“Oh, ho, so there’s more of you. Am I to sail with half the boy-population of Palermo hanging off my stern?” Hadji-Mustafa took a cup from one of the sailors and drank wine from it. His eye sparkled and flashed with laughter. “Take you to Cefalu, eh?”
Federigo had said Cefalu only because it was one of the few ports in Sicily he knew to be open to pirates. He nodded.
“And what do I get in return?”
“When I really am King, I won’t hang you.”
The uproar doubled. The big Moor said softly, “He knows how to talk to you, Malik.”
Looking thoughtful, Hadji-Mustafa scratched his nose. “So I see.”
Federigo grinned. “I won’t be any trouble, Master. I don’t even eat much.”
“I wasn’t planning to go to Cefalu.”
“What good is there in being a pirate if you have to do everything by plan?” Federigo hopped up and down with impatience. “Please, Master, please. They really will kill me if they find me. If I try to walk to Cefalu, someone will recognize me and take me back to them.”
Durante said, “He’s telling the truth, Malik — I heard them say what they meant to do to him.”
“Who is this who wants to murder a child?” the Moor said.
“People who want to rule the child’s kingdom,” Hadji-Mustafa said. He reached out suddenly and grabbed a handful of Federigo’s red hair. “I’m sick of black hair, I’ve had nothing around me but hair black as the Pit for twenty years. Yes, King, I’ll take you to Cefalu.”
The approving roar clogged up Federigo’s ears, and he grabbed Hadji-Mustafa’s hand and kissed it. “I’ll work, I’ll help you. You can teach me how to sail.”
Hadji-Mustafa stood up. “Hah. That I’ll have to see.” Raising his voice to a bellow, he shouted, “Abdul, when can we sail?”
“On the midnight tide,” a deep voice roared.
Yusuf and Durante flung themselves on Federigo, hugging him. “You did it,” Durante screamed. “You got us onto a pirate ship. You did it, Little Red!”
Federigo laughed and shivered both at once. He wasn’t sure he trusted Hadji-Mustafa. No pirate could be trusted. But at least he was safe from the men in Al-Aziz. With the sailors rollicking around him, the noise shrieking in his ears, he thought of sailing, of going somewhere on his own, and abruptly his whole body sang with joy. This time he would have something to say about what happened to him. He felt fluttery all over with excitement.
Chapter Four
“NOW, HEAVE!”
Yusuf, Durante and Federigo flung their weight against the capstan bar — the three big sailors on the bar opposite theirs started to laugh, and Abdul, the first mate, glowered at them. They leaned into the capstan, and it began to turn, winding up the anchor rope. Federigo wanted to shout. Pushing as hard as he could, he put his head down and strained his shoulder muscles. Yusuf gasped for breath. The capstan turned slowly at first, but gradually it picked up speed, and shoving it around was easier. The rope turned wet and slimy.
“Out oars,” Abdul shouted, his hands cupped around his mouth. “All right on the anchor, she’s up.”
Federigo stood back, panting. Through the holes in the sides of the ship, the oars flashed, clipped into the dark water of the bay, and thrust the ship forward.
Durante whispered, “We’re going, we’re really going,” and flung his arm around Federigo’s shoulders. “Look!”
Across the water, the lights of the harbor showed, reflected in streaks on the waves. On each boat anchored in the bay shone another light.
Federigo said, “Look — look at it all.” He was bursting with excitement; he tried to hear and see everything at once, afraid of missing some detail.
Beneath their feet, the deck tilted slightly — they were under way. The oars groaned in the oar locks, and the water gurgled past the hull — the wind touched his face and cooled it.
Abdul shouted, “Sing out, watch.” He spoke a mixture of Arabic and Italian and Greek, the universal language of the Mediterranean.
“Open water dead ahead,” called the watch on the mast-head. Federigo could barely see him, up above the yard with the sail wrapped tightly around it. The sailors in the hull, pulling on the oars, began to sing in deep, measured voices, fitting the rhythm of the song to the beat of the oars, boomed out on a drum.
