by Robert Adams
As the coffee came to its initial boil, the man adroitly took it from the heat, added three cardamom pods, then replaced it over the coals. As the mixture boiled up the second time, he again took it up and this time spooned a generous measure of the rich brown froth into each of the three waiting silver cups.
On the third boiling, the man removed the pot from the heat, dashed into it a large spoonful of unheated water, then filled the three cups with the fragrantly steaming, thick, syrupy, stygian-black brew.
"It is many years since I have savored dhwah in the Turkic style," the herald commented politely, still speaking Arabic.
Walid shrugged. "Thank you for the compliment, Sir Ali, but I understand, believe me, I more than understand. You will have noticed that I did not dignify it by calling it dhwah. I shipped this sorry Turk aboard in Izmir, after my own cook was killed in a dockside brawl. And dhwah or even a simple kuskus simply baffles him."
"But now, I am a blunt seaman, Sir Ali, so let us get down to business, eh? For what purpose did this Bey Sebastian send you to me? This galleon is his for the taking, already; even a landsman could see that she cannot be steered. The bread of slavery is bitter at best, but forced to it, I imagine that the most of my crew would prefer becoming slaves to becoming corpses, today. As for me, after the loss of this vessel and the guns, I'd as lief remain as far as possible from Sultan Omar's domains . . . for reasons of bodily health, you understand."
Sir All grinned briefly. "Yes, I've heard that he's possessed of a foul temper, though exceeding generous to those who can please him. But tell me this—how is it that one of Sultan Omar's fine war galleons is escorting ships sent by the Pope of the West? Is all the Church allied against England, then?"
Walid snorted scornfully. "Not hardly, Sir Ali! Our Pope's last word on the matter was that anyone simpleminded enough to go west and risk his fortune and/or neck to try to help put a bastard-spawn usurper onto the throne of England at the behest of old Pope Abdul would probably have been killed by his own stupidity sooner or later anyhow, wherever he chanced to be."
"No, bad luck and illegal coercion brought me and mine here to this sorry pass. Nor have that Moorish dog who styles himself Pope of the West and his criminal Roman cohorts heard the end of the coercion business, either, not if I ever get the ship back to Turkey, they haven't."
"The Turkish ambassador to the court of King Giovanni, in Napoli, having died—he and all his family, of a summer pestilence—I had conveyed the new ambassador and his household to Napoli and was asea en route to the Port of Marsala to take aboard certain cargo consigned to Sultan Omar's chamberlain when, of a late, dark night, a freak, unseasonal tempest all but swamped the galleon, killed or injured several of my crewmen, and seriously damaged my rigging. When all was done, I found my position to be far nor'-nor'west of where I'd been at the start, and somehow I managed to get the vessel into the Port of Gaeta, a small port on the mainland . . . and squarely into the claws of Pope Abdul, the black-hearted bastard sibling of those noisome canine creatures that subsist on thrice-vomited camels' dung."
"Now understand, Sir Ali, all that I required was a few score fathoms of decent rope, some small items of hardware, some good, seasoned hardwood lumber, and a few pinewood spars, for all of which I was prepared to pay fair value in new, undipped golden omars. And for all of my first day in that port it seemed that I would soon be accommodated at a better than good price; indeed, I was received and feted in the manner of some visiting bey. But one 'unavoidable' delay followed on the heels of another for more than a week. Finally, I was informed that materials of the quality and in the quantity I required simply were not available anywhere in the environs of Gaeta-port."
"At that juncture, I offered to hire a few of the larger coasters and crews to tow my galleon south to Napoli, which port I knew was well enough stocked to effect my repairs and which lay less than sixty sea miles distant. But, Sir Ali, not one coaster captain or fishing-boat master would look at my gold, though I offered enough to all but buy their wallowing little tubs outright."
"Then, when I was making ready to sail out under a jury-rig and follow the coastline down to Napoli as best I could, the damned two-faced Dago harbormaster, claiming most piously to be in fear for the safety of me, my crew, and the sultan's ship, sealed my moorings with armed guards on the dock, and most sadly informed me that if I should try to leave the port without his say-so, the fort gunners had orders to hull me with their demicannon! Can you credit it?"
