The Last Crusaders: The Great Siege (44 page)

‘Reinforcements,’ said the Grand Master. ‘You are welcome, even at this late hour.’

To Sir Oliver Starkey he said privately, ‘Ten thousand are needed, and some seventy have come. Yet we should welcome them with grace. They have come here to die for us.’

Early the next morning, La Valette called his closest to him: Smith and Stanley, the captains of the langues, Don Pedro Mezquita, and young Parisot. Nicholas was permitted too, but not to speak. It was hard when another figure entered the room: Marshal Copier, now one-legged, but supported on a very fine olivewood peg-leg. He eyed Nicholas, seeing the boy’s pleasure at his appearance, and winked.

La Valette said it was as Mustafa Pasha had foreseen. ‘Despite the great spirit and faith of our brother Roberto di Eboli,’ said
the Grand Master, ‘and his picture of all Christendom standing shoulder-to-shoulder, worshipping as one – you know this is not so.’

‘No relief is coming?’ said Smith.

La Valette shook his head. ‘Apart from the gallant few who sailed in last night – no relief is coming. Other kingdoms may burn bonfires like us, but they will send no ships. And we will hear from Venice sooner or later, I have no doubt, that the bankers who run that serene Republic’ – his voice was corrosive with bitterness – ‘ordered great celebrations when they heard of Elmo’s fall. St Marks’ Square will look like Carnival time.’

Nicholas looked baffled and agast.

Stanley said to him
sotto voce
, ‘To assure the many Ottoman diplomats and spies in Venice that the Venetians value peace and trade with the Empire above all else, and have no love for the Knights of St John. They say we are no more than troublesome pirates, causing wars and ruining Mediterranean trade.’

Smith growled, ‘A Venetian would sell his own daughter for a ducat.’

The stench of politics was worse than corpses under a midday sun.

‘No, gentlemen.’ La Valette spread his hands on the tabletop. ‘We fight on alone, as God wills it. Dragut’s ten thousand are now under Mustafa’s command, of course, making a total still of at least thirty thousand in all. And there are the cut-throats of Candelissa and Hassan, itching to get into the city and loot and … worse. Remember that Hassan Ali is the son-in-law of Dragut himself. So for him, it will be vengeance. And for the Mohammedans of North Africa, to fight against Christendom is always vengeance for the loss of Spain. For seven centuries, their beloved Al-Andalus was their home, and then the Catholic Kings cast them out and they were exiled to the barren African shore. They became corsairs with all of Christendom theirs to sack, sailing out in their low galleys from their lairs at Tlemcen and Tenes, Bizerta and Susa, Djerbah and Monastir, to fill their pockets and honour Allah simultaneously. If they break into the town, it will be terrible.

‘We lost nearly two hundred at Elmo, nothing to the Turks but a great deal to us. We are left with fighting men but two or three
thousand in number. You know I like precision, but do I count fourteen year old Maltese militia boys, armed with butcher’s cleavers, protected by nothing more than jerkins wadded with sheep’s wool?’

His face was heavy with care. The burden of responsibility, thought Nicholas, for the lives not only of his soldiers but of all the people of Malta, nursing mothers and eager ignorant boys and babes in cradles – it must be well-nigh more than any man could bear.

La Valette said, ‘Elmo was a month of heroes, and sheer bloody attrition. Janizary faced knight across a single ditch, and both died. It was a simple affair. The siege of Birgu will be very different. More mobile and varied, fought over a much wider front, and I do not doubt that the wily dog Mustafa will try many tricks to break in on us. We have tricks prepared too. But – we also have women and children. It will be a very different battle in this never-ending war. And you will see not only your fellow knights and soldiers maimed and killed. Be ready for it.’

He gestured to his secretary, and Oliver Starkey spread a map over the table.

‘We hold Birgu and Senglea, both promontories largely surrounded by water, and protected on the landward side by their curtain walls. The Turkish fleet still cannot sail into the Grand Harbour itself, or they will be blasted in pieces by the guns of San Angelo. I do not expect any attack over the water.’

‘But then you should expect the unexpected,’ said Mezquita, stroking his fine moustaches.

‘Quite so. Every gun on the harbourside is primed and ready, manned day and night.’

