A magpie: bird of ill omen, as much here as anywhere.
Marshall turned, grabbed Rob by the shoulder and dragged him down into the lee of a fallen tree trunk. Voices. Through the spindly stalks of a host of foul-smelling fungi which sprouted from the rotten wood, Rob saw shapes moving twenty feet away through the trees. Their striped cloaks made them hard to discern in the slats of light and forest shade, but the animals they led had no such camouflage. Mules, drawing carts piled high with timber.
It was Rob’s first view of the natives of this land; at first sight, they did not look like devils or even much like brigands. As they approached, he could tell from their gestures and loud laughter that they exchanged ribaldries like any other working men. Their skin was a few shades darker than his own, but it was not much darker than the skin of the fishermen with whom he supped down in Market-Jew. They seemed to be of slight build. He felt a vague disappointment; if truth be told, he had been expecting fierce black giants dressed outlandishly and with their curved swords flashing, but these were just woodsmen much as you would find anywhere in the world, poor men with a living to make and families to feed.
Six carts rumbled past, accompanied by fifteen men, the final four of whom wore swords and were more watchful than the rest.
Marshall and Rob watched them go. Eventually, the Londoner said heavily, ‘That’ll be another two pirate ships bound for English shores come the spring. Come on, lad, get up. Let’s put some space between them and us.’
By nightfall there was still no sign of an end to the forest. Lying beneath a makeshift shelter of sticks and leaves, Rob dreamed of Cat beaten black and bloody, Cat dead from a dozen causes – from disease, from starvation, from exhaustion, from some mad attempt at escape. Cat lying in a pool of filth; Cat beheaded by a half-naked savage wielding a dripping scimitar; Cat dragged behind a pair of horses till she was unrecognizable; Cat hanging from a spike in a wall, weeping silent tears of blood.
He woke at dawn and trudged behind Marshall through the unending, monotonous trees. At some time in the afternoon the older man held up a hand, then pointed away to the left. Rob followed the line of his finger. In a little clearing two men slept in a pool of sunlight with their cloaks pulled over their heads. Rather than creeping away, Marshall beckoned him to follow. Then he turned, grinned at him and drew a finger across his throat.
With horror, Rob realized his purpose, but before he could protest the Londoner had plunged his weapon into one man, withdrawn it and applied it to the other.
‘They like to take a nap in the afternoons,’ Marshall declared, pleased. ‘Lazy bastards.’
Rob fell to his knees. He had never seen a man killed before, let alone two in cold blood as they slept. Bile filled his mouth, and then he had to turn away to let out a hot wave of vomit.
Marshall wiped his sword on the first man’s cloak and resheathed it. Then he started to pull the man’s robe up over his head, revealing a pair of scrawny legs and a grizzled scrotum.
Rob stared at him in disgust. ‘That was murder.’
‘Got no stomach for the work, eh, lad? You’d better toughen up fast. They’d have had no qualms about doing the same to you, and don’t you forget it. Now wipe your mouth and help me. We’ll take their clothes and anything else we fancy, right?’ He regarded the two corpses with his head on one side. ‘You’d better take the other one, he’s taller. Good thing about these robes: one size fits all, but this one’s shoes’ll never fit you.’
‘I’m not wearing a dead man’s clothes,’ Rob said obstinately.
‘Fair enough: we’ll be out of the forest by evening. You’ll get maybe a mile if you’re lucky, before some band of villagers stone you to death. Your choice.’
So it was that some while later two robed and turbaned figures emerged from the eaves of Marmora Forest into the dreary countryside beyond, each mounted on a dun-coloured mule.
Rob had insisted on wearing his own tunic beneath the robe, and now he was sweltering. He could already feel fleas and lice as they burrowed and bit into his flesh, yet he bore the discomfort with a savage satisfaction. He had stood by and done nothing while two human lives were taken, and he felt filthy inside and out.
He was surprised that no one paid them much attention as they passed, for he could feel his own guilt burning like a beacon, but, other than a group of ragged children who threw olive pits at the mules as they passed through a dusty grove, people barely turned their heads.
‘Blasted little urchins,’ Marshall grumbled darkly. ‘These people breed as easily as rats, then turn their children out into the fields to make mischief without the least threat of discipline. No wonder they grow up into wastrels and thieves. Problem comes from the top down, as is always the case. There is no central authority in this scurvy country: it’s a fucking anthill.’
