by Peter Kerr
It was as if the king was talking to himself, unaware of the presence of anyone beside him. Once more, Pedrito was prompted to compare his own regard for Mallorca with the king’s. All Pedrito craved was to be back at home with his family, living the simple life they had always known, and working hard in the magical, yet modest, environment they had lovingly cared for in the same way as generations of country folk before them. In contrast, King Jaume was bent on taking for himself and his supporters the island’s attributes that had been created by others. And, Pedrito pondered, how many of these man-made wonders of Arabian civilisation would remain unsullied by the Christian Reconquista, should it prove successful?
Yet again, King Jaume seemed to have been reading his thoughts, though not entirely accurately.
‘I’ve been following your gaze, Master Blànes, and I can see that, like mine, your eyes have been drawn to that magnificent building overlooking the city’s harbour down there. An architectural marvel to equal the most splendid in the entire Caliphate of old Damascus, perhaps?’
Pedrito nodded. ‘The principal mosque of Medîna Mayûrqa – and a finer example of the Moorish craftsman’s skills would be hard to find anywhere, they say. But I’ve only ever been able to admire it from the quayside before now. And yes, you’re right – when viewed from up here, I think it’s beauty is even more, well – breathtaking.’
The king seemed lost in a trance of approbation. ‘The gilt domes, the white marble minarets and turrets piercing the sky, the sweeping archways shaped like the upturned keels of ships, the delicately carved stone of the windows. And the mosque’s position dominating the city on one side and the entire expanse of that magnificent bay on the other. Surely there could be no more impressive a location for a sacred building.’ He fell silent for a while, gazing intently at the mosque, before declaring to his companions, ‘I swear here and now to our Lord God Almighty that, if He helps me retake this land from the infidel thieves, I will build to His glory – and on that very site – a mighty cathedral to His glory that will be the envy of every city in Christendom. And you, gentlemen, are witness to this, my solemn vow.’
The animated mutterings of approval from the king’s bodyguard suggested to Pedrito that his concerns for the survival of even the most treasured of Moorish legacies might well be justified. Time, and the respective wills of God and Allah, would tell.
The sun was now dipping beyond the western horizon, sending shadows creeping from the summits of the Serra de Na Burguesa down over its foothills towards the city, where little pools of amber light began to appear one-by-one within the maze of streets.
The king looked enquiringly at Pedrito.
‘I’ve never seen it before now,’ Pedrito confessed, ‘but I’d heard about it. At nightfall, men go about the town lighting oil lamps fixed to the outer walls of the houses.’
‘To light up the streets for the ordinary citizens?’ The king cocked his head, a frown of disbelief wrinkling his brow. ‘A charitable gesture, I’m sure, but a somewhat extravagant way of spending public revenues.’
‘Depends where your priorities lie,’ Pedrito thought to himself, glancing seaward to where the hindmost vessels of the great Christian armada were lining up to berth at Porto Pi. How many streets in how many cities, he wondered, could be lit by the revenues collected to fund just one of those?
‘I see you’re looking at our ships,’ remarked the king, reminding Pedrito of just how observant this young monarch could be, despite his occasional bouts of apparent daydreaming. ‘Even that one squadron makes an impressive sight, no?’
Pedrito had no hesitation in agreeing.
The King then nodded farther round the bay towards the city’s main harbour, its wharfs and piers huddled snugly beneath the sea walls of the great mosque. ‘But what do you make of those ships lying there. There may be no more than a dozen, but they could be a threat nonetheless, don’t you think?’
Pedrito told him that they were more than likely just peaceful merchantmen going about their normal trade, and caught unawares here by events. Anyway, there was no need to worry about them. They wouldn’t be looking for trouble.
The king was still to be convinced. ‘No pirate galleys among them? It’s well known that the port of Medîna Mayûrqa is a hornets’ nest of Saracen sea bandits.’
Pedrito gave a little laugh and suggested that most of the hornets would now have scurried off to the safety of one of the neighbouring islands of Menorca and Ibiza. ‘Even if there are one or two pirates still in port there, they won’t come out to mix it with a fleet of warships. No, they always operate with the odds stacked in their favour – a pack of them versus one poorly-defended cargo ship. That’s more their style.’