"It sounds not like a friendly act," Sir Ali commented dryly. "So, what happened then?"
With a strong tinge of sarcasm, Walid said, "Lo and behold, two days later, a Roman Papal galleon—that same one that your galleys blew up and sank earlier today, for which may God always love you all!—came bowling into Gaeta-port and I was shortly given to understand that the only way I would get out of that overgrown fishing hamlet with my ship and crew intact and before we all grew long, white beards was to allow the Roman to take us under tow and convey us thus to the Port of Livorno, some days' sailing to the north."
The Arabian knight nodded, brusquely. "And you agreed."
"What else could I do?" Walid shrugged and shook his head. "On the way north, I must admit, I toyed with the thought of possibly contriving a broken tow cable, then maneuvering my 'benefactor' into position to hull him with my main-deck battery. Then I could cripple his rigging and sweep his decks with my nines and swivels, and possibly serve him up a few red-hot shot for good measure, before I tried to make it down to Napoli alone. But then, the second day out of Gaeta, a brace of big galleases beat down from the north and I realized that at these new odds, resistance would be suicidal."
The seaman padded over on his bare, dirty feet and refilled the tiny cups with more of the strong Turkish kahvay, while another man removed the ceremonial tray of bread and salt to replace it with another small tray of black, wrinkled, sun-dried olives, dried Izmir figs, raisins, and similar oddments. Walid sipped delicately at the boiling-hot liquid, then went on with his tale. "The harbor basin at Livorno was packed with vessels like stockfish in a cask, Sir Ali. There was at least one vessel moored at every slip, with others moored to the starboard of those, where there was room. Every type and size of vessel in all the Middle Sea was there to be seen—cogs, caravels, carracks, galleys and galleases, coasters of every conceivable shape and rig, all engaged in lading, preparing, arming, victualing, and manning yonder fleet your arms have just captured. They—"
"Pardon," interjected the herald, his eyebrows raised quizzically, "how many principalities would you say were there represented in the preparation of that fleet? Which ones were they, do you recall?"
Ticking off his fingers, Walid answered slowly, jogging his memory. "Well, let's see, Sir Ali. The Papal State, of course, and Genoa—Livorno's owned by Genoa, though it's been on long-term lease to the Roman See for as long as I can recall—both the North and the South Franks had ships there, as did the Spanish, the Aragonese, the Emirate of Granada, the Sultan of Morocco, the Hafsid caliph, the Grand Duchy of Sardinia, the King of Sicily, the Prince of Serbia, the Archcount of Corfu, and the King of Hungary. I was told, but did not myself see, that supplies had arrived from Iskanderia; if true, they must have been private merchants, though, for I cannot imagine Sultan Mehemet getting any of his fleet involved in a clearly Roman dispute, not with the bulk of his army away down south fighting the Aethiops and their allies."
"No Portugees?" probed the herald. "No Germans, Venetians, or Neapolitans? No Greeks or Levantines?"
"No!" Walid attested emphatically. "Not one Portugee there, nor when this fleet called at Lisboa on the voyage northward would the Portugee king contribute anything save a few score pipes of wine, rather a poor vintage, too, I was later told. While there were a few German ships in Livorno, they took pains to keep a distance from the Papal fleet and its suppliers. As for Greeks, Levantines, and Venetians, though there had been more than a few of them all in the harbor at Napoli, not a one was
to be seen in the basin of Livorno."
"There was, however, a coaster flying the Neapolitan ensign. Fahrooq here was able to get to her captain and entrust to him a message to be delivered to Sultan Omar's ambassador at the court of King Giovanni, at Napoli, telling of the virtual armed impressment of my ship and crew by the minions of Pope Abdul."
"So, it was either sail in company with the fleet or die, eh?" asked Sir Ali, with a note of sympathy.
But Walid shook his head slowly. "Not exactly, my friend, not exactly. You think like the warrior you are, with all things in pure black or pure white, but statesmen and, especially, churchmen never deal in such purities, trafficking rather in innumerable shadings of gray. So did they deal with me."