“Make fast,” Hadji-Mustafa said quietly, up on the stern near the tiller, and Abdul shouted, “Make fast.” Halfway down the length of the ship, in the waist, a man leaning on the rail yelled it on up to the bow. Federigo looked around, wondering what they should do.
“Make fast,” Abdul said, “means that if you find any rope loose, you wrap it around a cleat, like this.” He nudged a piece of wood on the deck with his foot. “Or if you find anything rolling around loose, you secure it. Go on, make yourselves useful.”
The three boys jogged off down the deck. The hull was completely open except for a narrow walkway on either side. In the middle, the oarsmen sat on benches, bracing their feet against the planking and heaving their weight against the oars. It looked like much harder work than Federigo ever wanted to try. He found a bit of rope trailing over the side and looked to see what it was attached to; it ran up into the shrouds that held the mast and yardarm in place. Groping on the deck, he found a cleat and wrapped the rope carefully around it.
“Not like that,” the man in the waist said. “Here.” He knelt, undid the rope end, and formed it into a figure eight. Slipping each loop over opposite ends of the cleat, he pulled it tight. “That way we can get it loose easily when we want to.”
“Thank you.” Federigo tried to memorize how he’d done it. Yusuf and Durante were already up to the bow, and he ran after them.
“Look,” Durante said. He leaned over the railing around the bow and pointed down. Federigo pulled himself up on his stomach across the railing — at the foot of the prow the water churned up white, glowing.
“How far down do you think that is?”
“Oh, not far,” Yusuf said.
Durante grabbed Federigo by the waist. “Can you swim?”
“Yes. Let me go.” Federigo wiggled, and Durante pretended to push him over the rail. Yelping, they wrestled a moment.
“Quit that,” said the sailor in the bow. “Don’t make any fuss or you really will get pitched over. The Captain doesn’t like fuss.”
“Yes, sir,” Durante said, soberly, and then giggled.
“Come on,” Federigo said. “Let’s explore.”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” the sailor said. “Captain wants you below. Down there.” He waved his arms back toward the stern, answering some signal.
“Down where?” Federigo said, doubtfully. He peered into the hollow the sailor had indicated. It looked like nothing more than a tiny cave made by the sides of the ship coming together into the point of the bow.
“Go on, that’s where you’ll be sleeping.” The sailor pushed him.
“But can’t we—”
“No! He says go below.”
Federigo sighed. With his hands outstretched before him, he crawled into the dark, narrow space ahead of him. To his surprise, it was almost a room, large enough to stand up in, and full of folded canvas and huge coils of rope. Yusuf stumbled over something that clanked and sat down with a howl, holding his shin.
“Ssssh,” Durante said. “Let’s not get thrown off before we leave the harbor.” He picked up what Yusuf had tripped over; in the dim light Federigo saw that it was a lantern. “I’m still hungry. We never did get fed.”
“Do you think he’ll really take us to Cefalu?” Yusuf asked. He sprawled out on the coil of rope behind him. “Maybe they’ll take us to Cairo and sell us in the slave market.”
Durante put his chin in his fists. “Maybe they’ll hold you for ransom, Federigo. He did say something about that.”
“Well, if he does, he won’t get much.” Federigo pulled at the canvas until it was spread out across the deck and lay down on it. “We should have brought someth
ing to eat.”
Yusuf muttered something under his breath.
“What?” Durante said.
“I want to go home. My mother will be worried.”
“So? Let them worry, it will do them good.”
“But I miss them,” Yusuf wailed. “I want to go home.” He glared at Federigo. “You got us into this.”
Federigo snuggled down with his head on his arms. “You could have stayed behind if you’d wanted to.” He wished Yusuf would shut up. The thought of Franciscus, his own bed, a cherry jam tart before he went to sleep, all came unwanted into his mind and made him feel a little queasy. Franciscus would look for him in the morning and he wouldn’t be there. They’d worry. Diepold would probably get into just as much trouble as if Federigo had actually been murdered. But that was Diepold’s concern, not his. He just wished that his insides would stop turning over and that the lump in his throat would go away. Outside, the gulls cried and the rhythmic creak and splash of the oars mixed with the slap-slap of water against the hull of the ship. He felt very little and far from home, and getting farther away with each long stroke of the pirates’ oars. Footsteps came up toward their cave.
