Crossed Bones

by Jane Johnson

  The renegade chivvied the first group of captives into line, then turned back to address the hold at large. ‘We’re takin’ you up on deck one group at a time for some air on the chirurgeon’s instructions. Anyone who can’t make it up the stairs on their own two feet will be thrown over the side. One person from each row will clean up your shit before going on deck. Then you will return with a bucket of seawater and sluice your area.’ He took a metal pail from the second crewman and threw it to a woman in the first group on their feet. Cat averted her eyes as the woman scooped the filth into the pail and selfishly prayed that this awful task would not fall to her.

  She watched three ragged coffles of prisoners following these instructions, leaving and after a while returning, cleaning their area, taking their stations once more. Her feet itched to move; she could almost taste the briny air that awaited her. At last, after what seemed an interminable amount of time, Ashab Ibrahim came to her row and unlocked the bar. ‘Up, all of you.’

  They lurched upright and stood there uncertainly, trying to balance. To her horror Cat found that after two weeks cramped into a crouch her legs did not want to support even her reduced weight, and she fell across the man in the row in front of her, who swore in protest.

  The renegade caught her by the arm and dragged her to her feet. ‘Can’t afford to lose ’ee overboard, my bird: precious cargo, you are.’ He leered.

  Affronted, Cat forced her muscles to obey, shuffling along in the heavy woollen robe they had given her, her chains clanking painfully against her ankles. Someone else had landed the task of cleaning the row.

  At the top of the steps, the fresh air hit her like a fist. For a moment she felt dizzy, disorientated. She had to close her eyes against the sudden light and hold tightly to the sides. Someone pushed her in the back. ‘Move on, can’t you?’

  Up on deck she stared at the swathes of blue that assaulted her vision: a great vivid sky, streaked with high clouds like mares’ tails; an endless ocean beneath frothing with white caps. The shimmer of the sun on the sea and the whiteness of the belling sails hurt her eyes so that she had to look down at the solid darkness of the wood beneath her feet. Two weeks, she thought (they had all been counting, judging the passage of time by the changing quality of darkness in the hold); two weeks without sight of the world or fresh air to breathe. She had never realized how lucky she was simply to exist at Kenegie; to wish for more than simple pleasures had been a raw vanity.

  They stumbled across the deck, impeded by their chains, threw the filth overboard (out of the wind, if you please, as the renegade laughingly instructed them), drew up bucket after bucket of seawater and scrubbed their filthy skin and clothes. Salt stung their sores; strong men cried out in pain.

  The crew watched them, their black eyes as inimical and assessing as those of the Kenegie farm cats. While they joked with one another, Cat wondered what they were thinking: were they mocking their captives, commenting on the weakness of these poor pale creatures? Were they totting up their likely prize money, the prices they would fetch at auction; or were their thoughts running along darker lines? She huddled under the robe, using it as both washcloth and towel. How they must despise us, she thought, filthy as animals, crawling with lice, feeble and diseased. They have reduced us to this state so that we are less than human, and that is how they now see us: cargo which must be kept alive to earn any sort of price, as nondescript as sheep. And she kept on scrubbing as if the dirt would never come off.

  She was still in this almost trance-like state when she was surprised by a cry, and a man on the foredeck started to chant in a strange singsong voice:

  ‘Allah akbar. Allah akbar. Achehadou ana illah illallah. Achehadou ana mohammed rasoul allah. Achehadou ana mohammed rasoul allah. Haya rala salah. Haya rala salah. Haya rala falah. Haya rala falah. Qad qamatissaa. Qad qamatissaa. Allah akbar. Allah akbar. Laillah illallah…’

  The entire crew stopped whatever they were doing and walked quickly to the buckets of sand set at intervals about the ship. Each man dipped his hands in the bucket and rubbed the sand between his palms like soap. Then they ran their hands over their faces, three times, as if washing. They took another handful of sand, then ‘washed’ their right hands, then their left, to the elbow, again three times. Cat stopped her own washing and watched, fascinated. She looked around and found that the other captives were doing the same thing. It was like a Mystery Play, she thought suddenly, remembering when as a child her father had taken her to see the mummers when they visited Truro – something you didn’t quite understand but could not take your eyes from. The mummers had frightened her with their strange costumes and their chanting voices: the Devil with his skin rubbed black with ashes, his wild red hair and the sheep’s horns stuck on his head; the angels in white sheets swaying and pacing, back and forth, back and forth, mesmeric but unsettling. But at least the mummers had been at a safe distance, and she had known she was going home afterwards.

