The Pirates of the Levant (7 page)

'You bet they do, to supplement their alms. The cavalcades benefit everyone, including the tradesmen and merchants, because later the Arabs come into town to buy back their loved ones, with money or produce, and the whole city becomes one great bazaar.'

We stopped beside a lean-to made of planks and roofed with palm leaves. At night it provided shelter for the guards at the bridge that connected the town and the fields with the castle of Rozalcazar on the other side of the Ouahran River, and with the castle of San Felipe further inland. The former, Copons told us, had almost completely collapsed and the latter had not yet been fully fortified. For although Oran was famous for its fortresses, it was all show, the town itself having only an old wall with hardly any moat to speak of, no ditches, no stockade, no covered entrance, no parapets and no redoubts. Indeed the town's only real fortifications were the living, breathing bodies of those who had to protect it. As some poet or other had said: our only gunpowder our swords, and our only walls the balls of Spain.

'Could
we
go?' I asked.

Copons glanced at me, then at Captain Alatriste, before looking back at me. 'And where exactly do you want to go he asked with an indifferent air. I adopted a bold, soldierly demeanour and held his gaze without a flicker.

'Where else?' I replied coolly. 'With you, on the cavalcade.

The two veterans again exchanged glances, and Coponrubbed his chin. 'What do you think, Diego?'

My former master studied me thoughtfully, then shrugged. 'A bit of extra money always comes in handy, I suppose.'

Copons agreed. The problem, he said, was that the whole garrison usually wanted to take part in these outings, in order to get a bigger share of the profits.

'Although sometimes,' he added, 'when there are galley crews in town, they do take reinforcements. In fact, you may be in luck, because there's a lot of fever about at the moment brought on by drinking bad water, because there's no shortage of water here, but it's brackish — and a number of people either ill or in hospital. I'll speak to Sergeant Major Biscarrues. He's a Flanders veteran, too, and a countryman of mine. Bu don't say a word. Not a word to anyone.'

He wasn't addressing the Captain when he said this. I returned his gaze — knowingly at first, then reproachfully. Copons stood thinking for a while, then turned to Captain Alatriste.

'The little lad's grown up,' he murmured, 'damn him.'

He looked me up and down, and his eyes lingered on my thumbs looped through my belt, next to my dagger and sword.

I heard the Captain sigh. He did so with a touch of irony, I think, and perhaps some weariness too.

'You don't know the half of it, Sebastian.'

Chapter 3. THE CAVALCADE TO UAD BERRUCH

In the distance, a dog howled. Lying face down among the undergrowth, Diego Alatriste jerked awake. He had been resting his head on his arms, but with the instinct of an old soldier, he suddenly opened his eyes and looked up. He had not slept for long, only a matter of moments, but, like any experienced soldier, he took advantage of every opportunity to rest. In his line of work, you never knew when you might have another chance to sleep or eat or drink. Or empty your bladder. All around him, the slope was dotted with silent, motionless shapes, soldiers making the most of their last opportunity to do just that, rather than have their guts sliced open with their bladder still full. Alatriste unfastened his breeches and did likewise. A man fights best on an empty bladder and an empty belly, that's what his first sergeant in Flanders used to tell them. His name was Don Francisco del Arco, and he had died at Alatriste's side in the dunes of Nieuwpoort, by which time he'd been promoted to Captain. Alatriste had served under him towards the end of the last century, when he was only fifteen, in the war against the Estates General and France, when Amiens was attacked under cover of night and the city was sacked. Now that had been a profitable cavalcade, although the worst came later, when they spent nearly six months besieged by the French.

While he relieved himself, Captain Alatriste gazed up at the sky. He could see the occasional laggardly star, but the grey light of dawn was growing in the east. The bare hills still cast their shadow over the tents and walnut trees, and it wasn't bright enough yet to tell a white thread from a black in the large dried-up riverbed that the guides called Uad Berruch, five leagues from Oran. When he had finished, Alatriste lay down again, having first checked his belt and his weapons, and fastened his buff coat. The latter would weigh on him later, in the heat of the day, when the African, sun was at its highest, but in the dawn chill, he was glad of it. And as soon as the attack began, he would be gladder still of that old buffalo hide, for a knife-thrust was a knife-thrust whether it came from a Moor, a Turk or a Lutheran. He recalled the various places where he had received such blows — eyebrow, forehead, hand, legs, hip, back ... He counted as far as nine if he included the harquebus shot and ten if he counted the burn to his arm. He didn't have room on his body for many more such wounds.