"Upon arrival in Livorno, my vessel was anchored in the basin until a slip could be cleared in the navy yard, then we were warped in and moored fast. Immediately we were fast, an arrogant Roman officer and his well-armed escort boarded my ship and I was ordered to collect my ship's papers and accompany him to his superiors. I did. I could just then do no other, like it or not. With my damages, the oldest and most ill-kept cog could have sailed rings around me, not to even think of what the full cannon mounted by that fortress at Livorno could have done to me."
"But we had not proceeded far through the navy yard when an older man, most distinguished of appearance, with the walk of a seaman and the honorable scars of a veteran warrior—neither of which had been evidenced by the supercilious, peacock-pretty, Roman puppy!—confronted us and announced that as senior captain of the navy yard, he had first claim on my person and time. The Roman first spluttered, then argued, then made to bluster, laying hand to hilt and calling up his pikemen. But when the older man whistled once and a double squad of matchlock-armed marines, the matches smoking-ready in the cocks, came trotting into view, the Roman backed off with the whinings of a kicked cur, whilst his own pikemen laughed behind their hands at his cowardice and discomfiture.
"And so it was that on that auspicious day, I made the acquaintance first of the renowned Conde Evaldo di Monteorso."
CHAPTER THE FIRST
With his crippled galleon under tow toward a destination known to none aboard save the herald, Sir Ali ibn Hussein, Walid Dahub Pasha stood his quarterdeck at the side of the enemy's emissary. Walid still wore his best armor and bore cursive sword, big battle dagger, and slimmer boot dagger as well as several well-hidden edge weapons of varying sizes, shapes, and purposes.
Below, in the waist, Walid's one-eyed boatswain, Turgut al-Ayn, and his mates closely supervised the repair and/or replacement of both classes of rigging, now and again lowering to the deck a shot-shredded remnant of canvas or a splintered spar.
Still lower, out of Walid's sight on the gun decks, Captain Fahrooq had seen the last of the broadside guns unloaded, powder and shot and wads stowed in their respective places. The gunpowder was stowed back into copper-hooped casks. The casks then were carefully laid back in the security of the thick-walled, felt-lined magazine; the wads were, one by one, washed, squeezed dry, then stacked back in the wad chests; shot went into ready racks affixed to the hull above each gunport.
While a carpenter and his single surviving mate went about the patching of battle damage on the main gun deck, Fahrooq ordered the gun captains to set their crews to cleaning and polishing the secured guns and the mounts and ancillary equipment before once more shrouding them from damp and dust.
His immediate orders fully discharged, the officer made his way abaft to the spot whereon the surgeon and his mates had established themselves and their apparatus at the commencement of this most costly conflict. Despite the long hours which had passed since cessation of hostilities, the sweating, blood-soaked practitioners still were hard at work with knives, saws, pincers, probes, and needles upon the latest occupant of their makeshift table, which dripped clotting gore at all four corners and all along each edge.
As he waited for the senior surgeon, Master Jibral, to finish his current undertaking, Fahrooq took down one of the lanterns and began to carefully pick his way among the recumbent forms lying close-packed on the blotched and shadowy deck. His bootsoles grated on the sand which had been liberally scattered over blood pools to provide secure footing to Master Jibral and the rest.
He found two of his soldiers almost at once. One lay dead, cold, beginning to stiffen already. The other lay equally still, but he still lived . . . most of him, at least. His left leg now ended just a bit below the knee, but the stump was neatly done up in almost-clean bandages. Although the man's eyes were open, they did not focus; Fahrooq correctly surmised that the cripple had been well dosed with poppy, probably before they took off his foot and leg.
Further search revealed yet another wounded soldier, also poppy-drugged and bandaged, but no trace of the young officer he sought, his nephew, Suliman ibn Zemal.
While his assistants manhandled the last patient off the gory table to a place on the deck, Master Jibral wiped his red-dripping hands on his blood-soggy kaftan. Taking a waterskin down from a peg, he played the thin stream into his open mouth for a moment, swished the lukewarm liquid about tongue and teeth, then leaned and spat it into a half-barrel filled with severed limbs before again throwing back his head and swallowing a pint or so of the tepid water. When he had rehung the waterskin, he sighed once, then turned toward Fahrooq, smiling tiredly. The waiting captain shuddered involuntarily, for in the dim and flaring lantern light, in the close, noisome atmosphere of this place of stinks and blood and death, the surgeon's face—with precious little skin visible under the layers of old and new blood, spade beard and mustaches stiff with clotted gore, the just-rinsed teeth shining startlingly white—bore an uncanny resemblance to how Fahrooq assumed a man-eating Mareed from out the very depths of Gehenna must look.
