The Pirates of the Levant

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  'Right, let's see if there are any spoils to be had,' sighed Alatriste.

  'Spoils' was what we called the booty from a ship, but this time there was almost nothing. The galley, chartered in the pirate port of Saleh, had not yet taken any booty itself when we saw it approaching our convoy; and so, even though we lifted every plank on the deck and smashed all the bulkheads, we found nothing of value, only food and weapons, not even a gold coin to pay the King his wretched quint. I had to make do with a fine cloth tunic — and I almost came to blows over that with another soldier who claimed to have seen it first — and Captain Alatriste found a large damascene knife, with a good blade skilfully worked, which he filched from the belt of one of the wounded. He returned to the Mulata, while I continued foraging on the Turkish galley and looking over the prisoners.

  Once the galleymaster had, as was the custom, taken the sails from the captured vessel, the only items of any value left were the surviving Turks. Fortunately, there were no Christians at the oars — the corsairs themselves rowed or fought, depending on the circumstances — and when Captain Urdemalas, very sensibly, ordered the killing to stop, there were still some sixty men alive: those who had surrendered, the wounded and the remaining survivors in the sea. On a rough calculation, that meant eighty or a hundred escudos each, depending on where the slaves were sold. Once you had subtracted the King's quint and what was due to the captain and the other officers, and when that was shared out among the fifty sailors and seventy soldiers on board — the two hundred or so galley-slaves, of course, got nothing — it certainly wouldn't make us rich, but it was better than nothing. That's why the captain had shouted out, reminding us that the more Turks that were left alive, the greater the profit. Each time we killed one of the men trying to scramble back on board, more than a thousand reales went to the bottom of the sea.

  'We have to hang the galliot captain,' Captain Urdemalas said.

  He murmured this in a low voice, so as to be heard by only a few, namely Ensign Muelas, Sergeant Albaladejo, the galleymaster, the pilot and two trusted soldiers, one of whom was Diego Alatriste. They were gathered in the stern of the Mulata, next to the lantern, looking down at the galliot still skewered by the ram of our boat, its oars shattered and with water pouring in through its sides. They all agreed that there was no point in trying to tow it, for at any moment it might sink to the bottom like a stone.

  'He's a Spanish renegade,' Urdemalas continued, scratching his beard. 'A Mallorquin called Boix or, to give him his infidel name, Yusuf Bocha.'

  'He's wounded,' added the galleymaster.

  'All the more reason to string him up before he dies of his own accord.'

  Urdemalas glanced at the sun, which was now close to the horizon now. There was perhaps another hour of daylight, thought Alatriste. By nightfall, the prisoners should be chained up on board the Mulata and the galley heading off to some

  friendly port where they could be sold. The prisoners were currently being questioned to find out which language they spoke and where they came from, so that they could be divided up into renegades, Moriscos, Turks and Moors. Every pirate galley was a Babel full of surprises. It was not uncommon to find renegades of Christian origin, as was the case here, or even Englishmen and Dutchmen. That is why no one disputed the need to hang the corsairs' leader.

  'Prepare the noose now and be quick about it.'

  The hanging, as Captain Alatriste knew, was inevitable. A gallows death was obligatory for any renegade in charge of a vessel that had put up resistance and caused deaths on a Spanish galley, especially if that renegade was a Spaniard himself.

  'You can't hang just him,' Ensign Muelas said. 'There are some Moriscos too: the pilot and at least four others. There were more than that — mostly Morisco rebels — but they're all either dead or dying.'

  'What about the other captives?'

  'Paid oarsmen, Moors the lot of them, and people from Saleh. There are two light-skinned men — we're checking their foreskins now to see whether they've been clipped or are Christians.'

  'Well, you know what to do. If they've been clipped, they go straight to the rowing benches, and then we hand them over to the Inquisition. If not, we'll hang them too. How many of our men did they kill?'

  'Nine, not counting the galley-slaves. And there are more who won't make it through till morning.'

  Urdemalas made an angry, impatient gesture. 'God's teeth!'

  He was a blunt old seadog, and his weather-beaten skin and grey beard bore witness to thirty years spent sailing the Mediterranean. He knew exactly how to treat such men, who set sail from the Barbary Coast at night in order to reach the Spanish coast by dawn, where they frequently sacked and plundered villages before returning home to sleep peacefully in their own beds.

  'The rope for all six of them. That'll keep the Devil busy.'

  A soldier approached with a message for Ensign Muelas, and the latter turned to Urdemalas.

  'Apparently the two light-skinned men have been clipped, Captain. One is a French renegade and the other's from Livorno.'

  'Right, set them to the oars.'

