Priscilla of Alexandria

by Maurice Magre

  Charles V’s army, commanded by Diego de Vero, had just been crushed under the walls of Algiers. The Turks, emerging from the city, had penetrated into their camp, had set fire to it and carried out a great massacre. The Spanish standard, of which a negro had taken possession, had been thrown in front of Barbarossa’s horse, which had trampled it underfoot.

  Aroudj Barbarossa had taken Algiers with the Arabs of the Sahel; he had strangled Sultan Salem personally and had had himself acclaimed Sultan by his janissaries. Vanquisher of the Spaniards, he thought about consolidating his authority. He appealed to his brother Khair Eddin, who was in Tunis and disposed of five hundred resolute and disciplined Turks, and offered to share power with him. The latter accepted; the entry was solemn, for it was a matter of impressing the Arab and Moorish population.

  Khair Eddin matched at the head on a horse covered in a white fur from the Caucasus in spite of the extreme heat. He wore an immense Persian cloak in emerald green silk brocade and a Russian bonnet with a plume attached by an enormous diamond . His son Hasan was to his right. Then came the ulemas and the imams, and then the janissaries, in closely-packed ranks behind their agas. Their breastplates sparkled in the sunlight. They had short coats of garnet cloth on top and leaned on very long canes in imitation of the janissaries of Constantinople. Behind them, surrounded by a guard of negroes, in a litter curtained in blue silk, Lorenza was carried. She could not be seen and was not allowed to show herself. She was veiled like the Muslims, for she had been instructed in the law of Mohammed. Sometimes, she moved the curtain aside in order to look at the unfamiliar city and the unknown people. Although a captive, she felt like a queen, and savored the intoxication of a triumphal entry.

  Now she is in Khair Eddin’s palace. Aroudj, the latter’s brother, has just been killed at Tlemcen and his head has been sent to Spain. Khair Eddin is now the unique Sultan of Algiers. He has a mad passion for Lorenza.

  In spite of the difficulties caused by rebel tribes and the Spanish fleet, which might appear outside the port of Algiers at any moment, he has constructed around his palace, at great expense, gardens with flower-bed, fountains and pavilions, modeled on those found in the palace of Soliman at Constantinople.8 Like the cadines, or favorite wives, of the latter, Lorenza will have mutes, eunuchs, twenty peiks clad in golden cloth to guard her, an ichokadar who will attend to her wardrobe, a kalib who will write letters, and dwarfs who will carry them. He buys three hundred precious cashmere shawls for her. And when he traverses the harem to find her, he wears, in imitation of Soliman, babouches studded with silver, in order that the sound they make on the paving stones will warn the other women to look away and not meet his gaze, all of whose flame he want to keep for the woman he loves.

  She knows the secret that permits her to make his desire burn incessantly. She has belonged to other men, he knows. She talks to them about him, either to regret them or to curse them. She makes him live with memories of lust. She has even invented some in order to torture him. She makes use of that for personal vengeances.

  In Tunis, the Jew Aboulferes, in order to humiliate her and to enjoy the spectacle, had her taken by force by one of his negro slaves; she was whipped if she resisted. Khair Eddin sends men to Tunis with the mission to abduct Aboulferes and his wife secretly, to put them on a ship and bring them to him. They come back without having been able to succeed. Khair Eddin then sends his companion, Hassan the Bald, who had a grudge against Aboulferes, putting ten thousand gold ducats at his disposal. Hassan the Bald returns two months later with the two prisoners.

  Khair Eddin has them imprisoned and keeps them for several months, treating them reasonably enough. He awaits the return of an Arab chief who has promised him a great ape in a cage. When the ape has arrived, Khair Eddin sends for Aboulferes. He takes him to the animal’s cage, into which his beloved wife is introduced before his eyes. She dies in the embrace.

  “I am like you, Aboulferes,” says Khair Eddin. “I take pleasure through the eyes.”

