Song of the Legions (33 page)

“Blumer, my friend,” Hassan said in Russian, producing a flask of vodka, “these are your men? You lead them?”

I shook my head and pointed to Tanski. “He leads us.”

Hassan grimaced and looked affronted. “No? The pretty one? Why, he is but your flag-bearer, Blumer! Surely? Ah, but when I look at him close, he has a killer’s eyes! Like a hawk.”

Of course Tanski could hear every word of this exchange, but Hassan spoke as if he was not there, for he would only deign to converse with me. It must have been some protocol amongst the Janissaries.

Hassan cast his eyes over us as if appraising horses.

“So we have the lion, the hawk, and this one – (he indicated Sierawski) – this one is the fox! The cunning one! The three of you – the strong, the skilful, the cunning – you are like the Trinity of the Christians! And as for the fourth – you even have a Jew returned from the dead – he wears the mark of the scaffold on his neck, does he not?”

Hassan indicated his own neck, which was also scarred with rope burns, and laughed, and Birnbaum grew pale and fretted at his musket. I stilled him with a glance, and Hassan saw this with his good eye, and winked at me.

“Ah,” he said, “my men are good, but my officers are dust! I should say they are women, but women fight harder than they do! Turkish officers are eunuchs and catamites, worse than women. What I would give for officers such as you! Trained men, hard men, white warriors, like me!” and he thumped his chest, belched, and sighed. Beside him the Vizier began to importune, and cajole, and the two of them fell to bickering in their impenetrable tongue, which sounds like snakes and daggers. As the argument became heated, the Vizier made the palms-out, money-grubbing gesture.

“My friend, the Sultan’s man,” Hassan explained, “wants you to pay a toll if you want to reach The City.” By this he meant Constantinople, which the Turks call by many names, but mostly it is referred to simply as ‘The City.’

“What toll?” I said, suspiciously, for Hassan had already told me that Dabrowski had arranged for him to be paid.

Hassan smiled. “The Vizier says you must forfeit all your horses, guns, and swords. This, he says, is the Sultan’s law. What say you, Blumer? Will you stand for this insult?” Hassan grinned, and made a secret sign to me. Drastic action was called for. I took a chance. With that I leaned forward and slapped the Vizier full in the face. The blow sounded loud as a gunshot. The Vizier fainted dead away, blood pouring from his mouth. Two of the Nubians carried him out. Hassan spat and a slave caught the spittle in a silver salver before it hit the carpet. I held my breath. No one moved. Hassan did not bat an eyelid. My comrades stared at me, aghast. Hassan’s men began to reach for their weapons and Hassan stilled them with a wave of his hand.

“That was well done, Blumer,” Hassan observed, blandly. “My friend the Vizier insulted you, my dear guests, and he has dishonoured me. I apologise to you, Blumer, and I apologise to your men,” Hassan bowed to me, quite delighted by what I had done. Breathing a great sigh of relief, I bowed in return from where I sat.

“Apology accepted, Your Excellency,” I shrugged.

“You do me much honour,” he inclined his head. “As you see, Blumer – we Janissaries rule in Turkey,” Hassan grinned, tapping his antique pistol, with a hilt chased in silver and studded with jewels, “and not the Sultan’s eunuchs. It is good to be a Janissary.”

“That,” I said, “seems to be very clear.”

Hassan laughed again and a slave poured my coffee. What he said next astounded us.

“Tell me, what news of Pepi?” he asked, as if we were sitting in Madame L’s salon, back in Warsaw, and not in this Godforsaken fly-blown hole.

“The last I heard,” I replied, “the Prince was living in exile. You know him, your Excellency?”

“Know him!” Hassan laughed, pointing at his scarred face and jewelled eye patch, “why, he took my eye, at the Siege of Sabbatch! Ah, good old Pepi! What a warrior! Tell me, will he join your Legion?”

I shrugged. “If God wills it.”

At this, the Arab exploded with laughter and slapped his knees with his heavy, ringed hands. He asked me of the wars, the Uprising, of the Commander, of our adventures, of Poland, and of the fall. We talked long, and smoked the tobacco in the water pipe down to the ashes. It was now or never, or we should be sitting by this harbour until doomsday, with this evil old fellow.

