Blood Red Sea

1

There was a furious bustle for days after, lading ships with provisions, caulking and tarring, checking cannon, loading powder and shot, bickering, trying to keep the whores off the galleys at night. Two whores were even found, stark naked, aboard the galley of the knights, celibate as they were. Puzzling.

There was endless paperwork and administration, which Don John swiftly delegated to secretaries. He preferred to spend time on the quayside.

‘I know nothing whatever of sea battles, ships, sailing, ropes or any of that tarry nastiness,’ he said gaily. ‘I couldn’t float a cork in a bathtub. Which is why my saintly half-brother Philip has made me Supreme Commander of the Fleet. It makes sense, does it not? The blood of the Emperor Charles flows in my veins, along with the blood of a German trollop, my beloved mother, and I am therefore but a bastard and misshapen homunculus of the great Emperor. But this is enough for me to be Supreme Commander, is it not? No need for any vulgar knowledge of how to command ships at sea, or wage a battle?’

Veniero’s habitual scowl deepened, his sunburned face riven with new creases. This one was clever and dangerous and talked half-gibberish. Was he mocking himself, or Veniero, or Philip of Spain? He would arch a fine eyebrow and mock God himself, this one. Veniero didn’t know what to make of him. You never knew what he was going to say or do next.

And still there was fighting in the streets of Naples and Messina between the squabbling factions. There was a widespread rumour that King Philip had secretly commanded Santa Cruz to hold back the Spanish fleet and let the rest take the brunt of it. A rumour impossible to disprove.

Don John received several urgent missives from Madrid which he read swiftly and then tore to shreds and dropped in the harbour.

‘What news, sire?’ his old tutor, Don Luis de Requesens, would anxiously ask.

Don John looked blank. ‘Dear me, I’ve forgotten already.’

There was a threatened mutiny at La Spezia over pay. Don John rode down in person, arriving with the words, ‘I do beg your pardon, I was detained tupping my fille de chambre.’ He smoothed out his waxed moustache. ‘What is the problem here?’

He quelled the mutiny with personal assurances and promises, earning a grudging respect from the hard-bitten, low-paid veterans.

As he was leaving he dropped his sword. A mariner retrieved it and said pointedly, ‘Fine piece of work. The handle alone is worth more than a year of my pay.’

Don John smiled. ‘Well said, sir. Take it. It is yours.’

The mariner gawped.

‘On one condition. You sail hard against those damned dog Turks and use that blade to part at least a dozen of ’em in two.’ The mariner scowled and grinned at the same time. For a velvet fop he wasn’t such a bad bugger.

Nicholas and Hodge were accosted on the quayside one evening by a fellow they vaguely recognized. Lean and pale and sickly looking, with an effortful moustache that looked like a drooping bootlace, he seized them by an arm each and said, ‘You are the English gentlemen volunteers? You fought at both Malta and Cyprus?’

They acknowledged it warily.

‘Ah,’ sighed the fellow, ‘would that I had been there, in the midst of all that glory and heroical death!’

‘You’re right about the death, anyhow,’ said Hodge.

‘You seem familiar,’ said Nicholas. ‘Did we meet at Messina before?’

He bowed low. ‘My name is Don Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, from Alcalá de Henares, in Old Castile. My father is the universally renowned Rodrigo de Cervantes, knight at arms and sometime apothecary-surgeon, in reduced circumstances. Through him I claim descent-’

‘I remember now,’ said Nicholas.

‘-from the ancient kings of Castile, from Alfonso and Pedro, as well as Eleanor of Navarre, and ultimately from the Visigothic kings themselves, Rodrigo being the name of-’

‘Aye, truly, engaging stuff. And you are a poet, are you not?’

The fellow gave another small bow. ‘I follow the muse Calliope where’er she leads me. It is my dream to write a great epic of this noble war between Christian and Turk, to rival that of Homer. A vaunting ambition, perhaps. Yet is it not true that this great conflict takes place over the same lands and seas as that of the Achaeans and Trojans, the eternal battle between East and West, in which Achilles-’

‘I don’t know as I’d turn out a heroic epic, from what I’ve seen of it all,’ said Hodge.

‘Would you not? Yet you were there, in the very midst?’

‘So I was. And if wrote an epic about it, which is fair to middlin’ unlikely, I admit, I’d make it full of wrong starts and false turns, dreams and daftness. More like a comedy, only with a lot of knocked-about heads and fallin’ off horses. If you could of seen us landing on Cyprus that first time, and skedaddlin’ down a cliff to get away as soon as we were landed, you’d know what I mean. And if you could see that damn fool Niccolo Dandolo, who thought he was such a fine commander of men, you’d know too. War’s full of it. Piss and wind, just as much as your heroism and martial glory, if you want my version of it.’

Miguel de Cervantes stared at Hodge. Nicholas smiled to himself. The Spanish poet seemed momentarily lost for words.

‘And on that note we bid you farewell,’ he said. ‘May luck go with you in the days to come.’

