Crossed Bones (38 page)

‘Chained naked to a bench, rowing twenty hours a day, he was, whipped till he was bloody. All they got to keep ’em going was a bit of bread soaked in wine when the officer went round, just to stop the poor wretches from fainting. A round dozen of them died, and then they flogged ’em just to make sure they was dead and not fakin’ it, and after that they chucked ’em in the drink. He survived three years of that, then he got bought by another master and put to work building some barracks or such outside of Argier. Not much changed, he said: still got flogged day and night, but at least he got to lie down from time to time on something that wasn’t pitchin’ and tossin’ on the brine. He saw some right fearful sights there. Men beaten on the soles of their feet – bastinadoe, they call it, the brutes – till they was black and bloody and never walked aright again. One who tried to escape, he was brought back and dragged behind horses round and round through thorns and rocks till he expired; another was cut up into little pieces while he was still alive – one joint at a time till he died screaming. For they hates and loathes Christendom, these Mahometans; nothing pleases them better than to see a Christian suffer. Another poor bastard got away but killed one of his guards in the process. When they finally caught up with him, he’d have been better off making a fight of it and having them kill him then and there. Poor bugger, he was cast off the city walls till his body caught fast on one of the cruel spikes they had embedded there for that very purpose, and there he hung, pierced through thigh and groin, unable to move up or down, in agony, while crows picked at him and women came and threw stones at him and laughed when they drew blood.’

He paused to draw breath and was about to go on, when Rob said quickly, hoping to bring the subject to a close, ‘Truly, they sound a most savage people.’

‘They are that. For the most part they are barbarous and intemperate, given to violent humours and monstrous appetites.’

Rob turned to find that another man had come to join their conversation and now leaned on the gunwale, cutting off any chance of escape he thought he had had. It was someone he had met, briefly, at the offices of Hardwicke & Buckle, though when this man and Killigrew had begun their more serious discussions Rob had been ushered away into another room. Even in that short time, the man had created an unfavourable impression. Rob couldn’t put his finger on it, for the man was bluff and pleasant enough; yet there was something calculating in his regard. His name was William Marshall, and Rob wondered if he were in some distant way related to Killigrew, for they shared the same narrow features and the same chill blue eyes. But Marshall was an older man than the other, although it might just have been that long exposure to sun and sea had hardened his flesh and burned lines into him which his compatriot lacked.

‘You have travelled extensively among them, sir?’ Rob asked, curious, and keen to draw the conversation along less lurid lines.

‘I have made four or five visits to Barbary and swear each shall be my last,’ the other said, tugging at a knot in his grey beard. ‘The climate is foul and the inhabitants fouler still. But there is money to be made there, and I’d fain make my fortune sooner than later, and have some years left to enjoy it. Aye, even among the scum of Africa, as good Marlowe would have it.’

‘Marlowe?’

Marshall exchanged a mocking glance with the mariner. ‘Can he really know nothing of Kit Marlowe, the finest playwright that ever graced our shores?’

The mariner shrugged. ‘The lad’s young,’ he said fairly, ‘and Marlowe’s been dead and buried longer than he’s lived.’

Marshall sighed. ‘So much for immortality. Give me a pot of gold and the here and now, I say.’ He turned back to Rob, an instructive light in his eye. ‘“The cruel pirates of Argier, that damned train, the scum of Africa” – he had the right of it, did Marlowe. You should make an effort to see one of his pieces when it comes around your way.’ He struck a swashbuckling pose and declaimed in ringing tones:

And with a flourish he skewered Rob upon the point of his invisible blade. ‘Ah, ’twas a fair few seasons past I was on the stage,’ he sighed. ‘Great times; fine times. Oh, how they cheered when Tamburlaine burned the Mahometans’ sacred book and danced upon its ashes!’

‘We don’t have much opportunity for seeing plays down in Cornwall,’ Rob said stiffly. ‘And I’d hope we’d have more respect than to burn a sacred text, even if it were not our own.’

‘Lord save me from ever being consigned to the provinces! No wonder John spends so much of his time up in town. If the women of Cornwall are as self-righteous as you, there can be nothing down there to keep him entertained.’

