by S. W. Perry
Nicholas recalls the rough-hewn character who’d stood at his side while the sandglass marked the changing of the watch. ‘Where are they now?’
‘Only the Almighty knows that, Dr Shelby. Or perhaps the Devil. Connell might be a fine seaman, but I’ve always held there was a whiff of Lucifer about that man.’
‘And you haven’t seen him since yesterday?’
‘When I asked him what was afoot, he cursed me for a savage and took Stawley away with him. Our people have been asking me what’s happening ever since. They’re all afeared the Moors will take us ashore and make prisoners of us.’
‘How long has that Moor corsair been gone?’
Yaxley casts a glance through the Marion’s cordage towards the beach. ‘The oarsmen came down to her yesterday in chains, from the Safi slave bagnio, just before sunset, along with about a score of janissaries. They’re off to do some slaving up the coast towards Lisbon, I shouldn’t wonder. They’ll have an easy job of it, too – there’s precious little wind. With oarsmen who know what they’re doing, a corsair galley will outrun a Christian sail easily in this weather.’ He lets out a grunt of appreciation. ‘It must be a goodly prize they’re after; I haven’t seen them get a galley that big off the beach so fast in all the years I’ve been sailing to the Barbary shore.’
Nicholas gives a tight smile of understanding. Connell has taken the speediest means of escape.
‘Captain Yaxley, you may know I was sent aboard the Righteous by Sir Robert Cecil. I was carrying messages of goodwill from the queen to Sultan al-Mansur.’
‘Aye, I’d heard the like.’
‘Then hear this also: Sultan al-Mansur is a valued ally of England. The queen’s Privy Council must know of what has happened here. In their name, I ask for your assistance to return to England as swiftly as possible.’
Yaxley does not hesitate. ‘That’s all the excuse I need, Dr Shelby. None of my people fancy getting caught up in a quarrel between the Moors. There’s enough English sailors languishing in captivity across Barbary as it is.’
‘How soon can you be ready to sail?’
‘The cargo’s already loaded. The tide’s in our favour. But with these slack breezes, we’ll have to warp the Marion out to sea. We can be away from the quayside inside an hour, but it could be several more before we’re far enough out to catch a proper wind.’
‘Then look to your task, Captain Yaxley,’ Nicholas says. ‘In the meantime I’ll tell Minister al-Annuri to get his marines off your ship. The sooner we’re away, the sooner your men will be downing English ale and spending the Cecils’ reward.’
Three children are driving a herd of goats across the track from the Kechla down to the waterfront. When they see the imposing figure of Muhammed al-Annuri escorting Nicholas and de Lisle back towards the quay after a final meeting in the governor’s mansion, their happy chatter ceases and they fall silent, driving the beasts quickly out of the way. Nicholas thinks how easily he too had fallen into the trap of misjudging the taciturn minister.
When they reach the quay, al-Annuri snaps his fingers. A minion who’s been trailing them at a respectful distance hurries up with a leather pouch trimmed with gold thread and pearls. The minion hands it to Nicholas, while al-Annuri makes an account of it in Arabic to de Lisle.
‘This contains the letter His Excellency has written to your Minister Cecil,’ de Lisle explains. ‘It is in Italian, in which His Excellency is proficient. He trusts Sir Robert will be able to find someone to translate it.’
‘If it was in the picture-writing of Rameses the Great, Robert Cecil could probably find someone to tell him what it says,’ Nicholas replies knowingly.
De Lisle seems uncertain if he’s joking. ‘Also, the pouch contains the gift the sultan gave you at the Badi Palace – the ring. It was recovered from al-Seddik’s house. His Excellency says it was given to you as a measure of the sultan’s friendship, and must therefore remain with you. Finally, there are the ducats you left in your chamber at Adolfo Sykes’s house. I understand Connell’s men would not return to the place where they had taken the bodies of the old woman and the two children. They thought it unlucky. One of them protested – before he died – that he was a warrior, not a common looter.’
‘Is that what’s happened to al-Seddik’s janissaries – all dead? Even the new apprentices from the Righteous?’
De Lisle looks troubled. ‘His Excellency has not seen fit to tell me. But conspiracy is a dangerous sport here, Dr Shelby. Even more so than in England or France. If you cross them, the Moors have little truck with mercy. Play the game of treason with them, and it’s wise to make sure you win.’
