The Religion (98 page)

Mustafa Pasha and his commanders left forty thousand
gazi
in the dust of Malta and with those unburied dead their reputations too. After sixty bleak days at sea they returned to the Golden Horn to face their Sultan's scorn. To their own surprise most of all, they were spared the eunuch's
bowstring, and Suleiman bowed his head to Allah's Will. He then ordered preparations for a second assault on the island the following year, one that he himself would lead to a famous victory. But this was not to be. Late in the summer of 1566, at the age of seventy-two, the mighty Shah died in Hungary while conducting the siege of Szigetvár. He died as he had lived, making war, and so stunning was this catastrophe that his doctors were strangled in his tent and his death kept a secret from his agas for forty-three days, until his embalmed corpse was buried in the tomb Sinan had built for him, by the Suleymaniye Mosque in Old Stambouli.

Suleiman the Magnificent was succeeded by his last surviving son, Selim, known, for excellent reasons, as "The Sot." Thus did the Ottoman sun begin its slow descent, for in the passing of God's Shadow on this Earth, so too passed its zenith and meridian.

In Rome an attempt was made on the life of Pope Pius IV, Giovanni Medici. His would-be murderer was one of those lone, mad assassins well known to historians of every age, and the villain died in custody before he could betray his phantom coconspirators. The Will of God, however, was not so easily thwarted. Medici succumbed to a crueler hand, that of Roman fever, in December of 1565. Michele Ghisleri stepped into the Shoes of the Fisherman, as long planned, and provoked much callous mirth among his inner circle by taking the pontifical name of Pius V. Under his reign the Inquisition flourished anew. Ghisleri fomented further wars against the Mohammedans, and against Protestants throughout the rest of Europe. Intellectual darkness benighted the Catholic world and a long and needless decline was blindly embraced. For these egregious crimes, the inquisitor pope would one day be canonized a saint.

To the heroic natives of Malta fell the task of rebuilding the island in Hell's wake. Out of a total population of some twenty-odd thousand, seven thousand adult males had perished in the siege. Their fields lay scorched and barren, their houses smashed to rubble, and many of those spared death remained crippled for life. They endured in the shadows thrown by the Religion's radiance and their feelings about what had passed were never recorded, for while the knights were
i nostri
, the Maltese remained
la basse plèbe
, and all that needed to be known of the lower orders was that they'd done what was required of them by their betters.

In August of 1566, the granddaughter of Gullu Cakie gave birth to a son. On taking the patriarch's counsel, she had the newborn babe christened "Matheu."

The Chevalier Mattias Tannhauser, Magistral Knight of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, remained unaware that he'd been honored by a second namesake. For all his lifelong intimacy with the evils and fortunes of war, the Maltese Iliad left him in a deep melancholia, one for which he knew no balm, and he left the island on the first galley bound for Sicily.

Before he left, he submitted to the rituals of the Order and received the Habit of Magistral Grace. In a bout of generosity he later had cause to regret, he donated most of his opium to the Sacred Infirmary, which remained in dire need. He secured Starkey's promise that when Carla left for France she'd be accompanied by a pair of guardian knights of the soundest possible character. Then, on the brink of his departure, a boon befell him, and it was something to shine a light through the night of his gloom.

Among the few men taken alive in the slaughter at Saint Paul's Bay was the silent Ethiop, the man who'd restored him to life in the pink pavilion of Abbas bin Murad. Tannhauser found him in chains and kneedeep in human swill, hauling disintegrating corpses from the ditch around the town. Tannhauser purchased his freedom. He washed him and bought him some clothes. And throughout all this the Ethiop remained quite mute. They sat at the refectory table in the Auberge of England, and while they ate Tannhauser studied him at length.

"I will be damned if I know what to do with you," he said.

The Ethiop seemed to grasp the essence of this for he upped from the table and went outside. Tannhauser followed him. The Ethiop pointed to the far blue fastness to the south.

In Arabic, he said, "
Home
."

Tannhauser talked his way into an hour with La Valette's secret library of maps and with his broken fingers he copied as best he could what was known of Egypt and the African Horn. He showed it to the Ethiop, who recognized the Red Sea. If he could cross Egypt and reach the sea's northern shore, the Ethiop believed, he could sail to its southernmost tip and from there cross what he said was called the Danakil and make his way to the mountains of his far-distant origin. It would be a most daring and singular journey, Tannhauser thought, and for a moment the epic vision of it leapt from one man's mind to the other, and the urge to accompany the Ethiop blazed through Tannhauser's breast. But only for a moment. That
would be another journey, for another time, and another life, and not for this one.

Tannhauser loaded a mule with supplies and he and the Ethiop rode over Monte San Salvatore to the ruins of Zonra, where Tannhauser's fabled boat yet lay concealed. They reassembled and launched it and Tannhauser instructed the Ethiop, as best he could, on the route to Alexandria and by which heavenly constellations he might be guided. He gave him a pound of opium and some hooks and line, and a Turkish sword and some Turkish specie in silver to pay his way, and he told him when he reached Alexandria to seek out Moshe Mosseri and ask for his counsel, and to invoke to him the name of Sabato Svi.

And all this the Ethiop accepted like a man who knew that his prow would be guided by God. Finally, Tannhauser made him custodian of the ebony-and-silver musket that Bors had so treasured.

"If you fail," said Tannhauser, "it won't be for want of fine tackle."

The Ethiop smiled. And this smile was a jewel to be treasured always.

Tannhauser never knew his name, and to the last he did not ask it, for he knew he'd never see the man again. The Ethiop embraced him and climbed in his felucca and ran up the lateen.

Tannhauser stood and watched until the red sail was lost in the haze.

