Popes and Phantoms

by John Whitbourn

  ‘Persevere,’ said the corsair as an aside. ‘It is well worth it. Meanwhile, I have received a letter concerning you. There is someone keen to meet you, my Captain Slovo, and I do not think I dare to deny them. It will be next month – are you agreeable?’

  Slovo shrugged. ‘What have I to lose?’ he quipped.

  Khair Khaleel-el-Din gave the comment far more consideration than it merited.

  ‘That,’ he said, running an index finger pensively along his withered lips, ‘is a very good question.’

  At the time appointed for the meeting, Khair Khaleel-el-Din was more forthcoming. ‘This enlightened being who deigns to look upon you is the Principal of the ancient Cairene University of the Mosque Al-Azher. He is known as the Shaduf, after the original water-lifting implement of his nation, since he likewise brings life to the parched fields of the mind from the refreshing waters of truth. As a fellow respecter of wisdom, Slovo, you should abase yourself before him, as I do.’

  In fact, neither of them made a move to do any such thing. Slovo took the minute movements of the little Arab visitor’s implausibly neat beard and moustache to be outward signs of facial expression, and presumed it was a greeting. He made a semblance of a bow in return.

  ‘I thank you, master privateer,’ said the Shaduf. ‘You may now leave us.’

  Slovo wondered just what was in store. And it transpired he had the opportunity to ponder for some while. The Shaduf simply sat and studied him at first. Considering a trial of stares unwise, Slovo pretended to examine the galleys in Tripoli Harbour far below.

  ‘Yes,’ the Shaduf eventually drawled, clearly expectant that Slovo would give way to ecstasy at first hearing of that word. ‘Yes, you will do.’

  Slovo cleared some imaginary dust from the knee of his breeches. ‘Well, that’s a great weight from my mind,’ he said. ‘Do for what exactly?’

  ‘For what we have in mind,’ replied the Shaduf concisely, not obviously disappointed by the infidel’s reaction. ‘But that needn’t concern you unduly at this stage in your career.’

  ‘I was unaware of owning such a structured concept,’ said Slovo. ‘And, incidentally, who is this “we”?’

  For the Shaduf the interview was patently over but he remained willing to humour this impudent Christian. ‘Firstly,’ he ticked off one elegant finger, ‘you may be presently unaware of a pattern to your life but that is not to disprove its existence. Secondly,’ another digit was coaxed to bend over, ‘the “we” to whom I referred is a collective called the Vehme.’

  Slovo’s data-retrieval faculties travelled gingerly down the hall of memories, careful to avoid some of the more monstrous items slumbering lightly there. ‘I recall hearing that word,’ he said, frowning to recollect, ‘in Germania, amongst the City States. I have heard things …’

  ‘But not the truth,’ interrupted the Shaduf dismissively, with confidence that convinced. ‘That is something that can only be learned gradually. It is this that we propose to you.’

  Captain Slovo already had the experience to scent overwhelming power. Physically, the Shaduf might be no match for the youngest trainee pirate aboard Slovo’s ship but it was clear to the Captain that he himself was very much a slingless David to the Arab’s Goliath in this encounter.

  ‘Just out of curiosity,’ he asked, ‘is it open for me to refuse?’

  ‘It is open to all men to die,’ answered the Shaduf.

  The Year 1488

  ‘By possession of a beautiful bottom (but not my own) I secure a new position in life and acquire respectability and a wife!’

  ‘Details, mere details,’ said Captain Slovo.

  ‘They may be mere details to you, Captain,’ replied Bosun, ‘but to us it’s life and death. Come on – slit your throat and spill the news.’

  Ever since the blowing of his cover, revealing him as an amateur philosopher, Bosun had been manifesting dangerously democratic tendencies. Slovo would never have tolerated it but for the fact that he had only one more voyage to make and that replacing Bosun would be inconvenient. Otherwise, the upstart tiller-tugger would have been over the side in short order, to join the Venetian.

  ‘A reliable source,’ Slovo explained with a patience that should have stirred Bosun’s neck hairs, ‘informed me of a particularly succulent “fruit of the waves”, that is all. We sally forth to pluck and devour it. What could be more natural?’