  The name and portrait of Alonso de Contreras are sent to all the corsair captains in the Mediterranean with a promise of a thousand ducats if they capture him alive. On the island of Djerba he has Azim killed because he had been to virtuous with regard to Lorenza and had punished her for what he called her bad conduct with the Spanish nuns, and he also has the slave-merchant who sold her in Tunis killed, because he had not been virtuous enough with her.

  In spite of such an amour, and perhaps because of the fatigue caused by such an amour in a violent and brutal man, Lorenza only thinks of fleeing. She wants to flee because she is nostalgic for her homeland, the men of her race, and also because she thinks incessantly about the page Rodrigo.

  It seems improbable that the Sultana of Algiers, enjoying all the attributes of power, and enjoying them all the more because she has such a great power of enjoyment, has been able to regret a child whose hair she has barely caressed, whom she slapped and whose death she nearly caused, but the root that generates the desire of women is deeply plunged into the soul and the flesh, and its origin is unfathomable. And all of them willingly give their lives a distant objective, which they call their ideal.

  There was then in Algiers a very large quantity of Spanish and Italian slaves, whose numbers were increased every day by Khair Eddin’s captures at sea. Some lived wretchedly in a vast prison known as the Steambaths; others labored under the rods of bachis on the ramparts and ditches of the city; finally, others more favored, were bought by individuals and were well treated when they fell into the hands of good masters. The Fathers of Mercy came three or four times a year on vessels bearing the Sultan’s safeguard and negotiated the ransom of slaves for gold siphoned from bequests and given to them by the families of prisoners.

  Lorenza thought that she might escape easily, thanks to them. But they showed mistrust. They had been suspected of facilitating escapes. They feared a trap on the part of a woman who had embraced the Muslim faith. They replied that they would compromise their renown forever by enabling Lorenza to flee, and might be prevented from ransoming other prisoners for a long time.

  She nevertheless obtained an assurance from them that they would enquire about Rodrigo in Spain, at Cadiz, and she gave them a letter as well as five hundred gold coins that they were to transmit to him. She explained to him the dignity she had attained, the desire she had to see him and asked him to come to Algiers with the Fathers of Mercy, where she would make his fortune, provided that he consented to embrace the Mohammedan faith.

  The Fathers found Rodrigo in the house of his father, who was a cook in Cadiz. They brought back a vague and embarrassed response from the young man. Even with great hopes, one does not venture to the lands of infidels like that, especially when one is summoned by a woman who has nearly caused one’s death. He thanked her enormously for the five hundred gold coins and exhorted her to return as soon as she could to Christian soil.

  Cruelly chagrined, Lorenza thought about distracting herself while awaiting a favorable opportunity.

  She often went to the Batistan, which was the bazaar where slaves were sold. She also watched those who were laboring outside the city. She did her best to ease their condition. She sought confusedly to encounter a known face that would be agreeable to her.

  For preference, however, she went to a terrace that overlooked the courtyard of the Steambaths. In that courtyard were the prisoners who belonged to noble or rich families and were awaiting the arrival of their ransom. One day, she noticed a very young man there—for it was always the very young men who impressed her the most. He had reddish blond hair like her own, an effeminate manner and hands that would have been beautiful if they had not ceased to be manicured. He was playing with a cup-and-ball that he had fashioned himself in wood, and Lorenzo saw immediately the advantage she might obtain from that cup-and-ball.

  For greater surety, she told Khair Eddin about her desire to play that game, with which she was unfamiliar. He agreed that she could have it explained by the yo
ung prisoner, who seemed to excel in it. That did not appear extraordinary. She sent one of her eunuchs to fetch the young man.

  Her first concern, when he appeared before her, was to send him to her baths. The prisoners slept heaped together in narrow stone cells that were never cleaned, on rotten straw, and vermin were abundant there. The principal preoccupation of those prisoners who were not working was to destroy that vermin during the day.

  She learned that the young man was eighteen years old, that his name was Ruy de Azevedo, that he was the son of an old family from Valencia and that he was waiting for his ransom.

  If he taught her to play cup-and-ball, she taught him to play other games, as soon as their first interview, because she did not know than whether she would have the facility of bringing him back. She was able to do to almost every day, but it does not seem that she had conceived a great attachment for the young man, at least on the evidence of what followed.

