Gloriana's Torch

by Patricia Finney

  Her husband followed and went straight to the gun that had broken loose, to examine it. He squinted in the dimness, but then there was a scrape and a clatter, and that useful clerk was standing by his oarport, one hand cupped around his privates, the other hooking up the hatch to let the grey light in.

  Well, he had not been ordered to do it, but Suleiman would have ordered him, so the initiative could be allowed. The clerk turned to the gunner and his woman, quite slowly, bowed with ridiculous formality, then slipped back under the end of his bench. Suleiman thought the clerk was less bold than he seemed, for he was blushing red, all the way up his chest and face.

  The woman, Mevrouw van den Berg was also less strong than she had thought she was. She bobbed, almost as if she was curtseying, which was impossible. Clearly the smell of the place and perhaps the starved gazing of the slaves was upsetting her, for she clung to her husband’s good arm and translated in a low breathless voice as Suleiman explained how the gun had destroyed three lives when it broke loose. Mijnheer van den Berg pronounced that the gun was too heavy for its fastenings and ought really to be on the lowest deck, beneath the oardeck. Through his wife’s stumbling words, he complimented Suleiman on being able to make it safe in a rolling ship. There would have to be changes made – such heavy guns ought to be bolted to the deck, not lashed … and so on.

  They looked at every gun while the air in the oardeck became a soup heavy with desire, and then climbed back up the companionway. A concerted sigh followed them, as if every mother’s son there was letting out breath he had been holding the whole time the woman was before their eyes.

  Suleiman supposed you couldn’t blame them, most of them hadn’t seen a woman for months and if women were what your fancy desired, that would be difficult. He thanked Allah that he was made as he was. Youths were better and a great deal easier to find, if only the Christian idiots were not so frightened of what they called impurity. Later in the voyage, when the Captain of the Oardeck and the Señor of the Benches stayed out of the stink as much as possible, then he would be able to find someone. And in due course he would have more offers than he knew what to do with, as the slaves got hungrier and realised they had only one thing left to sell. There was no reason to risk a beating. He could wait.

  Except he was beginning to suspect he was falling in love. Not with the pretty boy and his round bum – already hollowing out and becoming sinewy. No, with the clerk who already looked sinewy, who had started scrawny, who looked carefully past him with cold pale eyes every time they spoke.

  A part of Suleiman was amused and jeering. It happens to you every voyage, Suleiman, said that part to him, you find someone you think is different, who stands out, and sometimes you get what you want, and sometimes not, but always it ends badly. You are worse than any mucky-minded woman.

  He couldn’t help it, he thought, in response to his own jeering. It was lonely to be the Padron, and it was lonely to be the best.

  It will end badly, said the jeering voice, this will end very badly indeed.

  Mentally, Suleiman shrugged. So what? he thought cynically. He’s only a slave and no doubt he will die. If necessary, I’ll kill him.

  The carpenters came the next day, under the supervision of the one-armed gunner, Mijnheer van den Berg, to bolt the heavy guns to the deck. With enormous care four new guns, two culverins and two smaller falconets were lowered into the oardeck and bolted into their solid wood cradles by the empty sternchaser gunports aft of the oars. Suleiman was vastly impressed by the complex moulding on them, the elaborate dragon. Perhaps these guns also came from England – he had heard that many of the guns in the Armada were English-cast.

  Thanks be to Allah, the woman, Mevrouw van den Berg, stayed out of the oardeck this time. She had herself lowered on a sling to the gunners’ gallery, and stood by the gun ports shouting the correct words through when Mijnheer van den Berg was at a loss. She brought with her a strange little creature, dressed as a child, who said nothing at all, but scampered busily up and down the gallery and the rigging. Once she peered in through the oarport when Suleiman was watching, and he saw that she was in fact a dwarf, afflicted by Allah with life-long childhood. He had seen such a creature when he was a boy and thrown stones at it too. His neck prickled superstitiously, but the creature was only there for the day, to attend its mistress.

