The Siege

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  Mojarra shrugs. The gunboat. Two days ago he returned to Naval Headquarters to claim the promised reward. He has lost count of how many times he has been there. Three hours standing in line, cap in hand as usual, only for some surly bureaucrat to say—in a matter of thirty seconds, and without deigning to look at him—all in good time, be patient. There are too many leaders, officers and soldiers who have gone for months without being paid.

  “It’s going to take a little time. That’s what they said.”

  Cárdenas looks at him anxiously. “But tell me honestly … you did go, didn’t you?”

  “Of course I went. And Curro has been there several times too. Each time they send us packing. You have to remember it’s a lot of money, and times are hard.”

  “What about Captain Virués? Couldn’t he talk to someone for you?”

  “He says that with matters such as this, there’s nothing to be done. It’s beyond his influence.”

  “They were happy enough to see us when we showed up with the boat. The Navy Commander himself came down to shake hands with us, remember? He even bandaged my head with his kerchief.”

  “You know how it is; things are always different in those first moments.”

  Cárdenas brings a hand to his forehead as if to touch the open wound, but stops an inch from the edge.

  “I’m lying here for the sake of five thousand reales.”

  Mojarra says nothing; he does not know what to say. He takes a last drag on his cigar, lets it fall to the floor and grinds it with the heel of his sandal. Then he gets to his feet. Cárdenas’s red-rimmed eyes stare up at him miserably. Indignantly.

  “We pulled it off,” he says. “You, me, Curro and the lad. And what about those French bastards we slaughtered, lying there asleep in the dark …? Did you tell them all that?”

  “Of course I did … Don’t worry, everything will be fine.”

  “We earned that money,” Cárdenas insists. “That and more …”

  “We have to be patient.” Mojarra lays a hand on his brother-in-law’s shoulder. “I’m sure it will come through in a day or two. When they get the money from America.”

  Cárdenas shakes his head wearily and lies back on the mattress, curling up as though he were cold. His feverish eyes stare into space.

  “They promised … twenty thousand reales for a gunboat with its cannon … That’s why we did the job, isn’t it?”

  Mojarra picks up his cloak, his gamebag and his hat, walks past the rows of straw mattresses and leaves the hospital, fleeing the horrors hidden in the folds of the flag.

  TWENTY MILES WEST of the Espartel cape. The last cannon shot brought down their quarry’s main topsail, which falls to the deck, a tangle of spars, rigging and canvas. At almost the same instant, the crew heave to and hoist the French ensign.

  “Lower the launch,” orders Pépé Lobo.

  Leaning on the starboard gunwale, in the stern of the Culebra, the corsair looks at the captured vessel, bobbing on the waves, its sails aback, held there by the fresh easterly breeze. It is a medium-tonnage, square-rigged chambequín, with three 4-pounders on each side which surrendered after the briefest of battles—two carronades on either side, resulting in little damage—following a five-hour pursuit which began at daybreak when the lookout spotted it heading out into the Atlantic. It had to be one of the enemy vessels—part corsair, part merchant ship—that frequent the Moroccan ports, bringing supplies to the French-occupied coastline. Given the course it was steering before it realized it was being pursued, the chambequín must have put out from Larache last night intending to gain the open sea, sailing west to evade the English patrols, before tacking northward toward Rota or Barbate under cover of darkness. Once its topsail is repaired, and manned by a crew from the Culebra, it will be bound for Cádiz. The ship’s bell rings the quarters with two double-peals. Ricardo Maraña, who has exchanged a few words with the crew of the chambequín using the loud-hailer, comes back from the bow, passing the four 6-pound cannons on the starboard side, still aimed at the captured vessel to avoid any last-minute surprises.

  “The crew is French and Spanish, the skipper is French,” he informs Pépé Lobo, satisfied. “Out from Larache, as we suspected. They’re carrying a cargo of cured meat, almonds, barley and oil … It’s a good capture.”

  Pépé Lobo nods while his first officer, with his usual nonchalance, slips two pistols in the wide belt of his black jacket, straps on his sword and goes to join the boarding party, equipped with cutlasses, blunderbusses and pistols. Given the flag the chambequín is flying and the cargo it is carrying, no Prize Court would dispute its lawful seizure. Word has already spread across the deck: elated at the prospect of such a large booty with no bloodshed, the crewmen heartily clap Maraña and his men on the back.

