by Peter Kerr
Scarface couldn’t have agreed more. ‘Absolutely!’ he enthused, then prodded his comrade on the shoulder. ‘And don’t forget, mate – if we needs to, we got plenty materials inside the city to build as many war engines as we wants, while the enemy only has what little heavy timber our lookouts seen them strip from their own ships today.’
‘But – but surely the enemy would need to be really desperate to do that,’ Pedrito gasped, wide-eyed with fake incredulity. ‘I mean, they say out in the countryside that a big fleet has been sent by our brothers in Africa to attack the Christians, so surely they’d be stupid to damage their own ships.’
The soldiers shared another derisory chuckle.
‘It don’t never fail to amaze me just how gullible you country bumpkins on this island can be,’ Scarface snorted. ‘A big fleet from our brothers in Africa, says you? Listen, boy, us in the know here in the city found out days ago that that was never going to happen.’
Pedrito allowed his jaw drop. ‘Honestly? You mean – you mean it was just a false rumour put about to worry the enemy?’
Scarface dipped a hand into the communal bowl and pulled out an alleged rabbit leg. ‘Rumour, says you?’ he slavered between bites. ‘Rumour? Depends what you means by rumour, don’t it, boy?’ He prised a shred of meat from between his front teeth with a dirt-ingrained finger nail, surveyed the morsel for a moment, rolled it between forefinger and thumb, then popped it back in his mouth. ‘Rumour? Nah, us in the know always knowed it was more than that. Didn’t we, lads?’
While Scarface continued to devour his dubious dinner, the third member of his group, patently keen to show off his superior urban awareness to an ignorant yokel like Pedrito, took up where his mate had left off. He readily divulged that there had indeed been a plan to summon reinforcements from Africa, but the Amir’s message had never left the island, intercepted as it had been by a member of his own family, an uncle by the name of Abú Hafs Ibn Sheyri.
Pedrito donned his incredulous mask again. ‘But why would the king’s own flesh and blood want to do such a treacherous thing? I mean, we farmers always say that our family is even more important to us than our animals – well, almost.’
Sniggering, the three soldiers exchanged mocking glances, then Scarface resumed the role of group spokesman…
‘That, boy, is what centuries of breeding with your own sisters and mothers has done for you peasants. You ain’t capable of thinking except in straight lines.’ After his two comrades had given that quip grunted nods of approval, he added, ‘Yes, and even then, your tiny minds goes round in circles!’
Scraps of half-chewed meat and stewed onion flew in all directions from gaping mouths as the three arrow-stoppers laughed their fill at this brilliant punch line.
Pedrito had felt his hackles rising at the derogatory remark about mothers and sisters, and for a moment it had revived all the pain and sadness of his recent loss. But trying to alleviate his grief by rising to the bait of these buffoons would do him more harm than good. The odds would be stacked against him if he attacked them physically, and displaying a bit of intellect to put them in their place verbally – which he knew he was more than capable of doing – would be both a waste of breath and tantamount to admitting that he was an impostor, with all the disastrous consequences that this would invite. He decided, therefore, to maintain his country bumpkin persona.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said, while scratching his head and smiling vacantly, ‘but I still don’t understand why the king’s own uncle would want to stop help coming from Africa.’
‘And you doesn’t need to understand,’ Scarface came back. ‘Even us what’s in the know here in the city doesn’t to need understand. All we needs remember is that them sheikhs and amirs and caliphs and suchlike that rules the roost only holds onto power by staying one move ahead of them that’s nipping at their heels – and that’s usually one of their own. So, King Abú’s Uncle Abú tries to knock him off his perch by stopping the reinforcements. How would that help Uncle Abú grab power, says you?’ Scarface hunched his shoulders. ‘Who knows? But whatever the ins and outs of his plan, the king got wind of it, he’s still in charge, and his uncle, as likely as not, is rotting in a dungeon by now – if he’s still alive.’ Scarface tapped the side of his nose. ‘That’s what it means to be a member of one of them top families, boy, and that’s why the likes of us common soldiers does as they tells us.’ He pointed a rabbit-size leg bone at Pedrito. ‘Yes, and you’d better learn double-quick to do the same, as long as you’re inside them here big-city walls.’ He pointed to his ear through his headdress. ‘And don’t forget, boy – big-city walls has eyes as well as them here things!’
