Pirates of the Levant

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  was blowing on the match-cord of his harquebus, and Sebastian Copons, who was, as usual, tying an Aragonese scarf about his head. I too was wearing such a scarf, on top of which I wore my helmet, which was very heavy and hellishly hot, but since we would be climbing upwards to board the ship, it seemed advisable to protect one's belltower from storks. As we drew close to the mahone, my former master saw me there, as I had seen him, and before looking away I noticed that he nodded to the Moor Gurriato, who was by my side. The Moor nodded back.

  I don't need either of you, I thought; but that was all I had time for, because at that very moment, the cannon in the gangway and the moyens on the prow fired off some chain shot to shatter the enemy ship's rigging and leave it without sails. Pedreros, harquebuses and muskets blasted them, too, the last filling the galley deck with smoke, which, in turn, was filled with Turkish arrows and lead and stone pellets that penetrated planks and flesh alike. We had no option but to grit our teeth and wait, which is what I did, crouched and afraid that a few of the many things falling on us would fall on me. Then the galley hit something solid, which made the whole vessel shudder and creak. The galley-slaves let go of the oars and, screaming, sought shelter among the benches. When I looked up, I saw above our heads, in among the clouds of smoke, the enormous stern of the mahone, which seemed to me as tall as a castle.

  'Forward for Spain! Attack! Attack!'

  Men were yelling furiously as they crowded onto the prow. No one was there simply because he had to be, apart from the oarsmen, of course; we knew that here was a prize that could make us all rich. The grappling-irons were thrown, and the lateen yard of the mainmast was lowered so that it rested on the side of the enemy ship for our men to climb along it.

  With the galley heeled slightly to starboard, the troops — and I was among the first — shinned up the ropes on the mahone as if they were a flight of steps.

  Lope Balboa, that soldier of our King, slain in Flanders with great pride and honour, would not have been ashamed of his son that day, watching me scale the high side of that Turkish mahone with all the youthful agility of my seventeen years, up to that place where your only friend is your sword, and where living or dying depends on chance, God or the Devil.

  As I said, the fighting was fierce and lasted more than half an hour. There were about fifty janizaries on board, who all fought valiantly and, grouped together at the prow, killed quite a number of our men. The janizaries, Christians by birth, had been taken as children by way of a tax or tithe and had then been brought up in the Islamic faith to show unthinking loyalty to the Great Turk. It was a point of honour among them to fight to the bitter end, and they fought with extraordinary ferocity. We had to fire on them several times at point-blank range with our harquebuses — which we did gladly, for they had done the same to us through the portholes, hatchways and grilles as we were climbing up. Then we had to go in with shield and sword to finish them off and seize the mainmast, which they defended like rabid dogs.

  I fought hard, although without letting myself get too carried away, protecting myself with my shield and lunging forward, always looking around me, as the Captain had taught me to do, only taking a step when I knew it was the right moment, and never retreating, not even when I felt Corporal Conesa's brains — blown out by a harquebus shot — splatter onto the back of my neck. The Moor Gurriato was beside me, scything his way through the crowd, and our comrades were not far behind. And so, step by step, sword thrust by sword thrust, we pressed the janizaries hard, driving them back as far as the trinquet sail and the prow itself.

  'Sentabajocane!' we screamed at them in lingua franca, calling on them to surrender. By then, the men from the Virgen del Rosario and the San Juan Bautista were coming at them from behind, boarding at the prow, with the Spaniards shouting out the name of Santiago — St James — and the Maltese Knights that of St John. Once the three galleys came together, the sentence had been read. The last of the wounded and exhausted janizaries, who had, until then, been hurling insults at us — guidi imansiz, which, in Turkish, means 'infidel cuckolds' or bir mum, 'sons of bitches' — suddenly changed their tune and started addressing us as efendi and sagdic, 'sirs' and 'skippers', begging us to spare their lives, Ala'iche, 'for the love of God'. Once they had finally thrown down their arms, a large part of our squad began scouring every corner of the ship and tossing bundles of booty onto the decks of our galleys below.

