The Flag of Freedom (44 page)

I
t was the Devil of a journey. The camels evil-eyed and spitting, their drivers cursing and grumbling, forever demanding more pay, or drink, or women. No relief from sun or sand, the flies and the smell of excrement. And the nights cold and dark, huddled into a blanket next to a smoking fire of camel dung.

There were no towns, and the villages they came across were small and filthy.

She wished, many times, she was back in the harem. Swimming in the pool while the light faded from the windows and the Italian girls brought sherbet in tall glasses.

She discounted her memories of the stale bread soaked in milk and sugar, and the Pasha's wives, and the Pasha himself watching them from behind the grille. And her dreams of freedom.

The food on the journey was, besides, not much better, and she was no freer now than she had been then.

She thought many times of escape, but they were shadowed every step of the way by the Bedouin, and on the whole she preferred to take her chances with Naudé and the men he had hired as guards in Cairo.

He came to her many times, especially at night, but she could hardly bring herself to speak to him, much less let him into her bed. Not that she had a bed.

He maintained a form of chivalry and did not impose himself on her. He seemed to have hopes that sooner or later she would give herself to him voluntarily.

And sooner or later she probably would, she thought. But not on that journey, among the camels and the flies and the filth.

‘I will make it up to you,' he said, ‘when we arrive in India. You will be a princess. You will have a palace with servants, and silken dresses, and ride on elephants.'

‘Is it better than riding on a camel?' she asked him sourly.

He was a hopeless romantic; and dangerous.

‘I do not want to be a princess,' she said, ‘if it means being kept by a man.'

‘Surely it is better than being kept as a slave,' he said, ‘or a nun.'

He seemed to think he had saved her from a life of penury or worse.

‘I was not just
any
nun,' she said. ‘I was Suora Caterina Caresini, Deputy Prioress of the Convent of San Paolo di Mare in Venice, do you not remember? A woman of power and influence – until
you
came along.'

‘You were a hireling,' he said, ‘in the pay of the British.'

‘Well, at least they paid me,' she said. ‘And did not drag me off to India with a promise that I might ride on an elephant.'

She had not told him about the wealth she had accrued in the vaults of Coutts & Company of London, though it seemed increasingly unlikely that she would ever lay her hands on it. For how could she ever prove that it was hers?

But she could not help wondering, as she swayed across the sands of Egypt and Arabia on her camel, if they had a branch in India.

With most sincere thanks to Martin Fletcher and his colleagues at Headline Review for giving me the pleasure of writing this series, and to all who have helped me with the research, especially the staff at the National Archives in Kew and at the Caird Library in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. Also to Andrew Wilson at Sky News for his help with contacts and logistics in the Middle East; to Nick Moll for his guidance on the migration of birds, especially swallows; to Cate Olsen and Nash Robbins of the Much Ado Bookshop in Alfriston for finding me such invaluable reference books on the history and sieges of Gibraltar and on the corsairs of the Barbary Coast; to the Maritime Bookshop in Greenwich for finding me the obscure but incredibly detailed
Naval Wars in the Levant 1559–1853
by R. C. Anderson published by Liverpool University Press in 1952; to Ayse Tekçan for her folk story about the hunter and the bird; to Bill Cran and Clive Syddall of Paladin Invision for giving me the opportunity to study the workings of the harem at Topkapi Palace in Istanbul while making the series
Harem
for Channel Four; and to Sharon Goulds for making my stay
on the island of San Pietro a great deal more pleasurable than it would have been without her.

As usual I've based the latest Nathan Peake novel around real historical events and characters, so readers might like to know where fact and fiction merge – and where they part company.

The Fall of Venice, which starts the novel, happened in the spring of 1797, when the city was occupied by the French under Bonaparte. It was the first time that Venice had fallen to an invader, and put an end to its thousand-year history as an independent republic. Sister Caterina Caresini is, unfortunately, a figment of my suspect imagination. You can read more about her – and Venice – in my previous Nathan Peake novel
The Winds of Folly
.

The hanging of the four ‘mutineers' and the bombardment of Cadiz really took place. Nathan's objections mirror those of serving officers at the time; both Jervis and Nelson were criticised for their part in the bombardment, though it was, in fact, ordered by the British Admiralty in the hope of forcing the Spanish fleet to come out and fight. However, it's also true that Nelson sent a note to the Spanish Admiral warning him that it was about to happen
and telling him to evacuate the civilians. War was obviously less barbaric in those days.

The Moorish Castle in Gibraltar is a real place and is still there – you can visit it, if you don't mind the climb. Alternatively, you can see a picture of it on the back of a Gibraltar five-pound note. It was used as a prison until 2010.