“The tide turns,” I said, pointing to the water. “We must take ship, Your Excellency.”

“Go with God, Blumer,” Hassan said, and we all stood, our stiff knees shooting out a volley of cracks. “My man will take you to your ship – pride of the Turkish navy.”

After thanking our strange benefactor, we took our leave as fast as we could. Beside the road the Janissaries lounged in the sun like dogs, with the hawkers and peddlers circling them like flies. Hassan clapped a huge hand on my shoulder.

“Fight for me, Blumer,” he cackled, making the money gesture, palms out. “Much gold!”

I laughed, for I was flattered, but not tempted.

“I’ll think about it, Excellency.”

Hassan watched us go through hooded eyes.

“I will see you in The City yet, Blumer, my son! Go with God!”

“Go with God? We will both go to the Devil, you and I!” I replied, and grinned, as I climbed onto my horse.

“These are damn strange sailors,” I said sceptically, staring at the mass of crabs crawling across the deck. One of them began snapping at my boot and I flipped it over on its back. “I don’t think the English Navy has much to worry about,” I added.

“This is no battleship!” Sierawski said, needlessly, “this is a bleeding fishing boat!”

“Thank God we have an expert engineer to advise us on these matters,” Tanski said sarcastically. He was breathing heavily and leaning on his lance, and appeared unwell. “What do you think, Birnbaum?”

Birnbaum stared at the mass of crabs. There were crabs writhing in pots, wriggling in great baskets, clacking their claws in nets, crawling in buckets of water, and scuttling sideways across the decks. There were loose crabs battling vainly with predatory seagulls. Here and there a lucky fugitive crab would escape, and abandon ship, dropping over the side and hitting the water with a plop. Their pink, red and yellow shells shone wetly in the sun. Above all the rest, an astonishing, overpowering stink of fish assailed our nostrils.

“This ship,” Birnbaum said wryly, “is not kosher.”

Pride of the Turkish navy, my horse’s sainted arse! You will have divined, as we did, that this was a mere crab ship. Old Hassan had no doubt pocketed the excess fare, and substituted this cheaper vessel. Instead of an escort of marines and sailors, a dozen raddled and tattooed old fishermen worked the sails and oars.

Still, we met another group of Polish lads on the way, about a dozen, and it was good to swell our numbers for once. Our masters had been bilked and shortchanged by Hassan, but at least we had not been robbed blind and stripped naked by the rapacious Vizier. No doubt, as soon as he had our weapons, we should have found ourselves auctioned off in the slave markets of Constantinople!

The boat itself was of a fine enough aspect, if one overlooked the cargo of crabs, and held one’s nose against the stench of fish. It was similar to a galley – a long, slim brig, of a type they called a chebec. It had a long narrow hull, like a lance, and was fitted with both oars and sails. It had two large triangular sails at the front, and one small sail on the rear deck, which was a raised box, like a wooden castle. A castle piled high with baskets of writhing crabs for battlements, of course. These chebecs, we discovered later, were coastal craft. Fast and manouevrable, but vulnerable on the open ocean, and prey to bad weather. More of that anon, for it was almost our undoing. None of us knew anything of ships at the time, and there was naught to be done about it.

Our horses liked this not, so we held czapkas and blinkers over their eyes, and dragged them aboard. Some would not budge, and had to be winched aboard with block and tackle, and slings under their bellies. We watched anxiously as the poor frightened horses took wing like birds, hoisted up into the sky, and were deposited, whining piteously, on the deck. The horses were not enamoured of the crabs. They sniffed suspiciously at them, and the angry crabs nipped at their noses with their pincers. So the horses huddled together at one end of the deck, and the great wooden yard yawed and heaved unsteadily. Greatly alarmed by this, for the sea was as calm as a millpond, I spoke to the crew. It was hard to make myself understood, but eventually I did. As the boat set off, I had the men and the crew spread out the horses, and tether them below the decks, at intervals, as ballast.