  Now the crewmen turned to the left-hand side of the ship and stood facing an older man in a white robe with the hood up over his head. They waited, silent for a few moments as if deep in thought, even the most savage-looking of them; then they went to their knees and stayed like that without a word for a minute or more. Finally they prostrated themselves, touching their foreheads to the deck: once, twice. Cat realized, with a sudden shock, that they were praying, and that their captain was among them, no distinction made between him and the men of his crew.

  They rose, and followed the same ritual again, and the prisoners shuffled uncomfortably. No one knew what to do; there was no hiding place on the ship, nowhere to escape to, except the great wide, empty sea. One by one, they tore their gaze from the praying men, and that was when John Symons saw the ship.

  ‘Ship!’ he whispered hoarsely and pointed.

  Cat and the others turned, shading their eyes against the glare. There it was on the northern horizon aft of them, a big square-rigger, but still too far away for the colour of the pennants streaming from its topmast to be discerned.

  ‘Spanish,’ declared a man who had been on the merchant vessel taken by the pirates in the Channel.

  ‘Caravel ain’t no indication,’ grunted Dick Elwith. ‘These Sallee Rovers’ve got ships of all sorts – pinks, xebecs, brigantines, cogs and caravels. Origin ain’t the thing, it’s who sails in her that counts. And there’s no point straining your eyes for the colours, as I knows to my misfortune, for they’ll fly any nation’s flag for convenience before changing it for their own damned sigil.’ But, even so, he screwed up his eyes and scrutinized the approaching vessel with all his might.

  What difference did it make if it were a Spanish vessel? Cat remembered the stories of how the Spanish had fired the houses of Mousehole, Newlyn and Penzance, and the church at Paul. They did not inspire her with much confidence of better treatment at the old enemy’s hands than from those of their captors. And if they attacked the pirate vessel, what then? She could see the gun ports on the bigger ship now: if it turned those guns upon them, what chance did they stand? Was it better to be blown to pieces or sold as a slave? She abruptly felt so sick that she had to stagger to the gunwale and vomit over the side.

  Maybe it was her sudden movement that caught the raïs’s eye, for at that moment he looked away from his prayers. His eyes widened, and then he was on his feet and running, shouting instructions. There was an immediate frenzy of activity as the crew leaped up from their prayers and took up their designated stations at sail or gun. Two men fled up the rigging on the main mast for a better sight of the other ship; from the deck, someone drew down the corsair flags.

  The prisoners stood like trees in the eye of a storm, still among the chaos. The raïs pointed at them. ‘Get them below!’ he shouted to Ashab Ibrahim and his subordinate.

  Dick Elwith darted a look at the approaching renegade, then at the ship, as if calculating something. Cat saw him give a little, inturned smile, then he winked at her. ‘Can’t go through it all again,’ he
said softly. ‘I’d rather take my chances with the Spanish or go down in Davy Jones’s locker than be whipped bloody working a galley’s oar.’ And with that he levered himself up on to the gunwale and dropped like a stone over the side of the ship.

  Ibrahim ran to the gunwale, but there was nothing he could do. ‘Bleddy idiot,’ he stormed, watching the sea foam subside where Elwith had plunged in. ‘He coulda made a fine corsair if he hadn’ta been so stiff-necked. All you gotta do to turn Turk is say a few words and lose a little bit of useless skin. ‘Ten’t a lot to give up for a life a darn sight better than ’e ’ad before. Now all ’e’ll see for ’is trouble is to feed a few fishes.’

  ‘He’s going to swim for that ship,’ Cat said furiously.

  ‘’E en’t swimming anywhere with them shackles on ’im.’ And he grabbed her by the arm. ‘Down below with ’ee, while we take care of business.’

  ∗

  Back down in the hold they huddled in their rows, waiting and listening, but it was only when the first of the guns roared that they realized the two ships had engaged. The woman on the left of Cat – who up till now had said barely a word to her, locked in her own private misery – gripped her arm suddenly.

