The Mountain of Gold (2 page)

We had pursued a corsair ship off the coast of Minorca only a few days before, trading round shot with him before the wind died away and he put out his oars. On that occasion the captain had laughed heartily as, stroke by stroke, his craft pulled away from us, free to fall on other benighted mariners.

But even a corsair sometimes has to acknowledge the harsh reality of defeat, particularly when half his crew is dead and his craft is sinking, and even more so when a broadside of over twenty iron guns on each side can send him to Allah in a matter of minutes. The stricken galley's captain, a swarthy, turbaned man of forty or fifty, even raised his curved scimitar in salute to me as his men hauled down their black flag.

Lieutenant Castle organised a prize crew to take possession, its chief task being to liberate the poor souls who had spent many long years chained to oars on behalf of their heathen masters. I could see and hear them as they were brought up from below, pale creatures, some stark naked, others clad only in a cloth about their privates, all with wrists and ankles red and bleeding from their newly-broken shackles. A few looked around uncomprehendingly, but others cried out in joy, not a few wept uncontrollably, and some pointed to the
Wessex
and her captain, bowing and waving in relief and gratitude.

I remember that sight, I hear the sounds, and I smell the stench, as though it was all but this morning. In all my long years on this earth, I have seen many sights to turn a stomach or elevate a heart, but only once have I witnessed a scene that brought on those two sensations together. All these years later—past sixty of them—I can still see the tears on the face of one thin grey-bearded old man, his hands clasped in prayer as he offered up thanks for his deliverance. In that moment, he fell down to the deck. Even though I was standing on another ship a few hundred yards away, I did not need the shake of the head from my crewman who attended him to tell me that the old man was dead. True, he had died a free man, but ever since that day, I have debated in my mind whether the sudden realisation of that very freedom killed him.

In their turn, the captain of the galley and his surviving officers were brought over for questioning. I watched them brought aboard, these three dark-skinned men in their long white robes. They looked about our deck with disdain, as though only a trick of the unkindest fate had put them into my power; as, indeed, it had. Coxswain Lanherne led the captain down to my cabin. He was tall and defiant, this Moor, his bearing that of a nobleman. He was clean shaven, a thing unusual for that race. He saluted me with an elaborate wave of his hand, after the fashion of his kind, and muttered some imprecations that might or might not have been calling down the blessings of Allah upon my head. I began by asking him the name of his home port, for I assumed that like so many of the men of the African shore, he would have acquired at least a smattering of the tongues of those whose ships he preyed upon relentlessly.

He stared at me, uncomprehending.

I tried again in French, in which I was fluent, and Dutch, with which I was reasonably conversant (having lived in that country for some time before the happy restoration of King Charles, and having acquired a vivacious Dutch wife and tedious Dutch brother-in-law as a consequence).

The brown-red face remained a mask, even when Lieutenant Castle tried his competent Spanish and Phineas Musk attempted the rudimentary Greek that he had acquired a few weeks earlier from an intriguingly immoral nun on Rhodes.

I spoke to Musk, who returned after a short while with a man as dark-skinned as my captive, albeit shorter by a head. This was Ali Reis, an Algerine renegade who had served with me on the
Jupiter.
I asked my questions again through my interpreter, and at last the corsair captain launched into a babble of incomprehensible speech, rolling his eyes to the heavens (or at least, to the deck a few inches above his head) and gesticulating wildly. Finally he drew breath, and Ali Reis said, 'He claims to be of Oran, Captain, and says his name is Omar Ibrahim. His galley was twenty days out of Algier when it encountered the Maltese. But there is one thing more, Captain.'

Ali Reis stepped across to me and whispered in my ear. I frowned and asked, Are you certain?'

The Moor nodded determinedly, placing his hands on his chest and head. I looked hard at the corsair captain and said, 'Omar Ibrahim of Oran, indeed. A shame for you, Omar Ibrahim, that Ali Reis, here, has a better ear for languages than all the diplomats of the Pope, the King of France and the Sultan combined, even if you locked them all away together in the Tower of Babel for a hundred years. He tells me that as an Algerine himself, he has encountered many men from Oran, but never one who speaks Arabic with the brogue of County Cork.'

At that, Musk reached out and pulled off the man's turban, revealing a shock of sun-curled red hair. The corsair captain nodded slowly, as though ending some secret inner game, looked me in the eye, and said in rolling Gael-English, 'Ah well, Captain. God bless all here.'

