The Disorderly Knights (30 page)

‘Pregnant?
Hâmile?
’ said Dragut. ‘Of what stock?’

‘Of the best stock there is. Of a line of black fighting Irish kings,’ said Gabriel, and in his mind’s eye saw all Oonagh had described to him of Cormac O’Connor.

‘I will take her,’ said Dragut. ‘But if the son is yours, do you wish him back?’

‘If the son is fair,’ said Gabriel at length, and for the first time his eyes were lowered against the shrewd gaze of the corsair, ‘if the son is fair, send to me, and I will buy him at any price you name. The woman need not know.’

‘It shall be done,’ said Dragut Rais, the Drawn Sword of Islâm, as across the white glare, in Tripoli, the guns made their first breach.

*

Twenty-four hours later, the Negro and Turkish slaves labouring to rebuild the bastion of St Brabe under a curtain of arrows and arquebus shot refused to do any more, and the order to bastinado went out. Jerott, armourless in filthy shirt and breech hose, heard the screaming above the gunfire and the noise of women shrieking in the castle halls, and anger fuelled his exhausted body like fire.

De Herrera, the Spanish knight, had come to look for the bamboo rods: the thin, whippy peelings used to tap feet and belly, monotonously, over and over until the agonized nerves gave way and the shivering tissues parted into internal haemorrhage and death.

Jerott had tried to stop him and so had de Poissieu, out of commonsense, not humanity. The devastation of the town behind its crumbling walls had turned the castle into a wailing wall of refugees, where Spanish knight and French knight eyed each other sullenly and the Calabrians whispered in corners.

St Brabe was broken. Because of the continuous firing it was suicide to work in the entrenchments behind. All right. What good would it do, said Jerott passionately, to kill the defenders publicly while the defences were giving way? Why in heaven’s name didn’t they do something positive? Re-site, re-angle the guns: counterattack. They had gunpowder, they had sachetti, they had trumps. Why not use fire on the Janissaries: grenades, pitch, catapults.…

‘Because they would use fire in return, and fry us in our shells,’ de Herrera had said briefly. ‘So far they have been careful because they wish to capture the castle intact.’

‘They will. They’ve only to wait,’ Jerott had said, his face bloodless under the cracked brown skin and the dirt. ‘They’re having Tripoli handed them on a salver.’ De Herrera had pushed past; and presently the screaming began, and there was nothing Jerott and his handful of French companions could do but go from post to post round the walls and battlements and into the halls and the sick quarters exhorting, cajoling, heartening, replacing weak links with stronger, sanctioning renewal of water, matches, shot, arrows and bolts, and listening all the time to the murmur of sedition.

When, at last, the brutal heat of the sun waned, to be replaced by the treacherous shadows and night, Jerott, irritated by a delay in the supply line, went himself to the magazine to find the reason and have a trolley loaded with sacks of shot.

He was not allowed inside. Striding along the dark corridors, through uneven passages, his way barred by great oaken or iron doors that had to be unshackled and dragged ajar by the serving brother at his side, Blyth reached the open space before the big underground magazine, whose veering oil lamps were hung on Corinthian columns and whose decaying walls were blotched with terracotta and chrome and the oval eyes and tight curled hair of Roman heterae. It had been a bathing-place, someone said. It was now a guardroom.

Three Knights of the Order were there; one by the door, the other two supervising the removal by Turkish slaves of a load of corn powder. The slaves were naked to their shaved heads. The guards did not leave their flanks until the double doors, of iron and then of timber, were shut and locked behind them. One of the knights went with the supplies. The other two remained, looking at Jerott. Both were Spanish, old fighting companions of Guenara’s; both were fully armed with helm, breastplate, dagger and sword.

In the uncertain state of the garrison, it seemed a wise precaution. A pack of frightened soldiers could hold them all to ransom with a few sacks from here. It seemed a wise precaution until Jerott was informed that although his needs would be met, he might not enter.

‘Why?’ Hard, brown, his black hair in a soaking swathe across one grazed cheek, Jerott Blyth had his bare sword in his hands when he added softly, ‘And by whose orders?’