Pedrito smiled inwardly. This mission was going a lot more easily than he’d dared hope. In the space of little more than a couple of minutes, he’d already ascertained the approximate number and location of the Moor’s war engines, and had also been informed that there was no longer any threat of a backup fleet arriving from North Africa. Admittedly, the source of these items of military intelligence probably wasn’t of the most elevated variety, but it was certainly about as reliable as he was likely to gain access to in the short time available.
Feeling buoyed up by this, he professed his unease at being trapped in the city when its garrison had already been depleted to such a large extent. He told of how he had seen the bodies of so many of the Sheikh’s soldiers lying on the slopes of Na Burgeusa Mountain as he passed by earlier in the day. There had been hundreds of them, he said, maybe even thousands. Yes, and someone on the road had told him there had been even more killed in battles near Santa Ponça a day or two before. And, he went on, someone else had told him that those who survived these encounters had taken refuge up in the mountains. How, then, could the city be defended against the huge Christian army now that African reinforcements weren’t going to come after all? He put this last question with what he hoped would be taken as a note of panic in his voice.
Scarface glowered at him disdainfully, before muttering that there were still as many soldiers in the city as those deployed to the mountains – three thousand, maybe four, maybe even five. Who was counting anyway? And then there were the civilians – fifty thousand of them, and every man, woman and child ready to fight like lions to keep the Christian pigs out.
Pedrito gathered his brows into a puzzled frown. ‘Deployed to the mountains? Sorry, sir – I don’t understand.’
‘You peasants just doesn’t get the subtleties of battle strategy, does you?’ Scarface gave an impatient shake of his head. ‘Pathetic! I mean, it can’t be that difficult to grasp, can it?’
Pedrito flashed him an uncertain smile. ‘Uhm, what can’t?’
Scarface inhaled a slow sigh of exasperation, then proceeded to elucidate. ‘It’s all a crafty move dreamed up by the Sheikh to lure them Christians into their present position, that’s what. Understand now?’
Slack-jawed, Pedrito indicated the negative.
Scarface tutted impatiently, then marked three crosses in the grease of the table top with his alleged rabbit bone. ‘This here’s the city, right? And that there’s the mountains, right? And this here cross in the middle of them two crosses is the Christan camp, right?’
Pedrito nodded, vacuously.
Scarface muttered an oath. ‘It’s what we calls a pincer movement in military parlance, right!’ The leg-bone pointer came into play again. ‘This here’s our war engines – or rock-throwing contraptions, as you calls them – and they’re pounding that there Christian camp, right? Right, and when them Christians has been pounded senseless, our lads charges down from the mountains and attacks them, while we does the same from inside the city.’ He stared into Pedrito’s eyes in search of any glimmer of battle-strategy comprehension that might be flickering there. ‘Pincer movement, right? Simple. Just like you, boy.’ He turned away and plunged his hand into the communal bowl again. ‘Peasants?’ he harrumphed to his comrades. ‘Cretins, the lot of them. Telling you – this here ra
bbit’s got more brains!’
‘You’re not wrong,’ one of his mates concurred, ‘and it’s probably only half as inbred and all!’
This shaft of soldierly wit elicted even more food-spraying guffaws from the trio of troopers.
Pedrito smiled a suitably cretinous smile throughout, while contemplating, perhaps a tad morbidly, that even cat passed off as rabbit might soon become a luxury for those besieged inside these walls. Not even the inn’s rat population would be safe from the stew pot then. And what about the soldiers’ smug assertion that the situation of the separated remains of their army was actually a cunning pincer-movement strategy devised by their king to trap the Christians? Pedrito knew that even the most unmilitary of minds would suspect that the Moorish forces hiding in the mountains were hardly likely to pose an immediately sustainable threat to anyone, routed as they had been and forced to abandon much of their weaponry on the battlefield. No, as with the claim that the absence of seaborne reinforcements from Africa would be of little consequence, what these potential arrow-stoppers had eagerly swallowed was nothing more than a generous helping of morale-boosting propaganda, fed to them by an understandably concerned hierarchy. That was Pedrito’s reading of the situation, anyway, and it was the conclusion he would report to King Jaume at the earliest opportunity – given, of course, that he managed to get himself back out of the city again.
