by Peter Kerr
Just then, a loud splashing noise disturbed the gentle sough of the sea lapping onto Es Pantaleu’s little beach, its waterline barely visible in the flickering firelight, though only a few steps away. Startled, the king sat upright, peering into the darkness. The splashing stopped momentarily, only to be replaced by a frantic shaking and shuddering, mingled with the jingling of a chain and the rasp of heavy breathing. A black shape emerged out of the gloom and bounded towards the fire, leaping at the king with such ferocity that he was knocked flat on his back.
Pedrito froze. Behind him, by the royal tent on Pantaleu’s tiny summit, the swish of swords being drawn by two of the king’s guard carved a vigilant warning through the night air.
‘Qui va? came the urgent call from the sentries as they started down the slope. ‘Who goes there?’ Thoughts of an attempt on the king’s life by a Moorish assassin made their blood run cold – just as surely as it would run free should he come to any harm during their watch.
To their surprise and even greater relief, however, the response they got was an outburst of laughing from their king. It was all right, he shouted to them. It was only his dog. Nothing to worry about. ‘Relax, men. Back to your posts. Tranquíl, eh!’
Pedrito was fascinated by the king’s almost childlike giggling as he tried to shield his face from the dog’s slobbering tongue. This was more an image of a boy and his pet than of a conquering hero with one of his dogs of war. Pedrito looked at the animal while he playfully fought his master’s good-natured attempts to push him away .
‘I mean no disrespect, senyor,’ he said, ‘but he looks more like a lop-eared black sheep than a dog.’
‘You may well be right,’ the king grinned, ‘but he’s a dog all the same – a French water dog, given me by my subjects in Montpellier. They said his breed is good for carrying messages from ship to ship at sea. Would be a real asset on such an expedition as this, they said.’ He laughed again. ‘Well, I’ve had him six months, since he was a little pup, and this is the first time I’ve known him go anywhere near water. Hates it!’ He nodded towards a ship anchored nearby. ‘Yet he must have swum over from the transport that brought him from the mainland with my horses. Must have slipped his tether, I suppose.’ King Jaume indicated the leftovers of their supper lying on a plate by his side. ‘Most likely attracted by the smell of this pork.’ He popped a scrap of gristle into the dog’s dribbling mouth. ‘Vaja! You’re welcome to it, boy!’
The dog promptly released the king and gave his undivided attention to gobbling up every remnant of pork and bread that remained on the plate. Then, as if noticing Pedrito for the first time, he lunged at him and proceeded to honour him with the same boisterous greeting he’d given his master.
‘He obviously likes you,’ said the king.
‘It takes a long time to get a galley slave’s smell out of your pores,’ Pedrito gasped amid an onslaught of licks to his mouth and nose. ‘He probably thinks I’m another dog.’
He laughed along with the king for a few moments, then stopped abruptly and declared, ‘But I think I’ve discovered the true reason why he’s called a water dog.’
‘Yes?’
‘Yes. You, uhm, you probably can’t see it in this light, senyor, but by the feel of my shirt front, I’d say he’s just pissed all over me!’
‘Aha, a true sign of affection in a water dog!’ the king pronounced.
‘What’s his name?’ Pedrito asked after the ensuing howls of hilarity had subsided.
‘Nedi – I call him Nedi.’
‘Nedi?’ Pedrito tilted his head. ‘A nice name, but an unusual one. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it before.’
‘Yes, well, that’s because I made it up myself, you see.’ That look of assured self-satisfaction spread across the king’s face again. ‘Short for El Nedadór, the Swimmer. You know – him being a breed of water dog and everything.’
Pedrito glanced down at his sodden shirt. ‘Fair enough, but maybe Pee-pee would’ve been nearer the mark, no?’
More waves of laughter rippled over Sa Palomera bay.
After a while, the king wiped a tear from the corner his eye, then lay back and gazed at the stars, his hands clasped behind his head. ‘Ah, Little Pedro,’ he sighed, ‘I can’t remember when I had so much fun.’ He pondered that statement for a bit. ‘Maybe not at all. Sí, and certainly never when so close to battle.’