  A Turkish eunuch named Giafar was charged with the administration of the harem. He came to tell Lorenza that the Sultan was beginning to view with a jaundiced eye the excessively frequent presence of a young Spaniard. He no longer dared take it upon himself to introduce him, but as he desired to remain in Lorenza’s good graces, he deliberated with her as to the means to employ to enable her to have Ruy beside her. Giafar thought that Khair Eddin would no longer have any objection if, on the one hand, he converted to Islam and if, on the other hand, he submitted to the operation of castration.

  Those two conditions, even the second, did not appear to her to be exorbitant—which seems to indicate that she did not have an overly passionate love for the young Spaniard. She took charge of persuading him with regard to the conversion, but they decided that it would be better not to warn him about the matter of the eunuch condition, and that he would be castrated by surprise against his will.

  That was what was done. Ruy de Azevedo proclaimed the unity of God and felt the blade of the knife, one evening when he was promising himself a very different caress. His pain was great but he was healed. He became paler and more effeminate. Lorenza swore to him that everything had happened unknown to her, and they strove to console one another by means of incomplete embraces.

  Lorenza had not failed to remark that she had a curious resemblance to Ruy de Azevedo. To be sure, their features were different, but there was a similarity in their large dark eyes and the color of their hair. Furthermore, they were almost exactly the same height. Once, to amuse herself, Lorenza put on Ruy’s costume, and it was then that the stratagem that would permit her to flee was formulated in her mind.

  Ruy’s ransom had been long delayed. Lorenza told Giafar to warn her when he ship carrying the Fathers of Mercy entered the port, and above all to inform her as to whether it was bringing the young Spaniard’s ransom.

  That day finally came. Giafar announced to Lorenza that the ransom had been paid to the functionary charged which receiving it, and that various supplementary fees had also been paid, such as that of the pacha’s kaftan, that of the harbormaster, that of the bachis and others. Ruy de Azevedo had no more to do than to board the Nueva Granada, which was due to leave the port the next day.

  In order for the plan that Lorenza had made to succeed, it was necessary to wait for the last moment. She charged Giafar with warning the Fathers of Mercy and the captain of the Nueva Granada who was to transport the ransomed prisoners that Ruy de Azevedo, escorted by one of her mutes, would only arrive at the moment when the vessel hoisted its sails, which was to take place at dawn. Such orders, coming from her and transmitted by Giafar, could only be respected.

  The evening before, she instructs her mute Ali to be at the bronze door of the harem that gives access to the gardens shortly before sunrise, and entrusts him with the mission of conducting the Spaniard as far as the Nueva Granada. She has prepared a costume similar to the one that Ruy wears and has knotted in a cashmere scarf as many gold coins as she can carry and all her jewels—which represent a fortune—enveloped in silk to that they will not rattle.

  How has Ruy, imprisoned in the palace, learned that the Fathers of Mercy had brought his ransom? Doubtless he was secretly corresponding with other prisoners and they have informed him. He comes to see Lorenza, suspecting that she wants to prevent his departure. He begs her, and then threatens her. She cannot use violence, for it is necessary that it is believed until the next day that it is the Spaniard who is going.

  She begs him in her turn. She tells him that she loves him, that she cannot do without him. She asks him for a few months more. His ransom is now paid, he has nothing to fear. She swears that she will let him depart with the next convoy of ransomed prisoners.

  The insensate consents to that, and in the morning, draped in a Moorish cloak that hides her face, holding in her hand a part of the treasure of Algiers, Lorenza opens the bronze door where the mute Ali is waiting. She reaches the Nueva Granada without difficulty, which a favorable wind carries away from the port rapidly.

  She is not without anxiety during the crossing. Khair Eddin’s vessels will surely be launched in her pursuit. Everything depends on the moment when her flight is discovered. Then too, her companions treat the young Ruy de Azevedo very badly, who is a renegade and is known to have enjoyed the Sultana’s favors. Misfortune has embittered the souls of the best and there are men of all sorts among the prisoners. It is necessary for her to watch over her fortune incessantly. By night, the men sleep together, beside one another, on the deck.

