Sign of the Cross (9 page)

‘Almost there . . .’ Rufus said as he neared the landing.

Upstairs, two life-size portraits hung on either side of a double-doored entrance. On the right-hand wall stood a younger Baron Malaspina, captured in front of a bookcase, his right hand cupping his left elbow, his three-piece suit and waxed moustache suggesting a touch of the dandy in his early years. On the other side of the door frame, straight-backed in a Louis Quinze chair, sat the Baroness. Spike was reminded of the unusual beauty which even as a child had moved him. Golden hair snaking over bare shoulders, pale oval face with a heart-shaped mouth, the narrow hips and long svelte legs of a dancer . . . There was a reason she was seated, Spike thought – five in fact, one for each inch she towered over her husband.

One might have taken their union as a straightforward transaction of looks and status, except that the Baroness’s family was said to outrank even her husband’s. Her mother had been a young Russian aristocrat, evacuated by the British after the Bolshevik revolution, arriving in Malta on HMS
Marlborough
in 1919 as part of a convoy of White Russian refugees. The Russian connection had been maintained by the Baroness teaching ballet in the years before she’d met her husband.

‘Hel-lo?’ came a shrill voice from behind the doorway.

‘It’s only us,’ Spike called back.

As the doors opened, Spike glanced from portrait to subject: the Baroness’s cheekbones were more pronounced, her skin more parchment-like, yet she remained a beauty.

‘My darlinks!’

Rufus was drawn into the Baroness’s floating chiffon dress, freezing like a cat in a child’s embrace. As he pulled away, Spike saw a touch of pinkness in his face.

‘And you,’ the Baroness said, turning to Spike. ‘Michael forewarned me, but what a man you have become.’ She pecked him on both cheeks, trailing a rose-scented powder. ‘Like that matinee idol of the forties, the Spaniard, so rangy and handsome, but with those eyes . . .’ She glanced back at Rufus. ‘Why, you have given him your blue eyes, Rufus! If I were only twenty years younger. Or five!’

The maid was waiting on the stairs, mouth set. ‘Off you go, Clara,’ the Baroness snapped, before wafting inside past the image of her younger self.

Rufus remained swaying on the landing; placing a hand on the small of his back, Spike encouraged him inside the drawing room. Frayed rugs lay seemingly at random over uneven oak floorboards; tucked against one wall was a harpsichord, its cypress-wood lid decorated with pastoral scenes. Tall windows gave onto an inner courtyard, orange trees growing from below, pressing their leaves to the glass as though seeking to eavesdrop. The central coffee table was piled with Russian art books, enclosed on three sides by sofas draped in moth-eaten cashmere throws.

At the end of the drawing room, a covered balcony gave onto the street. The Baron emerged from its shelter, his faded blond hair combed back, pinstripe suit a little tight, a pink square of kerchief poking jauntily from his breast pocket. He glided between the antique furniture, one arm behind his back, with the rictus grin of a man well used to meeting and greeting. The only element detracting from the statesmanlike bearing was the geriatric Maltese terrier snuffling behind, nose pressed to his ankle.

‘Rufus Sanguinetti,’ he said. ‘What’s it been? Ten years?’

‘Seventeen.’

Rufus stiffened slightly as the Baron shook his hand. Even with his father’s stoop, their height difference was less than expected: Spike glanced down and saw stacked leather heels on the Baron’s brogues.

The Maltese terrier switched attention to Rufus’s trouser leg. ‘She can smell something,’ the Baron said.

Rufus glanced down as well. ‘Must be the General.’

‘The General?’

‘General Ironside, our Jack Russell.’

‘You have a dog now, Rufus? I didn’t know.’

‘Why would you?’ Rufus screwed up his eyes. ‘Is that a nef?’

The Baron turned. On the console table behind lay a gleaming model ship, a silver galleon with four masts. ‘My great-great-grandfather was awarded it for services to the Maltese fleet.’

‘A drinking vessel?’

‘Ornamental. Though we do have a salt-cellar nef at our hunting lodge in Wardija. That said, if you detach the nautilus shell . . .’ The Baron turned and headed back across the drawing room, Rufus following slowly behind, dog still attached to his leg.

