"Direct your fire on the trenches! Keep the buggers' heads down!" bellowed an officer. "The galleys are going to make a landing here beneath the wall."
Umberto found himself holding his breath. There was a strip of shingly beach below the wall on this side of the berm. On the sea-side. The berm would provide some shelter and the ships would be at least three hundred and fifty yards from the enemy-held shore. That was well and good—but was the water deep enough, close in enough to allow the vessels to beach?
Umberto was a ship-builder. He doubted it. And moreover, the gate that had been used for workers to get access from the Citadel to the port was at least a hundred and fifty yards closer. The storehouses of the Little Arsenal lay just inside that gate.
He hastened over to Leopoldo, the garrison commander. "Milord. Permission to take some Arsenalotti down to the port gate. We can push some heavy balks of timber onto the beach for them to shelter behind."
Leopoldo peered at him. "Umberto Verrier. Go to it. Here, Sergeant. Go with him to provide my authority to the gate." He turned to one of his captains. "I'll want all the fire we can muster from the northeast tower. See to it, Domenico."
Umberto hurried down, calling to various people as he ran. He wasn't much of a fighter, maybe, but he could handle timber. And he loved ships—not sailing in them, the ships themselves. The thought of those ships ripping their bottoms out was not a pleasant one.
Maria had slipped back into sleep after Umberto left, but the sound of the cannons woke her.
It sounded serious; she got up, and listened harder.
It
was
serious. Had the Hungarian king got his cannons onto the island, then? Was this the moment they'd all been dreading for days? If so—
If so, then every able body would be needed on the walls!
There was no way she could leave Alessia, and she had a horrible feeling she might need both hands, so she tied the baby to her back in a large shawl. Then she took up the wheel-lock pistol that Kat had given her, when they'd gone out in search of Marco, in what seemed a lifetime ago. She also took the largest cleaver in her kitchen on her way to the door.
As soon as she was outside, she headed for the wall. She had no doubts as to what her fate would be, and that of Alessia, if the Hungarians breached the walls. If nothing else she could fling rocks. You didn't have to be a soldier to fling rocks down on those below.
She went pelting down the hill, along with several hundred others, all showing signs of hasty dressing and of seizing the first arms that came to hand: here a rolling pin, there an arquebus, or a boar-spear, or a bread-peel. Half the citizens of the Citadel seemed to be running to the outer curtain-wall.
Then, she heard the cheers.
"San Marco! San Marco!"
That didn't sound as if things were going badly. In fact, it sounded more like a welcome than a call-to-arms. And it was coming, not from the landward side, but the seaward side. Her headlong run slowed slightly; she looked out into the darkness, peering at where the shouts were coming from. For a brief moment she thought she was seeing things. The Winged Lion of Venice was coming across the sea! And it was as golden as the sun itself.
Then she realized it was just an image of the winged lion glowing from lateen sails and pennant flags. There must be a couple of vessels out there. Corfu wasn't being attacked, it was being reinforced! She went to join the throng on the wall, to join the cheering now, rather than the defense.
The two vessels, now easily visible in the growing light, looked as if they were racing each other for the shore. They were rowing toward the sheltered water of the L-shaped berm—except that they didn't seem intent on getting into it, which would have put them right up against the enemy-held shore. Instead, they were heading for the seaward side of the berm.
She saw the lead vessel shudder, and heard the snap of oars as the vessel hit some underwater obstruction. She could make out a stick-figure frantically waving at the other vessel from the poop. The other vessel bore hard to seaward. The first vessel was still edging forward—she was barely thirty yards from shore—but obviously leaking and sinking. The silence from the wall was now profound. People were hardly breathing. Cannon still roared from the landward wall, but here it was still.
The second ship passed over the obstacle and, with a sugary crunch they could hear from the wall, slid to a halt. It was still in the water, but not very deep water.
Men began pouring off it, jumping into the shallows on the eastern side of the vessel, with the ship between them and the firing from the trenches on the mainland of Corfu. Then part of the cladding timbers were smashed out of the side and knights, waist-deep, began hauling horses out of the hole in the hull of the ship.