  A prisoner who has forgotten the taste for women in the Algerian galleys comes to find her at night, taking her for the young man whose costume she wears. She repels him, but not soon enough to prevent his first gestures, which have permitted him to observe that she is a woman. He reveals it the next day. There is no talk of anything but that aboard, and he captain puts her in irons for that deceit.

  But finally, the Nueva Granada reaches the port of Valencia.

  Then Lorenza is forced to deploy all her powers of seduction and all her qualities of deception. Ruy de Azevedo’s relatives, people of great nobility, are awaiting the young man impatiently. They are on the quay when the Nueva Granada arrives. They learn that Ruy is not there and that a woman has returned in his stead. Explanations are difficult at first, but Lorenza is informed of the actions and deeds of the Azevedo family and a thousand details of all its members by virtue of the conversations she has had with Ruy. It is easy for her to prove that a great intimacy has connected her to him and to give guarantees of Ruy’s affection for her.

  She also tells them, almost exclusively truthfully, a part of the end of the story. She represents herself as a victim of the Sultan. She has been able to save Ruy from the wretched fate of prisoners. She has done so. She has loved him. But he was dying of a disease when his ransom arrived. He died, she said, on the eve of the day when the Nueva Granada was to quit Algiers, and it was then that the idea came to her to substitute herself for him, an idea that luck has permitted her to realize.

  She was, in any case, only mistaken by a matter of days regarding the death of Ruy de Azevedo, for Sultan Khair Eddin, convinced that he had been Lorenza’s accomplice, had him impaled after having his hands severed.

  Lorenza’s stories were plausible, and they were believed. In order to remove doubt, she brought with excessive precision the last will of the young man, imagined by her, as well as words of farewell for his cousin Isabelle, to whom he was betrothed.

  Ruy’s uncle, the head of the family, old Gomez de Azevedo, was smitten with her, and offered her a palace in Valencia. She did not care about that, for, having consulted a Jewish jeweler as to the value of her jewels, she had learned that her fortune was immense She only took the time to buy dresses, underwear, a carriage and mules, and the time to reconvert with a certain ostentation to the Christian faith; it was known from the prisoners that she had denied her religion and it was necessary not to become suspect to the Inquisition.

  She departs as soon as she can for Cadiz, for she is s
till illuminated by the same obsession. But a sharp disappointment awaits her there. Rodrigo has renounced the estate of page some time ago and that of man of war for which he was destined. He has embraced his father’s profession, more placid and safer, and he is a cook—a cook in Genoa, in the house of a great nobleman of that city.

  But an unrealized desire has an incalculable power. No matter! Whether he is a page or a cook, it is him she wants. She waits for a ship departing for Genoa and, in spite of the dangers of the sea, and the fear of being recaptured by Khair Eddin, she embarks thereon.

  She arrives in Genoa without encumbrance, installs herself in the Swan Hotel with great ostentation, and immediately summons the cook Rodrigo. Because of his functions he can only arrive at a late hour. She waits for him, full of impatience. The hotel servants have been paid to receive him with honor. He finally arrives.

  Ten years have gone by since she last saw him. During those ten years, she has been able to consecrate herself to her beauty. She has lived as a Sultana. Power has given nobility to her physiognomy. She is twenty-eight years old and has never been as beautiful.

  But things have worked out very differently for him. The desirable little page has become a big man, extraordinarily bloated and fat. He is so broad that it seems to her, at first, that he will be unable to pass through the doorway. His jaundiced face his expanded by a stupid smile. He is holding his cap in his hand and turning it awkwardly. Lorenza has the sensation of an odor of sauce that is spreading through the room. She considers the light and low cut Venetian dress that she has put on, the large four-poster bed that she has bought and had transported in haste to the bedroom in order to embellish it, and the cook who finds himself in her presence in the light of candelabra, and about whom she has been thinking for ten years.