The Baroness placed a hand on Spike’s shoulder. ‘Poor Rufus,’ she whispered. ‘After what happened to your mother. And now David . . .’ She inhaled suddenly through yellowing teeth. ‘A drink?’

‘Allow me.’

The decanters on the drinks trolley were strung with tarnished silver name tags. On the lower shelf squatted a phalanx of ancient-looking mixers. ‘I take a vodka and ice,’ the Baroness said. ‘A Scotch and dry for Michael.’

The icebox exuded the aroma of stale freezers.

‘Please,’ the Baroness said. ‘Your father first. I forget: what is his tipple?’

‘Just fizzy water these days.’ Spike instantly regretted the suggestion, seeing that there was none. ‘I’ll give him some tonic. He’ll never notice.’

‘Standards, darlink,’ the Baroness chided. ‘Come. We find some in the cellar.’

3

They descended the palazzo through rooms of dust-sheeted furniture and unintelligible, bleached-out tapestries. On the occasional exposed table, amid the tea caddies and potpourri, sat photo frames of the Baron and his wife, posing with international dignitaries of another era: minor British royals, ageing French rock stars, a suited Asian who might once have been the Prime Minister of Japan. The absence of family portraits was a reminder to Spike that – like the Mifsuds – the Baron and Baroness were childless.

The kitchen lay in the basement, small barred windows high in its walls, like a prison cell, Spike thought. A wooden ceiling fan hung motionless, while open on the Formica table was a Maltese newspaper: evidently the kitchen was Clara the maid’s domain.

‘This way.’

The Baroness was beckoning to Spike from the open doorway. Within, a broad stone staircase curved downwards. The steps were worn with footmarks, their pallor a reminder that Malta was formed of the same limestone as a certain British-forged fortress at the mouth of the Mediterranean. What was it about Empire-builders and malleable rock? Places in which to carve their own image?

The temperature fell. ‘
Eccoci
,’ the Baroness murmured, falling for some reason into Italian. She flipped on a stuttering light to reveal a cellar lined with wine racks, most of them empty. ‘You used to like it down here as a boy,’ she said. ‘You remember? When you visited with David and Teresa. You said it reminded you of St Michael’s Cave in Gibraltar.’

A drop of murky water fell onto the Baroness’s hair, melting into the sand-coloured strands. ‘San Pellegrino in the corner. We bring up four,
da
?’

Spike crouched beneath the vaulted roof towards the racks. Carved into the walls, a foot or so above the floor, was a line of small crucifixes.

‘They date from the Second World War,’ the Baroness said, seeing Spike looking. ‘The Malaspinas opened their cellars as an air-raid shelter. Hundreds of people sleeping on the floor each night. They used to carve crosses above their camp beds to keep themselves safe.’

Spike slid out the first two bottles, their labels slick and loose.

‘A charitable family,’ the Baroness said, ‘even then.’ She held out an elegantly wrinkled hand. ‘Come. We go back up.’

4

Rufus and the Baron sat on the covered balcony, rocking in their chairs like a couple of Mississippi landowners out on their porches. As Spike approached, he heard Rufus saying, ‘But he’d had business meetings scheduled, he’d been in Gozo . . .’

‘Gozo?’

‘Visiting a church, I believe. No thanks, son, not thirsty. Which church was it David went to in Gozo?’

‘Our Lady of St Agatha.’

‘Our Lady of St Agatha,’ Rufus repeated, ‘and at 10 a.m. on a Monday, which sounds like work to me, so hardly the conduct of someone about to –’

Spike cleared his throat. ‘I think we’re sitting down.’

As soon as the Baron began to move, Rufus clambered to his feet. ‘Michael’s offered to help with the wake.’

‘That’s very kind,’ Spike said to the Baron as he passed.

‘The least I can do.’

‘Gentlemen?’ came the Baroness’s soprano voice.

The dining room gave onto another side of the courtyard. Four places had been laid at the end of a long, cherrywood table. Between them sat a decanter of red wine and a tureen heated by tea lights.

‘Rufus?’ the Baroness said, drawing out a chair at the head.

