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

by Peter Kerr

  However, when Pedrito drew closer to the scene of the opening encounter, another sound came to his ears. It was the sound of men dying; grown men whimpering for their mothers, moaning pitiably, praying to Allah for deliverance, or, even more heart-rendingly, pleading for someone to put a swift and merciful end to their suffering.

  Body was strewn upon Moorish body. Hundreds upon hundreds of them. Some were lying distorted and lifeless, others writhing in agony, all of them smothered in gore that oozed from wounds so appalling that it turned Pedrito’s stomach to steal but the merest glance. And there was the smell, the smell of mutilated flesh mixed with the once-sweet aromas of a field now sullied by human brutality. The aberrant odour of earth soaked in blood, the putrid stench of clothing drenched in sweat and urine, the foul stink of defecation. The stuff of fear that took Pedrito back to his years as a pirate-galley slave, though the sensations now polluting his consiciousness bore a more debasing stamp than he had ever thought possible.

  He was standing in what appeared to have been, until a few violent minutes ago, a horta, a vegetable plot of the type common to many small farms in Mallorca. Indeed, there was one on his own family’s finca – a little, dry-walled enclosure just like this, in which his father would cultivate a range of crops to augment the staple sustenance provided by the family’s modest assortment of poultry, sheep and goats. Onions, cabbages, garlic, spinach, carrots, peas and beans. Plenty of beans. Always a surfeit of beans, it seemed. Which reminded him of his ‘tail-ender’ colleague, Rafael, the itinerant plunder-seeking peasant from Aragon.

  ‘Hola! How goes your life, camarada?’

  Speak of the Devil. Pedrito’s eyes followed the voice to where Rafael, crouched like a hunchback, was emerging from behind the stone parapet of a well.

  ‘Keep a low profile, boy – that’s the secret. Sí, sí,’ he hissed, ‘you never know who might be watching from afar while you go about your business.’

  Pedrito’s senses were still numbed by the scenes of horror surrounding him. ‘Your business?’ he asked vaguely.

  ‘Loot, plunder, booty. That’s why I’m here, remember?’

  Pedrito shook his head, hardly able to believe the insensivity of the man. ‘And you’re scared Muntcada or one of his knights might see you, is that it?’

  Rafael wheezed his chesty laugh. ‘Nah, I don’t bother about them toffs.’ He glanced furtively about. ‘Nah, nah, it’s other scavengers like myself I’m on the lookout for. Telling you, boy, them toerags would pick the pockets of blind lepers, given half a chance.’ He flashed Pedrito one of his conspiratorial winks. ‘Better get rummaging fast, if you want to grab yourself a few trinkets while the going’s good.’

  But Pedrito wasn’t really listening. His ears were becoming deaf to everything but the heartbreaking sounds of misery all around him. Yet what could he do to help these victims of the recent orgy of bloodshed? Even if he had been armed, would he have had the courage to end even the most doomed of lives with a compassionate thrust of a sword? For the first time in his life he felt totally inadequate in the presence of the deplorable suffering of fellow human beings. Even back on the pirate galley, chained as he was, he had been able to call out occasional words of solace and support to those captives being herded into the cramped zuga holds beneath the decks. But here, the only comfort he could offer the afflicted would be death, and the very thought of having to administer it gave him a feeling of impotence that filled him with shame.

  It seemed that Rafael had been privy to his thoughts. ‘If you’re thinking about putting any of them Arab sons of a whore out of their misery, there’s plenty weapons lying about. Just help yourself to a scimitar or a dagger and get on with it.’ He gave a mocking chuckle and glanced up at the sky. ‘You’re a big strong boy, but you better be quick all the same. There’s scores of the half-dead bastards for you to bump off, and them buzzards circling up there have more patience than you’ve got energy or time.’ He savoured Pedrito’s perplexed look for a moment, then added with a smirk, ‘Them Arabs like a nice sheep’s eyeball in their rice and boiled mutton round the camp fire of an evening, see.’ He smacked his lips. ‘Mmm, and them buzzards up there like a nice human eye – live if possible – any time.’

