by Tim Severin
Abruptly there was a choking grunt, and the pressure pushing him against the wall eased. ‘Bastanza!’ said a new voice sharply, and there was a gurgling sound. Hector pushed himself clear of the wall and turned to see his assailant clutching at his throat, his thick body arched back, and a third person in the cubicle, half hidden behind his would-be rapist. The newcomer was holding a leather belt which he had looped around the attacker’s neck and was now using as a garrotte. ‘Bastanza! Bestia!’ the newcomer added, pulling the noose tighter so that the cord began to cut off the windpipe. Shaking with shock, Hector pulled up his pantaloons and staggered out of the cubicle, remembering only to scoop up his blanket from the floor.
He blundered past the ranks of bunk beds, and somehow managed to find his way out to the balcony. There he leaned against the balustrade, gasping for air. He felt defiled and frightened. Moments later he sensed someone emerge from the dormitory and stand beside him. ‘Are you all right?’ It was the voice of his rescuer, and the question was spoken in English. Hector raised his head to look into the face of the man who had saved him. His rescuer was about his own age yet resembled no other man he had seen in his life. His eyes were so dark brown as to appear almost black, and long, straight jet-black hair hung down to his shoulders, framing a narrow face with high cheekbones and a strong nose. His rescuer’s skin, Hector was astonished to see, was the colour of peat.
‘Malo umbre – a bad man, that one,’ explained the newcomer. ‘Best you stay out of his way. He’s a kaporal and a friend of the aga di baston.’
‘Thank you for what you did,’ blurted Hector, still shocked.
The man shrugged. ‘He cheated me last week. Took my money for a gileffo, and then did nothing. Now he’s got a sore throat to remember me by.’
‘I’m sorry but I don’t understand.’
‘A gileffo is what you pay when you want to have the day off from work. It goes to a kaporal who then arranges with the scrivano that your name is not in the morning roll call.’
He saw that Hector was still too shaken to understand, so abandoned the explanation. ‘I am called Dan,’ he said, holding out his hand. As he shook hands, Hector noticed that his rescuer had a deep, lilting accent vaguely similar to the way the Devon sailor Dunton spoke.
‘I’m Hector, Hector Lynch,’ he explained. ‘I come from Ireland.’
‘I met some Irish when I was a small boy. With them I practised speaking English,’ said Dan. ‘They had run away from their masters and came to us. We sheltered them, the mesquins. Now I know what it was like for them to be slaves. They told us that they had been sold as punishment for making war in their own country, and sent far from their homes.’
It took Hector several moments to grasp that Dan was speaking about prisoners from Cromwell’s campaign in Ireland. He remembered his father telling him how thousands of Irishmen had been shipped to the West Indies and sold off to work as slaves on the plantations. Some of them must have fled their masters.
‘You are from the Caribees?’ he asked.
‘From the Main, the Miskito coast,’ replied Dan. ‘My people are Miskito, and we have no love for the Spanish who would take our lands. My father, who is a great man among us, sent me on a mission to the King of the English. I was to request that the Miskito become his subjects and, in return, he would supply us with guns to fight off the Spanish. It was my bad fortune to be captured by the Spanish even before I left the Main, and they put me on a ship for Spain to show me off to the people. But their ship was taken by corsairs, and I have finished up here.’
‘How long ago was that?’
‘I’ve been here for six months now, and it was lucky for you that I was not at work today. I paid another gileffo to a more honest kaporal, and he arranged it. Here, let me carry your blanket. You need a proper place to put your things.’
Dan led Hector along the balcony, explaining that the bagnio was ruled by a senior Turk known as the guardian bashaw. Under him were his lieutenants, the assistant bashaws, and below them came the kaporals. ‘Most of the kaporals are all right provided you pay them a few coins,’ Dan stated. ‘Not like Emilio who gave you trouble. He blackmails young men. Threatens to have them punished under false charges unless they agree to be his lovers. He and the aga di baston – that’s the Turk in charge of beatings – have the same tastes. They both enjoy man love, and there are no women in the bagnio, only men.’
