Blood Red Sea

2

The massive explosion blew the bow clean off the galley. After that, events unfolded in a strange, dreamlike silence but for a faint distant ringing. For the explosion had deafened every man aboard.

The single centre-line gun pitched head first through the flaming timbers and sank directly down to the ocean floor, a few last air bubbles trailing from its black mouth. The rest of the slaver seemed to rear back for a few moments, as if in horror at its own mutilation. Spars and scraps of burning sailcloth turned and wheeled high in the blue sky, and among them, heads and limbs and limbless torsos of corsairs and slaves alike.

The decapitated galley crashed down again and immediately her hold was swamped by the inrushing sea. Rowers on the benches scrabbled desperately at their manacles, but it was useless. There were only seconds left. Groaning forward, the galley began to slide down below the surface. Bubbles and eddies came up from the drowned hold, a casket of oranges floated free, a severed arm revolved in a small whirlpool. The captain held his chest of treasures clutched under his arm, looking wildly around. The Sweet Rose of Algiers carried no longboat or dinghy, and few of the corsairs could swim. The galley had been their home, their mother, their country.

The water swirled in around the rowers, and the salt made them reel in agony as it coursed past blistered thighs and backsides, chafed by months on the accursed bench. But swallowing their pain and shock, Nicholas and Hodge managed to move. They levered their broken manacles from their legs, and Nicholas thought to snatch the loosely draped headcloth from his bare skull and tie it around his neck, shouting at Hodge to do the same. Another of the rowers held on to him in desperation, pulling him down beneath the swirling water, nearly drowning him, screaming to be set free. The galley gave another lurch and, gripped by a maddened, dying man, chained to a sinking ship, Nicholas was momentarily dragged beneath the water. He strained every sinew and came up above the surface sucking in air. Then all he could do, loathing himself, was ram his elbow into the fellow’s face, driving his nose-bone back into the brain so that his grip loosened and he fell silent. That was the only way he could set him free.

He saw Hodge take another cloth and wrap it round his waist, and Nicholas grabbed a floating corsair by his belt — what remained of him — and took his dagger. There were so many other things they might do, so many things they might try to salvage, in faint hope of rescue before the Sweet Rose of Algiers took everything with her to the unknown deep. But his head was screaming, the water was swirling ever more powerfully and carrying him away. He clambered and waded back to the stern, stuck his dagger in the captain’s chest as he stood there wild eyed, wiped it clean and wedged it between his teeth. The captain dropped his treasure chest and sat down in the water, holding on to the whipstaff of the rudder, his face ashen and dying. A whirlpool of water coursed around him and Nicholas. Even the chest, heavy with silver and gold and precious stones, lifted and turned. Somewhere in the distance, his ringing ears heard Hodge shouting. ‘Save yourself! Get away from the ship!’

Nicholas staggered in the powerful surge, then set his foot on the captain’s throat, grabbed the rawhide thong around his neck and pulled. It came free, with the key attached. The captain’s head fell back and he went under water, his last words a curse in slurred Berber.

‘May it carry you down.’

The ship itself then gave a colossal gulp, like the last gasp of some dying leviathan, as its stern was finally sucked beneath the surface of the sea and it tilted and began its slow dive to the ocean floor, many dark fathoms down. Nicholas abandoned himself to the turbulence, eyes closed, mouth clamped shut, the dagger still between his teeth, his lungs filled with one final breath. You could not fight the sea. You had to wait until it let you go.

Seeing nothing, tumbled about, all sense of direction lost, he was aware only of an iron key in his right hand, and a heavy locked chest under his left arm, dragging him downward fast. So fast that even through tight-closed eyelids he was aware of the sunlight fading, the water around him darkening, deeper and deeper green, as he fell away from the sunlit upper world. In his blindness he groped with the key, tumbling over and over, and at last drove it into the lock of the chest.

The captain had kept it well oiled. He counted his loot nightly. With his last strength, his lungs feeling as if he’d inhaled a line of pure gunpowder, Nicholas turned the key and wrenched the lid open with main force. The weight of the sea at this depth was trying to keep it shut, as if Old Father Ocean had already stretched out long green fingers of weed, decreeing these treasures Mine, mine, for all eternity. .

