Swords From the Sea

by Harold Lamb

  For one thing, he wouldn't have galley slaves on his ships. He said he wanted all hands to be fighting men. For another, he had madness in him. To go after things like Julie, as no levelheaded man would have done. Once when his officers pulled him out of the wreckage of a Portuguese galley they had rammed, he cursed them. He was still alive. "Lubbers," he said, "if God doesn't slay a man, how is anyone else going to do him in?"

  They said he had luck. But in all the Mediterranean he had no place of his own to shelter in. Until a place was made for him. At the far end of the sea, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent of the Turks had been keeping himself posted about Barbarossa, and now he sent for the pirate to come on his carpet.

  The sultan expected to see a small-time pirate. Instead he saw a giant with eighteen ship captains following, ushering in gifts, including some remarkably fine-looking women.

  When Suleiman had accepted the gifts, he asked, as if casually, had his visitor any strategy to defeat the Europeans?

  Thinking that over, Barbarossa shook his head and said no, he had no plan except to close with them and fight them.

  Suleiman was not one to hesitate. "Do it then."

  He gave Barbarossa the rank of Captain of the Sea and a blank check to draw on, with the arsenal to build a new Turkish fleet for the sultan. "Build what you like ... with sails of satin and spars of gold if you want," he specified. "But do not put to sea with less than one hundred and eighty ships. I do not want you taking any more long chances. That's an order."

  So the redheaded fisherman had a jeweled sword to wear and all Constantinople to set up shop in. He wondered if Julie might think Captain of the Sea was something of a great name. On the whole, he did not think so, because he had to take orders from another man.

  You see, he still visualized her as the proud teenager he'd held, light as flowers, in his arms. It was like a beacon on his course. When he heard her husband had been promoted and Julie was now a marchesa, he sent her a present of the best family table service he could find.

  This complete gold service arrived in time for Julie's gala party with royalty present. Only it turned out to be the d'Este gold plate, which had been missing for years, and Isabella made no bones about claiming it. But Julie kept track of the Sardinian wine merchant who'd been released from jail in Istanbul to bring it, and she stopped him outside the crowd to ask if there wasn't a message this time with the gift. Yes, the Sardinian said, there was a message, if she asked for one.

  He gave her a fine gossamer scarf, with directions, "If you are unhappy, go anywhere to the sea and wave this, and a fisherman will see it."

  Observing her, Catherine de' Medici, who was no prize beauty, told the scuttlebutt it was too bad the lovely Julie had such dealings with the underworld.

  Although she looked like a perfect hostess, Julie really felt confused. To go and wave at the empty sea! Like a child! When she wasn't happy. Only the inward part of her that nobody saw knew that. Anyway, what would happen if she did ... or if she didn't?

  Anyway, Julie argued with herself, she was only holding on to a memory of her lost youth. She had to argue like that when she caught a glimpse of the far-off blue sea.

  In no time at all, Barbarossa was called back on the sultan's carpet. He tried to guess what Suleiman might have on him now; he'd been careful to have one hundred and eighty sail following in line when he headed out for the Gallipoli light, because he knew Suleiman would count them off from the sun garden where he kept the best-looking girls.

  On his part, Suleiman noticed the dents in his captain's skull under the gray-red hair.

  "Now hear me," said he. "You're doing a fair job as my Captain of the Sea. But you're still using command tactics when you should be planning operations like an admiral. Stop leading with your head; you're going to need it now," barked the sultan, and let the cat out of the bag. "Listen, Barbarossa. I have a terribly big empire to manage. Figuratively speaking, it's a big as one of those superbattleships Andrea Doria is building."

  "Galleasses. No better than junks in a calm."

  "Be that as it may be," continued Suleiman, who was not accustomed to interruptions, "my empire being so big, I have to leave the European area and go off to Africa and Asia to put down the Mamelukes and give a hand to my cousins the Moguls, out India way. Now, while I'm gone, I don't want any of Iny European enemies to knife me in the back. And would you," said he, passing the wine, "see to that?"

