The Last Crusaders: The Great Siege (25 page)

He wheeled his horse and rode south, covering three rough miles in a quarter of an hour. His horse was nearly lamed.

He stood at the door of the chapel and regained his composure before entering.

Da la Rivière was an ugly sight, for all the washing and bandaging. But he remained conscious. The naked boy now twitched and jabbered to himself on the floor. The fairheaded one, the whiteskinned snake, looked him insolently in the eye.

Mustafa said to them, ‘The capital of this island is Mdina. This is an Arabic name, the Arabic for “city”. You know this, in your hard Christian hearts. And Arabic is a holy language,
the
holy language, the language of the Prophet and the Koran. This Malta was an Arab island once, a Muslim island, and Mdina was a city of Islam.’

‘Things change,’ whispered De la Rivière, his voice as dry as sand.

Still insolent, still defiant. Curse him. Would these knights never yield?

‘It will be a Muslim island again!’

‘How was the assault on Castile?’ asked the boy.

Mustafa did not even strike him. It was useless with such a one.

He ordered all three dragged outside.

The naked acolyte was mad. The knight was almost dead with his injuries, he would not make it through another night. Mustafa ground his teeth. Though the fairhaired boy was the most insolent, the most unbreakable of all, with his eyes like blue ice … it would have to be him.

A Janizary dragged Faraone forward and drew his scimitar. The boy’s lips moved but they could hear no words.

‘He is only a boy,’ whispered Da la Rivière.

‘Old enough to die,’ said Mustafa.

The scimitar flashed down, and Faraone’s head rolled in the dust. Nicholas had never seen a sight so pitiful. But he did not look away. He commended his soul to heaven.

De la Rivière was beaten slowly to death with fine rods. It took a long time. He never begged for mercy nor made a sound, but Nicholas knew he was praying in his heart. Perhaps in those last minutes, God in his mercy reached down and took away his pain. And that moment before, when he had broken under torture, in the chapel, and cried out … He had been acting all the time. The slim, aristocratic Frenchman, the elegant swordsman – he was made of something harder than steel.

Even Mustafa had enough chivalry in him to allow a man a last few words. The beating paused.

‘For our three deaths,’ De la Rivière said, his mouth drooling spittle and blood, but smiling, teeth gleaming through the blood.
‘You have lost two hundred men or more. At Castile. This is how it will go with you. A prophecy of what is to come.’

The soldiers raised their rods to finish him, but at last Mustafa stayed them. The courage of this flint-hearted infidel touched even him. Let him die a man’s death, at least. He gave the order, and a scimitar blade came down.

Mustafa bent his dark eye on Nicholas.

‘Alone of all his tribe,’ he sneered.

‘Be quick about it then,’ said the boy.

The Pasha smiled. ‘It tastes foul in my mouth. But it is you who will ride back alive to your comrades, and tell them all. Wear this around your throat and my men will not molest you. Let your comrades know everything. Be sure to tell them of the horror that awaits.’

Nicholas took the decorated green cloth with distaste, tempted to drop it to the ground. But he would never pass by the enemy watchmen without it. He knotted it round his neck.

His horse was brought over, the wound in her belly sewn with strands of her own mane and daubed with turps and earth. He mounted up.

‘I wonder if we will meet again before you die,’ said Mustafa.

‘Once is enough, I think. You filthy mule-fucker.’

Then saving his spurs on the animal’s wounded flank, he lashed the reins and trotted north.

Mustafa cursed himself for not cutting off a hand or a foot.

His head still hurt, his vision shimmered, and not only from the afternoon heat haze on the earth. When he reached a spot of shade beneath a carob, he dismounted and was suddenly overwhelmed with grief and revulsion. The dead boy Faraone, an innocent heart, and the horrible torture of De la Rivière. The butchered peasant woman … He leaned and spewed, bilious spew upon the baked ground. His stomach was void, his throat more parched than ever. Mustafa had refused him even a mouthful of water. Only this accursed Mohammedan token about his throat. It burned his skin.

He remounted and sat a moment in the shade. He must have water soon or he would be pissing black. Yet he felt a little better. Things were clearer. Some things. His ardent heart, his fierce
loyalty to his father and his sisters and his name, even to Hodge; his love of comradeship, his appetite for glory, and for righteous vengeance. Now he had an object for his temper and his many passions. Of course he had come to Malta to fight the Mohammedan. But now he would fight them with savage joy in his heart, and absolute conviction. For his father and his mother, his sisters, for England and St George. For Christendom, for the Knights, for the magnificent, defiant scornful peasant woman beheaded by the Turks. For Copier and Faraone and De la Rivière, and all the tough soldiers and gallant knights yet to die.