“Is anybody in there hungry?” a strange voice whispered.
“Yes!” All three of them sat up.
“That’s what the Captain thought.” A round bundle rolled into the cave and stopped near Durante’s feet. “He says if you get homesick, seasick or whatever, he’s on watch all night long, but don’t bother him unless it’s serious.”
Durante was already tearing off the wrapping on the loaf of bread.
“Thank you,” Federigo called. “Hey, Durante, save some for us.”
“Here.” Durante tore off a chunk of the bread and tossed it to Federigo. “Yusuf?”
“I’m not hungry,” Yusuf said, in a shaky voice.
“Oh, well, more for us.”
Federigo chewed on a huge mouthful of bread. Whether running away was good or bad, it was done. With something in his stomach, he began to feel much better. The gentle rocking of the ship lulled him; when he’d stuffed himself with bread, he lay down, yawning, and listened to Yusuf sobbing quietly in the dark until he went to sleep.
*
When he woke up, it was still dark. Yusuf lay fast asleep on the coil of rope, but Durante was gone. Federigo crawled out onto the deck of the bow and looked around. The sail was stretched out on the wind; sailors dozed on the narrow walkway and the deck around his feet, and the oarsmen slept on their benches. He started aft, toward the stern, stepping carefully over the bodies of the sleepers in his way.
Overhead, the sky was moonless and covered with stars. He stopped, one hand on the rail, and looked up, amazed. Beyond counting, the stars swept across the sky, wheeling with the slow motion of the ship, so many of them he could barely pick out even the most familiar constellations among them. The broad sash of the Milky Way seemed as bright as the moon.
When he was closer to the stern, he could hear Hadji-Mustafa’s voice, soft and pleasant: “That’s called the Reaper’s Star, where I was born, but the Arabs call it Raz-al-Gul, the head of the demon. The one over there, that looks red — hello, King.”
“Hello, Master.” Federigo climbed up the little ladder to the stern deck and sat down next to Durante. Hadji-Mustafa had the tiller bar in one hand. He was leaning up against the railing, his eyes on the sky and the sail.
“And the red star?” Durante said.
“That’s called Sirius by the Christians — the Dog Star — but the Arabs call it The Red Eye. It shines brightest in the summer, when it’s hot. King, that star up there, that’s the Pole Star, as I was telling Durante. If you’re ever lost that tells you which way is north.”
“Do you have an astrolabe?”
“No.” Hadji-Mustafa laughed. “Should I?”
“Well, I saw one in a shop in Palermo that a Genoese sailor had.”
“I don’t need one. I can tell how far north I am just by looking, I’ve been a sailor so long.”
Federigo leaned his back against the railing. “Don’t you ever get lonely for the place where you were born?”
“Not really.”
“You said you were tired of black hair,” Durante said. He stretched his legs out and yawned.
“Oh, that, sometimes. For people who speak the language I was born speaking. But I’m a sailor, I’m never happy unless I’m on the sea. So I don’t get homesick.”
“Why are you a pirate?” Durante said. “Couldn’t you be a sailor for someone else?”
Hadji-Mustafa laughed again, but this time it was harsh and hard to listen to. “And sail on someone else’s ship? Not me. I could work my whole life away and never save enough money to get my own ship, either. I’m a pirate because it’s the only way I can do what I want. Otherwise I’d spend my whole life waiting for the day when I could be free, and when I died, why, I’d never have gotten there.”
The two boys were silent. Federigo was thinking that he’d always taken for granted that people became pirates to get rich, to fight and steal and kill people. But what Hadji-Mustafa had said made more sense to him. He listened to the creak of the timbers in the ship and the swish of the water past her hull.
“Is that why you changed your God?” Durante said.
“Yes. Otherwise I’d have been a slave all my life. And they weren’t paying very high for skinny Christians in the slave auctions that year.”
Federigo thought it made no difference anyway — all gods were the same, only the religions differed.
“I even went to Mecca,” Hadji-Mustafa said. “Because I could sail there. Not all the way, most of the way.”