  This explained why the Turkish galliot had fought so long and so hard: its crew knew what the consequences would be. Most of the Moriscos on board had preferred to die fighting rather than surrender; and that, as Ensign Muelas remarked dispassionately, was sure proof that they had been born in Spain, even if they were now corsair dogs. After all, it was common knowledge that no Spanish soldier would respect the life of a renegade compatriot turned corsair captain, nor the lives of their Morisco crew; unless, that is, the latter gave in without a struggle, in which case, they would later be handed over to the Inquisition. The Moriscos — baptised Moors whose Christian faith was suspect ~ had been expelled from Spain eighteen years before, after a great deal of trouble and treachery, and many bloody uprisings and false conversions. Cast out upon the road, they were often ill-treated, murdered, stripped of their possessions, and saw their wives and daughters raped, and when they reached the North African coast, even their brother Moors failed to welcome them. When they finally settled in the pirate ports of Tunis, Algiers and, especially

  , Saleh — the nearest to the Andalusian coast — they became the

  bitterest and most hated of Spain's enemies, as well as the cruellest

  in their raids on the Spanish coastal villages, which, with their knowledge of the terrain, they attacked ruthlessly and with the understandable rancour of settling old scores. As Lope de Vega put it in his play The Good Guard.

  And Moors from Algiers — pirates—

  Who lurk in coves and bays

  From which they later slip

  And sail their hidden frigates.

  'But don't make a fuss about hanging them,' Urdemalas advised. 'We don't want any trouble from the captives. Wait until they're all safely chained up.'

  'We'll lose money by hanging them, Captain,' protested the galleymaster, envisaging more reales going to waste on the yard-arm. The galleymaster was even more avaricious than the captain; he had an evil face and a worse soul, and earned a little extra money, which he shared with the overseer, through taking bribes and secret payments exacted from the galley-slaves.

  'I piss on your money, sir, and everything you buy with it,' Urdemalas declared, giving the galleymaster a withering look.

  Long accustomed to Captain Urdemalas's odd ways, the galleymaster merely shrugged and stalked off down the gangway, asking the under-galleymaster and the overseer to find some ropes. The bodies of the slaves killed during the battle — four Moors, a Dutchman and three Spaniards who had been condemned to row in the galleys — were being unchained and tossed overboard so that their places could be taken by the captured corsairs. Another half-dozen or so badly wounded galley-slaves were sprawled, still in their chains, on the gore-soaked benches, waiting to be seen by the barber, who served as both blood-letter and surgeon and whose treatment for any wound, however terrible, consisted of applying vinegar and salt to it.

&
nbsp; Diego Alatriste's eyes met those of Captain Urdemalas.

  'Two of the Moriscos are very young,' he said.

  This was true. I had noticed them when the galliot's captain was wounded: two boys crouched among the benches at the stern, trying to keep out of the way of all that whirling steel. The captain himself had placed them there, to prevent them having their throats cut.

  Urdemalas pulled a surly face. 'How young?'

  'Young enough.'

  'Born in Spain?'

  'I have no idea.'

  'Circumcised?'

  'I suppose so.'

  Urdemalas muttered a few well-turned oaths and regarded the Alatriste thoughtfully. Then he turned to Sergeant Albaladejo.

  'See to it, Sergeant. If they've got hair on their tackle, they've enough neck to be hanged; if not, set them to rowing.'

  Albaladejo walked reluctantly down the gangway towards the galliot. Pulling down boys' breeches to see if they were man enough for the rope or fodder for the galleys was not exactly his favourite occupation, but it went with the job.

  For his part, Urdemalas was still studying Diego Alatriste. His look was inquisitive, as if wondering whether Alatriste's concern for the boys was based on something more than common sense. Even if they were mere boys, born in Spain or elsewhere — the last Moriscos, from Valle de Ricote in the province of Murcia, had left around 1614 — as far as Urdemalas and the vast majority of Spaniards were concerned, there was no room for compassion. Only two months before, on the

  Almeria coast, the corsairs had carried off and enslaved seventy-four men, women and children from one village, having first plundered it and crucified the mayor and eleven others whose names they had on a list. A woman who had managed to escape was later able to confirm that several of the attackers were Moriscos and former villagers.

  Everyone had an account to settle on that turbulent Mediterranean frontier. It was a melting-pot of races, languages and age-old hatreds. In the case of the Moriscos, who knew every bay, water-hole and path of the country to which they were returning to take their revenge, they enjoyed an advantage that Miguel de Cervantes — who knew a lot about corsairs, as both soldier and captive — described in his play Life in Algiers:

  Because I've known this land from birth

  And all its entrances and exits,

  I know how best to fight upon its earth.

  'You were there, weren't you?' Urdemalas asked. 'In 1609, when the Moriscos were expelled from Valencia?'

  Alatriste nodded. There were few secrets on board a small ship. Urdemalas and he had friends in common, and Alatriste, although not an officer, received extra pay for taking on the duties of corporal. The sailor and the veteran soldier respected each other, but they also kept their distance.

  'They say,' Urdemalas went on, 'that you helped to crush the rebels, the ones who took to the hills.'

  'I did,' Alatriste replied.