‘But Emilio is not a Turkish name,’ said Hector.
‘The kaporals are not Turks. They are from other countries. Emilio is from some place in Italy, but there are also kaporals from France and Spain, from all over. They are rinigatos, men who have taken the turban, and now have an easier life. You’ll find rinigatos everywhere. One has even become the guardian bashaw in another bagnio. A man like Emilio will never go back to Italy. He has too good a time here.’
They had reached another dormitory farther along the balcony. It was arranged in much the same way with tiers of closely packed bunks.
‘All the bunks are already taken,’ explained Dan, ‘but there’s enough room to sling a hammock in this space next to my bunk. Tomorrow I’ll get hold of some cords and rope. We Miskito use hammocks when we go on hunting trips in the forest so it will be no trouble to make you one. For now you can borrow my straw mattress and sleep on the floor. I’ll fix things up with the dormitory kaporal later.’
‘I can’t thank you enough,’ said Hector. ‘Everything around here seems so strange and brutal.’
Dan shrugged. ‘In my country we are taught to work together when life is hard, and to share what we have. I would offer you some food, but I have nothing left over, and the next rations will not be issued until tomorrow.’
Hector realised that he had not eaten all day and was very hungry.
‘The bagnio ration is not much,’ Dan added. ‘Just a hunk of black bread, and often that is mouldy. You want to stick close to whoever is your gang leader. He’ll be given a bowl of vinegar with maybe a few drops of olive oil sprinkled in it. You can dip your bread into the bowl during the meal breaks.’
‘Will you be there too?’
‘No,’ said Dan. ‘I live in the bagnio because my master has not enough accommodation for his slaves. He pays a weekly fee to the guardian bashaw to house me. I work as a gardener. I look after my master’s masseries outside the city wall, weeding, cultivating, harvesting, all that sort of thing. I go there each morning after roll call. That’s where I’ll be able to steal the cord for your hammock, from one of his work sheds.’
‘So what will I be doing?’
Dan glanced down at Hector’s ankle with its iron ring. ‘You are a public slave, so you’ll do whatever the scrivano assigns you to. It may be in the stone quarries or down at the harbour unloading boats. They’ll tell you in the morning.’
‘All these words you use, “scrivano”, “masserie”, and the others, they seem strange yet familiar. What do they mean?’
‘That’s our bagnio language. A scrivano is a scribe, and a masserie is a garden,’ said Dan. ‘You must learn the language fast if you are to get by in here. On the work gangs all the commands are given in that tongue – we call it lingua franca, though that seems odd because most of it is Spanish not French. Even the Turks use it when they are speaking with the Moors who don’t understand Turkish. There are so many different peoples held in the bagnio, all with their own languages, that we must have a way of understanding one another.’
‘My mother was from Spain,’ said Hector, ‘and she taught me and my sister to speak her language.’
‘Then you are fortunate,’ commented Dan. ‘Some prisoners seem never to learn to speak the lingua franca – the moskovits, for example, who come from the northern lands. They are always apart, and I feel doubly sorry for them because there is never any chance that they will be free. No one in their own country sends money to pay for their release. Some other countries send priests with chests of coin to purchase the liberty of their countrymen. The French do that,
and the Spanish also. But their priests often quarrel.’
‘What about the English? Do they buy back their people?’
‘I don’t know for sure. There’s a rumour that this will happen soon, when the King in London has enough money to spend on his subjects. If that happens I will continue my journey and bring greetings to the King of England from the Miskito.’
Hector could no longer hold back the question that had been tormenting him since he landed.
‘Dan, you said that there are only men in the bagnio. What happens to women who are captured by the corsairs? Where do they go?’
The Miskito heard the anguish in Hector’s voice.
‘Why do you ask? Do you know a woman who was captured? Your wife, perhaps?’
