Blood Red Sea

1

Nikos guided them into a small, shallow cove, hidden by tall cliffs.

‘We’re trapped already,’ said Smith, glancing round, as if half expecting Turkish musketeers to appear above, forewarned by some secret signal from Nikos, to slaughter them where they sat.

‘You can hardly step ashore on a broad beach,’ said Nikos, ‘not in this moonlight. But look, there is a gully in the cliffs. That is your route.’

‘You are coming with us.’

‘I am not. It is enough for me.’

Mazzinghi was already wading through the shallows with the bundles of weapons.

Stanley squinted up at the cliffs. Even he was feeling daunted at the absurd task they had set themselves. ‘And then we make inland, and across the Troödos mountains. I think it will take us ten days.’

Nikos stroked his moustache. ‘You would be strong for that. More like twenty. The Troödos are no mere hills, and then the burning plain beyond — it is May now, and very hot.’

‘We can come down to Kyrenia from inland, or else to Nicosia.’

Nikos eyed them. He was an old man, his eyelids drooping like his moustache, his eyes like those of an old dog that has seen all. He spoke without pity for them, and without enmity, but with sorrow for his native island. ‘The Turks have already taken Kyrenia.’

All heads turned. ‘Impossible! Not so quickly as that, not with those fortifications.’

‘Not by conquest,’ said Nikos. ‘Kyrenia surrendered without a shot. They saw the size of the Turkish armada, and they held up their hands. It was a wise decision for men who want to live.’

‘Without honour, despised by all,’ said Smith.

Nikos inclined his head and made no comment. Instead he said, ‘Now Nicosia is already under siege.’

The words sank in, a bitter double blow. They were come too late, always too few and too late. Smith hung his shaggy head. It was worse, far worse, than he had expected.

‘Brace up,’ said Stanley to all of them, but mostly to his old comrade. ‘We will not sit here and watch Cyprus go up in flames.’

‘Yet what good are we now,’ said young Mazzinghi, wide eyed, ‘so few as we are?’

‘We know a thing or two about sieges,’ said Giustiniani, ‘and experience counts more than numbers. We make for Nicosia. We can do some good, if Governor Dandolo will listen to us.’

‘If,’ said Smith, ‘is a very big word.’

Giustiniani also knew that there was nothing so demoralising for men dismayed as mere talk. Whereas labour worked wonders.

He dropped over the side of the longboat into the warm water with agility, for all his sixty years, took up a bundle, and rapped out orders to the rest of them to follow. Once men got going, their spirits rose accordingly.

They knelt on the narrow beach and divided the muskets and swords, gunpowder and balls between them, as well as their food rations of dried meat, hard cheese and ship’s biscuit. The rest would have to come from forage. Stanley and Mazzinghi both carried crossbows for hunting. Most precious of all were the water flasks.

‘Every time we find fresh water,’ said Giustiniani, ‘you drain your flask, you drink until you can drink no more, then you fill your flask again and walk on.’ He turned to Nikos the fisherman.

‘Very well,’ said Nikos. ‘You ascend that gully. It is steep and crumbling but not impossible. You will come out on to a flat clifftop, a hundred or so paces of bare rock, and then scrub will hide you. Far ahead, right of the Pole Star, you will see a hill with a church dome on top, the village of Agios Nikolaos. Do not go into the village, or only in secret at nightfall. Many there would sell you to the Turk.’

‘Shame on them,’ said Smith.

‘They are hungry,’ said Nikos. ‘Their children starve. Some cousins of mine live there also. So do them no harm in the night, steal not even a loaf, or you will pay for it.’

There was an awkward silence. They had to admire the grim old Greek. Unarmed, surrounded by a group of heavily armed strangers, he was still threatening them.

‘We will circumnavigate this fearsome village,’ said Giustiniani.

Nikos nodded. ‘Beyond the village is forest, and a deep gorge carved by an ancient river. Follow the gorge up, it is good cover, but remember that it is also sweet water from the mountains, and Turks may come there to fill their flasks. A day’s hard climbing, over rocks, over boulders, the gorge still flowing with snowmelt, a night’s sleep, and you will come out on to the dry plateau. Ahead of you then will be the Troödos, the mist of morning upon them.

‘After that, I do not know. It is not my country. But that hard sun-baked plateau is a dry country, the people have fled, and may have poisoned what wells remain for the Turk.’