Joseph Nassi was walking in the gardens of the Topkapi Palace in Constantinople, talking with a clerk from the mint, when Selim summoned him to audience.

‘Bragadino’s sons,’ he stammered without introduction, ‘we have heard from agents in Venice that they are accounted two of the finest naval commanders in Christendom. This Holy League is coming for us, isn’t it?’

Nassi had prepared for this moment with luxurious frequency. ‘Admittedly, the severity of Lala Mustafa at Famagusta is in danger of uniting our Christian enemy against us, in a way that nothing else could have done.’

‘Y-you,’ stammered Selim, looking hunted, ‘you think he was too severe in his punishment of this wretched Bragadino? You think he made a terrible mistake, that this mighty armada now sailing against us is all his fault?’

Nassi gracefully laid his hand on his heart, giving a little bow. ‘My Lord and Master, Shadow of God upon earth, I would not dream of suggesting such a thing. That would suggest that Lala Pasha was nothing but a vainglorious and overambitious fool, who has triggered an attack on our Empire greater than any before, by sheer stupidity and viciousness.’

He suppressed a smile. How easy it was to put a thought in the Sultan’s head, so vividly worded, while denying it! The Greek rhetoricians called this trick paralipsis, and a most delightful one it was too.

He continued, ‘The Pasha is, of course, Your Majesty’s greatest general. Yet in his torture and execution of this Bragadino. . Well, as I say, it was a severe punishment, and not perhaps without some risk. .’

To be an enemy while seeming a friend. To destroy while seeming to defend. Such were the low arts of palace politics. Nassi excelled in them, exulting in his own abilities, even as he felt some mingled disgust. All this was only to serve a far higher purpose, God be thanked. Or his own cleverness would sicken him.

Selim brooded uncomfortably, eyes darting.

Yes, Nassi felt sorry for this fat little man, the weak, unhappy son of Suleiman the Magnificent. It was always a curse to have a great father. Absalom, Absalom. . And it was a terrible fate that he had become ruler of so mighty an empire. A burden more than his puny, sloping shoulders could bear, which was why he took to gluttony, and dulled his fears with wine. He always slept badly, rising up out of bed, jabbering with nightmares, bringing his Nubian guards running, spears at the ready.

‘They are trying to kill me!’ he would scream, writhing in his bed. Always the same nightmares. ‘I am drowning! Save me!’

Or he awoke thinking he was trapped underwater, or most often of all, that the palace itself had collapsed in an earthquake and buried him alive. He was in darkness, alone, beneath tons of rubble, unable to breathe. . It needed no Persian soothsayer to interpret his dreams.

Like all such men — burdened, anxious, weak, and knowing that they are despised as weak by all around them — Selim was given to wild, ill-considered outbursts of belligerence. Suddenly he sat upright, as befits the Lord of the Lords of this World, and snapped, ‘We must engage this Holy League. They must be destroyed!’

‘Majesty, is that wise? Our galleys have been at sea all summer, theirs are fresh, their guns-’

‘My generals will do as I say!’ screamed Selim, puce with sudden ferocity, rising up out of his seat, spittle flying. ‘They will obey me, or I shall have them and all their kin dismembered at the Edirne Gate!’

Nassi bowed. ‘A noble threat, Your Majesty.’

So the two massive fleets must come face to face, bow to bow, and battle be joined, he thought. They would annihilate each other, and peace would follow.

Selim sank back in his seat, exhausted, eyes rolling.

‘Destroy them utterly,’ he said. ‘They must not come near.’ His gaze darted back and forth over the patterned carpets, but all he saw in his mind’s eye were triumphal Christian galleys rowing into the Golden Horn.

‘That is my final command. Engage and destroy them, now.’

‘How can we lose?’ murmured Nassi. ‘With Allah on our side?’

Don John sent word that he wanted the survivors from Famagusta aboard his flagship, La Real. They could tell him inspiring stories as they sailed. And so it was that Stanley and Smith, Giustiniani and Mazzinghi, Nicholas and Hodge were again given space aboard that resplendent scarlet-painted galley. Romegas and De Andrada would fight from the knights’ own galley, the St John of Jerusalem.

Mazzinghi grumbled, ‘What action will we see aboard a flagship? None.’

‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’ said Stanley. ‘From what I know of our commander, we could be right in the heart of it.’

‘I s’pose it means we’ll get better food, at least,’ said Hodge.

Smith took his place upon the fighting deck immediately, sword drawn, as if the great battle was about to begin in a minute or two.

‘We have suffered much defeat lately,’ he rumbled, ‘a whole damnable summer of it. And Sir John Smith, Knight Grand Cross,’ he thumped his sword on the deck, ‘does not like defeat!’

‘Mind your sword there, Brother.’

He shot it back in its sheath and glared balefully round, black eyes burning. ‘But this summer will have a better ending. I demand it.’

A messenger came to Don John.

‘How many?’ he asked crisply.

‘Some fifty sailing down from Venice to join us at Brindisi. And here already, over a hundred, sire.’

‘I did not ask for an estimate,’ Don John snapped, sibilants hissing, ‘I asked for a number. Come back with a precise number within ten minutes or I throw you in the sea.’

