The Pirates of the Levant by Arturo Pérez-Reverte Read Free Book Online

about to enlist for Flanders or Italy, a tavern brawl, in which two catchpoles were beaten up and one constable slashed across the face, brought him up against the law once more. This time, he had no money with which to blind Justice, and so the judge — who, like him, was from Huesca — offered him a choice between spending four years behind bars or one year as a soldier in Oran for fifty reales a month. So there he was, one year and five months later.
'Why don't you leave?' I asked innocently.
Copons and Captain Alatriste exchanged looks — as if to lay he may look like a grown man, but he's still green about the gills — and then refilled their mugs with wine. It was a pretty rough vintage and God knows where it came from, but it was wine after all, we were in Africa and it was as hot as hell. More to the point, it had been a long time since we three had shared a jug, and we had been through a lot together — the Ruyter Mill, Breda, Terheyden, Seville, Sanlucar ...
'I can't because the Sergeant Major won't let me.'
'Why's that?'
'Because he says the Marquis of Velada, the town's governor, won't let him.'
Then between sips of wine, he explained what life was like in Oran: the people, ill-fed and poorly paid, simply rotted, away between its walls, with no hope of promotion or any glory other than that of growing old there, alone or with their family if they had one, slogging on until they were deemed too feeble to work. Any complaints or petitions went unanswered. Even a veteran with forty years' service was not allowed to return to Spain because that would leave the post unfilled; new soldiers sent to Barbary simply deserted before they even embarked.
You just had to go for a stroll through the city to see how many ragged, vulnerable people there were; and if you did manage to buy something — food or clothes — this would be followed by weeks of hunger and dearth, because the pay didn't arrive, not even a half or a third of it, even though the troops in Oran were the worst paid in all of Spain. Some secretary in the Treasury had evidently decided — and been backed up in his decision by our master the King — that as long as there was sufficient water, fertile fields and friendly Moors on hand, the troops should have no problem making ends meet. Soldiers were only offered help in dire emergencies. Copons himself, after seventeen months' duty there, had not seen one maravedi of the one hundred or so escudos that were owed to him. The only thing the soldiers could do to help themselves was to go on the occasional cavalcade.
'Cavalcade?' I asked.
Copons winked but said no more and it fell to Captain Alatriste to explain.
'You know ... raids, incursions, the kind of thing our grandfathers did when they rode out into the countryside and attacked the camps of hostile Moors. They used to call them almogavarias.'
'Well, that's what Oran has had to stoop to, as if she was some old procuress,' Copons added.
I looked at him, confused. 'I don't understand.'
'You will.'
He poured more wine. He was as thin, sinewy and strong as ever, but he looked older and wearier and, what was even stranger, he had become talkative. Like Captain Alatriste, he had usually been slow to speak and quick to draw his sword. However, it seemed that in Oran, in his silence, he had accumulated far too many thoughts and feelings, so that the unexpected encounter with us and the warmth of our friendship had suddenly made them flow forth. It was hot and he had unfastened his grimy leather doublet — he wore no undershirt, for he had no money for such things. Above his left ear, he bore the scar earned at the Ruyter Mill, still visible through his short hair, which had grown greyer, and he had some white hairs too on his ill-shaven chin.
'Tell him about the hostile Moors,' said Captain Alatriste.
And he did. The Arabs who lived nearby could be divided into three classes: peaceful Moors, hostile Moors and what were known as mogataces. The peaceful Moors