Let it be something decent, he thought. Even at that extremity the wry thought crossed his failing mind that, knowing his luck, he would probably come up with a fistful of English pennies. His fingers closed around something like a chain, and then he let the chest go and it dropped away into the depths. He kicked the opposite way from its descent, towards the light. He could barely kick more. But he must, or he would not rise fast enough to save his life. He must swim.

He began to see visions, colours. But he held himself in his right wits, eyes bunched tight, though longing to open them and look down, for one last glimpse of those corsair treasures sinking away into the midnight deep. But he denied himself. That second or two of delay alone might kill him. He kicked for the sunlight, eyes screwed so tight he saw stars, mouth leaking bubbles now, eardrums throbbing and hissing.

He imagined himself kicking upwards through glinting silver reales, cascades of pearls and glittering clouds of gold dust. Turning and falling, winking and revolving like some strange sea creature, at last losing even its light, an emerald necklace that once graced the alabaster neck of a queen.

He never remembered the last of his ascent but came to the surface and lay there with a roaring in his ears, a thunderous sound. After a while he realized it was his own breathing, as his burning lungs sucked in air. He lay spreadeagled on his back in the water like a starfish, just floating, blinded by the sun. Still alive. A dagger blade still between his teeth.

Then a familiar voice called his name.

If the ship had sunk entire, they too would have been lost. But the Rus’s act of mayhem had blown timbers and spars widely over the sea, which offered the remote chance of reprieve, at least for a few hours. Straws to drowning men.

Hodge was draped over such a spar. Nicholas stuck the dagger in the knotted waist of his loincloth and swam slowly over to him.

After the months of enslaved horror, then the sudden violence and the gigantic explosion, there was an eerie calm. They bobbed in a flotsam of shattered timber and drowned men. Now the Sweet Rose of Algiers was gone, they looked out on nothing but boundless sea. They almost felt a longing for the filthy brigantine. Here, so far from land, so far from other living men, was the loneliness that drove men mad.

After a while they found the energy to exchange their single spar for a broader, more promising timber. A plain piece of pine from the mountains of Lycia, all that saved them from death. They draped their arms over it. Their blistered backsides and legs under water, their rotted feet, had gone strangely numb. Perhaps it was better that way.

‘What’s that you’ve got? Round your fist?’

He hadn’t even looked at it. A rope of colourless stones that flashed every colour of the rainbow as he twisted his fist about.

‘Looks like it was diamonds you very nearly perished for,’ said Hodge.

Nicholas almost smiled. ‘So far,’ he said, ‘I’ve had a very lucky day.’

Hodge closed his eyes. When he opened them again, Nicholas had checked the links and then awkwardly managed to drape the necklace over his head.

‘As drowned men go,’ said Hodge, ‘you’ll make a very pretty one shortly.’

‘We’re not drowning,’ said Nicholas. ‘I’m not done with this world yet.’

It was very quiet but for odd splashes and groans. Nicholas looked around for the Sardinian boy, the only other slave unmanacled at the end who might have survived.

‘Save your breath,’ said Hodge. ‘You’ll need it.’

‘He might still live,’ said Nicholas.

‘He died,’ said Hodge. ‘Look around you.’

It was true. Among the gently rocking detritus, one or two terrified corsairs still clung to bits of wood. But no boy.

‘How long can wood float before it’s waterlogged?’ asked Hodge.

‘Weeks,’ said Nicholas.

‘How long can we float before we’re waterlogged?’

‘We shouldn’t speak. Breathe through your nose.’

Hodge fell silent. Then he fumbled underwater at the cloth tied round his waist, and produced. . four oranges, salvaged from those that had floated up from the hold. He laid them carefully in a deep rut on the timber. But still seawater sluiced over them.

‘Eat them now. They may save us.’

Such paltry things a man’s life could depend on. Man whose mind ranged the whole universe — yet his life could depend on a single iron bolt, the thread of his life be cut for want of an orange.

They ate slowly and deliberately, knowing this could be the last thing they tasted before they died.

