Blood Red Sea

2

They huddled, panting, half in and half out of the water, on the seaward side of one last broken outcrop of rock before the coast flattened out into a wide sandy bay. The sun was halfway down the western sky. They fumbled for flasks in their bundles with white wrinkled fingers, and each tasted. Two of them were turned salt.

‘Damn it all,’ said Smith savagely.

‘Speak only necessities,’ said Giustiniani.

The other flasks were handed round and they drank small draughts. They would take more every half-hour or so. The summer day was long, nightfall was far off. They covered their heads with cloths. Waiting like this, sun-baked yet waterlogged, their mission already half ruined, was more exhausting than swimming.

At last it was dusk, and then darkness, and their hearts were as heavy as their sodden possessions. They would have an hour before the moon came up on their left as they walked north. They would have to go.

They crawled on to the sandy beach, all eyes, all ears. Not a sound came to them. They left off their boots and Giustiniani began the long walk, just in the shallows to kill the scent. But moving painfully slowly so as not to make a splash. They walked out across the wide bay feeling like actors crossing a bright stage. The whipcrack of Turkish musket, the skull-splitting impact, their slow fall into the small waves, the billowing red stain. . They could picture it all.

Yet they made it across the bay without mishap. They knelt in the deeper shadows below a ridge of rock, and Mazzinghi began to unbundle so he could wring out his blanket.

‘Not yet,’ said Giustiniani.

The young knight looked puzzled. ‘It weighs so heavy. Like carrying a mule on my back.’

Giustiniani gestured back towards the sea.

Mazzinghi rolled his eyes. ‘Oh no, for the love of-’

‘For the love of God and our duty,’ said Giustiniani, ‘it is back to sea with us. The country is swarming with Turks, the moon is nearly up, and we must put miles between them and us. So it is round the coast we go, weary as we are. And in darkness.’

Mazzinghi hung his handsome head, curly locks plastered to his cheek.

‘But come, Brother, we are still young and vigorous, are we not?’ said Giustiniani. Born in the Year of Grace 1509.

Mazzinghi managed a weary smile. If this old dog could do it, so could he.

They were allowed a hard biscuit or two, salty and damp, and more freshwater. ‘But pray we find a decent spring soon,’ said Smith.

The coast beyond was more broken and rocky, and there was less danger of drowning. But the water was now liquid black, spangled with starlight, the rocks eroded and rough, their hands and feet already pitted and scratched, stinging and humming with the salt sting. There was little wind and small waves, but strong currents and eddies hauled them to and fro, dragged at their leaden limbs, tormented them. Water slopped and boomed in caves beneath the cliffs so dark they could not even see into them. What monsters lurked there? Nicholas and Hodge could not help but picture huge dark-finned fish circling, jagged jaws agape. This was the landscape Andromeda was chained in. The thought of a beautiful naked girl chained to a rock might usually heat the loins. But no, thought Nicholas with bitter humour, squeezing his reddened eyes free of blinding salt water. Not a stirring. Nor would any Perseus come to save them. It was just them and the sea and the sky, and their strength and stubborn will to embrace their predestined fate.

They scrambled repeatedly up over rock, dripping wet, boots laced round their necks cascading water, descended the other side, dropped back into the water, swam a few yards, scrambled out over another rock; or swam along a sheer cliff face, trying to clutch to whatever tiny fragments of mica or embedded quartz they could find, fingers torn, fingernails now as soft as wet rag, bony flanks buffeted and bruised by the swell.

And then, their eyes now accustomed to the starlit darkness, they were suddenly blinded by the appearance of the moon over the western sea. No comfort at all. Like a white burning torch, a flare of pure magnesia, held in their faces, burning their eyeballs. A cold interrogator.

‘Some trick of Pedro Deza’s,’ muttered Nicholas.

Part joke, part exhausted hallucination.

They were all in a dream when they heard a bell tower tolling midnight from far inland. Some priest would be kneeling defiantly in a lonely church, dedicated to some saint they knew nothing of — St Spiridon, St Mamas — before a single taper, an icon of the Virgin, praying for the destruction of the Turks.

Giustiniani lay on his belly on a flat white rock. Soon the others were sitting around him, heads bowed, puddles of water spreading round them.

‘That priest should learn to worship in silence,’ said Abdul. ‘Or the Turks will teach him soon.’

Smith said at last, ‘I suppose we walk now.’

Giustiniani raised his head, and then rolled over and hauled himself up from his undignified position.

‘We walk until dawn,’ he said, pulling on his boots. ‘But let us get over there, under those trees.’

They drained their flasks and ate half their cheese and some biscuit. After half an hour’s rest they felt slightly more alive again.

They stood and wrung out their woollen blankets — a two-man job, one at each end.

‘I can’t believe we brought blankets,’ said Nicholas. ‘In this heat.’

‘They make fine sacks,’ said Stanley, ‘soft bedding on hard ground, and in the Troödos, you will be glad of their warmth, believe me. It snows in winter there as hard as in England, and in spring the snowmelt comes down the gorges in torrents.’

They wiped their swords dry as best they could, and the last firearm among them was broodingly inspected. Smith and his treasured Persian jezail. There was no way he would have abandoned that. But it needed a soak in fresh water soon, and then a good oil. As for their gunpowder — it would need a week of drying. Until then, they felt as vulnerable as lambs.

‘Do you think Nikos sold us to the Turks?’ asked Nicholas.

Smith shook his head. ‘He didn’t have time. There was a marching column there anyway. Just our ill luck. Turks everywhere. The island is swarming.’

Lala Pasha had brought an army of a hundred thousand men to Cyprus, it was said. An exaggeration, surely. Yet some forty thousand had come to Malta, six years before. The Ottoman Empire seemed inexhaustible.

‘Don’t look now,’ said Stanley, and all froze at his tone. ‘But there is a pair of yellow eyes watching us from behind that carob tree.’

Nicholas whipped round — he couldn’t help himself. And there was a curious goat, staring at them out of the darkness.

He sighed. ‘I’d call you a damned fool if you weren’t a knight and I a mere penniless vagabond.’

‘And don’t you forget it,’ said Stanley.

Smith was reaching slowly for his crossbow, salt-encrusted though it was, his eyes never leaving the munching goat. But just as he brought the quarrel towards the stock, the goat turned and ambled off unhurriedly, soon lost to view in the thorn scrub.

‘Run after it,’ suggested Stanley helpfully.

Smith dropped the crossbow, scowling. ‘You run after it, blubberguts.’

‘We can’t risk a cooking fire anyway,’ said Mazzinghi.

‘You mean you have never eaten raw goat?’ said Stanley. ‘Bloody liver, still warm from the paunch? Brother John here wouldn’t eat it any other way. Though admittedly he is rather primitive.’

‘On your feet, you gossiping women,’ said Giustiniani. ‘The Turks are wasting no time at Nicosia, be sure of that. So neither may we.’ He glanced up. ‘Five hours till dawn. I want to be fifteen miles along the coast by then. You can sleep in the day. And after that, it’s inland, and the mountains.’

Even getting to their feet was weary work. Their boots were sodden and chafing.

They went west.