Corsair (25 page)

The commissaire hesitated. It was nearly noon, and he was looking forward to a leisurely lunch with a trio of echevins, aldermen of Marseilles. They were finalising a plan to acquire a parcel of land adjacent to the Arsenal, so that next year the King could be informed that the galley base needed more space and, after a suitable interval, that a site had been found which was good value. The transaction ought to net a fourfold profit for the syndicate. ‘Regretfully, I have pressing duties for the rest of the day, but if you would be willing to inspect the prisoners in the company of the receiving clerk, that can be arranged at your convenience.’

‘Without delay, if you please,’ retorted Chabrillan.

The commissaire summoned an aide and ordered him to escort Chabrillan to the holding cells where the convicts of the chain from Bordeaux were waiting their assessment.

‘And while the Chevalier is examining the convicts,’ the commissaire added, ‘you are to arrange for the Turks from Livorno and the two renegades to be made ready for galley service and delivered to the
St Gerassimus
, also that pickpocket, what’s his name – Bourdain or something like that.’ Turning to Chabrillan, he enquired, ‘Who should my man ask for at the quayside? He will need a receipt.’

‘He can deliver the oarsmen to my premier comite, Piecourt. He has full authority in these matters. Piecourt will also see to the necessary training of the men while I am away. As soon as I have selected the extra men I need, I set out for my estates in Savoy. In the meantime
St Gerassimus
needs maintenance work and I trust you will have this done promptly now that you have told me how fast your workmen can perform. When I return, I expect to find my vessel fully seaworthy again and her complement properly trained.’

‘The Arsenal will make every endeavour to meet your requirements, Chevalier,’ the commissaire assured his guest, though inwardly Batiste was already scheming how he could rid himself of the troublesome Chevalier. On his desk was an instruction from the Minister of the Marine. It ordered the Galley Corps to conduct trials to establish whether a new artillery invention, an exploding shell, was suitable for use at sea. He decided to recommend to his superior, Intendant Brodart, that the most suitable vessel for the test was
St Gerassimus
. The sea trials would keep the Chevalier of St Stephen busy, and if they went disastrously wrong might even blow him to smithereens.

Chabrillan stalked out of the commissaire’s office with the merest hint of a polite farewell, then made his way to where the receiving clerk was already waiting, his black coat hastily brushed in an attempt to smarten his appearance.

Chabrillan nodded at the clerk as he strode into the large gloomy hall where the chain prisoners were being held. ‘Have the prisoners paraded in a line,’ he ordered crisply. Slowly the newly arrived convicts shuffled into position, urged on by casual blows and curses from their goalers.

‘Now have them strip.’

Awkwardly, for many of them were hampered by their fetters, the prisoners removed their tattered and lice-ridden clothing, and dropped the garments to the stone floor.

‘Over against the opposite wall,’ Chabrillan commanded. The prisoners, trying to conceal their nakedness with their hands, shuffled across the room and stood, shivering, to face their examiner. Chabrillan walked along the line, looking into their faces and glancing at their bodies. ‘This one, and him, and this one,’ he announced, selecting the strongest and fittest, until he had picked out a dozen men. ‘Make a note of their names, have them dressed properly and sent to my ship,’ he instructed the receiving clerk, ‘and now let me see your ledgers.’

Meekly the clerk brought the Chevalier to his office, and showed him the list of names he had entered for the newly arrived chain. Chabrillan ran his eye down the columns, picking out those he had selected. He found he had chosen three army deserters, a poacher, a perjurer, and two sturdy beggars.

‘What about these?’ He pointed out the entries for five men against whose names the clerk had written, ‘without saying why’.

‘Just as it says, sir. They were unable to tell me why they had been sent to the galleys.’

Chabrillan fixed the clerk with a questioning stare. ‘So why do you think they were condemned to the oar?’

The clerk shifted uneasily. ‘It’s hard to say, sir,’ he answered after a short pause. ‘My guess is that they are Protestants, those who call themselves the Reformed. They have made problems for those of the Apostolic and Roman faith.’

‘Excellent. The Reformed make reliable oarsmen. They are serious and honest men compared to the usual felons and rogues who are condemned to the oar. I shall be glad to have them aboard,’ and without another word, Adrien Chabrillan left.

