The Pirates of the Levant by Arturo Pérez-Reverte Page A

that former comrade, Yndurain, whom I had never met, leaping over the wall at dead of night, prepared to go over to the Moors rather than stay here, and a shudder ran through me.
'So what do you make of Oran?' Copons asked me.
'It's as if the town were sleeping,' I replied. 'All these people ... standing so still, staring.'
Copons nodded and wiped the sweat from his face.
'People only wake up when the Moors attack or when we organise a cavalcade,' he said. 'Having a scimitar at your throat or pelf in your pocket works wonders.' At this point, he turned to Captain Alatriste. 'And speaking of pelf, you've arrived at just the right time. Something's afoot.'
There was a flicker of interest in the Captain's pale eyes, beneath the broad brim of his hat. We had just reached the arched Tlemcen gate, on the opposite side of the town to the harbour, where a few reluctant stonemasons — Moorish slaves and Spanish convicts, I noticed — were trying to patch up the crumbling wall. Copons greeted the sentinels sitting in the shade and then we strolled outside the town. From there we could see the village of Ifre — inhabited by friendly Moors — situated about two harquebus shots from the town wall. That whole section was in a parlous state, with bushy plants growing in between the stones, many of which had fallen to the ground. The sentry box was dilapidated and roofless, and the wooden drawbridge over the narrow moat — almost entirely clogged with rubble and filth — was so rotten that it creaked beneath our feet. It was a miracle, I thought, that the town could resist any attack at all.
'A cavalcade?' asked Captain Alatriste.
Copons gave him a knowing look. 'Possibly.'
'Where?'
'No one's saying, but I suspect it will be over there.' He indicated the Tlemcen road that ran south through the nearby fields. 'There are a few Arabs in that direction who are none too happy about paying their taxes. There are livestock and people — so there'll be some decent booty to be had.'
'Hostile Moors?'
'They can be, if it serves our purpose.'
I was watching Copons and listening intently. This business of cavalcades intrigued me, and so I asked for more details.
'Remember those raids we used to go on in Flanders?' he said. 'Well, it's the same here: you leave at night, march quickly and in silence, and then you strike. We never further than eight leagues from Oran, just in case.'
'And you take harquebuses?'
Copons shook his head. 'As few as possible. The whole thing is very much hand-to-hand so as not to waste gunpowder If the village is near, we take people and livestock. If it's further away, we just take people and jewellery. Then march back as fast as we can, see what we've got, sell it and share out the booty.'
'And there's plenty of it?'
'That depends. With slaves we can earn maybe forty escudos or more. A healthy female of child-bearing age, a strong Black man or a young Moor means thirty reales in the pot. If they're suckling babes and in good health, ten ... We did well out of the last cavalcade. I made eighty escudos, and that's double my year's wages.'
'Which is why the King doesn't pay you.'
'As if he damn well would ...'
We were nearing the fertile, leafy banks of the river, along which there were mills and a few waterwheels. I admired the view — the green terraced fields dotted with trees, the town with its kasbah perched halfway up the hill and downriver, the sea, spreading out like a blue fan into the distance. An old Moor and a little boy passed us on their way into town. They were both wearing threadbare djellabas and carrying baskets full of vegetables on their backs.
'Without the cavalcades and what these fields produce,' added Copons, 'we wouldn't survive. Until you arrived, we'd spent four months with just a bushel of wheat per month and sixteen reales for any soldier with a family. You've seen the state of the people here, almost naked because their clothes are literally falling off their backs. It's the old Flanders