Lepanto
1571
Once we had crossed the Pyrenees, where they taper off at the shoreline of the Mediterranean, I felt optimistic that I could make it to Italy. I put all my hopes on an invitation Cardinal Giulio Acquaviva had extended to me to visit him in Rome. Perhaps he would help me out of respect for his friendship with my professor. It had been a defining stroke of luck to become the protégé of Professor López de Hoyos, a man of personal integrity who seemed to have read all the great books. His belief in my talent gave wings to my ambition. “Reach for the highest stars in the literary firmament, Miguel. Aim for no less!” he had said to me on a number of occasions.
At the recommendation of my professor, Cardinal Acquaviva had asked to see some of my poems. He was only a few years older than me, but his tall, aristocratic presence; his aura of power; his worldly manners; the precision and elegance of his speech; his white, soft hands and elongated musician’s fingers garnished with impressive blood-red stones that matched the hue of the princely vestments he wore—it all made me feel like a mere boy in his presence. I memorized his compliments about my poetry: “Professor López de Hoyos speaks of you as one of the future glories of Spanish letters,” he said to me one evening at dinner. “He raves about the elegance of your verses, the originality of your conceits, and your persuasive flourishes. I dabble a little in poetry myself. Will you show me some of your verses?”
At the professor’s house I left for the cardinal a selection of my poems rolled up and tied with a ribbon. When I saw him next, Acquaviva said, “Cervantes, you must come to Rome to learn the language and study Italian poetry. You will always have a job waiting for you in my household.” I took his invitation to mean that he liked my poems. I clung to that casual offer as the only bright spot in my dire circumstances, the one beacon of light on my shadowy horizon.
That autumn, as I traveled with the Gypsies through the leafy valleys of southern France, the weather was mild, the foliage afire, and the languid afternoons were filled with buzzing, inebriated golden-gloved bees. We camped in idyllic chestnut and cork tree forests that reminded me of the settings in pastoral novels. The French countryside teemed with rabbits, hedgehogs, deer, pigeons, partridges, pheasants, quail, and wild boars. By day the women and children rummaged in the wooded areas for berries, pine nuts, eggs, snails, mushrooms, wild herbs, and truffles. The older women stayed in the camp minding the smallest children and tatting lace, looping multicolored threads of cotton and linen to make the tablecloths that were highly esteemed as decorations for the dining rooms of the prosperous homes in Spain.
We camped on the banks of cold, burbling streams or narrow but fast-flowing rivers, thick with fat trout that we caught from the mossy banks with our bare hands. At night we bivouacked around a bonfire. New mothers squatted on the ground breast-feeding their babies; they displayed their bursting teats in front of the men without any shame. This custom added to the reputation the Roma had of being immoral. As the night wore on, the clapping of hands and the ringing notes of the tambourines charged the air of the camp; caskets of red wine were uncorked; pipes with aromatic hash were smoked. The dancing and singing went on until everyone—the very young and the old included—collapsed on the ground exhausted and intoxicated.
I never let out of my sight the few gold escudos I had left after I paid El Cuchillo. Before I went to sleep, I hid the leather pouch between my scrotum and my undergarment. Perhaps I need not have been so vigilant. Maese Pedro had introduced me to the Gypsies as a criminal poet wanted for numerous murders. Once my murderous identity was established, I was always called “Brother Miguel” or “Poet.” The children could not hide the awe my reputation inspired in them.
My lifelong fascination with Gypsies was cemented by that trip. Their love of drinking, dancing, making love, and fighting, and their ferocious attachment to their customs and their people, were qualities I held dearly. They spoke Castilian—and a little bit of many European languages—but they communicated among themselves in Calo. I passed many of my waking hours talking to the children, trying to learn the rudiments of their language. I was speaking from direct experience when I wrote in The Gypsy Girl, “It seems that Gypsies, both male and female, are born into the world to be thieves: their parents are thieves, they grow up among thieves, study to become thieves, and graduate with honors in the arts of thievery. The desire to steal and the act of stealing are inseparable traits that only death can part.”
* * *
I said goodbye to my Roma friends in Italy, as they continued on their way to their ancestral land in the Carpathians. I rode to Rome as fast as my horse would take me, afraid to run out of money before I reached my destination. Six days later, my exhausted horse rode under the arch of the Porta del Popolo. I dismounted and, with tears clouding my vision, I kissed one of the columns that marked the entrance to the city of the Caesars.
Without delay, I headed for the residence of Cardinal Acquaviva, near Vatican City. I didn’t care that I was dirty and close to collapsing when I came knocking on the door of the cardinal’s grand residence and was brought into his presence. Acquaviva received me with an open smile that dissipated my worst fears.
“I was afraid Your Excellency would have forgotten me,” I mumbled, as a way of apologizing for my unannounced visit.
“Of course I remember you, Cervantes,” he said. “I don’t ever forget a promising young poet. How good of you to remember me. Welcome to Rome and to my, and your, house.”
I kissed the white-gloved hand he offered me. No questions about my precipitous arrival in the city were asked, to my great relief. I was wondering if he had heard anything about the incident in Madrid, when he put me at ease, saying, “I have a pressing need of a secretary who can answer my correspondence in Spanish. How is your calligraphy?”
“I speak the truth when I say to Your Excellency that my handwriting, though small, is clear, and has been praised by my teachers.” I was flabbergasted by his offer. “And I hope not to embarrass you with my spelling.”
He motioned to his aide de chamber. “Take Signor Miguel’s bags to the visitor’s apartment on this floor.” Addressing me, Cardinal Acquaviva added, “Cervantes, I can put you to work immediately. In the meantime you’ll have your meals here. How does five florins a month sound to you?”
* * *
Besides his love of poetry, the cardinal was interested in painting, music, philosophy, history, and both local and world politics. He liked stimulating conversation, especially when accompanied by good food and the finest red wines. Talk of religion seemed to bore him, making him distracted and impatient. Even though at that point I had written little and published less, he treated me with the respect due a serious poet.
Those first months in Rome, I took every free moment I had from my duties to explore the magnificent, immortal city. As a new pilgrim, I vowed to love Rome with tender affection, humble devotion, and an open heart, and soon surrendered to her bewitchment. The streets and sun-filled piazzas on which I walked, bedazzled, had been soaked with the blood of Christian martyrs and were sacrosanct ground to me. The footsteps of Michelangelo still echoed in the parks, avenues, and narrow streets. His frescoes on the ceiling and altar of the Sistine Chapel seemed more the work of a deity than a single artist. Admiring their vastness, their beauty, and their perfection for hours, I began to comprehend what it meant to create a work of art that, like Dante’s Comedy, was a summa of all that could be said about the human spirit.
There was no part of Rome—no gigantic marble column or broken arch, no ancient tomb, no mysterious alley, no ancient wall, no venerable cemetery, no crumbling church, no fading fresco, no vandalized palace, no penumbrous forest of cypresses, no romantic piazza where lovers met at night—that was not an example of the endless bounty of marvels that God had bequeathed men.
Memories of my troubled past in Spain receded, as well as nostalgia for the life I had left behind. Visiting Rome’s churches, chapels, shrines, and basilicas, studying the statues and the paintings adorning their walls, the frescoes gracing their ceilings, the intricate gold-work of their altars and domes, I felt a perpetual intoxication.
Determined to succeed at something at least once in my life, I worked assiduously for the cardinal. My parents had sacrificed themselves to send me to the Estudio de la Villa, and I had failed them. In my letters home, I talked at length about the duties I performed in the house of the great man (magnifying their importance) as well as the important people who visited the cardinal’s palazzo. I wrote to my parents that Pope Pius V had blessed me. I did not mention he had blessed—at the same time—thousands of other believers from his balcony. I hoped this would lighten the burden of shame I had caused my parents and make them proud.