‘Sir Henry Marten said there was a sultan, a Moulay something,’ Rob said hesitantly. ‘Said he thought King Charles would send an envoy to him to plead the case of the captives.’
Marshall laughed. ‘Moulay Zidane: king of nothing but turmoil and trouble, and most of that of his own making. His father was Al-Mansour, called the Victorious because he drove the Portuguese out of Morocco and killed sixty thousand of their army. The son is as nothing compared to the father: he has no morals and earns no respect, not even from his own corsairs. They have stopped paying him his due from the spoils; they mock him at every turn. That is why we do business with the true power here.’
‘Do these pirates have a king, then?’ Rob asked. ‘Someone they have set up in place of the Sultan?’
‘The business of pirating is a complex one,’ Marshall said, sucking his teeth. ‘Morally complex, if you like.’
‘I can’t see what is morally complex about thieving and slaving.’
‘They see it in rather different terms. The Sidi Mohammed al-Ayyachi is a very remarkable man, a respected man to whom all listen, who has managed to draw to himself many like-minded allies. He has forged a formidable fighting force from most diverse quarters – renegade ships’ captains from every seafaring nation in Europe, religious fanatics, wealthy Hornacheros, Moriscos thrown out of Andalusia and Grenada by King Philip – just about anyone, in fact, with a grudge to bear against Christendom. He plays a wily game: talks it up as a holy war while encouraging them all to make a fortune. To plunder a Christian ship is to return the wealth of the world to Islam, to the rightful glory of their god; and if in the process that means killing Christians or forcing them to turn Turk, so much the better for the war effort. If we’d had a king like him in England, we’d have conquered half the world by now, for he is a thousand times more charismatic than that fool James or his pompous arse of a son. The old Queen would have appreciated Al-Ayyachi mightily. In many ways they are much alike: they could understand the nature of men and work upon their weaknesses to play them like pawns in the greater game.’
‘What manner of being is their god that he demands such offerings of blood and gold?’
Marshall turned to regard him pitifully. ‘Why, the same god as our own, lad, the great God Almighty. They have but a different name for him and different practices with which to worship him. Otherwise there is not much to separate our religions except a thousand years of bloodshed!’
This was all too much for Rob, who felt as if his world was tilting end over end. ‘But if we all serve the same god, then why are we at war?’
‘Why are men ever at war? For power and greed and to enforce their own views on others. Personally, I don’t give a toss for any of it: I’d serve the Devil himself if it fit my purpose. But I’ll tell you now: when we penetrate this nest of pirates, you’d better keep your head down and show no anger or disrespect, whatever your own views and no matter how you are provoked, or you’ll lose both your head and your wench in one fell swoop and there’ll be nothing I can do about it.’
As they rode on, the sun beat down, then blessed clouds covered the sky and a light spattering of rain began to fall as they crossed a great fallow waste land dotted with rocks and dusty bushes. After a while they came upon a number of black tents pitched low to the ground. Livestock were hobbled in little groups around the outskirts, including a herd of great, ugly, hump-backed things with long necks and knobbly knees. Beside the tents women sat tending to infants, weaving bright textiles or pounding grain between stones. One of these now saw the travelling pair and came running towards them, her silver bracelets and anklets jangling as she ran. She fit Rob’s idea of the exotic he had expected this far-flung place to contain, for she wore any number of colourful wraps of cloth about her head and body bound with great silver brooches and pins. Her eyes were outlined with some thick black cosmetic which made her regard most striking, and there were tattoos on her chin and her forehead, and brown patterns on her hands and feet.
She stretched out one of these patterned hands now in entreaty and gabbled at them. To Rob’s surprise, Marshall did not chase her away with angry words but instead dug in his pouch, drew out one of the coins he had robbed from the dead men and placed it in her palm. More extraordinary still, he then exchanged a few words with the woman in a harsh-sounding language, and she chattered back at him.
‘Come,’ said Marshall, sliding down from his mule. ‘Tonight we shall eat and sleep well; and tomorrow we enter Salé.’
‘Who are these people?’ Rob asked nervously. ‘How do you know they won’t kill us in the night and leave us for the crows? And what are those horrible beasts they have tethered there?’