  Bosun made his protest with a discreet lowering of voice. ‘But a Caliph’s ship! That’s not been our way. We’re just a galiot and she’ll be laterna size – we’ll never hack it. They’ll be all over us!’

  ‘That prospect might be more attractive than you think,’ answered Slovo. ‘A Princess’s ship will carry a hefty contingent of maidens and eunuchs-in-waiting, in lieu of fighting men. The odds will be more even than you suppose. Besides, I am assured that we will be assisted by an agent aboard.’

  In between his reflex ten-second checks on the crew’s devotion to duty, Bosun found time to construct the message ‘unconvinced’ on his features. ‘You’ve got a lot of faith in this source,’ he said cautiously. ‘That’s not like you.’

  Nor indeed was it but, in the face of the arguments arrayed in battle order by the Shaduf, Slovo had seen little option but the leap of faith. If the Principal of the world’s oldest university said that a dowry-laden daughter of the Egyptian Sultan was en route to matrimony with a Turkish rival, Slovo found himself with no alternative but action. The additional consideration, that Slovo was soon to be declared an ‘Enemy of God’ throughout the Islamic world, made imminent departure very attractive. Bit by bit, the Vehmic conspiracy had narrowed and straightened the path before him, and then firmly pushed him on his way.

  ‘What more can I say?’ asked the Captain of his Bosun, preparing to deploy his ‘doomsday instruction’. ‘Trust me.’

  There was no safe answer to that and Bosun swung away, launching into compensatory abuse of the crew. Those seamen not wedded to the oars teemed about like ants trying to appease him.

  The galley fairly ripped through the water as the rowers settled easily into the mindless rhythm of the strokemaster’s ancient song. Bosun had been permitted to tantalize them with hints of a bounteous prize ahead and they pulled away with a will. Only Bosun himself remained discontent, pacing the rowing deck and scanning the sea ahead, but there was nothing so unusual about that.

  Slovo, by contrast, was looking forward to what was to come. For once in his life he did not need to worry about preparing for every eventuality. The Shaduf – and through him, the Vehme – had instructed him down to the last detail. Such tender care recalled dim memories of family, and might have cheered the Captain but for what the Venetian and Stoicism had jointly worked on him.

  While the Shaduf had said next to nothing about the apparently all-embracing Vehme, he had been generous to a fault with other thought-provoking ‘facts’. The Deity, however one conceived him or it, he had said, was possessed of seventy-three proper names and those infinite few who knew any of them were termed the Baal Shem.

  Slovo had confessed himself intrigued by such theological information, but he was a working pirate with a living to steal. Exactly how did such revelations assist him?

  The Shaduf’s patient explanation that the hearing of such names was destruction to an unprepared mortal and that the Vehme would secrete one of their own Baal Shem aboard the Sultan’s ship, went a long way to convince Slovo. Now he understood why the Vehme would pit a mere hundred fighting men against the floating fortress he knew they would meet. A deep and secret leviathan was being awakened on his behalf and the opposition would be vouchsafed a glimpse of God – at the price of their lives.

  There were inconsistencies and unanswered questions Slovo would have liked to pursue but he’d felt it indelicate to do so. He had purchased waxen earblocks for all the crew and put his trust in his new employers. It was this unprecedented sentiment that had so alarmed Bosun. Slovo couldn’t find it in his heart to blame him.


  Then, just as he was pondering the degree to which the Islamic fatalism of Tripoli was influencing his present decisions, the look-out bellowed, ‘Ship-ahoy!’

  Even the Captain had second thoughts when they drew close to the monster containing the Sultan’s daughter. The great galleon sat heavy in the sea, indicating the manpower packed within, although she moved along nippily enough when heaved by myriad banks of oars. The ominously huge bow and stern cannons discouraged proximity and the side facing Slovo was packed with a crowd of armoured welcomers.

  It was to Bosun’s credit that he moved swiftly to silence the murmurs of dismay. To encourage the others he split the head of one too plainly frightened sailor. Thus exhorted, the crew embraced the wisdom of their Captain’s wishes and closed for battle, urged on by the strokemaster’s allegro song – and an impulse to get the thing over and done with, one way or the other. Slovo noted the skilful positioning of the Egyptian ship to permit her stern gun to fire, but allowed Bosun to judge when to make the vital ‘flick’ to port or starboard that would avoid the crushing ball. True, the ship was bigger than any they had faced before but the basic play had been run through a hundred times. And, supposedly they had a friend aboard.