‘They were good,’ said Nicholas.

‘They were sweet.’

After a time Nicholas said, ‘We’ve got a day and a night. After that we will die of thirst. I remember Smith and Stanley telling me.’

‘Smith and Stanley,’ repeated Hodge. ‘We could do with their company now.’

Nicholas smiled faintly. What would they do now, if they were us?

It was a question they had asked themselves many times over the last few years. What would the mighty Smith and Stanley — old acquaintances from their past lives, adventurers, knights, warrior monks — what would they do? Nicholas and Hodge had whispered it to each other in filthy Tripoli dungeons, yelled it to each other as they fled through almond orchards pursued by hunting dogs and a hundred maddened villagers, murmured it to each other drunkenly in many a dubious quayside tavern, surrounded by half a dozen cut-throats they had just insulted. What would Smith and Stanley do now?

‘Smith,’ said Hodge, ‘would swim about with a knife in his hand, finishing off any corsairs he could find.’

‘Stanley would be making terrible puns. He’d say he’d be surprised if the Sweet Rose of Algiers ever rose again.’

‘Both of ’em,’ said Hodge sharply, ‘would have the wit to remember to cover their heads.’

Hurriedly they unknotted the cloths around their necks and tied them over their heads. At least they might delay the hour when the Mediterranean sun stewed their brains in their skulls. They also took off their loincloths and draped them round their reddened shoulders.

‘We’ve survived worse,’ said Nicholas, still ignoring his own rule about not speaking. The desolate silence sapped the spirit. ‘Remember when we stood at arms at Elmo. Our comrades, Lanfreducci, Luigi Broglia, the Chevalier Bridier de Gordcamp — those gallant souls. Remember the nights at Birgu, when the Turkish cannon roared. The basilisks spat flames that lit up the sky.’

‘Remember?’ said Hodge. ‘I will never forget.’

It was a comfort to talk, despite the thirst. Every little trick helped in survival. Nicholas looked around at the barren plain of the sea. There were no men coming to help, no comrades. It was a saltwater wilderness that cared nothing, for no one. Where was God?

Yet they prayed. Dying men always prayed.

‘What current are we in?’ said Hodge. ‘The Atlantic rushes in past Gibraltar and heads north, does it not?’

‘Aye. And we know we’re near the African shore. The yellow sky to the south tells us so. The current here heads back west. A great wheel. We live long enough, we may paddle into harbour at Cadiz or Tangier. Should only take some three months or so.’

‘I wonder about all the blood,’ said Hodge. ‘From the corpses. What fish and monsters it will bring.’

‘We have hardship enough already, friend Hodge. Don’t add sea monsters to it.’

For the rest of that day, they watched men flounder and die. Some simply fell silent on their timbers, their faces dropping into the water. The sea gradually pulled the other survivors farther apart and cast them wide over the ocean. Towards dusk one still living came kicking past them very slowly. He wore a white turban.

‘Salaam,’ he croaked. He tried to smile but his cracked lips made it impossible.

‘Die, you maggot,’ said Nicholas, his voice a hoarse rasp. His throat was so parched, his lips so burned, he hallucinated wildly that his words were being spoken by a ghost. He had a mouthful of cobwebs. The sun made a malevolent humming noise in the sky as it went down in the west. ‘Die, or I will kill you.’

The corsair rested, exhausted, his head on his arm. His voice too was like the wind through dry grass, only just audible. ‘We are equal now. No longer slave and master. . equal before the gates of death.’

‘Die,’ whispered Nicholas.

Then night came on, and the corsair died. The loneliness began to unhinge their minds. There was nothing but silence under the starlight, an empty world, the lapping of small waves at their timber of pine. Exhaustion and fragmentary dreams. Nicholas saw a Maltese girl called Maddalena. Hodge saw the woods and green fields of Shropshire. The constellations wheeled overhead, the moon came up and blinded them. Each of them had a horror he would close his eyes, and open them again to find the other one dead. They talked in slurred words with swollen tongues, hallucinating, lips splitting and bleeding, dreading the rising sun. For tomorrow would kill them.