‘Control yourself, Brother. The Marshal has agreed that lest the French knights be tempted.…’

‘Tempted to do what? Start a real defence against the Turks? By God, if I’d thought of it—’

‘You are profane,’ said the older of the two knights sharply; and
Jerott opened his mouth, and then discovering the sword in his hand, shot it back into the scabbard with his head bent. He took a deep breath and said, ‘Forgive me. But there is sufficient distrust in this garrison, surely, without causing more?’

‘These are the Marshal’s orders.’

‘The Marshal would never have thought of this idea unaided. Do you know that all the doors between here and the upper floors are shut and barred, and that supplies are taking twice the time they should to reach the guns?’

He could not shake them. ‘There are sufficient reserves on the surface to keep all guns fully supplied. It is your job to ensure that these reserves are maintained.’

‘Without being allowed into the magazine?’ Jerott was sarcastic.

‘The officers and soldiers at present raising the stores are under your orders. You have only to command.’

‘Oh. They will obey, will they?’

‘So long as I tell them to,’ said the senior of the two knights. What he knew of him, Jerott had liked. But religion and politics were now in opposition, he suddenly realized. And politics had won. He could go to the Marshal, but what good would it do? The Marshal was hamstrung too. He turned away, and in sudden fear, raised his clenched fist and drove it home against the cold, leering flakes of fresco on the wall. ‘What can I do?’

‘Pray,’ said Lymond’s voice mildly in the gloom; and he saw him, just ahead, mocking, holding open the thick passage door for him to walk through. ‘I came through an hour ago full of plans for an enchanting little shop of special grenades. They won’t let me in either. Quite rightly.’ Like Jerott, he had stripped to essentials. Down one arm was a series of frayed blisters from an arquebus or cannon barrel, and his shirt front was patched with brown blood, but he sounded still inhumanly fresh. ‘Someone else’s,’ he explained when Jerott pointed to the stains, and left it at that. But as the next door closed behind them and the passage lightened, he added, ‘The Calabrians, however, are allowed into the magazine. Interesting, isn’t it?’

‘My.…’ said Jerott, and stopped.

‘God,’ supplied Lymond. ‘I told you to pray. They haven’t removed anything—yet, if that’s what’s worrying you. I’ve been watching them ever since I found out.’

‘Why? What can they do except murder us?’ asked Jerott blankly.

‘What our panicky Spanish friends hope that they’ll do, I imagine, is force us to surrender. That’s all they want, isn’t it?’ said Lymond. And after a moment he said with genuine disgust in his voice, ‘I tell you, if there were a few more of you and you weren’t so damned holy, you could kick out both the Marshal and the Spanish crew calling the tune, get the Calabrians on to your side and let them
reduce us to a heap of sand before we had to give in. And we wouldn’t have to give in.’

Jerott stopped. ‘You tried on Malta to get Gabriel to revolt. He told you why he wouldn’t, and I’m telling you the same. It would be open revolt against the Order. It would mean the end of us. I’ve taken an oath to obey. I’ll do everything humanly possible to change this policy of suicide, but if they won’t agree, I’ve no option but to obey. Don’t you understand?’ He pushed the thick hair out of his eyes and glared, his sight thick with tiredness, at the bland, importunate face. ‘You follow the common laws of warfare, Crawford. Our service is to Christ.’

In the long, tolerant silence that followed, he became aware, outside his fury, of a sudden unpleasantness, an acridity, a thickening odour in the stone passage where they stood. He took a single step craning, towards the bend of the passage and daylight. A wisp of smoke coiled round and met him, and he hesitated, a question in his eyes, and looked towards Lymond.

Francis Crawford’s blue gaze stared coolly back. ‘The bodies of the bastinadoed slaves, burning,’ he said.

VIII
F
ried
C
hicken
(T
he
Y
oke of the
L
ord
)

(
Tripoli, August 1551
)

T
HAT
night, for two hours, the Turkish cannon stopped firing again. As the great silence fell, and continued, the beleaguered garrison guessed that the halt was an enforced one. Constant firing in midsummer could play havoc with the guns. Almost certainly they were being rested, regreased and repaired, and the gunners were being given a respite.