‘Senglea,’ murmured Don Pedro, waving an aristocratic hand over the map, slender fingers gleaming with jewelled rings, raising his delicate eyebrows. His bloodline went back to the Visigothic kings, it was said, and even to the Spanish Emperor Hadrian. Yet he was a very fine soldier. ‘Is it worth holding?’

The others could see what he meant. Birgu was a populous, tight-packed city, the beating heart of Malta. But the neighbouring promontory of Senglea was thinly inhabited, with a few mean houses and some creaking windmills, and the little fort of St Michel at its
tip overlooking the harbour. To defend it was to stretch defensive lines thin indeed.

‘You mean pull back, consolidate? Abandon Senglea, defend only Birgu? Yet you see that Senglea is already conjoined to Birgu in three ways, by the great chain across Galley Creek, by a pontoon bridge behind, and by an inner chain boom we have laid across as well.’ La Valette’s voice was steely. ‘No. We surrender not one inch, no matter what the military textbooks and manuals might advise. As at Elmo, we give not a handful of dust away. The Turks must fight and bleed and die for every forward footstep.’

He indicated again. ‘The Turkish main camp and field hospital remain at Marsa. The forward camp is here, on Santa Margherita, and their biggest guns. They have further gun emplacements on the Corradino Heights, on Mount Salvatore across Kalkara – very close indeed to your post, Don Pedro – and also on Gallows Point, and across at Sciberras, albeit at long range.’

‘That is truly a ring of fire,’ said Smith softly.

‘The main attack will come from land, against our walls. And no matter how many tens of thousands Mustafa commands, only a wave of a thousand or so can attack at a time. They will also try to get miners in close as soon as possible – as they are already. They may attack across the creeks in small boats. They will try everything. But we will be prepared.’

They stood and shook hands.

‘To your posts, gentlemen. And God go with you.’

After he had spoken with them, La Valette had a private matter to attend to, and he could not bear that any man should even know of it. He had assessed the amount of food left in the city, and it was not good news. There was no choice.

He buckled on his dagger, opened a door in the corner of the great state-room, and two lean and beautiful hunting dogs bounded out. They leapt at him with joyful little yaps, licking his hands in panting excitement. It had been so long since they had hunted out over the island. Surely today was the day. La Valette fondled their silken ears and they playfully bit his hands, their great jaws as gentle as a maiden’s handshake.

Everything about a dog was noble. Its candour and affection, its love unto death, its freedom from words, and therefore from lies.
Dogs knew everything about loyalty and fidelity, the beauty of running with the wind, the joy of the world. And they knew nothing of princes and politics, bankers and gold, treachery and war. He embraced them around their powerful necks and lean ribbed sides in a manner that was strange to them, and gazed long at them, and they saw it in his eyes. They looked uncertain, crestfallen, knowing there was to be no hunt today. But there was something else. They snuffled at him pleadingly, tails curling between their legs. And when he came to lead them down the steep stone stairs to the cellar below – they followed him obediently, of course, to the very end – he had to go slowly, holding on to the rail, for his eyes were so blurred with tears.

‘Can we truly defeat such an army?’ asked Franco Briffa. ‘We have seen the numbers of the Turks, and they are as numberless as the sands of the shore. Their guns are like dragons, a child could curl up and sleep in the mouth of one. Their trenches advance daily to our walls like snakes. We are so few, mere people of the land and the sea. You believe we can defeat them? You who survived Elmo?’

‘Yes,’ said Nicholas. ‘Yes I do.’

But the boy looked away as he spoke and did not meet his eyes. And Franco Briffa knew he was lying to him, though it was a noble lie.

That night, Franco Briffa held his wife very close to him. In the morning, she watched him go over to the cradle and take up the bambino and hold the gurgling smiling infant very close to his chest, tears running down his face, and she went and held them both in a human trinity.

‘When will they come?’ people asked. ‘When will the guns start to roar?’

They kept looking out to sea, for the sight of Spanish or Papal galleys. None came.

The waiting was terrible, and though the preaching of Roberto di Eboli had put fire in their hearts, yet it was beginning to die again. They were trapped in their little town, surrounded, and no one was coming to help. The villages beyond were laid waste and desolate, and the size and number of the Turkish guns, glimpsed from the walls, ranging up against them line on line, was truly
terrifying. Elmo, that had seemed such a heroic tragedy lately, now seemed like the stirring up of a hornet’s nest. There would be no mercy.

