Pirates of the Levant

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  Even now, on this side of time and life, having been certain things and ceased to be many others, I am proud to sum up my existence, and those of some of the loyal and valiant men I knew, in the word 'soldier'. In time I came to command a company and made my fortune and was appointed lieutenant and later captain of the King's guard — not a bad career, by God, for a Basque orphan from Onate — nevertheless I always signed papers with the words Ensign Balboa — my humble rank on the nineteenth of May 1643, when, on the plains of Rocroi, along with Captain Alatriste and what remained of the last company of Spanish infantry, I held aloft our old and tattered flag.

  Chapter 5. THE ENGLISH SAETTA

  We were sailing eastwards, day after day, across the sea known to those on the other shore as bahar el-Mutauassit, in the opposite direction from that taken by the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the gods of Antiquity and the Roman legions when they set sail for our old Spain. Each morning, the rising sun lit up our faces from the prow of the galley and each night, it sank behind us, in our wake. This filled me with pleasure, and not just because at the end of the voyage lay Naples — that soldier's paradise and bounteous treasure chest housing all of Italy's delights. No, when the galley, propelled by the rhythmic strokes of the rowers, slid across waters smooth as a blade of burnished steel, it seemed to me that the blue sea with its red sunsets and calm, windless mornings was weaving a secret connection with something that crouched in my mind like a sensation or a dormant memory.

  'This is where we came from,' I once heard Captain Alatriste murmur as we passed one of the bare, rocky islands so typical of the Mediterranean. Perched on top of it, we could see the ancient columns of some pagan temple. It was a very different landscape from the Leon mountains of the Captain's childhood, or the green fields of my Guipuzcoa, or the rugged peaks of Aragon where Sebastian Copons' soldierly ancestors had been born and bred. Copons stared at the Captain in bewilderment when he heard him speak these enigmatic words. But I understood that he was referring to the ancient, beneficent impulse, which — via language, olive trees, vines, white sails, marble and memory — had arrived at far-off shores of other seas and other lands, like the ripples set in motion by a precious stone dropped into a pool of still water.

  We had travelled from Oran to Cartagena with the other ships in the convoy and, having taken on fresh supplies in that city praised by Cervantes in his Journey to Parnassus — 'We finally reached the port/ to which the men of Carthage gave their name' — we weighed anchor, along with two galleys from Sicily. Once past Cabo de Palos, we set sail east northeast and in two days we reached Formentera. From there, passing Mallorca and Menorca on our left, we headed for Cagliari, in the south of Sardinia, where we arrived, eight days after leaving the Spanish coast, safe and sound, anchoring near the salt marshes. Then, sails hoisted and with fresh supplies of water and dried meat, we passed Capo Carbonara and, taking a south-easterly direction, sailed for two days to Trapani in Sicily.

  This time we kept a sharp eye open, with lookouts posted on the tops of the trinquet- and mainmast, because — this being the Mediterranean's slender waist and therefore a natural funnel through which all nations passed — these waters were full of ships travelling between Barbary, Europe and the Levant. We were on the watch both for enemy ships and for any Turkish, Berber, English or Dutch ships that we might capture. On this occasion neither Christ nor our purses was in luck, for we encountered neither foe nor easy prey.

  Trapani, built right on the coast, is spread along a narrow cape and has a reasonable harbour, although its many reefs and sandbanks meant that our pilot was never without a curse on his lips or the sounding-lead in his hands. There, we parted from our convoy and continued on alone, rowing against the wind, until we reached Malta, where we were to deliver despatches from the Viceroy of Sicily and four passengers — Knights of the Order of St John who were returning to that island.

  I was still intrigued by the Moor Gurriato, who, by then, appeared to be as accustomed to galley life as if he had been working on one since he was born. He seemed so patient and resigned, with his shaven head and muscular back, that if it hadn't been for the absence of shackles on his ankles — Biscay boots we called them — one might have taken him for just another slave. He ate, like the others, from a wooden bowl and drank the same murky water or watered-down wine from the wooden goblet — the chipichape — attached to his bench. He was also respectful and disciplined. He applied himself vigorously to the task of rowing, urged on by the galleymaster's loud whistles and hard lashes — for the galleymaster did not distinguish between voluntary backs and forced ones — never protesting or looking for an excuse not to carry out his duties. Whether standing up — when the order came to row till they dropped — or seated and leaning back when the rowing was easier, he would chant the same songs they all did to maintain the rhythm. And although he did not become close friends with anyone — he was the only free man on his bench, which he shared with a Spanish convict and two Turkish slaves — he was nonetheless a good comrade, well-liked by his companions. The fact that he got on well with both the Christians and the Turks was significant, because if, one day, we were to fall into the hands of the Berbers or the subjects of the Ottoman Empire, the testimony of the Turks, pointing him out as a volunteer who had renounced his religion — or whatever other accusation they chose to make — would be more than enough to get him skewered without the benefit of fat or lard to ease his passing. However, the Moor Gurriato seemed unperturbed by this possibility. He slept between the benches just as his colleagues did, happily engaged in mutual delousing sessions, and when, in rough weather, so as not to get drenched at the prow, a soldier or sailor would inconsiderately do as the galley-slaves did and relieve himself next to the rower nearest the sea — always the worst place to sit — the Moor, having more freedom of movement, would throw a bucket attached to a rope into the sea, fill it with water and wash the deck clean. He treated his companions as considerately as he did everyone else, chatting to them if it fell to him to do so, although he was not, on the whole, a great talker. We thus discovered that he spoke not only Spanish and Moorish Arabic, but also Turkish — picked up, we later learned, from Turkish janizaries in Algiers — as well as the lingua franca that was spoken from end to end of the Mediterranean, a mishmash of all the languages.