During his exchange with the three soldiers, who, it eventually transpired, were actually mercenaries from the south of mainland Spain, Pedrito had been keeping a discreet eye on a group of six pirates sitting at a table a little farther into the room. And a pretty unsavoury-looking bunch they were. All were clad in the typical attire of Moorish corsairs, which in most cases amounted to minor personal variations on a fairly universal theme; heads wrapped in turbans; flowing capes draped over shoulders; open-fronted tunics girt at the waist with broad sashes; long, billowing ‘Sinbad’ pants gathered in at the ankle; wrists and fingers dripping with gold. Each man had a scimitar sheathed in a spangled scabbard dangling at his side, and, apart from the trim of respective beards, the only other noticeable difference in their appearance was the individual choice of garish colours for each item of clothing. As much as Pedrito, for good reason, had grown to detest the very sight of their breed, he was still obliged to concede that they did present a striking image, albeit one bristling with wanton savagery.
Four of the pirates were entertaining ladies of the world’s oldest profession, who looked, even in the dim light of the inn, like prime examples of mutton dressed as lamb. Not that dress was one of their most obvious features. Rather the lack of it. Muslim rules governing female modesty clearly meant nothing to this clutch of sirens, nor did their well-used appearance seem to matter a whit to their present clients, who, fair to say, were showing signs of of having consumed copious quantities of vision-deluding drink.
The increase in noise coming from their table had been consistent with the pirates’ intake of wine. As with the women’s immodest dress, no regard was being paid to accepted Islamic principles in relation to the drinking of alcohol, which was generally thought, at least by many non-Muslims, to be forbidden. Pedrito recalled, however, that his pirate-galley friend and mentor al-Usstaz, ‘The Professor’, had told him that some Muslims, particularly those of higher rank, chose to interpret the Koran’s pronouncement on the subject as meaning that imbibing would actually be condoned by Allah, with the one stipulation that the common man should never enter a mosque for prayers in a state of drunkenness. In other words, prudent moderation was mandatory – at least in the case of the common man.
There was no doubt that these pirates could rightly be classified as ‘common’, and in the most derogatory sense of the word at that. Although Moors, the only gods these fellows worshipped were those of greed and violence, so there was no chance of them ever entering a mosque at even one of the five daily prayer times. They could feel absolutely free, therefore, to get drunk whenever they wanted, and now was clearly one of those occasions. What’s more, they were acting as if they owned the place, which, it could be said, they effectually did. And this applied not just to this sleazy inn, but to the entire island. For without the revenues gleaned from plunder that the ruler of Mallorca received from the fleets of Moorish pirate vessels to which he granted safe haven, his little kingdom would never have become so fabulously rich. Yet, ironically, it was the persistent attacks on their merchant ships by Mallorcan-based corsairs that had stimulated the Catalonian call for this all-out war against King Abû in the first place.
But if any of this had ever been a cause for concern to the six pirates present here, they were certainly doing a fine job of disguising the fact. Uttering a string of curses, the two ‘unattached’ men got to their feet and, swaying as if on deck in a heavy swell, informed everyone within earshot that they were abandoning ship. They were off, they said, to find a sweeter-smelling brothel than this stinking slops bucket – one where the whores looked more like mermaids than the beached whales disguised as women who flogged their pox-ridden wares in here. This declaration elicited an explosion of raucous laughter, not only from their drunken shipmates, but also from their respective beached whales, who presumably accepted that it was ultimately more profitable to take such insults in apparent good humour than to spit in their clients’ faces.