'Damned dog,' someone whispered nearby.

The dog howled again and, shortly afterwards, was joined by another. It would be bad news, thought Alatriste, if they had scented the presence of the marauders and were alerting the people sleeping in the encampment. He reckoned the group on the opposite side of the riverbed would be in position by now, keeping their horses well back, in case their whinnying spoiled the surprise. Two hundred men on that side and the same number on this, including fifty
mogataces —
more them enough to take on the three hundred or so Arabs, including women, children and the old, who were camped there with their animals, asleep and unaware of what awaited them.

He had been given the background the previous evening in Oran, when the order had come to get ready. He had found out more details during the six-hour march through the night, guided by
mogataz
scouts. They had marched hard, first in ranks and then in single file, down the Tlemcen road, along the riverbank, and then on past the lake, the house of the local marabout, the well and the fields, after which they headed west, skirting the hills before dividing into two groups to wait in silent ambush for dawn to break.

According to what he had been told, the people in the encampment belonged to the Beni Gurriaran tribe, who were considered by the Spanish garrison to be peaceful Moors. The agreement was that the garrison would protect them against other hostile Berber tribes in exchange for agreed quantities of wheat, barley and livestock to be handed over every year on predetermined dates. However, last year, the wheat and barley harvest had been late and the contribution rather sparse — a third of it was still owing to the garrison — and now the Moors were trying to avoid handing over the livestock that had been due in the spring. They still had not done so, and rumour had it that the people of Beni Gurriaran were preparing to move somewhere far from Uad Berruch, beyond the reach of the Spanish.

'So we're going to catch them napping,' Sergeant Major Biscarrues had said, 'before they can even say knife.'

Sergeant Major Biscarrues was from Aragon; he had seen long service as a soldier and had the confidence of the governor of Oran. He was a typical denizen of those North African towns: as hard as nails, his tanned skin parched and lined by the sun, the dust and by a life spent fighting, first in Flanders and latterly in Africa — with the sea at his back, the King in far-off Spain, God preoccupied with other matters, and the Moors only a sword's length away. He commanded a troop of soldiers whose one hope was to win some booty, and he carried out his job with due rigour, for these men of his were dangerous, potential deserters, fodder for the gallows and the galleys, and as ready to mutiny as they were to kill each other. He was, in short, a cruel but approachable bastard, and no more venal than most. That, at least, was how Sebastian Copons had described Biscarrues before we met himon that first evening.

The meeting had taken place in a small barracks in kasbah, where we found him bent over a map spread out the table, each of the map's four corners weighted down, respectively, by a jug of wine, a candlestick, a dagger and a small pistol. With him were two other men: a tall Moor with a white cloak over his shoulders, and a thin, dark individual dressed in Spanish fashion, clean-shaven and with a prominent nose.

'With your permission, Sergeant Major, may I introduce my friend Diego Alatriste, a fellow veteran of Flanders no deployed on the galleys in Naples. Diego, this is Don Lorer Biscarrues. These two men are Mustafa Chauni, the chief our
mogataces,
and Aron Cansino, our interpreter.'

'Flanders, eh?' The sergeant major eyed Alatriste curiously. 'Amiens? Ostend?'

'Both.'

'A lot of rain has fallen since then. At least in Flanders, those damned heretics. There hasn't been a drop here f months.'

