The Last Crusaders: Blood Red Sea (10 page)

‘I do not know,’ said Abdul, ‘how men so foolish and ox-like and undiplomatic as yourselves ever survive long enough to breed.’

They were in front of Pedro Deza in less than two hours. They sat on wooden chairs in a lofty stone chamber – still chained at wrist and ankle. Two soldiers stood behind them. In front of them sat a man at a wide desk. He had a narrow, ascetic face, so white that it might have been powdered, and watery fish-eyes that blinked too rarely. He kept himself very still.

‘So,’ he recapitulated. ‘You come ashore under cover of darkness in Cadiz, blue-eyed English Protestants, and from Moorish Africa. English thieves. Your Queen Elizabeth has dealings with the Sultanate of Morocco, does she not? Because both she and Morocco are enemies of Catholic Spain.’

‘I do not know,’ said Nicholas. ‘But I repeat, we are Catholics, we did not come from Moorish Africa but from a sunken galley, and we are not thieves. You have seen our manacle sores and scars. Look.’

Pedro Deza remained quite expressionless. ‘What do you know of Cyprus?’

‘Cyprus?’

‘And of the great sea battle that is to come? The Turk is building new war galleys on the Bosphorus at the rate of three a week. Where will they sail?’

‘I do not know.’

‘Because you are mere humble vagabonds and thieves?’

‘We are no thieves.’

‘You have never stolen? What do you eat – air? Wandering vagabonds like yourselves, mercenaries, spies?’

‘Gentleman adventurers.’

Deza smiled. It was not a reassuring smile. ‘You tell me you have never stolen?’

Nicholas shrugged. ‘In the back streets of Algiers, when we fled through the alleyways with the manacles still on our wrists. Just like now. Yes, we stole.’

‘You escaped from the jail in Algiers? This is impossible.’

‘Not if you know how. We escaped three times.’

Deza laughed. A thin sound, more like a cough.

Nicholas said, ‘The first time we filed through the bars. The second time we started a fire. The third time we faked that we had a noisome fever. We rubbed our faces with plaster dust, played the delirious madmen.’

‘Then you were recaptured and put on the galleys? How long did you slave?’

‘Time is not counted there. But in all, it seems – two years.’

‘Two years a prisoner or a galley slave. And you are still alive, and not maddened?’

‘I wouldn’t say not maddened,’ said Nicholas drily. ‘But we still have a shred of reason in us. We had many adventures. Yet all we wanted to do after Malta was get home to England. I have an estate there, but it is in the hands of—’

‘You were at Malta?’

‘Six years ago. We were.’

Deza drummed his elegant fingers. He was getting impatient. ‘Now that caps your tall tale,
Inglés
. Only heroes were at Malta six years ago. The Knights of St John. It was the greatest, most heroic siege in history. And you tell me you were there. You fought there?’

‘We did.’

‘I have been to Malta. You lie.’

‘I do not lie.’

Deza leaned forward. ‘Be very careful what you claim, my friend. If you lie to Pedro Deza, he will find you out, as he has found out ten thousand before you. In the dungeons below there are machines that can break every bone in your hands and your feet. Crack them into shards like a nutshell under a hammer, and ensure you are still in your senses, though voiceless from screaming with pain.’

‘I don’t doubt that your machines are very efficient.’

Pedro Deza sat back. ‘So. Tell me about Malta.’

Nicholas looked sidelong at Hodge, then cleared his throat. Then he told Pedro Deza about Malta.

At first Deza took notes. After a while he laid down his pen and just listened. A long time later, he sat and stared in silence.

‘Truly,’ was all he said, shaking his head very slowly. ‘Truly.’

At last he stood. ‘
Inglés
, your tale is persuasive. But tell me this. Why did you ask your cellmate, Abdul, if he could get you back to Algiers?’

‘I did not!’

‘He tells me you did.’

‘That double-crossing bastard,’ cried Hodge, rising from his chair until cuffed heavily from behind.

‘Below with them,’ said Pedro Deza.

They began with a beating, the soldiers wearing heavy leather gauntlets, Nicholas and Hodge roped to the wall, naked but for loincloths.

‘There is no plan,’ said Nicholas yet again, hearing his words bubble malformed through the blood in his mouth. He spat. He had learned long ago that nothing makes you sicker than swallowing your own blood.