He lifted his head. Federigo felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle up. It was as if Hadji-Mustafa heard something, a voice speaking, that they couldn’t hear; he listened intently a moment and shifted the tiller. “Abdul!”
Down in the waist, Abdul got up and shouted back. “Trim the sail!”
Abdul went around kicking sailors awake, and they moved around loosening ropes and moving the sail around. Hadji-Mustafa moved the tiller steadily to one side; Federigo could feel the ship heeling slightly over.
“How did you know to do that?” Durante asked.
“The wind. I felt it change.”
Durante whistled. “Will you teach me how to do that?”
“No one can teach you, you have to learn the feel of the wind.”
“How long will that take?”
“That depends on you. Some people never learn.”
Federigo rested his head against the railing. Everything about sailing pleased him — the roll of the ship, the touch of the cool wind, the stars overhead, and, beyond the innumerable small noises, the great silence of the sea. When I am grown up, he thought, I’ll have many ships. Beside him, Durante went on asking questions in a voice tight with a passion to know the answers by heart, to know them in his bones, the way Hadji-Mustafa knew them. Federigo listened only casually. The music and peace of the ship made him drowsy, and he sank into a half-dream, in which the sun-blasted plain of Palermo itself rose up to acclaim him King.
*
“Like that. Right, Durante. Let me see yours, Red. Good. Yusuf—” Abdul shook his head, took the spliced rope from Yusuf, and carefully picked it apart. “You’re not a sailor, sonny, that’s all.”
“I don’t want to be,” Yusuf said, and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “I want to go home.”
Federigo made a face at him. “We’ll go home when we reach Cefalu. You’d better make the best of it. Show him, Abdul.”
“I’m trying,” Abdul said. His forehead ran with sweat, and his thick, curly hair stuck to his face. Nimble as a girl’s, his big fingers braided together the two ends of the rope. “Now. See?”
“I guess so.” Yusuf took the rope ends back and undid them. “When can we do something else?”
“I’m just teaching you so you can splice up all those sheets,” Abdul said. “That’s what the Captain said.
He said as long as you were on board to put you to work.”
Yusuf wailed. “How far is it to Cefalu?”
“Three more days.”
Durante murmured, “That’s too short.” Already deft, like Abdul’s, his hands put together another splice. Federigo concentrated on getting the right pieces together and woven tightly.
“When we get to Cefalu, what will we do?” Yusuf said.
“Go back home, probably,” Federigo said. “The Legate will be gone by then.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we—”
“Sail,” the lookout shouted from the mast. “Red sail to windward!”
Federigo jumped up and ran to the rail. In the hull, the sailors were racing to their benches, and their excited voices boiled up to his ears. Far down the leaping, glittering water, a red scrap danced — the ship coming. He leaned over the rail and squinted to make it out.
“Get forward,” Abdul shouted to him. He grabbed Yusuf and Durante by their shirts and tossed them up toward the bow. “That’s a Genoese, that’s an enemy. Go on, will you? Run!”
Durante whooped. “A battle. They’re going to fight a battle.” He jumped up onto the railing to see.
“Get those brats forward,” Hadji-Mustafa roared. He was coming up on deck from his cabin below the stern. Federigo took one look at him and streaked for the bow, yelling to the others to follow.
The ship seethed with action. All the oarsmen had gotten to their benches, and with a thundering roll the drumbeat started up. The sail had been tucked around the yard. Abdul and three other men dragged a chest out onto the foredeck just as the three boys darted into the shelter of the bow. Tipping up the lid of the chest, Abdul reached in and pulled out a sword.
“She’s coming down on us,” the lookout screamed. “She’s taken in her sail!”
“Hard to windward,” Hadji-Mustafa shouted. “Abdul, get up here.”
Federigo climbed into the rigging on the bow. Swinging their oars, the rowers turned the ship neatly into the wind. Federigo shaded his eyes. Now he could see the Genoese ship crawling on her oars down toward them. His hands began to sweat, and he dried them on his shirt. Off down the sea, on the opposite side from the Genoese ship, he could just catch a glimpse of the coast of Sicily, gray against the blue sky.
The King's Road Page 5