  ‘My name is Harriet Shorte,’ she said. ‘If I die and you live through this, I want you to let my husband know what happened to me. Nicholas Shorte is my husband’s name, everyone calls him Little Nick. We have a cot in Market Street, Penzance, they all know us there. We argued on the Saturday night before I was taken – he said he en’t no Puritan, and he don’t want his sons brought up Puritan, and so he took the children to St Raphael and St Gabriel’s instead.’ There was a boom, and the ship shuddered from stem to stern, as if God had struck it with his fist. Tears began to run down her face; Cat saw the gleam of them even in the dark. ‘I wish I’d listened to him. If I hadn’t been so cross-grained I wun’t be here now. I shoulda been with them, I should never have gone off alone in high dudgeon.’ She swallowed. ‘I told him… I told him… to go to the Devil, and then I stormed off. This is God’s punishment to me, I know it, I know it…’ And she broke down sobbing.

  Cat placed her hand over the other woman’s. ‘I promise if anything happens to you, I’ll let him know. But it won’t, you know: you’ll be fine,’ she lied. If their ship was struck again, if a cannonball blew apart the hold, how would any of them survive when the ocean rushed in through the hole? Chained to the iron bars as they were, they would drown, each and every one.

  There came a terrible grinding sound all down the right of the ship, followed by the report of muskets and muffled cries a long way off. For some while there was a storm of sound, like thunder, overhead; then the ship gave a great lurch and the water in the bilges sloshed and they were moving again, at some speed, it seemed.

  More muffled booms, at a greater distance, and the ship rocked as its own guns recoiled from firing on the other vessel. At last there was quiet, just the creaking of the timbers and the low rumble of the sea.

  ‘They’re trying to outrun her,’ said a gruff voice. ‘They’re outgunned, and they’ve got to run.’

  ‘What does that mean for us?’ cried Jane Tregenna. ‘If they catch us, will they sink us?’

  ‘More like they’ll try to take her. She’s an old ship but still serviceable, a decent prize for any captain. And there will be a price on the heads of these pirates; they’ll be rewarded for the captives they take, and they can use the bastards to trade against their own. From what these other lads have said there must be a fair few Spanish souls mouldering away in Barbary dungeons, or striped by a galley master’s whip.’

  ‘The Spanish have no love for the English,’ rumbled Walter Truran.

  ‘They’ll have no love of thee, that’s for sure,’ laughed another man bitterly. He had an Irish accent. ‘But I’ll not tell them ye’re no Catholic if ye don’t.’

  On they sailed and night fell, and no one came down to bring them sustenance at the usual hour.

  ‘Something’s up,’ Isacke Kellynch opined sagely.

  But, even as he said this, the hatch opened and Ashab Ibrahim appeared with two of his fellows, one of whom wore a bloodstained turban, the other a bandage about his arm. The captives looked to one another and said nothing: where was their food?

  ‘Do you not have even a little fresh water for us?’ Jane Tregenna asked querulously.

  ‘We en’t here for your convenience,’ Ibrahim said. ‘I have the raïs’s orders to carry out.’

  At this there was great commotion and many among the prisoners began to shout and curse.

  ‘Shut yer holes or I’ll stop ’em for ye!’ Ibrahim roared. He stamped down through the hold until he reached Cat’s row, whereupon he took a great iron key from the chain about his waist and unlocked the bar that held them. The man on the end started to rise, but the renegade shoved him roughly back down with a boot. ‘Not you, cur! I want the girl.’

  Cat’s fingers tightened instinctively on the bar. She feared the worst, and he saw it in her face and laughed. ‘Stupid chit, it’s not what you think. The raïs wants you.’

  Somehow, that was worse. ‘But why?’ she asked in a small voice. The raïs frightened her, and not just for his casual violence against the preacher: there was something fearsome in his demeanour, in his very eye. The renegade switched at her knuckles with the knout of his rope.

  ‘Leave go and do as you’re told,’ he growled. ‘He don’t confide his desires to me, the Djinn.’

  ‘Djinn?’