The gully was as steep and crumbling as Nikos had said, and dark too. They moved slowly and carefully, finely balanced, each foothold tested before they committed their weight, leaving plenty of space between them in case of rockfalls. Several fist-sized chunks of sandstone were torn loose and rolled down the gully to land with a crack on the rocks below. But none of them was struck, at least.

At the top they crouched low and took in their surroundings. All were in a muck sweat already, thinking of water. Out to sea, gilded with the rising sun now and magnificent with her white sails and fluttering banners, the St John was moving westwards. Returning to Malta and the sea battle to come.

They were alone.

‘Into the thorn scrub,’ said Giustiniani, ‘and quick about it.’

As they ran, Nicholas’s sharp eyes saw a movement away to his left. He stopped and shielded his eyes and made out a peasant in a loose turban, naked to the waist, gathering salt in a leather bucket from a dried-out rockpool. The peasant stopped too and looked over at this strange apparition of men come from the sea. More Turks, were they?

‘Keep moving, boy,’ said Stanley, trotting past. ‘Ignore him.’

By the time Nicholas got to the cover of the thorn scrub and looked back again, the salt collector had gone.

They took swigs of water from their flasks, gasping. Mazzinghi began to chatter with elation.

‘Silence,’ said Giustiniani harshly. He raised his hand.

They kept still. There was nothing but the silent land, the sun rising in a burning blue sky, the skitter of little lizards. The distant murmur of the sea.

And then Smith too heard something. He cupped his ear with one hand, and laid the other flat on the ground.

Time passed, sweat trickled down. Their legs ached where they squatted. A fly found them and tormented them, then another. Another skitter came from beneath a nearby clump of low thorn. Too big for a lizard. A snake?

Smith looked at Stanley and then Giustiniani. ‘A marching column. Men only, I think, no pack animals.’

‘And pray, no hunting dogs or we are dead men already. Stanley, leave your bundle and go on. Report back soon.’

An agony of waiting. More flies. Nicholas began to feel dizzy and shook his head. The damned Nikos had sold them to the Turk already. The bare bleached rock between the scrub was blinding. He closed his eyes and rocked on his haunches.

Stanley came back some minutes later, silent as a deer. His eyes shone with that mad humour of his.

‘Brothers and gentlemen volunteers,’ he said. ‘We have come ashore right next to a fair company of Turkish infantry, come here, I think’ — he indicated around — ‘to build a lookout station on the coast, against enemy invasion.’

‘Darkness and devils,’ muttered Giustiniani.

‘And,’ said Stanley, rapidly taking up his bundle and hitching it over his shoulder, ‘they have hunting hounds.’

At that very moment, there came an excitable bark from not far off — the unmistakable bark of a hound that has found fresh traces.

‘Run!’ cried Giustiniani.

It was farcical, humiliating, but not one of them was unafraid. If the Turks caught them, their deaths would be prolonged. They went back down the gully they had just ascended in an undignified scramble, skidding and sliding, sending loose scree slithering and dust cascading. Abdul made sure he went down first, on his bottom. Smith and Stanley knelt at the top of the gully as a rearguard, though what they could do against a column of infantrymen was unclear.

The barking sounded nearer: two of them. Two lean hunting hounds straining at the leash, tongues out, tails wagging. Their handler becoming curious as to what this fresh scent might be. The entire Turkish army on the lookout for any invasion force.

Hodge and Nicholas were down, and Mazzinghi, and now Giustiniani was descending, rapidly and without fuss, face to the cliff.

Smith reached into his bundle for his jezail. Stanley laid his hand on his comrade’s.

‘No, Brother. It is madness.’

‘I’ll die fighting.’

‘No doubt. But not yet.’

The barking was barely a hundred yards off, more and more excited, and they could see low thorn trees stirring as someone passed beneath them. Smith and Stanley dropped to their bellies, pressed themselves into the ground like snakes, their dark canvas bundles cradled on the far side of them, covered in white dust.

The handler called out in Turkish to his comrades. Telling them to come to him armed. Something was up. Now he was at the spot where they had crouched, the hounds snuffing up their very drops of sweat.

Stanley loved dogs as much as any nobleman, but at that instant he could have shot the stupid beasts. Did they not know they were hunting Christians?

At last he and Smith were scrambling over into the steep gully, almost on top of each other. Smith glanced back, wondering whether to cast a handful of gunpowder over their last traces. But it was pointless, the ground was scuffed and bore the traces of where they had just been. The spoor glared back at him in the sun.

Flee, flee.