Yet, I was restless. Rome was the political capital of the world. The fat-assed prelates, who seemed to love their young acolytes as much as they loved the luxurious life they led, talked more about political intrigue in the ranks of the church than about God. I realized I did not fit in that society of spies and intrigue; I did not have the subservient spirit required to reside in the palaces of people who hungered for power, even if they were so-called men of God. The world of the Vatican was not where I wanted to make a career. There was grave danger of becoming a lying and pompous poet if I let that sybaritic life seduce me.
Pope Pius V wielded more power and commanded more fear than many mighty kings and emperors. Concerned that Selim II, son and murderer of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent, emboldened by recent Ottoman conquests in the Mediterranean, was gathering massive forces in nearby Greece, the pope created a Holy League to embark on a new crusade against the Turks. The talk in Rome was that the invincible Turkish navy was preparing an assault on Italy, to extirpate Christianity and enslave Christians. Once the Ottomans had conquered Italy, it was believed they intended to retake Andalusia, if not the whole of Spain, in the name of Islam.
Selim II was the son of Suleyman the Magnificent with the ex-slave Roxelana, his favorite wife. He was called The Sot because he lived in a permanent state of debauched drunkenness. He cared nothing about the affairs of state and demanded enormous revenues from his navy so that he could live in grand splendor and unrestricted decadence. To this end, he had given license to Algerian corsairs to terrorize and plunder the peoples of the Mediterranean. But his grand vizier, the Serbian renegade Mehmed Sokollu, was obsessed with expanding the frontiers of the Ottoman Empire. He sought to gain control of all the Mediterranean nations and, afterward, all of Europe. Sokollu had become emboldened by the Turks’ conquest of Yemen, Hejaz, and—the jewel of all—Cyprus.
The thought of Selim II and his grand vizier subjugating the Christian nations, stocking the Ottoman harems with our women and selling our children to the Turkish sodomites, was unbearable to me. I was ready to give my life to defeat such a monster. And the decision of Philip II to name Don John of Austria as commander of the Spanish armada was all the encouragement I needed. The young prince and I had been born the same year, and I was not alone in revering him. Though he was an illegitimate son of Charles V, the Spanish people preferred him to King Philip, who was more comfortable in court, with his mistresses, than on the battlefield. Don John’s campaign in Andalusia squashing the Moorish revolt had made him famous as a soldier and leader. He gained further renown as a naval tactician by attacking and capturing the Algerian ships that sailed our waters and raided our coastal villages in search of slaves. His bravery made him a hero in the eyes of Spain’s youth. I dreamed of becoming a soldier in his army. Don John was the prince Spain was in desperate need of, if we were going to recapture our leadership among the nations of the world. For me, it was a clear-cut choice: the noble prince—a true knight and righter of the world’s injustices, and a warrior against evil—versus the cruel, degenerate, and despotic Selim II. Depending on which side emerged victorious, the Mediterranean nations would be either Christian or Muslim.
I rejoiced when Spanish forces joined the Catholic states of Genoa, Naples, and Venice to fight back the imminent assault by the Turks. Their forces began to gather off the coast of Italy, near the port of Messina. The imminence of the approaching war saturated the air we breathed; it dominated our conversations, our thoughts, and our dreams. It made all the young men in Rome walk about with their chests puffed out. I had never been so thrilled to be alive.
When Cardinal Acquaviva did not require my services, I was drawn to visiting the Colosseum. I would find myself alone, late at night, sitting high up, looking down at the empty arena until I could imagine it drenched in blood that blazed in the moonlight. Then I could hear the roaring echo of the bloodthirsty Romans. If I closed my eyes I saw the angry populace making signs of life and death with their thumbs; signs that screamed silently, Life, death, life, death. Life.
I would kill Turks the way I imagined myself killing lions and slaying gladiators in the Colosseum. My head was filled with patriotic fervor for the Spanish land and our Christian faith. One night, alone, with the shadows of the monument and the stars in the firmament as my only witnesses, I pledged to give my life, if necessary, to defeat the Turks. If I lived, the battlefield, I was convinced, would provide me with experience, and a great subject to write a magnificent poem, something that would rival The Iliad or El Cid. And if I never became a great poet, I would at least be an active participant in a decisive moment in history.
That was my state of mind when my brother Rodrigo arrived in Rome as a soldier in a Spanish regiment commanded by Don Miguel de Moncada. We drank in the taverns, visited whorehouses, and talked incessantly about the glorious future that awaited us in the service of our king.
All that remained was for me to inform Cardinal Acquaviva of my decision. There was no displeasure in his voice when he said, “Miguel, I will miss you. If my circumstances were different, I, too, would become a soldier. I will pray for your safety. Remember that there will always be a place in my home for you.”
* * *
The last days of that humid August of 1571, the Christian fleets began to gather in the harbor of Messina. I was feverish with my zeal to serve under the command of our noble and magnificent prince, who had promised to bring Spain into another Golden Age. On the days leading to the great battle, Rodrigo and I waited aboard La Marquesa, hearing the Masses said by the priests who went from galley to galley reminding us that to die in the defense of the only true God was a worthy enterprise. Along with thousands of other Christian youths we waited for orders from our commanders to ready for battle, hearing changing reports of the strategic movements of the Turkish navy.
That September, which seemed to be the longest thirty days of my young life, we whiled away the time cleaning and oiling our weapons, rehearsing different attack scenarios, and praying under our breath to kill multitudes of Turks in order to preserve our faith and the Christian world.
At last the moment came, that glorious day of October 6, when, hearts inflamed with dreams of immortality, we sailed forth in two hundred galleys—thirty thousand men under the command of Don John with orders to destroy the fearsome Ottoman navy.
* * *
We sailed under clear skies until night fell. A moonless sky favored us. In complete darkness we slipped through the narrow and heavily fortified entrance to the Gulf of Corinth. The Turkish navy awaited us at the eastern end of the gulf.
On October 7 I woke up feverish and vomiting, and was ordered to stay below deck during the battle. “Your Grace,” I said to Captain Murena, “I joined the king’s forces to do my duty, and I would rather die for God and Spain than survive the battle without fighting.”
The captain frowned and said: “As you wish, Cervantes. But you will be stationed by the skiff and not move from there.” He added, “You must be a great fool. Most men in your condition would be happy to be exempted from fighting. God favors fools and madmen. May He be with you.”
On the southeast side of the gulf, where the Peloponnesian Mountains rose, witnesses to many epochal ancient wars, I imagined I saw and heard the great Greek heroes of antiquity cheering us on from the wooded hills. The currents of the gulf steered our fleet toward the Turkish ships, which were stationed in a line across the bay. Dawn revealed the triangular red flags of the enemy decorated with the moon star; they seemed like an airborne wave of brilliant color. In the center of their formation Ali Pasha’s immense galleon stood out; on its mast was hoisted a colossal green flag on which, it was said, Allah’s name was woven in gold twenty-nine thousand times. The Turks’ fearsome chants, and the spectacle of their glowing sails, lent majesty to the occasion. Their battle cries sounded as if they’d erupted from a giant common throat, one that belonged to a dragon whose red eyes stared at us from the clouds.
For hours both navies were frozen on the surface of the sea. The noon sun was blazing above us when the orders came to prepare for battle. Don John’s strategy became evident as the fast currents in the greenish waters thrust us in the direction of the enemy: we would not meet the Ottoman navy head-on. Our armada parted to form two flanks, while leaving behind in the middle a line of ships with our most powerful cannons facing the Turks. Both columns of ships traveled close to the shores of the bay. Rodrigo and I were both in the northern formation, but on different ships. I no longer felt sick.
The Turks fired first, producing a rushing wall of flame, which was followed by a thundering sound, as if the sky had crashed down to earth. I felt my heart stop, until the cannons of our galleons blazed back, aiming at Ali Pasha’s ship. This was the sign for our two columns to aim our prows at the Turkish vessels. We prepared to ram their fleet as our artillery fired. Of all their weapons, we feared most the Greek fire the Turks used. Once it hit a ship, it was impossible to put out: no amount of water or sand could quench its burning, steady fury.