One of the two departing pirates had been sitting with his back to Pedrito, and from this angle he’d looked pretty much the same as the others, apart from being considerably bulkier. But the moment he turned round, Pedrito’s heart skipped a beat. The gold ring piercing the septum between his nostrils instantly identified him as al-Tawr, ‘the Bull’, one of the most bestial of all the slave masters Pedrito had had the misfortune to encounter during his years as an oarsman on that damned galley. However, the nose ring wasn’t the only reason why this lumbering brute of a man was called the Bull. When sober, he could just about be relied upon to threaten female captives with nothing more harmful than a salacious look and a few ruttish grunts. But when under the influence of drink, the Bull lived up to his name – or would, if not physically restrained by his shipmates and, more often than not, left to sleep off his lustful urges courtesy of a persuasive blow to the back of his head with the haft of a scimitar. Female captives were, after all, potential sources of rich rewards at slave markets, and premium prices could always be expected for younger girls presented as being virgo intacta. Unfortunately, this category of female prisoner also topped the Bull’s list of preferences when in a fever of drink-induced lechery, and he had the scars on the back of his head to prove it.
He was indeed a nasty piece of work, given to unprovoked and vicious acts of aggression, to the extent of being known to run people through for no better reason than having disliked the way they’d looked at him. And now he was staggering towards the door where Pedrito was sitting. Suddenly, panic surged through Perdrito’s veins. If the Bull recognised him, the clandestine mission King Jaume had dispatched him on would surely be terminated in a pool of blood, Pedrito’s blood, right here and now. And recognise him the Bull almost certainly would, because he had been the leader of the slave-taking party from which Pedrito had escaped near the Catalonian hamlet of Sitges earlier in the year. Pedrito tugged the front of his head wrap down over his eyes, then dipped his head as if appraising the bread and olives on the plate now resting on his knees.
He heard the padding shuffle of the Bull’s footsteps stop in front of him, cringed at the rasp of his laboured breathing, gagged at the pungency of his closeness. The all-too-familiar smells of the galley, stale sweat and urine, were now augmented by the nauseous whiff of spirit liquor. Pedrito thought again of al-Usstaz and how he had claimed that it had been a devout Muslim alchemist who, while experimenting with the development of subtle perfumes, had discovered, reputedly by mistake, how to distil brandy from wine. How ironic, then, that a religion which advocated temperance should spawn the creation of such a powerful intoxicant, and one ultimately so highly
prized by those not subject to the righteous constraints of Islam. The Bull reeked of the stuff.
Pedrito held his breath as he watched grimy fingers hover above his plate, then grab a handful of olives. Without daring to lift his eyes, he waited, fully expecting the scarf to be whipped from his head at any moment. But when the Bull’s hand eventually reappeared, it was only to fling spat-out olive stones back onto the plate. He then broke wind, cursed the inn and everyone in it, before finally lurching out of the door arm-in-arm with his mermaid-seeking companion.
Hardly had Pedrito’s pulse rate returned to normal when it was sent racing again by the sound of a blood-curdling scream coming from the alley outside the inn. Hearing it so soon after his close encounter with the Bull reminded him chillingly of the despairing cries of the girls taken captive on the pirate galley. It also made him think of his little sister Esperanza and how she had fallen victim to just such a horrific fate. Instinctively, he got to his feet.
‘Relax, boy,’ Scarface the soldier drawled. ‘Chances are it’s only some of the lads having a bit of fun. Happens all the time in garrison towns like this, and them here Mallorcan floozies loves it. Thrives on a bit of rough and tumble, they does.’ He nonchalantly held up his latest miniature leg of meat and surveyed it approvingly. ‘Mmm, and they goes like rabbits and all!’
But his words were lost on Pedrito. Although he had managed so far to suppress the most repugnant thoughts regarding details of what might actually have happened to his family, all he could see in his mind’s eye now was an image of his sister being maltreated by some filthy pirates like the Bull and his coterie of scum. In a trice, he had flung his plate onto the soldiers’ table and was out of the door and into the alley.