He screwed up his eyes and heeled his horse gently forward into the white blaze.

For all of them.

‘Open the gates!’

A party of Turks watched from the heights of Santa Margherita not half a mile off, their muskets trained on his back. But he wore the green neckerchief of protection. The drawbridge swung down, the gates of Birgu swung open. Nicholas stopped his horse on the narrow drawbridge and tore off the neckerchief and looked back at them, unsure if they could see. In case they could, he leaned back and made as if wiping his horse’s arse with the cloth, embroidered with the sacred names in Arab script. Then he dropped it in the dust behind him and walked his horse in. A shot rang out wild. The gates slammed shut.

Stanley came running, and also Hodge.

‘God’s mercy, boy, you’re alive!’

‘Alive and well,’ croaked Nicholas, slithering from the horse and finding his legs didn’t work. Hodge held him.

‘Water!’ bellowed Stanley.

The boy drank.

‘Slowly.’ After only a few tantalising glugs, the knight pulled the flask away. ‘The others?’

Nicholas shook his head.

‘Copier too? De la Rivière?’

‘They all died fighting. We faced two hundred or more. We charged them … Copier gave the order. They had murdered a woman.’

Stanley gripped his sword hilt. ‘This is a sad loss. A bitter loss.’

‘I was no hero. I did not break free, the Turks let me go. The tall fellow in the black robe, their leader.’

‘Mustafa Pasha himself?’ Stanley’s blue eyes were round. ‘La Valette will want to speak with you. When we’ve got you bandaged.’

‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘I only took a blow to the head.’

The knight of the lost English langue looked almost guilty. ‘You’ve not looked in a glass of late.’

‘The Turks offered me none. Nor roasted mutton, nor sherbet, nor harem girls. The uncouth barbarians. More water.’

He gave him the flask again. ‘Then to the infirmary with you.’

They weren’t called the Knights Hospitaller for nothing.

The Sacred Infirmary was one of the most beautiful buildings Nicholas had ever seen. A different world from the heat and blood and dust outside, it breathed the spirit of gentleness, expertise and monastic calm. The great dormitory where the sick lay was a vast, high-roofed hall, blissfully cool, with arched windows down the east and west side, admitting only the soft golden light of morning and evening. The walls were plain whitewashed, the smell clean and soothing. Slop buckets by beds were emptied instantly. Alcohol and turpentine and other disinfectants were widely used. All dishes and instruments were made of silver. The ministering brothers wore white. Forty beds lined each wall, well spaced from each other. Most lay empty for now.

Nicholas lay back on cool white sheets and a young brother, Fra Reynaud, washed his face. He kept dabbing around his nose.

‘It was the back of my head they hit me hardest.’

Fra Reynaud sat him up again and looked. ‘Your skull’s thick.’ He washed off the crusted blood and dabbed on brine and alcohol. Nicholas gritted his teeth and made no sound.

The knight returned to washing his face. He rinsed the cloth in a shallow silver dish, silver being the miraculous enemy of infection and putrefaction. The water spiralled with red.

‘They must have kicked me in the chops or something,’ said Nicholas. ‘When I was out cold.’

‘They slit your nose.’

‘They
what
?’

‘Just a nick. They might have cut off your nose entire, so give thanks to God. It’s only your left nostril. Not bad, but it’s bled a lot. I’ll put a fine stitch in it. Mostly you need to drink water and then some salted bread. Tonight you’ll get meat broth.’

‘
Slit my nose
,’ repeated Nicholas, still indignant. ‘When I was out cold? Damned barbarians.’

‘Mind your blaspheming tongue,’ said the Hospitaller mildly. ‘Most knights have suffered a lot worse in their time.’

His hands were huge and strong, yet his touch precise. It was said that a good chirurgeon should have the heart of a lion, the hands of a lady and the eyes of a hawk. This one’s mighty sword-hands were hardly those of a lady, but they were as gentle. He had battle-scars on his face. Over his white soutane he wore a silver cross. Warrior, healer, monk.

Nicholas’s eyes roved over the cool white arches and crossbeams of the lofty infirmary roof above him. Like a cathedral. A refuge, a holy place. What men they were, the Knights. How he was beginning to love them.