‘We had no plan,’ he said more clearly. ‘We are no spies, no allies of the Moors. You know as well as I that the word of that Abdul of Tripoli is worth less than a beggar’s purse. In the square here I saw a girl being beaten by two soldiers in armour, with pikes.’

‘Chivalry indeed,’ said Deza. ‘But it is only when such a treacherous people as those Moriscos are driven from Spain that our kingdom will be safe. Not until.’

‘Kingdoms and policy,’ said Nicholas. ‘These are not my interests. I saw a girl being beaten.’

‘A Morisco girl. An unbeliever, a Christ-denier and devil worshipper. These Moors are the enemy within. Their souls are dark, their very blood is dirty. And you went to her aid. A dirty Moorish whore.’

‘No whore. But your mother was.’

Not a wise thing to say. Hodge bowed his head and closed his eyes. Nicholas had often been unwise. Deza raised an eyebrow and the soldier hit him hard with a bunched fist. He managed to pull back a fraction as the fist connected, softening the blow. But only a little. It hurt very much. He drew himself back from the pain, as
Stanley and Smith had taught him. The pain was very great, but it was there, look, there, in his left eye, his nose, his jaw, throbbing in his ribs and his belly. But he was not there. He, Nicholas, was here, safe and deep inside the bone cave of his skull, looking out. Aware of that pain there, but not part of it. Unaffected by it. He was somewhere else, something other.

When he came to his full senses again, Pedro Deza was standing in front of him holding something bright and gleaming.

‘And this?’ he said. ‘Concealed in the ingenious belt that held your britches up?’

It was the diamond necklace.

Nicholas could not help but smile as he told the truth. ‘I took it from the treasure chest of a corsair captain as his galley was sinking.’

‘You have a romantic imagination,’ said Deza. ‘But I think you were carrying it to pay for a large shipment of arms and munitions from Africa to the Spanish coast, to help England’s Moriscos allies.’

‘You have a fine imagination too, kind sir,’ said Nicholas. ‘It’s a fake.’

The jester was quite unbroken.

One of the soldiers asked about the machines. Deza considered briefly and then shook his head. ‘It is enough for today. Throw them back in the cells.’

The machines tomorrow, perhaps. But there was much here he did not understand. Though all they had told him so far was mere fairy tale, and the diamond necklace looked real and was damning evidence, yet Pedro Deza had been interrogating men long enough to know the liar from the truth-teller. And in this one’s quiet and steady voice, to his puzzlement, he heard nothing but truthfulness.

They were unmanacled and shoved through the barred door. They lay on the floor of the cell, trying not to move. Everything throbbed. There was no Abdul.

‘I will meet him again, I swear,’ said Hodge. ‘And when I do—’

‘I wonder,’ said Nicholas. His mouth was so swollen his voice sounded strange and slurred to him.

‘Wonder what?’

‘If he really told Deza such lies. Or if Deza himself was inventing. He is more cunning than a fox.’

Hodge breathed out. ‘I hate lies.’

Nicholas started to feel about, and to his surprise found the stub of candle still set in its own melted wax on the stone flags.

‘Strange,’ he muttered.

In the blackness he could feel a trail of candlewax leading away from the source into a far corner. Yet the floor did not slope.

He followed the little ridge of hardened wax until his fingers encountered a hole in the far corner, and within, his fingers closed on . . . a fire-steel.

With the candle lit, he explored again, and in the same shadowy hole, barely large enough for a mouse, he found something else.

‘What?’ said Hodge, voice tight.

Nicholas turned back and smiled as well as his face would allow. ‘If this was a romance, it would be a key, or a bag of food at least. But this is no romance, it’s the life of mortal men. So instead what we have here is’ – he held up a tiny bottle, barely longer than his forefinger, popped out the cork and sniffed – ‘what smells like truly filthy Spanish grape spirit.’

They took turns pouring it down their throats. It tasted even worse than it smelt.

‘Filthy,’ said Hodge. ‘Filthier than Wagg’s cider brandy back home.’ He tipped it back again. ‘Stings like hell too.’

‘I think,’ said Nicholas, when they had finished and sat gasping, eyes watering, throats burning, ‘that Abdul of Tripoli, like all men, is maybe a mix of good and bad.’

Hodge belched and then gasped again. ‘Hell itself doesn’t belch out vapours like that from the lake of fire and brimstone.’

‘Keep away from the candle,’ said Nicholas.