‘I always heard Will Shakespeare was more favoured than Kit Marlowe,’ the mariner said, eager not to be shut out of the conversation.

Marshall pulled a face. ‘Old Shake-a-stick was as soft as butter: always conniving with whichever faction was in power, and wordy as the day is long. God, some of those monologues. I could never remember my bloody lines, always made my parts up as I went along and tried to get a laugh or two.’

‘There was that there
Titus Andronicus
, though,’ the mariner mused. ‘I enjoyed that mightily.’

‘That was just him trying to catch the general temper of things. He never did it very well,’ Marshall said disparagingly. ‘No, Kit had the right of it when it came to brutality. There’s no touching his Tamburlaine, or the Jew. Though I’ll give Tourneur his due, he had a proper feel for violence; and Kyd had his moments.’

‘Aye, I loved that
Spanish Tragedy
of his,’ said the mariner with relish. ‘But I went to see
The Renegado
last year and left after an hour, it were so dull.’

‘That was Massinger, not Kyd,’ Marshall chided him with all the world-weariness of the connoisseur.

Rob was beginning to feel ever more at sea, in all senses of the term. But he must try to get along with these new comrades, so, ‘I’ve heard there’s a Moor in
Othello
.’

‘Aye,’ said the mariner cheerfully. ‘Black as soot, but he marries a white girl: stands to reason that’s against nature. He gets tricked into believing she’s made the two-backed beast with another man, so he strangles her.’

‘But the poor lass,’ cried Rob; ‘that hardly seems very fair!’

‘Fair?’ Marshall clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Life’s not fair, lad: surely you’ve learned that much in your – what? Twenty years?’

‘Twenty-three,’ Rob corrected.

‘Aye, you’re young enough yet; but old enough too, not to lose your head over a maid.’

Rob’s chin came up dangerously. ‘What do you mean?’

‘John mentioned you have joined our expedition with a mad scheme to save some poor drab taken by the Sallee Rovers?’

‘She’s no drab,’ Rob said hotly.

Now the mariner was agog. ‘Tell on, lad,’ he cried eagerly, ‘for that sounds like a story worth ten of these play-makers’ tales.’

Marshall watched Rob go red to the tips of his ears. ‘Go about your duties, man,’ he told the sailor shortly. ‘This is a subject for the attention of gentlemen alone.’

The mariner cast him a knowing squint. ‘En’t nothing refined about the doings of men and women –
that
much I know. Women are bitches on heat for all their silks and satins; and men but dogs with their pricks up, and there’s an end to it. But if my presence makes ye feel less like
gentlemen
, I’ll leave ye to it.’

Marshall watched the man retreat, then he leaned in towards Rob. ‘I’d give it up, lad, if you’ve any sense. These Turks have rampant appetites, especially where there’s sweet white meat to be had; and they’ll take a boy as hungrily as a girl. The wench’ll be long ruined, and then where’s the point in a gallant gesture? Come along for the ride, that’s fair enough, and if we get lucky and catch a Spanish prize on the way home, you’ll be entitled to your share of the spoils. We sail under the King’s letter of marque: it’ll even be legal. Then you can buy yourself no end of fine fillies and go home a hero.’

‘She’s my fiancée,’ Rob said steadily, gritting his teeth with the effort not to smash the man’s nose flat. ‘I’ve sworn to bring her back or die in the attempt.’

Marshall shrugged. ‘That’s the more likely outcome of the two.’

‘You will take me with you as Sir John agreed?’

‘John has his own reasons, as usual, no doubt in consigning you to me. You can tag along: but don’t expect me to risk my neck for you. It’ll be hazardous enough without having to nursemaid a simpleton.’

Rob frowned. ‘If you’re trading with these people, can’t we just sail into their port?’

The elder man smiled, but the expression didn’t touch his eyes. ‘Nay, lad, far too risky. There are too many factions involved, all at each other’s throats, and a fine British vessel bearing a valuable cargo is a great temptation to every one of them. Since Mansell’s stupid bloody assault on Argier any British ship in these waters is fair game. John Harrison had to put in as far away as Tétouan when he came on his mission earlier this summer and walked five hundred miles across rough country disguised as a Mahometan pilgrim, crazy bastard!’