Of course, this process took hours of threats, and cajoling, and hard sweat and toil. Eventually, the boat reached a sort of equilibrium, a balance, and steadied herself somewhat. The number of men running to the rail to vomit began to diminish accordingly.

“Damned Turks could have laid on some food,” Tanski muttered, “my stomach hurts like hell, I’m so hungry.”

“What the Devil do you think this is?” I said, grabbing a pair of passing crabs by their heels and slinging them on to a brazier. Unlike the horses, the men were greatly enamoured of the crabs, the Lithuanians amongst us fondly remembering the crayfish of their homeland. Soon the deck was turned into a kitchen, as the men cheerfully boiled buckets of crabs alive. The delicious scent of cooking fish and the sound of cracking shells filled the air, and we ate our fill of the sweet white meats. The sailors were outraged. We were eating their catch.

“We will pay them,” I said curtly. “Pass the hat,” I ordered, filling my hat with worthless coins, brass buttons, and a few old trinkets. All I had left to my name was my mother’s ring, but that would only be taken from my dead body.

“What?” Sierawski moaned, “we have already been robbed once! Are we to robbed again by these Turkish scum? We are armed, and they are not, remember?”

“We are ignorant of seafaring, and they are not,” I replied, “and that is that. Pay up.”

So we paid for our meal, and ate, out on the water. The wind and sun made us ravenous, and we butchered hundreds of crabs, and tossed mounds of spent shells into the sea.

“Not eating, comrade?” I asked Birnbaum.

Birnbaum looked at us with envy. “Not hungry, Sir,” he replied, licking his lips.

“Here,” I said, taking some worm-eaten hard tack and biscuits from my bag. It was about as appetising as a length of ship’s rope, and took as long to boil down, but Birnbaum thanked me graciously, and ate it without complaint. Still, the Jew had the last laugh, for he was the only member of our whole company who did not spend a goodly part of the voyage praying over the ships rail, and giving the contents of his stomach to Neptune and the mermaids as a watery offering.

By the time we crossed the estuary at the mouth of the Danube, and entered the open sea, Tanski had turned a brilliant white, flashing with green, like some exotic fish. He alternated between squatting in the heads and vomiting in a bucket, not even having the strength to lean over the side any more. He was in no fit state to command, not even being master of his own bowels. Arms wrapped over his chest, he lay curled up, head down in a corner, moaning balefully. Sierawski, too, though not as far gone, was devout in his prayers to the mermaids, and swayed on his feet. So at last I was in command again. It was a real case of dead men’s shoes – or rather dead men’s stomachs.

“Look at that English bastard,” Sierawski said, enviously, for I had only vomited once or twice, “seafaring must be in the blood.”

“Polish bastard, if you please,” I said cheerfully, “and my forbears were Irish, not English.”

“Same difference,” Sierawski said, and puked in a bucket.

I alone found the ship invigorating, the swell of the sea, the deck rolling beneath me like a wooden horse. I watched, fascinated, as the sailors climbed the ropes like monkeys, adjusting the sails that grew empty or full-bellied on the wind, as the occasion demanded. As we sailed, I talked to the captain, the mates, the tillerman, even the oarsmen. I had set off from Galatz entirely ignorant of seagoing, but I was learning fast. Because we had paid for our suppers, they were happy to speak to me. They grew garrulous, and boastful, and delighted in showing me the tricks of their trade.

We passed a good few days like this. Many comrades joined in with the crew, hauling ropes, and scaling the rigging. Still, we made poor time, for the water was becalmed, and the breath of the wind fell from a lusty bellows to a feeble whispering breath, such as would scarcely upset the feather in a lady’s hat. So I set a team of the lads to pulling on the oars, both to take their minds off the sickness, and to hurry us along. Besides, the Devil makes work for idle hands.

Abruptly, the crew’s manner changed. They grew anxious, angry, and restive about something. I thought at first that we Poles, in our ignorance, had offended their customs or religion somehow. I racked my brains as the Turkish sailors ran about, yelping like mad angry dogs. Then the storm blew, and a curtain of darkness fell, with driving rain, like a wall of icy daggers. A white light lit up the sky, and there came a roll of thunder so loud that it was as if all the cannons in every battle we had ever fought had been discharged at one stupendous volley. On the coat-tails of the storm came her attendants, the wailing winds, and the driving rains.