  When Barbarossa didn't answer right off, Suleiman hastened to explain, "This isn't an order; I'm only asking. I figure the odds against you to be about seven to one. So take those new heavyweight mortars and ten thousand janizary shock troops-"

  "I can't use soldiers on my sea. Keep the marines. No," explained Barbarossa, doing some figuring of his own, "I was only trying to count up your enemies here. Six I know of, but ..."

  "The Knights of Malta are the seventh. What do you say, Red?"

  Barbarossa didn't say, quick off. Always he and the sultan dealt the cards face up between them; how they played their cards was each man's affair. And Suleiman would sell out nobody; he was a good chief-even his enemies called him "the Magnificent," as well as "the Terrible Turk."

  "Chief," answered Barbarossa, "chief. I know you love your wife Roxelana faithfully. But you are taking off on a long business trip and you will be tired, with all these affairs of state-"

  "If you happen on a Venetian red-head," said Suleiman, keeping his voice low, "with broad hips and a narrow waist."

  "There's a brunette," said Barbarossa, without batting an eye, "the pick of the Mediterranean, and no Venetian babe could open the door to her."

  Suleiman piped down even more. "Red, I don't think you'd lie to me. I know you keep most of my hundred and eighty warships for decoys while you work with your own eighteen, but you never said different. Tell me now, is this a fact?"

  "Chief, you hold her in your arms, it's fire and silk, and her lips, rose petals."

  "Get her."

  "Give me the order in writing."

  Suleiman did that, but slowly.

  "Go your way now," said Barbarossa happily, taking the order. "And think no more of being knifed in the back by any concert of Europe."

  "I am going a long way. And I am beginning to think I've ordered you to take the long chance that I just warned you against. Damn your punchdrunk head, I don't want you killed! "

  "If God doesn't rub a man out, how is anyone else going to do it?"

  Suleiman couldn't answer that.

  Julie was sunning herself on the bathing beach at Nice when it began to change along the Mediterranean. So long she had been staring out at the empty sea she was sure Barbarossa had forgotten her. When the fleet wore in against the land breeze she hardly noticed it, thinking it was Doria's or the French Toulon, until Barbarossa's scarlet pennant was sighted. Immediately all the royal set evacuated the Riviera. This time Julie had time to put on her riding dress and take her jewel box, and she looked like a girl again, at the excitement.

  Her husband, the marquis, however, told her it was no laughing matter, and she must be more mindful of the good name of his family.

  Anyway, the raid on Nice brought in the big shot himself, the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, to bring Barbarossa's situation in hand; the emperor calling in his German veterans from his other wars and sending Hernando Cortes, the conquistador, who was killing Mexicans by the millions in the New World.

  "This time," announced the marquis, "they will take Barbarossa's base: Algiers." He had the low-down at court. "It is all set up because that old friend of yours is selling out the Turks."

  It confused Julie to hear Cortes called a noble conquistador and Barbarossa a pirate. Before she thought, she spoke. "Then they're making a terrible mistake. Barbarossa wouldn't sell out Suleiman."

  How did she know that the redheaded fisherman who had tried to carry her wouldn't sell anybody out? Women have hunches like that.

  But when the emperor came back from Algiers without Algi
ers and most of his Germans, and Cortes with only a few of his caballeros of Spain, and all of them without the armor they'd ditched to swim better, the marquis said it had been due to an unforeseen storm, and how had Julie got her information in advance?

  This time Julie didn't answer him. This thing was bound to break, and probably she sensed how it would break. For one thing, the marquis only told her politely how worried he was by her being pale and noaccount. For her health, so he said, he took her to Venice by coach, assuring her the gondolas and the canals would be perfectly safe. When he took her to see the Ducal palace, he led her straight to the conference room. And there, waiting for her, sat seven of the greatest sea lords, including the doge himself in his red cap of office. They all stood up to compliment her on her looks.

  Andrea Doria explained the idea to her, with maps-how they could only win the war one way, by everybody ganging up. But Julie understood in a flash what they were after, and said so.

  "You call yourselves Christian soldiers, and you gang up against a man who fought you fair," she said.

  The marshal of the Holy Roman Empire said a woman couldn't judge very well what was fair in war. The lord admiral-that being Doria-would decide the strategy.