‘My sister, Elizabeth. She was taken at the same time as myself, but placed on another ship, and she did not arrive here in Algiers.’
‘Is Elizabeth beautiful?’
‘My sister’s friends used to say that Elizabeth was bathed in May dew when she was a baby. Where I come from the young women go out at dawn on the first day of May to gather the morning dew and wash their faces with it. They believe the dew makes them beautiful for the coming year.’
‘If she is as lovely as you say,’ answered Dan, ‘then you need have no fears about her safety. The Turks treat their women captives very differently from the men. They never expose the women in public, and they treat them with respect. But they are still prisoners, and if they come from rich or powerful families, the Turks will demand a great ransom for their release.’
‘And what if a woman does not have a rich family?’ Hector asked quietly.
‘Then a good-looking woman will find a place in her owner’s household. Maybe she will be a servant or – and this has happened – she even marries her captor.’ Dan paused. He was wondering how to explain gently that it was far more likely that Elizabeth would become her master’s concubine when a sudden sound of catcalls and jeers came up from the courtyard. ‘Come. The work gangs are returning. There’s more to know if you are to survive in the bagnio.’
The two men returned to the balcony, and Hector looked down into the courtyard to see crowds of slaves pouring into the compound. All of them wore the red slave cap, and most looked gaunt and emaciated. One group was powdered with chalky dust which, Dan explained, showed that they had returned from a day working in the stone quarries. Others had streaks of dried mud on their arms and faces as they had been cleaning out the city sewers. A few slaves headed straight for the arcades, several climbed the stairways towards their dormitories but the majority loitered in the courtyard, gossiping or filling in time. Packs of cards and dice appeared as half a dozen gambling sessions began.
‘Where do they get their money?’ he asked Dan as a group of card players began tossing small coins into the centre of their circle. ‘They don’t get paid wages, do they?’
Dan laughed. ‘No. They steal.’ He pointed out a man whose face, even from that distance, looked badly mutilated. ‘That one is the king of the thieves. He’s a Sicilian. He was caught several times by the Turks, and thrashed. But it did not deter him. Finally the aga di baston lopped off his nose and ears as punishment. But that still had no effect. He simply can’t leave off stealing. It’s his nature, and now the Turks treat his thievery as a joke.’
More and more slaves were entering the courtyard, which was slowly filling up with men. Without warning a brawl broke out between two groups. There were shouts and curses. Punches were thrown, and two men were down on the ground, mauling one another.
‘Remember what I said, about the moskovits,’ observed Dan. ‘They are the ones with the heavy beards and matted hair. The darker-skinned slaves they are fighting look like they are Spaniards. It’s not enough that we are all slaves of the Muslims, but we have to quarrel among ourselves about who worships the Christ god properly. The Spaniards and Italians insult the Greeks, the Greeks spit on the moskovits, and all of them mock – what do you call it – the Puritana.’
‘The Puritans. I know what you mean. The Puritana, as you call them, are those who enslaved the Irish you met at home,’ commented Hector. ‘In my country, too, there are bitter quarrels between those who call themselves Protestant and those who respect the Pope in Rome.’
Dan shook his head, perplexed. ‘I have never been able to understand why the Christians manage to have so many quarrels and hatreds among themselves. We Miskito all believe in the same gods and spirits, whether they are of the sun or rain or hurricane or in the sea. Slavery to us is natural. We ourselves hunt slaves, taking them from the weaker tribes around us. But we make them slaves only to do our work and because it gives prestige to their owners, not because we hate their religion.’
The fighting in the courtyard had attracted the attention of the Turkish guards from the gate. They came running into the courtyard and began to break up the fight using whips and cudgels to separate the contestants. The Russians and their opponents drew apart, still looking sullen, but they offered no resistance to the intervention of the guards.
