William Napier: Blood Red Sea

Nicholas staggered in the powerful surge, then set his foot on the captain’s throat, grabbed the rawhide thong around his neck and pulled. It came free, with the key attached. The captain’s head fell back and he went under water, his last words a curse in slurred Berber.

‘May it carry you down.’

The ship itself then gave a colossal gulp, like the last gasp of some dying leviathan, as its stern was finally sucked beneath the surface of the sea and it tilted and began its slow dive to the ocean floor, many dark fathoms down. Nicholas abandoned himself to the turbulence, eyes closed, mouth clamped shut, the dagger still between his teeth, his lungs filled with one final breath. You could not fight the sea. You had to wait until it let you go.

Seeing nothing, tumbled about, all sense of direction lost, he was aware only of an iron key in his right hand, and a heavy locked chest under his left arm, dragging him downward fast. So fast that even through tight-closed eyelids he was aware of the sunlight fading, the water around him darkening, deeper and deeper green, as he fell away from the sunlit upper world. In his blindness he groped with the key, tumbling over and over, and at last drove it into the lock of the chest.

The captain had kept it well oiled. He counted his loot nightly. With his last strength, his lungs feeling as if he’d inhaled a line of pure gunpowder, Nicholas turned the key and wrenched the lid open with main force. The weight of the sea at this depth was trying to keep it shut, as if Old Father Ocean had already stretched out long green fingers of weed, decreeing these treasures Mine, mine, for all eternity . .

Let it be something decent, he thought. Even at that extremity the wry thought crossed his failing mind that, knowing his luck, he would probably come up with a fistful of English pennies. His fingers closed around something like a chain, and then he let the chest go and it dropped away into the depths. He kicked the opposite way from its descent, towards the light. He could barely kick more. But he must, or he would not rise fast enough to save his life. He must swim.

He began to see visions, colours. But he held himself in his right wits, eyes bunched tight, though longing to open them and look down, for one last glimpse of those corsair treasures sinking away into the midnight deep. But he denied himself. That second or two of delay alone might kill him. He kicked for the sunlight, eyes screwed so tight he saw stars, mouth leaking bubbles now, eardrums throbbing and hissing.

He imagined himself kicking upwards through glinting silver reales, cascades of pearls and glittering clouds of gold dust. Turning and falling, winking and revolving like some strange sea creature, at last losing even its light, an emerald necklace that once graced the alabaster neck of a queen.

He never remembered the last of his ascent but came to the surface and lay there with a roaring in his ears, a thunderous sound. After a while he realized it was his own breathing, as his burning lungs sucked in air. He lay spreadeagled on his back in the water like a starfish, just floating, blinded by the sun. Still alive. A dagger blade still between his teeth.

Then a familiar voice called his name.

If the ship had sunk entire, they too would have been lost. But the Rus’s act of mayhem had blown timbers and spars widely over the sea, which offered the remote chance of reprieve, at least for a few hours. Straws to drowning men.

Hodge was draped over such a spar. Nicholas stuck the dagger in the knotted waist of his loincloth and swam slowly over to him.

After the months of enslaved horror, then the sudden violence and the gigantic explosion, there was an eerie calm. They bobbed in a flotsam of shattered timber and drowned men. Now the Sweet Rose of Algiers was gone, they looked out on nothing but boundless sea. They almost felt a longing for the filthy brigantine. Here, so far from land, so far from other living men, was the loneliness that drove men mad.

After a while they found the energy to exchange their single spar for a broader, more promising timber. A plain piece of pine from the mountains of Lycia, all that saved them from death. They draped their arms over it. Their blistered backsides and legs under water, their rotted feet, had gone strangely numb. Perhaps it was better that way.

‘What’s that you’ve got? Round your fist?’

He hadn’t even looked at it. A rope of colourless stones that flashed every colour of the rainbow as he twisted his fist about.

‘Looks like it was diamonds you very nearly perished for,’ said Hodge.

Nicholas almost smiled. ‘So far,’ he said, ‘I’ve had a very lucky day.’

Hodge closed his eyes. When he opened them again, Nicholas had checked the links and then awkwardly managed to drape the necklace over his head.

‘As drowned men go,’ said Hodge, ‘you’ll make a very pretty one shortly.’

‘We’re not drowning,’ said Nicholas. ‘I’m not done with this world yet.’

It was very quiet but for odd splashes and groans. Nicholas looked around for the Sardinian boy, the only other slave unmanacled at the end who might have survived.

‘Save your breath,’ said Hodge. ‘You’ll need it.’

‘He might still live,’ said Nicholas.

‘He died,’ said Hodge. ‘Look around you.’

It was true. Among the gently rocking detritus, one or two terrified corsairs still clung to bits of wood. But no boy.

‘How long can wood float before it’s waterlogged?’ asked Hodge.

‘Weeks,’ said Nicholas.

‘How long can we float before we’re waterlogged?’

‘We shouldn’t speak. Breathe through your nose.’

Hodge fell silent. Then he fumbled underwater at the cloth tied round his waist, and produced. . four oranges, salvaged from those that had floated up from the hold. He laid them carefully in a deep rut on the timber. But still seawater sluiced over them.

‘Eat them now. They may save us.’

Such paltry things a man’s life could depend on. Man whose mind ranged the whole universe — yet his life could depend on a single iron bolt, the thread of his life be cut for want of an orange.

They ate slowly and deliberately, knowing this could be the last thing they tasted before they died.

‘They were good,’ said Nicholas.

‘They were sweet.’

After a time Nicholas said, ‘We’ve got a day and a night. After that we will die of thirst. I remember Smith and Stanley telling me.’

‘Smith and Stanley,’ repeated Hodge. ‘We could do with their company now.’

Nicholas smiled faintly. What would they do now, if they were us?

It was a question they had asked themselves many times over the last few years. What would the mighty Smith and Stanley — old acquaintances from their past lives, adventurers, knights, warrior monks — what would they do? Nicholas and Hodge had whispered it to each other in filthy Tripoli dungeons, yelled it to each other as they fled through almond orchards pursued by hunting dogs and a hundred maddened villagers, murmured it to each other drunkenly in many a dubious quayside tavern, surrounded by half a dozen cut-throats they had just insulted. What would Smith and Stanley do now?

‘Smith,’ said Hodge, ‘would swim about with a knife in his hand, finishing off any corsairs he could find.’

‘Stanley would be making terrible puns. He’d say he’d be surprised if the Sweet Rose of Algiers ever rose again.’

‘Both of ’em,’ said Hodge sharply, ‘would have the wit to remember to cover their heads.’

Hurriedly they unknotted the cloths around their necks and tied them over their heads. At least they might delay the hour when the Mediterranean sun stewed their brains in their skulls. They also took off their loincloths and draped them round their reddened shoulders.