboon!’ Then he plucked the eyeglass from the tripod, stowed it inside his doublet and leapt back to the captain’s lookout position with the eagerness of a man half his age.

Stanley saw Nicholas’s and Hodge’s enquiring expressions.

‘Kara Hodja,’ he said. ‘The Black Priest, and the evillest corsair in all the eastern sea. Shame on him that he was once a Christian. He still wears his Dominican robe in mockery, even as he is beheading Christian captives on the deck of his ship.’ He looked out across the narrowing gap. ‘But Judgement Day is coming.’

‘Six galleys against one,’ said Hodge.

Gil de Andrada joined them. ‘Watch and learn.’

The six galleys had slowed and were hoving to uncertainly.

‘Fire the centre-line!’ called Romegas.

A few moments later the great centre-line gun roared and they heard the rush of the forty-pound iron ball through the air, then saw the geyser of white water where it struck, many yards short of the enemy.

‘Well out of range,’ said Hodge. ‘Waste of good powder and shot.’

Gil de Andrada shook his head. ‘Shows we mean business. Romegas wants them to think we are bent on attacking with all guns blazing, and he reckons on a certain response.’

And he got it. Moments later all six corsair galleys were seen turning sharply to the north. They were fleeing. Now the sharpest eyes on the St John, Nicholas and Hodge included, could see their black sails straining and filling as they turned into the nor-easter. Their mariners scurried about the decks and up the rigging. And they could hear the drumbeat sound.

‘Romegas bewitches men’s minds,’ said De Andrada. ‘Makes them see things which are not, makes them do his bidding like whipped slaves.’

Meanwhile Romegas stood leaning hungrily forward from his post, dark-circled eyes burning, muttering like an incantation, ‘Give us a shot, God rot your bones! Just one shot.’

Then it came. A vague, half-hearted warning shot from one of the fleeing galleys’ stern guns. The ball fell nearer its source than its target.

But it was enough.

‘Helm about! Battle speed due east, and don’t spare the lash down below there!’

‘Now I am truly confused,’ said Nicholas. ‘We are going into battle against, what, thin air? And hurrying due east, with our enemy now rowing away north? Chevalier Gil de Andrada, we need a commentary.’

The St John came sharp about, sails tight reefed, and surged into the oncoming waves. They could hear the groaning slaves, the creak of the thole pins down below.

‘Even I cannot always read Romegas’s mind,’ said De Andrada. ‘And he rarely shares his thoughts. But here is my interpretation. We encounter an enemy, far more numerous than us. We feign an attack. They flee. This tells Romegas the enemy has valuable booty, and wants to keep it. They will row fast north, almost into the wind. What else does it tell us? That they judge they can row faster than us. What, laden with booty? Then they must be carrying very few heavy guns. Unlike us. So we outgun them.’

‘Romegas indeed reads men’s minds,’ murmured Stanley.

‘And of course he reads the wind,’ said De Andrada, ‘and knows every rock, every current, every vagary of the sea. So then he waits until the enemy return fire — as they did, just that one feeble shot — and then feigns to flee east. At battle speed. Not to attack anything, young Ingoldsby, simply because that is the fastest sustainable oar speed there is. Only ramming is faster, but that can be kept up by the slaves below for only a few hundred yards. Meanwhile our guns are all readied and waiting. The enemy are heading north in file. Then there comes a moment. .’

The St John was already a mile east of the vanishing corsair squadron, apparently heading away fast. The squadron finally rounded Cape Matapan and the mad dog Romegas was out of their sight.

‘Head her about. . NOW!’ Romegas roared. ‘Hard on the starboard oars, face her about to nor’ward! Then give me full sail, master mariner!’

‘We’ll swamp her sides, Capitán! And salt all the starboard guns to boot!’

‘Full sail and quick about it!’

‘Galleys must be low sided, low in the water,’ said De Andrada, ‘so the oars can reach the sea, obviously. But that limits how far they can roll. Unlike a high-sided Atlantic galleon, there’s a limit to how much sail they can carry. But Romegas knows every wind around Cape Matapan.’

‘Ship oars!’ called Romegas.