Lieutenant Castle raised his eyebrows and nodded vigorously. 'A renegade, then, and what's worse, a damned Irish renegade! A king's subject turned Turk, by God. There's only one outcome for that, Captain. Hang the bastard. Send him up to meet Saint Peter and then down to meet Lucifer, fast as you like.'

Castle pronounced the sentence with his usual good humour, making a public execution sound like a forfeit in some hilarious tavern game, and Musk (who had found the perfect carousing partner in my veteran lieutenant) nodded heartily in agreement. Now, I am no milksop in such matters—as I get older, my list of those who should be summarily hanged lengthens almost daily, the most recent additions being my cook and most of the inhabitants of Winchester. But as it was, my more tolerant younger self sensed that more might be gained by questioning this Irish Turk than by at once placing a noose around his neck and throwing him off the main yard.

I attempted to make myself as grand and terrifying as possible, saying, 'Well, my renegade friend, Lieutenant Castle has spoken justly. The King himself instructed me to execute any of your kind that we encounter.' (This was strictly correct, as my orders contained such an injunction; but my attempt to convey the impression that Charles the Second and I spoke intimately about such matters was the merest bluster.) 'But we Quintons don't despatch men to their maker without giving them the chance to tell their tale.'

Castle shook his head, clearly believing this to be an unnecessary diversion which delayed a good hanging. He excused himself, returning to the quarterdeck to monitor the slow approach of the Maltese galley. Ali Reis went with him, for evidently I now had no need of an interpreter, and both Musk and John Treninnick, who guarded the door, carried enough weapons to deter a small regiment, let alone one unarmed Irishman-turned-Turk.

The corsair captain grinned and said, 'Ah, but you're a fair man, Captain Quinton. Now that's a name of some honour, I think, that I knew from my old life. Is it not so? I was in Kinsale town, a lad of seven or eight, when Lord Buckingham's fleet came back from Cadiz. There was one ship especially, with an old captain on her quarterdeck, and my father pointed him out, and he says to me, "Brian, my son,"—Brian Doyle O'Dwyer, I was, before Omar Ibrahim was hatched out of a Mahometan egg—"Brian, that captain there, he's the famous Quinton that sailed with Drake and fought the Armada, no less. An earl of England, he is." Now, what was that title he bore? Near forty years ago, Captain, and my memory's not what it was. Some bird, I think. Eagleswing? Hawkscar?'

'Ravensden,' I said. 'The man you saw was Matthew Quinton, my grandfather, and I share his name. My brother is the present Earl.'

Musk snorted and rolled his eyes; he had been a persistently surly yet ferociously loyal retainer to my grandfather, father, brother and now to myself. But even then, I was not such a raw idiot that I could not see what this O'Dwyer (if such truly was his name) sought to do. Claiming a connection with a stranger at first meeting, and flattering their family name to the heavens, is a sure way of melting the heart of the gullible, especially if this gullible stranger has the power to put a noose round your neck. But it was hardly a story that the Irishman was likely to invent (how else could he have known the name and history of my grandfather?) and I knew from reading Earl Matthew's sea-stained journals in our library at Ravensden Abbey that his ship had indeed spent some weeks repairing in Kinsale harbour in the year twenty-five. Kinsale, the same haven where my first command was wrecked through my utter ignorance of the seaman's trade, costing the lives of over one hundred men.

The Irishman said, 'Brother to the Earl of Ravensden, by God! That lifts my spirits a little, Captain. To surrender at all, well, that's enough disgrace for a lifetime, and many of my fellow captains, the native Algerines that is, won't even countenance it. But to surrender to a man of noble birth, and to an Englishman, not yon Knight of Malta—'

'Yes, my thanks, but enough, sir!' I blustered. 'Now, let us return to the matter in hand, namely your imminent hanging. When and why did you turn renegade and traitor, Irishman?'