‘Whatever happens,’ advised Dan, ‘whether you are kicked or whipped, or punched in the face by a Turk, you must never strike back. I could pull that unnatural beast Emilio off you because he is foreign-born. But if he had been a true Turk, my certain punishment would be death. Never hit or insult our Turkish masters, that is one rule which everyone respects. Even if the Turk is drunk.’
‘But how can that be? I thought that the Mussulmen are forbidden to take alcohol.’
‘I’ll show you something,’ answered Dan, and led him towards the stairway.
They descended to the courtyard and Hector followed the Miskito into one of the side rooms in the arcade. It was a tavern, and doing a thriving business. The place was crowded with slaves, drinking and carousing, the smoke from their clay pipes creating a thick fug that made Hector’s eyes water.
‘Where does he get the alcohol?’ he whispered to Dan, nodding towards the landlord behind his counter at the back of the room. ‘He buys it from the merchant ships who come to trade in Algiers, or from the corsair captains who capture it as part of their booty. Then he resells it, often to the Turks themselves because the city authorities turn a blind eye to their own people who come into the bagnio for a drink, provided they don’t make an exhibition of themselves.’
Hector noticed a small group of Turks standing close to the counter who were obviously the worse for drink. ‘Look behind them,’ said Dan, lowering his voice. ‘Those big men over there, they’re paid by the landlord to keep an eye on the Turks. If any Turk gets drunk and it looks as if he will make trouble, one of those fellows will quietly escort him out of the bagnio. The landlord cannot afford a disturbance. If there is a fight, the guardian bashaw has the power to shut his tavern and order him to be beaten, even though the landlord is giving him a cut of the profits.’
‘You mean to say that customers of the tavern can just walk in and out of the bagnio?’
‘Yes, until an hour or so after dusk. That is when the gates are locked shut.’ Dan cocked his head to one side. ‘Listen, you hear that shouting? It’s the beylik foreman. He’s calling out what the jobs will be tomorrow. It’s time we went back up to the dormitory. If it’s your first day at work, you’ll need all the rest you can get.’
As they climbed back up the staircase Hector asked why the slaves did not attempt to escape if the gates were left open.
‘Where would they go?’ Dan replied. ‘If they run inland, the Moors of the countryside will catch them and bring them back to the city and receive a reward. If they get as far as the mountains, they will be eaten by wild animals. Should they reach the desert beyond the mountains they will get lost and die of thirst.’
‘Couldn’t they steal a ship?’
‘The Turks have thought of that, too. When a galley comes into port after a corso, the first thing they do is order the galley slaves to dump all the oars overboard into the harbour. Then the oars are towed ashore and placed i
n a secure warehouse. A few slaves have managed to escape by swimming out to visiting merchant ships and stowing away. But the ship captains take good care to search their own vessels before they leave Algiers. If the Turks find an escaped slave aboard a visiting ship, they’ll seize the vessel and put it up for sale. The captain and his crew are lucky if they are not enslaved as well.’
They had reached their dormitory, and Hector stretched out on the lumpy straw palliasse Dan had lent him. He lay there, listening to the sounds of the other slaves settling to their rest, the creaking of the bunks, the grumbles and mutterings, the coughs and spitting as men cleared quarry dust from their lungs and mouths, and the gradual chorus of snores. He felt the nagging, hard pressure of the iron ring around his ankle, and after everything he had learned that day he wondered if he would ever find out what had happened to Elizabeth.
SEVEN
‘WAKE UP YOU DOGS! Rise you foul unbelievers! Wake and get to work!’ Hoarse shouts from the courtyard of the bagnio roused Hector the next morning. The man in the lowest bunk close to him groaned. Then he farted loudly and deliberately so that Hector supposed it was his customary sardonic way of greeting the new day. Holding his breath, Hector got to his feet. ‘Time to get going.’ It was Dan’s voice. The Miskito was already out of his bunk and folding his blanket. ‘Get down to the courtyard and listen for your name in the roll call. Then follow what the others do. Try to stay in the background. I’ll see you this evening.’