  Picking up the spyglass lying next to the binnacle, Pépé Lobo extends it, puts his eye to the lens and looks toward the raised poop deck of the other ship, whose crew are busy gathering up the fallen sail and securing the rigging. Three men stand at the foot of the mast, looking desolately toward the Culebra. One of them, sporting a thick beard and wearing a black pea jacket and narrow-brim hat, seems to be the captain. Behind him, on the far side, the apprentice pilot—or maybe a deckhand—throws something overboard. A book of secret codes, perhaps; or official correspondence; or a French Letter of Marque; or all of the above. When he sees this, Lobo calls to Brasero the bo’sun, who is still manning the cannons.

  “Nostromo!”

  “Aye, Captain!”

  “Get the loudhailer and tell the crew of the chambequín to move toward the bow! And if they throw anything else overboard—if they so much as spit over the side—we’ll fire another cannon shot.”

  As Brasero delivers the order, the captain of the Culebra looks over the side to see if the launch is in the water. The boarding party are now all aboard and the men are setting the oars into the rowlocks as Maraña lowers himself over the side. Pépé Lobo looks toward the Moroccan coast, which is not visible, although the weather is fair and the horizon clear. Once the chambequín is manned, Pépé Lobo intends to tack a little landward and keep an eye out for any other prey—these are good waters for hunting—before escorting the captured vessel home.

  “All hands! Ship ahoy to starboard!”

  Pépé Lobo looks up irritably toward the crow’s nest; the lookout is pointing northward.

  “What ship?”

  “Looks like a two-master. Square-rigged, all sails set!”

  Hooking the spyglass over his shoulder, Lobo crosses the deck beneath the boom that is swaying with the half-furled mainsail. Heaving himself on to the gunwale, he climbs a little way up the ratlines, opens out the telescope and peers through it, trying to compensate for the lurch and roll of the swell.

  “It’s a brigantine!” the lookout calls down from above his head.

  The yell comes a moment before Pépé Lobo identifies the rig of the ship, which is now gaining on them rapidly thanks to a fresh easterly wind swelling its sails. It is indeed a brigantine. Packing all sails—jibs, topsails, topgallants and royals—it is five miles out and making good speed with the wind on its port quarter. It is not yet possible to see which flag she is flying, if she is flying any, but there is no need. Lobo closes his eyes, cursing his fate, then opens them and peers through the spyglass again. He thinks he recognizes the intruder. He can hardly believe his misfortune, but the sea likes to play these little games. Some you win, some you lose. The Culebra has just lost.

  “Get the boarding party back here now! All hands on deck!”

  He barks the orders while he slides down a shroud line, and as soon as his feet hit the deck he heads back to the stern, ignoring the crew, who stare at him bewildered or scan the horizon. On his way he bumps into Maraña, scrabbling aboard and giving him a searching look. Lobo has only to jerk his chin northward and the first officer understands.

  “The Barbate brigantine?”

  “It could be.”

  Maraña stands
gazing at him expressionlessly. Then he leans over the side, looking down at the launch; its crew, at their oars, are hanging on to the chain of plate with a boathook and look up quizzically, not sure what is happening.

  “All aboard! Get that launch out of the water!”

  It could be an English ship, thinks Pépé Lobo, though he’s had no news of one in this area of the Straits. But he is not about to take any risks. The cutter is fast, but the French brigantine—if that is what it is—is much faster, especially with the wind on the beam and all sails set, which will be the case if they decide to give chase. It also has greater firepower—twelve 6-pound cannons to the Culebra’s four. And a larger crew.

  “It’s the French brigantine!” comes a call from the crow’s nest.

  Lobo does not need to be told twice. “Set the mainsail, set the foresails, port tack!”

  The launch is back on deck, water streaming from it. The boarding party have put down their weapons and are lashing the boat to the skid beam beneath the boom in front of the mast, while Maraña barks orders and Brasero the bo’sun pushes the laggards toward their stations. There are disappointed mutterings on deck. Bewildered at first, they have come to realize the danger bearing down on them; the men rush to brail the mainsail up; it unfurls with a crack of canvas while, in the bow, the standing jib and the foresail are hoisted, clacking on the staysail sheets.

  “Trim the mainsail! Trim the foresails!”

  The men haul aft the starboard sheets, and the cutter heels three points to starboard as the wind fills the sails. Still standing in the stern, Pépé Lobo operates the wheel himself until the bearing on the compass mounted on the companion hatch reads west by south; he repeats the bearing to the Scotsman, the chief helmsman, and hands him the tiller. A quick glance tells him that the sails are catching the wind and the cutter responds—whipped on like a thoroughbred racehorse by the unfurled canvas on its lone mast—cleaving the waves and gathering speed as the crew finish trimming the sheets.

  “That’s a small fortune we’re leaving back there,” mutters the steersman. Like his captain and most of the crew, he glares back in frustration at their abandoned prey. Their course takes them within pistol range of the other ship, close enough for the corsairs to witness its crew’s confused looks turning to joy, to hear their mocking catcalls, to see their obscene gestures. As they leave the chambequín behind, Pépé Lobo feels a twinge of bitterness as he watches the enemy captain wave his hat in the air while his men run the French flag back up the mast.

  “Can’t win ’em all,” says Ricardo Maraña, who has come back to the bow and is leaning against the leerail with his habitual languor, thumbs hooked into the belt in which he stows his sword and his pistols.

  Pépé Lobo does not answer. He shields his eyes against the sunlight and stares at the water, then up at the pennant indicating the wind direction. The corsair is busy calculating bearings, wind and velocity. As effortlessly as if he were tracing them on a chart, he maps out in his mind the zigzag of lines, angles and the distance he intends to cover in the next few hours, in order to put as much water between the cutter and the brigantine which, as soon as it identifies the chambequín and has been assured of its reward, will certainly give chase. If this is the French brigantine that plies the waters between Barbate and Guadalquivir, it is a fast ship, 800 feet in length and weighing in at 250 tons. With a fresh wind on the beam or on the quarter, this would give it a maximum speed of ten, perhaps eleven knots—considerably greater than the cutter’s seven or eight. The Culebra’s one advantage is its superior ability to sail close-hauled; its large fore-and-aft sail allows it to hug the wind more closely than the square-rigged brigantine, and consequently outrun it by at least a couple of knots.

  “The easterly should hold,” sighs Ricardo Maraña, staring at the sky. “Until tomorrow at any rate … That’s one blessing, at least.”

  “Well, thank God for that, because I was beginning to think he had us cursed!”

  Having vented his spleen—Maraña smiles a little at the captain’s comment, but says nothing—Pépé Lobo takes out his pocket watch. He knows that he and his first officer are thinking the same thing: there are only five hours’ daylight left. The plan is to keep a southwest course until dusk, heading out into the Atlantic, and then tack northeast, working to windward to lose the brigantine under cover of dark. That is the theory. The main thing is to keep a safe distance between them until that time comes.

  “One mile an hour,” says Lobo. “That’s as much as we can let the brig gain on us … Best set the flying jib and the foretopsail.”

  The first officer looks up at the mainsail—the vast expanse of canvas, swelled by the wind, braced to leeward and held in place by the gaff and the boom, urges the cutter on, aided by the foresail and jib set on the long bowsprit.

  “I don’t trust the topmast,” Maraña almost whispers, so the helmsman does not overhear. “One of the French cannonballs grazed the mast just above the cap … Carrying that much canvas, it might well split if the wind freshens any more.”

  Pépé Lobo knows his first mate is right. Given their bearing, in a high wind and carrying a press of sail, the cutter’s lone mast might break if they set any more canvas. It is the one drawback of this class of swift, easily manageable ship: its speed comes at a price. It can be as delicate as a señorita.

  “That’s why we’re not going to set the topgallant,” he tells Maraña. “As for the rest, we have no choice … Go to it, pilot.”

  Maraña nods wearily. He sets down his sword and his pistols and calls the bo’sun—Brasero is making sure the cannons are secured and hatches battened—then goes over to the mast to supervise the maneuver. In the meantime, Pépé Lobo corrects the Scotsman’s course by two points then directs his spyglass over the cutter’s wake. The chambequín has set its sails again and is heading toward its savior, while the brigantine is still gaining fast. When he sets down the telescope and looks back toward the bow, the lone mast is carrying more sail, which flutters briefly before swelling in the wind, as the men trim the topsail sheets: the flying jib above, straining at the grommets of the standing jib and the foresail, the foretopsail braced on its yard above the crow’s nest. As it catches more wind, the Culebra surges forward, slicing through the water, leaning more to leeward, the gunwale so close to the water that spray crashes over the cannons, water coursing down the deck to the scuppers such that everything is soaked. Leaning in the angle formed by the stern taffrail and the leerail, feet spaced wide apart to compensate for the steep inclination, the corsair once again bemoans the prey they have had to leave behind. Leaving aside his share of the plunder, he knows the capture would have impressed Don Emilio Sánchez Guinea and his son Miguel. And even Lolita Palma.

  For a moment, Pépé Lobo thinks about Lolita (“When you come back to port again …” she had said when last they spoke), as the Culebra keeps a straight course, surefooted, riding the Atlantic, slicing through the heavy swell. A blast of icy water leaps from shroud lines to stern, drenching the captain and the helmsmen, who duck in an attempt to avoid it. Shaking out his frockcoat, soaked to the skin, his hair disheveled, the corsair wipes his face on his sleeve to get rid of the salt stinging his eyes. Then he turns back to look out across the wake of the cutter toward the distant sails of the brigantine. As Maraña said earlier, at least that’s one blessing. Chasing down a ship takes hours, and the Culebra is running like a hare.

  “Come on, then,” Pépé Lobo mutters savagely. “Catch me if you can, you bastard!”

  THE CLICKING OF bobbins, the swish of silk and the rustle of dresses on the chairs and the sofa, its arms adorned with lace covers. Glasses of sweet wine, chocolates and sweetmeats on the side table. The skirts of the table have been lifted and beneath it burns a copper brazier, warming the room and filling it with the sweet scent of lavender. The walls, papered in vermilion, are hung with a large mirror, engravings, painted ceramic plates and a couple of fine oil paintings. A lacquered Chinese sideboard st
ands out among the pieces of furniture, and a cage with a cockatoo. Through tall windows opening on to balconies, the trees of San Francisco convent can be seen, gilded in the late afternoon light.

  “They say Sagunto has fallen,” remarks Curra Vilches. “And that Valencia might well be next.”

  Doña Concha Solís, the mistress of the house, gives a start and sets down her work for a moment.

  “God would not permit such a thing.”

  She is a heavy woman in her sixties, with gray hair pinned up into a bun. She wears earrings and bracelets of polished jet, and a black woolen shawl draped around her shoulders. Her rosary and her fan lie on the table beside her.

  “He simply would not allow it,” she says again.

  Next to her Lolita Palma, in a dark brown dress, its collar trimmed with white lace, takes a sip of her wine. She sets the glass down on the tray and returns to the embroidery in the frame on her lap. Her character and social standing make her ill-suited to needle, thread and thimble, but she is in the habit of visiting her godmother’s house on the Calle del Tinte twice a month, for a gathering of women who sew, embroider and make bobbin lace. This afternoon, they are joined by Doña Concha’s daughter, Rosita Solís; her daughter-in-law, Julia Algueró, who is five months pregnant; and Luisa Moragas, a tall, blond woman from Madrid—she and her family are refugees here in Cádiz—who rents the top floor of the building. Completing the group is Doña Pepa de Alba, widow of General Alba, whose three sons are all in the military.

  “Things are not going well,” Curra Vilches continues assertively between stitches. “General Blake was defeated by the French at Suchet and his army disbanded. People are afraid that the whole of the Levant will fall to the French … And if that is not bad enough, Ambassador Wellesley, who is enraged with the Cortes, has threatened to withdraw not only the English troops in Cádiz, but also those of his younger brother, the General Wellington.”

  Lolita Palma smiles and remains tactfully silent. Her friend speaks with a military assurance that certain generals might envy. Anyone would think she spends her time surrounded by mortar fire and drum-rolls, like some brazen serving wench.