By the sea, Abdul was wild eyed, and all were staring back at the clifftop, trying not to look stricken. Nikos and his boat, the longboat, the St John were all vanished.

Giustiniani said, ‘Lace your boots round your neck. Take nothing more in your bundle than you can swim with. Take too much and you drown. You judge. Then follow me.’

He was up to his waist in the water already. As an example to them, he took the musket from his shoulder, held it by the barrel and flung it far out to sea. All he had left now was a blanket, a sword and his provisions.

Then he struck out.

The deep cove was flanked by two great dark headlands, dropping almost sheer into the sea. Giustiniani was leading them westwards. No one knew what lay beyond. Drowning would be easy.

Abdul jabbered. ‘Sea does not agree with me. Nor mountain, nor forest, nor desert. I am a man of the cities, urbane, sophisticated, erudite-’

Nicholas told him to save his breath. He would need it.

Soon they were out of their depth, clawing forward through the clear water, kicking their bare feet, their clothes and the bundles on their backs making swimming hard. Smith glanced back. Still no one on the clifftop. They might just make it.

Giustiniani was already under the thin shadow of the headland, the swell washing him up and down the rock. Impossible to hang on to even the tiniest spur or crevice, the swell would only take you off again, and the skin off your hands with it. No rest.

Hodge looked hollowed out and afraid.

Smith glanced back once more and there was a silhouette on the skyline above the cove. A man with two hounds. Then another man stepped up beside him, a long musket cradled in his arms. Smith ducked down underwater and made the last few yards round the headland. No shot was fired.

‘What comes next?’ gasped Hodge, moving his arms wide in the swell, muscles already aching and beginning to tremble, desperate not to reach out and hold on to Nicholas.

‘Keep going,’ said Giustiniani. ‘There may be a cave, a break in the cliff, anything. We’re out of sight for now, so move as slowly as you can without drowning.’

‘If I move at all it’ll be a bloody miracle,’ muttered Hodge.

They floundered on. Exhaustion was approaching. Their blankets were sodden; most of them had not unburdened enough and were weighed low in the water, making swimming still harder. There were no waves but the swell was powerful. At least no currents seemed against them. But they must find rest soon.

Nicholas took his mind elsewhere and ploughed on. Salt stung his eyes. They passed beneath a tiny crystal waterspout from the gaunt cliff face, a glistening fault green with algae. No handhold there, no rest, not even safe fresh water to open the mouth to.

‘Nick,’ said Hodge suddenly, ‘I’m going.’

Nicholas grabbed the strap of Hodge’s bundle as they were both pulled underwater and wrenched it off. The bundle fell away — all Hodge’s water, his provisions, his last weapon — and Hodge surfaced again, gasping.

‘Breathe,’ said Nicholas. ‘Breathe. Lie back spreadeagled. You cannot sink in salt water, and we cannot be seen from above. Breathe.’

After a minute or more, Hodge bucked upright, hawked and spat and scooped his hair back.

‘Go on,’ he said.

‘You first,’ said Nicholas. ‘I’m behind you.’

At last they came to a sharp needle of rock just a few yards off the cliff face, and clung to it like shipwrecked men. Above them the cliff was huge and ominous, but eroded at the top so they could not see the edge. So they too could not be seen. The barking of the hounds was out of earshot. It was just them and the indifferent sea.

Stanley was already hitching his bundle over Smith’s shoulder, and then his laced boots.

‘I go to reconnoître, as the French would say.’

Giustiniani nodded.

The fair-skinned Englishman with sun-bleached hair and brown arms ploughed away through the sea as confident as Neptune himself. He was back a few minutes later.

‘Another couple of hundred yards and there is a low sandy beach and scrub. Very easy.’

‘And very visible.’

‘Aye.’

Giustiniani shook his head violently; droplets flew from his beard.

‘Moor, drop your bundle. You are almost drowned.’

Abdul did as ordered. ‘Your worshipful magnanimity-’

‘Mazzinghi, you are struggling too. Lose your sword.’

‘My father and my grandfather fought with this sword, my father at Djerba.’

‘It will drown you.’

‘Then, Commander, I ask permission to drown with it.’

Giustiniani swiped his brow with the back of his hand. They were all sweating, even in the sea. ‘Permission granted. Young fool.’

He looked in the direction of the beach.

‘We make towards it and huddle out of sight there until nightfall.’ He pushed off from the rock. ‘And pray for cloud tonight.’

Nicholas glanced up. The sky mocked them with its benevolent azure from east to west. Tonight would be as bright and moonlit as ever.