  That was one way of putting it, he thought. The searches carried out among the steep, rocky hills, sweating beneath the sun; the ambushes, the sudden attacks, the reprisals, the killings. There had been cruelty on both sides, and the poor people caught in the middle, both Christians and Moriscos, had paid the highest price, with the numerous rapes and murders going unpunished. And then there were those long lines of unfortunates trudging the roads, forced to leave their homes and sell off cheap what they couldn't take with them, harassed and plundered by peasants and soldiers alike — many soldiers even deserted in order to steal from them. The paths they trod led to ships, and to exile. As Gaspar Aguilar wrote:

  Strip them of their house and all their wealth,

  Ye powers that rule the world;

  For alms, leave them their lives and petty health

  'By my life,' said Captain Urdemalas with a cynical smile, 'you don't seem very proud of service done for God and King.'

  Alatriste gave him a hard look, then slowly smoothed his moustache.

  'Are you referring to the service performed today, Captain, or to that performed in 1609?'

  He spoke very clearly and coldly, almost softly. Urdemalas glanced uneasily at Lieutenant Muelas, the pilot and the other corporal.

  'I have no criticism of your performance today,' he replied in quite a different tone, studying Alatriste's face as if he were counting the scars. 'With ten men like you, I could take Algiers in a night. It's just that ...'

  'It's just what?'

  'Well,' Urdemalas said with a shrug. 'There are no secrets here. People say you were unhappy about what happened in Valencia and that you took your sword and your services elsewhere.'

  'And do you have an opinion on the matter, Captain?'

  Urdemalas' eyes followed the movement made by Alatriste's left hand, for it was no longer smoothing his moustache but was by his side, just inches away from the scratched and battered hilt of his sword. Urdemalas was a determined man, as everyone knew, but every man has his reputation, and Diego Alatriste's had preceded him onto the Mulata. Mere words, one might say, but, having seen how he had fought that day, even the lowliest cabin boy was convinced. Urdemalas knew this better than anyone.

  'No, no opinion at all, I assure you,' he said. 'Everyone's different, after all, but you can't stop people talking.'

  He maintained the same firm, frank tone, and Alatriste considered the matter carefully. There was not, he concluded, anything to object to in either the captain's voice or his words. He was a wise man. And prudent too.

  'Well, if that's what they say,' Alatriste said at last, 'they're quite right.'

  Ensign Muelas thought it best to change tack a little.

  'I'm from Vejer myself,' he said. 'And I remember how the Turks used to attack us with the help of the Moriscos who lived there — they told them when they could most easily catch us unawares. A neighbour's son went out to herd the goats ... or maybe he went off fishing with his father ... anyway, he woke up in a souk in Barbary. He's probably like one of these renegades here, up to goodness knows what ... Not to mention what they do to the women.'

  The pilot and the other corporal nodded grimly. They knew about the villages built high up, away from the shore, as a precaution against the Barbary pirates who scoured the sea and haunted the coast; and they knew how afraid the villagers were of the pirates' boldness and of their embittered Morisco neighbours. They knew, too, about the bloody rebellions led by the Moriscos who refused to accept baptism and the authority of the King, about their complicity with Barbary and the secret petitions made to France, to the Lutherans and to the Great Turk to join them in a general uprising. After the wars of Granada and the Alpuj arras, attempts to disperse them had failed, as had Philip Ill's ineffectual policy of conversion, and three hundred thousand Moriscos — an enormous number in a population of only nine million — had settled on the vulnerable Levant and Andalusian coasts. Almost none of them were true Christians, and they remained rebellious, ungovernable and proud — like the Spaniards they also were — dreaming of their lost liberty and independence, and unwilling to become part of the Catholic nation, forged a century ago, that was intent on waging war on all fronts; against the greed and envy of France and England, against Protestant heresy and against the immense power of the Turks. This was why, until their eventual expulsion, the last Muslims in the Peninsula had been a dagger permanently pointed at the side of a Spain that was, at the time, master of one half the world and at war with the other.

  'You could never feel at ease,' Muelas went on. 'From Valencia to Gibraltar, the old Christians were caught between the Moriscos in the mountains and the pirates at sea. These supposed Christian converts, so suspiciously reluctant to eat pork, would send signals at night, then help their friends to disembark and plunder the villages ...'

  Diego Alatriste shook his head. He knew that this wasn't the whole story.

  'There were honest people too,' he said, 'newly converted Christians who genuinely believed and were faithful subjects of the King. I knew a few in Flanders. They were helpful and hard-working. The
re wasn't a gentleman, villain, friar or beggar among them. In that respect, it's true, they didn't seem like Spaniards.'

  Everyone stared at him in silence. Then, the ensign bit off a piece of fingernail and spat it over the side of the boat.

  'That's beside the point. We had to put a stop to all that worrying, all those terrible acts. With God's help, we did, and it's over now.'

  Alatriste thought to himself that it certainly wasn't over yet. The silent civil war between Spaniards was still being waged elsewhere and by other means. A few Moriscos, very few, had managed to return to Spain secretly, helped by their neighbours, as had happened in Campo de Calatrava. As for the others, they took both their anger and their nostalgia for a lost homeland to the corsair towns of Barbary; and the power of the Turks and of North Africa had been strengthened by exiled mudejares — unconverted Muslims — from Granada and Andalusia, and by the tagarinos — Muslims who passed as Spaniards — from Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia, who were skilled in many trades, particularly those that then proved useful to the corsair enterprise.