As the two fleets got within striking distance of each other, and the harquebuses and cannons fired salvos on both sides, a hot mass of smoke swallowed up Christians and Turks alike. A force I did not understand seized me: I was no longer myself, no longer just one body, but part of something prodigiously large—a nation, a religion, a way of life, a soldier in the army of the true God. I became thousands of men, invulnerable, as tall and fearsome as a cyclops.
Orders came to board the Ottoman ships, and to engage the enemy in hand-to-hand combat. Battle-axes were wielded. For the next few hours severed fingers, hands, arms, feet, and heads pelted me, and I was drenched by mutilated and headless bodies shooting streams of blood.
Once the fighting started, my fear evaporated. When one man died, he was replaced by another; when that other man fell wounded, a healthy one emerged from behind him, creating an endless reserve of soldiers always venturing forward, a bloodthirsty horde shouting slogans, insults, prayers, curses, in Spanish, in Italian, in Turkish, in Arabic.
I had slain many Turks when a gunshot tore my left hand to pieces, leaving the bones exposed and protruding. At first I felt no pain and kept fighting, striking and killing with my healthy arm until a thump on my chest sent me reeling back: a harquebus blast had dug a hole in my torso. I was trying to block the flow of blood by pressing my fist against the orifice, when another deafening charge hit inches from my fist. My chest was heavy with the gunpowder and iron embedded in my flesh, and I staggered around as if drunk, smelling my charred flesh, trying to hold onto anything to keep my balance, to keep myself from collapsing on the deck of the ship where I knew I would be trampled to death.
As men were wounded and killed all around me, as ships caught fire and sank with loud groans, as choking black smoke enveloped us, I continued to swing my sword at anything that moved, intending—despite my weakened state—to vanquish every heretic in my path until I died.
Where was my brother? I prayed that he had been spared; prayed that if he was mortally wounded, and in excruciating pain, a compassionate soul would put an end to his suffering. I prayed that our parents would not lose both sons in one day.
* * *
I thought I must have been dreaming when I began to hear, in Spanish and Italian, cries of “Victory! Victory!” The fate of the battle had been sealed when the oarsmen of the Turks—Christian and Greek slaves who were unshackled so they could maneuver better during battle—jumped off the ships and swam toward the shores of the bay, disappearing into the thick forests that covered the hills. By sundown it was clear that we had slaughtered a great number of Turks; that our losses had been smaller; that we were the victors; that we had defeated the hitherto invincible Ottoman navy. Our men cheered when what was left of the enemy fleet was spotted fleeing the Gulf of Corinth, carrying their commander.
For what seemed hours, I lay on my back in a corner of La Marquesa, semihidden by empty barrels and dead men. My burning desire not to die so far from Spain kept me alive. The orders not to pursue the Turks reached my ears. Our men took a rest from the killing; the world hushed. The glorious battle of Lepanto had ended—I was a part of history.
Our ship, however, caught on fire and started sinking fast. With the last of my strength I crawled on the blood-crusted deck and hoisted myself overboard. The sea was so thick with corpses that soldiers walked over them—as if they were on land—to move from ship to ship. The soldiers who had been hit by Greek fire bobbed in the water like human torches, illuminating the bay. I floated next to a raft heaped with men—Muslim and Christian—dead and dying. In death all of them looked like pitifully broken marionettes made of the same material. With my good hand I grabbed onto a corner of the raft. When a hand aflame emerged from the sea as if to grab me by my throat and pull me to the underworld, I screamed and my entire body shook in the water.
The sea was scarlet with flames that spread in waves over the roiling waters. The stench of burning wood, gunpowder, and above all, of roasting and charred flesh, was the work not of God but of the devil, I told myself. The world around me lost all its edges; everything became a blur. Heavenly Father, forgive my sins, I prayed. Forgive me for the many times I offended You. Have mercy on my soul. I closed my eyes, certain I would open them again only in the afterlife.
* * *
Weeks later, when I regained consciousness, Rodrigo sat by my side. His eyes filled with tears. “You are in a hospital in Messina. The Blessed Virgin saved you,” he said. The pain in my chest, and in my useless hand, was excruciating. I howled. The Sisters fed me drops of water, but breathing itself was painful, as if the insides of my chest were ablaze. After a few drops of laudanum subdued my agony and I was calmer, my brother explained that he had found me on the beach the night after the battle, buried under a heap of dead soldiers.
For the next two years I languished in Italian hospitals, on bug-infested straw cots, in wards full of the ill, the wounded, the mutilated, the pus-ridden, the insane, the dying, of men who were rotting while still alive. Many nights I woke up screaming, panicked that the Greek fire had turned me into a burning torch, or that I was the only survivor after a gory battle, roaming in a desolate land, a landscape of severed limbs and decomposing corpses that was more frightening than any vision of hell I could ever have imagined.
Rodrigo left the army and found employment so that I could have the proper medications, and eat something besides the watery broth patients were fed in the hospital. When finally I was strong enough to go out into the world, with my scarred, patched-up chest and my limp arm, I was half the man I once had been. And I felt twice my age.
* * *
Three long years crawled by after the glorious days of the Battle of Lepanto, and I was desperate to return to Spain to see my family. I did not want to die on foreign soil. Over five years had passed since I fled Madrid. I was weary of the never-ending bloodshed, weary of being always on the move, engaged in endless campaigns against the Turks; weary, too, of the pestilential hospitals where my fellow soldiers rotted on their cots, eaten alive by maggots.
When I announced to Rodrigo that I was ready to walk back to Spain if necessary, he said to me, “Brother, I’m ready to return home with you. I have satisfied my curiosity about war and heroism. I want to go back home, find work, and help our parents. I would like to get married and have children.”
With the belated, pitiful payment of the wages owed us for our service as soldiers, we booked passage from Naples on the galley El Sol, bound for Barcelona. The irony of my return did not escape me: I had fled Spain to save my right hand and I was returning with my left hand hanging by my side like a dead appendage, ending at the wrist in a knobby, swollen stump, a ball of skin filled with blood, ready to burst if scratched. It was the hand of a monster.
Traveling on a lone ship back to Spain would make us easy prey to the corsairs. But the alternative was to wait for weeks to join a fleet of vessels, and our funds were dangerously low. At Lepanto, the Christian navy had made the costly mistake of not finishing off the slaughter of the Ottomans when they were at our mercy. Barely a year later, the Turks had regrouped, rearmed, and regained control of the Mediterranean, where once more they reigned supreme and were the bane of seafarers and people living in coastal towns. I had left some of my flesh and bone at Lepanto for nothing more than a taste of glory; it was as if the battle had been fought for naught. Mediterranean people quickly came to see Lepanto as a defeat; any mention of it was met with scorn.
Considering the circumstances, I wondered whether it was too late to receive from the Spanish crown compensation for my injuries. All my hopes rested in two letters I carried, one signed by Don John of Austria; the other, by the Duke of Sessa. The letters recommended me to his Catholic Majesty for a pension to reward my heroism in battle. Don John’s letter further pleaded with King Philip to grant me a recompense for additional service to the crown in the campaigns of Corfu and Modon, and a full pardon for the wounding of Antonio de Sigura.
But I knew the sluggish wheels of Spanish justice meant it could be years before my case was heard in court, and additional years before a pension was awarded to me. How would I survive until then? I could not hope to live on the charity of my impoverished family. With my lame arm, I could not be of much help to my father with his patients. What trade did not require the use of both hands? Could the experience I had acquired in Rome, as Cardinal Acquaviva’s Spanish secretary, help me to get work copying documents? I had failed to acquire riches as a soldier, but perhaps it was not too late to make my mark as a poet. My heart harbored a nugget of optimism; I clung to the belief that through poetry I might yet make my family proud. The naïve young man who arrived in Italy with the Gypsies would barely recognize himself in the man who was returning to Spain poor and crippled. But one thing had not changed: my belief that I was meant to achieve greatness.