They could afford to rest. Through the broken wall of St Brabe lay the first opening crack in the castle’s defences. And the frightened slaves and dispirited soldiers who held the trenches behind, driven there under threat of torture, presented the slightest of obstacles. The greater the suspense the greater the likelihood that the defence would break down of its own accord. The Provençal knight with his Moorish mistress must have painted a shamingly accurate picture of the ancient Order’s stand for their religion in Tripoli.

Meanwhile, at their posts, one in four of the defenders slept heavily in exhaustion in spite of the crack of the hackbut and the hiss of falling shafts that continued, in flocking bursts in the lukewarm darkness under the vast, glittering stars, to keep the over-eager on each side circumspect.

Jerott Blyth, so tired that he knew he was a hazard to the defence and to himself, dropped beside the men at the shore culverin and was wakened, by his own orders, at the end of an hour, sick and clogged with inadequate sleep. He made his rounds, his senses still sluggish, attempting to see that the older knights, the wounded and the less able were relieved, and only realized as he went into de Vallier’s room to make his report that he had not seen Lymond. He mentioned it. Nerveless creature that the other man was, he was one of their most priceless assets at this moment with his hard expertise, and his harder detachment.

But the Marshal only gazed at him with his eyes filmed with recent sleep and said wearily, ‘He is under lock and key. I do not know whether this man is a traitor or not, but he is an individualist, and in war the two are the same.’ He paused, and added, ‘He
countermanded the orders to bastinado the Moor, and when de Herrera interfered, he held him at sword point until the man was released.’

Jerott knew the Moorish prisoner he meant—a powerfully made man, second-generation exile from Spain who had fought for Turkey in North Africa until his capture by the knights. Since chivalry had obviously nothing to do with Lymond’s action, Jerott said only, ‘Why?’

The Marshal shrugged. ‘We are all under stress. But we cannot have authority undermined at the moment when we are enforcing it. The Moor took his brother’s place under the whip: it is not unknown. The Scottish gentleman thought it a needless waste of manpower. In any case, the Moor and his brother have escaped, and are probably hiding in the town, where they will almost certainly be killed by the cannon fire; so your friend has deprived us at one stroke of the services of two slaves and himself.’

In any man but Lymond, you would define that as crass incompetence allied to sentiment. Jerott said, ‘I suppose I relish the gentleman no more than you do. But I can’t see him unfaithful to the people who are paying him. And we can’t afford to be without him, sir.’

‘If I release him, the Spanish knights will kill him; or at the very least I shall have a revolt on my hands. He used rough measures. In public,’ said de Vallier, and dropped the pen he was agitating as the big door crashed open. ‘
Dispense Vd
.… Forgive me, sir,’ said his Acting Treasurer, his dark face drawn with sleeplessness and anger as the thick, hot air of the passage came with him into the lamplit room. ‘If you speak of Señor da Laimondo, there is no need to release. He has escaped. Also, the arsenal has been broken into, and the guard slaughtered.’

Nothing about that made sense. As Jerott stared, the Marshal said, ‘Search for him. What ordnance has been taken?’

‘We do not yet know. The outer door is open, but the iron grille has been relocked and the key is missing.’ There were men behind him in the passage; comrades, Jerott guessed, of the dead man. Whatever his reasons this time, Lymond’s chances of survival were frail. The Marshal was enjoining silence and care, to avoid panic. True, the news that an unknown quantity of arms and ammunition was missing would hardly brace the garrison’s confidence. A good deal more coldly than before, de Vallier was addressing him. Brother Jerott must now admit that his compatriot at the very least was a Turkish agent or sympathizer, intending either to lead a revolt or coerce them into surrender?

Brother Jerott thought of de Herrera, who was moving out, talking urgently, his hand on his sword. But he could swear there was genuine rage in his face. Besides, it was a Spaniard who had been killed. He visualized the team he had just seen, the murder party,
splitting up and silently searching the castle through the hot night, the torch flares moving from rampart to rampart, the discreet questions which would elicit—which were bound to elicit—the direction of any small unexplained bustle, any unaccountable throb of running footsteps in the uncanny, exhausted silence.