‘H
ECTOR,
did you find out anything more about where your sister might be?’ asked Dan as he wriggled his shoulders inside the red and black woollen prison jacket he had just received from the Arsenal stores. Clothes issued to prisoners came in just two sizes, small and large, and the Miskito’s jacket was too tight on him. It was a warm afternoon in early summer and the two friends, together with Bourdon the pickpocket and a dozen Turks taken captive from the
Izzet Darya
, were being led along the Marseilles quay by an elderly warder whose relaxed manner indicated that he did not believe they would try to escape.

‘I asked everyone I could for information about where the Barbary corsairs land and sell their captives, but I didn’t learn anything more than I already knew. She could have been landed in any one of half a dozen ports,’ Hector answered. He too was uncomfortable in his new clothes. In Algiers he had grown used to loose-fitting Moorish clothing and, working in the Arsenal, he and Dan had continued to wear the garments they had been wearing when captured. Now his legs felt constrained by the stiff canvas trousers issued by the Arsenal stores. The trousers fastened with buttons down the outer seams so that they could be put on over leg chains while his other new garments – two long shirts, two smocks in addition to a jacket, and a heavy hooded cloak of ox wool – could all be put on over his head. He had also been issued with a stout leather belt, which was there not just to hold up his trousers. It was fitted with a heavy metal hook over which he could loop his leg chain while he was at work so that leg irons did not hamper him. ‘I wrote a letter to an old friend of my father’s, a clergyman in Ireland who had been a prisoner of the Moors. I asked him if he had heard anything. But when I tried to send the letter, I was told that prisoners in the Arsenal were forbidden from communicating with the outside world. I had enclosed a note for my mother in case she is still living in Ireland, though I suspect she has moved back to Spain to live with her own people. Maybe she has heard directly from my sister. It’s impossible to know. Life as a convict galerien in the Arsenal is as cut off from the outside world as being a slave in the Algiers bagnio.’

‘Maybe that will change now that we’re being transferred to a galley,’ Dan tried to cheer up his friend.

‘I doubt it. Look over there,’ Hector nodded towards the far side of the docks. ‘Aren’t those the masts and spars of galleys? At least ten, I would say. All neatly lined up side by side.’

‘Which one’s ours?’

‘Can’t tell from this distance. But I heard that she’s hired to the royal Galley Corps by her commander who’s a Knight of one of the Orders. It’s being said that he is a fire-eater and his premier comite is a cold-hearted tyrant.’

‘Maybe someone aboard her can give you the information you’re looking for,’ Dan responded. As usual he was quick to point out the best possible outcome. ‘Don’t the Knights take their galley slaves and convicts from wherever they can get them?’

‘That’s true. I’ve not given up hope of tracing Elizabeth. The thought of finding her helps to keep me going. I sometimes wonder why you never get discouraged.’

Dan gave his companion a steady look. ‘I have often thought about my homeland and the mission I was given by my people, but when that sour-faced man from London came to Algiers to ransom the English prisoners and he refused to help me, I realised the world is a much larger and more complicated place than the Miskito imagine. Now I’m resigned to the fact that I am unlikely ever to deliver the council’s message to the King of England. Yet I feel that my travels may turn out to be for my people’s benefit. Something tells me that I will surely get back home. When I do, I intend to bring something worthwhile with me.’

The prisoners had turned the corner of the harbour basin, and were approaching what looked like a busy pedlars’ market. The wharf was covered with open-sided stands and booths which served as shops and stalls. As the convicts threaded their way between the booths, Hector saw men repairing shoes and doing metalwork, butchers and barbers, tailors, a man making hats, and stallholders selling every conceivable item from haberdashery to pots and pans. For some odd reason nearly every stall had dozens of pairs of knitted socks for sale, which hung up like strings of onions. Looking more closely, Hector realised that every one of the stall holders was a galerien.

‘Same old junk,’ Bourdon spoke up. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those goods were on sale when I was last here.’ The pickpocket was staring hard into the face of a man standing by a barrow on which lay a strange mixture of items – a pair of scissors, several fine handkerchiefs, some carved buttons, a snuff box, and various small articles which Hector could not immediately identify. ‘Some of the vendors are no different either.’