  By God, we had a good day, stealing right, left and centre. For a while, permission was given to plunder freely, and we took our captains at their word, for the mahone was more than seven hundred tons and was carrying all kinds of merchandise: spices, silks, damasks, bales of fine cloth, Turkish and Persian carpets, gemstones, seed pearls, silverware, and fifty thousand gold coins, not to mention several barrels of arrack — a Turkish liquor — to which we all paid lavish homage. Smiling like Democritus himself, I stole along with the best of them, without waiting for the general share-out, and by God I deserved it, for I was one of the men who had made the Turks work hardest, and had been the first to stick my dagger in the mainmast as proof that I was there, for this brought both honour and the right to a larger share of the booty. Testament to how hard I had fought were the seventeen Spaniards who had died boarding the mahone, as well as the various dents in my helmet and breastplate, and the bucket of water that was needed to wash the blood off me — other men's blood, fortunately.

  Captain Alatriste and Copons had boarded at the stern, fighting first with harquebuses and then with axes and swords, breaking down doors and pavises behind which the Turkish officers and some of the janizaries had barricaded themselves. I later found out that when Captain Alatriste asked the Moor Gurriato how things had gone on my part, the Moor had summed up the situation elegantly, saying that he would have had a hard time keeping me alive if I hadn't roundly despatched everyone trying to stop him doing just that.

  The men on the Caridad Negra and the Cruz de Rodas did their fair share of killing too. First one and then the other had boarded the Turkish galley, and the ensuing battle was fierce and without quarter, for it happened that, as the Caridad Negra rammed the enemy vessel, taking with it all the oars on that side, a stone had killed Sergeant Zugastieta, a jolly Basque, valiant trencherman and an even braver drinker, who was very popular among the other soldiers. They were all, as I explained, from the same part of Spain, and while the Basque people — and I speak as someone from Guipuzcoa — might sometimes be short on brains, we are always long on generosity and courage. The Basques therefore leapt onto the Turkish galley, yelling 'Koartelik ezV and 'Akatu gustiakl', and other such things, which, in our language meant that no mercy would be shown, not even to the Captain's cat. And so everyone down to the last cabin boy was put to the knife and no attempt was made to distinguish between those trying to surrender and those who were not.

  The only men left alive were the galley-slaves who had survived the attack, of whom ninety-six were Christians, half of them Spaniards. You can imagine their joy at being liberated. Among them was one fellow from Trujillo who had spent twenty-two years as a slave since his capture in 1615 at the taking of Mahomet, and who, miraculously, was still alive, despite all his time at the oars. How the poor man wept and embraced us all!

  For our part, we liberated fifteen young slaves from the hold of the mahone: nine boys and six girls, still virgins, the oldest being fifteen or sixteen. They were all fine-looking youths, Christians captured by corsairs on the Spanish and Italian coasts, who were being taken to be sold in Constantinople, where an all too foreseeable future awaited them, given the licentious nature of the people there.

  However, the most notable prize was the Pasha of Cyprus's favourite wife, who turned out to be a Russian renegade of about thirty. She had blue eyes and was tall and voluptuous, the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Agustin Pimentel placed her in a cabin along with Chaplain Nistal and a four- man escort, threatening with death anyone who bothered her. We queued up at the door to admire her, for she
was lavishly dressed and accompanied by two handsome Croat slave-girls, and it was very strange to have such a woman among coarse men like us, when the blood was still not dry on the deck. We did not even touch the booty she brought with her, for two days later she was sent to Naples in the mahone, with the liberated captives and the Virgen del Rosario as escort, the Turkish galley having been holed and sunk. She was ransomed there some time later in exchange for three hundred thousand gold coins of which we never caught so much as a glimpse, despite all the dangers we had faced. We learned that the Pasha grew quite mad with rage when he was told what had happened and that he swore revenge. Our poor pilot Braco paid the price in full when, a year and a half later, he was captured on board one of our ships on the sandbanks off Lemnos. He was identified as one of the men involved in the capture of the Cypriot mahone, and the Turks flayed him alive, slowly, and then stuffed his skin with straw, hung it from the topsail of a galley and paraded it from island to island.