The first night at sea, as El Sol sailed toward the Spanish mainland, after the passengers retired to their berths, the weather was so gentle, the sky so clear and alive with the light of the stars, that I decided to sleep on deck. Lying on the floor of El Sol, smoking a pipe, my head resting on a heap of coiled ropes, I wondered about the course my life would have taken if I had sailed to the Indies back then. The closer El Sol sailed to the coast of Catalonia, the more I thought of Mercedes. Would I see her again? I had written many letters to her over the years, but never received a reply. It was true that my love for her was tempered by the passage of time, but I still treasured her memory as an oasis in my past, before my life became a chain of misfortunes.
* * *
Four days and three nights later, we caught glimpses of the snowy peaks of the Sierra Nevada de Granada; it began to feel as if we might reach Spanish soil without incident. After a day of sailing turbulent waters the moon rose over a serene sea, and the African breezes were favorable. Captain Arana gave orders to lash the oars and let the winds blow us homeward. The moon’s brightness illuminated the sea in all directions. The passengers aboard El Sol were enjoying the balmy breezes and the shimmering stars as the sailors played cards on deck. Rodrigo amused himself and the female passengers by singing Spanish songs accompanied by the vihuela. But adverse luck is never readier to strike than when the world seems affable and inviting.
Suddenly, as if emerging from the bowels of Poseidon’s realm, three large ships approached us at such speed that, before our oarsmen could take their positions, or the remainder of our crew man El Sol’s guns, or the captain order the sails raised, the helm of the largest of the ominous ships came so near our vessel that we could hear the questions men shouted at us in a strange language, which I recognized as the lingua franca spoken in North Africa.
Captain Arana yelled, “They are Algerian corsairs! Ignore their questions!”
These were the infamous buccaneers in the service of Hassan Pasha, ruler of Algiers, who hunted for human chattel in the Mediterranean. Even the bravest among us were fearful. Captain Arana shouted from his post: “All the women and children must go immediately to their cabins and bolt their doors! And, for the love of God,” he continued, “I implore you to keep them locked! Do not open the doors until our fate is decided and you receive orders from our men.”
The women grabbed their children and rushed to their compartments in a flurry of rustling dresses and cries of, “Protect us, saintly Mother of God! Holy Virgin Mary, do not abandon us!”
We drew our pistols, prepared the muskets, wielded daggers, and unsheathed our swords to defend ourselves and our women and children. I turned to Rodrigo. “If we have a fight, let’s stay together,” I told him. The prospect of combat excited, rather than frightened, my brother: he was born to be a soldier. His pupils sparkled with the fire I had seen in the eyes of soldiers during battle. The Cervantes were all hot-blooded, impulsive, and easily excitable, but Rodrigo was the most fearless of us all. The prospect of death in battle did not frighten him. He was young, healthy, and strong, and could defend himself better than I could, yet I felt protective. Even with my lame arm, I will fight the corsairs to the death, I told myself.
Below deck, the boatswains shouted at our oarsmen to row faster and faster to put some water between us and the Algerians, and we began to outdistance them. Just when it looked as if we would evade being captured, the corsairs discharged two roaring cannon blasts: the first missed our ship; the second broke the ship’s mast in half. A swell of ocher smoke choked everyone, yet we managed to chant, “For Christ! For the only true religion! For the honor of the king! For Spain!” The bodies of two of our men lay crushed under the severed mast. They looked glued to the floor in a pool of bright blood—their entrails floating next to their bodies. Images of Lepanto flashed in front of my eyes.
The Algerians lowered to the sea a flotilla of boats, filled with hundreds of men who rowed furiously in our direction. The fifty men manning El Sol did not stand a chance against the swarm of corsairs approaching us. We were going to be slaughtered.
Captain Arana’s resonant voice rose over the din of our men: “Do not resist. They will kill all of us if we fight them. We are outnumbered. Listen to me, men, do not resist.”
There were cries of, “Rather dead than a slave!”
Captain Arana implored, “For the sake of the women and children, do not resist. For the sake of the innocents, we must surrender. Pray to our Lord Jesus for His great mercy. That’s our only chance.”
Without encountering any resistance, the corsairs came aboard El Sol, yelling: “Death to the Christians! You will be our slaves!” Then they cursed Christianity and King Philip. As our men were herded in a circle, a renegade who spoke Spanish barked, “If you want to live, throw down your weapons! This ship is now under the command of Arnaut Mamí. From now on, you are his property.”
Mamí was an Albanian notorious throughout the Mediterranean for his barbarous cruelty. It was easy to spot him among the corsairs: he was a head taller than most of his men, bulky, with long blond hair and large blue eyes that seemed made of ice. His lips were drawn into a smirk. Growling insults in imperfect Spanish, he pulled out of our group two young members of the crew, unsheathed his scimitar, and drove its point through the throat of one of them. As the sailor fell on the deck, blood gushing from his neck, Arnaut Mamí drew his weapon back and, with one fulminant stroke, beheaded the man. The other sailor—so stunned he had not moved—met the same fate. Arnaut Mamí kicked their heads into the sea, then ordered his men: “Bring out all the trunks in the cabins. Blow open the doors if need be.”
Buccaneers carrying large coarse bags demanded all the coins, jewels, and valuables we carried on our bodies. We obeyed in silence. I kept the precious letters from Don John of Austria and the Duke of Sessa in a leather pouch under my shirt. My fate hung on those letters. We were asked to undress. Surreptitiously, I took the letters out of their pouch and balled them in my hand. I was about to place them between my buttocks when a corsair struck me in the head with the handle of his dagger, and shouted, “Give me that or I’ll kill you like a dog!”
The commotion attracted the attention of Arnaut Mamí who asked for the letters and inspected the wrinkled documents. Apparently Mamí could butcher our language but was unable to read it. He said, “Yussif, what’s in these letters?” A corsair, who looked like a Spanish man who might have been captured long ago and then converted to Islam, revealed the contents. As someone who was used to assessing the monetary value of people, Mamí immediately noticed my lame arm. “Show me your other one,” he commanded. I extended my right arm. Mamí’s bejeweled index finger ran vertically over my palm. “You have the hand of a lady,” he sneered, his eyes appraising me up and down with curiosity. “You must be an important person, or a high-ranking nobleman. The letters prove it.” Then he said to his men in Spanish: “If any one of you harms this man,” he held up his right hand, making a V with two long-nailed fingers, “I will pluck out your eyes. Is that understood?”
Corsairs were returning to the deck with heavy trunks. They waited for Mamí’s orders. Wielding a heavy ax he shattered one of the locks, then rifled through the contents of the trunk, chortling with revolting delight at his splendid booty. He selected some coins and rings, which he threw at his men, who fought over them like starving vultures over carrion. He handed the ax to another corsair and made a motion to crush the locks of the rest of the trunks.
We were commanded to remain absolutely quiet, or else our heads would be lopped off. We watched as the loot was inventoried and transferred to Mamí’s ship. Next we were separated into three groups: The women and children were removed to Mamí’s ship. The men who looked like laborers, and therefore did not have prosperous families who could pay to ransom them, were transferred to another ship. These unfortunates would be put to work as oarsmen, which was the same as receiving a death sentence. The rest of the captives—those who were dressed as clergymen or as gentlemen or who had the manners of such—were reassigned to the third boat.
I was greatly relieved when Mamí determined that Rodrigo, as my brother, was valuable too, and included him with me in the third cluster. Once our transfer was finished, the corsairs stripped El Sol of everything of value. The last man to abandon it poured tar on the deck and set it on fire. As El Sol went down in flames and smoke, my hopes sank as well. Even when it went under, the Greek fire kept burning on the deck, illuminating El Sol’s descent to the bottom of the Mediterranean.
