The Flag of Freedom

by Seth Hunter

  He was aware of its sinister reputation. It was here, among these dark corridors, and the haunted chambers that led off them, that most of the political murders which characterised the Karamanli dynasty were committed. Many a guest, invited to a banquet or reception, had met a grisly end in one of these gloomy passages. A shadowy figure would step out of some recess or doorway with knife or garrotte, and after a few moments of futile struggle the corpse would be dragged to one side ready for the next victim. It was said that as many as 300 of the Pasha’s enemies had been disposed of in this manner, at one sitting.

  It was unlikely to happen on this occasion, however, for the main purpose of this particular summons was extortion, and though the Pasha could, and frequently did, extort money from the dead, it was a once and for all withdrawal, whereas the payment of ransoms could continue for some considerable time.

  Even so, it was an essential feature of the Ottoman system that anyone entering the presence of the ruler should fear that he would never emerge from it alive. It was part of the mind torment that ensured the complete subservience to his will. Thus, the walls of the buildings themselves were pervaded with such an air of gloom and despondency, such a sense of betrayal and treachery, of unseen suffering and secret murder, that the courtier, supplicant or foreign ambassador invited to enter such a web would feel himself to be completely in the power of the monstrous spider at the heart of it. And grateful to him if, on this occasion, he was merely spat out, like a pip, without his skin.

  Thus Spiridion was led through a network of passages, twisting and turning this way and that, up stairs and down stairs, through heavy, iron-plated doors – locked at sunset, Spiridion had been told, to divide the castle into a myriad different compartments – into tiny courtyards, open to the sky but barred with iron gratings that only emphasised the resem blance to a prison, until he arrived at length – at unnecessary length, he suspected – into the audience chamber of the Pasha.

  The contrast was startling, as indeed it was meant to be. A large, almost cavernous room, with beams of light filtered through narrow arched windows set very high in the walls; the walls themselves gleaming with tiles and mirrors in ornate designs; sweet-smelling herbs burning in long-legged holders, the smoke twisting and turning like phantom snakes in the beams of sunlight; the great expanse of floor covered with sumptuous Turkish carpets and cushions and – unusually in the Levant – chairs: carved and gilded chairs from France, a sign of status in the Orient, like the mirrors, as if in some reflection of the Sun King in distant Versailles. Before the Revolution.

  The centre of all this magnificence was the throne, a simple enough affair padded out with tasselled cushions and raised on a dais at one end of the room. It was currently empty. On each side of it and all around the walls stood heavily armed guards. Opposite the throne but at a healthy distance from it, sat the members of the Divan, in their finery, with the Grand Kehya occupying a table in the centre with his clerks and his paperwork. And huddled in a group at the far end of the room were the captives from the Saratoga – in chains and under close guard.

  There were about 100 of them, by Spiridion’s reckoning, including a number of women and children, presumably the passengers the Consul’s dragoman had told him about, who had fled Venice after its surrender to the French. Spiridion kept his head down, near the back of the hall, but his covert surveillance established that several of them were indeed known to him personally. He recognised two senators and a judge – also one wealthy merchant with whom he had done business from time to time. But so far as he was aware, none them knew him as anything but a merchant from Zante who acted as British Consul in the Seven Isles. Even so, he was subject ing them to a more intense inspection when he was distracted by the dragoman whispering in his ear. Most of what he said was unintelligible but Spiridion picked up the words ‘Murad Rais’.

  Murad Rais. Yes. There he was, the Captain of the Meshuda, standing to one side of his captives with several of his officers. Spiridion had heard of Murad Rais from various sources both within and without the British Consulate, where Rais was also known as Peter Lisle, or Lilly, the Scottish seaman who had turned renegade.

  According to one story, he had been a master gunner who had deserted from a British frigate visiting Tripoli. Another story had him as the mate of a British merchant ship. Yet another, the mate of the Meshuda when it was an American vessel, a schooner called the Betsy. Whatever the truth of the matter, he had converted to Islam and so impressed the present Pasha that he had appointed him Captain of the Meshuda and later, when his exploits had made him famous – or infamous – throughout the Mediterranean, he had promoted him to Admiral of the Fleet.