General Charles O'Hara, the Lieutenant Governor of Gibraltar, is a real-life character and it is true that he had the distinction of being taken prisoner by two of the greatest political and military leaders in history – Washington and Napoleon. The son of an Irish lord and the latter's Portuguese mistress, he was variously described by his contemporaries as charming, garrulous, eccentric and larger than life – but suffered a ludicrous caricature as an upper-class English officer in the film
The Patriot
, starring Mel Gibson.

The story of the migrating swallows is, I think, particularly interesting from an historical point of view. It was only when I was writing this that I thought I had better check to see if people knew about the migration of birds in 1797. It turned out that they didn't – but that they were thinking about it. Until then, it was widely believed that the birds hibernated – under water.

Absurd though this seems, in those days it would have been a lot more believable than the notion that they could fly from England to Africa and back without getting lost. One of the first to suggest this as a possibility was the Reverend John White, who saw it happening during his stint as Chaplain to the garrison of Gibraltar. He was unable to convince his more famous brother, Gilbert,
however, who continued to believe to his dying day that the swallows spent the winter months in ponds.

As for the corvette
Swallow
and its mission to Tripoli, this is based on the operations of the newly established US Navy and Marines in the First Barbary War of 1801–05. Yusuf Karamanli and his two brothers – Hassan and Ahmed – are historical characters, as are James Leander Cathcart, Xavier Naudé and Peter Lisle aka Murad Reis. I hope I haven't been too unjust to them. Having said that, Yusuf appears to have been an eighteenth-century version of Gaddafi, who not only seized power by murdering his older brother in their mother's harem – in the way I have described – but went on to terrorise his people and whoever else was unfortunate enough to fall into his power. But, like Gaddafi, he did have charisma. This is not a recommendation. However, to read more about him, and the war with the US, I recommend
A Nest of Corsairs: The Fighting Karamanlis of the Barbary Coast
by the former British diplomat Seton Dearden.

Life inside the harem is described from personal experience, although it is based not on the harem in the Red Castle but on the Great Sultan's harem in Topkapi. I spent a very happy few weeks there filming the docudrama series
Harem
for Channel Four in 2003. It hadn't changed much, not by the time we'd finished with it.

Spiridion Foresti is a real character. He was British Consul in Corfu but was kicked out when the French came. I have no idea if he was ever in the Levant, but it wouldn't surprise me. Nelson said he was the best intelligence agent he had ever met. Though now I come to think about it, I'm not sure they actually did meet. Their
correspondence is well worth a read, however. You can find it in the National Archives at Kew.

Gilbert Imlay is another real-life character. And he, too, was a spook. He was probably born in Philadelphia around 1753. As a youth, he was employed in the family shipping business which was largely centred on the rum trade – a euphemism for smuggling in the West Indies, though rum probably came into it somewhere. During the American War of Independence he served in Washington's army – as pay officer for the New Jersey Line, an early example of the credulity of his fellows, for who in his right mind would have entrusted Imlay with his pay? He deserted after a few months and his activities for the rest of the war are shrouded in mystery. His family were convinced to their dying day that he had been an agent for the British – or certainly an informer – and they never spoken to him again. But others reckoned he was working for General Washington all along: one of a select band of brothers known as Washington's Boys who were paid out of the General's own pocket – or at least out of secret funds provided by Congress for whatever nefarious purposes the General and his Boys had in mind. A kind of embryonic CIA.

After the War of Independence, Imlay turned up in London, with a book he'd written based on his experiences on the American frontier:
A Topographical Description of the Western Territory of North America
, which was published by Debrett ‘to wide acclaim'. He followed this up with a novel called
The Emigrants
. Less widely acclaimed, it contained scenes of rape, wife-beating and brutal attacks by native Americans. Imlay said his purpose was to encourage emigration.

Certainly it made him something of a celebrity for a time and he became a popular guest on the London salon circuit. Then came the French Revolution and he took himself off to Paris where the action was – and the money. He worked as a shipping agent running goods past the British blockade for a handsome profit and helped himself to the Bourbon silver, i.e. the property of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. He was also some kind of a diplomat and probably a spy. I've seen copies of his reports – in Paris and Havana – proposing French operations in Spanish Louisiana, which certainly show he was up to no good. While he was in Paris he became the lover of Mary Wollstonecraft, the pioneer English feminist, and fathered her child, Fanny. His behaviour towards her was such that she twice tried to commit suicide. He eventually got her off his back by sending her to Sweden, with their one-year-old daughter, to find a treasure ship he'd lost, with the Bourbon dinner service on board.