  That is what the Mediterranean was like. Between its narrow shores, everyone knew everyone else and there was always unfinished business. And such, too, was piracy and war: as you sow, so shall you reap. On that day, off the island of Fournoi, the people doing the reaping were the one hundred and fifty dead and wounded Turks, give or take a few, whom we threw into the sea, for they' all duly sank to the bottom. Then the overseers chained fifty or so of the uninjured Turks to the benches, despite the protests of the Basques from the Caridad Negra, who wanted to cut off their heads for good measure. In the end, the Basques were so up in arms about it, refusing even to obey their captain, that Don Agustin Pimentel had to allow them to cut off the ears and noses of the five or six renegades found among the captured Turks.

  As for private booty, by the time the order came to stop the plundering, I had filled my pockets with a few handfuls of silver, five good strands of pearls and fistfuls of Turkish, Venetian and Hungarian gold coins. It is no exaggeration to say that what we felt as we fell upon all that wealth was sheer joy. It was quite something to watch grown men, bearded soldiers clothed in leather and metal, laughing like children over their full purses. After all, that is why we Spaniards had left the safety of our own country, left hearth and home, prepared to suffer vicissitudes, hard work and danger, rough weather, the fury of the seas and the devastation of war. As Bartolome de Torres Naharro had written in the previous century:

  We soldiers only prosper If there's a war to fight; Like the poor in darkest winter Who long to see the light

  Better dead or rich, we thought, but at least gentlemen, than poor and wretched, bowing the knee to the latest bishop or marquis. This was a concept defended by Cervantes in the character of Don Quixote, who placed the honour of the sword above the glory of the pen. If poverty is good because Christ loved it, I say, may those who preach poverty enjoy it. Disapproving of a soldier stealing gold for which he has paid with his blood, be it in Tenochtitlan or from under the nose of the Great Turk, as we were doing, shows a complete ignorance of the harshness of a soldier's life, and of the suffering he must endure to win that booty in battle, where he is exposed to bullets and injury, to cold steel and to fire, and all to earn a reputation, a living, or both things at once, for it comes to the same thing:

  Here we do not die in bed, Sipping from a sweetened cup, Cosseted before we're dead.; No — bullets or a thrusting sword Will cut our life-blood's precious cord

  Anyone who quibbles over a soldier's booty is forgetting that rewards and honour are what drive us all: sailors set to sea in search of both, farmers plough the fields, monks pray and soldiers fight. But honour, even if won through danger and wounds, never lasts long if it does not come with the reward that sustains it. The fine image of the hero covered in wounds on a battlefield soon turns sour when people look away in horror at the sight of his mutilated limbs and face while he begs for alms outside a church. Besides, Spain has always been rather forgetful when it comes to handing out rewards. If you want to eat, they tell you, go and attack that castle. If you want to be paid, board that galley. And may God help you and reward you. Then they watch from behind the safety of a barricade and applaud your feats — because applause costs nothing — and rush to profit from them, bestowing on that booty far more perfumed names than we do and wrapping themselves in the colours of a flag torn to shreds by the same shards of metal that have torn our flesh. For in our unfortunate nation, there are few generals and still fewer kings like the general, Caius Marius, who was so grateful for the help given by Barbarian mercenaries during the wars with Gaul that he made them citizens of Rome, in contravention of the local laws. When he was criticised for this, he replied: 'The law speaks in too quiet a voice to be heard above the clash of war.' Not to mention Christ himself, who honoured and, above all, fed his twelve soldiers.

  Chapter 10. THE ESCANDERLU CHANNEL

  In the previous chapter, I used the expression: 'as you sow, so shall you reap', and it is very true. It's also true, as the Moor Gurriato said, that God blinds those who want to lose, to which I would add, don't count your chickens. Five days after capturing the mahone, we fell into a trap. Or perhaps it would be truer to say that we entered a trap of our own accord by pushing our luck too far.

