Song of the Eight Winds - An Epic Tale of Medieval Spain

by Peter Kerr

  ‘No wish to inflict harm on the Moors?’ the king interrupted, his voice rising, a frown of amazement furrowing his brow. ‘No wish to inflict harm on the disbelievers who stole our land from us?’ He shook his head. ‘You mystify me, Master Blànes. First you say you’ve no desire to benefit from the spoils of war, and now you tell me that you wish no harm to my enemies.’ King Jaume was making no attempt to conceal his displeasure. ‘I think it’s high time you explained precisely why you came on this crusade, don’t you?’

  ‘Well, firstly because I was hired as a sailor, not as a soldier, and secondly –’

  ‘Every sailor must take up arms if required,’ the king barked. ‘Surely you’re aware of that?’

  Realising he had talked himself into a corner, Pedrito decided to throw a measure of caution to the wind. He had no option now. ‘You said you respected my frankness, Majestat…’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I’m going to be honest with you. My main reason for coming on this expedition was because I hoped it might give me the chance to check on the wellbeing of my parents and little sister. I’ve been at sea for five years now, and I haven’t had any news of them in all that time.’

  ‘Then perhaps you should never have gone to sea,’ the king retorted.

  ‘I didn’t really have any choice,’ Pedrito came back. ‘If it had been up to me, I’d still be working with my father’s mule on our finca.’

  ‘All of us, even kings, have to do things in life that we’d rather not!’ the king admonished. Then, after a moment, his look softened slightly. ‘Still, your concern for your family is commendable, Master Blànes. And I envy the fact that you have a family at all, for I’ve known no mother or father since I was three years old. However, we’re about to go to war, and you are a member of my army, whether you like it or not!’

  At that, and to Pedrito’s great relief, the galley’s captain appeared, stepping briskly up to the poop deck from between the ranks of oarsmen now settling onto the benches straddling the vessel’s hull. Though obviously in a state of some agitation, the captain took a moment to bow before the king.

  ‘Permission to weigh anchor, my lord?’ He crooked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘As you can see, the rowers are on the thwarts with oars at the ready, and the deck hands are waiting for my order to hoist the sail, and –’

  The king raised a silencing finger. ‘No one is more impatient than I am to start this voyage, Captain Guayron, but the orders I gave are clear – the fleet does not move off until the lead ship of Captain Bonet signals that the last of the vessels have come out from Tarragona and Cambrils on either side of the cape yonder. Then, and only then, does my galley join the fleet, bringing up the rear as planned.’ He followed that outburst with a mumbled: ‘As planned by our fine general, my cousin En Nunyo Sans, but not by me, I may say.’

  The captain, though an older man than the king and doubtless much more experienced in the ways of the sea, clearly had no wish to invite his monarch’s displeasure. ‘I beg your forgiveness, senyor, and I don’t wish to distract your Majesty’s attention from other more important matters’ – he cast his helmsman a chilly glance, then offered the king another stiff little bow – ‘but if you will pardon my intrusion, I –’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, get on with it, man!’ the king snapped. ‘This is no time to stand on ceremony! What is it you want to say?’

  The captain was now pointing frantically towards the seaward flank of the fleet, and to the lead ship in particular. ‘B-but, my lord,’ he stammered, ‘– look there! The flag man on Captain Bonet’s ship is already signalling. You see, the remaining Tarragona and Cambrils vessels came out and took up position while you were –’ he shot Pedrito another icy look – ‘while you were otherwise engaged. Everyone’s now waiting for your signal to proceed.’ He pointed again. ‘As you can see, the canvas on the sailing ships is already being raised.’

  The king glared at Pedrito. ‘If you had the makings of a half-decent squire,’ he hissed, ‘you would have told me about that flag!’

  Pedrito was sorely tempted to tell the king that if he had the makings of a half-decent naval commander he would have noticed the flag himself, but he kept his own counsel. It was becoming increasingly obvious to him that King Jaume, though destined to become one of Spain’s greatest heroes (if the fates allowed), was also a ‘normal’ young man like himself, saddled with insecurities and self-doubt, which his regal status compelled him to conceal as best he could.