King Jaume seemed reassured by this, while also declaring that the harbour would be blockaded, just in case. Then, looking out to the open sea, he said, ‘There’s also still the danger of an enemy fleet arriving from Africa, so we must position sentry vessels out towards the southern horizon in the morning.’ With these naval decisions made, he directed his attention to purely land-based military matters. He gestured towards the city. What, he asked Pedrito, did he know about its fortifications?
With the light fading fast, the best Pedrito could do was to point out the battlements of the watchtowers that marked the position of the city’s main gates – five of them located at intervals round the inland arc of the city wall, three others along its sea face. ‘But to be honest,’ Pedrito confessed, ‘as a simple fisherman, I had no reason to learn any more about the city’s defences than was common knowledge among the townsfolk who frequented the quayside markets.’
The king was unconcerned. ‘No matter, Master Blànes. From what I’ve already seen, the fortifications of Medîna Mayûrqa are fairly typical of any city I’ve attacked. But what about a ditch? Do you know if the walls are protected by a ditch or moat?’
Pedrito hunched his shoulders. ‘All I know is that the western wall, the section closest to us here, follows the course of a rambla, a river bed that’s dry except following a storm, when flash floods in the mountains can turn it into a raging torrent.’
The king pursed his lips. ‘Hmm, which would make it difficult to undermine the walls at this side of the city.’ He stood surveying the scene intently for a while, then, with daylight almost gone, he sighed and said, ‘Va bé. All right. That establishes a good enough picture in my mind’s eye.’
At this point, they were joined by En Nunyo Sans, who reported that the making of camp for the night was under way, as instructed.
‘Fine, fine,’ said the king distractedly. He rubbed his stomach. ‘By God’s faith, I’m hungry! I’ve eaten nothing all day, and the rump of Master Blànes’ old hack there is looking more appetising by the minute!’
‘No need to go to such desperate lengths,’ En Nunyo laughed. He pointed westward down the hill. ‘A gallant friend from my own fiefdom of Roussillon, En Oliver de Termens, has pitched his tent on the far side of the camp site there. He has food and a good cook in his train.’
‘Trust a Frenchman!’ the king quipped.
‘Indeed,’ Sans acknowledged with a little dip of his head, ‘and that one invites you to dine with him this evening.’
*
While King Jaume and a small group of his barons were served inside the tent, Pedrito sat round the camp fire with some lesser mortals, including, on this occasion, Robert St Clair de Roslin, the novice Knight Templar from Britain, who had played a pivotal part in Pedrito being hired as helmsman for the royal galley back in Salou. Pedrito knew that Robert had been assigned at the beginning of this crusade to serve under En Guillen de Muntcada, so it was with some hesitancy that he broached the subject of the noble’s death.
‘He was a brave man,’ Robert replied with surprising nonchalance, ‘and a good man too, I think. But many other brave and good men died today, and even if they weren’t of such blue blood as En Guillen and En Remon de Muntcada, their death is no less tragic. However,’ he shrugged, ‘we
’re all soldiers, and we dice with death every time we go into battle.’
Pedrito had no way of telling if Robert’s cavalier attitude towards death was authentic, or was only a show of bravado born of the necessity for a knight to appear fearless in the face of danger. Either way, Pedrito decided not to pursue this line of conversation further. He did notice, though, that there was a definite sadness in the eyes of Robert and the handful of other survivors from the Muntcada troops sitting round the fire here. He had already heard the king personally tell them not to show any sign of sorrow at the loss of their commanders, but to put a brave face on things for the sake of overall morale within the army. They were clearly doing their best to obey this order, albeit that there had been tears in the king’s own eyes when he gave it.
Nevertheless, in true knightly fashion, King Jaume had quickly covered that momentary lapse of aplomb by announcing with an ostensibly spontaneous laugh that their host, being a true Frenchman, had ensured that supplies loaded onto one of his pack mules when leaving the Santa Ponça base camp that morning had included a few skins of wine. Each man here would be welcome to a cup or two – deserved it, in fact. The king stressed, however, that nobody should be tempted to over-indulge, since there would be an abundance of work to do in the morning in preparation for laying seige to the city. Provided, of course, they weren’t attacked by the Moors in the meantime.