When Tannhauser sailed away himself, he watched Carla and Orlandu salute him from the wharf. This parting tore rents in the fabric of his heart and he knew not if he'd see these two again. Or even if he'd want to. There was no sense in this, it was true, for he felt a terrible love for Carla and harbored for the boy an uncommon affection for which the word
love
seemed trite. But so it was. And he had to go. Orlandu couldn't comprehend his leaving, and raised "the famous enterprise," in which Tannhauser had suggested they'd engage.

"If you honor your mother, and learn something useful, then perhaps one day it shall be so," Tannhauser told him. "Meanwhile our ways must part, for I've business in the north."

Carla didn't make his parting more painful by trying to dissuade him. She contained the many emotions that battled within her. She tried to understand his need to journey alone. Her own needs would wait on Hope, and as she embraced him in farewell, she gave it voice.

"On the main road from Bordeaux to Perpignan is a church with a bell tower in the Norman style, the only one of that character in those parts. Beyond it is a fork in the road. The southern fork leads to a
manoire
on a hill, whose roof has a single turret tiled in red."

Tannhauser took this in without making any answer.

Carla said, "If a certain bargain is-someday-to be concluded, that's where you will find the appropriate partner."

In answer to this, Tannhauser kissed her.

And letting that stand as his promise, he was gone.

In Messina, Tannhauser paid a visit to Dimitrianos.

In Venice he settled the affairs of Sabato Svi.

Then on an instinct too primal to refuse, he continued north-far north, and east-and on this journey he learned to treasure solitude above all things. He slept in monasteries where silence was the rule, and the company of women he abjured, and as he and the winter closed fast upon each other, he reached the village of his birth, and threw himself upon the kindness of his father.

Tannhauser spent the winter and spring at work in Kristofer's forge and the bond that war had long broken was spliced anew. In the frosty dawns he wrestled with fire and steel. He became a great favorite with his newfound sisters and brother. He accompanied his father on his circuits and they talked of simple things. They shared memories-at first with pain, but then with a bittersweet joy-of the kin they'd so loved and had lost. They prayed together at the graves-which Kristofer had dug from the earth with his own hands-of Tannhauser's mother and Gerta and dear Britta. And Tannhauser sometimes wondered, did Kristofer remember the mysterious Ottoman stranger who'd called at his forge? And sometimes he sensed that he did, and that the stranger was no stranger at all; and sometimes not. And neither ever mentioned the stranger, and this was fitting, for the man was a ghost, and a ghost to Tannhauser himself most of all.

Thus he regained his strength in heart and limb. And through winter's slow retreat and the burgeoning of spring he believed that he would never leave again. And perhaps it was from that conviction that the healing came, for these people cared little for his past or his deeds or his glory. They cared only for him. And this put him in mind of Amparo and he thought of her in the nights when he watched the stars traverse the sky.
And he thought, too, of Carla and Orlandu. And he thought of Ludovico Ludovici, the tragic monk who lost his mind in the gulf between Power and Love, and who told him that Sorrow was the route to Grace and spoke true.

In these mountains far from everywhere, Tannhauser came to understand that sadness was the thread that wove his life into a single piece, and that in this there was no reason for regret, much less surrender. And this his father taught him: that in spite of sadness, in spite of loss without measure, Life beckoned yet, like a billet of base iron awaiting transformation. Since Tannhauser had last raised a fire in that pale stone temple, where his father brought things into being that had not been before, emperors and popes had fallen and the lines on the maps had been changed. Flags had been brandished and armies had marched and multitudes had killed and died for their tribes and their gods. But the Earth yet turned, for the Spheres danced to a music of their own, and the Cosmos was indifferent to the vanity and genius of Men. The human spirit eternal, if such a thing there was, was here, in an old man with his hammer and his hearth, and with a woman and fine children whom he loved.

Tannhauser realized, at last, that it was in the gap between Desolation and Love, between Sorrow and Faith, that Christ and the Grace of God were to be found.

As summer kissed the Alps, and melted all but the highest snows, Tannhauser packed his gear and saddled Buraq and bade farewell. And though many tears were shed, this parting didn't rend his heart as had others before, for it was only a parting of flesh and not of spirit. He headed back across a continent, through the dominions of many different kings, and in the shortening days of summer, Tannhauser entered once again the land of the Franks.

Thus, on an auburn autumn day, the Chevalier Mattias Tannhauser rode from the city of Bordeaux and down the Perpignan road into Aquitaine. Horse and rider together had covered a thousand miles in the year now gone by. It had taken that long and that far for the wounds to his spirit to heal. Buraq was in fine fettle and ate up the sunlit miles with equine joy. Tannhauser had found the city greatly to his liking. It was a splendid port, a start that could not be bettered, and a town committed to commerce
rather than war. He would have to improve his French, a chore he didn't relish, but it could be done. As a
Chevalier de Malte
, and a veteran of the greatest siege in history, all doors were open to him there as they'd been elsewhere. More than all this, he'd seen the Atlantic Ocean, a gray and turbulent immensity that entranced his imagination, and which set him to wondering what lay on its farther shores.

He saw in the distance the Norman church tower that marked the road he was seeking. He took the southern fork, and half a league later saw a small
manoire
on a hill-and suddenly he was aware of the beating of his heart, for from its roof rose a turret tiled in red.

In a cobbled yard beside a barn he found two youths brawling in the horse manure and straw. Rather, one youth lay curled in a ball while the second kicked him-without any great appearance of mercy-in the back and skull. Since the one prostrate and whining for quarter was somewhat the elder and larger of the two, Tannhauser felt a distinct glow of pride.