The Mer- Lion (45 page)

Among de Wynter's group, two of the Scots servants had their wounds examined. At a gesture from Eulj Ali, they were scooped up like so much trash and heaved screaming into the sea. John Carlby bowed his head and intoned the last Sacrament while the bound group sat penitent. The screams rose in frequency and pitch, then were cut short. Carlby interrupted his prayers to utter but one word:

"Sharks!" De Wynter silently swore to exact vengeance for their deaths.

While Moslem slaves and Christian seamen changed places at the oars, others were transferred in irons to the hold. Then, as the unfortunates sat or lay in bilgewater, the crippled ship set partial sail, and under the flogging of a familiar whip wielded by a new oarmaster, they headed toward Algiers. Their new captain was a boyish redhead.

Eulj Ali had had little difficulty convincing the first men to board that he was son of their leader. The resemblance between father and son was too well marked, especially the luxuriant flaming red beard. Wielding his chains like a feared "Holy Water Sprinkler," he had flailed away, wreaking havoc among the Christian crew, stopping only when he saw resistance lessening and the single knot of noblemen left. Having at least partially repaid his debt to the Scot by saving his life, the corsair thought nothing of having him locked in irons to be ransomed or sold as fortune would have it.

In the hold, John the Rob's experience came to the fore. It was he who showed the closely chained men how to lift their arms in unison when eating the miserable scraps they were thrown. How to drink in unison and in uniform amounts so that relieving their bladders could be done as one. How to sleep, alternating heads and feet so that broad shoulders did not rob them of room, and the peculiar choreography in which every other man had to step over the chains, bring them up and over his back and head and then, in unison, he down head to foot. Only in this way were the chains prevented from buckling and doubling on themselves, and cutting shorter what little give they offered.

The physical discomfort was one thing. The worry about their fate was another. Carlby reminded them, "Boast not about being in Holy Orders. Suleiman has vowed to kill any Hospitaler found in the Mediterranean. And Barbarossa," he pointed out, "has served his time at the oar in the order's galleys."

Chapter 20

Mercifully, even with less man full sail, the trip to Algiers took but three nights and two days. The merchant ship with its firkata escort moored alongside the new dock at Al Penon, the fortress-island built and held by the Spaniards until Barbarossa tore it down around their heads in 1530. Now, two years later, with the help of thousands of slaves, many of them the former Spaniard inhabitants of the island, Barbarossa was rebuilding the fortress and simultaneously constructing a jetty connecting island and mainland. When it was completed; Algiers would have a large harbor of its own and would no longer need to use Tunis for the wintering of its fleet.

Brought up from the Stygian darkness of the hold, and still chained hand-to-hand, the prisoners were marched, walking sideways, crablike, toward the city. When one tripped and fell, to the catcalls and jeers of the onlookers, the others could only drag him along until he regained his feet. The last remaining Scot serving man—except for Fionn—fell once too often. A scimitar ensured he would never get up. The headless body bounced about, spewing blood on the fellow prisoners as they dragged it with them—a grim reminder of what happened to one who was less than surefooted.

Their destination soon loomed above them: the Jenina built by Barbarossa on the site of the palace once occupied by his assassinated Moorish predecessor.

Iron cages, less than a man's height, hung here and there from tree or beam, tower and turret. Inside crouched men, dead or dying
of thirst and starvation. To the Christians' horror, their group stopped just below a cage where one emaciated man was devouring the death-bloated remains of another. Above the great arched entrance to Barbarossa's Jenina, hundreds of heads and even more skulls were mounted on spears, the flesh being scavenged from the newer ones by great blackdaws. Amidst this mute and terrifying testament to the cheapness of life in the Barbaresco state of Algiers, the captives were glad to reach the comparative safety of the dungeons.

That night, while the prisoners from the
Annunciata
thirsted unattended in the windowless dungeons carved from stone below the Jenina, there was much merriment above in the Court of the Four Domed Chambers. There, intricately stuccoed walls, ornate window shutters, and lavish wood paneling rivaled in richness the sumptuous, overelaborate furnishings. That Barbarossa was unaware of his son's rescue and was still searching for him did not dampen the feasting. Eulj Ali, his four wives and his mother rejoiced in food and wine and, when he was up to it, in the vigor of his
jima
with one or more of his wives, as Marimah looked on fondly.