Pedrito allowed the king to submerge himself in the privacy of his own thoughts again.
Clearly, the young monarch was relishing the simple pleasures of eating, drinking and communicating one-to-one with someone of his own age; with someone who wasn’t part of the same cloistered and double-dealing establishment as himself, and who didn’t have any self-interested motive for being friendly towards him. He was enjoying the theraputic comfort of the situation, wallowing in a feeling of mellow relaxation, which was likely to be the very antithesis of the turmoil he would be exposed to in the coming days, weeks and months. Perhaps even an entire lifetime, if he survived the perils of the looming conflict.
Pedrito understood this, and he remained silent until the king, in his own good time, decided to pick up the threads of conversation once more.
‘Have you ever been married?’ was the unlikely question he eventually chose to open with.
Pedrito’s response was a mocking laugh. ‘Married? Me? Well, firstly, weddings weren’t all that high on the pirates’ list of treats for their galley slaves. And secondly, I was only sixteen when I was captured. So, no, I’ve never been married.’
‘Sixteen’s nothing,’ the king countered. ‘I was married at thirteen. Not that I had any choice in the matter, mind you. No, the decision was made for me by some of my most powerful vassals, En Guillen de Muntcada of the fluctuating loyalties foremost among them. Yes, they said that, since I was my father’s only son, I would have to produce a son of my own, if my family’s royal bloodline was to continue. At the time, my kingdom was still riddled with treachery and opposition to my monarchy, and I was continually told that my life was in grave danger. The risk of my murder, whether by poison or other foul means, was said to be both real and always imminent.’
‘Yet your decision-making vassals couldn’t have believed your murder was that imminent,’ Pedrito put in.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Just that it would have taken nine months at least for you to produce the son and heir they wanted, wouldn’t it?’
A sheepish smile vied with a squirm of embarrassment as the king scratched his beard. ‘Even allowing for that timespan, they’d have been disappointed, I’m afraid. I was still a child, you understand, not yet a man.’ He feigned a cough. ‘Well, even if I was a – a man, I didn’t know how to…’ He coughed again. ‘What I mean is that you don’t learn much about the ways of the flesh when you’re educated by priests and monks … not with regard to the opposite sex at any rate.’
It was all Pedrito could do to stop himself from bursting out laughing again, but he recognised that the king was feeling understandably uneasy about divulging these highly personal details, so he maintained an appropriate air of composure.
After a third cough, King Jaume continued, though even more awkwardly. ‘It was, ehm – it was actually fully a year before I did the … you know, consummated the, uh, with my bride.’ He glanced over at Pedrito while putting on a semblance of man-to-man frankness. ‘She was the daughter of the King of Castile – La Infanta Doña Léonor – lovely girl – very gifted in the, uhm-ah, in the consummation procedures, if you know what I…’ His words trailed away as he took a steadying slurp of wine.
Pedrito stepped swiftly into the conversational hiatus by stating that his own youth now seemed like a sweet, uncomplicated dream compared to the nightmare of the king’s. ‘A child king who never had a childhood,’ he pondered aloud, then prudently added, ‘No offence intended, senyor.’
‘None taken,’ the king replied, but in a way that suggested his thoughts were elsewhere anyway. ‘Ah sí,
my queen,’ he mused, his eyes closing, ‘the lovely Doña Léonor. She was made to suffer many discomforts after marrying me – even being kept captive with me for three weeks by so-called loyal nobles in my own palace in Zaragoza. Why, it was only my own skill in negotiating with those traitors that saved us from even worse deeds of treachery – perhaps even death. Sí, and I was still only a child myself.’ He promptly opened his eyes and turned his head to look squarely at Pedrito. ‘But I have fathered that required son and heir. Born this very year, the year destiny decreed that I, with the blessing of God, would help change the history of Spain.’ He fell silent again, lying back and staring blankly up at the stars. ‘Ah sí, my little son Alfonso … like me, born to be a king.’
