Shadow of God (12 page)

A while later, the procession approached the gates to the city, and Suleiman saw the Janissaries guarding the entrance.

Suleiman leaned over toward Ibrahim and whispered, “The payment! The payment!” mimicking the cries he had heard at the ferry. “Yes, we will make the cursed payment!”

Piri and Ibrahim both laughed aloud, secretly relieved that Suleiman had remembered without their having to remind him again.

“For my personal guard, each man will get exactly what Selim has paid them. No more. For the rest of the army, give every man a bonus in keeping with his station.”

When the payment was announced, Suleiman could not tell whether the Janissaries were pleased or not. His guards stood impassive at their posts, and nothing revealed their thoughts. Their eyes were fixed straight ahead at attention, and they saluted their Sultan as he passed. They were a splendid army, Suleiman thought as he rode past, dressed in perfect uniforms of blue cotton, topped with white, felt hats. Their swords, polished and honed, gleamed in the bright light. But, who could read their hearts? How could this new Sultan forget that in the flash of a sword stroke, they had turned against his grandfather, Bayazid, to follow Selim?

Marseilles, France
September, 1521

The stagecoach careened down the muddy road toward the harbor, its six horses lathered and blowing as they struggled to keep their footing on the treacherous surface. The horses were covered with a layer of caked mud mixed with the foam that sprayed from their mouths. The coach, too, showed the scars and marks of the difficult overland journey from Paris to Marseilles.

The driver leaned back hard against the reins, straining to keep the horses in hand and control the speed of the coach as they pulled into the final run for the port. He ran the horses onto the old wooden wharf and reined up abruptly in front of two knights dressed in full shining battle armor, immaculate scarlet surcoats, and broadswords hanging at their sides. Both men paced nervously, stopping only when the coach stopped at the edge of the wharf.

Almost before the wheels had stopped, the righthand door swung open. Philippe Villiers de L’Isle Adam, Grand Prior of the Order of the Knights of St. John in France, jumped to the ground. He, too, was dressed in full battle gear with identical surcoat and markings. Older than the others, he had a weathered face and long, white hair hanging down nearly to his shoulders.

The journey from Paris to Marseilles was long and difficult. Philippe’s bones ached from the pounding, and his joints were stiff from inactivity. He had allowed stops only to change horses and to
buy food for his drivers. The route had been treacherous. Several times they had nearly ended their journey in a collision. At night, as now, there were no lights along the way. The wars between Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, and Francis I, of France, had brought chaos to the region. The roads remained unprepared, and bands of undisciplined soldiers roamed the countryside.

But, after more than four days of travel, Philippe debarked safely at the wharf, where his heavily armed knights awaited him.

“Quickly, my Lord,” said the captain of the knights, “the ships are ready. We can sail on the next tide, which is only an hour away. Your knights are all aboard. We have sufficient food and water for the trip.”

Philippe stared into the dark night, but could not see the waiting ships. His mind recoiled at yet another long journey. He did, however, welcome the relative comfort of this large ship. “What ships are waiting here?”

“The
Sancta Maria,
my Lord, the largest ship of our fleet. The one we captured from the Egyptians, and rearmed at Rhodes. And we have four smaller escort galleys, heavily armed with knights and cannon.”

The carrack,
Sancta Maria,
was the flagship of the Knights of St. John, and was one of the most heavily armed sailing ships afloat in the world. It was the sea-going headquarters for the Grand Master of the knights, as well as a formidable platform for cannon, men, and supplies. This ship had previously been the
Mogarbina
, captured from the Egyptian Mamelukes in 1507 at a battle near Candia in Crete. The treasure on board alone had been worth the fight. She was longer and sleeker than the old round ships, and had four tall masts with square rigged sails. A large cabin, perched high in the stern, served as both meeting room and captain’s quarters. Her new powerful cannons could reach out and destroy whole cities while staying out of range of shore batteries. She could carry a crew of over two hundred fighting men. The
Sancta Maria
was a machine of war.

Philippe nodded as he remembered how powerful his new ship really was. He quickly stepped into the small tender waiting at the dock. As the band of knights rowed into the darkness, he breathed
easier than he had since he left Paris nearly five days before. The departure from Paris was so fast…so painful. He had no time to do what needed to be done.
Never enough time,
he thought.

The summons had been delivered to Philippe in Paris by two of the Knights Hospitaller of St. John, who had been dispatched from the island fortress of Rhodes by the Grand Council. The note informed Philippe that the Council had elected him Grand Master of the Knights of St. John on Rhodes. The former Grand Master, Fabrizio del Caretto, had died eight months earlier, in January, after a long illness. The letter went on to warn Philippe of several problems he would have to face in very short order. “The election was not easy, my Lord,” the note read. “Of the three candidates, you and Thomas Docwra of England were separated by only one vote. And while Thomas Docwra took his defeat with the equanimity and nobility expected of a Knight of the Order of St. John, the third candidate—Chancellor Andrea d’Amaral—did not.”

Philippe realized that this was, indeed, a serious matter. D’Amaral was an arrogant and difficult leader, immensely unpopular even among his own men.

The letter went on, “To make matters worse, d’Amaral did not receive a single vote, and has retired to his quarters at the Inn of Aragon, where I understand he is brooding over this perceived insult.”