Marshall clapped him on the back. ‘They’re travellers like ourselves: nomads from the desert lands to the south. They travel the ancient caravan routes with their camels and their livestock, trading their produce and whatever trinkets they come by on the way. Did you see how much silver that woman was wearing? No need to worry: their byword is hospitality. Make the most of it: they’re the last decent folk you’re likely to encounter for a while.’
Rob watched the sun go down in a blaze of gold that left a pillar of violet light reaching high into the darkening sky, while to the south the clouds flushed amber and crimson as if lit by inner fire, which faded to ashes as night fell and the stars came out. His belly was full of a savoury stew he suspected was goat, but was nevertheless as good as any mutton he had ever eaten, served with a soft black fruit that after the first bite was less shocking and increasingly delicious, and flatbreads which had been baked on stones heated by the fire. Listening to the nomads laugh and sing, he felt calm and optimistic for the first time since he had left London. It seemed that not all foreigners were devils. Life could be fine, and, while he and Cat were still alive, there was hope that all would be well.
The next morning four of the nomad herders rode with them on the way to Salé, with their billy-goats trussed up and dumped like sacks over their saddles; others followed at a more leisurely pace with the rest of the livestock and trade goods. Rob got the distinct impression that Marshall had put a few coins their way: a group of nomads riding into the city were hardly likely to attract notice in the same way as two lone travellers, one of whom was unusually tall and possessed of a pair of bright blue eyes.
Within an hour the traffic on the road became noticeably heavier. Peasant women walking with huge baskets of herbs on their backs, their foreheads taking the strain of the handles; farmers with cartloads of vegetables; girls in black robes balanced precariously upon donkeys, sitting not astride like a man, nor yet sidesaddle like an Englishwoman, but upon a meagre blanket, with both feet bumping against the animal’s flank. Occasionally armed men on horses came hammering down the road, shouting for others to get out of the way, and they did so with such alacrity that one cart even toppled into a ditch, spilling its load of turnips and potatoes everywhere. In England, if this had happened, everyone would have made mock of the carter and walked on, laughing; but here men, women and children scurried hither and thither to collect the bouncing vegetables and return them safely to the cart with a smile and a nod to the farmer.
As they approached the city, the nature of the countryside began to change once more from parched waste land – which Marshall referred to as ‘the bled’, as if indeed the life had all run out of it – to land that was now cultivated and greener, dotted with trees and bushes and strips of crop. Along the roadside women sat amid great pyramids of fruit, the like of which Rob had never seen.
‘Pomegranates, lad,’ Marshall told him. ‘Fruit of life, and Persephone’s downfall!’ Rob was none the wiser on either count.
A nomad peeled off from the group, returning a moment later with one of the fruit. Marshall tossed it to Rob. ‘There you go. That’ll keep you occupied for a while.’
Biting into it resulted in a mouthful of horrid, bitter pulp and caused the nomads no end of merriment; but at least he could now perceive the fruit within, gleaming like little rubies in the sunlight. Rob dug out a handful and popped them into his mouth. The explosion of sweetness when he bit down on them was so unexpected and so sensual he almost fell off his horse.
Pomegranates
. Would they grow in Cornwall? If they would, he vowed he would never eat another apple.
At last the ochre ramparts of the town rose up before them, and now the traffic became intense and noisy and accompanied by clouds of flies. The road funnelled them towards a huge, arched gateway manned by guards in dusty blue tunics and wide breeches tucked into boots, their turbans so white they hurt the eye. ‘Do what I do and keep your head down,’ Marshall warned Rob again, ‘and say nothing, even if you are addressed.’ He wound his own turban about his face so that his eyes were in deep shadow and only a glint of them could be seen, and Rob arranged his own headgear in like fashion.
He glanced up once as they approached, in time to catch a glimpse of an array of huge bronze cannon mounted on the crenellated wall above them, pointing out to sea. Expensive guns, of European design. This was it, then: the pirates’ nest, the city to which Catherine had been brought across the wide ocean. He hunched to disguise the breadth of his shoulders and stared fixedly down at the stiff sprouting of dusty hair on the mule’s neck as the shadow of the gate fell across him. The nomads chattered like magpies to the guards, then miraculously they were waved through into a great milling chaos of a place, with all manner of unsavoury smells, and a thousand jostling people.