The Last Crusaders: Blood Red Sea (45 page)

Nicholas glimpsed Veniero himself, the old sea dog, the old sea lion of Venice, standing at his fighting post, a bloody bandage round his thigh, one arm crooked round the mast, the other holding a stout crossbow it would have taken most men two hands to use. He raised it and fired from the hip, and a Janizary on the
Sultana
went down in a tumble of white silk.

‘Sire, you need to get below and have that leg freshly bound!’ cried a young musketeer.

‘Time enough when the Turks lie six fathoms down! Find me more bolts, damn you!’

A second later, a huge explosion sent the
Trebizond
rolling away on her side, and half her men slithering towards the far rails. Then she settled down at a steeper and steeper angle. She was sinking fast.

Someone had made it to her lower decks and sabotaged her with a well-placed keg of powder . . . There was no sign of Smith.

‘Make sure they don’t grapple us as they sink and take us down!’ cried Stanley. ‘Cut all ropes!’

There followed vicious hand-to-hand fighting on all sides, as refugees from the sinking
Trebizond
tried to press aboard
La Real
in final desperation, and those aboard the
Sultana
, under assault from two sides themselves now, were steadily pressed back along their decks, flailing and tripping over their own wounded and dead.

At last, crowding back to the stern cabin, they threw up makeshift, unlikely-looking barriers.

Smith reappeared and stared blearily through the smoke, a wheel-lock pistol in each hand. One of his eyes was badly cut about. ‘Mattresses!’ he bellowed. ‘Goose-down mattresses! What do the devils think this is, the Sultan’s seraglio?’

Yet they would make bizarrely effective barriers to their capturing the stern cabin and Ali Pasha within.

And they needed to move fast, seize this momentary advantage. Nicholas yelled out and pointed. Across the water, not a quarter of a mile off, three or four fast galliots were ploughing towards their stricken flagship, densely manned with a fresh hundred or more best Janizaries.

‘Hit those galliots, prow gunners!’ cried Don John. ‘Don’t let them get close! And Smith, Stanley, get men on the roof! Tear the timbers off with your bare hands!’

Then a familiar voice bellowed out from beyond, ‘Get your heads down there!’

Veniero. And without a second warning, he put a matchstock to an ancient petrier he had mounted on his starboard side: a stone thrower.

An instant later the barrier of mattresses exploded in a storm of feathers, blood and bone. Smith and Stanley and Nicholas, with many a grim-faced Venetian pikeman, fought their way forward in an eerie snowfall of white goose-down, falling gently to the deck and turned red beneath their slithering boots.

On the right, Andrea Doria did everything he could to shadow Kara Hodja and prevent him from some ruse that would tip the battle his way. Kara Hodja’s flagship even signalled that they were preparing to move off and save themselves, but Doria did not believe it for a moment, and held close to him.

Yet Doria and Genoa had barely half as many galleys as the enemy, and as they moved further out to sea, shadowing the African squadrons, the brilliant renegade commander switched direction in a trice. Some eighty galleys came about with sails tight, smooth as a skein of geese, and moved fast into the gap that had now opened up between the Christian centre and Doria’s ships.

There was something else. Behind the Christian centre, flanking the reserve squadron of Santa Cruz, Kara Hodja had glimpsed a certain standard which made his blood burn.

The accursed white cross on red. The Standard of the Knights of Malta.

Doria pursued manfully and fired on the enemy even as they closed on Santa Cruz’s reserve, and the single galley of the knights under the Chevalier Romegas. Yet as the massive squadron bore down upon them, Doria saw something that made his heart miss a beat, then swell with mournful pride. He saw the single galley of the Knights, out on the right of the whole reserve, turn steadily and face prow-on the oncoming force of eighty ships. There was no sense or reason in it, but it was magnificent.

Within minutes, the
St John of Jerusalem
was surrounded, battered and half overwhelmed, knights lying dead across the deck or hanging over the rails. Yet still a last few fought furiously at the prow and the stern, even as their own awnings and sails blazed fiery above them.

Below, Pietro Giustiniani lay dying, his left arm almost hacked off. But it was his own Mohammedan slave who had carried him below, and then wadded up the door with clothes and blankets.

‘Over the side with you,’ murmured the dying knight. ‘Go.’

