Believe or Die (19 page)

The young Scot began sobbing. The older man nudged Pitkin.

“You doubting the wisdom of your choice my friend?”

“What choice?” shrugged Wil.

“Aye,” nodded the man mournfully, “That’s the way I sees it an’ all.”

Two days later guards came for them. As their apostasy had been voluntary, and not made under what the Moors considered duress, they were afforded a little pageantry. They were paraded around the town by their escorts taunted by crowds shouting:

“Shehed Cunmoora!”
Turn Moor!
until they came to a small square lined with warriors, their swords drawn and ready. A wizened old man harangued them in a screeching voice. He couldn’t really see them observed Pitkin, his eyes being covered in milky cataracts. The meaning was clear enough however: raise your finger to heaven and embrace Islam. Wil took a deep breath and did so and in so doing, left his old life, such as it was, behind him.

When all had signified their conversions, cymbals crashed and the Moorish women commenced their shrill, spine-chilling warbling. Huge, ebony-skinned retainers appeared and threw the converts to the ground. Then the enforced circumcisions began. Pitkin had known pain before and in many, many variations, but nothing in his past had prepared him for this. Mercifully, he briefly passed out at the height of the agony. The older Englishman was less fortunate. His heart gave out at the first slicing of the knife. The young Scot fared even worse. He screamed and struggled too violently causing the operation to be badly botched and he bled to death as he was held on the ground.

It took four weeks for Pitkin to recover to any noticeable degree. He was tended by a Muslim slave woman whom De Rood advised him was now his wife and she was his property to do with as he pleased. She was young, plump, and after such a long abstinence, achingly attractive to Wil. His tortured member however made it abundantly clear that any carnal activity was completely out of the question for the immediate future. He had his head shaved and made his oaths to both Yusef and De Rood, who he now found was known as ‘The Wolf’ to his followers. Soon he was given the Djellaba to wear in place of his rags. De Rood monitored his progress towards regaining fitness and his erratic, hesitant, but gradually improving grasp of the Arab tongue. At length the Wolf was satisfied.

“Now Pitkin, you will begin to earn your keep. You have drained my coffers and tested my mellow nature without return long enough.”

“What now then Lord?”

“Once you were a soldier, an officer you tell me. Were you a good officer?”

“I believe so Lord.”

“I hope so for your sake. You are about to become an officer once more, only now you will be one of MY officers. There will be many battles both large and small to fight. Much booty will come our way and your share will be related to your deeds and your success as a commander. Is that clear?”

“Yes Lord. Who will we be fighting?”

“Whosoever comes before us or stands in our way. Allah is great and he will provide. Mohamed is his Prophet and he will guide us.”

Pitkin noticed an odd glint in the Wolf’s eyes. He spoke the words of the faithful to be sure, but was that what was really in his heart?

“Do I now too then serve Allah Lord?”

“Allah we worship and prostrate ourselves before. The Prophet, blessings be upon him, we revere and heed. But ‘serve’ Pitkin? We, you and I that is, we serve another of the exhaulted ones.”

“Who Lord?”

“The Angel of Death Pitkin. You are
his
servant now, indeed, mayhaps you always were.”

Morocco was in chaos. Civil war reigned but it was not a conflict contested by a mere two sides. There were at least a dozen factions vying for power, still striving to fill a vacuum caused by the death of the Sultan Ahmed nearly fifty years previously. Pitkin had ‘joined’ the forces of the current Sultan, Yusef, at a time when that worthy had only just seized power by murderous means from one Mohamed esh Sheik. Yusef, a cruel and tyrannical man who had disposed of at least six of his brothers, was struggling to hold on to power. He called his domain ‘The Republic of Bou Regred’, named after the principle river in the area. Its wealth was based on what he called ‘Trading’. Others called it slavery and piracy. The primary threat to Yusef came from the Dila Berbers who periodically swept down from the Atlas Mountains displaying a ruthlessness to equal even that of the psychotic Yusef. Yet despite his probable insanity, Yusef was, in his own depraved way, a methodical and clever ruler. He soon recognised that in order to fulfil his dreams and what he believed to be his destiny, he must obtain certain specialists and a constant supply of labour. Both came from the slave trade. Those who were useful to his schemes - artisans, professional soldiers and such - would serve him or cease to exist. All other slaves would be worked to death or ‘traded’ on, apart from the women. Yusef had a great hunger for white women. He had over four hundred on his harem. The grand buildings of Sale and Rabat, the mortar for which Pitkin had so recently been mixing, were marvellous to behold. But few if any, ever seemed to get finished. As soon as a building neared completion, Yusef would decide it needed to be longer, wider, or more ornate. Thus the Sultan’s building plans could never reach fruition. Not so however his armed forces. His fleet of ships were all privately owned, contracted, and manned by some of the most vicious, pitiless and audacious pirates afloat. Many were originally descended from Spanish Moors and their hatred for that land knew no bounds. But Portuguese, French or English, the nature of the prey mattered not, only how much the proceeds of their barbarism would yield. Yusef insisted the captains and crews of his vessels were merely valiant and adventurous traders, obedient to the laws of supply and demand. But then a man could call a lion a sheep and still not conceal its true identity. Thus did Yusef fund his affairs and his ambitions.