We were stuffed into a small crawl space below deck, forward of the midsection where the oarsmen rowed. On each side of the vessel they sat on wooden planks, four rowers to an oar, attached at the wrists and ankles by iron chains that ran through hooks connected to the sides of the galleon. The oarsmen spoke Spanish and other European languages. They were naked except for a swatch of fabric they wore around their midwaist. The backs of many of the men were verdigris and purple slabs of raw flesh, crawling with green maggots. Swarms of flies feasted on the pus that suppurated from their wounds. We learned not to breathe too hard, or to open our mouths unnecessarily, for fear of swallowing the buzzing shiny flies, which fought to enter our bodies as if to devour us from the inside out.
For days and nights, the low ceiling above our heads forced us to remain on our buttocks, pressed against each other like salted fish in a sealed barrel. Rodrigo found a space near me. Being so close to each other was a great consolation. Forward from the front of the crawl space was a globular window through which I caught glimpses of the sea and sky. There was also a hole in the floor, which we used to relieve ourselves. But it was hard to move around: often it was easier to urinate and defecate in place. In this extreme confinement all the class differences were soon erased. After a while aristocrats, prelates, and hidalgos all acted like beasts fighting for a chance at survival.
Fleas, chiggers, and lice feasted on our blood; fat black roaches crawled on the walls, and angry rats scurried between our legs. Now and then a bucket of fresh water with a cup was brought to the front of the crawl space, and each man was allowed to fill half the cup and pass it around until everyone had drunk. If the bucket was emptied before each had his ration, the unlucky thirsty men would have to wait until the bucket was brought again later. When our thirst was extreme we began to drink each other’s urine. The soggy biscuits that were handed to us now and then were fat with worms. We resorted to eating the fleas, and the lice that infested our heads. We began catching the roaches and the rats and mice, pounding them to death with our feet and fists, then tearing them to pieces and devouring their flesh and entrails.
Grown men cried inconsolably over the lack of news about their wives and children. The married men were tormented that their wives and daughters would end up in Turkish harems, and the fathers of male children could not hide their horror that their sons would be sold to Turkish sodomites. One of our men had managed to hide a Rosary and we found solace in saying the Lord’s Prayer and reciting Hail Marys in a whisper. Only through prayer could I escape a voyage that seemed bound for hell. The gentlemen in our midst knew that their families would pay their ransoms promptly; but the rest wondered what the future held for us. My parents would never be able to raise the money to buy the freedom of my brother and me, perhaps not even one of us. What kind of future awaited me with a lame arm? Would I become a servant in Mamí’s house? I refused to accept that either Rodrigo or I would remain in Algiers the rest of our lives. Despite my pitiful state, I developed an unshakable conviction that by whatever means at my reach I would try to escape at the first opportunity to the Spanish town of Oran to the west of Algiers. From there, I would make the crossing on a floating log, if necessary.
Some nights, I would wake up from a nightmare, and it would be so dark and the air so putrid that for a moment I would think I was still on the beach in Greece, that night after the Battle of Lepanto, buried under a heap of dead soldiers, and the little air that reached my nostrils would bring with it the sickening smell of roasting human flesh.
Despair is more contagious than hope. Yet as ephemeral as my hope to survive this ordeal was, I could not give it up—it was all I had. One day, a Spanish hidalgo, who now looked like one of those sick, starving beggars in Spanish cities, asked, “Cervantes, is it true you are a poet?” When I said I was, he said, “Why don’t you recite us one of your poems to relieve our boredom?”
I was not the type of poet who memorized his poetry. In my despondent state, I could barely remember a few scattered verses of my beloved Garcilaso de la Vega, whose poetry in former days I had been able to recite in my sleep.
One of our men caught a virulent fever, and he urinated and defecated blood. I remembered Father saying: “Song and play will chase sorrows away.” To make his last hours more pleasing, Rodrigo and I chanted patriotic songs we had sung before going to battle against the Turks. The man had been moaning in agony, but as we sang to him he became quiet and listened attentively, and the grimace of pain on his face became a faint smile. Our singing was not enough to snatch him from the claws of death, but for a moment made him forget he was dying.
Our captors made no effort to remove the rotting man. His belly kept distending, until one night his stomach burst, making a deafening explosion, and those close to the corpse were covered with decomposing organs. Then the body caught aflame. The great commotion awoke the oarsmen who started to scream and rattle their chains. By the time the pirates came down, the man’s body resembled a twisted branch that had burned until it turned to coal.
In the aftermath, many of us woke up from nightmares screaming and shaking; some men began to choke their neighbors, mistaking them for pirates; others started to talk like children and called out to their mothers. Another man screamed that we were in hell paying for our sins. Another one cried, “Strike me dead, Lord! If You have any compassion for this sinner, kill me now! Don’t let me live another day!”
Rodrigo proposed: “Why don’t we write a song? Just think of some words and I’ll compose the melody.” Though the buccaneers had confiscated his vihuela, we passed hours composing it. One night, as our ship was tossed in a tempest so violent that we began thinking in anguish that we would sink in chains to the bottom of the Mediterranean, Rodrigo and I began to sing our song:
In the middle of the sea
the hungry, water-heavy sea
with the eyes of desire
we captives gaze
in the direction of Spain.
The waves rock
the ship’s human cargo.
We cry as we sing:
How dear you are, sweet Spain.
Luck has abandoned us;
our bodies are in chains;
our souls are in grave danger.
Cascades of tears fall from the sky
As we are taken to a land
of warlocks and black magic.
How dear you are, sweet Spain.
A few men requested an encore. By the third time, some had memorized the words and we sang together forgetting about the angry sea. Singing our song whose words we had strung together as if to prove we were alive, I felt a taste of freedom.
* * *
It was dawn. Behind a veil of fog there emerged a shape resembling a gigantic beehive rising from the base of a verdant mountain. White buildings amassed atop each other—it could only be the port of Algiers. Remaining quiet, in case it was a dream, I shook my head and rubbed my eyes as the image of that city rose like the Tower of Babel, and then disappeared behind the fog. But the snoring, farting men, and the excrement we were covered in, were real enough. As the minutes passed, and the sky lightened, I saw clearly the breakwater that had been built as a barrier to make Algiers impregnable.
I nudged Rodrigo and said, “We’re here.” One of the men heard me, and soon all of them were awake, feverish with excitement and dread. Some of the men wept, sensing that our arrival there signaled merely the continuation of their torment. But I knew my chances of survival would be greater on land than in that hellish crawl space.
It was morning by the time the infamous port of Algiers loomed before us. The closer we got to land, the louder I heard droning drums punctuated by jubilant trumpets. The galleons carrying us entered the harbor, firing volleys at the sea behind them; in response, a deafening rumble sounded from within the walls of the city.
Once the ships had been secured, we were herded to the deck where silence settled over our group. I had been crouching for so long that I walked with bent knees throbbing as if I had nails hammered into my kneecaps. On the other hand, the fresh air and the scorching African sun on my damp, moldy flesh felt invigorating.
Our women and children had already disembarked and were waiting on the quay. Their husbands and fathers breathed with relief to see them, accompanied by their chambermaids and duennas. The women stood in a tight circle clutching their Rosaries, praying, looking with silent longing at their husbands and then at heaven imploringly. The mothers embraced their children and cradled their infants. Young women seemed to have grown wrinkles in captivity; the hair of other women had turned white. They would be put to work as maids and companions of rich Turkish and Moorish women. We all knew that if the ruler of Algiers, or any important Algerian, took a fancy to one of them, she would become part of his harem. How many of them had been defiled by the corsairs, as was the custom?