He remained lost in his reverie for a moment or two, then raised himself up on one elbow again and said in confidential tones, ‘You’ll recall, Little Pedro, that I told you how I’d inherited at least one of my father’s many faults.’ He smiled leniently as he noticed Pedrito looking askance at his beaker. ‘No, no, not the wine,’ he laughed. ‘Admittedly, I do enjoy it, but unlike my father, I drink in moderation only.’ He lowered his voice again. ‘No, the fault, the weakness I’m talking about is – how can I put it? – yes, let’s say Cupid’s little arrows. Do you know what I mean?’
Pedrito did, but he diplomatically indicated that he didn’t.
‘All right, I can tell you,’ the king disclosed, ‘that one of those arrows in the eye can blind the wisest and strongest of men – even kings. Well,’ he added with a frown of self-reproach, ‘this one at any rate.’
He held out his beaker, which Pedrito dutifully refilled from the goatskin.
‘And I have to admit, amic, that I’m an easy target. Sí, and the irony is that it was that first, you know, consummation procedure with my young queen that gave me the taste for being shot in the eye – figuratively speaking, of course.’
Without saying a word, Pedrito continued to lend a willing ear.
The king took a pensive sip of wine. ‘Sí, sí, Cupid’s little arrows. If only they’d been aimed better at myself and Doña Léonor.’ He heaved a doleful sigh. ‘But we were only innocent children – two lambs whose young lives were sacrificed to the scheming ways of our shepherds. Sí, and Cupid’s arrows had nothing to do with it.’
It was obvious that the king was drifting into a maudlin mood, partly brought on by the effects of the wine, no doubt, but also, Pedrito guessed, because he harboured an element of guilt about a certain aspect, or aspects, of his relationship with his wife, the queen.
‘My father was unkind to my mother, they say – ignored her, neglected her, deserted her, was unfaithful to her, never went near her bed until urged by his senior barons to produce a son – me.’ King Jaume was mumbling now, thinking aloud. ‘At least I haven’t been unkind to Doña Léonor … although I have been unfaithful. Then again, maybe I wouldn’t have been, if I’d been allowed to chose my own bride. But maybe I would have been. I am my father’s son, after all. Hmm, Cupid’s arrows, indeed…’ He sank into several moments of morose contemplation, then looked at Pedrito and said earnestly, ‘You do believe I’m not really an ungodly man, don’t you?’
Pedrito thought it wiser not to respond to the king’s question, and it became apparent that he wasn’t expected to either. It seemed that he was now being used as some sort of mute father confessor – a secret, though secular, font in which the king could wash away his sins before the very real possibility of an early meeting with his maker.
King Jaume lay back and retreated into his self-appraising shell again. ‘You see,’ he murmured, ‘I have to admit that, like my father, I’m just not capable of being faithful to my wife – or, perhaps, to even more than one wife, even if they’re not mine.’
So, Pedrito told himself, two of the Ten Commandments which were the basic tenets of the Christian religion had already been abandoned by the man who had aspirations of being its champion against the alleged disbelievers.
‘Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife,’ his mouth said of its own volition.
He expected the king to instantly threaten to have the offending tongue ripped out by the roots, but instead, he merely shook his head and said offhandedly, ‘Ah, but you can’t always take these things too literally, amic. Circumstances dictate the interpretation of the scriptures. For instance, God’s Commandments also tell us that “Thou shalt not kill”, yet when we’re compelled to do it for the furtherance of His glory, killing clearly isn’t a sin, but a virtue.’
‘One of the many complexities of theology that al-Usstaz warned me about,’ Pedrito said with deliberate lack of contention, despite being totally unconvinced by what he’d just heard. ‘Too much for a simple peasant like me to grasp, I’m sure.’
The king gave a condescending little laugh. ‘Ah sí, the teachings of your pirate-galley Professor. Trust a Muslim to be confused by the obvious.’ He heaved himself up on one elbow once more and stared into the darkness of the bay. ‘And yet those Moors over there do have one aspect of their religion which even I am tempted to envy … at times.’
‘The, uhm – the right to have several wives?’ Pedrito hesitantly put forward.
The king didn’t answer – not directly anyway. ‘Those harems of their kings,’ he began, still gazing into the void, ‘full of concubines, beautiful young women, hand-picked and pure, and each one available to satisfy her master’s needs whenever he snaps his fingers.’ He savoured that thought for a while, then, his eyes alight, he turned to Pedrito and said, ‘You must have seen many such beauties taken as slaves, Little Pedro. And don’t tell me that you and all those other shackled men didn’t hunger for each and every one of them. It must have been torture for you, no?’