The messenger was back in six minutes. ‘One hundred and eight galleys and supply ships in all, sir.’

Don John nodded. ‘Apart from mariners, we will have some eight thousand soldiers aboard, all told. What say you, brother knights? Is that enough?’

‘It is never enough,’ said Smith. ‘But it will serve.’

In the harbour there was one particularly striking galley, low and lean and predatory, draped all in black.

‘The Bragadino brothers,’ said Stanley. ‘Truly, something even in my blood chills to think of them.’

At night, a strange boat slipped into the main harbour under cover of darkness. A spy party sent by Kara Hodja, surprised to enter Messina so easily, unchallenged.

‘Deliberate,’ drawled Don John the next morning. ‘They will have counted the ships in the main harbour and come to about sixty. We spied on them spying on us. They entirely missed the other forty or so galleys in the inner harbour, and have not reckoned on the Venetian party either. An enemy’s false sense of superiority can be very useful.’

The oar slaves appeared in a shuffling column on the quayside. They had been kept busy mending sails with needle and cord, loading pebble ballast, even polishing cannonballs. Now they were stripped naked and searched. One was found with a hidden needle. An inch-thick rope-end was wetted in seawater and he was condemned to fifty blows. Don John stopped them after ten.

‘I need him for rowing my ship,’ he said.

‘But discipline, sire-’ said the boatswain.

‘Enough,’ he snapped.

Their heads were shaved and they were driven up the ridged gangplank.

‘Give me your blasphemers, your sodomites, your forgers and drunks,’ murmured Don John, ‘and I shall set you free.’

They were chained to the benches below by one leg. The benches were roofed over with planks to make for easier movement above. They would row in sunless gloom, blind as moles, though once they began to sweat they would be glad to be sunless. In the heat of battle they would hear the din and bellow of the guns above them, the deafening explosions, the ship lurching, and shake in terror that any moment an iron cannonball might erupt through the hull and smash them into pieces where they sat. It was all a matter of luck who survived.

‘Tell me, boatswain, who we have here.’

The boatswain indicated each grimy, despairing face in turn.

‘Bernardino here: took three wives. The devil knows how, to look at his poxy face. Sentence, five years at the oar.

‘This scumbag, Ercole di Benedetto, cheesemaker: sodomy. He can row till he rots.

‘This is Lorenzo di Niccolucci: heretic.’

‘The Book of Revelations says-’ began Di Niccolucci, before a mariner struck him a blow on the shoulder with an ugly-looking maul.

‘This gallant fellow, Senso de Giusto: rape and deflowering of a thirteen-year-old girl. Two years at the oar.

‘This one, Ahmed, a Turk-’

‘Syrian,’ corrected Ahmed.

‘Shut it, shitskin. Next to him, Salem, moor of Tunis, half lame. Next to him, Il Cazzogrosso, missing his two front teeth, and blind. But he can still row.’

Il Cazzogrosso grinned miserably.

‘They’re all under sentence of beneplacito.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning until whoever is well pleased to set them free.’

‘A rather vague and sinister sentence.’

The boatswain grunted with satisfaction. ‘That’s the idea. You want more, My Lord? There’s every vice under the sun down here.’

‘I get the picture,’ said Don John. Then he raised his voice. ‘Listen to me, you scum of the earth. Most of you will die at the oar if you do not die in this coming battle. And it will be a terrible battle, we are still hugely outnumbered by the enemy. The sea will foam with blood. Most of it will be yours. You are as good as dead already. But — I give you one thin lifeline. When our galleys hit theirs, and heads start rolling, the boatswain here will unlock your chains. Every man that rows for us or fights for us and lives to tell the tale will be set free. Even the sodomites and heretics.’

The oar slaves stared. Nothing seemed real to them for now but their misery and the huge, heavy oar before them.

‘Good,’ said Don John. ‘I’m glad that cheered you so well.’

It was late afternoon when the boatswain blew his silver whistle. Gradually a wave of whistles sounded across the harbour.

The mighty fifty-foot oars creaked in their leather collars, between four and six men chained to each haft, and slowly, slowly, La Real’s gleaming prow eased forward through the sluggish harbour waters and towards the open sea.

Nicholas and Hodge looked at each other with excitement and dread. They were going. No turning back now.

On the harbour mole stood Don Luis de Requesens.

‘Be nothing rash!’ he called in a quavering voice. ‘Remember the wise caution of princes!’

‘Caution,’ Don John called back, waving a white-gloved hand, ‘is the daughter of lechery and the wet nurse of impertinence!’

Don Luis muttered and crossed himself. Beside him stood the papal nuncio in his crimson robes, arms raised in blessing upon the departing fleet.

‘We need it,’ murmured Stanley. ‘After Preveza, Djerba. . We’ve lost every major battle at sea with the Turk these past fifty years.’

‘That’s because I wasn’t there,’ said Smith.

Stanley roared with laughter and clapped him on the shoulder. Nicholas wasn’t so sure Smith was joking.