  A couple of times, Suleiman thought he saw Mevrouw van den Berg passing by the oarports, but he was busy making sure none of the slaves stole any carpenter’s tool. When a file was missing at the end of the day, he went along the benches, looking in open mouths until he found the one that had it. Being fair-minded, since the man had not actually attempted to escape, only stolen a tool that would help him to do it, Suleiman offered him the choice of having his front teeth knocked out or a beating and wisely, the man chose a beating. The blacksmith came to put manacles on him since he had shown he could not be trusted. Once the carpenters and the gunner and his wife had gone, Suleiman hooked the manacles up to one of the oar-ropes and spent a happy half-hour thoroughly welting the man’s back and chest.

  When he finished, he came to rinse his whip in the gulley by the clerk’s oarport. All the oardeck was quiet, even the other Padrons were staring at him with fear. What did they want? A mutiny? If you were soft on one, the others got cocky.

  Spotting the clerk watching him round the end of the bench, Suleiman grinned and brushed his moustache. ‘Well?’ he said.

  The clerk tilted his head at the other side of the ship where the would-be escaper sobbed quietly into his chained hands. ‘How will he sleep, Padron?’ he asked coolly. ‘I understand why you did not beat his arse, since he must row, but surely he needs to rest as well?’

  ‘Every time he turns over and can’t get comfortable, he will remember not to try to escape.’ Suleiman told him. ‘And every time all of you hear him groan in the night, you will remember not to try and escape.’

  ‘Will he not die of exhaustion, Padron?’

  ‘Well, you know, clerk, all of you will probably die soon, but not immediately. You would not realise this because you have lived a sheltered life with your account books, but it is astonishing how tough men are. I myself have seen slaves no better than you row night and day on a bit of black bread and some olives, and hardly any of them died for many days. It always amazes me, clerk, how much work it takes to kill a man unless you stab him exactly right.’

  The clerk nodded.

  Suleiman went off the ship again to dull the tedium. They were still waiting for more supplies to reach them, to replace the ones that were already rotten. He passed an unsatisfactory evening in a wine shop in Corunna, gaming with dice. He won at first and even took a pair of spectacles off one of the gamesters, but then he lost. When at last he came back to the oardeck late, rocking with wine, angry at himself, he found the Padrons standing around his oarbench and yet another of his slaves dying. It was the soldier, hunched over, gargling himself to death.

  Suleiman shoved past and turned the man over. Someone had broken the man’s adam’s apple in a fight, a particularly ugly way to die. There was nothing anyone could do. His knuckles were grazed, he had bruises on his ribs. Suleiman scowled around at the slaves nearby: the black called Snake had a swollen, bleeding nose, and the clerk …

  Even in the dim light of the lantern, Suleiman could see that the clerk had a purpling swollen black eye and bruises around his ribs and his knuckles were bruised and broken as well. He was standing, looking unhappily down at the soldier while he choked.

  Suleiman showed his teeth, rose up, grabbed the clerk’s wrist, turned him over and wrapped an arm around his throat. The clerk made no attempt to fight, perhaps he was tired.

  ‘You killed him, clerk?’

  ‘By accident, Padron.’

  ‘Why were you fighting?’ There was no food around, not a scrap. They were on half-rations, nobody was going to save anything.

  ‘He insulted m … me.’

  Suleiman chuckled softly in the cl
erk’s ear. ‘And then you…?’

  ‘I hit him, Padron.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘He hit me back but missed and knocked Snake down, then he hit me and grappled me and I tried to break free and as I did, he slipped and hit the bench with his chin and so broke his throat and is dying.’

  ‘Is that what happened?’ Suleiman snapped at the other slaves on the bench. They all nodded at him, fearfully. ‘So you admit you started the fight?’

  ‘No, Padron, he did by making his insult.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘I prefer not to repeat it,’ whispered the clerk.

  Suleiman squeezed with his forearm and the clerk started to choke slightly. ‘You can die now for destroying His Majesty’s valuable property, or you can tell me what the insult was.’

  ‘He said … ggghhh … he said that you, Padron, were staring at me the way I had been staring at the gunner’s tight little cunt of a wife and that soon enough, I’d be making no noise when I fart.’ The clerk spoke in a cold distant voice. ‘I found that insulting and so I hit him.’