Arnaut Mamí’s men busied themselves unloading the ships’ loot, pulling down the sails, and rolling them up lengthwise. The oars were brought to the deck and then transported to a storage building nearby, along with the ballast. Eager to set foot on land and enter their city, the boatswains cracked their whips to make the men work faster. Yet all this activity could not distract me from the fact that we were now captives in the slave capital of North Africa.
We were ordered to remove our putrid clothes and crouch together on the deck. My rags adhered to me like a leprous skin. The corsairs hauled buckets of water from the sea and doused us, throwing squares of black soap at us, so that we could begin to wash off the grime which clung to our bodies like a dry, tough hide. Our scabby skin gave off a foul odor. When we were deemed sufficiently clean, we were instructed to soap and rub our faces and heads until they were lathered. Wielding sharp, gleaming blades, the corsairs shaved our heads and facial hair. Again we were drenched with buckets of water until we had washed away all vestiges of foam. I barely recognized the hairless and naked young man next to me as Rodrigo. By the time the corsairs put iron rings around my ankles, I already felt like a slave.
Buckets of drinking water and cups were distributed to us for the first time in days, as well as pieces of puffy and dry Algerian bread. We put our teeth to work, chewing without dignity, fighting for crumbs. Water and bread had never tasted better. It felt good to be clean and with a full stomach. Rodrigo and I sat next to each other in silence. As long as he was in my proximity, I was hopeful. I had to be strong and brave, to provide him a good example.
We were left in the sun for what seemed like hours. Our bodies dried, and our faces took on color—we no longer looked as if we were made of yellow wax. The sun’s rays returned us to a human state.
“Now that we look presentable, they’re ready to auction us off,” a man near me commented.
“My children, remember we belong to God and not to any man,” Father Gabriel, a young priest in our group, reminded us. Then one by one we approached him and kneeled at his feet. “Go with God, my child,” he said to each of us as he made the sign of the cross on our foreheads.
The men hugged each other in farewell, whispering words of encouragement, as we waited for the ordeal to begin. It had already been my experience that when fortune turned her back on me, it would be awhile before she smiled again.
We were ordered off the ship, walked down a long wooden plank, and assembled on the quay. Algerian corsairs pointing long, sharp lances stood between us and the women and children.
Suddenly we were startled by a din that sounded like hundreds of iron hammers tapping the street. The viceroy of Algiers, Hassan Pasha, a Sardinian renegade sent by the Grand Turk to rule that den of thieves and murderers, was arriving with his attendants to have first choice of the new crop of captives.
A squadron of showily attired warriors entered first through the doors of the city. They were the infamous Albanian Janissaries I’d seen portrayed in paintings and picturebooks. Just the mention of the word Janissary struck terror in the hearts of Europeans. It was well known that they were paid according to the number of Christian scalps they presented to their captains after battle. When they killed scores of the enemy, ears or tongues were taken as proof. If the slaughter had been greater, index fingers would be accepted instead.
As the Janissaries entered, I felt as if a noose had tightened around my neck. Even our captors looked at them in awe. Their blue eyes resembled smooth, dull pieces of glass that had been in the ocean for a long time and then washed ashore. Their eyes caught no light, as if they belonged to soulless creatures. A chill shot down my spine.
The Janissaries carried harquebuses and wore long daggers. A horn shape, wrapped in shiny green cloth, extended from one side of their white turbans. From the tips of the horns drooped white and black ostrich plumes, which nodded as they marched in. The Janissaries’ red leather shoes ended in a curled tip.
Behind the Janissaries marched Hassan Pasha’s infantry, wearing long-sleeved blue robes that fell all the way to their ankles, and over them red vests open at the chest. These men projected the strength of monumental beasts. Their arrogant strut, which created an infernal metallic clatter with the heels of their shoes, was mesmerizing. For the rest of my captivity in Algiers, I feared that sound more than any other. Once a captive heard it, it was time to run, hide, cower, jump over a wall, try to become inconspicuous, wish you could disappear with a puff.
A pageant of gold-haired boys, dressed in rich Turkish costumes, marched behind the soldiers. They played drums, trumpets, flutes, and cymbals. Their music was funereal, as if meant to put dread in people’s hearts, and their faces expressionless.
Behind the boys entered the cavalry, riding graceful white and black Arabian horses with bushy, perfectly groomed tails and bearing headdresses made of colorful plumes that fanned out in the manner of a peacock. Finally, there came Berber warriors on camels wearing dark-blue robes and headscarves that covered their faces, except for their midnight-colored eyes, which were rimmed by thick black lashes. These were the descendants of the Berber tribes that had invaded and conquered Andalusia centuries ago.
Neither the pope’s processions that I had seen in the Vatican, nor those of the king of Spain when he paraded through the streets of Madrid on special occasions, could match such a vision of luxury, color, and might.
Hassan Pasha, beylerbey of the Grand Turk, viceroy of the province of Algiers, made his entrance seated on red cushions, on a platform that was carried by giant, barefoot Nubian slaves dressed in loincloths that barely covered their private parts. Their smooth skin was so lustrous they did not need ornaments to make them beautiful. Hassan Pasha’s huge turban of crimson and deep blue was shaped like a full moon; from the middle of it projected a blue conical cap. He was draped in a cherry-colored robe that gleamed in the burning North African sun; a short animal wrap—copper-russet like the fur of a red fox—covered his shoulders. His full-length beard matched the color of the fur. He was massive, as if made of granite. His arched eyebrows and long, beaked nose gave him the look of a hawk ready to strike—and crack open—the skull of his prey.
With the help of a Nubian page he stood up and stepped off the platform, exuding immense power combined with unfathomable corruption and cruelty. The corsairs dropped to their knees, and placed their hands and foreheads on the ground. Arnaut Mamí was the first to raise his head. With a barely detectable nod, the beylerbey beckoned him to approach. Mamí advanced, taking small steps and bowing low. As he kneeled in front of Hassan Pasha, he took the hem of the beylerbey’s robe, kissed it, and cried, “Praise be to Mohammed!”
The beylerbey inspected the boys first, but showed no interest in the crop offered to him. From the cadre that accompanied his regiment, I deduced that he was already well stocked with European lads. Quickly he moved to the women, and reserved for himself the most beautiful and distinguished-looking señoritas and their duennas.
As the auction of the men began, Mamí said to Hassan Pasha, pointing at me, “The cripple is mine, Your Highness.” When the pasha saw my deformed hand, he flicked his own hand as if to make me vanish. I was pushed to one side of my group of compatriots and ordered to stand as close as I could to the women and children while still remaining chained to the other men. I felt then a pain more acute than that of the wounds I had received at Lepanto. Fear, disgust, and boiling anger overtook me. I swore I would do my best to someday hurt that walking incarnation of the devil.
The almighty pasha took more time choosing the men. First he singled out the strongest looking. Fortunately Rodrigo was of slender build—like all the Cervantes men. Then he engaged Arnaut Mamí in conversation, asking him to list the qualities and skills of the rest of the captives. Hassan Pasha claimed the two surgeons who were traveling aboard El Sol, as well as the carpenters, blacksmiths, and cooks. It was heartbreaking to see the desolation on the faces of these men, who knew that the pitiless ruler would value their skills so much they would die as slaves.
When Pasha finished his selection, he spoke in Spanish to the men who were now his property: “Listen well, Christians: as of this moment you’re part of my army. From now on, if you work hard and don’t try to escape, I will reward you. And if you convert to Islam,” he paused so that the importance of his words would register on all present, “I swear by the name of Allah, I will give you your freedom.”
The rest of the men the viceroy had discarded were ordered to stand aside. They would be auctioned last, to rich people who needed house servants, gardeners, and teachers.
The beylerbey returned to his cushion, sheltered from the sun under a parasol of white ostrich plumes held by an African colossus. The auction of the remaining captives began. Hassan Pasha presided over the scene with a stony expression and sleepy eyes.