  Murad Rais was a smallish man with a red beard and earrings – every inch the pirate. He could have been Drake or one of his fellow Elizabethan seadogs, Spiridion thought, had it not been for the turban and the flowing robes and baggy trousers, a curved dagger at his belt – or at least the sheath, for weapons were forbidden in the court of the Pasha. He looked a little troubled, Spiridion thought, for a man who had just returned to the port in triumph. He kept glancing towards his captives as if they were a burden to him and not a supplement to his already considerable fortune.

  A deep and rhythmic drumbeat announced the imminent arrival of the Pasha. Was it Spiridion’s imagining, or did it send a shiver of apprehension running through the crowded room? Certainly, there was a tension, a collective stiffening of fibres, a nervous adjustment of dress. The drumbeat grew louder and with it the shriller sound of pipes and timbrels. Moments later the musicians marched in, closely followed by a file of Janissaries in their steel helmets and breastplates. Then came the Agha carrying the Pasha’s staff of three horsetails – in homage to the nomadic origins of the Ottoman Turks and a mark of the Pasha’s dignity as a senior potentate of the Empire, equal in rank to the Governors of Baghdad and Budapest.

  Then finally, as the music ceased and the courtiers and ministers and supplicants prostrated themselves, and the foreign representatives bowed as low as was possible without actually touching the floor with their heads, the Pasha himself entered the hall.

  Yusuf Karamanli was a short, fat man of about thirty, and though he wore the bejewelled turban, the embroidered robes of an Ottoman satrap, he had a fair, almost rosy complexion, with pale blue eyes and a thin blond beard. To Spiridion he looked like one of those young men from England or Germany when they turn up in Venice, the highlight of the Grand Tour, wearing the costume they have bought for Carnival.

  It was said that he took after his mother, who had been born in the Ottoman province of Georgia, in the Caucasus – at least, in his appearance. Unhappily for his subjects, he had nothing of her gentle, passive nature. For although he exuded an air of humorous and relaxed charm – quite the jolly prince, in fact – he was frequently possessed of violent rages. Spiridion, when they were described to him, had wondered if it was all part of the act, the elaborate subterfuge of a man who knew himself and his people very well and was well-versed in the power of theatre to impress them. For Yusuf Karamanli, appearances to the contrary, was, in fact, a cold and calculating killer.

  He came from a long line of what were known in Tripoli as Khuloghlis – literally, in Turkish, the sons of slaves. In reality, they were the sons of Turkish officials who had taken Arab wives, and they formed an elite warrior caste similar to the Janissaries. But unlike the Janissaries, who fought on foot, the Khuloghlis were horsemen – splendid horsemen for the most part – who lived under the control of their own elected Aghas, mainly in the oases outside the towns.

  Yusuf’s grandfather, Ahmed, had been one of their leaders. He had seized power in a military coup, which was not unusual in the outer provinces of the Ottoman Empire. What was unusual was that shortly afterwards, he had invited several hundred of the country’s most eminent chieftains and notables to a state banquet and had had them murdered, singly or in groups, as they shuffled through the corridors to the dining room. There was still some debate
in the coffee houses over whether he had had them garrotted or cut their throats. The majority favoured garrotting, to avoid any telltale signs of bloodshed. Either way, none of the victims returned to shed light on the matter. The Pasha used the money from their confiscated estates to bribe the Sultan into confirming him as Regent.

  Whether Yusuf had learned from this admirable example, or inherited the same ruthless sense of survival, his own route to power was just as merciless, if rather more personal.

  As Spiridion had heard it, the story was this:

  The previous Pasha, Ahmed’s son, Ali, was a drunk and a profligate, who rarely moved beyond the castle walls and left the management of the country to his Grand Kehya, while for the more subtle business of managing the court he relied on his women – ‘those casual instruments of mischief’, as Spiridion’s informant had described them. Ali had many women, but in the Khuloghlis tradition, only one wife, the Georgian, Lilla Kebierra, by whom he had three sons, Hassan, Ahmed and Yusuf.