By now, it was obvious the other vessel was not going to get much farther. Water was overhead deep, to judge by the men swimming ashore. To her shock, Maria recognized the stocky figure who emerged, dripping, from the sea.
Benito Valdosta yelled up at the watchers. "Hands to these ropes, all of you. Move!"
She was even more shocked when she recognized the emotion surging through her.
"Don't be stupid!" she snarled at herself, joining the little mob racing to help with the ropes.
Benito was nearly thrown overboard when they struck the rock. He knew straight away they were in trouble. The galley had a draft of one and a half fathoms, when she was this heavily laden. They were relying on hitting the shore at speed to beach the vessel so that the men could emerge without swimming. Now they'd lost their momentum and she was holed. The ship would ride deeper than her one and a half fathoms. The sailors could easily manage the twenty yards to shore . . . if they could swim. The knights in heavy armor had not a chance.
"Get them to strip their armor!" yelled Benito.
"Takes too long!" bellowed Manfred, above the bedlam of screaming horses and shouting men.
"Get a rope to the shore!" commanded the captain.
Benito took the end of a light line. "Get the anchor rope on the other end!" he shouted, and dived overboard.
On the beach, he saw he'd arrived in the shallows just ahead of the Corfiote steersman who also had a rope.
"Hands to these ropes all of you. Move!" he commanded.
Maria saw how the port gate had opened farther up the shore toward the Hungarian trenches. Great balks of timber were being thrust out and now, in the shelter of these, hundreds of men and women from the Citadel were streaming to help.
Maria ran to join them. It was only when she was out on the shingle that it occurred to her that a woman with a baby on her back shouldn't do this. It was too late by then, though, so she ran on. By the time she got there, the men were hauling at the anchor ropes—twisted hempen lines as thick as her arm—of the galley still wallowing and sinking further out. They were using the second galley as a bulwark. And by the looks of it, the Arsenalotti who had pushed out the timber barrier were extending and raising it. Still, shots whistled overhead as, handspan by handspan, they hauled the other galley closer. Someone had unlimbered a small boat from the first galley and it was hastily paddled out the fifteen remaining yards or so, to begin bringing people in.
"Get men with shovels and start digging a trench, we need to unload!" shouted a voice Maria recognized. Erik Hakkonsen!
What a bitter irony. Svanhild was not in the Citadel but out there somewhere. Hopefully safe . . .
"What the hell are you doing out here, Maria?" Benito looked anything but pleased to see her. "And—Jesus wept!—with your baby! Get back! No, stay here! It's safer here."
"I've come to help you out of your mess!" she snapped back. "And my child goes with me. At her age she has to."
"Merde!
Well, just stay behind the
Dolphin
. At this range they're not going to get a bullet right through her." He ran out, regardless of his own safety, getting into deeper water. "Come on! She's only neck deep on a short knight. Let's have what people we can off and then we'll haul her a bit further in. Another five yards and we'll get the horses out."
Maria saw Francesca and Eneko Lopez and some other clerics coming ashore in the small boat. She waved, but they didn't notice her. Well, there'd be time for greetings if they survived all this.
A group of very brave Magyar cavalrymen, or perhaps just very stupid ones, had swum their horses across the channel between the Citadel and Corfu Island. The cannon and gunfire from above had had a devastating effect on what had been perhaps four hundred men who had set out to cross the gap. Now the remainder had won the sand strip and were charging down it.
A handful of arquebusiers had taken up position behind the balks of timber. The gate swung hastily shut behind them . . . but there was timber in the way. It could not be closed. What had started out as a glorious rescue mission was fast turning into a fiasco.
And then Maria realized that Knights of the Holy Trinity were already swinging themselves into the saddle. Perhaps only thirty of them were ready to mount, but they were up and riding, broadswords out, hurtling toward the oncoming Hungarians. When the Hungarians had begun their charge they'd outnumbered the Knights by five to one. By the time they clashed, however, those odds had been viciously reduced. The wall on their right was lined with people—some soldiers, firing, but the rest just men and women throwing whatever they had in their hands. Even cobblestones.