  Just then, a cry rose up from amid the masses of onlookers thronging the shoreline:

  ‘Look there! See how all the sea seems white with sails!’

  ‘And why, Captain, aren’t we hoisting ours?’ the king demanded. ‘The royal galley having to bring up the rear in front of all those people is bad enough, but being left behind completely would be a disgrace too terrible to contemplate!’

  ‘To Mallorca! To Mallorca!’ came the concerted call from the crowds on the beach. ‘To Mallorca, and go with God, King Jaume!’

  ‘Well, Captain Guayron,’ the king urged, ‘you heard what they said! What in heaven’s name are you waiting for? Tell your conch horn blower to sound the advance, or whatever it’s called at sea!’

  Without having to be asked a third time, the captain barked the required command. Then, with a pained look, he turned round to address the king again.

  ‘The Ponent – I fear it may not favour the larger ships today, senyor.’

  ‘The what?’ the king frowned.

  ‘The Ponent – the west wind.’

  The king’s frown deepened. ‘But surely the west wind is what we want. The Ponent, as you call it, will blow us eastward to Mallorca, no?’

  ‘Sí, Majestat, but look at our sail. It’s hanging like a wet shirt on a washing line. The wind’s just too slack. I mean, this and all the other galleys can make good headway by using our oars, but the large sailing ships – well, they have no oars.’ His expression changed from concern to one of resignation. ‘And any fleet is only as fast as its slowest vessel.’

  The king’s face fell. ‘Surprise is worth a thousand men in battle, and this morning after mass the Bishop of Barcelona prayed for a fair wind to take us swiftly to Mallorca. But now your wretched Ponent…’ His voice trailed away.

  ‘Perhaps he didn’t pray hard enough,’ Pedrito Blànes suggested, aware that his wayward tongue might be putting his head on the chopping block again, but deciding nevertheless that an attempt at raising the young monarch’s flagging spirits was called for. King Jaume was already renowned as a leader of land armies, but it was becoming increasingly apparent that he was sadly lacking in knowledge of how things happen at sea.

  ‘You dare to criticise the Bishop of Barcelona’s power of prayer?’ he growled at Pedrito.

  ‘I’d never criticise anyone’s prayers,’ Pedrito assured him, ‘for I’ve no skill at praying myself.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Never seems to work for me.’

  ‘You’re treading on dangerous ground, marinèr. Doubting the power of prayer, even your own, is tantamount to doubting the mercy of God, and that’s a sin punishable by –’

  The king’s words of warning were interrupted by the galley master’s shouted command to his oarsmen that they should take the strain.

  Then, as the regular beat of a drum dictated the rate of the rowers’ strokes, Pedrito said to the king, ‘All I was about to say, senyor, is that, when it comes to dealing with the fickle ways of the sea, even the most skilled sayer of prayers can have his powers boosted by the age-old traditions of the seafarer.’

  He then began to sing in time with the slow, steady rhythm of the galley master’s drum…

  ‘Sailor, you say you will do anything,

  So make me a song of the winds

  And sing it to me when night falls…

  I see the winds –

  Morning wind and evening wind,

  North wind and desert wind.

  Llevant, Xaloc, Migjorn,

  L
lebeig, Ponent and Mestral,

  Tramuntana and Gregal.

  Make me a song of the eight winds –

  The winds of the world.

  And bring me a wind,

  A wind that will take us safe to land.’

  The king’s mood had mellowed somewhat by the time Pedrito had come to the end of his song. ‘A pleasant enough ditty, Master Blànes, but are you really suggesting it’ll bring us the wind we need more readily than would the power of prayer?’

  Pedrito raised his shoulders again. ‘All I can say is that, when man’s at the mercy of the sea, the eight winds are God’s messengers, just as Christ was his messenger on earth. So, it does no harm to pay the winds homage, even if only through an old sailor’s song like that one.’

  Smiling, the king nodded his head as he considered what Pedrito had told him. ‘You speak more like a philosopher than a helmsman,’ he said at length, then patted Pedrito’s shoulder again, though more gently than before. ‘However, it’s good to know that your years spent pulling an oar on a Catalonian galley taught you, somehow, to nurture such worthy Christian thoughts – even though I don’t entirely follow them.’