  When the Bosun had done his job and they were all soaked by the vast impact in the sea a score of paces to port, Slovo wound his ship up to attack speed. Then, reverentially on one knee (but weapons to hand), Slovo commended himself to Mary and her Son, not forgetting a word of praise to Jehovah (since Judaism seemed occasionally persuasive).

  The galley Slovo was liberally hosed down with Egyptian bow and shot and men started to slump at the oars. The crew would normally have returned suppressing fire and plainly wished with all their hearts to do so. However, above the noise of the dying, Captain Slovo forbade it. At the same time he ordered his men to insert their earplugs.

  Obeying the stupid Barbary pirate custom of the ship’s Captain standing fearless and prominent to face the worst the enemy could throw, Slovo at last had the opportunity to study his target at leisure – even whilst it tried to end his observations for ever.

  It was a behemoth! A forest’s worth afloat, made to look even more unnatural atop the waves by the rich, primary-colour decorations the Mohammedan Royals seemed to like so much. After painful translation and with mounting amusement, Slovo noted that the mighty white sail was emblazoned with a profession of faith: There is no God but God and Mohammed is His prophet. He smiled even as a whistling arrow’s passage disturbed the fall of his hair. One God there might well be, he mused, but there was the hope that they might soon learn that He went under a number of names.

  Abandoning attempts to escape by slave or sail from their more nimble pursuer, the lumbering Egyptian craft shipped oars and more or less awaited what might be. Happy to show them, a mere two lengths off and still weathering a storm of missiles, the galley Slovo banked for the cannon-free side and the final approach. The iron grapples and boarding platform were made ready and, since no ram was intended, the oarsmen were ordered to abandon their charges and tool up, allowing momentum to finish the job.

  Slovo traversed his ship to join the elite group of particularly bestial sailors who always led the first charge. In lieu of commands they could no longer hear, he smiled encouragement.

  The Royal Egyptian ship was high-sided but, burdened by her load, she sat low and permitted a clear view of her deck from the galley Slovo. Ordinarily, at this point it would have been time to hurl the fiery naphtha-pots and baskets of vipers to shed confusion and worse amidst the massed enemy, but Slovo ignored the pleading looks of the toughs around him. This time, just this once, he would have faith right up to the last possible moment.

  The Baal Shem very nearly did leave it too late and exhaust Slovo’s feeble trust. The grapples had dropped, the platform had crashed down, its spikes biting into the Egyptian deck, before he showed his hand. The front ranks of pirates and marines were already in intimate and deadly embrace before his voice was heard. It was as well he acted, for they were hopelessly outnumbered.

  Standing beside the gorgeous divan within the Royal pavilion, was a negro among a frightened huddle of courtiers. Unhurriedly laying down his ostrich feather fan, he stepped forward and began to speak.

  What he had to say carried above the clamour and what he said caused all clamour to cease.

  One by one the Egyptians stopped what they were doing, their attention now clearly held by something far more important than a mere life-and-death struggle. Some of the pirates unchivalrously took the opportunity to dispatch their distracted opponents. And now that the identity of their helper was known, Slovo seized his own chance and took out the ship’s Captain with a crossbow-bolt to the throat.

  In the event, he need not have bothered. At the call of the Baal Shem all those who could hear began to cry – with joy or horror Slovo could not discern – and then they started to die. A few pirates who had seen fit to discard the earplugs rapidly joined them.

  Soon the Egyptian deck was choked with dead and dying, either neatly in rows as with the captured Christian oarsmen, or in twitching heaps of armoured marines and silk-garbed courtiers. Slovo had hoped to be able to watch and read the Baal Shem’s lips but it had all happened too fast, and perhaps that was just as well.