‘To rest the oarsmen,’ said De Andrada. ‘Because battle speed cannot be sustained more than a few minutes either.’

Out of sight of the enemy, the St John came hard about to face westwards now, and her two fine sails, foresail and mainsail, billowed forth under the fresh nor’easter.

‘Ah,’ said De Andrada, shaking his head. ‘Masterly. You see? The enemy have gone north, they cannot use a nor’easter so are condemned to oars alone. But we are now coming back westwards, with the wind on our side. They have also gone into the lee of Cape Matapan so there is little wind for them anyway. We are still in full wind so can gain on them with little effort. And they cannot see us coming.’

Now the St John surged exultantly forward again with the wind, the waves running with her. They crowded fore, hair blowing about their faces, breathless with excitement.

A minute. . two minutes. . Nicholas squatted and looked over the muscular, filthy backs of the rowing slaves, still sweating and panting from that punishing battle speed. How ironic, how potent — he had thought it many times, when he was chained to the bench himself — that a galley slave faced always backwards. Could not even see where he was going.

The master mariner’s doubts about full sail in such a wind very nearly proved justified. As the St John leaned perilously under a stronger gust, the larboard rowers had to raise their oars still higher if they weren’t to get the blades caught in the passing sea, slamming them backwards, badly injured, off their own benches. Men had even been killed that way. Meanwhile, to starboard, the oars would have been unable to reach the water even if they’d tried.

But it was only a gust, and then the wind dropped off markedly.

Cape Matapan.

Romegas knew every wave, every eddy.

‘Hence his risking full sail,’ said De Andrada.

The lessening wind still filled the sails, but the St John now moved forward on an almost even keel. From his position Romegas gazed keenly forward.

‘See to your guns! Report from larboard!’

A moment later a gunner ran up to say, ‘Front verso got a faceful of salt, Capitán. No other.’

‘Then clean her down. I want every gun ready to fire in two minutes.’

They were cutting perilously close to Cape Matapan now, far nearer than the corsair squadron had dared to sail, even though these were Kara Hodja’s home waters. But Nicholas felt a growing trust in every single thing the extraordinary Romegas did. He could sail between Scylla and Charybdis blindfold, this wolf of the sea.

There was a spike of rock not ten yards off the starboard bow, and heaven knew what ragged monsters lurking immediately below the hull, down in the sunless gloom. The St John surged merrily over them all. The rocks of the cape itself were barely fifty yards off. They were sheering round, and any moment would emerge, perhaps with an extra gust of wind as they moved offshore again, the rowers rested and ready for. .

‘Battle speed!’ called Romegas.

And then they were surging out from the cape, the file of six corsair galleys spread away towards the Dalmatian coast and their lair. The rearmost of the six was merely ambling. Not a soul aboard had yet seen the St John’s red hull appear round Cape Matapan, coming to destroy them.

Nicholas had rarely seen such ferocious aggression, with never a moment of hesitancy or doubt.

Romegas signalled now, rather than shouted. The helmsman brought the prow around to just ahead of the hapless, unwitting rear galley, and the oarsmen left off battle speed for a slow stroke, just enough to keep her steady and moving forward.

Romegas raised his hand. The master gunner beside the centre-line gun held a smoking linstock. Nicholas felt what it was then to have absolute power. A wild, dark pleasure.

Later the lookout boy swore he saw one of the corsairs glance back at that moment, and his eyes flare wide with terror.

Then Romegas dropped his arm, and all five prow guns fizzed and roared in a rolling volley of less than a second.

‘All guns reload! Hold fire!’

From the crow’s nest the lookout boy saw men turn and stare aghast from several of the corsair galleys, and clapped his hands in delight.

Then two of the five cannonballs struck home.

The galley rolled helplessly under the iron hammer-blows, and both balls passed clean through her hull, erupting from her far side in a mighty explosion of splintered timbers and spars. A howling went up from her depths as the oar slaves panicked and ceased rowing, crying out for mercy, their drivers flailing their lashes but to no avail.

The five other galleys seemed to give a moment’s pause at the shocking fate of their companion — and then the order ran through the squadron to row ahead with all speed. They fled.