  The eldest, Hassan, was widely regarded as a man of intelli gence, charm and courage. Spiridion’s informant, who was the sister of the previous British Consul and clearly enamoured, had described him as ‘a fine, majestic figure of a man, a born ruler, much beloved by his people’.

  Always a curse in the Ottoman world.

  In his early twenties, as was customary with the eldest son, Hassan had been appointed Bey, Commander-in-Chief of the Janissaries. He took this role more seriously than most and spent a great deal of his time and much of his money on military campaigns against the brigand tribes of the interior, which was mostly desert the size of France and Spain combined. Unfor tunately for Hassan, his obvious qualities of leadership, together with his prolonged absences from court, proved fatal. The first provoked the jealousy of his two brothers and aroused the fear that he would have them disposed of the moment he assumed power; the second provided them with the opportunity to do something about it.

  The middle son, Ahmed, was a nonentity – a drunkard and a coward who took after his father and made himself scarce at the slightest hint of danger. Hassan had nothing to fear from him. But the youngest son, Yusuf, was a talented and ruthless conspirator, with a devotion to his own interests uninhibited by considerations of family, friends, country, honour or religion. Everyone expected him to go far.

  His main problem was catching Hassan off-guard.

  Such was the hatred and suspicion that existed among the three brothers, they rarely moved without a coterie of armed retainers and loyal followers. The one exception to this was their mother’s harem – a traditional place of sanctuary in the Ottoman world, where no violence was tolerated, and no weapons or male followers were permitted.

  From what Spiridion could gather, Yusuf persuaded his mother that he wanted to be reconciled with Hassan. So she had summoned them both for a meeting – in the harem.

  Hassan had just lost his two young sons in a recent plague which had decimated the population. He was in a mood for reconciliation with his brothers, but being a Khuloghli he took his sword with him, hidden under his robes. Unfortunately, his mother detected it and made him take it off and leave it on a windowsill.

  She then sat her two sons down beside her and joined their hands together, begging them to swear an end to their enmity. Yusuf appeared willing. He even proposed that they swear on the Qur’an. Hassan being agreeable, Yusuf crossed to the door and called loudly to the servants to bring him a copy of the Holy Book. This was a prearranged signal. One of his slaves promptly appeared and handed him two loaded pistols.

  Hassan was still seated beside his mother on the sofa. Yusuf had his back to them at the door. When he turned, they both saw the pistols and Lilla Kebierra gave a scream and threw herself in front of her eldest son. Yusuf fired anyway and the ball pierced her hand and struck Hassan in the side. He was still able to reach for his sword, however, and make a lunge at his younger brother. Whereupon Yusuf discharged the second pistol, killing him instantly.

  Lilla Kebierra draped herself across the body, wailing piteously. The door opened and Lilla Ayesha, Hassan’s wife, came running in. She, too, hurled herself upon the body. In her wake came five of Yusuf’s slaves who pulled the two women away and hacked the corpse to pieces with their swords. Then Yusuf and his followers, covered in blood, made their escape, killing the Grand Kehya on the way.

  As Spiridion’s informant eloquently put it: ‘Hamlet ain’t in it!’

  But whatever Shakespeare’s audience might have made of it, the population of Tripoli, after a short period of pleasurable horror, anarchy and Turkish intervention, gave Yusuf a stand ing ovation. He was widely acknowledged to have that elusive spirit of bashasha – a combination of charisma, charm and the capacity for unrestrained violence – which marked him as the coming man: a man with all the qualities necessary to rule a turbulent province on the fringes of the Ottoman Empire. When he emerged from his exile among the Berbers and the Bedouin of the interior, he returned in triumph to take his place on the throne. His grieving mother uttered no word of rebuke, his surviving brother fled to Tunis, and his subjects kept their heads down and refused all invitations to dinner at the castle.