  The surviving pirates howled with pleasure at such wild success and, casting their earplugs aside, poured on to the Egyptian prize. Their Captain followed suit. Then the coal-black Baal Shem stepped forward to meet them and thereby reversed the tide, leaving Slovo irritably wondering why he was being buffeted by routing men just as the battle was apparently won. But the crush before him cleared and all his doubts were resolved. As the Baal Shem casually advanced upon him, Captain Slovo found it supremely easy to forget courage and purpose and dignity. He discovered himself strangely willing to leap athletically back to his own ship and trample anyone between him and its familiar deck.

  Fortunately it was all just by way of an effect, and the Baal Shem turned off his aura of approaching death-plus-something-worse as abruptly as he’d inflicted it. He leaned on the grappled rail of his galley-hecatomb and studied the shivering pirates with a neutral expression. ‘How much do they know?’ he asked in a touching falsetto, speaking directly to Slovo, and gesturing towards the crew.

  ‘Just enough,’ Slovo said, his speech emerging as a croak, ‘and no more.’

  ‘Then let them come and play,’ replied the Baal Shem, ‘while we talk.’

  He stood aside and bowed everyone back aboard, the action as smooth and practised as that of any Sultan’s flunkey. The prospect of good plunder overcame the pirates’ fear and, like mice bypassing a watchful cat, they cautiously edged on to the ship of the dead, where they regained their normal instincts and fell whooping upon the fallen.

  The Baal Shem in turn clambered stiffly on to the galley Slovo, making heavier weather of it than was customarily seen in pirate circles. He was obviously older than appearances suggested.

  ‘There are survivors in the pavilion,’ the Baal Shem said, almost as an aside, ‘together with an object which will be of inestimable use to you. Instruct your creatures to respect its boundaries. All else they may have – even my trusty old ostrich fan.’

  Captain Slovo so instructed Bosun and he so implemented. Even in the present madness, their management-record was such that they were confident of being obeyed.

  The Baal Shem allowed himself to be directed to the Captain’s deck at the stern and was settled upon a canvas stool. Slovo procured a goblet of wine each, the Baal Shem partook and then smacked his lips.

  ‘Delectable!’ he said with open pleasure. ‘This is the first fruit of the vine I’ve imbibed since my Islamic servitude began. Thank you, Captain!’

  ‘Every man needs access to intoxication,’ said Slovo, ‘in order that he may escape being himself.’

  The Baal Shem nodded wholeheartedly. ‘I agree, Captain. However, to business straightaway: how and why, I suppose?’

  ‘If you
don’t mind,’ replied Slovo, eyeing him cautiously whilst trying to conceal the impoliteness of doing so. ‘What was that magic word you cried? It won us the game, sure enough.’

  Wiping his lips with a broad hand, the Baal Shem explained, ‘One of the names of the infinite, whereupon any mortal within earshot withers and dies. It is as simple as that.’

  Slovo frowned slightly. ‘But you mentioned survivors?’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ The Baal Shem looked meaningfully at the dead wine flagon but Slovo didn’t take the heavy hint. ‘It was always intended there should be one – aside from myself, of course – you’ll need the Princess where you’re going. It did come as a surprise though there being two who lived. Have you the time for me to explain?’

  Slovo looked over his deserted ship to the wild scenes unfolding across the way. ‘They will be like badly brought-up children if they do not have their full measure of fun and profit,’ he answered.

  ‘Well, it will be enough for you to know that my life’s vocation – up to mere moments ago – was to fan the brow, and other parts, of the Princess Khadine. Now, it so happens that she is famous in the Islamic world for the divine beauty and perfection of her curvaceous behind …’

  ‘Oh yes, I have heard of her,’ said Slovo helpfully. ‘I once saw an indecent woodcut highlighting her attributes.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ said the Baal Shem. ‘Our “lustrous jewel of the Delta” is quite a celebrity. Anyway, coincidentally, it also happens that the Caliph-Sultan Bayezid of Istanbul is famous for his interest in such matters. Accordingly, in order to avert the scandal of a war between Moslems and the deaths of untold thousands, the girl’s backside is to be pressed into service and she is being rushed into matrimony with him. I am called upon to keep her cool while she is ferried thither, post-haste.’

  ‘I still don’t understand why she is alive,’ Slovo said. ‘Surely a body-slave such as yourself must have ample grievances you wish to repay in full? There is also the question of how you ensured her immunity.’