He slept badly, had restless dreams. Once again he was in prison. Only twenty-two and doomed to die, the days and the years running by, time like a smooth evil river. His whole life would waste away in manacles, in jail or on a stinking galley. The sun came up and went down in the beautiful sky, white birds flying, wings translucent in the sun. Girls singing, combing their hair, the warm wine of life . . . And here they lay, he and Hodge, rotting in another filthy dungeon. He dreamed there was a black monk in the cell
with them, and the black monk was really Death. He raised his skeletal hands to bless them.
Vivite
, he said.
Venio
.

Live. I am coming.

He stirred. The cell was still dark but somehow he knew it was day, and there was someone with them. Not in the cell, but just outside the door. Someone rattling the bars.

‘Wake up, idlers and fools. Move yourselves!’ A girl’s voice, whispering harshly.

His eyes were clotted. He rubbed them and stared. It was Maria, from the wine shop. Maria de l’Adoracion.

‘You!’

‘Over here, fool. Unless you want me to throw you food like a dog.’

‘You brought us food?’

‘The more fool I for doing so.’

‘How did you get in?’

‘Persuaded the jailer.’

‘How?’

‘How do women usually . . . oh, do not ask. Here. Bread. Watered wine in here. Some almonds and some oranges. It stinks in there.’

‘The lack of privies is a disgrace, in a tavern of this quality. We will complain to the landlord.’

‘You are such fools. Look at your faces.’

‘We cannot. No looking glasses either. A disgrace.’

He and Hodge slurped from the flask of watered wine.

‘You look terrible,’ said Maria. ‘So they are beating you?’

‘With enthusiasm. Can you help us?’

‘I? Don’t be ridiculous. You are in the dungeons of Pedro Deza. Pedro Deza is the Chancellor of Granada. He has personal audiences with King Philip himself. You have made an enemy of a very powerful man.’

She could have wept but she held herself. Soon they would be put to the torture, these two. Then they would either die, or emerge trembling into the daylight in another day or two, speechless, tongueless, and crippled for life. She had seen it before. Yet they still joked. Englishmen and fools. But she did not weep. Let them be ignorant of it a few more hours.

Nicholas chewed on the bread as best he could.

‘Your lip is bleeding.’

‘One kiss from you, and—’

She pulled a face of genuine disgust. ‘Kiss a dying man through the bars of a dungeon door!’

‘You are cruel.’

‘Cruel but fair,’ she said.

Nicholas couldn’t help but laugh.

‘And all for the sake of a Morisco girl, so I hear,’ she said. ‘What possessed you?’

He shrugged. ‘It seemed right at the time.’

‘You are a fool.’

‘Surely you mean a great and chivalrous hero, and conqueror of your beating heart?’

Then she seized his arm through the bars and held him urgently. ‘Do anything that they ask. Co-operate with Pedro Deza.’

‘Turn traitor?’

‘Just survive,’ she whispered. ‘Just survive.’

Then she was gone.

The hours of waiting were a torment, though they tried to remain calm. Both had a terrible sense of foreboding about today.

Then keys were rattling in the locks, and they were dragged out of the cell and along the passageway to a heavy wooden door studded with black nails. They heard the voice of Pedro Deza behind them.

‘Today, my English friends, we will hear the truth.’

‘You have heard the truth,’ said Nicholas. He could hear the pleading in his own voice, and despised himself for it. Yet he was very afraid now. Afraid of the excruciating pain of torture, but more of the way it sent a man mad, never to be sane again.

The door swung open and they gasped. Within was a large, high-arched chamber, brightly lit with twenty or thirty flaming torches all around the walls. There was a table set with a jug and some beakers of coloured glass, and arranged in a rough circle, a number of machines comprised of strong wooden beams, ropes, manacles, weights and metal bars with their ends hammered into hooks and
claws. High up on the wall at the far end of the chamber was a large wooden crucifix. Christ’s eyes were raised to heaven.

Both of them were pleading now, saying Please, please. Trying to keep their voices calm, as befits men, but desperate and afraid. Please, we have told you everything. Please, this is not needed. Please.

They were strapped into seats with rapid efficiency, and Nicholas found his right arm laid on to a thick oak board, manacled tight down. His fingers were splayed around some nails.

Above his hand hovered a long wooden arm with a lead weight at the end of it.

‘Please,’ he said again. ‘Let us talk.’

‘Let me show you this first,’ said Pedro Deza. He ordered the torturer to unlock his arm again.