  His rasping laughter mingled offensively with the moans of anguish that rose and fell like waves of despair within the horta, where neat rows of one family’s life-sustaining crops lay flattened and destroyed by the fleeting presence of two armies committed to furthering the glory of their respective gods – and, in the case of the invaders, to increasing the contents of their own purses, to a lesser or greater extent, depending on rank and, consequently, aspiration.

  Rafael’s aspirations may well have been among the lowest, but his dedication to the task couldn’t have been bettered, nor could his scruples have been more lacking. He dipped into the pocket of his sleeveless coat and, having attracted Pedrito’s attention with a shout of ‘Mira!’, pulled out a severed finger. He pointed to the blood-stained ring still encircling it.

  ‘Colours of King Jaume’s banner,’ he chuckled. ‘Red and gold, see? Very appropriate, I reckon.’ Whistling through the few teeth that still populated his gums, Rafael wiped some blood off the ring with his thumb. ‘Hmm, nice piece of stuff, this. Should fetch a fair price from old Moses back in Zaragoza.’ Then, with a frown, he tutted, ‘Just too bad I couldn’t get it off the Saracen bastard’s finger!’ He looked up and beamed at Pedrito. ‘Might have been easier if he’d been right dead, though, eh?’

  Pedrito winced.

  Rafael shrugged. ‘Sí, hardhearted it may seem to you, boy, but mark my words – us scavengers haven’t time to waste on them details here in the battlefield.’ He shook his head and unceremoniously stuffed the finger back in his pocket. ‘Nah, I’ll chop the bits off either side back at the beach later on.’

  While Pedrito watched in dismay, Rafael clambered over a pile of the dead and dying, his eyes fixed on a body lying on its own a few paces away. He swooped on it in a way that would have done justice to the birds of prey wheeling hungrily above.

  ‘Must have been a right swanky bastard, this one,’ he called out, stradling the man’s knees and hauling at the buckle of his belt. ‘Never a soldier, this one. Nah, more like a no-balls eunuch or some other pansified pervert from one of them high-class Moorish whore houses. What do they call them again? Harems or hareems or something, ain’t it?’ Rafael whipped the belt from the body and held its buckle up for Pedrito to see. ‘Mira! Studded with nice shiny jewels.’ His eyes popping, he was grinning like a breathless cat. ‘Could be rubies and emeralds and sapphires or something, eh?’

  If Pedrito hadn’t been gagging with disgust, he’d have told him that beads of worthless glass would have been more likely. He’d noticed plenty of baubles like those being worn by the poorer sailors who hung about the quaysides of North African seaports. It was well known that the souks there were full of such fake stuff. But, in the event, it made no difference whether he offered Rafael this information or not, because the self-styled scavenger suddenly had more important things to concern himself with.

  As he made to get back on his feet, a Moorish archer, who had been lying as though dead nearby, raised himself onto an elbow and, with what may well have been his last gasp, released an arrow into Rafael’s chest.

  Rafael’s bellow of pain appeared to serve as some kind of signal to his old horse, El Cid, who had been grazing peacefully in a patch of trampled carrots over by the well. In defiance of the arthritic appearance of his aged limbs, he took off at the canter, cleared the boundary wall with a foot to spare and galloped away to who knows where without a backward glance. It was as if he realised that his master’s plight had presented him with a long-awaited chance to escape the purgatory he’d been obliged to accept as his way of life since the day he’d tasted his first handful of oats.

  Rafael was now sprawled awkwardly over the corpse he had just robbed. He glanced at the departing El Cid, then, with a pained smile, grunte
d, ‘Let the bastard go. He was clapped out anyway.’ Though clearly in agony, he attempted another smile, then added, ‘Sí, don’t worry, camarada, there will be plenty better horses than him going a-begging before this war’s over.’

  Pedrito stepped forward to take a closer look at where the arrow had struck.

  Rafael coughed, and a trickle of blood ran out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Just get me back to the shore, boy,’ he wheezed. ‘Bound to be a sawbones or two ashore already. Sí, one of them bastards will get that thing out and fix me up right as a trivet. No problema!’