The night was still, the sky cloudless. The place that had been chosen by En Oliver for this simple little refuge of rest and refreshment was only a short distance from where Pedrito and the king had awaited the arrival of En Nunyo Sans’ rearguard troops that morning. The view down the gentle slope towards the sea was therefore similar, although the almond groves that occupied the land now appeared only as a faint filgree of spidery branches silhouetted against the moonlit waters of the bay.
Inland, the dark bulk of the Serra de Na Burguesa rose majestically, providing a serene and silent backdrop to a scene which, even in those tense moments of war, exuded an almost tangible tranquility. From somewhere in one of the high valleys, the tinny sound of sheep bells drifted down through the pine woods, to be followed by the high-pitched bleating of a lamb calling for its mother. Yet again, Pedrito was reminded of his own mother, and how she aways took charge of their small flock of sheep at lambing time. It took a woman to help with a birth, she always said. It was second nature, after all. Now, his fervent hope was that his family’s life on their little finca would be allowed to continue unchanged under the Christian aristocracy who aspired to be the island’s new overlords.
At that moment, another sound wafted down from on high: a plaintive, humming sound which was comfortingly at one with the ambience of the mountains, yet strangely disturbing as well, particularly to the unaccustomed ear.
Young Robert St Clair de Roslin sat rigidly upright, his ears pricked, his eyes on sticks. ‘What in the name of Saint Mary is that unholy din! My Good God Almighty, it sounds as if the Devil himself is castrating all the tomcats in hell!’
Pedrito had to stop himself from laughing at this unlikely mix of the sacred and profane. ‘That’s just the shepherd’s xeremía,’ he said.
‘His cherry what?’
‘Xeremía. Bagpipe.’
Robert winced. ‘Bagpipe! Is that some sort of instrument of torture – like the rack? How does it work? Do they put your head in a bag and hit it with a pipe? That’s certainly what it sounds –’
A soldier sitting on the other side of the fire cut him off abruptly. ‘No, no, no! Xeremíes aren’t instruments of torture, they’re musical instruments.’
‘Musical?’ Robert spluttered, pointing towards the source of the sound. ‘You call that music, laddie?’
‘Sí, sí,’ the soldier calmly assured him. ‘In the Asturias region of northern Spain, where I come from, we also have bagpipes. We call them gaitas.’
‘It’s an ancient instrument,’ Pedrito told Robert. ‘Some say it came to Spain with the Romans.’
‘Well, I’m not surprised they abandoned it here when they left,’ Robert retorted.
‘Maybe so,’ Pedrito chuckled, ‘but at least the shepherds are glad they did.’
In response to Robert’s puzzled look, the Asturian soldier explained that the monotonous buzzing of the bagpipe drones had a calming effect on sheep, while the more strident sound of the chanter, or melody pipe, let the sheep know where their shepherd was while they grazed the mountain slopes at night – just as the clanking of the sheep’s bells helped the shepherd keep track of any members of his flock that might wander away from the rest.
‘Very interesting, I’m sure,’ said Robert, ‘but in northern Britain, in a country called Scotland, where I come from, we prefer hunting stags to herding sheep, and the infernal squealing of your bagpipes would scare the deer back up the mountains!’ He wagged an emphatic finger. ‘Never will such a frightening abomination ever be tolerated in Scotland!’
‘Very interesting, I’m sure,’ the Asturian soldier muttered, disinterestedly. He was clearly more stimulated by the arrival of the cook, or at least by the promise of the food he was bringing.
‘Chireta!’ the cook announced, while placing a large dish on the ground. ‘A great delicacy in Aragon, where I come from.’
‘Yuk! I hope it tastes better than it looks,’ said the Asturian as he peered at the pulpy substance gushing from a slash along the length of what appeared to be a large, portly sausage. ‘It looks like you’ve just disembowelled a piglet.’
‘Nothing to do with pigs,’ the cook replied indignantly. ‘A chireta is made from the chopped liver, heart and lungs of a sheep, all spiced up and bulked out with some onion and coarse-ground meal – or maybe rice, if you have it.’