The Spanish and Italian children traveling with their parents, and the cabin boys, were sold first. A handful of men clothed in luxurious garments approached the innocents. We had all heard about the Turkish sodomites, who were the greatest fear of all parents in Christendom. These merchants of innocence looked inside the boys’ mouths and proceeded to count their teeth. Next, they pulled down the boys’ pants. “This will have to be removed right away,” said one buyer, yanking the foreskin of a trembling boy. It was the custom of the Turks to circumcise the boys as a first step in their conversion to Islam. There was no Christian unfamiliar with the story of a North African ruler who tied Christian boys to a column, then had them lashed until they embraced the Muslim faith. Those who refused to convert were beaten until their bodies were drained of blood.
A couple of sodomites started to haggle over two blond brothers. “I’ve fallen in love with these puppies!” a man shouted. “Arnaut Mamí, I must have them. I plan to adopt them as my own children when they become Muslims.”
The mother of the boys convulsed as she shrieked and then fainted. There was a commotion among the women who came to her succor and tried to revive her.
Arnaut Mamí made a face of disgust at the women. He said to the merchant, “I can sell the youngest for a hundred and thirty gold escudos, he’s just seven years old. At that age they never offer any resistance. You’ll be able to mold him to your own liking, without too much trouble. As for the oldest”—he took the boy by the hand and paraded him like a dog of the finest breed—“even Ganymede’s beauty would pale in comparison. You may not be able to afford him. This is the most perfect example of earthly beauty you’ll ever see.” Mamí ran his fingers through the boy’s hair.
The boy’s father tried to break away from our group. We restrained him, but he managed to yell, “Take your revolting hands off my boy, you monster!”
Mamí turned toward the man. “If I hear another sound from you, I will behead you and your woman.” And to the buyer, “You’ll never find a fairer catamite than this one. He will fetch easily five hundred gold escudos in any port on the Barbary Coast—and more in Turkey. Cadi, I’ll sell you the oldest if you buy the runt too.”
“By Mohammed, stop your haggling, Mamí,” the man named Cadi replied, becoming extremely agitated. “If that’s how it is, I’ll take both of them. Just name your price. I must have this boy”—he pointed again at the eldest. “I’ve fallen for his beauty, his gentle manner.” He addressed the trembling unfortunate: “What’s your name?
“Felipe, sir.”
“Listen to that honeyed voice,” Cadi said in a swoon to those around him. “And he has the grace of a gazelle.” To Felipe he cooed, “From now on, you will be my son and your name will be Harum.”
The man embraced Felipe tightly. The boy tried to wrestle himself free, and Cadi motioned to two of his slaves to grab the brother. The smaller boy wailed and kicked violently.
Felipe started yelling, “Father, where are they taking us?”
The boys’ father sobbed inconsolably as he shook his head. His mother had been revived and, feebly, she begged the buyer, “Please, please, sir. Let me embrace and kiss my boys for one last brief moment, since I’ll have to live forever with the pain of losing them.”
I feared for her life.
“Hurry up, woman,” Cadi grumbled. “These boys are no longer your children: they belong to me.”
Our women and men wept, some loudly.
Through her sobs, Felipe’s mother said to her sons, “My children, never forget that you’re Christians. Never deny our Lord Jesus Christ, our true Savior. Pray every day to His Holy Mother, who is the only one who can sever the chains that enslave you and who will give you back your freedom someday. Felipe, Jorge, never waver in your faith. Pray to Mary every day. Do not forget your parents, because we will never forget you. You will be in our thoughts and our prayers always.”
She dropped to her knees and pounded the floor with her closed fists, and the boys were led away.
The auction of the women soon began. They held each other and cried as they prayed. The protests of our men rose in volume, and we pulled and rattled our shackles. The beylerbey gestured to his giants to lash us until we quieted down.
Later I learned that many of these buyers were Moriscos expelled from Andalusia; that they bought Spanish slaves as a way of humiliating the crown and as an act of nostalgia for the land from which they had been expelled, and which they still considered theirs.
The auction of the rest of the captives commenced. The orifices and limbs of our men were inspected, and poked, as if they were beasts of burden. Rodrigo was put on the auction block. The face of my beautiful brother had turned the color of snow, and his hands trembled slightly, but he did not show fear, and behaved with the dignity of a true hidalgo. I felt miserable and worthless, fearing that I would never see Rodrigo again. Once more I had failed my family. I thought of the pain of my parents when they found out what had happened to their sons.
“He’s the cripple’s brother.” Mamí pointed at me. “The cripple will fetch a good ransom because he’s a war hero and a protégé of Don John. So this one should fetch a good ransom too. I am not selling him cheap.”
There were many bids for my brother, who was a fine and handsome example of the best of Spanish manhood. When Mamí advertised that Rodrigo played the vihuela, and had a beautiful singing voice, a merchant dressed in rich vestments offered two hundred gold escudos. The transaction completed, I overheard the man say to Rodrigo, “I’m buying you to teach music and singing to my children. You look like you will be a good tutor. If you teach my children well, one day you’ll be free.”
I knew that as a tutor in the house of a wealthy man, Rodrigo would be spared harsh labor and the lash, and he thus would have good chance of surviving in captivity. All was not lost.
* * *
The auction over, the beylerbey and merchants gone, those of us who stayed behind—about twenty men—were the property of Arnaut Mamí. He had kept the priests from El Sol, as well as the handful of gentlemen whose rich families would pay their ransom. The rest of the men would be put to hard labor, or become oarsmen on his ships.
We were handed our new slave clothing: two pieces of fabric—one to wrap around our waists, the other a coarse blanket to keep us warm—and we were informed the Bagnio Beylic was our destination. In single file, dragging our chains, we were led through the city gates. A throng of people—who had been waiting for the end of the auction—met us with taunts and jeers. Thus I entered the city known as the refuge of every depraved specimen of humanity that Noah had rejected from his ark. We began to climb the steps of Algiers’s ancient casbah, and dragged our shackled feet over steep and ever narrowing streets. Children followed us screaming, “Christian dogs, you will eat desert sand here!” “Your Don John is not coming to rescue you! You will die in Algiers!” The demonic urchins hit us with rotten oranges and balls of still-steaming donkey dung. I would gladly have shoved the dung down the urchins’ throats.
The casbah was a winding labyrinth, penumbrous, cool. Many of the houses looked as if they’d been built in Roman times, or even earlier, when Phoenicians had occupied Algiers. As we shuffled up the hill, the stone steps seemed to multiply. Near the summit of the city the streets were so narrow only one man at a time could traverse them. Sturdy burros carried weighty loads up adjacent alleys. From the roofs of the dwellings men cackled and insulted us as we struggled with the slippery steps. Unveiled, but demure, Moorish women peered at us from the oval-shaped windows of their homes. Christians were considered so lowly, I later learned, that Algerian women did not have to cover their faces in our presence.
It was late afternoon when we arrived at a plaza at the top of the casbah. A rectangular white fort rose before us; its tall corner towers were patrolled by armed guards. We had arrived at Bagnio Beylic, infamous throughout the Mediterranean for its harshness. It had been built almost a hundred years earlier by the brutal Barbarosa brothers as a detention camp for those they had captured at sea and were holding for ransom. We were herded inside, where the long chain linking was removed; but our ankles remained shackled. The prison’s interior walls, lined with rooms on two levels, faced a cobblestone courtyard where hundreds of men milled about.
Despite my exhaustion, I wended my way through the crowd. My ears recognized many languages being spoken. The captives, it seemed, were gathered by nationality: Englishmen, Frenchmen, Greeks, Italians, Portuguese, and Albanians. Others spoke in languages I did not recognize.
A large number of Spaniards squatted on the floor, gambling. My fellow captives began to mingle timidly with our compatriots. I watched the scene, unsure of what to do next. If there were any gentlemen among my captive countrymen, slavery had transformed them into untrustworthy types. As soon as possible, I would have to grow eyes in the back of my head.