Yaxley was right. It takes hours to warp the Marion out of Safi harbour. Under a brilliant blue sky and a breeze that barely ruffles the hair, two of her boats row ahead, paying out a cable with the small kedge anchor attached. When the cable is extended, the anchor is dropped to the bottom of the bay. Then the ship’s crew toils on the capstan to haul her up to the anchor. The process is repeated, cable-length by cable-length, so often that Nicholas loses count. Eventually the boats’ crews are dropping the kedge into ten fathoms of water and the Kechla has faded to a pale smudge against the scrub and olive trees. Even the ramparts of the Kasar el Bahr on the waterfront lose their outline, becoming little more than a thin line of sandstone dancing in the heat above the surf.
And then the wind stiffens a little. The long pennants hanging limply from the mastheads begin to dance, and the sea lifts in long, slow heaves beneath the Marion’s keel. Captain Yaxley gives the order to make sail. As the crew race into the rigging above his head, Nicholas feels once again the self-conscious embarrassment of the inept thrown amongst the skilful. He allows himself the excuse of his healing bruises to sit quietly by the stern rail.
He has had time during the long haul out of the harbour to take the measure of the Marion. She is smaller than the Righteous, sleeker, with a low, gracefully sweeping prow and a high, raked sterncastle. She carries four cannon a side. He couldn’t be in a better ship, he thinks. All she needs now is a good southerly wind to fill her sails.
He is still counting his good fortune when he hears cries from aloft, attracting Yaxley’s attention.
Looking up, Nicholas sees several hands perched high in the rigging, pointing in the direction of the headland that Cathal Connell had told him was the Rass Lafaa, the Head of the Snake. He turns in the direction indicated by the outstretched arms.
Low against the glittering wave tops, a dark shape is moving across their path, faster than this breeze should be able to carry a ship. Then Nicholas sees the silver, rhythmic glint of foam marking the sweep of a bank of oars as they strike the water in unison.
‘It’s the Moor corsair,’ Yaxley says, confirming Nicholas’s fears. ‘I think he means to come down upon us.’ He looks at Nicholas, his grey eyes searching for an answer.
‘It’s Connell,’ Nicholas admits, sensing a lifting of the hairs on the back of his neck that has nothing to do with the breeze. ‘It’s me he’s after. He has friends in England who will go to the scaffold if I live to reach home. We can fight him off, though, can we not?’
Yaxley gives him a troubled look. ‘With a better wind, aye. But at present we’ve precious little way on us. We can’t manoeuvre. He’ll be able to keep out of range of the culverins, then cross our stern. All he has to do then is rake us with his bow-chaser cannon until we’re a hulk and half of us dead. When he’s ready, he’ll close and board us.’
‘Surely we have some defence against that?’
‘Only the rabinet,’ Yaxley says, indicating a light cannon set upon a swivel-iron near the stern. ‘A charge of hail-shot from that will clear them off. But they’re not fools. They won’t risk boarding until that’s battered down. It doesn’t have the range of their bow-chaser.’
‘Can we not fly a signal, tell the Kasar el Bahr that we’re in danger?’
‘We can barely see it from here, Dr Shelby. Besides, we’re all but out of ran
ge of their ordnance. The Moors are good gunners, but no one can carry a shot further than the God Lord means it to fly.’
‘How long do we have, Captain Yaxley?’
‘Less than an hour, I’d imagine. She was out of the water for careening – that’s why she was on the beach. Her hull will be clean of weeds and barnacles, so she’ll cleave the water all the faster. So you’d best get down on your knees, Dr Shelby, and beg the Almighty to fill His lungs and start blowin’.’
No sooner are the words out of Yaxley’s mouth than the pennants fluttering from the mastheads fall limply, like accusing fingers pointing down towards the deck. The newly set canvas hangs sullenly from the yards, fractiously banging against the masts until eventually all movement ceases.
The Almighty, it seems, has other things to do today than blow.