  With a twinkle in his eye, Pedrito returned the young king’s smile. ‘Perhaps that’s because the old song of the eight winds isn’t a Christian one, Majestat.’

  The king looked surprised.

  ‘No, no,’ Pedrito said, ‘it’s actually a Muslim sailors’ chant I translated from the Arabic.’

  The king stared at him, aghast. ‘Muslim? Arabic?’

  ‘Oh, absolutely, senyor. You see, before I was hired as helmsman for this voyage, the years I spent pulling an oar were served, not on a Catalonian galley, but aboard a Moorish pirate ship.’

  Stunned, the king glowered at him, then gave the captain an even darker look.

  ‘You hired a Mozarab pirate to man the helm of my galley?’

  The captain was quick to point out that he hadn’t hired Pedrito, raising both hands to emphasise his innocence in the event of the king’s wrath being provoked, which it was clearly about to be.

  King Jaume lowered his voice to a menacing snarl. ‘Then who, in the name of Saint Mary, did hire him?’

  The captain dropped the corners of his mouth. ‘My information is that the order came directly from one of your nobles, En Guillen de Muntcada, who sails in the lead ship of Captain Nicolas Bonet, and it was Captain Bonet who relayed the order to me.’

  Mulling that over, the king rubbed his jaw. ‘But En Guillen de Muntcada is one of my most battle-seasoned nobles, and one of my most trusted as well.’ He looked askance at Pedrito. ‘I’d have expected him to be a bit more careful when selecting members of my crew.’

  Pedrito was now adjusting the angle of the tillers, setting course for the rear of the fleet, his head raised, his gaze directed beyond the king towards the prow of the galley. He was fully conscious of the king’s confusion, however, and he couldn’t help smiling.

  ‘Don’t look so smug, helmsman,’ the king muttered. ‘You may think it’s too late to replace you now, but I swear that if you put a finger wrong during this voyage, I’ll personally throw you overboard and steer the ship myself!’

  Pedrito suppressed the urge to laugh as he stole a brief glance at the captain, whose face was a picture of bewilderment. Then, with his eyes focused on the galley’s direction of passage, he gave the king a sideways nod of his head. ‘It’s fair enough to call me a Mozarab if you choose to, senyor, but I’m no pirate and never have been.’

  ‘You’re talking in riddles again,’ the king replied frostily, ‘and I told you I’ve no time for them. It seems you have a poor memory, no?’

  ‘No poorer than your own, if you’ll permit me to say, because you obviously forget what I told you only a few minutes ago.’

  The captain, fearing a right royal eruption at what he regarded as Pedrito’s show of insolence, excused himself and made a swift exit from the poop deck. Nautical matters, he claimed, required his urgent attention.

  But the king was too busy glaring daggers at Pedrito to bother about what the captain had said. ‘You’re pushing your luck again, helmsman,’ he growled through his teeth.

  Pedrito smiled. ‘Only being candid, your Majesty, and you did tell me you appreciated my frankness.’

  ‘Except there’s a thin line between respectful frankness and disrespectful impertinence, and you’re coming dangerously close to crossing it!’

  Staring dead ahead, Pedrito continued to concentrate on manipulating his tillers. ‘I merely wanted to remind you, senyor, that I said I’d no choice about going to sea those five or so years ago.’

  ‘I remember you said that,’ the king retorted, ‘but I don’t recall you saying anything at the same time about joining a pirate crew!’

  ‘And I don’t remember anything about joining the pirate crew either. And that’s the whole point. One minute I’m ploughing my father’s field with the old mule, a minute later I see a bunch of Arabs leaping out at me from behind a wall, and the next thing I know I’m lying on the deck of a Moorish pirate ship with a lump on my head and stars in my eyes.’

  ‘Ah, I see,’ said the king with a contrite dip of his head, ‘you, uh – you were kidnapped, then – taken into bondage. Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘That’s where I did have a choice, senyor – either become an oarsman on that pirate galley or be sold to the highest bidder in a Moroccan slave market.’ Pedrito shuddered at the thought. ‘A fine strong boy, they said I was. Would fetch a handsome price as a plaything for some rich, wizzened crone in Tangier or Casablanca, they reckoned. Vaja! I couldn’t get them to shackle me to that rowing bench fast enough!’