O'Dwyer sighed, a little too theatrically for conviction. 'You'll not know Baltimore, I suppose, in west Cork? A grand village, Captain, just grand. We had a good life there, with the fishing and the like. I can remember that day in the year thirty-one as if I was standing there now, back down on the green shore with Seamus O'Sullivan, the brewer's son, and his sister Aoife. We saw the great galley come in from Clear Island, we did, and watched it with all the curiosity that fills youngsters of twelve or thirteen, as we were. It was only when their boats started to come ashore that we realised they were Turks. They carried off the whole village, that day, every man, woman and child. Upward of three hundred souls, all carried back to Algier and eternal slavery. Aoife went into the harem of the
dey
that ruled Algier, and bore him four sons before the plague took her.' The Irishman's eyes were suddenly distant, as is the way of his kind when they digress into matters of love and death. 'Aoife O'Sullivan.' Matters of love, at any rate, from the sigh that accompanied the name. 'Ah, now there's the thing, Captain Quinton. We were all slaves, you see. But Aoife was the greatest lady in the court. She died in comfort in the palace of Algier, in the full beauty of her youth, rather than as an ancient hag in the putrid hovel of the Baltimore O'Sullivans. That's played on my mind for near these thirty years, Captain. For if we talk of slavery, when in her life was she truly a slave?' This was a strange, unsettling man, this Omar Ibrahim, or O'Dwyer, or whatever he elected to be from one moment to the next. Then the Irishman's temper brightened in the blink of an eye, and he said, 'Seamus, though. A big, laughing lad he was. But, well, he was ever a stubborn one, Captain, the sort who can never accept their fate, you see. He swam for it one night, hoping to reach a French ship lying off Algier. The Turks' guardboat caught him, and they skewered him on a pike. I saw things differently, shall we say. I knew my chances of returning to old Ireland were as likely as there being a woman Pope, and I could see the corsair ships coming back laden with booty that made their crews rich. Not a difficult choice, in the end. I embraced the Prophet just before my sixteenth birthday, which was when Omar Ibrahim ventured out on his first voyage.'

Musk growled, 'And killed and stole from good Englishmen ever after. Damned from your own treacherous lips. Let's get the rope—'

Martin Lanherne entered the cabin, saluted, and spoke in his strong Cornish voice. 'Mister Castle's compliments, sir. The captain of the Maltese galley is coming across by boat.'

I said, 'No doubt to protest at our stealing his prize, or to demand the right to hang this renegade himself, or both. Whatever the upshot, Irishman, you'll hang this day. Say your prayers to whichever god you've currently elected to serve.'

'Ah, Captain, that would be a mistake, a most grievous mistake, that it would. Your king would be most angry with that, seeing how useful I could be to him.' Our trumpeters were already sounding their welcome to our imminent guest, and Musk was searching in my sea-chest for garments that could clothe me suitably for the occasion. The Irishman was casting about for anything that would save his life, that much was obvious, and would say anything to stave off his inevitable fate.

As I donned the clean shirt that Musk handed to me, I said, 'Desperate lies won't save you from the rope, O'Dwyer. Once I've talked to this galley captain, I'll see you dangle.'

His tone became more urgent. 'Not lies, Captain. No, far from a lie. The biggest truth in the world, instead. It's gold, you see, Captain Quinton—a whole mountain of gold. There, in Africa.' He pointed toward the distant shore, far over the horizon. 'Oh, it would make your king the richest monarch in the world, that mountain,
and I am the only white man who knows where it is.'
He was speaking very quickly now, aware that he only had seconds before I had to leave him to greet my fellow captain. Only seconds in which to preserve his miserable, worthless, renegade's life. He even clutched my sleeve as he spoke. 'One year when I was a young man, our corsair fleet was forced to stay in harbour by plague and an enemy's blockade. I took a caravan across the great desert, hoping to find plunder in the south. And that was when I met an old Arab merchant who led me to it, Captain. A mountain of gold. I'll swear it on every holy book of every faith under the sun. A mountain twice as tall as the old hills of Beara, and as broad again. A great rocky hill with streaks of gold along its length, each one catching the desert sun in its turn.' His eyes blazed, as though reflecting the gleam of that golden mountain. 'My old Arab, Captain, he says to me it's the prize that they've all sought, down the centuries. Alexander himself, the Caesars of Old Rome, David and Solomon alike, Prester John, the Grand Turk. All of them searched for it. And now King Louis and Emperor Leopold both seek it, for they know what it will bring its owner. Gold without equal, Captain Quinton.' His voice was now an insinuating, plausible whisper. 'Unlimited gold, and with it, unlimited power. No white man has seen it, other than your humble servant, here. No other white man knows where it is, and can lead an army right to it. Now wouldn't it just be the grandest shame if you strung up the man who could make your King Charles the richest and most feared sovereign in all the world?'