Sometimes the corsair is visible from Nicholas’s vantage point beside Yaxley, sometimes not. The slight swell, or the glare of the sun on the water, can erase it for minutes at a time. On one occasion it vanishes long enough for Nicholas to hope a sudden catastrophe has swallowed it up. But always it returns, a little larger, a little clearer. By the sandglass next to the compass box, Nicholas can see that half an hour has passed since the first shout from the rigging. The corsair is now some five cable lengths off the Marion’s beam, just out of effective range of her armament, manoeuvring to come up from astern – a wolf stalking an exhausted, limping hind.
And still there is no wind. The Marion has barely shortened the distance to the Rass Lafaa.
Yaxley orders the sternmost culverin to try its luck with a ranging shot. The concussion feels like a blow against Nicholas’s chest. In the still air, the choking smoke drifts slowly towards the bow, filling Nicholas’s throat with the acrid, devil-stink of burnt black-powder. The splash of the landing shot rises out of the sea neatly abeam the corsair, but fifty yards or more from the swaying rank of oars.
‘The bastard’s canny,’ Yaxley says. ‘He knows we haven’t enough way on us to turn the culverins on him, once he’s clear of our quarter. If we’re not careful, we’re goin’ to get well and truly bit in the arse, Dr Shelby.’
Yaxley orders the helm put hard over, trying to swing the Marion and keep her beam-on to the corsair. But in the calm air and sluggish sea, she merely takes up a crabwise drift.
Now Nicholas can see his enemy clearly. Her oars sweep with a disciplined rhythm, powered by manacled slaves who know that to falter is to invite the lash, or worse. She is a weapon powered not by the sinew of a bowstring or the flame of igniting powder, but by human effort. He sees the janissaries, clad in mail jerkins and helmets, waiting to hurl their grapples against the Marion’s stern. And he sees Cathal Connell in her prow, his salt-scoured face grinning like the Devil’s dancing monkey.
‘Cast me adrift, Captain Yaxley,’ Nicholas says. ‘It’s me they want.’
Yaxley’s face seems unnaturally calm, given the circumstances. He seems not to have heard what Nicholas has said. Instead, he draws his sword and waves it aloft. ‘Load the rabinet!’ he shouts. ‘Hail-shot – two canisters! All hands muster on the sterncastle to deny boarders!’
It dawns on Nicholas that when a man has watched a wave the size of a small mountain break over his vessel and has lived to emerge on the other side, a battle is not lost until God says it is.
The rabinet’s crew load the barrel of the swivel-gun with wadding, powder-bag and two cloth balls containing the hail-shot. Nicholas has seen its effect in the Low Countries: a spraying blast of musket balls that can sweep away men as a thunderstorm can flatten a field of Suffolk wheat. But now, looking at the corsair as she closes, he can see the gun crew crouching by the bow-chaser cannon in her prow. Its heavy shot will soon smash the stern of the Marion, destroying the rabinet before it can be effective.
‘Captain Yaxley, lower one of your skiffs,’ Nicholas shouts, at last accepting the hand misfortune has dealt him, knowing the card he’s turned is the one with the skeletal horseman on it. ‘It’s me he wants. If you set me adrift, Connell will have his prize. If you don’t, he’ll slaughter every last one of us. I’ve seen what he can do.’
Yaxley seems torn. His eyes dart from Nicholas to the approaching galley and back again. He seems to be gauging whether his conscience can stomach the knowledge of what will happen to Nicholas if he agrees. With a frown of regret, he calls to the main-deck, ‘Lower away the skiff!’
A murmur of approval from one or two of the crew puts the seal upon Nicholas’s growing sense of abandonment. He has never felt so alone in his life, not even after Eleanor’s death. To be set adrift, certain to fall into Connell’s hands, brings fear enough. But to lose all hope of seeing Bianca again – just when it seemed he was free – threatens to turn him from a man into a distraught, howling child. It takes all his will to stay on his feet.
‘God Himself knows I wish there was another way, Dr Shelby,’ Yaxley says, staring at the deck planks, no longer able to look Nicholas in the eye. ‘But I must think of my men.’
‘It’s the right thing to do, Captain Yaxley. There is no fault to be laid at your door.’
‘Do you know how to use a wheel-lock pistol, Dr Shelby?’ Yaxley asks, drawing one from his belt and offering it to Nicholas.