  Suleiman let go. He scowled at the other slaves. ‘Is that true? Did the soldier say that?’

  Snake nodded, and the peasant furrowed his brow and said nervously, ‘It was something like that, Padron. I think.’

  It seemed everyone else had been asleep. Suleiman stood over the now quiet body of the soldier with his hands on his hips. Damn it. He had lost yet another man from his two benches, three so far. Never had he had such an unlucky voyage. But as for the clerk … Well, what could he do? He didn’t want to lose another man. Especially not the clerk.

  ‘You know that in the morning I must flog you, clerk,’ he said and the little clerk licked his lips and nodded once. ‘Strictly I should kill you for the murder, but on this occasion I shall be merciful.’

  ‘Yes, Padron,’ whispered the clerk sadly.

  Suleiman paused, he couldn’t help it, no matter what his jeering internal voice said, he was curious. ‘Which was the insult that made you hit him, the one against me or the one against the woman?’

  The clerk paused. ‘Both, Padron,’ he said at last. ‘I see no reason why I should listen to any respectable woman being called a tight little cunt by any galley-slave and at least, you have not been unkind to me, Padron.’

  They were cautious measured phrases, well-weighted not to be insulting. Clearly it had been the woman, not himself, Suleiman thought regretfully. Well, the clerk had much to learn yet. And it was quite admirable that he had been able to take on and beat that brawny soldier, given how little and scrawny he was.

  Accordingly, in the morning, Suleiman was quite careful with the scourge, not to flay the man too badly. He couldn’t help enjoying the sight of the clerk bent meekly over his bench, his arms cording as he braced himself against the blows, his head bent so no one could see his face. Suleiman indulged himself in fantasies of other reasons for bending the clerk over his bench. The Captain of the Oardeck brought the blacksmith and yet another replacement for the soldier and put the soldier out of the oarport and Suleiman didn’t like the look of the replacement at all – skinny, hollow-eyed and coughing cavernously. Allah help them, they were down to the idiots and madmen already. And the consumptives.

  At least extra food arrived from Don Hugo for the galley-slaves, to encourage them. Suleiman approved. If you wanted every last effort out of a man, you got it from him better with rewards than with beatings.

  * * *

  The next day the Armada set sail again from Corunna, newly replenished with supplies and water barrels that were supposedly sound and clean, and now the flagship was flying the banner of the Crusade, the one with images of Jesus and his Mother on it. Quite magnificent embroidery, you had to give them that. And the singing by the bald monks was wonderful, sonorous and deep-voiced, full of the sound of iron bells and righteous anger.

  It was a slow business getting out of the port, but the galleases were in the van as the fighting ships they were. Also the wind was brisk and fair from the south-west, perfect to reach England while bottling the English up in their ports. They rowed hard to get out of the pool and to find enough searoom, hours of straining to heave the heavy unwilling mule of a ship through the waves of the Bay of Biscay. At last the sails plumped out and took the strain and they could haul the oars in again. Shortly after, all the faster ships hove to and waited in position for the slow clumsy transports to wallow after them into formation. They would stay in that formation until they landed in England; it was the only sure defence against the English ships. The Admiral of the Galleases, Hugo de Moncada made a speech in which he said that the Armada was like a herd of sheep and the galleases were the dogs, there to protect them all from the wolves.

  That first night, the little clerk gave him cause for concern. In the evening, when they were greasing the oar, Suleiman spotted Snake rubbing some fat into the clerk’s back to soften it up, which Suleiman let pass because it was a sensible idea. In fact he suggested it to the Padron of the man who had tried to escape, who was still moving very stiffly.

  Seeing the clerk turning over and over to try and get comfortable, wincing away from Snake his benchmate, Suleiman went and squatted next to him. He felt like a chat before he lay down in his favoured place by the drums.

  ‘How are you, clerk?’

  In the lamplight, Suleiman saw the clerk’s pale eyes glitter. ‘I have been better, I have been worse.’