But Captain Fahrooq was basically a rational man, nor did he lack of courage, Firmly setting aside his fleeting, superstitious fancy, he spoke formally. "Good Master Jibral, I seek young Lieutenant Suliman. His sergeant informed me that he was brought to you, wounded, early on in the battle. Where will he be found?"
The surgeon raised one bushy, clot-matted eyebrow. "Lieutenant Suliman . . . ? Oh, that must've been the one in the fancy lamellar djawshan, heh? In that pile of corpses in the outer space, there, probably on the bottom of the pile, or near to it."
Fahrooq sighed. "You . . . you did your best for him, Master?"
The surgeon shook his head. "I had another feed him poppy paste, Captain. Aside from that, there was naught any man could have done save to have given him a faster death, perhaps. When that ball hit this ship, it drove a sharp oaken splinter more than a cubit long and near a hand's-breadth wide into the space between the lower edge of his djawshan and his private parts. Men with punctured bowels don't live, Captain, no matter what is done to or for them. His bowels assuredly were punctured several times over, and I would have been remiss in my responsibility to other men whose wounds were less grave had I wasted time on a man who could not be saved in any case."
"I tell you, his uncle, this, just as I would say it to Walid Pasha . . . or to the dead man's father himself, should I be called upon to so do."
"You then are acquainted with the father of the late Lieutenant Suliman, Master?" The captain's tone was relaxed, conversational, but a barely perceptible aura of tenseness surrounded him, radiated from him, and his right hand hovered near the access slit to a well-hidden envenomed dagger.
His answer was a tired smile. "Captain, that secret was ill kept. I know who the young man was, and so too do the most of the original crewmen of this ship, though no one of the Westerners ever learned aught of it, you may be sure. I know just who and what you truly are, too, Captain, but that secret is no less safe than was the other. Why you are aboard in such guise I have no idea, but then the doings and schemings of such persons as yourself are not and should not be and have never been the affair of this lowly one."
"You have my sworn word that I will never betray you. If that is not sufficient
to you, use that weapon beneath your hand. Otherwise, please grant me your leave to get back to my patients yonder."
"We're at least as safe here as we could be at Rutland or anywhere else, Bass," began the third page of Krystal Foster's letter. "Both King Arthur and King James are maintaining garrisons round about Whyffler Hall while the negotiations drag on, some of Hal's episcopal guards are usually in residence, Geoff has somehow raised and armed and mounted and is now training (he claims) a ragtag bunch of rogues from both sides of the border. He seems almighty proud of them, though they look to me to be just another pack of savage, deadly border bandits. But both Sir Liam and dear Uri assure me that Geoff's vaunted 'Whyffler Launces' are brave, stout, reliable, first-class troops, and as they both and Melchoro, too, often ride out with them, they're probably right about them."
"I don't blame you about that Rutland business, Bass. You only saw it briefly and in good, warm weather. Honey, believe me, winter residence was just impossible. We could have burned every tree for miles around in those fireplaces (and some of them looked as if they could have easily accommodated whole trees, too) without getting much of the bone-deep chill out of those high, drafty rooms. Most of that pile was built in the thirteenth century, Bass, for easy defense, not for comfort."
"When I found chilblains on little Joe's hands and feet, I talked it over with Melchoro and Uri, then with Sir Liam, and we decided to come back up here to Whyffler Hall as soon as we could. If, as you indicated, Rutland seemed to offer more in the way of creature comforts than does your residence in Norfolk, then I can only pity you, poor dear, and hope that you soon will be free to join me, your son, and your friends here, in the north."
"I love you, Bass Foster, so take good care of yourself. No excuses, you are now a very important man to the kingdom, so let someone else take the chances and run the deadly risks; just recall what old Earl Howell told you—The Lord Commander of the Horse is not expected to lead cavalry charges any more than is the king; both are too important to the army and the kingdom to risk in open battle."