  I would go over to him occasionally, driven by curiosity, and we would talk, and so I learned more about his life and his desire to see the world and to stay by Captain Alatriste's side. I never got to the bottom of that strange loyalty, and he never explained, as if constrained by a strange modesty. Yet in the events that followed, his deeds never gave the lie to his intention; rather the reverse. As I said, I was astonished at how easily he adapted to this life and, as I discovered, to the many other lives that fell to him while in our company; for, although I prided myself on being a brave lad, I would have found life as a galley-man very hard to take.

  At first, I trembled, wanting to withdraw,

  But time and custom taught me:

  All's within their cure.

  What I couldn't stand was the boredom. I had grown used to the promiscuous nature of our existence, to the stench, the discomfort and the noise, but I could not get used to the hours of idleness, which, in the cramped space of a floating piece of timber, were entirely wasted. I would even greet with excitement any sail we spotted, welcoming a chance for a hunt or a fight, or would feel pleased when the sky grew dark, the wind began to howl in the rigging and the sea turned grey. With the prow bucking and the storm harrying us, everyone else on board would be praying and crossing themselves, commending themselves to God and making pious promises that, once back on dry land, they would be most unlikely to keep.

  To fill the tedium, I continued to apply myself to reading, a habit greatly encouraged by the Captain, who often led by example; unless he was talking to me or Sebastian Copons or another comrade, he could usually be found sitting snugly in one of the ship's embrasures with one of the two or three books h
e always carried in his pack. One, which I remember with particular gratitude, for I read and re-read it on that voyage, was Miguel de Cervantes' Exemplary Novels. The colloquy between the dogs Ciprion and Berganza and the characters in 'Rinconete and Cortadillo' made me laugh out loud. Another book that I read with great pleasure, even though I found it sourer in style and rather short on ideas, was a very old and dog-eared tome, printed in Venice in the previous century, entitled Portrait of the Lively Andaluza. Since it was a work of a somewhat scabrous nature, the Captain was reluctant at first to place it in my hands, and only did so when he discovered that, unbeknown to him, I was reading it anyway.

  'After all,' he concluded, 'if you're old enough to kill and be killed, you're old enough to read whatever you choose.'

  'Amen to that,' said Copons, who hadn't read a single book in his life and had no intention of doing so.

  ********

  Six or seven leagues before we reached Cape Passero, with the rowers taking it in turns, our galley changed direction. We had come across a Dalmatian tartana carrying dates, wax and leather from the Kerkennah Islands to Ragusa. Its crew, once they were near enough to talk, told us that a three- masted pirate saetta and a smaller ship had called in at the island of Lampedusa to be careened. They had spotted them at dawn the previous day when they approached to take on water, and the saetta looked very much like the one which, for a month now, had been patrolling the sea between Capo Bono and Capo Bianco, the English pirates on board stealing everything they could lay their hands on. So far the ship had eluded both the galleys of Malta and of Sicily.

  As the tartana sailed on, a council of war took place under the awning of our ship and, given that the wind was now a fair easterly one, perfect for the Mulata to unfurl her two lateen sails and do a good league an hour, we headed south south-west, in the direction of Lampedusa, ready to knock seven bells out of those bastards — that is, if they were still there.

  As I have mentioned before, there was nothing unusual about Englishmen or Dutchmen venturing further into Mediterranean waters and frequenting the ports of Barbary and even of the Turk, because what they were interested in was persecuting Spain and the other Catholic nations. The men of fair Albion had been applying themselves to this task with zeal, smuggling and pirating with few interruptions since the days of the Virgin Queen Elizabeth — and I use the word 'virgin' purely as an epithet, not a proven fact. I am referring to that red-haired witch whom our poets, among them the Cordoban Gongora, viewed as the very worst of our enemies:

  More she-wolf than lascivious queen, Wife and daughter-in-law to many,

  Vile, libidinous and mean

  And to whom Cristobal de Virues dedicated these eloquent lines:

  Ungrateful queen, unworthy of the name, Cast out from God — a Jezebel — O why disturb this holy armed peace? And make a Christian peace a hell?

  And whose death — for, thank Heaven, that hour comes round for everyone — was greeted by Lope, our Phoenix, with this fitting epitaph:

  Here lies Jezebel, The new Athalia; Harpy of the Atlantic gold, Of oceans, the cruel fire.

