The Disorderly Knights (15 page)

On the flagship travelled Dragut the corsair, and Sinan Pasha, the renegade Smyrnian Jew, in command. Because the Janissaries were on board, it was as if the Sultan Suleiman were present himself. Over its carved golden poop there stood the Grand Turk’s own private standard: a square of beaten silver, aching-bright in the sun; and above that, the yellow crescent of Islâm and a golden ball, its long, horsehair plume streaming idly behind.

Spahís, corsairs, thieves and robbers, renegade Greeks and Levantines sailed westward with the Osmanli in their great fleet. Enslaved knights of Malta tugged at the oars; whistles shrilled; gongs pulsed with the strokes on, on, on through the lapis-blue water; and at the five appointed times, day after calm day, the
adhan
, the ritual call to worship, ululated from their packed decks.

The Twelve Thousand, the Followers of the Prophet, were approaching. Not to harbour in France; not to capture Naples; not to seize back Bône; but to drive the Knights of St John and all their works into the sea.

*

From the moment that he hurled himself, in a blaze of anger, on to Malta with his two hundred unfortunate shepherd boys, through all that followed, Jerott Blyth spent a good deal of time, out of curiosity, at Lymond’s side.

No more than Gabriel did he attach any great significance to the
encounter. But he wanted to find, and give nostalgic credence to the attraction he remembered as a boy in Scotland, before the years in France and his joining the Order: before Elizabeth’s death.

The Blyths until then had always been lucky. Like the Culters they were well-born, well-favoured, and with money enough to give Jerott the finest tutors and the best training for war. He had not known Lymond well before the battle of Solway Moss against the English in ’42; but he had allowed himself to be entertained, as had they all, by the kind of quick-witted fantasy which was Francis Crawford’s trademark at the time.

For the rest, it was Richard, the elder brother, whom most people knew best. Until Solway Moss, the tragedy which ended in the Scottish King’s death just after the birth of the child Mary who was to succeed him. In that messy rout, Jerott Blyth lost his father and saw Lymond, who had ridden and fought beside him with a kind of insane inspiration in the field unlike anything Jerott had seen before, removed a prisoner of the English to London.

Then on the eve of Jerott’s wedding, amid the mourning for his father, Elizabeth too had died, and he had barely attended to the rumours of Lymond’s wild subsequent career. Until, long settled in France, where his family were now in business, in course of taking his caravans and his vows to become a knight of Malta, Jerott had wondered now and then what the instant affinity had been that he had felt, nine years ago at Solway Moss, and whether, a man now instead of a boy, he would find it a childhood illusion.

In search of enlightenment, Jerott Blyth attached himself with great firmness that evening to the party which went to dine, after the Council meeting broke up, in the Auberge of France. As well as Lymond, de Villegagnon was there, and Graham Malett, with Nicholas Upton the Turcopilier, refugee from the non-existent English Langue.

For the sake of coolness the meal was set in the courtyard, visible through the crested doorway, its barrel arch lozenged in colour. For sixty scudi a year, the Pilier could clearly serve his knights’ hunger most handsomely. The platter from which each quartet of knights ate was of silver; the food oily but surprisingly varied. Jerott Blyth listened, crumbling his brown, loose-textured bread, to Gabriel’s level and accurate account of all that had happened in Council since they left. Nothing had convinced de Homedès of Malta’s danger, and for his own reasons nothing ever would. He had given sanction for limited safeguards and, short of violence, could be made to do no more. It was for the knights themselves to stretch these as far as possible, and without equipment, without prospect of help from Sicily or the Emperor, to arm the citadel of Malta ‘with straw and sea air’, as de Villegagnon said bitterly, as best they might.

Throughout the heat of the argument Lymond had, Jerott noted, restrained comment. It was, after all, the Order’s own dirty linen which was being turned over. A thought struck him. Leaning over, he said in an undertone, ‘Have you been to Gozo yet?’ From Birgu to the north tip of Malta was only a dozen miles or so, and four miles across the channel from that was the island of Gozo, where that woman was. Or where he supposed she was, if the Governor hadn’t got tired of her.

Hoping for some observable reaction, he was disappointed. Lymond, watching Gabriel as he talked of fortifications, simply shook his head.

‘It will be a little awkward now, surely, that you can’t leave the island?’ Jerott persevered.