A captive playing dice shouted from the circle huddled on the floor, “You standing there! What’s your name? Where were you captured?”
When I satisfied the man’s curiosity, the gamblers went back to their game. My aching legs and blistered feet prompted me to sit down on the cold floor. I threw around my shoulders the blanket we had been given at the quay and drew up my knees to rest my head against them before closing my eyes. I was in that position when a voice addressed me.
“Are you the son of Don Rodrigo Cervantes?”
A short man, with an extended belly and stubby legs, stood before me, his bare feet caked with dirt. He smiled, and instantly his face took on a picaresque air, that of a survivor.
“I knew you when you were a youth,” he said. “My name is Sancho Panza, a son of the noble town of Esquivias, somewhere deep in La Mancha, famous for its fat tasty lentils and the best, most medicinal wine. Which, in case you don’t know, is the only wine our magnificent king drinks.” He crouched across from me.
This was all too incredible, yet the mention of my father cheered me up. “How do you know my father, Señor Sancho?”
“Don Rodrigo treated me when I had no money. After my master, His Worship the late Count of Ordóñez, died, his unnatural children threw me out on the street, even though I had served their father since long before they were born.” Sancho sighed. “What’s past is past,” he said, then rubbed his eyes, as if to make sure I was still there. “You were a student at the Estudio de la Villa at that time; a mere lad. You’ve changed a lot. I would not have recognized you from those days. But when I heard you say your name, I knew you had to be Don Rodrigo’s son. You look like you were made from the same mold.”
Despite my exhaustion, this odd man amused me. Perhaps he could, for a brief moment, make me think of happier times.
“Your father was so proud of you,” he went on. “Did you know he recited your poems to his patients? That sonnet, the one that got the award, I must have heard it a hundred times. After Don Rodrigo finished his recitation he would say, My friends, Ars longa, vita brevis. One day, a patient with a gangrenous leg, who wasn’t getting any better despite all the leechings your father subjected him to, asked what those words meant.
“Those are the words of the great Virgil, Don Rodrigo said.
“Was Virgil a doctor? the man wanted to know.
“My friend, your father explained, as if to a child, puzzled there was anybody who didn’t know who Virgil was—I knew a Virgil in Esquivias, Don Miguel, but I don’t think your honorable father meant him, as the Esquivian Virgil was a butcher—those are the only words we ever need to remember: Art is forever, life is short. Virgil was a poet—a doctor of souls.
“The patient shouted: And this is what you, as a doctor, believe, Don Rodrigo—that life is short? No wonder my leg keeps rotting here! He barely finished speaking when the man rolled over on his cot to the floor and practically crawled out of your father’s infirmary.”
Sancho patted his mountainous stomach to stop his fit of laughter. I laughed too. It had been awhile since I’d heard the sound of my own laughter.
His reminiscing finished, Sancho said, “I don’t mean to pry, my young squire, but what happened to your arm? And pray tell your story including its periods and commas. I like well-rounded tales.”
Not wanting to relive painful moments of the past, I gave him an abbreviated account of how I was wounded at Lepanto.
But Sancho was determined not to leave me alone. “What do you know about the bagnio?”
“Is there anything I should know?”
“You do know this is not a bathhouse, don’t you? Though most men here need to take a bath urgently. This is not a jail like the ones in Spain. The Turkish dogs let us come and go as we please, as long as we are back behind the walls by the first evening call to prayer, when they close the doors. We are allowed to go out, not because they are good-hearted, but because we have to earn the money to feed and clothe ourselves. We are the lucky ones. These asses think we all have families that will pay our ransom. That’s why our backs won’t be broken repairing roads, pushing huge pieces of marble, making pagan monuments, building mosques or tombs for Moors with deep coffers, or, the worst of all possible punishments, becoming oarsmen in their death ships. They think your family has money. Has Don Rodrigo become prosperous since I last saw him? His Worship used to talk about his rich relations.”
I told him about Don John of Austria’s letter.
“What bad luck that a letter from our great prince would bring so much misfortune. As for me, my illustrious friend, I’m as poor as the day I came bawling out of my sainted mother’s belly. But I was damned if I was going to work as an oarsman or a laborer, so I told them I was a member of a rich Galician family. Thank God during my years of service to His Excellency the Count of Ordóñez, all I did was wash the chamber pots of my master and serve his meals. I have the hands of a prince.” He extended them in front of me for my approval. Indeed, despite his general uncouth aspect, his hands looked immaculate. “These are hands that have worn gloves for many years. When the dim-witted Turk asked to inspect them, that son of an infidel whore remarked they were as smooth as polished ivory. Since the Turk was still not convinced, I said: Adversus solem. Amantes sunt. Donecut est in lectus consequat consequat. Vivamus a tellus.” Sancho burst in laughter. “An educated hidalgo such as you will know that I was speaking nonsense. These were all words I’d heard my master say over the years.” Again he patted his belly with quick taps to collect himself.
I laughed out loud. Sorrow had been my companion for so long that I hadn’t had a good laugh since before Lepanto.
“Now listen to me, my young and esteemed squire. Try to stay healthy, for he who has health has hope; and he who has hope has everything. Even though some days freedom seems farther than earth from heaven, I pray to God to send with speed Don John’s forces to Algiers to liberate us. I will die an optimist. Yes, sir.”
Who was this philosopher? I wondered.
“Young Miguel, thank your lucky stars you’ve met me. For your own sake, be so good as to favor me with your complete attention. The least I can do to show my gratitude to your noble-hearted father is to teach you everything you need to know to survive in this viper pit. I’ve been here four years, and I’ve seen many men who arrived with me die in this land of pagans and idolaters. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that the early sparrow gets the worm. Tomorrow, as soon as the doors of the bagnio open with the first call to prayer from the mosque—you’ll recognize the call because it sounds like a man who’s been trying to relieve himself for a month and still can’t do it—we’ll go down to the port to meet the fishermen who return with the rising sun. All the fish they don’t want, they toss to the dogs or throw back to the sea. If they don’t have any fish to throw away, there are always plenty of sea urchins.” Sancho made a face. “I would not have eaten such repulsive creatures back in Spain, where I never lacked for a crust of bread, a slice of cheese, or an onion. But when there’s no horses, we saddle dogs.” He paused, then added, “It’s going to be hard for you to survive here with a lame arm.” Sancho held his head between his hands and then smiled. “Do you still write poetry? I hope so. Algiers is the best place in the world for a poet. These cruel Moors only respect two kinds of people: madmen and poets. According to their crazy religion, poets and locos are God’s blessed people and must be respected because they are in constant contact with Him.”
I wondered what other pieces of wisdom the fat man had in store for me.
Sancho got up. “The warden’s men are collecting the fee to sleep in the rooms. If you don’t have enough money for a place in a room, you have to sleep out here with heaven as your blanket. Unfortunately, I have barely enough to pay for my own place tonight. Many are the nights when I’ve had to stay out here.”
All I possessed were the iron chains around my ankles—which didn’t belong to me—and the clothing hanging on my emaciated body.
“You wait here while I go inside to find you an extra blanket. The nights get chilly this time of year.”
Notwithstanding Sancho’s ample frame, he sprang to his feet with the agility of a dancer and hurried away, zigzagging among the crowd.
The Algerian sky shimmered with the light of the moon. I closed my sleepy eyes. I was beginning to drift off when I heard, accompanied by a flute, an eerie wail, a lamentation that was not meant for humankind, but for the heavens: it was a late-night call to prayer coming from the mosque. The plaintive voice, like an invisible kite, ascended from the tip of the minaret toward the grape-black African sky powdered by stars. An absolute exhaustion overtook me, a weariness at what I was beginning to accept as the curse of my sad fate. I saw my soul leave my body and fly over a glassy, doleful sea, a sea without any shoreline. The first day of my life as a captive in Algiers had come to an end.