Being chained up was a great cooler of ardour, Pedrito told him. And those men whose lust burned hotter than their shackles, though never enough to melt them, would take their release whenever and in whatever way they could. The results were only further indignities to pour onto to the depths of inhumanity that victims of slavery are plunged into.
The king stroked his nose. ‘A-a-a-ah, not only the victims of slavery, amic. Believe it or not, but I myself have been obliged to witness such sinful bahaviour by soldiers encamped in no-man’s-land during a siege. Sí, and many times at that. Masturbation. I’ve often thought its prohibition should have replaced adultery in the Ten Commandments. That is, ever since those initial consummation procedures with my queen, I mean.’
Yet again, it was clear to Pedrito that the king had misssed the point entirely. Perhaps the privilege of being brought up in ivory towers, no matter how restrictive, had blinkered him to the harsh realities of life at the bottom of the castle midden. It occurred to him now that it might not go amiss to make him aware of a slave’s perspective on the matter.
‘It’s one thing to have some rutting, pox-ridden gargoyle trying to interest you in satisfying his needs in the piss-slopping bilge of a galley – you either have to bend with the wind, so to speak, or give him such a kick in the plums that he’ll think twice about bothering you again – but it’s another thing entirely to look on helplessly as lines of frightened young girls are herded like pigs into the tiny zuga holds below decks.’
Pedrito glanced at the king to check his reaction. There was none. Indeed, if he had been shocked by what he’d just been told, it certainly didn’t show on his face. Undaunted, Pedrito continued…
‘No, far from being aroused by the sight of newly-captured girls, I thought of my own sister and I how I would have felt if she’d been one of them.’ Pedrito paused, an icy shiver running up his spine as vivid images of such moments returned as clear as daylight to his mind. ‘The pitiful wailing, the frantic screams and cries for their mothers that came from those poor creatures, some little more than children, was like a bucketful of freezing water onto the lap of all but the most sadistic of men. And, sickened as most of us were by the sound, we had to sit there chained to the thwarts and
listen to it, hour after hour, day upon day, night after night, until we reached port and the girls were herded away to be pushed around, ogled, prodded, groped and bid for in the teeming souks of Morocco. Yes, and what might have happened to them after that hardly bears thinking about.’ He shook his head vigorously. ‘No, no, Majestat, I can assure you that hungering for them was the opposite of what I felt.’
In turn, the king nodded his head, but slowly. ‘Now that you explain it, I can see that having a sister could have its difficulties.’
Pedro could hardly believe his ears. Was this man’s regard for others so shallow and self-centred that all he cared about was whether or not a sexually-attractive victim of a slave trader was a sibling of his or not?
Yet again, however, it seemed that the king had been reading his thoughts. ‘Being brought up as a fighting knight, who takes – as is his right – the victor’s spoils, doesn’t mean I’m a cruel and heartless person,’ he murmured, as if thinking aloud again. ‘The little birds will vouch for that on Judgement Day, I know.’
Pedrito was puzzled. Little birds … on Judgement Day? Was this a biblical fable his parents hadn’t mentioned, or was the king’s mind flying away on the wings of wine?
‘Excuse me, senyor, but did you say little birds … on Judgement Day?’
The king twitched, like someone waking from a daydream. ‘Little birds?’ he repeated, the vague look in his eyes gradually changing to one of unease. ‘Sí, sí,’ he scowled, brushing the question aside with a flick of his hand, ‘it’s, uh, it’s nothing that would interest you.’
Pedrito allowed a few respectful moments to pass before gently reminding the king of his oft-voiced assertion that he had no time for riddles. ‘And now,’ he said, his fingers firmly crossed, ‘you come out with a right royal one of your own.’
A wary look was the king’s immediate response. ‘Do you really want to know?’
Pedrito assured him that he did indeed. ‘My thirst for knowledge didn’t end when I bid my final adéu to al-Usstaz, you know.’
