William Napier - The Great Siege

‘What tripe he talks,’ said Smith, stumping past to relieve himself over the stern. Yet as he passed by, he shot his comrade-in-arms what looked like a warning glance. As if to say, Hold your tongue, brother knight. You talk too much .

Then Stanley fell silent.

The master of the Swan was still adamant that he’d not go east beyond Cadiz.

‘Malta I know not,’ he said stubbornly.

‘Sardinia, then. You know Sardinia. You might pick up a fine cargo of sweet wine there, much cheaper than in Spain, and yet sell it back in Bristol for Spanish prices nonetheless.’

The master pondered Stanley’s business advice. At last he said, ‘Cadiz for fresh water and the best price for our cloth. Then Sardinia, for four hundred florins more, or a hundred ducats.’

‘A hundred ducats!’ Stanley laughed. ‘Twenty.’

‘Eighty.’

‘Ten.’

The master scowled. ‘You mock me. That’s no bargaining.’

Stanley hadn’t time to bargain. He stood. ‘Listen to me, man. We sail to Malta to fight a Christian crusade against an invader who will devastate all of Europe if he triumphs. One day he will come to Bristol too. This gold coin in my wallet is to buy men and weapons to fight him, not to pay you for your services. You take us to Sardinia, and you will earn yourself twenty gold ducats, no more, and the knowledge that you have done God’s will.’

At last, the captain sullenly held out his hand. Stanley counted out the heavy Spanish ducats.

It was common knowledge that you could not argue with a master on his ship, Emperor of his little wooden domain amid the sea’s boundlessness. Evidently, it was common knowledge that Stanley did not have.

They rounded Cape St Vincent, passed by a flat, marshy coast to the north, the sky filled with elegant white seabirds, and finally into a great harbour, backed by an ancient city, gleaming white and pleasantly crumbling.

‘You are now nearer the sun in his zenith than the north coast of Africa,’ said Stanley. Hodge looked very uncomfortable. ‘Mind your drink is clean and never go hatless, or your wits will fry in your skull. And this — ’ he held is arms wide — ‘is the most ancient sea city of Cadiz, founded by the Phoenicians, three thousand years ago.’

‘We’re in Spain?’ said Hodge disbelievingly, gazing round the harbour tight-packed with jostling boats and many coloured sails, a babel of barefoot seamen shouting, loading and unloading sardines and olives and wool. ‘Will they treat us well? Are we English not enemies?’

The mariners were already lugging the bales of broadcloth up from the hold onto deck.

‘ Negotium omnia vincit ,’ said Stanley dryly. ‘Trade conquers all.’

‘Two hours,’ said the master. ‘Enough for us to make our sale to the Jew dealers, and take on water. We sail again before sundown.’

A crowd of fellows were drinking watered Jerez wine in the shade of a thatched and open-fronted quayside bodega.

Smith glanced back at the two boys following them and murmured, ‘Practice is one thing. They need a real brawl, if they are not to shit and run at the first sight of the Turk.’

‘Here’s one,’ said Stanley, nodding his head in the direction of a talkative drinker seated on a stool surrounded by listeners. The knights called for four cups of sweet wine and hot water and sat on a bench just out of the sun.

The drinker and braggard was bedecked in outlandish attire, plumes and silver bracelets and a necklace of shark’s teeth along with his unbuttoned shirt and ridiculous wide galligaskins, to make it known he had travelled much in foreign parts. His listeners, hard sunburnt sailors all, listened to him nevertheless, some grinning, some agog.

Smith’s great fist tightened round his wooden wine cup. The fellow spoke Andaluz Spanish, but his accent was French.

‘What’s he say?’ asked Hodge, taking a sip of wine. Nicholas had already drained his and was calling for another. The pretty young barmaid was getting prettier with every cup. Her dark eyes flashed and glittered in the dark of the wineshop.

Stanley translated.

‘He commends Russian wine and Cretan bread above all others. He says English beef is nothing, you should taste the roasted snake they eat in China, where he says manners are so much finer too. The Emperor is a personal friend of his. He says the moon gives off a burning white heat near the tops of the mountains at the equator, and fills half the sky. He says in the far north, men live in houses of ice, share their wives freely with strangers, and coat themselves with bear-fat instead of clothes. He says he has met a great hairy man whose beard nested birds, and gathered hogsheads of orient pearls from shallow lagoons in the tropics, in water as warm as a bath. There, naked maidens disport themselves wearing nothing but garlands of flowers about their pretty tawny throats, begging passing sailors to dally with them.’

‘If there’s one thing I cannot abide,’ said Smith, looking meaningfully at Stanley, ‘it’s a fellow who brags about his foreign travels.’

The traveller tossed back another cup of wine in a single gulp. Nicholas did likewise. It was manly.

‘Señorita!’ he called.

She came over with a leather jug, her slim hips swaying. He held his cup out. She looked at him.

‘Please,’ he said. ‘ Por favor . ’

The girl arched her fine black eyebrows at Nicholas with just a hint of amusement, and then refilled his cup.

‘ A borracho fino, primero agua y luego vino ,’ she said as she turned away. For a fine drunkenness, first water and then wine.

‘What did she say?’ asked Nicholas.

‘A compliment,’ said Stanley. ‘A saucy compliment indeed.’

Nicholas grinned goofily.

The great French traveller was telling of the island of Madagastat off Africa, ruled by Mohammedans as black as devils. On another island, mermaids and tritons swum inland and slept in the treetops at night, and there were owls the size of horses, and dragons with feathers as long as a cannon royal, and mouths like a castle gateway. There he had raked up carbuncles beneath the palm trees, diamonds and amethysts, and carried them home in sacks to his beautiful wife, the daughter of a duke.

‘All this,’ said Smith, ‘from a fat braggard who never stirred beyond the stinking backstreets of Paris, except to cheat a few simple Spanish sailors for his dinner.’

‘And before you know it,’ said Stanley, ‘your hand has bunched itself into a fist and punched the windy fool off his stool, sprawling on the flagstones, with blood pouring from his nose now flatter than an Ethiop’s.’

‘At which he says,’ added Smith, his voice rising, ‘why, manners are far superior to this in China! Then everyone in the tavern joins in belabouring him and tossing him over the quayside into the brine, wishing him hearty Godspeed back to China, and give the Emperor there a kick in the Netherlands for us!’

Nicholas laughed and stood a little unsteadily. He had taken too little water, as the barmaid had observed, and the strong sweet Jerez wine had already warmed his empty stomach and young head.

‘I need to piss,’ he said. ‘All this traveller’s talk has gone to my bladder.’

He made his way carefully outside.

Stanley just managed to catch the braggard’s eye at that moment. He shook his head apologetically, murmured something, and gestured outside at Nicholas.

The braggard stopped talking and frowned. The crowd of drinkers about him fell abruptly silent and stared round. The braggard stood up. He was a good height and of useful build, full-bellied but broad-shouldered, his lantern jaw finished with a neatly pointed beard. He pushed one or two men aside, staring directly at Stanley. Then he came over, hand on his sword hilt.