Rob had no idea who either Mansell or Harrison was, but he nodded as if such things were public knowledge. ‘He made it, then, Harrison?’

‘Oh, aye. He always does. Neck of the devil, that man. Went with the King’s blessing to try to trade free some of the thousand or so English captives held in Sallee, came away, though, with nary a one.’

‘A thousand prisoners?’

Marshall looked at him askance. ‘The Turks have been stealing the poor bastards off merchant ships and fishing vessels for years, and no one’s done a damn thing about it. Not enough money in the Treasury to pay for a decent navy after King James’s extravagances, and his son’s no better with the purse-strings, and of course now we’re at war with Spain again and there’s bigger fish to fry. Harrison’s a bit of a lone adventurer, in it for the glory, though I dare say he’s making a pretty penny on the side with bribes and “fees” and whatnot. But war opens up opportunities for the canny, that’s what I always say.’ And he winked, then took himself off to the galley for a sup, as he put it.

That night Rob tossed and turned. If the King’s agent had been unable to bring the captives away, what chance did he have? It sounded as if he were about to set foot in some region of Hell populated by a legion of monsters and fiends. The prospect frightened him: it was so far removed from his own life at Kenegie, where the worst you were likely to encounter was some poor desperate sheep-thief trying to make off with one of the flock or some travelling mountebank trying to con you out of your wages down at the Dolphin. He had never even learned to wield a sword, though he’d brought one with him; such a skill was rarely called for in rural Cornwall. He could, though, he told himself fiercely, defend himself well enough with fists or a cudgel. And perhaps this man Marshall – who seemed both wily and experienced – might help him to succeed where others had failed. From the little pouch he wore about his neck, Rob took out his grandmother’s ring, the one Cat had pressed back into his hand with the instruction to give it to her again at a better time. And what better time might there be than when he had saved her from the pirates? An eternal optimist, Rob closed his hand around the ring and made himself fall asleep on that thought.

The next day they slipped past Salé in the dark and ran some way up the coast till all the lights of human habitation were passed. Then the ship dropped anchor, and Marshall came and shook Rob awake in his berth. ‘Rub this on your face, wrap your great, pale head in this turban cloth and keep your sword in its scabbard,’ he advised, passing Rob a pot of some acrid-smelling stuff. ‘We need no glint of light betraying us. The area we go into is alive with desperadoes. Take only the barest essentials in a pack you can carry on your back: we will move fast and light.’

And with that he was gone, leaving Rob to do as he was told, his stomach tight. The ash paste felt gritty as he rubbed it into his skin, and the length of turban cloth was stubbornly uncooperative in his clumsy hands, but at last he made his way up on to deck. The first mate and another hand awaited them there and accompanied them in the skiff they lowered, rowing as hard as they could towards a long line of surf running on to a flat black shore. Rob could sense their fear at sculling in towards a land full of devils.

Marshall’s teeth were white in the moonlight as he grimaced at Rob. ‘Putting in is always the worst thing. I hate to get wet.’

The keel crunched on pebbles then, and they were out and running, the water shockingly cold as it penetrated every layer of clothing. Glancing over his shoulder a moment later, Rob saw that the sailors had already turned the skiff hard about and were pulling swiftly away towards the black outline of the ship. There was no going back now. He looked towards the shore of Morocco, a fabled land he had heard of only in the drunken tales of broken-down old sailors in the Penzance inns, who spat and cursed and talked of pirates and heathens.

Marshall was a good distance ahead now, ploughing through the rolling breakers with his head down, his breath soughing as loudly as a pole-axed bull’s. Rob ploughed after him through the white water, blundering from thigh-deep to knee-deep, until he hit harmless rills that barely covered his boots. Then he was on dry land and crunching up the pebble beach behind Marshall, every step a loud advertisement to any murderous fiend who might be waiting for them, just out of sight, among the rocks or distant trees.

A long bar of stones gave way suddenly again to water. ‘God’s body!’ Marshall swore. ‘They’ve put us down on the wrong bloody side of the river! This wretched coastline all looks the same from the sea, not that any of those want-wits could read a chart if they tried. Now we’re as like to bloody drown inland as if they’d thrown us overboard.’