  Pedrito wasn’t so sure. The arrow had entered the left side of Rafael’s chest, and you didn’t have to know much about anatomy to realise that its tip was probably lodged dangerously close to his heart. If that were the case, moving him might well be the worst possible thing to do. In any event, Pedrito told himself, Rafael was probably in no worse a state of health than some of the men whose bodies he had been in the process of desecrating, so why should he help this objectionable wretch in preference to any of the other wounded? Certainly not because Rafael was a Christian and the rest were Muslims. To Pedrito, a life was a life, irrespective of which particular divinity the owner believed he owed his existence to, though there could hardly have been a less commendable example of any religion’s fellowship than Rafael. Neither did the total disrespect Rafael had shown for his fellow man do anything to earn him the sympathy of one of them now. He deserved to die the same lonely, lingering death that he had so callously proclaimed to be a fitting end for those he now lay among.

  All of these things raced through Pedrito’s mind as he unrolled and spread on the ground the litter that had been tied to his old mule’s harness. A life was indeed a life, and if he could help save just one on this god-forsaken day – even a life so apparently worthless as Rafael’s – then it might go at least a little way to help lessen the feeling of inadequacy that had overcome him when he first stepped into this arena of misery.

  He attached the front ends of the litter’s two long shafts to the mule’s hip strap. Then, as gently as he could, he lifted Rafael up in his arms and laid him on the crude canvas stretcher. Rafael groaned and flinched as Pedrito heaved the other ends of the shafts onto his shoulders and, with a click of his tongue and a few quiet words, coaxed the mule into a steady plod back towards the bay of Santa Ponça.

  ‘And another thing, boy,’ Rafael spluttered, ‘don’t let any bastard swipe my Saracen’s finger while the sawbones is working on me.’ He hacked up a gob of bloody mucus, then gasped, ‘Sí, the money Moses pays for that gold ring will buy me a whole week with the halfwit whore in Zaragoza!’

  Pedrito didn’t waste his breath asking what the same money would have bought for Rafael’s wife and twelve kids. This was a crusade, and he was doing his best to save the life of a crusader. Not a typical one, admittedly, but a crusader all the same, and maybe no less deserving of survival than some of the more illustrious stereotypes.

  *

  The entire landward area of Santa Ponça cove was swarming with men and horses when Pedrito arrived back. It seemed to him that the situation was slightly less chaotic than before, despite the fact that even more droves of men were splashing ashore from the scores of ships now anchored in the bay. The standards of the various nobles that had been raised in designated areas along the sparsely wooded foreshore were obviously serving their purpose in marking the mustering points for the respective companies of troops.

  Rows and rows of horses were being hitched to ropes tied between pine trees on the fringes of each detatchment’s patch of ground. Makeshift kitchens were being set up in shady spots adjacent to the wells of little farms whose carefully cultivated land was now being trodden flat by this massive influx of human and animal feet. The smell of wood smoke and vegetable broth mingled oddly with the whiff of horse droppings, though Pedrito had to concede that there was something comforting about this – at least to a homesick peasant like himself.

  Amid the rallying calls of knights and their squires, the clank and thump of blacksmiths’ and carpenters’ tools could already be heard reverberating through the trees, as repairs were being made to equipment damaged during the storms that the fleet had encountered on its way here. To Pedrito’s amazement, a veritable tented city-on-the-move had materialised in the short time he’d been absent, and it was obvious that its inhabitants planned to be moving in one direction only, and that certainly wasn’t back to sea.

  A baggage park had been established near the beach to accommodate supplies still being off-loaded, and it was to here that Pedrito had been directed by a priest stationed on the edge of the encampment to offer prayers for the returning casualties, of which, Pedrito had been informed, his own particular stretcher case was the only one thus far.

  Rafael, his face fixed in a grotesque grin, was staring at the sky when an out-of-breath Pedrito laid down the shafts of his litter outside the tent he’d been told was serving as a field hospital.

  ‘I hope it’s God he’s smiling at and not the Devil,’ said the portly monk who greeted them.

  ‘You mean he’s –?’

  ‘As a doornail. The unblinking, unseeing eyes are always a dead giveaway, my son.’