As a lad, Nicholas had often gone wildfowling with his father’s old matchlock in the marshes around Barnthorpe. And in Holland he learned how to use a modern wheel-lock from the Protestant mercenaries he’d served with. He nods.
‘Then take this. All you have to do is cock the dog-head. Don’t get it wet climbing into the skiff.’
Nicholas understands immediately the implication behind Yaxley’s offer. It has nothing whatsoever to do with killing Connell, but everything to do with saving Nicholas from whatever Connell has in store for him.
Taking the pistol, Nicholas imagines the walk from the sterncastle, down the ladder to the main-deck and to the skiff, already being unlashed from its place aft of the mainmast. He does this because he knows that when he embarks upon the short journey for real, his legs will resist. He will have to force himself to move. Seeing the action in his mind might overcome the overwhelming desire to stay rooted to the spot.
He imagines Bianca waiting for him on the main-deck, her hand outstretched, her amber eyes smiling, the faint breeze ruffling those heavy, dark waves of hair. He sees her clearly. Almost as though she’s here, on the Marion. Maybe Ned and the other Banksiders were right – perhaps she really can turn herself into a creature of the air and travel over land and sea to be with him when he has most need of her. He smiles. It will be easier, he thinks, to face what is to come with her beside him. He closes his eyes, the better to see her image.
From somewhere far beyond the lonely centre of his thoughts, he senses – rather than hears – a distant clap of thunder, sharp and brief. He opens his eyes. A moment later he hears the rushing sound of wind like the passage of powerful wings through the air. A tall waterspout bursts out of the ocean barely twenty yards in front of the oncoming corsair galley, hanging like a cloud, before slowly decaying back into the water.
They’ve opened fire upon us, Nicholas thinks. It’s begun.
But he’s faced bombardment by cannon in the Low Countries. At this range, the corsair’s bow-chaser could not have missed. The shot would have smashed into the narrow, high stern of the Marion almost below where he’s standing, sending wicked splinters of timber ripping in all directions. The noise of the cannon’s discharge should have been a hundred times louder.
Was it a misfire? he wonders. Did the powder only partially ignite, hurling the heavy iron ball barely a quarter of the required distance?
Nicholas is still pondering these questions when two more dull explosions reach his ears, followed moments later by more rushing wings, and two more waterspouts rising from the surface of the sea – one astern of the galley, the other on her seaward beam.
It takes him a moment to realize what’s happened: the guns of the Kasar el Bahr have opened fire on t
he corsair.
But how has the shot reached this far? he wonders, stupefied. The fort on the quayside is all but out of range. Yaxley had told him so when the corsair was first sighted.
And then Robert Cecil decides to have the last word. For what he thinks must be the very first time, Nicholas is actually glad to hear his conversation with Cecil in his head. We send Sultan al-Mansur new matchlock muskets… In payment he sends us saltpetre… so that we can out-charge Spanish cannon…
Yaxley grins like a man making the greatest wager of his life. ‘Looks like you have friends ashore, Dr Shelby. You’d best pray they have their eye in, or we’ll be tinder, too.’
Nicholas cannot stop one short bark of laughter escaping his mouth. He has an image of the taciturn al-Annuri, warned by a lookout somewhere on the Rass Lafaa, stalking the ramparts of the Kasar el Bahr in his gown of white silk, berating the gunners to improve their aim. For he is now certain that these three balls were but ranging shots, to get the gunners properly sighted. And it is fine-quality Moroccan saltpetre that has carried them this far.
The master of the corsair has realized it, too. Astern of the Marion, the galley tries to turn away seawards, to get out of range. The bellowing of the officers reaches Nicholas clearly across a hundred yards of ocean.
But her oarsmen have given their all, in the dash to close on their victim. Muscles that have laboured for the past three-quarters of an hour have no more strength to give. The power that a moment before had made the corsair a predator is now spent. She tries desperately to turn away from what all aboard both vessels know is coming.
There are eight cannon on the ramparts of the Kasar el Bahr, Nicholas recalls. Eight royale cannon – the largest calibre of ordnance. It would take a pair of oxen to move one gun and its carriage. It would take a strong man to lift the forty-two pounds of a single solid iron shot. When the salvo hits, the result will be devastation and death. And at this distance, the Marion is in almost as much danger as the corsair.