Nicholas tilted his head back to the sky because it was raining. But no, it was not raining. He was dreaming. He wondered whether there was dewfall at night on the sea. He opened his red mouth wider, wider. The moon burned his black tongue.

Then he looked round and Hodge had gone. Slipped below without a word. His childhood friend, his manservant, his comrade-in-arms through the atrocity of Malta. Hodge was gone below and he was alone. Now he would surely die.

‘Hodge!’ he tried to cry out across the starlit sea. ‘Hodge!’

But no sound came from his throat. Not even a whisper.

Some time later Hodge reappeared, but Nicholas knew he was just seeing visions. It was the Devil’s torment of a dying Christian. Hodge, he thought, came back very slowly through the sea, dragging a set of three timbers tied together. He pulled them up against their own, and tied them loosely to it with his waistcloth. It made a very crude, narrow, unstable kind of raft.

‘And look,’ said Hodge, producing something else. ‘Two more oranges were still afloat. Breakfast.’

He hauled himself on to the four lashed timbers, which sank a little but held. Nicholas stared up at him.

‘By day we stay under water or we’ll cook,’ said Hodge. ‘But by night we can crawl out like turtles and lie on deck. Aboard the Fair Maid of Shrewsbury, as she’s called.’

Nicholas smiled. It was a comical vision. There was the Devil for you. Gentleman, liar, joker.

He was cold in the night and towards dawn he stirred. Water lapped shallowly round his chest and legs where he lay. But he lay flat across four timbers. A light wind blew.

‘Master?’ came a strained whisper. ‘I thought you’d never come round.’

Nicholas raised his head. His neck ached abominably, his head throbbed with merciless pain, and the thirst was agony. But then Hodge waved an orange before his nose and he could smell it.

‘Hodge?’ he whispered. ‘I thought you were dead.’

‘Not yet. Eat.’

Hodge helped him roll on to his side. Everything was hurting — his joints, his legs, his feet, his hammering skull, his pulsing, bloodshot eyeballs. Every bare inch of his flesh felt as if it had been rubbed raw with sharkskin.

He sucked on the orange, and after a few minutes he felt a small trickle of strength in him. Enough to say, ‘This is our last day isn’t it?’

Hodge lay beside him, his eyes closed. Both of them were half in the water. ‘I think it will prove so, master. Aye. And soon the sun will be up and we must drop back in the sea.’

‘I cannot, Hodge. I cannot.’

Hodge turned his face towards him. ‘Master. To get this paltry raft, knotted with old clouts, I had to drown two Moors.’

Nicholas heaved himself round. ‘I have a dagger.’

Hodge look at him. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Hold out a little longer.’

‘For what?’

‘For a last hope.’

The sunrise was beautiful and terrible, a few trails of cloud in the east scattering the burnished light. God’s blessed daylight come to kill them. Every minute that the sun climbed to the zenith brought their death closer. They rolled back off the raft into the water with barely the strength in their arms to hold on to the spars. Their feet were bloated and white, legs blistered and weeping. Little fish came and nibbled at their sores but they could do nothing. They rested their throbbing heads on their forearms and made their last confused peace with God.

Nicholas thought he heard a splash near by and raised his head again. Twenty yards off there was a corsair corpse lashed to a spar, half submerged. His face was turned upwards, and the sun had burned his eyes dry in their sockets. But he seemed to move strangely, to twitch and bob. Like a dead dancer.

Then he understood. Something was tugging on the corpse from below, making it jerk spasmodically. Teeth were taking chunks out of his stomach.

To the dumb animals, flesh was flesh, alive or dead. Sailors’ tales told of rats biting into sleeping men’s faces. Meat was meat. He did not even know whether he would feel it when they in turn began to be eaten. His head drummed in hot agony, but the rest of his body below felt bloated and numb.

He could not speak but touched Hodge on the shoulder.

They watched a dark triangular fin passing back and forth through the water near the corpse. No, two fins. Three. Another splash. It was the fish fighting over the meat.

Hodge spread his hand wide, very calm. The old signal from their boyhood deer hunts. Keep still. Make no noise.

One of the dark fins, driven from the corpse by the others, was coming towards them.