Hector saw the stallholder’s right eyelid flicker very slightly as he winked at Bourdon.

‘Who is he?’ he whispered to Bourdon.

‘A thief like myself,’ came back the quiet reply. ‘I would say that he also fences stolen goods on the side, though it looks as if trade is a bit thin at the moment.’

‘But how . . .’ began Hector. They had paused while the Arsenal warder stopped to examine some lace on sale in one of the stalls.

‘These baraques?’ said Bourdon. ‘They’re run by the comites of the galleys. The port officials rent the stalls to the comites from the galleys, and the comites then put their galeriens into the booths to staff them. If the galerien has a useful skill, a carpenter or lacemaker for instance, he conducts his trade from the baraque, and the townsfolk come there for his services. Any money he earns is handed over to the comite. If he’s lucky, the comite may let him keep a bit of it for himself. But if the galerien doesn’t have a trade, then he has to learn to make himself useful in some other ways. That’s why you see so many knitted socks. The comites hand out wool and knitting needles to their most useless galeriens, and they have to take up knitting. Naturally the comites claim that by keeping the galeriens busy in port they are less likely to make trouble. But of course the main reason is that the comites earn a nice living from their charges.’

He gave Hector a nudge. ‘Look. Over there. That’s someone who’s either so clumsy or so stubborn that he cannot earn his comite any money, at least not yet.’ Hector saw a man dressed in a galerien’s parti-coloured uniform. He was wearing leg irons and cradling a cannonball in his arms. ‘His premier comite will make him carry that cannonball around until he learns something that’ll earn a bit of money,’ Bourdon explained.

Their easy-going guard had finished at the lacemaker’s stall and was strolling towards the far end of the quay. There he turned aside and pushed his way between two booths to bring his charges before what Hector thought for a fleeting moment was a fairground tent of blue and white striped canvas. It took a second glance to establish that the tent was a great canopy which covered the full length of a 26-bench war galley of the first class.

A halberdier stood on sentry duty at the foot of the gangplank. Dressed entirely in scarlet and white, from the red stocking cap on his head to his spotless red breeches with a contrasting white belt and coat lapels, he came smartly to attention, and bawled out at the top of his voice – ‘Pass the word for the premier comite!’ From somewhere inside the huge tent the call was repeated, and Hector heard the summons passing down the length of the galley. Then came a pause filled with the incessant background noise of the shoppers at the baraques, the mewling of the gulls, and the distant shouts of watermen. Finally, after a delay of about five minutes while Hector and the other prisoners waited patiently on the quay, a man appeared at the head of the gangplank and stood there, quietly surveying them. Dangling from a cord around his neck was a silver whistle which glinted in the sun.

Hector was taken by surprise. He had expected a rough brute of a man, violent and coarse. But the man who now stood looking them over had the appearance of a mild-mannered shopkeeper. He was of medium height and dressed in sober dark clothing. He would have passed unnoticed on the street except for his skin, which was uncommonly pale, and the fact that his close-cropped hair was a light sand colour. He did not wear a wig. ‘That will be all, warder. You may leave the prisoners with me and return to your work,’ the comite spoke quietly, barely raising his voice, yet every word carried clearly. His duty done, the elderly guard strolled off. But the comite made no move. He stayed at the head of the gangplank, gazing down on the prisoners, judging them. ‘You are joining the galley
St Gerassimus
, and from now on you belong to her,’ he announced. ‘My name is Piecourt, and I am the premier comite, so you also belong to me. Serve the vessel well and you will become proud of her. Serve her badly, and you will regret the day you were born.’ He spoke in French with an Italian accent. Then, to Hector’s surprise, he repeated his warning, this time in fluent Turkish. Hector felt the odjaks around him stir uneasily. A moment later, Piecourt was repeating his caution a third time, using lingua franca. Aware of the impression he had made, the premier comite of the
St Gerassimus
reached for the silver whistle hanging around his neck and held it up for them to see. ‘From now on the only language that matters to you is the language of this whistle, because this whistle is my voice. Everything you do will be controlled by it. You will soon be like dogs, the best-trained dogs. Obedient dogs are fed and cared for; disobedient dogs are whipped. Remember that.’