We gazed, transfixed, at the sky. Mother of God! Such rain! Such a deluge! Such waves! Such a sea! Oh, the weight of water! To draw a pitcher of it is hard enough, but to be on a boat, struck by hills, mountains of the stuff! The poor slim boat reeled and heeled, pitched and hawed. All manner of things were hurled overboard and lost – weapons, spars, ropes, hats, and several men. They flew through the air before my very eyes, like sparrows. Great strips of the sails were torn off, as a child tears the petals from a flower.

“We are lost!” I heard a cry. “Save yourselves!” Fortunately, I had sent Tanski below decks, for he had been a liability, what with his groaning and his constant voiding of his bowels. The others cowered below decks, or clung as best they could to the deck, the masts, or the rigging, holding on with strength born of terror.

“Sierawski!” I shouted. “Our Lord walked upon the waters, and so can we!” For I saw the root of the problem – these slim chebec ships were too unsteady for these waters. They carried too much weight, too high. It was those damned crabs. Sierawski was losing his footing, and struggling. I grabbed him by the heels as he flew past me, hauling him to his feet like a rag doll, for he is but a slight fellow.

“What desertion is this?” I laughed, “come, Sierawski! To the crab nets! It’s them or us!”

Drawing our daggers, we held them between our teeth. Grabbing a rope, we hauled ourselves bodily across the deck, like mountaineers. She rolled wildy, bucking like a crazy horse. One moment the deck was as flat as a field, the next it was as steep as a hillside. Somehow we made it to the heavy box nets full of crabs. Rain lashed our faces, endless droves of icy arrows. Now the very air had turned to water. As we stood on the deck, waves broke across our bodies, drenching us to the core.

“Cut the ropes, damn you!” I roared, my voice lost in the storm. But Sierawski saw my frantic slashes at the ropes that lashed the boxes to the deck, and he understood. We cut one box free. The ship lurched and it was pitched over the side, snatched from our hands by the greedy ocean, and we very nearly went with it.

“Now the other side!” I cried, for we had to keep her level. We repeated our awful journey to the other side. By now we were thoroughly drenched, our hands red raw. Our lungs heaved, our eyes streamed, our teeth chattered. The stentorian roar of the sea, the angry voice of Neptune, was louder than the sounds of any battle. One after another we cut the heavy cargo of crabs loose, throwing them over the side, first from the left side of the ship, then the right. Soon they were all gone. If the crabs were pleased at their liberation and reprieve, it showed not in their black, beady eyes, as we returned them to the deeps from which they had so recently been abducted.

Thus lightened, the ship ran on a more even keel. It hurtled off, like a cork from a bottle, a flying bullet, or a loosed horse, out of the path of that diabolic storm. Later, we learned that several boats like ours had been lost, with all hands. Thankfully we knew it not then.

“The rocks!” Sierawski wailed. We had been caught between Charybdis and Scylla, for the storm had driven us towards the shore.

“At least we can be buried on land!” I laughed. Huge boulders loomed into view, like enormous teeth. The ship, by some miracle, swept by the rocks, missing them by a hair’s breadth. It hurtled towards a low yellow beach at an alarming rate. Still the ship lurched from side to side. The shipwreck, when it came, was like a bodyblow. Our poor boat, that had been travelling so fast, struck the sandy bank, slewed across it, and ground to a halt. Every timber of the ship rattled right down to its splinters. As if I had been fired from a cannon, I flew. I knew what it was to be a musket ball. When I landed, I was buried in soft yellow earth, praise God. I was utterly exhilarated and elated.

“It was as if all creation turned upside down, on its head, and the world spun on its axis! Still, I have had worse in drink,” I said to Sierawski, elated. For Sierawski and I were lying in the sand, on the beach. All around us were broken barrels and shattered spars and wooden planks. We had been hurled bodily completely from the deck of the ship. It lay beside us on its side, like an exhausted lover.