The Knights were still outnumbered three to one. But these were the Knights of the Holy Trinity, perhaps Europe's finest. They hit the Hungarians on a narrow strip of beach, too narrow for either side to ride more than eight abreast. For the swim across, the Magyar knights had reduced the weight of their armor to breastplates. They were very much at a disadvantage compared to the Knights in full armor.
Even as the first handful of Knights charged, more Knights were mounting, yelling and swearing at the Venetian sailors in their way. The sailors, too, were running to the timber-balk barrier with arquebuses, pistols and cutlasses.
If the Magyars could have carried their charge to the open gate, it would have been a different story. Speed had lent them some protection from those on the wall. But now, stopped and completely defenseless against the attack from above, they were being annihilated. And the second galley was now discharging more wet, angry Knights.
"Let them handle that!" roared a bull-like voice. Manfred strode through the small waves, and grabbed the anchor rope. "Haul! On the count of three!"
Manfred had both the voice and the presence for command, so more men rushed to seize the ropes. The ship however was filling up, settling, heavier. Much heavier. Maria, who was now hauling the water for their little house daily, knew just how much water weighed.
"One, two, three!
Heave
."
The vessel moved sluggishly. It wallowed like a drunken cow.
"And again! One, two,
three
."
Out beyond the ships, the Magyars were being reduced to bloody fragments. Maria promptly dismissed them from her mind, and went back to something she
could
do something about.
The rope snapped. Manfred's first heroic impression made on the Corfu garrison was of himself sprawling on his backside in the shallows, legs in the air. The roar of general laughter was inevitable, if hardly kind to his dignity. Because only one rope was now hauling the boat it slewed sideways a bit, till the prow touched the stern of the other vessel. "I wouldn't have put my nose there!" said one wag.
Erik had returned to the scene. "Up, all of you. The ships must be unloaded." He, too, had the presence of command. Those who had been hauling on the first rope, if they could not find space on the second, fell into a line heaving bags and boxes and unidentifiable bits into the fortress.
Maria found herself sharing a burden, carrying in a grain bag with another garrison woman. The woman looked at her with the liveliest of curiosity. "You look terribly ordinary after the stories I'd heard."
"What stories?" asked Maria warily. "What have you heard from whom?"
"I had it from Rosalba Benelli, who heard it from her maid, whose sister is one of the poor girls who work for Sophia Tomaselli's friend Melina, that Milady Verrier had been seen in an alley in Kérkira with your dress up and two sailors." She snickered, clearly not in the least inclined to believe it—not now, at least.
Maria snorted. "She's talking about her own daydreams. I'm a respectable married woman. Besides, when would I have time? I do the work of my household myself, and thank you. I don't need twenty little girls to do it for me."
She felt slightly guilty saying that, since Alessia wasn't Umberto's child. But she owed it to Alessia—Umberto too, for that matter—to kill any such rumors.
The woman, slightly plump and with a distinct twinkle in her expressive eyes, clicked her tongue. "Tch! And there I was going to ask how you managed two." She rolled her eyes. "I can't even manage my Alberto. He keeps falling asleep, especially now they're doing these guard shifts."
Maria grinned. "I think we women should complain to the captain-general."
The woman at the other end of the sack snorted. "And have randy Tomaselli offer to help out? No, thank you very much!"
Maria's mouth twitched. "Maybe we should suggest to dear Sofia that he needs a little . . ."
The other woman began giggling. "What? That would be beneath her dignity. Besides it would spoil her makeup."
"Only she if she smiled, which seems unlikely," Maria said, thoughtfully, as they tramped over shingle that slipped and rattled under their feet. "Or maybe she doesn't just plaster her face . . . does she have to do the whole body?"
The plumpish woman looked as if she was going to fall over and drop the sack. "Oh, Lord and Saints! If she could hear you . . ."
She went off into shrieks of laughter. They reached the gate and the pile of food bags just as Maria was beginning to think the woman would kill herself laughing. They dumped the bag. And the woman hugged Maria. "You can't know how nice it is to hear someone being malicious about Milady Sophia Tomaselli for a change. My name is Stella Mavroukis. I don't care if we've been told by 'her ladyship' not to talk to you."