The Mohammedan slave wept, and shook his head, and stayed.

‘Kill them all!’ cried Kara Hodja, frustrated even at this delay. ‘Finish them off!’

For in the time it had taken to destroy the knights – he had expected his squadron simply to mow that single ship down in an instant, but typically the Knights had already held out for twenty minutes now, and
were still fighting
– Kara Hodja had seen the reserve galleys of Santa Cruz turn about and draw up in a well-ordered line, ready to give fierce fire the moment Kara Hodja’s galleys came within range.

‘Yet again,’ muttered the renegade black priest sourly, ‘those gallant Knights have bought precious time for others by their sacrifice.’ He spat at his feet.

Moments later there came a massive first volley of cannon from the reserve fleet of the Christians, now moving towards them fast. And the smaller force of Andrea Doria was also approaching steadily from the south.

Kara Hodja ground his teeth.

But at last he decided, as many times before, to retreat and save his own skin. They had captured the Standard of Malta, and most of the Knights lay dead. The ship would soon burn itself to a cinder and sink.

His squadron pulled back, not a ship lost – though more than a hundred men had died trying to take the
St John of Jerusalem
. Kara Hodja retreated well out of range, almost out of sight, and then waited like a vulture for the verdict on the battle.

There was no final moment, no trumpet call of retreat or triumph. Skirmishes continued over the wide sea late into the afternoon and even as dusk fell. All along the shoreline of the Gulf of Patras, Turks, Arabs and Moors lay in the salt shallows, panting, flailing: fugitives from the galleys of the Ottoman right, so mercilessly savaged by the galleys of the brothers Bragadino. Spanish and Venetian infantrymen marched among them, kicking up saltwater spray, thrusting long sword blades through chests and backs.

Across the gulf, men floated on spars and timbers, men lay face up in the water. Shattered galleys flamed and belched black smoke. Occasionally there were desperate cries for help.

The flagship of Savoy drifted silent and haunted, not a man on board left alive.

The Naples galley, the
Christ over the World
, blew itself up in the late afternoon, taking with it the four Turkish galleys still locked in exhausted battle with it.

In places, the victors were too bewildered, deafened and weary to know they had won.

Amid the ruinous debris of the left flank, two galleys still faced each other, a Christian and Turkish, after hours of skirmishing. Two exhausted beasts, backs broken, masts tumbled and splintered, knocking gently into each other in the evening swell, soft twilight coming up out of the east over drifts of powder smoke, distant cries.

Paolo di Mazzarino, a soldier of Sicily, sat clutching the stump of his right arm across his chest, too weak from loss of blood to move. He croaked for water. His arm was gone above the elbow, bone showing. But he felt calm. The rest of him had survived. Two legs and an arm. Maybe he shouldn’t complain. There was more of him left than many men there. Below him on the benches, most of the oar slaves lay dead in their chains. But he might live on yet, if this wound didn’t kill him in the next week or two. He might yet live to see his village and his vineyard and his girl again. He could please her as well with one hand as with two. He smiled faintly, lips cracked, and whispered again for water.

The galley was slowly sinking. Longboats moved across the water among the wrecks in the setting sun, picking up survivors. And on
the other galley, also sinking, just twenty yards away, flying the crescent of Islam, Turks lay in a similar state, limbless, bandaged, blinded, beyond exhaustion, strangely calm. Some were now up their waists in the gently rising water. Warm Mediterranean water, mild October. It stung their wounds but it was gentle.

The enemy soldiers regarded each other in silence. The guns were all overheated, the barrels cracked or warped, swords chipped and broken, powder gone.

Suddenly a voice rang out from the Turks. ‘How can we fight each other now, eh?’

With their powder-blackened faces, their turbans gone, used for bandages, their standards and pennants ripped or burned, they all looked uncannily alike, thought Paolo. Then he spotted the fellow who had shouted. Half naked, bare headed, grimed and bloody, cropped hair, big moustaches: a hairy barrel-chested Turk if ever he saw one.

Nearby there floated a casque of oranges and lemons, split open, the fruit floating free and bobbing in the water. Paolo raised his eyes to heaven, reached out and seized an orange, bit into the peel and squeezed the juice from the flesh into his mouth. The taste of Sicily, the taste of heaven.