Above, flickering in the candlelight, hung a more recent portrait of the Baron. He stood somewhat awkwardly, arms concealed by black robes. Stitched to the front of his garment was a white, eight-pointed Maltese cross.

The Baroness followed Rufus’s gaze. ‘Somewhat vulgar, but we do have a duty to support our local artists.’

Rufus sat down. ‘When did you join the order?’ he said, looking at the Baron.

‘Last year.’

‘And about time too,’ the Baroness added, reaching over to the tureen, ‘given how much charitable work Michael does. Not to mention the business he has brought to these islands, at no personal benefit to himself.’

As if in confirmation of this, she raised the lid to reveal a humble dish of baked pasta. ‘Clara’s speciality,’ she said, spooning some steaming penne onto Rufus’s plate. ‘She’s more an Italian Maltese than a British.’

Silence weighed on the table.

‘So you’re a knight, then?’ Spike said.

The Baron smiled modestly. ‘Only in the modern sense.’

‘Which is?’

The Baron did not need to be asked twice. ‘To understand the modern,’ he said in the tones of the practised after-dinner speaker, ‘first we must return to the past.’ He launched into an indulgent history of the Order of St John, ‘the oldest chivalric order in the world’ – its origin as a pilgrims’ hospital in Jerusalem in 1099, its militarisation during the Crusades, its eviction from the Holy Land after the fall of Jerusalem, a stint on Rhodes before finally being awarded Malta in 1530. This had been a gift from the Spanish Emperor, Charles V, after the knights’ earlier struggles against the infidel, granted at a rent of two Maltese hunting falcons a year, one for the Viceroy of Sicily, one for the Emperor himself. ‘A prescient move,’ the Baron said proudly, ‘as of course the knights went on to win the Great Siege of 1565, so repelling the Ottomans and saving the whole of Christendom from Islamic domination.’

Rufus gave a snort. ‘Saviours of Christendom in 1565. Of Europe in World War II –’

‘So what exactly is a knight?’ Spike said, cutting him off.

The Baron looked sharply at Rufus, then resumed. ‘The Knights of St John were chosen from the great Catholic families of Europe. There were three hundred or so living on Malta at any one time, and they clustered together according to their nationalities, or “langues” – French, German, English, Spanish, Italian, et cetera. Each nationality had its own “auberge”, or inn, from where they administered the islands – the Italians took care of shipping, the French the hospital, and so on. A bit like an early European Commission, I always say.’

I’ll bet you do, Spike thought.

‘By the time Napoleon captured Malta in 1798,’ the Baron went on, ‘the knights had grown decadent. The gunpowder they’d stored against future Turkish attacks had become rotten. The strength of Europe had increased, so their role as protectors of the Catholic Church was no longer relevant. They put up minimal resistance, and were expelled, after which the British were forced to free Malta from French tyranny, so giving us our 150 happy years as part of the British Empire, before independence arrived in 1964.’

‘So the knights vanished?’ Spike said.

‘Not exactly. They no longer had a home, so they splintered. The British and German “langues” grew to accommodate Protestantism. The Italians retrenched to Rome. And that was when we started to look to the old traditions.’

Rufus glanced up from his penne. ‘The St John Ambulance. Finest volunteer brigade in the world.’

‘That was the principal contribution of the British “langue”, yes.’

Spike had seen the ambulances without ever associating them with knights and sieges. ‘We have them in Gib.’

‘Indeed . . . the naval bases of Gibraltar and Malta were among the first parts of Empire to receive the service.’

‘In 1883,’ Rufus said.

‘But don’t forget the work of the other chapters,’ the Baron said quickly. ‘The German “langue” still runs hospitals and nursing homes, despite being persecuted by the Nazis on account of their Christian faith. The Sovereign Order in Rome now organises up to 100,000 volunteers in over 120 countries. We even have a hospital in Jerusalem, within sight of the original hospital the order founded nine centuries ago. And, to complete the circle, the order now has significant holdings in Malta, with a number of the annual dinners and events held here in Valletta.’

‘It is particularly appropriate Michael has been invited to join,’ the Baroness said, ‘given that members of his family were knights by birth, before the order even came to Malta.’