  While we're on the subject of the English, I should point -; out that the people who behaved most shamelessly and ; outrageously in the Mediterranean were not the Turks or the Berbers, who tended to keep punctiliously to any agreements made between nations, but those pitiless, drunken dogs voyaging from their cold seas on the hypocritical pretext of making war on the papists. They did not behave like corsairs, but like pirates, buying complicity in ports such as Algiers and Saleh. So bad were they that even the Turks viewed them unkindly, for they blithely plundered everyone, regardless of cargo or flag, under the protection of their sovereigns and their traders, who, while they dissembled in public, in private

  encouraged the raids and pocketed the profits. I said 'pirates', for that is the word that befits them. In the old usage, 'corsair' was a traditional and respectable occupation, a group of private individuals who, granted a patent — royal permission to plunder the enemies of the crown — would set sail on a quest for private profit, on the understanding that they would pay their quint to the king and be ruled by certain laws agreed among the nations. In this respect, we Spaniards, apart from a few corsairs from Mallorca, the Cantabrian coast and from Flanders, played an almost exclusively military role: cruel and ruthless, yes, but always acting under the flag of the Catholic King and in keeping with all ordinances. We would rigorously punish any treaty violations and any excesses or abuses practised against neutral nations.

  For reasons of reputation and conduct — and because, centuries before, we had experienced corsairs on our own shores in Spain — the corsair subsequently acquired a very bad name indeed; this was, after all, war by other means, and war waged by soldiers or sailors was one thing; it seemed murky and ungentlemanly when carried out by privateers. There was the added misfortune that, while our enemies would resort to anything to sap our strength both on sea and land, our Spanish corsairs — apart from our intrepid Catholics from Dunkirk, the scourge of the English and the Dutch — gradually dwindled away for lack of crew, the difficulty or inconvenience of obtaining royal permission, or because, if it was granted, the- profits were minimal, siphoned off by a bureaucratic tangle of taxes, corrupt functionaries and other parasites. One must not forget the sad end of the Duke of Osuna, Viceroy of Sicily and later of Naples — a close friend of Don Francisco de Quevedo, and to whom we will return later. He was the terror of both Turks and Venetians, the father of our Spanish corsairs, and the implacable bane of our

  enemies, a man whose triumphs and good fortune aroused such envy that, ultimately, they brought him only discredit, prison and death. And naturally, with such antecedents, when for reasons of politics and war, Philip IV and the Count Duke of Olivares wanted to arm a fleet of corsairs once more -4. even promising that the booty would be shared out among the Basque regiment, and that the King would renounce his quint — many privateers, wary, sceptical or already ruined, preferred not to be drawn in.

  Lampedusa is a bare, scrubby, sparsely populated island some fifteen or sixteen leagues south-west of Malta. Our lookouts, who could see for about fifteen miles from their vantage points, spotted it late in the afternoon. To ensure that the corsairs, if they were still there, did not in turn spot us — the pilot, who knew those waters, warned that there was a watchtower to the south of the island — Captain Urdemalas ordered the two masts to be struck, and we continued on our way, sail-less and rowing gently, so that we could approach unseen and not before nightfall. While we were thus engaged, making the necessary arrangements to seize the corsair ship before it slipped from our grasp, the pilot told us that the island was used by both Muslims and Christians as a port, and that fugitive slaves from both sides took refuge there. He said there was a small cave containing an ancient image of Our Lady with the Child in her arms, painted on canvas with a wooden backing, where visitors left offerings of dry biscuits, cheese, bacon, oil and the odd coin. The strange thing was that near the cave lay the tomb of an anchorite whom the Turks venerated as a great saint, and where they also left offerings (although not, of course, of bacon). This was so that when any runaway slaves reached the island, they would have something to eat, for there was water to be had from a nearby well, which, although brackish and unpleasant, served its purpose. And whatever the religion of the slave, he would never touch the offerings left by those of the other faith, but would respect both the faith and the needs of his counterparts. For in the Mediterranean, where it was a case of I’ll do the same for you one day', these lines by Lope fitted like a glove:

  When it comes to fathers

  No one can be sure.

  But when we say 'Our Father',

  We're sons of Adam pure.

  With sails struck and rowing slowly, we reached Lampedusa from the north-east as the sun was setting on the starboard side. The darkness aided our enterprise and the last thing we saw before the light went was a column of smoke, indicating that, whether or not
it was the saetta, someone was on the island. Now that night was almost upon us and any brightness reduced to a fine red line on the horizon, we could see the occasional fire burning. This encouraged us greatly, and we began to prepare for action, feeling our way in the gloom, for Captain Urdemalas had ordered that no lights should be lit on board, nor was anyone to raise his voice; even the galleymaster was ordered not to use his whistle. And so we proceeded in near silence across the dark sea before the moon had risen. The only sound was the hoarse, guttural breathing — a kind of drawn-out uuuh, uuuh, uuuh — of our oarsmen keeping a steady rhythm and the splash of forty-eight oars striking the water.