He had spoken more loudly than he meant and Gabriel, who had a disconcerting trick of following conversations on several levels at once, broke off and said, ‘If Mr Crawford wants to cross to Gozo, I can take him.’

With no perceptible pause Lymond answered as easily. ‘I should like to see all the fortifications of both Gozo and Malta, but we should perhaps draw up our plan first. The Turcopilier and yourself have all the local knowledge we need.’ And Jerott, noting the evasion, was rather gratified by the results of his impulse.

It was only later, as they settled down to the detail of the defence, that he realized that Lymond had spoken the truth, if not the whole truth. His grasp of the fortifications of Birgu and St Angelo was already uncomfortably accurate; his analysis damning in its lack of colour. Nick Upton, in whose bailiwick the deficient fortresses fell, interrupted once or twice, his colour heightened, until Gabriel in his deep voice said, ‘Nick, this is the fault of no one but the Grand Master. If we are going to make the best of it we must accept the facts as they are. It is too late to make sea palisades; the hoops are rotten and there are no long chains in store. Soil must be brought from the Marsa for trenches—that means sacks, spades, wheel-barrows and boats. Water.… How many clay water bottles have you?’

Nick Upton pulled in a stool beside the four and lowered his great bulk. ‘We shouldn’t need bottles, Sir Graham. The underground cisterns will be enough.’

Graham Malett’s eyes met Lymond’s, and it was Lymond who answered the Turcopilier. ‘Not if the cannon vibration cracks the rock,’ he said briefly. ‘You’ll need seawater too, all the barrels you can spare. Sinan Pasha likes to use limpet fireworks, I believe, against men in armour. What about fire weapons of your own? Wildfire? Trumps?’

‘We’ve enough saltpetre,’ said Upton. ‘Pitch, turpentine, sulphur, resin, oil.…’

‘Where?’

Jerott didn’t see the point until Gabriel said, ‘In one of the warehouses you saw on the quay. We’ll need hides, Nick; as many as you can raise, and some of those barrels of seawater.’ For the warehouse, as Jerott realized, was itself a living bombard, which soaked hides at need might protect.

The discussion went on. Wheat, barley, oil, fish, cheese, wine and biscuit in the rock vats. Too late to lay mines, with only six feet of topsoil over the sand, and limestone below. Weapons checked—partisans, pikes, glaives, battleaxes and daggers and the knights’ own two-handed swords; powder, balls and arquebuses, bombards and fireworks; the cannon and mortars at St Angelo itself.

The most easily quarried stone and earth to be brought to build up the outer walls of Birgu. There was no time to deal with Mdina, the other city, and de Homedès had refused guns, troops and defences to Gozo. Horses, to be placed at Mdina to keep contact with the north of Malta, Gozo and thence Sicily. Planks and brushwood to hide snipers. Some of the Order’s remaining galleys to be accessibly sunk; the rest to be taken into the canal joining the fort of St Angelo with Birgu. The chain to be checked and maintained between St Angelo and L’Isla.

St Angelo, the only strong fortress and home of the Grand Master, would hold all the knights and, surrounded on three sides by sea and on the fourth by its narrow canal, would be their last stronghold. Birgu, and Mdina six miles away, the only towns, would have to hold all the refugee Maltese who, with their beasts and belongings, would be expected to stream for shelter as soon as the attack came.

Dragut, for this his fifth attack on the Maltese islands, would not risk sailing into the tongue of the sea, chain-stopped, between the St Angelo and L’Isla peninsulas. Instead, as before, he was likely to choose one of the sea inlets on either side—Marsasirocco on the south-west, or Marsamuscetto, the long inlet to the north hidden from Birgu and St Angelo by the spine of Mount Sciberras.

If Dragut chose this last place to anchor, he had only to climb Mount Sciberras to have the knights’ headquarters below him, in full view across the water. He had only to drag his ships and his cannon across the neck of land between Marsamuscetto and Galley Creek to be able to sail right across to Birgu,
within the chain at the neck of the creek
.…

Plainer and plainer, as the talks progressed, was the knights’ vulnerability. And plainer the queer congruity between Gabriel and Lymond: not in style or in temperament, but in coolness and, above all, in a sense of balance. Malett, the older man, with the peace of maturity within him, had a physical magnificence which had helped,
Jerott knew, to create his legend, but which was only the vessel for his special brand of power.

