by Lee Arthur
Not by gesture or grimace did de Wynter display his dejection; instead he seemed lost in study of the Thames. Beyond the entrance to the Millwall Docks where the Henry a Grace Dieu was loading, were landmarks of a different kind, also indicative of the king's rule: gaunt gibbet posts bearing bones of pirates left to bleach and dance to the music of creaking chains.
Once beyond these, the lower portion of the yellow pool channels the river into wayward and eccentric habits, broadening and curling, and seeming at every nun, especially when the tide comes in, more like a long chain of lakes than a river. With so much meandering and moving about, it seemed only natural to give every straight stretch of the river the name of Reach: Limehouse Reach, Greenwich Reach, Blackwall Reach, Bugsby's Reach, Woolwich Reach, Gallion's Reach, and so on until they reached the most magnificent reach of them all: Gravesend.
There the novice knights boarded the merchant ship Annunciata. Thence to Yantlet Creek was fifteen miles, from the Creek to the Nore Lightship another five nautical miles, and then they would be at sea. And still de Wynter had found no way to expedite his messages, the monastic brothers manning the barge being incorruptible. His only chance appeared to be the ship's husband. This land-agent, who had seen to the berthing, repairs, and provisioning of the ship for the owners, was the only one who'd leave the ship at the Nore, just before the open seas. In the space of moments de Wynter managed to press upon him both pearl and packet and secure his promise to send the letter north by messenger.
Unknown to de Wynter, his knightly shadow had seen the exchange. Before the ship's husband disembarked, he was further enriched, and the packet had left his possession and found its way into Carlby's purse.
The Annunciata left sight of the beacon ship at 5:00 A.M. on Friday, October 11, 1532. With luck—prodigious amounts of it—she would return to England by mid-December. Part of her problem was her captain. Although the compass's "constant needle" had guided ships for more than two centuries, mere was no compass aboard the Annunciata. Her hoary captain had sailed with Columbus on a voyage where the needle failed. He could still—forty years later— remember the fear that failure had engendered. Ever since, he'd put his trust in the sun, the moon, the stars, landfalls—not the navigator's needle. Thus, on this journey to the Mediterranean, he chose to hug the coast of Europe rather than striking due south.
Across the Channel to Calais they went, getting a preview of the reception planned for the English king and his entourage. From there, they leap-frogged to Le Havre and thence to Cherbourg and
on to Brest. Now, a long stretch of sea faced them as they worked their way, using both lateen sail and slave power across the Bay of Biscay. Finally, striking the coast of Spain to the east of La Coruna, they tacked close to shore and slowly made their way westward to the outermost tip of the Holy Roman Empire's landmass. At La Coruna, they took on water, and the passengers disembarked, ascending to the top of the Torre de Hercules. Don Federico was tempted to sail without them, so that he might squeeze on a few more tons of cargo to trade for candy wine on Cyprus. Only the fear of pirates made him sound the horn to summon the Hospitalers back to the ship. Those twelve fighting men might make all the difference in repulsing a pirate attack.
Once the Annunciate reached Gibraltar, a choice would have to be made: to take the fast, risky southern route or the safer, longer, northerly one to Cartagena, passing between Valencia and the Balearic Islands and up to Barcelona, across the Gulf of Lions to Marseilles, through the Ligurian Sea, keeping Corsica to starboard, down the boot to the tip and through the straits of Messina, thence due east to Greece and then south to Crete. Going this way would take twice as long, forcing a return trip during the fierce storms that lashed the Mediterranean from mid-November to April. The ship's captain, Don Federico, had tasted the winds of Solano, the hot, dust-laden winds that make men giddy and irritable and a crew almost unruly. It was not a pleasant choice.
On the other hand, the shorter route would take the Annunciata perilously close to the coast of Ifriqiya where Barbarossa laid up for the winter in Algiers, his fleet divided between his own capital and neighboring Tunis. Not before Tripoli, that fortress on the mainland under the protection of the Knights Hospitalers, would this merchant ship find friendly port.
Deliberately, Don Federico did not make up his mind. A word in his sleep overheard by one of his youthful bed partners and Barbarossa might be alerted. It was common knowledge that Barbarossa had his spies, even in English ports, plus a communications chain, stretching from one end of the Mediterranean to the other, that notified Algiers of departure date, destination, sailing plan, and most especially cargo manifest.
The Annunciata's cargo was a mixed one. The usual woollen goods, and a few great barrels of Scots whiskey, an experiment. But most of the space below ship was taken up by weapons from the fine armament shops in and around London. And beggars—a large contingent of them.
Nothing pleased the captain less than the bunch of dirty, thieving beggars in his hold. He had reluctantly taken them aboard and agreed to drop them off at the first possible port only because their transport meant ready money and sailing clearance. The king's men had been eager to pay a nice sum to get these beggars out of England.
"Clap them in jail," suggested the captain, but the king's justice had demurred.
"We have need of our jails for traitors and criminals,.not beggars. Besides, they have friends among the people."
The ship was cramped. Jammed with cargo and sailors and slave-oarsmen and passengers. Only one cabin existed, and that, occupied by the captain and his two cabin boys, was small and roughly furnished. Even if the captain had offered it, the Hospitalers wouldn't have accepted, preferring to rig up clean-smelling quarters on deck.
Carlby didn't wait for their arrival in Malta to start testing his new recruits' knowledge of weaponry, languages, and religion—the three things they needed to know to succeed in the order. The serving brothers were no more adept at any of the three than he expected, except for Gilliver, whose knowledge of religion proved exceptional, and Fionn, who'd been well coached by Seamus in weaponry. As for the novice knights, he was gratifyingly surprised. Only in religion did he find them less than totally proficient; that and the Arabic tongue. The latter he set out to rectify immediately:
"You have an advantage, being Scots; many of the Arabic consonants will come easily to your tongue. Take ra, for example, it's rolled as you do your rs, not fricative as in English. Kha is another good one. It's sounded like the ch in loch. The only trouble is sometimes kha initiates a word. Try and say loch backward and you'll see what I mean.
"As in most languages, the commonest verbs in Arabic are irregular, but it has fewer than most. One thing you'll find confusing is that the verbs have and be do not exist. Also, verbs have no tenses, only two forms which show completed or incomplete actions. Since my only goal is to make you able to understand and command the slaves rowing in our galleys, most of whom are Arabs, not to turn you into Arab scholars, we'll concern ourselves here only with the spoken language, not bothering with the written one. That's too confusing, for one reads and writes Arabic completely opposite to English—going from right to left. Numbers, however, go from left to right as ours do. Repeat after me: affamsu... the sun; albahru... the sea; arrajulu... the man; yadun... hand; pay-nun ... eye; zamrun. wine;..."
He found his pupils a mixed lot. Some, such as Angus and Ogilvy, would never command more than a passing knowledge of the tongue. Others, such as Drummond and Menzies, struggled hard and made slow progress. Cameron learned those words he thought would be beneficial to him, such as beautiful, love, and others that would work on women. De Wynter and Gilliver were the stars of the group, the latter because of his scholarly bent, the former seizing upon these studies as a narcotic to quell his troubled thoughts. Upon these.two, Carlby lavished much time, even going so far as to begin teaching them to read and write the Semite tongue.
During the course of the lessons, Carlby also taught them
of the order and its troubled history. Once there had been nine Langues, or houses with a common tongue. However, the numbers of the order had dwindled to such an extent that several Langues had been forced to combine with others. The English one, for example, now also encompassed Scotland. The rivalry between those two nations created more than a few headaches for the Turcopolier, or "Pillar" of the English Langue.
When Suleiman the Magnificent had driven the Knights into the sea off the Isle of Rhodes, he had allowed the remnants of the order to escape, knowing they had no home and believing they would disband and never be a problem again. However, Charles V of Spain, the Holy Roman Emperor, listened to the Knights' pleas for help and granted them the Maltese Archipelago in exchange for their promise to defend Tripoli against the Ottomans. He also exacted the payment of one Maltese falcon each year, a formality which would continue to affirm the fact that Malta was under the suzerainty of Spain.
Thus it was that Philip Villiers de l'lsle Adam, the order's Grandmaster, was able to issue a rallying cry throughout Christendom, calling for additional men to help the order build Malta into a powerful headquarters. And for the same reason, John Carlby had been in England trying to raise funds as well as manpower.
A genuinely religious man, Carlby believed with all his heart that God had made him one of the survivors at Rhodes. And now he believed just as fervently that Henry VIII had been used by God to the good of the order.
Normally, the Annunciata would have stopped to trade at Lisbon, the richest town in Europe, but that city had been nearly leveled by an earthquake the year before and disease was still rampant. Instead, Don Federico set sail for Cabo de Sao Vicente, the huge rocky plateau with red brown precipices rising sheer above the sea. After rounding this cape, the Annunciata had choice of ports: Sagres, founded by Henry the Navigator as headquarters for his explorations of the African coast... or Cadiz, the Gadir of the Phoenicians and Gades of the Romans, and the fortress-city guarding the river-route to Seville. Here, the beggars the ship carried might well be sold, as the Spanish were always in need of slaves. However, one of Don Federico's wives lived here, and to enter Cadiz might result in a lengthy delay.
Don Federico decided it would be wiser to head straight for the Straits of Gibraltar. Between the ocean and the inland sea run strong currents, and uncertain winds cause serious problems for sailing vessels; Don Federico ordered all canvas furled and the oars out.
Three of the serving men and Angus and Ogilvy suffered with seasickness, but the other companions were weathering the voyage reasonably well. De Wynter, himself an excellent sailor, tried to amuse himself with card games in his spare time. Tiring of these, he played games of dominoes with Gilliver and Carlby. Winning can grow boring, especially if one's opponents are not one's match. Carlby, seeing this, suggested he explore the nooks and crannies of the ship. "Now would be a good time to go below, before the hold gets so befouled with the stench of wet wool and dirty men that one can take no more than a few minutes without coming up for air."
The fetid air assailed de Wynter's nostrils before he reached the third rung of the ladder. He pressed on and came across the band of beggars chained to one another and to the masts and bulkheads.
Sickened at the sight, he was also fascinated by the hapless group who immediately tried to practice their wiles on turn
Among the group were dommers, who "swallowed" their tongues and pretended to be dumb. Others were truly deformed individuals, either born that way or deliberately mutilated by their parents so that they might beg. There were contortionists who could twist their bodies grotesquely. And one other—a pickpocket whom the king's constables had thrown in with the beggars, a short, wiry, monkey-faced man, to whom the others seemed to look for leadership.
"You there," de Wynter said to him. "What are you doing down here?"
"You addressed me, lord? John the Rob at your service." The man attempted within the confines of his chains to bow and scrape. "To answer your question, your good King Hal has sent us south for our health. But somehow the captain of this fine sailing ship did not get the message right. Instead of 'Land them in Spain,' he heard 'Hand them in chains.' Perhaps you could inform him of his error, milord?"
His followers tittered. Even de Wynter was amused by the cheek of this swarthy son of England. "Rest assured, I shall give him your message."
"Oh, we'll rest all right Nothing much else to do in this stinking hole. Fare you well, lord," John the Rob called after the departing Scot "Come back and visit us anytime."
The insolence of the man, his cheerfulness under such circumstances, the wry grin on his wizened monkey-face lingered in de Wynter's mind and later that day, he questioned the captain about the beggars.
"Why the chains, you ask? To save the ship from their thieving hands. They'd steal the bread right out of your mouth. I've seen their like before. The only way I takes them is chained hand and foot."
"But some are crippled." "The cripples are the worst"
"But where would they go? We're in the middle of the ocean." "They're like magicians, they'd disappear in thin air." Faced with such stupid stubbornness, de Wynter made up his mind to get the beggars freed. To this end, he broached Carlby.
"That hole is really foul. Aa absolute stink-hole. Perfect breeding ground for the pox. In fact, I would not be surprised if the smells coming from down there weren't the cause of Angus and Ogilvy's sickness."
The condition of a bunch of beggars bothered Carlby not at all. No man who had lived through a Moslem siege as he had at Rhodes would be bothered by man's inhumanity to man. But if the condition of the beggars should affect that of his new recruits, that was a different story. With de Wynter following on his heels, Carlby was off to beard the captain. A word from this martial churchman and the beggars were set free to clean themselves up, as well as the filth in the hole. Once clean, they were under orders to stay that way.
"And if I see one of you above deck, I'll clap you back in chains and, if you are able-bodied, set you to rowing," the captain threatened.
As the beggars hastily and loudly protested their good intentions, John the Rob caught de Wynter's eye and dropped him a wink. De Wynter was not surprised the next day to find the wizened little man standing alongside him as he leaned against the rail and watched the coast with its squares of white houses topped with colorful chimney pots.
"What are you doing up here?"
"Same as you, milord, admiring the view."
"I wouldn't think any view worth the risk of being rechained."
"No, nor of rowing. Look at those wretches, any one of them would gladly change places with one of us down in the hold. No, milord, not for any view—even of the Sultan's seraglio unveiled— would I risk rowing. But to say a word of thanks for your help..."
De Wynter was embarrassed, especially when John the Rob continued. "And if ever we beggars may be of help to you, make this sign, holding the little finger so, the pointer crooked like this."
Although de Wynter brushed the idea off lightly, the little man refused to scurry back to shelter until de Wynter had proven he could duplicate the gesture. Then, the beggar-chief was gone Without another word, flirting from shelter of bale to protection of barrel. With a final wave, he was gone from sight.
De Wynter turned his survey to the galley and its slave-rowers. Chained six to a twenty-foot oar, they rowed, ate, slept, and
defecated where they sat in irons. These are the fortunes of war, de Wynter reminded himself. He was glad John the Rob had not been discovered above deck. He did not think the beggar would last long if forced to strain muscles for hours at a time, with whips cracking about arms and backs that faltered. Especially favored for flogging, de Wynte observed, was a slim redhead who felt the whip over and over again yet was not cowed.
The slaves worked well in unison, muscles bulging and breaths gasping as each stroke fairly shot the ship ahead toward the straits. Sometimes the oars flashed even though the sails were full of wind. Don Federico was ru
nning against the calendar, as Carlby had explained.
Finally, the whipmaster sounded the drum, signaling an all-too-brief rest period. But many of the men exchanged one kind of work for another, carving bones or pieces of wood scavenged from heaven knew where.
"They're making scrimshaw," Carlby said, joining him. "They hope to sell it to a mujmil at the next port for food or clothes or even freedom. Faint chance of that last. But hope dies hard, and they all carve in the belief it might someday buy them their freedom.''
"Are they any good?"
"Oh, yes. Come see for yourself."
The best of the carvers, de Wynter soon discovered, was the redhead, not much older than himself. With a piece of broken chain-link and a bent carpenter's nail, he had transformed pieces of bone into wondrous animals, the likes of which de,Wynter had never seen.
After watching him perform during several rest periods, de Wynter struck up a conversation with him, though the oarmaster stayed nearby and kept a greedy ear open to the entire conversation.
"Where did you learn to carve such animals?" de Wynter asked in his halting and limited Arabic.
"The carving I have done since I was a little boy, al rabb; the animals are common to my native Ifriqiya. Like this one I work on now."
"May I see it?"
The redhead handed up the carving—less than the length of a man's finger, half lion and half fish—and waited expectantly for the reaction.
"You have actually seen one of these?" de Wynter asked incredulously.
"Other than on the chests of your companions?" The redhead grinned, his white teeth sinning against his sun-blackened skin. He gestured broadly. "Out there are many wonders. Keep the toy, as radika from me to you, you of the Jamid Ja'da."
At that the oarmaster shouldered his way past Carlby and held out his hand, demanding the carving. "That is not his to give. What the slaves carve is rightly mine to keep or sell as I see fit."