They chatted for a while, discussing comrades they had ' common, both alive and dead. Finally, Copons explained present situation and obtained the sergeant major's permission for us to join the cavalcade, while Alatriste studied both him and the other two men. The
mogataz
was an Ulad-Gale whose tribe had served Spain for three generations. In appearance he was typical of such men: grey-bearded and swarthy complexioned; he wore slippers, a curved dagger at his waist, and his head was entirely shaved apart from the small tuft that some Moors left so that, if their head was cut off  in battle, an enemy would not have to stick his fingers in the decapitated head's mouth or eyes in order to carry it off as a trophy. He led the harka of one hundred and fifty warriors chosen from among his tribe or family — which, in those parts, amounted to the same thing. They lived with their wives and children in the village of Ifre and nearby encampments. As long as those men were assured of pay and booty, they were prepared to fight under the St Andrew's cross with a courage and loyalty one would like to have seen in many subjects of the Catholic King.

As for the other man, it came as no surprise to Alatriste that a Jew should act as interpreter in the town, for although the Jews had been expelled from Spain, their presence was tolerated in the Spanish enclaves in North Africa for reasons to do with commerce, money and their mastery of the Arabic language. As he found out later, among the twenty or so families living in the Jewish quarter, the Cansinos had been trusted interpreters since the middle of the last century, and even though they observed Mosaic law — Oran was alone in having a synagogue — they had always shown absolute competence as well as loyalty to the King. This was why the various governors of the town had honoured and rewarded them, allowing the profession to pass from father to son. The translators combined their linguistic skills with a little espionage, for all the Israelite communities in Barbary were in regular communication.

The other reason why the Oran Jews were tolerated was their vital importance as merchants and traders, despite the heavy taxes imposed on them because of their religion. When times were hard, they were the ones who lent the governor money or wheat or whatever he might need. In addition, there was the role they played in the slave trade: on the one hand, they mediated in the ransoming of captives and, on the other, they owned most of the Turks and Moors sold in

Oran. After all, regardless of whether they worshipped Mary, Mohammed or Moses, as far as everyone — Jew, Moor Spaniard — was concerned, a silver coin was a silver coin. As Don Francisco de Quevedo would have said, Sir Money a powerful gentleman. And the man was a fool who would bother going to light a candle at anyone else's altar.

The dog barked again in the distance, and Alatriste touched the well-primed pistol at his waist. In a way, he thought he wouldn't mind if the dog kept on barking so that Moors in the encampment, or at least some of them, were awake, with scimitar in hand, when Sergeant Major Biscarrues gave the order to attack. Slitting the throats of sleeping men in order to steal their livestock, women and children was easier than slitting their throats while they were awake, but it would take a vast amount of wine to wash the blood from his memory.

'At the ready.'

In a whisper that gradually grew louder, the order passed down the line. When it reached me, I, too, passed it on, and heard the words move off into the crouching shadows until it vanished like the fading of an echo. I ran my tongue over my cracked lips and then clenched my teeth to stop  them chattering in the cold. I tried on my espadrilles, removing the rags in which I had wrapped both my sword and blade of my half-pike to avoid making any inopportune noise. I looked around. I couldn't see Captain Alatriste among the various silhouettes in the dawn light, but I knew he was lying with the others close by. I could see Sebastian Copons, a dark, motionless figure, smelling of sweat, greased leather and
s
burnished with oil. There were similar figures among lentiscus bushes, the prickly pears and the thistles that in Barbary are called
arracafes.

'We attack in two credos' time,' came the new order. Some, either out of devotion or simply to calculate the time, started mumbling the creed out loud. I heard them all around me, in the half-darkness, in different accents and intonations: Basque, Valencian, Asturian, Andalusian, Castilian; Spaniards who only came together to pray or to kill.

Credo in unum Deum, patrem omnipotentem, factorem caeli et trrae ...
Such pious murmurings as a prelude to bloody battle always struck me as odd; all those male voices whispering holy words, asking God to let them survive the fight, to capture gold and slaves aplenty, to be granted a safe return to Oran and to Spain, laden with booty and with no enemies nigh, for as they all knew — Copons and the Captain had both emphasised this point — the most dangerous thing in the world was fighting Moors on their own territory and then withdrawing and finding oneself pursued down those dried up riverbeds and through that arid landscape, beneath the implacable sun, with no water, or else paying in blood for each drop, or being wounded and falling into the hands of Arabs, who had all the time in the world to kill you. Perhaps that was why the murmur was spreading among the crouching shadows:
Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine, Deum verum de Deo vero ...