D’Amaral was Portuguese by birth, and his relationship with the French-born Philippe was tenuous at best. Most of the time it was intensely hostile. As Chancellor and head of the
langue
of Spain, d’Amaral wielded much power. His anger and pouting could do a great deal of harm to the unity of the knights.

Philippe had just turned fifty-eight years old when he was summoned back to Rhodes. He was a big man, over six feet and nearly two hundred pounds. He was well muscled, and wore a full, white beard. His silver hair made him look older than he was, but the rigorous physical conditioning of the knights kept him fit and active. His face was distinguished by high cheekbones, and a sharp, aquiline nose. He moved with a gracefulness unexpected of such a large man, and his quick reflexes had been finely tuned after decades of fighting alongside his brother knights. He wore his long,
scarlet cloak with the white, eight-pointed cross of the Knights of St. John over the left breast, and another cross in the center of the back. He carried his broadsword in the leather belt at his left side, handle tilted forward, always within easy reach of his right hand.

From the earliest days of the crusades, the Knights of St. John had established fortifications at several places along the Middle East and Asia Minor. Their mission was to provide food and shelter for pilgrims to the Holy Land, as well as hospitals for the sick. During the five centuries of the Crusades, the Muslims had driven them from one stronghold to another in the Holy Land. Their worst defeats came after long and costly battles all along the Mediterranean coast, at Jerusalem in 1187, at Krak de Chevaliers in 1271, and then again in 1291 at St. Jean d’Acre, when they were driven from their last foothold. Nearly all of the knights perished in the flames of Acre, including their leader, William de Henley of England. Only seven of the Knights escaped. The survivors fled to Cyprus, where they began to rebuild the Order of the Knights Hospitaller. Finally, in 1309, they landed on the island of Rhodes. There, they were to remain for over two hundred years, tending to the sick and making life generally miserable for Muslim vessels sailing the Mediterranean. They preyed upon shipping between Africa and Turkey, took slaves, and amassed huge fortunes in booty.

Philippe was born of noble lineage, a kinsman of Jean de Villiers, who had been at St. Jean d’Acre at the time of its defeat by the Muslims in 1291. Philippe followed his family’s tradition of service to the Order. He joined the Knights of St. John when he was still a teenager, arriving at Rhodes just after the terrible siege of 1480. By age forty-six, he was Captain of the Galleys, and at age fifty he was elected Grand Prior of the
langue
of France. For eight years, he led the
langue
from his quarters in Paris.

The knights, nearly five hundred of them, came from France, Provence, England, Aragon, Auvergne, Castile, Italy, and Germany. Each lived in a separate inn, or
Auberge
.

That they were perceived by their Muslim neighbors as nothing more than pirates did not appear to influence the activities of the knights. They continued to raid and plunder virtually all the shipping
that passed near their stronghold on Rhodes. The knights were expert seamen, and they had little difficulty in taking almost any prize that caught their eyes. The location of the fortress at Rhodes gave them the perfect starting point for ambushing the Ottoman merchant fleets that plied the waters between Africa, Asia Minor, and Europe. They controlled several other islands in the region, where they kept lookout posts and small bands of knights and ships. The knights could board merchant vessels at will, taking the cargo and the ship itself. The enemy crews would be kept as slaves for the knights or sold off in the slave markets of Africa and Asia Minor. There seemed little the Muslims could do to stop the slaughter.

In 1480, Suleiman’s great-grandfather, Mehmet, the Conqueror, attacked Rhodes with a massive armada. He hoped to destroy the knights and reclaim the Aegean as his own Ottoman Lake. But, the siege was repulsed, and Mehmet’s troops returned to Istanbul in disgrace. Mehmet died on the way home, just fifty miles from the city. When Suleiman’s father, Selim, died in Edirne in the fall of 1520, he was preparing a fleet and armies to attack the knights again.

With the enemy in full preparation to attack Rhodes, Philippe was on his way to lead the Knights of St. John in the defense of their island.

Philippe stood in the stern of the small tender and reflected quietly on the problems that he would have to face with Andrea d’Amaral as his Chancellor. The quarrel between Philippe and d’Amaral had started eleven years earlier, when both were lowerranking Knights of St. John. In 1510, Suleiman’s grandfather, Bayazid, had attacked Portuguese shipping from a naval base at Laiazzo, in Asia Minor, north of Cyprus. There the Sultan was resupplying his ship builders with timber from the rich forests of Edirne, near the Greek border. The knights had hoped to destroy the Turkish fleet, which had been harassing the lucrative trade routes in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. Then they would destroy the Sultan’s ship-building base at Laiazzo.

The Order dispatched an armada from Rhodes to attack the Sultan’s naval forces and then to attack the base itself. D’Amaral
commanded the oared galleys, which were the main striking force of the fleet. These three-tiered vessels were low and sleek. Their oars gave them complete independence of movement. They were wholly free from the vagaries of the local winds. The galleys were armed with a pointed bowsprit for ramming the enemy near the water line. Boarding planks with grappling hooks held the enemy ships fast. The armored knights would fire a salvo of arrows, then scramble aboard to destroy the enemy in hand-to-hand combat with their heavy broadswords. Some of the galleys had small cannons mounted in the bows as well, but the main striking power came from the knights themselves. The principles of battle were those of land warfare carried out on a sea-going platform. As commander of the galleys, d’Amaral had technically been the commander-in-chief of the entire naval force.