The Asturian wrinkled his nose. ‘Then you stuff it all into the skin of a dead piglet, right?’
‘I told you,’ the cook snapped, ‘pigs have nothing to do with it! The prepared ingredients of a chireta are stuffed into the intestines of a sheep!’
The Asturian squirmed. ‘Jesus wept! I think I’m going to throw up!’
Robert St Clair de Roslin, who had been taking a very close interest in this conversation, then leant forward and scooped up some chireta on the blade of his dagger. ‘Mmm,’ he crooned after taking a speculative taste, ‘not bad, but it could do with a bit more seasoning. Some crushed mustard seeds, maybe. Give it a bit more of a kick.’ He took another nibble. ‘Aye, definitely needs more kick, laddie.’
The cook glared at him. ‘And what would you know about chiretas, young sir? You don’t sound Aragonese to me!’
‘And you don’t sound Scottish to me!’ Robert pointed his dagger at the plate. ‘What you have there is a poor imitation of a haggis – a great delicacy in Scotland, where I come from! And for your information, the recipe was brought to us many centuries ago by the Vikings. Yes indeed, and I’m not surprised our friend here was retching. You should have stuffed the haggis mixture into a sheep’s stomach, not it’s intestines!’
The cook was outraged. ‘I’ve never heard of Scotland and I’ve never heard of your haggis. And for your information, the Vikings never came to Aragon, but the Romans did, and it was the Romans who brought us the recipe of the chireta!’
‘Which explains everything,’ Robert deduced. ‘The Romans must have stolen the recipe for haggis when we kicked them out of Scotland. They probably stopped off in Aragon on their way back to Italy to pull the tails from between their legs.’
Such duels of repartee, mostly good-natured, about bagpipes, sheep, deer, haggis, chireta, Vikings, Romans and all manner of things associated and not associated with them, eventually involved everyone and continued round the fire while they ate. And whatever the true ancestry of the chireta – and the advantages or disadvantages of sheep’s intestines being used as a casing – the proof of its tastiness lay in the emptiness of the serving platter at the end of this rough-and-ready feast.
Any residual scraps of intestine and gristle had been devoured by a shaggy b
lack shape that had appeared suddenly out of the darkness. Once it had ascertained that not a smudge of chireta remained, the black shape lay down and fell asleep at Pedrito’s feet.
‘It’s Nedi, the king’s dog,’ Pedriro said to Robert St Clair. ‘God only knows where he appeared from.’
‘Anyway, he seems to have bonded with you quickly enough.’
Pedrito shrugged. ‘Yes, well, we have a kind of religious association, I suppose.’
‘Religious association? You … and a dog?’
‘Yes, I know it’s seems strange,’ Pedrito conceded, ‘and I won’t bore you with the details, but let’s just say I was baptised by him – recently.’
Robert gave him a wary look, and left things at that.
Although Pedrito hadn’t contributed much to the general chit-chat, he had observed the rest of the company with interest. They were mostly all young men about his own age, a few perhaps even younger. In some respects, the way they were acting reminded him of how he and his fellow galley slaves had spent precious ‘off-duty’ moments, exhausted like these men, and preferring to be anywhere else than where they were at present. The banter of the oarsmen had also centred on topics that related to their respective backgrounds – each recalling the place he came from and boasting about its unique qualities, whether deserved or not. The telltale symptoms of homesickness, no doubt.
Time spent bragging and swapping mild insults constituted a respite, no matter how temporary, from the harsh realities of their present condition. On a pirate galley, thoughts were always of escape and a longed-for return to family and the comforts of home. Here, Pedrito presumed, the underlying thoughts of these soldiers would be whether or not they would survive the next battle. Gruesome thoughts indeed, though offset by the material attraction of plunder. Which, of course, was the primary reason for some of them being here at all – avowed religious considerations aside. In any event, this was all just a way for tired, combat-traumatised men to release the pressures of war in a harmless way, which a few slugs of wine helped promote. What better reason, Pedrito pondered, for the wine being given to them in the first place?