  "To use a woman to bait a trap!" said Julia.

  The vice-commander of the Knights of Malta stood up and swore by his honor that she would be safe this time on the flagship. Especially, he added-not liking Doria-on the lord admiral's flagship.

  "I wasn't thinking of myself," she told the commander.

  "Evidently not." The thin face of the marquis flushed dark. "I had thought you hated this renegade pirate, but I am led to believe you love him. Speak up," he insisted, when Julie held her tongue.

  The tightness within her gave way at the word. "My lord husband, it is true hatred can turn into love," she spoke up all in a breath, "and love can also become hatred. I know nothing about Barbarossa except one thing. He will never shame me as you have done this minute."

  Then she curtsied to Doria. "Will you kindly have a chair put for me on the deck of your ship, admiral? I will go with you gladly on your cruise to meet Barbarossa."

  When she did, everyone who saw Julie remarked how she seemed to be enjoying it-the doge himself handing her into the admiral's barge at the quay, and the flagship decked with streamers, while salutes were fired all around. Julie had on her newest blue dress with the gossamer silk scarf at her throat. She couldn't help enjoying it, although she knew it was staged like this so Barbarossa would be certain to hear about her.

  She hadn't been to sea for so long. And all the sea was covered with sails, from the gun barges to the five great new galleasses, like castles filled with tiers of guns. Seven fleets she counted with seven flags-the arms of Genoa above her, the lion of St. Mark, the Maltese cross, the shield of Spain, the eagles of the great emperor, the crossed keys of the Papal Curia, and another she didn't know that Doria said was Portuguese.

  She almost felt like waving her scarf, until Doria gave her the totals-two hundred ships, two thousand guns, sixty thousand armed men. And more than all that, the five new dreadnoughts.

  "And what," asked Julie anxiously, "does Barbarossa have with him? By the way, where is he?"

  At Preveza, said Doria, refitting his fleet of perhaps eighty sail. At the landlocked port of Preveza, watched by a screening force of light galleys. This screening force, Doria explained, would withdraw to decoy Barbarossa out to where the five galleasses waited. When Barbarossa had broken his strength against the five dreadnoughts, Doria's main fleet of two hundred galleys would encircle the battle to sink every unit of the pirate's Turkish fleet. It would all happen like that, barring bad weather, which, being an act of God, Doria could not control.

  This strategy Julie didn't understand very well. But realization came to her like a blinding flash of lightning. Barbarossa was trapped. If he tried to save his crews by landing, he lost his fleet. If he fled away from the armada and from her, the name of Barbarossa would cease to be a legend in the Mediterranean. If he came out to fight against such power as this, and against her, he was lost. And so, very likely, was she. There was no other possibility.

  "I understand," she said quietly in her deck chair, "everything now."

  Barbarossa came out to fight.

  It happened just as Admiral Doria and Julie had anticipated. Except that Barbarossa's vessels got under way at night, surprising the screening force and scattering it before it could draw him seaward. Yet he came on.

  The wind being against him, he had to work out with the oars. His lookouts sighted the forest of masts lying in wait off the island of Santa Maura, yet he kept his course to close his enemy.

  After dawn the wind died. The five galleasses, becalmed, lay in his way, their great firepower blasting his galleys back. He sent his galleys in singly to fire their bow guns and draw clear. What with that, and the mighty sea castles fouling each other in the calm, one of them caught in flames. After that the small galleys worked in through the smoke to board the great ships. It was mid-afternoon, and the weather thickening, before the fifth galleass hauled down her colors.

  If only Barbarossa had kept all of Suleiman's armada with him, and the heavy mortars and janizaries, he might have had more of a chance. As it was, he had taken too much punishment. When he made signal to close the enemy at Santa Maura, his flotilla had thinned behind him. His own galley limped forward with half its oars gone.

  Past the stern of Doria's flagship the galley of Malta rounded and the commander hailed, "Lord admiral, do you not see that the enemy will close us? Bear down, bear down!"