The Army, which also served as Marines on occasion, was an equally desperate though marginally more disciplined assembly. Though composed from a dozen or more nations, it was well trained and well equipped. The Wolf in particular picked his commanders with care with a view to proven talents. Needless to say, breeding and birth were of no consequence. Most of the gunners, for Yusef had a great fondness for artillery, were Frenchmen often commanded by Flemings. The engineers were Dutch, the pikemen mainly Spanish. Arabic was the
ligua franca
, albeit of a strange patois, and blind obedience to the Sultan through his Generals was mandatory on pain of death. De Rood’s command was held together by the sheer force of his nature and was based on three tenets: the promise of loot, the oath given to the Wolf, and the threat of summary execution. Indeed, although others held the title of ‘General’, for them it was mainly an honorific, the Wolf WAS the Army and his word was law throughout it, his orders undisputed by anyone. Only the cavalry were beyond his influence. These were fanatical followers of Yusef raised from birth to serve his dynasty only and to revere him above all except Allah and his Prophet. Although gloriously equipped and mounted, they were ill led and totally ignorant of any notion of tactics or strategy beyond that of the Charge. Pitkin found that in that, they were oddly reminiscent of Prince Rupert’s cavalry.

All items of interest seized by the Army had first to be personally scrutinised by Yusef or his agents. Only after the Sultan had had his pick could the remaining spoils be divided up amongst the troops and their officers. As to the nature of the Army, it was a beast. And when that beast was unleashed, it behaved with a savagery equal to that of the Corsairs at sea. As a result of their experiences as slaves, the soldiers regarded life as being of little if any value. Loot and survival were all.

Pitkin did well in his new position. His belligerent spirit, hardened by slavery, combined with a comparatively recently acquired trait of utter ruthlessness, earned him grudging respect among his new peers. This respect gratified him. Yet in many ways he felt a fraud. Despite the prayers, the fasting, the abstinence from pork and liquor, he knew that he was not a Muslim. But then neither, in truth, were any of his comrades. It was merely a way to stay alive, a precarious way to be sure, but a way nonetheless. A way though to … ? A way to what? Pitkin began watching the Wolf more closely. Did De Rood have something else, a different ‘way’ in mind perhaps? Did he have an ultimate goal that differed from everyone else? The more he studied De Rood, the more he became convinced that this was so.

Pitkin looked down on the little city of Fez. It was in ruins. The place had changed hands many times in the last decade or so and had been thoroughly ransacked on each occasion. The
Medina
through which he and his men had just fought was littered with the dead. At present, the Army was involved in systematic looting and reprovisioning. Wil had split his company in half, one group responsible for loot and the other for resupply. This had now become his established way of doing things and the system had proved eminently more viable than the previous free-for-all. All the booty was put into a communal fund and shares allocated by Wil himself. Everybody got their portion and this was why the foragers did not demure when ordered about their tasks. A strange code of conduct had developed amid this band of cut-throats. Everything was shared with transparent impartiality and the common fund was vigorously, and often lethally, defended against any who would have it otherwise. The rules of this strange, oddly democratic arrangement had been clearly demonstrated by Pitkin. He simply killed anyone who disputed the issue. But now, some two years on, he had his own personal bodyguards to do that for him, which was why he now sat on a crumbling bastion of the
Bordj Nord
munching on dates and wondering how his present condition and circumstances could ever have come to be. The Wolf appeared at his side, silent as ever.

