Corsair (5 page)

‘Does that mean we are in pursuit?’

‘No, the chase is the vessel which is pursued.’

‘God grant us salvation!’ pleaded the cooper. ‘Praise the Lord for his Mercy. He who watches over us! Let us pray together for our liberation.’ He began to hum a psalm.

‘Shut up!’ snapped Dunton. ‘I’m trying to hear what is going on.’

The cooper ignored him, and his co-religionists in the hold began a dirge which drowned out all but the distant occasional thud of the cannon fire which, as time passed, became fainter and more irregular until, finally, nothing more could be heard.

‘Must have outrun them,’ grunted Dunton, who had shifted to his favourite position beneath a crack in the deck planking where he could squint out at the sky. ‘Or perhaps we lost them in the gathering darkness. It’ll be full dark soon.’

The disappointed prisoners settled down for their rest, their stomachs empty, because for the first time in the voyage, no one had appeared at the hatch with their evening ration. ‘Let us pray to God that our women and children are safe,’ said the cooper, and Hector, who had naturally been silently wondering what might have happened to Elizabeth on the sister ship, found himself praying quietly for her survival as he tried to go to sleep, curled up against a bulkhead. He felt completely helpless as Hakim Reis’s ship sailed on towards its unknown destination.

B
Y NOON
the next day the captives had still not been fed, and they were hungrily awaiting the arrival of their usual ration of bread and olives when there was another shattering crash of cannon fire. But this time it was not a single cannon. An entire battery of guns was shooting, and very close by. The ship’s armament promptly answered, and the prisoners heard the thud of the gun carriages slamming down with the discharge. The sudden torrent of sound tipped the elderly madman over the edge of sanity. He leapt up from where he had been sleeping, and began to caper and shout nonsense. He hooted and bellowed, and nothing could restrain him. Again came the shocking crash of a battery, and an answering blast from the ship’s guns. A strange smell wafted down – the acrid stink of gunpowder.

All at once the hatch was flung open, and not one but five sailors came hurrying down the ladder. But instead of bringing food, they began to shout and point excitedly, urging the captives to go up on deck. Dazed and uncomprehending, the prisoners shuffled forward. Those who stayed were pulled to their feet and thrust forward. Hector found himself following the grimy and naked feet of a villager as he climbed the ladder to the deck, and emerged to see a scene ahead of him never to be forgotten.

Off to one side, less than a hundred yards away, stood a formidable fortress constructed of massive stone blocks on a low and rocky islet. The sides of the fortress were a series of angled surfaces designed to deflect cannonballs. Its parapet bristled with cannon, and from a copper dome, which also served as a lighthouse, rose a tall flagpole from which floated a huge crimson flag. In the centre of the flag was the image of an arm, black on red, brandishing a broad-bladed sword like the weapons wielded by the sailors aboard Hakim Reis’s vessel. As Hector watched, white smoke belched from the mouths of the fort’s cannon, and a moment later he heard the echoing explosion. He flinched, waiting for the shock of cannonballs tearing into the fabric of the ship. But nothing came. Then he realised that the fort was firing a salute to greet the incoming vessel, even as Hakim Reis’s men let off their own guns and gave a great cheer.

But what made him gape was the city which climbed the hill behind the fort. Blinding white in the midday sun, rank upon rank of tightly packed houses extended up the flank of a steep mountain to form a dense triangular mass. The flat roofs of the houses were topped with balconies, their walls pierced with rows of small arched windows. Here and there emerged a turquoise or gilded dome and the spikes of tall spires, and at the very apex of the triangle, far up the slope, was a sprawling complex which Hector took to be a citadel. To the left, outside the city wall and dominating the skyline, loomed another massive castle, its turrets decked out with flagpoles and banners. Orchards and gardens spread across the flanks of the mountains on both sides, and their show of greenery framed the dizzying spectacle of the corsairs’ base.

The sound of cheering brought his attention back to the harbour. On the seaward side of the fortress a curtain wall had been built to protect an anchorage. This curtain wall, some thirty feet high and built along the crest of a reef, was also topped with battlements and cannon platforms. The rampart was lined with citizens who had come out to greet them. They were shouting and waving, and a small band of musicians – three drummers and a man with some sort of flute – had struck up a wild skirling tune. Those spectators who were nearest the musicians were clapping in time and a few of them were whirling and dancing with delight.

A shove on his shoulder from one of the crew pushed him into line so that he stood side by side with the other captives at the rail of the ship, facing across to the crowd of onlookers. Hector realised that he and the other prisoners were being put on show. They were the spoils of the corsair’s cruise.

A few moments more and their ship was rounding the far end of the harbour wall, with the anchorage opening ahead of them. Moored in the middle of the roadstead were four sailing vessels similar to the one Hakim Reis commanded. But what caught his eye were the dozen vessels deep inside the harbour, their bows tied to the mole itself. Without being told, he knew what they were. Low and sleek and dangerous, they reminded him of the greyhounds his father and his friends had used to course hares in the countryside. He was about to ask Dunton if he was right in thinking they were corsair galleys, when the villager standing beside him said in anguished tones, ‘Where’s the other ship? The one with our womenfolk and the children?’