A little revived, he took another orange and hefted it, felt the weight, and then threw it across at the Turks. It hit the bulwark and dropped.

The big Turk grinned. ‘You throw like a girl!’ he called.

‘I am sorry for that, my infidel friend! I am used to throwing with my right hand, but alas you shot it off and it is now down in the deeps, fattening the fish. That was the best my left hand could do.’

A nearby Spaniard, still in one piece, gave a gruff laugh. ‘Here, send one over here.’

Paolo threw one over. The Spaniard caught it and lobbed it high in the sky at the Turks, like a grenade.

‘Here,’ said the Turk, ‘lend me one.’

Paolo tossed another to him underhand. The Turk caught it, weighed it up, narrowed his eyes and then hurled it suddenly at the Spaniard.

It skimmed over the deck close to him and then harmlessly away.

‘Hey!’ cried the Spaniard angrily. And then all three, and a dozen more, saw the absurdity of his anger, and there was helpless laughter on all sides.

‘Be careful, we might hurt each other!’ cried Paolo. He and the Spaniard gathered more oranges and lemons from the crate and hurled them over. The Turks began to catch them and throw them back.

Another Christian waded into the deeps where the water rose dark over the deck, pushed aside a corpse floating there face down, and retrieved another armful. Precious ammunition.

‘A hit, a fine hit, enough to take my arm off!’ cried the Turk.

Others cried out ‘Allahu akbar!’ as they threw. The Christians laughed with them. They were like boys throwing snowballs. Men splashed in the water, oranges and lemons flew brightly through the air, some bearing bloody handprints. Amid the floating corpses and the sinking galleys, the mirk of drifting powder smoke, it was like a mad scene from some painting of doomsday.

And then from the bowels of the Turkish galley there came a deep rumble and heave, and it began to go down faster, bubbles erupting from below. The childish game ended and they were back in the real world, grown men again, and dying.

The fight of the oranges and lemons ceased and silence descended once more, along with an obscure shame.

The Christian galley was sinking fast too now, and no sign of a longboat. It was far to shore, a mile or more, and few men aboard, none of the wounded, still had the strength to swim. All were dying slowly as if in a dream.

In the far distance, very far away, it seemed, occasional guns still fired pointlessly on other galleys, men shouted and screamed. But here between these two dying galleys, there was utter silence and stillness.

Facing each other, eyes fixed on each other, each man saw men like himself, fathers and sons. They could see the very earrings in their ears, the wrinkles about their eyes, teeth missing or carious like their own. The water swirled more strongly around their legs, over their knees, sluicing and slurping, rapid whirlpools in hatchways and out of portholes, The man sprawled against the mast went below the water without another word, head bowed. Paolo winced
with the sting of his arm, thinking how ridiculous, to wince at a little pain when he was nearly dead. How comical, almost.

One Turk still held an orange, but at last he simply let it drop. The mild waters rose over them and the galleys surrendered with a bubbling sigh, buckled and sank, dragging them all quietly down. Not another word was ever spoken, they went in a kind of solemn and reverent silence. As if in this last instant of their lives, some revelation had been granted, and for all of them there, Christian and Muslim and unbeliever, the revelation was the same.

The galleys gurgled and tipped and raced to the bottom and the men went with them. Some tangled together in the deep, indistinguishable now, arms outstretched towards each other as if they were dancing, or as if they were brothers greeting each other after long years apart. Drawn silently full thirty fathoms down, down to settle upon the soft white sand, among the waving weeds.

Nicholas trembled in every muscle and nerve end with fatigue. There was Stanley beside him, cleaning his sword, head hung low. There was Smith, bloody bandage around his neck, and another about his forehead, half over one eye.

‘You are not blinded?’ said Stanley.

‘Time will tell.’

Nicholas stumbled down the narrow steps, black with blood, and there was Hodge, red to the elbows. The odour of blood in that confined space was sickening.

‘Is it a victory, would you say, Nick?’ said Hodge.

‘I would not call it that.’ He shook his head. ‘No, I would not call it that.’

‘Nor I.’ Hodge reached for a cloth and wiped down his arms. The man on the low table in front of him was dead. He covered his face with the bloody cloth, so he could sleep now. ‘But the Turks will surely not return again after this.’ They looked at each other and then, both shaking, they embraced.