“Lord,” bowed Wil sliding off the wall. De Rood waved him back and helped himself to a date. The Dutchman, as was his custom, had been overseeing the ‘tribute’ Yusef would be expecting from the devastated city. Slaves were the main commodity, particularly if they were artisans. Livestock, horses especially, would also be expected. So too would be cats for reasons known only to the Sultan himself. He adored the creatures and filled his palace with them. Dogs on the other hand, he regarded as the servants of Shaitan, fit only for target practise or for feeding to the lions and leopards in his menagerie. Much gold had been found in Fez, hardly surprising since coins were minted there. But Yusef preferred the shiny mineral in lumps such as the huge Niger nuggets from the south of the continent. Failing that, cups, bowels or ewers, and especially plates - the bigger the better - were his preference. Gold to Yusef was merely an ornament. His buildings, saddles and chariots were covered in it. His favourite wives and concubines stooped under the weight of it. But coins? Coins seemed to bore him. Wil and De Rood watched a heavily laden caravan of the animal species that Pitkin despised above all others – camels - plod off with the ‘Tribute’. Behind trudged the enemy prisoners and most of Fez’s innocent population, all now destined for the slave pens and encouraged by liberal applications of the whip from Yusef’s cavalry. In the Sultan’s opinion this was a fitting punishment for not making sufficient effort to keep the Berbers out of the area. Examples had to be made. Yusef’s horsemen glared at the Wolf who merely spat out a date stone and returned the glare with stony contempt. The cavalry had played no part in the battle until the very end. It was the function of the ‘freed’ European slaves to act as cannon fodder, to shed their blood, and to facilitate the Sultan’s victory. That done, the cavalry would claim the credit. In his more lucid moments, Yusef was perfectly well aware of this; he knew who really won his battles for him. At other times he knew, or chose to know, nothing of the sort and lavished extravagant rewards on his ‘wonderful’ horsemen.

The Wolf’s polyglot commands, with everything in the city now looted, raped, eaten, or imbibed, had subsided into company-sized heaps to rest and lick their wounds. An order had been given that they must wash and pray to give thanks to Allah for their victory. The order was being discreetly ignored, as De Rood knew it would be. It had been issued by him in order that his clerk, the first Jew Wil could ever remember meeting, could record it for possible later audit. The clerk, one Simon, had also made careful note of everything taken in the sack of the city and of everything despatched to the Sultan. In reality, he had recorded what the Wolf told him to record. A copy had been made in fair hand and sent via the commander of the cavalry to the Sultan’s vizier to peruse.

The tiny Jewish community in the ‘capital’ of Rabat held an unusual and precarious position under Yusef’s erratic rule. Like many of those who dwelt on the west coast of Morocco, they had been banished from Spain. In the case of the Jews, this was because the Inquisition had chosen to blame them for every ill that beset the country. The Holy Catholic Church had allowed them simple choices, convert or perish, flee or burn, believe or die. Because of this, many of the descendants of Spanish Moors, who had experienced identical treatment, felt a dubious kind of kinship with the Jews. Unfortunately, life under the Sultan was always unpredictable in the extreme and those who wore the Star of David were obliged to tread softly and keep as low a profile as possible. One could never tell in which direction Yusef’s next tantrum might be released. Apart from the clerk, De Rood also employed an older Jew who acted as, amongst many other roles, the Wolf’s personal physician. Jacob was a man of great learning who had travelled even as far as Damascus in search of the Muslim world’s great knowledge of medicine. However, though he respected the Muslim sages, he had no time for a culture that seemed intent on religious conversion by the sword and prudently travelled on; for Jacob was also possessed of a violent temper, no pacifist he. His God, such as it was, was he who had decreed
an eye for an eye
, and that was precisely the kind of treatment Jacob meted out to those who crossed him. Whilst aboard a ship bound for Greece, he was taken by Algerine pirates. Taken that is, only after a fierce melee in which he layed several of their number unconscious and broken on the deck. Sold for a slave in Tangier, and on then again to a caravan owner, Jacob eventually found himself in the pens at Sale where his ‘attitude’ attracted the attention of the Wolf. But apart from his martial competence and his soon discovered medical knowledge, Jacob also seemed to have an encyclopaedic mastery of languages including most of the dialects of North Africa.