Shocked, Hector turned to look. Nowhere could he see the vessel that had accompanied them. She was gone.

S
AMUEL
M
ARTIN
, the English consul in Algiers, heard the salvoes of gunfire and walked to the window of his office. From long experience he knew the reason for the commotion. Squinting down into the harbour he recognised Hakim Reis’s ship and sighed. The corsair’s arrival meant there was work for him, and it was not a task he relished. By inclination and preference Martin was a trader. He would much rather have looked out of his window and seen merchant ships arriving and departing, laden with the honest merchandise from which he had hoped to make his living when he had first arrived in Algiers a decade ago. But it had not turned out that way. Legitimate trade between England and Algiers was on the increase but the Algerines much preferred to make their money by seizing captives for ransom or selling stolen goods, often back to their original owners. Hence the joyous reception being given by the populace to Hakim Reis and his ruffians down at the harbour.

Consul Martin, a small and active man, often wondered if the government in London had any inkling of the complications of being England’s representative to a Barbary regency. For a start he never quite knew whom he should be dealing with. Officially the city ruler was the Pasha appointed by the Turkish Sultan in Istanbul. But the Sublime Porte was far away, and ultimately the Pasha was really nothing more than a figurehead. Effective power apparently lay with the Dey and his cabinet of advisers, the divan. But that too was a deception. The Dey was elected by the janissaries, the city’s Turkish-born military elite. Known locally as the odjaks, the janissaries were professional warriors, but it was normal that they also followed a second occupation, usually as merchants or landlords. Certainly they devoted more energy to political intrigues than to soldiering. They made and unmade their Deys at an alarming rate, and their favoured method of getting rid of the current officeholder was by assassination. In Consul Martin’s time three Deys had been killed, two by poison and one with the garrotte. The Consul was aware that the divan only paid him any attention when it suited them, but he nursed a hope that one day he would be able to influence the current Dey, an elderly odjak, directly through his favourite wife who was reputed to be an Englishwoman. She was a slave girl who had taken the old man’s fancy and borne him two children. Unfortunately Martin had yet to meet the lady, and rumour had it that she was as avaricious and corrupt as anyone else in the palace.

The consul sighed again. Had the incoming vessel been a galley returning from a short cruise in the Mediterranean, the prisoners on board were likely to be French or Genoese, Greeks or Spaniards, and therefore not his concern. But Hakim Reis was known to range as far as the English Channel on his man-catching cruises. Recently Martin had helped negotiate a treaty between London and Algiers whereby the Algerines had promised not to molest English ships, or vessels sailing under English passes. But the consul was not sure that Hakim Reis would have honoured the pact. So it was best if His Majesty’s consul established just who was on the corsair’s roster of captives. And should any of his captives prove to be subjects of the King, then Martin’s duty was to find out their identities and what price was expected for them. The best moment to do that was when the prisoners were first landed, before they were distributed among various owners or vanished into any one of the eight bagnios, the slave barracks.

Indoors, the consul liked to wear the loose cotton kaftans and slippers which the Moors of Algiers favoured, and he thought the dress very sensible in the heat. But in public he was expected to dress according to his rank and dignity. So now he called for his manservant, a Hampshire man awaiting the final instalment of an agreed ransom, and told him to lay out his street clothes – a three-piece suit of heavy cloth with a waistcoat and knee breeches, a starched linen shirt with a frilled front and ruffles at the wrist, and a cravat.

Half an hour later, sweating in this turnout, Martin descended to the street. His office and living quarters were in the coolest part of the building, the topmost of the three floors which served as the consulate as well as his residence and place of business. On the way downstairs he passed the rooms where his servants ate and slept, the dormitories occupied by several dozen captives whose ransoms were expected soon or who were part-paid, and finally on the ground floor the storerooms for the commodities he traded – mostly skins and ostrich feathers from the interior. His doorkeeper, a burly and necessary functionary who intercepted unwelcome callers at the house, pulled back the heavy nail-studded door. Martin adjusted his newly brushed periwig and, a little unsteady on the two-inch-high heels of his buckled shoes, he stepped out into the narrow street.

The noise and heat made a double blow. The consulate was situated halfway up the hill of Algiers, and its front door gave directly on to the main street which ran the length of the city, from the docks to the Kasbah at the upper end of the town. Never more than a few yards wide, with high flat-fronted houses on each side, the street was like a sultry ravine. Paved with worn stone slabs, it climbed so steeply that it had to be broken by occasional short flights of steps. The street also served as the main bazaar and emporium of the city, so walking along it meant stepping around stalls and dodging pavement vendors selling everything from vegetables to metalwork. Asses laden with panniers plodded up and down the slope, hawkers yelled, water carriers clattered tin cups against the brass flagons strapped to their backs. As the consul made his way slowly through the press of the crowd he wondered, not for the first time, whether he should retire and return to England. For years he had suffered the noise and heat of Algiers, and the roguery of its inhabitants. Yet he told himself once again that it was too soon to abandon the city. Property prices in England were rising so fast that he would not be able to afford the country estate on which he had set his heart.