  ‘That’s what some of us call him. A djinn is made by God from subtle fire: fire that doesn’t give away its presence by the sign of smoke. Ah, it’s a good name for him, for they are angry spirits, the djinn, powerful and malevolent. But don’t ever call him that to his face, for he won’t thank ’ee for it.’

  Cat got to her feet unsteadily, as if she were about to go to the very Devil.

  Out on deck, the moon cast its sombre light upon the ship, illuminating pale, splintered wood on the starboard gunwale, a fallen mast, its rigging all in a tangle, patches of charred wood where fires had broken out. A team of men was engaged in freeing the sail from the fallen mast, cutting it away, while trying to salvage as much good rope as they could.

  They passed through the waist of the ship and climbed the stairs to the aft castle, and wherever they passed dark eyes followed them.

  On the tall upper deck Cat scanned the ocean, but found no sign of the Spanish ship. It seemed they had outrun it after all, which was surely a victory of sorts for the pirates, yet they seemed silent and subdued. A number of them bore visible wounds, while a few lay groaning against the sides. Others hunched over strings of beads, muttering quietly as if in prayer.

  Down an elaborately carved companion way they went. Lanterns burned here, casting blooms of golden light on to the panelled walls and illuminating leaves and acorns etched into the wood, as if in commemoration of the great oaks which had given up their timber to the construction of the ship. Despite her circumstances, Cat admired the delicacy of the designs. They reminded her of tapestries she had seen in the great hall at the Mount, tapestries of Flemish origin: it was puzzling to see the same motifs on a heathen pirate vessel.

  At the end of the companionway Ibrahim stopped at a low door and knocked. A moment later it opened, and he exchanged a few words of Arabic with the man on the other side. The door opened wider, and Ashab Ibrahim pushed Cat into the chamber beyond and shut the door behind her.

  It was like walking into another world, a world out of a dream. Everywhere she looked there was something extraordinary. Brass lanterns hung from the ceiling, their perforations sprinkling out dancing patterns of candlelight which played across carpets of scarlet, blue and gold wool, intricately carved little round tables with tooled gold tops, a tall silver flagon, a collection of ornate glasses, ivory boxes, silver incense burners, silk hangings, the great, decorated water pipe she had seen up on deck. A little cage of what must be songbirds hung swaying from a hook, though they were
not singing now.

  ‘Come here,’ commanded a voice from the shadows, and Cat’s heart lurched.

  She stumbled and pitched face forward into the dark. She cried aloud and flung out her arms, expecting to hit wood, but her fall was broken by a mound of cushions of bright wools and silks. Even so, the breath went out of her. Carefully, she levered herself upright.

  ‘Is good that you prostrate yourself to me,’ said the voice. ‘For I am the master of this ship, and therefore the master of you.’

  Someone caught her under the arms and hauled her to her feet.

  ‘Bring light,’ the raïs demanded. ‘So that she can see what she must do.’

  Cat struggled now, for it was horribly clear what was expected of her: the raïs, Al-Andalusi, lay half naked on his bed, draped only in a sheet. ‘No!’ she cried. ‘No! Leave me be! It is dishonourable of you to treat a poor maid so, to force her against her will!’

  There was a pause, then a short laugh that turned into a pained cough. ‘Ah, you think I intend to violate you.’ The raïs shifted slowly so that the light fell across his face. She saw that he wore no turban and that his shaved head bore an ugly stubble. It made him look smaller and more vulnerable, a vulnerability that was further emphasized by an unhealthy pallor and the sweat that beaded his brow. ‘Alas,’ said Al-Andalusi, with a small, courteous gesture of the hand. ‘I wish I could fulfil such fantasy, but maa elassaf, sadly I am not. Also, you stink like goat, which not very arousing even if I feel ardent. Which I hope I shall again soon, inch’allah. No, you here because I wounded and chirurgeon dead.’

  Cat stopped stone-still. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said at last. ‘I am not a chirurgeon.’

  The raïs closed his eyes. ‘I know that. You have other… skills.’ He said something rapidly to the man who held her, and he took Cat by the arm, more carefully now, and led her to another part of the cabin separated from the bedchamber by a beaded curtain and pushed her gently through the gap between the hangings. Inside this enclosure she found water heating in a metal bowl over a brazier, and a pile of linen beside it.