The crippled rear galley floundered and turned in a quarter-circle. Already her stern was beginning to sag in the water.

‘Fast ahead!’ roared Romegas.

There was many a Christian captive aboard her. And in but a minute or two they would be dragged down in their chains to the deep.

The corsair crew were standing fore with hands clasped on their shaven heads. Smith kept his jezail on them from the St John. They jabbered and rolled their eyes. The deck tilted.

A handful went aboard. Stanley whipped the key from the captain’s belt and tossed it to Nicholas.

‘Here, you can swim. Move fast.’

Nicholas clamped the dismayingly small, fiddly key between his teeth and waded down among the benches. In the stern the wretched slaves were already up to their waists in seawater. And the bilge that had lain around their feet, rotting the nails from their toes, was now afloat.

Nicholas crossed himself. A cholera sea, this was. Welcome, the bloody flux.

Back at the stern, the captain smiled a lazy smile. ‘That is not the key,’ he said.

Stanley thundered at him.

The captain shrugged, wasting time. ‘That is not the right key. That is the key to my treasure chest, such as it is.’

Stanley gripped him round his jaw. ‘Then give me the right key.’

He still smiled. ‘There is none. It is lost. The Christian slaves will drown. Because you have destroyed our ship.’

Nicholas had not heard. The manacles were on their ankles. They cried out to him. He knelt in the foul water as the galley juddered. A huge current came gushing in from somewhere below where the St John had holed her. Nicholas groped beneath the water. There was the lock. He plucked the key from his teeth and turned it underwater. It was damnably stiff. In God’s name let it not. .

Three things happened in a single instant. Smith’s jezail sounded its whipcrack shot. The galley gave another terrible lurch and Nicholas was up to his neck. And the tiny key snapped off in the lock.

He dragged himself to his feet, yelling out, ‘Another key!’

Stanley was shouting back to him. One of the corsairs was lying across the deck, shot through the head. He had tried to pull a dagger and stab Stanley in the back, but Smith had shot him instantly. The rest cowered and cursed him for a fool. You do not take on the knights, nor any galley that flies the white cross on red. Fools die.

Nicholas was wading back through the sluicing bilge. ‘Another key, for God’s sake!’

In the sinking stern the first and second benches were now under water. Men were drowning, crying out for help. Some voices were very young, those of beardless boys.

Stanley crossed himself, De Andrada muttered a prayer to Christ Jesus.

The captain smiled.

‘For God’s sake!’ cried Nicholas again, dripping and filthy.

Stanley shook his head. ‘There is no key. An evil day.’

‘To the longboat!’ cried Giustiniani.

Nicholas was seized then by. . he knew not what. That blind fury that came upon him at times, ever since Malta. A red blind fury. A mariner near by was holding a boathook as a weapon, loosely pointed towards the crew of corsairs. He snatched it from his grasp and made to attack the murderers, to smash the iron hook into the sides of skulls. But a huge bear-hug seized him from behind and flung him away. Stanley. The galley was all but below the water now. Any moment she would be sucked down to the deep. All was chaos. The longboat was filling up, only Stanley and Giustiniani remained. Then Giustiniani leaped into the sea. He would find the longboat after.

Nicholas floundered, his head alternately above and below water. The current among the benches was like a huge snake coiling around his legs. There at the rear benches were two slaves, one of them screaming.

He jammed the boathook down again and again until he felt it hit metal and then twisted it violently. It was lodged. Another current, the ship rolled and seemed like to capsize, then settled again at a crazy angle. Somewhere beyond the screams and the ringing in his head, there was Stanley shouting. He gripped the far end of the boathook, half expecting it merely to snap, and fell on it with all his weight. Something sprung loose and he was thrown. He floundered in reeking salt water. A huge bubble came up from the hold, perhaps all that had been floating her, and the ship was going now. Two men, still chained to each other, were clinging to him, drowning him. He struggled against them in the water, kicking furiously, windmilling his arms, the foul sea lashed white. All coherence gone. Then there was a powerful, unmistakable sucking force upon everything and he was being pulled down. Down in a dark silent vortex of rushing emerald sea.