  ‘How are your hands?’

  For answer the clerk held up his hands so Suleiman could make out the broad weals on the palms, which had healed and formed satisfactory calluses, there were a few blisters on the fingers, but nothing too serious.

  ‘Is your back bad?’

  ‘Not as bad as the man you beat for stealing the file,’ said the clerk and there was a touch of humour in his voice. ‘Clearly what I did was not so terrible as that.’

  Suleiman grinned. ‘You destroyed valuable property of His Majesty’s. Now he was trying to steal valuable property, namely himself, but if he had succeeded in it, both his benchmates would have had to die and so occasion His Majesty far more loss.’

  ‘Why would his benchmates have to die?’

  ‘Because they didn’t stop him. You might be able to keep secrets from the Padron, but not from each other, as I’m sure you realise. And if the men on either side of him had let him file away his chain and said nothing about it, then they would have deserved to die for treachery.’

  ‘Ah.’

  The clerk tried to lie on his back, winced away from the hard deck, and turned on his side.

  ‘By tomorrow night you will be able to sleep,’ Suleiman promised.

  ‘It’s not so much my back that bothers me.’

  ‘What then?’ Perhaps Suleiman had been too careful with the scourge. He didn’t want the clerk to think he could get away with killing people any time he felt like it.

  ‘Well, Padron, I was thinking about my wife.’

  Suleiman brushed his moustache with the back of his hand, balanced easily on the deck as it tilted and creaked. ‘Clerk,’ he said, ‘I like you. I like you because you do your best and do not moan and complain and you can think when you are frightened and in danger, as when you got your benchmates up on the bench when the gun was loose. And you must be a better fighting man than you look. So I will speak to you as I would speak to my son, if I had any. You have no wife. All of that life died when you came into the galley and it can only give you pain now. You used to be a man with a trade of being a clerk, with a wife, perhaps children…’

  ‘Three.’

  ‘… perhaps a father, brothers, sisters. Now you have none of them. They are far away, they cannot come to you, you cannot come to them. All gone. All you have to think of is yourself and your bench. Your benchmates are your brothers. And I am your father. Think like this, and you might survive to go back to your family. Wear your heart out wishing for your wife, and you will certainly not last the year.’


  Silence. The clerk was thinking. ‘There’s truth in what you say.’ Suleiman put his hand on the man’s bony shoulder, away from the welts and bruises, gripped. ‘But I think it’s more likely I’ll die anyway. It’s a race to see which will kill me first, the rowing, the bad food and water, your whip or plain boredom.’

  The clerk’s voice was cold and thoughtful. He was not complaining. Simply laying out the facts as he saw them.

  It amused Suleiman greatly. ‘Why clerk, I had no idea you were bored. Is this pleasure cruise not to your liking then?’

  Again the clerk’s eyes glittered, he smiled faintly. ‘If I tell you the truth, will you start entertaining me with your whip, Padron?’

  Suleiman shook his head, liking the clerk more and more, for his courage, for his irony. ‘I had believed that galley-slaves prefer less excitement rather than more, but perhaps I am wrong,’ he said, full of pleasure at the conversation. Perhaps the clerk could be weaned away from his wife.

  ‘The truth is that I look at the same men’s backs every day, I row the same oar in the same way, I look at the same piece of roof, of hull, all around me is the same. There is nothing to read and although I can talk to my benchmate a little, he has no great interest in the things that interest me – the stars, the Holy Names of the Almighty. The stink is the same except it gets worse every morning. And the food is the same and my belly gripes me the same way, at the same times, every day. Boredom is like pain for me.’

  ‘Did you not find your fight with the soldier entertaining?’

  The clerk blinked rapidly. ‘Yes I did, Padron, and I was very surprised at myself. I was surprised I could kill him too, only I didn’t think of it when I hit him because I was angry. I have killed before … But not that way. Not in a fight like that. And yesterday morning, I am afraid I was not at all amused despite your kind efforts.’

  Suleiman chuckled. ‘But you know, clerk, you have the best view of all your bench – you could look at the sea out of the oarport.’