  "Back to your station!" shouted Doria. "Obey your orders! We will have every sail of his by sundown! "

  "Admiral," cried Julie from her chair, "I find the conversation on my cruise most entertaining! What with so many commanders all running up different signals, and squadrons rushing by in the heavy swell," she added. "And the spectacle is really magnificent."

  Then through the circling squadrons the dark wedge of Barbarossa's ships came on, with the roar of the guns like the swift roll of drums. When a flying squadron struck against this wedge there was a vast splintering sound.

  With each lift of the swell, the wedge was closer. Like an injured wrestler, it felt for a grip on its enemy. And there happened at Preveza what sometimes happens at sea-the great fleet maneuvering, colliding, and changing course could not break up or check the small fleet bearing in.

  Under the darkening sky, Barbarossa's scarlet pennon showed clearer. Julie recognized the gilt stern lanterns bearing down on her. So few oars moved the battered galley toward her. Julie's mind told her, He knows I am waiting here, yet he will not turn away. Nothing now can keep his ship from crashing into mine.

  She didn't feel as if she were going to die. She felt excited and tense, as if at her wedding. What was really happening she couldn't understand because of the loud drumbeat and the darkness over her head.

  Then lightning glared. In the flash, Andrea Doria's nerves snapped. He cried, "Give way!" And unsteadily he ordered a signal flag bent-all ships to shelter from a storm. So the mighty armada turned and ran from Barbarossa. The long oars churned, the steering sweeps were thrust hard over, and their galley turned from Barbarossa's boat. Their armada followed, running before the wind rising to hurricane force.

  Rain squalls swept the deck. The galley, with oars inboard and only a patch of foresail spread, ran north. Braced with the sweep of the rain, seeing an inlet in the coast as night closed in, Julie wondered why they didn't light the stern lanterns that served as guide beacons for the fleet.

  She did not know that Barbarossa was following until the other galley drew alongside with its lanterns glowing aft. It hung to windward, accompanying them. No guns could be worked on her galley in that lash of rain. A shaft of lightning showed Barbarossa standing by the steering sweep across from her as the red fisherman had stood at his tiller, and she thought, How much heavier he's grown.

  Then she felt warm a
nd protected with Barbarossa between her and the flying spray. She waited for each flashing beacon of the sky to see him again until he drew ahead with beacon lighted, guiding her toward a break in the dark coast.

  When her galley reeled and swept into the gut of an inlet, Barbarossa sheered off, heading out toward his scattered fleet. Watching the two lanterns turning away, she remembered and laughed, hurrying to pull the scarf from her throat and wave it.

  "Marchesa," said Andrea Doria. He looked aged and sick. "What do you wish for?"

  Julie hardly heard him, watching into the darkness. "I almost forgot. I was so very happy."

  Barbarossa kept the sea until the last of his ships found shelter. Perhaps because of that, he died soon after. From Gib to Gallipoli light, his name was a great name. And when Sultan Suleiman came back from Asia he built that tomb close to the water, with the two stern lanterns hung inside it.

  When Terence McGowan finished with his identification of Barbarossa, the admiral flipped his cigarette into the water.

  "McGowan," he said, "I was a swab this morning."

  The admiral squinted shoreward at the Golden Horn with sunset lighting the minarets of the mosque of Suleiman the Magnificent, and at the small tomb dark by the water. He cleared his throat. "H'm-umh. I'll give you five to one in dollars that Barbarossa wanted Suleiman to keep those stern lights going, and Suleiman did it. But after four hundred years, people forget a detail like that. Furthermore, I think I owe these Turks something. It would be a good thing if I went back tomorrow morning with electricians and got those lanterns going again. Will you break out some flowers and et ceteras, and Miss-Miss Mediterranean to attend again?

  "You mean Miss Hisarbey?"

  "I mean Miss Mediterranean." The admiral looked at his aide. "Do you know any reason why the American Mission for et cetera can't have a good-looking Miss Mediterranean?"

  "No, sir," said McGowan promptly.

  The first of it was Ernst Salza's waking in the morning. Straight to the window opening he went, and saw a sea mist coming in. Then he felt sure that this would be his great day. Mist and a light breeze-they were sheer good luck.