  King Jaume was more intrigued than ever now. ‘So tell me, how did all that time spent on a Moorish pirate ship lead to you being taken on as helmsman on a Christian king’s galley, especially by a high-ranking nobleman such as my trusty friend En Guillen de Muntcada?’

  While maintaining his set heading in the wake of the hindmost vessels of the fleet, Pedrito proceeded to relate how he had managed to escape from his pirate captors during a slave-taking attack on the Catalonian fishing hamlet of Sitges. It was the first time in his five years as a galley slave that he’d been able to convince his masters that they could trust him to be included in such a raiding party. And he’d grasped the opportunity as though his life depended on it – which, in reality, it probably did. Men doomed to the drudgery of propelling Moorish pirate ships by the power of their muscles weren’t noted for their longevity.

  From Sitges, he’d made his way southward along the coast to the city of Tarragona, where the topic on everyone’s lips was the impending reconquest of Mallorca by King Jaume himself. That had been some three months ago, when many vessels committed to the expedition were already beginning to assemble at Tarragona and the neighbouring ports of Salou and Cambrils. In a harbourside tavern one evening, Pedrito had chanced to fall into the company of a happy-go-lucky, red-haired young fellow from northern Britain by the name of Robert St Clair de Roslin, a novice Knight of the Temple who happened to be one of En Guillen de Muntcada’s train. The new royal galley, the cost of its construction having been provided by the king’s native city of Montpellier, had just been launched and a crew was being put together prior to the start of the vessel’s sea trials. The hiring of the sailors had been entrusted to the master of En Guillen de Muntcada’s galley, Captain Bonet, who, as chance would have it, was also in the same tavern as Pedrito and Robert St Clair that evening.

  ‘So, Majestat,’ Pedrito concluded, ‘Robert St Clair introduced me to Captain Bonet as an experienced sailor, who’d not only known the waters around Mallorca since childhood, but could also speak Arabic and was well acquainted with the practices of the Moors at sea. Don’t forget,’ he cautioned, ‘that they may well launch an attack on your fleet between here and the island.’

  King Jaume stroked his chin in the now-familiar way, though his expression was more penitent than pensive this time. �
�It seems, then, that I owe you an apology, Master Blànes.’

  Pedrito gave him a reassuring smile. ‘You owe me nothing, senyor. As I said before, all I seek from this mission is an opportunity to see my family again, and being a member of your crew is giving me that chance. So, by my way of thinking, the only person who’s indebted to anyone is me.’

  A moment or two passed as the king gathered his thoughts, all the while studying Pedrito’s face, as he in turn concentrated on holding steady the galley’s course against the swells and currents of the open sea into which they were now sailing. Yes indeed, King Jaume told himself, there was a lot more to this young sailor than his lowly status might suggest.

  ‘And by my way of thinking,’ he said at last, ‘the old song of the eight winds wasn’t the only thing you learned during your five years as an oarsman on a pirate ship.’

  Pedrito gave a chuckle. ‘That’s right. I also learned the etiquette of farting in company.’

  ‘No doubt, no doubt,’ the king laughed, then resumed a more thoughtful mien. ‘Yet something tells me you learned a lot more besides, no?’

  Pedrito remained silent, his gaze still fixed on the way ahead.

  ‘However,’ the king said with a sigh, ‘as long as your old song brings us a fair wind to carry us in all haste to Mallorca …’

  ‘Keep the faith, senyor, keep the faith. Sometimes God answers a prayer, sometimes the winds answer a song.’ Pedrito turned his head to look the king in the eye. ‘And this time, I’ve a feeling my old song will bring you the very wind you need.’

  2

  ‘IT’S AN ILL WIND…’

  LATE AFTERNOON OF THE SAME DAY – ABOARD THE ROYAL GALLEY, TWENTY MILES INTO THE VOYAGE…

  The galley’s sail was flapping, as was Captain Guayron.

  ‘Majestat!’ he shouted over the howling of the wind. ‘Give the order to turn back, I beseach you. This Llebeig will be the ruin of us!’