  ‘Phew!’ Pedrito panted, wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. ‘You mean to say I could have saved myself all that trouble?’

  The monk leaned forward and closed Rafael’s eyes. ‘We certainly won’t need to operate on this one,’ he said blandly, before muttering a few words in Latin and making several signs of the cross. He gave Pedrito a cheerless smile. ‘There, that’s him seen to, my son. So, you can either dig a hole for him somewhere, or we can have him buried at sea.’

  Pedrito raised a cynical eyebrow. ‘You mean have him rowed out into the bay and dumped overboard.’

  The monk hunched a nonchalant shoulder. ‘I’ve given him a blessing and forgiven him his sins, so he’s now in the arms of Jesus – or at least his soul is. Whatever happens to his earthly body now is neither here nor there.’

  Just then, the old she mule half bent her back legs, lifted her tail and squirted a jet of piss directly onto Rafael’s face.

  ‘Not to worry,’ Pedrito sighed, ‘it’s probably the nearest thing to holy water that old rake has been splashed with in his entire life.’ He uncoupled the shafts of the litter from the mule’s harness, then lowered them to the ground. ‘The burial at sea it is then, friar. I’ve spent enough energy on this one already. Oh, before I go,’ he said as he took the mule by her bridle, ‘there’s something in the pocket of his coat that should provide a few alms for the needy.’

  The monk’s eyes lit up.

  ‘Or it’ll buy you a week with a halfwit whore in Zaragoza!’

  Turning to leave, Pedrito could have sworn that a smirk of enthusiasm had tugged momentarily at the corners of the monk’s lips. Conversely, it could have been a grimace of disgust at such an unholy suggestion being made to such a holy man as himself. By now, Pedrito couldn’t have cared less either way.

  9

  ‘WAR IS THE SPORT OF KINGS’

  SANTA PONÇA – A FEW MINUTES LATER…

  In the absence of any specific instructions, Pedrito made his weary way back to where the galleys of En Nunyo Sans and the king were moored in Sa Caleta inlet at the eastern end of the bay. As he approached through the pines, he could see King Jaume in conversation with a young knight who was wearing a surcoat emblazoned with the red and gold of Aragon. The garment was soaked from the waist down, suggesting that the knight had only just waded in from one of the recently arrived transports.

  ‘Hola, Master Blànes!’ King Jaume shouted when he caught sight of Pedrito. ‘Back so soon from the fray? I trust you bring us good news.’

  Despite Pedrito’s down-in-the-mouth delivery, the king couldn’t contain his delight at his depiction of the total rout and associated massacre of the Moorish force by such a small detatchment of Christians.

  The young Aragonese knight was
patently less pleased, however. ‘Just my luck!’ he griped. ‘The first battle for Mallorca has already been won, and I wasn’t even in it!’ He took a petulant kick at a conveniently located asphodel. ‘Damn the Devil in hell, I’ve missed the chance of a lifetime!’

  King Jaume wagged a finger. ‘No, no, not a bit of it! I’m as keen as you are to give the Saracens a taste of their own Toledo steel, and I’d have been in the forefront of that first battle myself if I hadn’t listened to the advice of those who thought I’d give more inspiration to my people by parading about here.’ He gave the young man a slap on the shoulder. ‘How would you like to follow me into battle right now, amic? Better late than never, no?’

  Without waiting for the taken-for-granted reply, the king vaulted onto the deck of his galley and shouted to the body of his company, who were tending their horses and checking equipment in an adjacent clearing, ‘Are any of you ready to go with me far into the island? The Saracen foxes are on the run, so now’s our chance to cut off their tails before they go to ground!’

  An encouraging cheer of assent rang out as mounts were swiftly saddled, swords girt and lances taken up. Then a cloud of dust appeared, rising above the trees in the direction of the Puig de Na Morisca, from where the recent assault against the Moors had been initiated.

  ‘Look there!’ the king shouted. ‘That’ll be En Guillen and his men returning victorious from the first thrust against the infidel. Now, friends, without delay, let’s continue the Lord’s good work where our brothers left off!’ He turned to Pedrito. ‘And you, Master Blànes – you will come with us to show the way.’