Beside him, they all looked pale. Even de Villegagnon with his honest passions and his brilliant career seemed slow-witted and crude; Nick Upton looked a sheepish, fat schoolboy and Lymond an ashen-haired, soft-voiced clerk, pattering solutions in court. Only Gabriel, Jerott noted, talked of the Maltese as if they were flesh and blood. Only Gabriel spoke of the hospital, and those who must serve there; and only Gabriel referred with simplicity to their strongest defence: their dedication to God.

And there only did Jerott’s new-found enigma fail him a little. For none of the crusading zeal, clearly, was in Lymond’s blood; and he did nothing, as Gabriel would have done, to avoid giving hurt. Instead, presently he remarked, ‘Could we persuade the Order, do you suppose, to put their trust in the Lord and wear brigantines or plain leather jackets as the soldiers do? Or is a knight not a knight without his hundred pounds of plate metal, no matter how heavy or hot?’

Gabriel smiled, and forestalling de Villegagnon, said, ‘There is no answer but armour to arquebus shot and scimitars, M. le Comte. Ours is made and seamed like glove leather in Germany, and in our armoury here. With the surcoat of the Order to protect us from the direct sun, we do very well … have done very well, perhaps, for a thousand years.’

He paused. Lymond added nothing. Upton was busily writing on a dog-eared sheaf of notes and de Villegagnon was looking over the Turcopilier’s shoulder. Gabriel said suddenly in a low voice, but with great clarity, ‘Mr Crawford, you have come to us at a time when the Order was never in greater need of friends. You must understand that to men who have taken vows and offered their lives as these have, the Moslem faith is an insult to the Church we adore; a pit into which all that is noble in mankind may well fall and be swallowed. We here on this fragment of rock are the shield of Christianity, of culture, of humanity, of all the great arts for which men have died. Think of that, and don’t despise us. We are not simpletons. We are not poor spirits fled to a cloister. We are men as you are, who have foresworn the pleasures of men; who will forego home and life itself if need be, to defend our heritage from the hosts of the fiend.’

Breathing quickly, Graham Malett suddenly stopped. Sweat, beading the fair skin, sparkled in the lamplight; and below his eyes, clear as seawater, dark shadows remained from the stress of the day. For a moment, raising his cupped hands, he masked his face from the circle of silent eyes. Then, dropping his hands open upon the table he added, his voice not quite clear, ‘Do you not think that I am human too? Do you think my vows are simple to keep?’

For a long moment, alone among the silent men at the table, Gabriel’s strained gaze sustained Francis Crawford’s. Then Sir Graham stirred, glanced quickly round and said, his voice almost normal, ‘God forgive me. I have embarrassed you, and myself too, come to that. What can I do? Gentlemen, I propose to take you back home for the finest wine my cellar can afford. After all, it may be the last chance we shall have to drink it. Nick—you can do nothing till morning. Come, man, and bring your lists with you.’

The passion which had brought Graham Malett to plead with a stranger was now well concealed. With talk sober but easy, Gabriel made the burden of that evening a light one; and later, when they were dispersing to sleep and Lymond and de Villegagnon had already gone, he put his light hand, restraining, on Jerott’s arm.

‘Wait a moment, if you will have patience with me. I think you are a friend of Mr Crawford’s?’

‘I knew him once,’ Jerott said.

Gabriel smiled. ‘Don’t be hard on him. He is young. And he has been embarrassed quite enough. Jerott.… you seemed to know of some wish he had to reach Gozo. Don’t tell me why. But,’ said the great Graham Malett, making a quick, rueful face and holding up in two fingers a folded fragment of paper, torn and dirtied with much handling, ‘this note came this evening from Gozo for Mr Crawford of Lymond, and I am sure he would be much happier if he thought it came through you rather than through me. Someone in Gozo, it seems,’ said Gabriel gravely, ‘heard with half the population this morning of his arrival from Sicily, and sent a hurried message to him addressed through me. Unfortunately, the superscription had been torn off and I have had to read it to discover its destination but, I promise you, I forget already all it contains.’ And handing the dirty note with gravest formality to Jerott Blyth, the merest glint of amusement in his eyes, Gabriel bowed and wished him good night.

At a taper halfway up the stairs, being human, Jerott bent his handsome black head and read, quickly and surreptitiously, the note Gabriel had given him. It was inscribed inside to the Comte de Sevigny, which was acid enough in itself. As for the note, it said merely: