The Last Crusaders: The Great Siege (24 page)

Nicholas shoved his knee hard into the fellow’s bended face and seized his scimitar. By Jesu it was heavy. He kept moving, moving all the time, his feet never still, never a steady target. Behind him was another, and he was cutting across Nicholas’s back even as the boy moved aside without knowing he was there. The fellow he had kicked in the stones fell forward and his comrade Janizary’s own scimitar cut him across the head. There was a moment of shock.

Nicholas had time in that still moment. He swung the heavy curved blade and cut deep into the fellow’s side. There was an instant stench from his split torso, which the boy would learn in time was the stench of ruptured bowels, and the fellow collapsed as if cut in two.

He hauled the reeking scimitar blade free and turned again. Four riderless horses milled about. There were Janizaries bending over fallen men, kicking off tall Spanish morions and performing a couple of quick deft beheadings. They had become trapped. It had been a foolish escapade.

De la Rivière sat still in the dust, head hanging forward like a man in final exhaustion, an arrow in his shoulder. A Janizary stood behind him with his blade at his bare throat, but not killing him, not yet. Mustafa’s harsh voice still rang out, and then Nicholas also saw the novice Faraone. They had stripped him naked. He was young and slim. They goaded him. He wept. Mustafa’s voice came again, and they reluctantly roped him up and rolled him down in the dust beside De la Rivière. Nicholas saw also that Copier lay dead, the greatest loss. The four Spanish infantrymen were dead too, come all the way from the green New World to die here in the Old, the blood-stained Old, on the very first day of Malta’s desperate struggle.

He was the last standing, he still clutched a Turkish scimitar, and he carried not a wound. And he was surrounded.

It was very still. Horses whinnied. His mare was led round the back of the line of troops and he saw that she carried a cut to the belly. It was not so bad. Hundreds of Janizary soldiers circled, and he was at the heart of them. Now he knew what would become of him. He was a boy. They were Turks. No, they would not kill him. They would keep him for recreation and amusement.

Mustafa stepped through the ranks and stood before him.

‘I saw you. You were unhorsed and disarmed, and then you went on to kill one of my men and badly wound another. You are dangerous for so puny an infidel.’

Nicholas said nothing, fingering the sweat-soaked handle of the scimitar, bringing the point round to face his own heart.

‘Ah.’ Mustafa smiled. ‘I see. And I saw you ride at me too. Well. Here I am.’

It took only an instant for Nicholas to choose how he would die. He thought he heard De la Rivière’s weak voice cry out ‘No boy!’ as he charged at the smiling Pasha. And then his world went black.

For a while he thought he was in the pound with Hodge. It was dark, his head throbbed, his mouth tasted of steel.

‘Is that you, Hodge?’ he muttered, the words thick and clumsy on his lips.

‘
Grace à Dieu
,’ said a man’s voice softly. ‘Brother – I mean, English boy. Can you hear me?’

Nicholas nodded. His head throbbed worse with every movement. And he could see nothing. ‘I am blindfolded, yes?’

‘We three,’ said De la Rivière. ‘We are captured.’ He sounded exhausted by these few words, and paused to draw strength. ‘Do you have any blade left on you, boy?’

Nicholas shook his head, and then laughed weakly. The knight couldn’t see him. ‘No,’ he said. ‘None.’

There was a long silence.

‘What will become of us?’

‘It would be better,’ said De la Rivière slowly, ‘if we had a blade. It would be a better way out.’ He gasped with sudden pain. ‘Have you faith, boy? Do you fear to die, to go to Christ in heaven?’

‘No. No I do not. Nor to join the souls that have gone before.’

‘Then make your prayers.’ He drew breath. ‘I believe this battle is over for us now.’

A door was kicked open, there were heavy footfalls and their blindfolds were ripped off.

They were huddled on the beaten earth floor of the tiny bare chapel of the village they had fought for. It contained nothing but
a plain altar table and one high window. Their hands were tied behind their backs. Faraone was still naked, curled up like a child, shivering, hiding his shame. De la Rivière seemed baptised in blood from head to toe, now dried black and crusted. The shaft of a broken arrow still protruded from his shoulder. He breathed with pain. Nicholas himself had a bad head, and his vision swam if he moved too quickly. But he could move little. He felt very tired and very afraid, and desperately thirsty.

Before them stood the Turks come to torture them, led by Mustafa himself. There was a tall thin fellow, naked to the waist, wearing a wolf’s tooth necklace on a rawhide string, and with a simple bare curved yatagan dagger at his belt, and there were two senior Janizaries. Now Nicholas could see them close to and study them, they were magnificent men, with a far gaze, oiled dark hair, noble features. They wore broad billowing white robes beneath tight mail jerkins, high domed helmets, and immense curved scimitars at their sides. The weapons had beautiful damascened scrollwork along the blade, the tiny grooves still showing the dark rust-red of old blood. One wore a brass quill through the skin above his deep furrowed brow.

Mustafa’s expression was of glowering anger at the insolent attack. He nodded at De la Rivière. ‘You are a Knight of St John. These are acolytes, yes?’

‘They are nuns,’ said De la Rivière.

‘If we put you to the torture, you may prove brave. So shall we start with torturing your acolytes? Or should I say, catamites?’

The knight said, ‘The moment you begin to torture either of these, I will bite through my own tongue and spit it in the dust. Besides, they know nothing of worth.’

‘So you do? Then tell us. What is the weakest point of Birgu?’

De la Rivière just smiled through broken teeth and split lips.

‘Drag him onto that table there,’ commanded Mustafa.

‘It is called an altar.’

‘How fitting.’

With their backs turned, Nicholas shuffled up close to the naked Faraone, now shaking like a leaf. It was the only comfort he could give. The boy was already far gone. Nicholas tried to warm him.
But it was not cold that made him shiver. Hearing the tortured screams would finally destroy his reason.

For a minute or two, De la Rivière made no sound. The torturer also worked in silence. Blood dripped, spotting the floor beneath the altar, and at one point there was a ripping sound, like fine leather being torn. Nicholas closed his eyes and hung his head. Faraone’s eyes were wide open, staring wildly into the chapel’s roof space.

‘Be elsewhere,’ whispered Nicholas. ‘Think yourself another place, hear birdsong, the sea.’

But the other boy could not. He was trapped in hell.

Behind them, Mustafa said, ‘Speak. Talk to us.’

They heard De la Rivière praying. He spoke the names of St John and the Blessed Virgin and his Saviour, Christ the Lord.

The torture continued, and then quite suddenly, without warning, the knight broke. He arched his back and screamed out, ‘Castile! The bastion of Castile!’

He subsided and sobbed.

‘Wash him down,’ said Mustafa, already turning and striding for the door. ‘And watch these two.’ He bent an evil eye on Nicholas. ‘Especially this one. He is a snake.’

Piyale asked, ‘You trust the word of a tortured man?’

Mustafa said, ‘Few men would suffer torture so long, only to lie. Nevertheless he is a Knight Hospitaller, our ancient enemy, and trustworthy as Shaitan himself. We will not send in the Janizaries. Not yet.’ He turned to a senior officer. ‘Call up the first division of the Bekta
ş
is. We attack the bastion of Castile tomorrow dawn.’

‘Where is Copier’s scouting party?’ demanded La Valette.

The lookout shook his head.

All day from the land walls of Birgu they kept their eyes on the southern horizon and the heights of Santa Margherita. The night watches leaned on the battlements and strained their eyes under the starlight. The land lay still. Not a dog barked. The stars wheeled silently in a velvet sky.

Then at dawn they heard the sound of a deep, distant rumbling in the earth. Citizens clutched tables, doorposts, thinking it was an earthquake. Some lay on the ground in the street.

‘Little that will avail you!’ cried a German knight, striding past to his post, clanking with armour.

People scowled at the arrogant knight. The Hospitallers had always looked down on them. One said sullenly, ‘It is no
terramoto
?’

‘No
terramoto
. The guns are coming.’

Stanley and Smith shared an eyeglass, looking out at the heights of Santa Margherita. There came another sound, of drums approaching. Cries rang out all around the walls, and immediately every man was donning his armour and seizing his weapons and running to battle stations, heart thumping. Above the drums sounded a braying brass horn. They were truly coming.

And then over the heights came line upon line of attackers. Gilded flags and waves of white silk robes casting long shadows, early sunlight flashing, dancing on polished shields and scabbards decorated with coloured glass, drums beating out a relentless dead-march rhythm.

Arquebusiers on the walls loaded and set their pans and checked their fuses. Crossbowmen stepped in their foot stirrups and ratcheted back and levered and set in the bolts and stood to the battlements again. They sighted.

The attackers stopped. An Imam pronounced the blessing of Allah on them, and they cried out with one huge voice,

‘
Allahu akbar!
’

The sound of that roar of faith was more terrible than any battery of guns.

Then the ranks of men parted, and the black mouths of bronze cannon appeared in their midst. The infantrymen retreated a long way, giving the guns plenty of room. The Turks had brought up a battery of eight on wheeled carriages. Gunners moved busily about their beasts, wedging the carriages against recoil, priming and loading, while a gunnery master surveyed the walls, estimating trajectories with a superbly practised eye.

‘Those are big guns,’ said Stanley.

‘But far from the biggest.’

‘Testing shots. They seem to be ranging on Castile. I wonder …’

Then knights along the walls were bowing low. It was the Grand
Master, bringing up the Spanish tercios in reserve, and come to take personal command of the south walls.

At a barked order from La Valette, seeing instantly that the attack was to be concentrated on Castile, the knights of Provence, Auvergne and France moved out onto their own flanking towers and walls in neat order, turning their arquebuses towards the bastion of Castile, ready for enfilading fire.

The Ottoman guns roared, almost in unison, a single, rolling thunder, and then hard cracks as the balls struck home against the sloped walls of Castile. Men ducked swiftly back behind the battlements as shards of stone flew up amid vast plumes of smoke and dust. They were using cannonballs of marble. Younger knights sprang up again too soon, but older hands dragged them back down and told them to keep their heads covered, faces lowered. Marble cannonballs fired with such force could send up burning splinters weighing a pound or more, hundreds of feet into the air. Then they came down again.

In the hot still air the clouds of dust formed great shielding curtains, impenetrable to the eye. And beyond the clouds of dust arose a fanatic howl, filled with madness, rage and longing.

‘Bekta
ş
is,’ said Smith. ‘Deranged with Allah and hemp.’

The Turks were only loosing one barrage. Now their infantrymen were already running at the walls with ropes, grapples and scaling ladders, still unseen beyond their own screen of dust, scimitars flashing and turning in the air.

La Valette raised an arm.

‘Arquebusiers!’

His arm dropped.

At no more than fifty paces, the enfilading volley was devastating. The smoke roiled and the dust swirled, yet immediately La Valette had the second rank of arquebusiers step forward and loose their volley, though they could barely see their target. Another deafening roar, and many more screams below. There came a third volley, and then the guns were rested and the crossbowmen took over, loosing another three volleys of bolts into the ranks of Bekta
ş
is, then cranking back and reloading a fourth time and waiting for the dust to settle.

‘Free fire!’ called La Valette.

They waited to aim clear and pick off individuals. Slowly the dust settled.

There were not enough attackers left standing for the fifty crossbowmen to shoot. A single fanatic, his white turban dyed red, stood and swayed, waving his scimitar, eyes to the sun in the east already blinded, chanting the names of Allah. In a second he was stuck with more than half-a-dozen hurtling bolts, and went to Paradise.

‘Hold!’ said La Valette.

A waste of bolts.

The dust finally drifted away on the summer air.

All down from the heights of Santa Margherita, and below the bastion of Castile, lay a mown field of red bodies. Here and there came a groan, a twitching limb. An arm was raised. La Valette signalled to the crossbowman nearest and the wounded man was killed. After that, the defenders did not even bother to shoot the last few wounded. They would die soon anyway in this heat. They saved their bolts for later.

Not one attacker had come close to scaling the bastion walls. Emerging through their own blinding dust clouds, the Bekta
ş
is had found the great walls of Castile barely grazed, let alone cracked or ruptured enough to permit an incursion. As Stanley thought, this was nothing but a test. Knights and soldiers looked down soberly on the field of tangled Ottoman dead. None celebrated. This was a very small beginning indeed. And if the Turk could be so prodigal with so many of his own troops, there would be many more to come.

Mustafa was incensed. There was no weak spot, or if there was, it certainly wasn’t Castile. Birgu was a fortified town of grim strength in every yard of its towering curtain wall.