  They were wise to do so. At his first full Divan, the new Pasha announced the death penalty for everything but the most trivial of offences. Thieves were seized by snatch squads of executioners – a profession reserved, in Tripoli, for members of the Jewish faith – and instantly hanged or strangled. Raiding tribesmen were beheaded. Women convicted of adultery were tied in a sack and throw into the sea. Yet it was said that Yusuf could be merciful. He had a tendency, it was reported, to be swayed by a transitory emotion. This, too, was part of his bashasha.

  His personal life was simple. He had two wives, one black, one white, and thus far no concubines; his alcohol consumption was moderate; he had no other known vices. Spiridion had been told he had a lively and penetrating knowledge of events in Europe and that he spoke fluent Italian, in the dialect of Sicily. He was on good terms with the Spanish and the French and until recently, when there had been a certain cooling of relations, with the British. His main problem, as a ruler, was lack of money. For which reason he had resorted, as had so many of his predecessors, to the licensing of piracy.

  Yusuf adhered to the traditional policy, practised all along the Barbary Coast, of being in a permanent state of war with Christendom. This conferred the right of his seafaring subjects to embark on a corse, or cruise, with the purpose of raiding isolated Christian communities through out the Mediterranean and of seizing any Christian ship incapable of defending itself.

  It being forbidden by the Qur’an to enslave the followers of Mohammed, the sole purpose of this enterprise was the harvesting of slaves and plunder.

  In practice, however, the states of the Barbary Coast made exceptions for all those nations powerful enough to exact retribution for such atrocities or prudent enough to pay an annual subsidy. One of Yusuf’s first acts on assuming office had been to declare all existing treaties to be null and void and to demand additional payments from the tribute nations, most of whom had reluctantly paid on demand. But not the United States.

  Which was why the Saratoga now languished in the Pasha’s harbour and her passengers and crew were assembled in his castle with chains around their ankles.

  The language of the court was Turkish and Spiridion was able to follow most of what was going on without the help of the dragoman. The Grand Kehya sat at a table with his paperwork while one of his officials read out the names and nationalities of the crew and the passengers. Spiridion knew the form. Crew members, whatever country they came from originally, were considered to be of the same nationality as the ship and were disposed of in the same way as the cargo. A tenth of their number belonged to the Pasha, the rest would be sold in the slave-market to the highest bidder and the profits divided by the corsair Captain, the ship’s owners, and those of his crew who were not slaves already.

  The passengers were treated more individually. If
they were not covered by treaty they, too, were enslaved – unless they could raise sufficient funds to buy their freedom. The actual amount varied but it was usually as much as they could afford to pay. There were a number of Jewish merchants in the port who acted as brokers, assessing exactly how much might be raised from the family and arranging the transfer of funds with other Jewish merchants in Europe. The whole process tended to take months, if not years, during which time the prisoners were employed as slaves.

  If any of the passengers were from a country covered by treaty, however, their Consuls would promptly petition for their release – and usually it was granted.

  On this occasion most of the passengers were Venetian – and their legal status, so far as their captors were concerned, was ambiguous. The Most Serene Republic of Saint Mark had ceased to exist. Something else had taken its place, but it had not yet been recognised by any of the nations of Europe, let alone by the Great Sultan. Nor did it have any consular represent ation. Venice being under French occupation, it was possible that the French Consul might speak up for them. Possible, but unlikely. Not when they had been fleeing from French control.

  Spiridion glanced towards the French delegation. His particular interest was in a man called Xavier Naudé, who was, like Spiridion, keeping well in the background. For he was, like Spiridion, a spy. He had formerly been the leading French agent in Venice, acting on behalf of the notorious Jean Landrieux, head of Bonaparte’s intelligence service in Northern Italy. What he was doing in Tripoli was anyone’s guess. Mr Lucas had heard that he was here on behalf of the Directory to renew the peace treaty, but he was far too important an agent to be concerned with such an issue. Something else was afoot, and Spiridion intended to find out what it was.