La Valette and the more experienced knights knew why the guns were still silent. It was not only them that would begin the battle. Mustafa was preparing other means. When it began, everything would come at once. And the three thousand fighting men, knights and soldiers, bakers and shoemakers and apprentice boys and urchins – they would not be enough.

It was to people’s amazement then that news spread that Mustafa Pasha had sent a messenger to parley. He was proposing terms.

It was an old Greek slave who came and stood before the post of Provence, carrying a white banner. He was led to La Valette.

‘Mustafa Pasha,’ he stammered, ‘Supreme Commander of the Ottoman Forces of Suleiman, Lord of the Universe, Possessor of Men’s Necks, Viceroy of Allah, Master of the Two—’

‘Suleiman’s nicknames do not interest me,’ cut in La Valette icily. ‘What is your message?’

‘My, my master,’ faltered the poor Greek slave, as old as La Valette but a good deal more decayed, ‘decrees that if you depart from this island as you once departed from Rhodes, without further resistance, you would be granted free and unmolested passage to Sicily. Not a shot will be fired, not a man, woman nor child harmed.’

‘Let the people know this for certain,’ said La Valette, turning sharply to Oliver Starkey. ‘The Turks want terms. It means they fear they may not be able to beat us. Let the town know. Let it put the fire back in their hearts.’ He snapped back to the slave. ‘And if we do not depart from this our island, gifted to us by the Emperor Charles himself?’

The slave looked anxious in the extreme. ‘Then, then your fate will be that of your slaughtered comrades at Elmo, now,’ he gulped, ‘now in the hell of the Unbelievers.’

La Valette towered over him. ‘Where?’

‘In the hell,’ he stammered, ‘of, of —’

‘You say that our Christian brothers burn in hell?’

The old wretch fell to his knees, whimpering and cowering, well
used to heavy blows. ‘Not I, master, I beg you, not I, I but carry the message …’

La Valette turned from him in disgust. A man whose spirit had leached away with his youth.

‘And then what?’ he murmured, more to himself than the slave. ‘The Turks will come on to Sicily soon enough, and then that island too will be a part of the Caliphate. As Rhodes is now.’ He turned back. ‘And then Rome, yes? Venice, and Genoa, and Marseilles, and inland, all of Western Europe. Another army will swarm over the Danube frontier, and all of Christendom will be a part of the Empire of Islam, and Christians once more reduced to servile
dhimmi
status, taxed and spat on and beaten in the streets, as Jews and Christians are today throughout the East.’ His voice trembled. ‘Where then will we go with our Bible and our Cross? Will the Turk gracefully allow us to depart for the New World, do you think? Or perhaps the Moon?’

The slave trembled and said nothing.

‘I reject the offer of Mustafa Pasha,’ said La Valette. ‘Here we take our stand. On this bare rock.’ He tapped the stone flag with his foot. ‘Here.’ He flicked his fingers at a soldier. ‘Take him away and hang him.’

‘No, master, mercy!’ cried the old wretch.

Even the soldier hesitated. It was a cruel order.

La Valette considered, his thoughts dark and labyrinthine, comprehending the power of every threat and counter threat, every gesture, small and great, and above all, the desperate straits of Malta.

‘Bandage his eyes and lead him back to the Gate of Provence,’ he said. ‘Take him up on the walls. I will follow.’

The old slave was dragged back to the walls and held at the very tottering edge, in sight of the Turks, and the bandage torn away. He stared down into the deep ditch far below.

‘Mark it well,’ said La Valette.

The old man looked up the Grand Master with his wrinkled toothless mouth agape, and then down again into the ditch.

‘The Turks will never take this place,’ said La Valette. He fixed his ice blue eyes on the shaking slave, gripped by the arms between the two soldiers. ‘Return to Mustafa and say this. Tell him he may have possession of the ditch below, with our most heartfelt blessing,
to lay the dead bodies of his Janizaries in. Beyond that – he will have nothing.’

The slave went back to the Ottoman camp, walking awkwardly, for he had dirtied his breeches.

Mustafa’s anger would be terrible. But not so terrible as the ice blue eyes and the even voice of that Grand Master. A sincere madness burned in him.

Mustafa heard, rolled up a map, looked out of the door of his pavilion and said, ‘When we capture Birgu and Senglea, every man, woman and child there will die. La Valette has sentenced them to death.’