It was not until the following day that Eulj Ali, his mother, and his father's most trusted lieutenant, Sinan the Jew of Smryna, sat down to discuss the fate of the prisoners. Marimah wanted to wait until the Beglerbey returned before any decision was made. Eulj Ali protested; the decision, like the captives, was his. "They must be freed. I have no choice," Eulj Ali finally declared. "I am indebted to the
jamad ja'da
for my life."

"Who?"

"The
jamad ja'da.
Wait till you see him, Sinan. You'll agree the name fits the owner, for never on a young man did I ever see such a head of hair white and gray and silver and damascene steel."

Sinan the Jew, looking on silently, found his interest piqued.

"A young man?" Marimah persisted.                           

"Of an age with me. He travels under this sign," Eulj Ali said, fishing his carving of the Seaforth crest from out of one of the many voluminous and secret pockets within his robes. As Marimah turned the small Mer-Lion over in her hands, Eulj Ali continued, "He bought me and protected me from whippings. I am in his debt, he saved my life."

"As you saved his," she retorted.

"He is a Hospitaler," was Sinan the Jew's quiet addition to the conversation.

Marimah reacted violently, throwing the small carving from her as if it had come alive and mauled her hand. "A Hospitaler?" she shrieked. "You saved a Hospitaler?" Fear, shock, anger, despair warred within her.

Eulj Ali could not meet her eyes; instead, he bent to retrieve the carving. Damn the Jew. He had hoped the secret would hold until the Christians were safely gone.

As if Eulj Ali had spoken aloud, Sinan the Jew responded impassively, "If I knew of this within minutes of your arrival, how long, think you, before word reached the Beglerbey?"

Marimah nodded vigorously; Sinan was right. Eulj Ali only stared coldly at his father's lieutenant. Not even months in the galleys had made him subservient to authority.

"There is a way
..."
the slow, nasal voice of Sinan suggested as he met, unblinking, the stare of his master's favorite son, a man only the foolhardy dared to offend.

Marimah, concerned for her son and fearful of her husband, clutched at the hope the man held forth. "Anything. Just tell us."

Ignoring her, since she was only a woman, even if mother to Eulj Ali, the lieutenant waited, staring at Eulj Ali. Only when he slowly and reluctantly nodded did Sinan proceed. "There is a way to save their lives and appease the Beglerbey's wrath while repaying the Moulay Hassan's daughter for her high-handed refusal of Barbarossa's offer to take her in marriage."

Eulj Ali had known nothing of the marriage offer or its aftermath. Diverted and alarmed, he stared at his mother with narrowed eyes. "My father would replace one of you? Which one? Not you, I trust?" A spy in his father's bed was an invaluable asset to a younger son with contentious brothers. Meeting his stare, Marimah saw smoldering in her son the same violence that Barbarossa was so quick to vent. Marimah had lived through Barbarossa's spasms of rage, however, and her son's did not frighten her unduly. She worried only that the Amira Aisha might change her mind and accept Barbarossa's offer. Marimah had spent too many years talking, coercing, threatening, coaxing, bribing, and whipping her
fellow wives into order. The thought of removing one and introducing another into the seraglio did not find favor with her. Moreover, secretly she applauded the young princess's posture of independence.

Eulj Ali's face contorted with anger when his mother did not respond quickly enough to please him. Then Sinan the Jew's nasal voice insinuated itself between mother and son and averted possible violence against the mother by the son. "Your mother would not be forced out. All know she is the favorite of the Beglerbey." Ignoring Eulj Ali's sigh of relief as merely an indication of his irnmaturity, the Jew continued on imperturbably. "All I suggest is a way to use this matter to our advantage. The young princess not only rejected our benevolent Beglerbey's offer of marriage, but also challenged him to compete for her hand. Against others. Any others, providing only that they be of noble birth. Naturally, Uruj Barbarossa will not demean himself to compete with untried men whose only claim to virtue lies in the blood of their fathers and forefathers. However, is it not written that he who owns the slave also owns all that belongs to the slave? And are you not
muraquib
to the
jamad ja'da
and his fellows? If you enter one or all of these captives of yours into the contest and one of them wins, the prize is yours. If any or all lose, then they die. It is as Allah wills."