La Valette rested grave eyes upon him. ‘Why were you riding with Copier?’

‘As a volunteer.’

‘And only you lived?’

‘Yes, Sire.’

‘The history.’

Nicholas told him.

La Valette studied some papers, then looked up. ‘You give a good account. Yet it was a grievous loss. Copier died like a young hothead.’ He looked out of the window. ‘But the Turks attacked Castile on De la Rivière’s advisement. Now that I like. Their loss was greater.

‘When the Turks are defeated, we will recover our brothers’ mortal remains and give them good burial. Now go to the church and confess. Your soul is stained with blood, though infidel.’

The Conventual Church of St Lawrence was the church of the knights, filled with their escutcheons and tombs. A church full of
noble blood-lines. In the crypt lay the bodies of the former Grand Masters of Malta.

Nicholas took his place in the confessional.

He said he had had lustful thoughts.

‘Was she married?’

‘No, they were—’

‘You have had lustful thoughts about more than one woman?’

‘Yes, Father. Many.’

‘You are young. It is but colt’s evil, and the weakness of youth. Yet lust becomes a habit, and habit becomes character. Pray to God for grace.’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘You’re certain they were not married?’

‘No, they were young. There was one in a tavern, in Cadiz, and there is one on the island here. She is very beautiful.’

‘Think not on her. This is hardly the time for gallantry anyway, not with the Turk upon us.’

‘I have killed men. On a ship, and here on the island.’

‘You have already killed a Turk on Malta?’

‘Yes, Father. I rode out with Marshal Copier’s troop. I cut one open across his flanks. I doubt he lived.’

There was a kind of hiss from the other side of the grille. It sounded like exultation. Then sober silence.

‘Also Father – I blasphemed and used foul language.’

‘In the heat of battle.’

‘No, Father. In the cool after. In the Sacred Infirmary here, I said
damned barbarians
. And before the Turks, as I rode away at their bidding, I … I called their leader, this Mustafa Pasha, a bad thing.’

‘To his face?’

‘Yes. It was dishonourable, and very foolish.’

‘You have insulted Mustafa Pasha of the Ottomans, to his face? And lived?’

‘Yes, Father.’

This time, the sound of exultation was unmistakable. With ill-suppressed excitement, the priest said, ‘What did you say to him? The exact words, boy. I need to know, so I may pronounce appropriate penance.’

Nicholas hesitated, then took a deep breath. ‘I called him a filthy mule-fucker.’

There was silence, and then the unmistakable sound of laughter being poorly stifled in a cassocked sleeve.

Finally the priest controlled himself and said, voice shaking a little, ‘
Te absolvo a peccatis tuis
, et cetera.’

‘No penance?’ said Nicholas with some surprise.

‘No penance. The Holy Mother Church absolves you of all, though it is God’s to forgive you. And no more lusting either. Now go and do some work.
Laborare est orare
.’

‘Yes, Father.’

He felt exhausted then, and longed for sleep. But it was yet only late afternoon of a very long day. Everyone worked. Everyone looked exhausted.

‘There will not come a day for another month when we do not feel exhausted,’ said Smith.

‘What encouragement he speaks,’ said Stanley. ‘A natural leader of men and rouser of spirits!’

‘I speak the truth. You speak like a bilge-pump.’

Stanley blew him a kiss.

Towards evening a message came for Nicholas. He was wanted in the infirmary.

Fra Reynaud admitted him. In the beautiful sunset light of St John’s ward, there lay a man with his arms and most of his face covered in fresh bandages. Probably the rest of him too, under the sheets. Some bandages seeped a little blood. It was Marshal Copier.

‘You survived!’ He felt at once overjoyed and stricken with guilt.

‘You too,’ whispered Copier, barely audible.

He communicated with his eyes. Nicholas drew up a stool beside him.

‘They let me go. I didn’t fight free.’

‘You fought, boy. I saw you. You fought.’

‘I am deeply sorry I left you there. I thought you were dead.’

‘So did I.’ Copier’s eyes smiled, since he could not. ‘Better, so did the Turk. I crawled by night, found a horse, rode in under dark. The Baptist himself lit the way, I tell you.’ He paused for rest,
swallowed. ‘The starlight was of Christ and the Virgin. It shone like day.’ His eyes settled on the boy with his head bowed in shame. ‘Your help was not needed. You were right to ride back alone.’