  Emboldened by that large prize, Don Agustin Pimentel decided to travel north, following the coast, to sack a small town inhabited by Ottomans: Foyavequia, which is in Anatolia, on the narrow Escanderlu channel. And so, after burying our dead — Sergeant Zugastieta, Corporal Conesa and other good comrades — in Turkish soil on the island of Fournoi, we sailed north, past Chios, and from there to the east of Cap Nero and the entrance to Smyrna. We entered the aforementioned channel, where we hove to far from the coast, waiting for night to fall. We did so confidently, despite one disquieting sign: having sent the Maltese galley, the San Juan Bautista ahead as scout, we had heard no more from her; indeed, no one has seen or heard of her since. We will never know if she sank or was captured, if there were survivors or not, because not even the Turks gave an explanation. Like so many mysteries that sleep beneath the waves, the galley was swallowed up by the sea and by history, along with the three hundred and forty men on board — knights, soldiers, sailors and oarsmen.

  *

  Misfortunes rarely come singly. Even though the San Juan Bautista had not rejoined us as planned, Don Agustin Pimentel was confident that she had simply been delayed and would join us later, and that, besides, three galleys were quite sufficient to attack the rather insignificant fortress of Foya- vequia, which had already been sacked by the Maltese Knights in 1616. Darkness fell. We weren't allowed to light a fire, so we filled our stomachs with cold boiled beans, a handful of olives and one onion between four.

  Then, at the angelus hour, with an overcast sky and not a breath of wind, and with our lanterns extinguished, the galleys began to row across the sea towards land. It was a dark night, and we were about a mile from the town, the three vessels close together, when the lookout thought he saw something behind us, out to sea: the shapes of ships and sails, he said, although he couldn't be sure because there were no lights to betray their presence. We stopped rowing. The galleys moved even closer together and a meeting took place around the flagship. It might be that the shapes were low clouds lit by the last light of evening, or some vessel far out to sea; but they could also be enemy ships — one or several — in which case, having our escape route cut off by them was very worrying indeed, as was the possibility of our galleys being attacked while anchored off the beach and our men fighting on shore. Greatly put out, our General despatched the skiff to reconnoitre, while we waited anxiously. The reconnaissance party returned at the start of the middle watch and reported that there were five or more shadows, galleys to judge by their shape, which apparently dared not approach for fear of being discovered or captured. This disturbing information persuaded Don Agustin Pimentel not to proceed. They might be Turks from Chios or Mytilene, merchants

  travelling in convoy, or perhaps a flotilla of corsairs preparing to travel w
est.

  We discussed each possibility and wondered if we could simply disappear off into the dark, but it was unlikely that we could do so without being seen or heard, and dangerous too, given that we did not yet know who we were dealing with. And so, holding firm to the order not to light fires on board and with the guard doubled to warn us of any attack, we were told to take it in turns to rest, but to be ready for action. Thus, with our weapons beside us, with one eye open and unease in our hearts, we waited for the light of day to decide our fate.

  'We're in for a rough time, gentlemen,' Captain Urdemalas said.

  He had just climbed from the skiff up the ladder at the stern, after a meeting in the captain's cabin on board the Caridad Negra. The three galleys were all facing out to sea, their oars motionless in the leaden water.

  'It's quite simple: tonight, we'll either be dining with Christ or in Constantinople.'

  Diego Alatriste turned towards the Turkish galleys, studying them for the hundredth time since the dawn had first begun to define their shape against the dark horizon, where a distant storm was threatening. There were seven ordinary galleys with one lantern apiece and a larger one with three, possibly their flagship. There must have been a thousand or so soldiers on board, not including the crew. Twenty-four pieces of artillery adorned the eight prows, as well as swivel- guns and sakers on the sides. There was no way of knowing whether they had sought us out or just happened to be sailing those waters at the right moment. Whatever the truth of the matter, they were now less than a mile away, formed up in