Marimah was anxious. "What of the Sultan of Sultans? What if Suleiman finds out?"

"Let him. Let him discover that the Moulay Hassan of Tunis harbors Knights Hospitaler. How long, think you, the Moulay will survive when his son-in-law is of that proscribed order? I have thought it over. No way may we lose, we can only win."

Marimah was not convinced. "What of the order? Suppose they get wind of this and exact revenge?"

"With what? If my voices tell me right, they scour the continents for new recruits. Think you they will dare storm Algiers or even Tunisia? Nay, they huddle on the barren rocks of Malta and pray that we ignore them."

Eulj Ali, having adopted the plan almost instantaneously, was eager for details. "How will you accomplish this?"

"I won't, you will. Is there a good-looking one among them who would impress a woman? Perhaps this
jamad ja'da?"

"He is the most beautiful, but there are one or two others. Why do you ask? For yourself or our plan?"

Sinan the Jew ignored the discourtesy of his friend's son in alluding, even faintly, to the corsair's predilection for men. "If one is attractive enough, our work may be done for us. We sell him and his friends—as a lot—at the slave market in Tunis. Already the market is being dried up by the princess's agents who buy and buy and buy. If, however, by the time we get there, she has bought all she needs, we can enter them in the contest under the aegis of one of our Berber friends."

At first flush, Eulj Ali could find no fault with the scheme and he agreed to ship the Hospitalers out the next day to the slave markets at Tunis. But before they were dispatched, Sinan the Jew demanded a look at them.

"Shall we go now?" Eulj Ali asked.

"You two go," Marimah said. "I have things to do."

At the foot of the steps to the dungeon, the two men were met with cries of "Water! Water!" from the several cells that held the knights, servants, freemen, beggars, and sailors. Eulj Ali suddenly remembered he had not given orders to feed and care for the prisoners, and he bellowed up the stairway, "Bring water and food for these miserable curs. And be quick about it!"

With a scurrying of many feet, both food and water were shoved through the small opening in the bottom of the barred doors that provided the only light into the cells.

Going from cell to cell, Eulj Ali quickly assessed the damage and concluded that other than being parched and weak, the lot of them would soon recuperate. The beggars, he noted, seemed hardly bothered at all by the lack of food and water. And when he came to the cell holding de Wynter, their eyes locked in a mutual mixture of respect and hatred.

"A thousand pardons,
al-rabb,"
said the redhead. "I was so glad to be home that I did not extend the courtesies of my home to you." And from his lips came a taunting victory laugh.

"I shall remember it," said de Wynter, noticing Eulj Ali's companion for the first time. Ignoring Eulj Ali, the Scot and the Jew silently took one another's measure while thirst-crazed, hungry men, slurping water and gulping unchewed food, filled the dungeon with
the bestial noise of some hellish menagerie. De Wynter, staring into those hooded eyes, felt his hackles rise—as if in the presence of evil incarnate—and he knew terror.

"I would have a better look at him," Sinan finally said, without looking elsewhere. "Bring him out here and let me assess his true worth."

Only too well the redhead knew the real meaning of Sinan the Jew's request. He wished to assess the man as a sex object, not as meat for the slave market. Nonetheless, Eulj Ali had to admit, sometimes the two were the same.

However, Sinan's liking for men frequently left his partners disfigured. That would not do for de Wynter, Eulj Ali decided. "No! Let him be. We want him in good shape when he arrives in Tunis. In fact, if I catch you near him, I'll cut off that thing that causes you so much trouble." He also changed his mind about sending Sinan alone with the prisoners on the four-day journey to Tunis.