Blood Red Sea

3

After hours of walking, stumbling, eyes closing as they walked, they came to a desolate peninsula. The moon now hanging in the west, the faintest hint of grey dawn out over the sea. It was a barren spit of land, wind-scoured rock and scrub, soon baking under the burning sun. There were small caves cut in the rocks.

Nicholas came to the edge of a drop and there before him, entirely below ground level, hidden from view until now, was a substantial courtyard with fine stone columns, and further chambers opening off into darkness so thick it was like black dust.

‘What is this place?’ he murmured.

‘Some kind of ancient burial ground,’ said Stanley. ‘But a good place to find shelter in the day.’

Hodge said, ‘I’m not steppin’ down there. This place is brimful of witchery or my name’s not Hodge.’

‘Then lie out on the rocks and cook like a side of beef,’ said Stanley. ‘There is no other shelter.’

Abdul squatted and stared down, more fascinated than afraid.

‘I know such places,’ he said. ‘In my country we say they are the haunt of djinns, but really they are more like the tombs of the Egyptians, in the time of Jahiliyah.’

Smith said roughly, ‘Speak a proper tongue.’

‘That is to say, in the time of darkness. Before the coming of the Prophet, peace be upon him.’

‘Plague and boils,’ muttered Smith. ‘Travelling to war with a Mussulman. We must be moonstruck.’

Abdul smiled. ‘Where there is chaos there is opportunity. Besides, you know we Moors are not always the closest friends with the Turk.’

‘You are for yourself and yourself alone, is that it?’

‘No one cares for me as well as I do. Now,’ he nodded downwards, ‘the tombs of the Egyptians are famous for their hidden treasures.’

‘That is all you have come for, in this accursed war? To hunt for treasure?’

‘You keep your God, I’ll take the gold.’

He had less soul than a dog, this one.

Abdul read Smith’s thoughts and grinned, and then began to climb down the rock face into the hidden courtyard.

They lay up in the shadowy recesses of the courtyard, ate and drank, talked softly.

‘Do we believe the army of Lala Mustafa is really a hundred thousand strong?’ said Mazzinghi.

Stanley grimaced. ‘We do not know, and will never know. But it is certainly enough for the job.’

‘And seven of us,’ said Mazzinghi, ‘one a Moor. We must be crazy. Why are we here?’

‘A knight is worth his weight in gold to any Christian army,’ said Smith. ‘We are the elite. We are worth a dozen Janizaries apiece. Four of us, that’s. .’

There was a long pause.

‘Forty-eight,’ said Stanley kindly.

‘Of course. Any fool knows that.’ He half-drew his sword and then slammed it back home. ‘Anyway, the devil invented arithmetic.’

They were so exhausted, Giustiniani did not move them on at dusk. Instead he sent Smith and Stanley out to find fresh water under cover of darkness. Smith was also desperate to clean off his jezail, in a horse trough if necessary. They might steal some bread too, God forgive them. The rest could have a few more hours’ sleep, but must go before dawn.

‘Neither Turk not Greek will come here,’ said Giustiniani softly. ‘They will all believe it is haunted by demons.’

Smith and Stanley returned with water and wine, bread and olive oil. Smith used the oil on his jezail. Not the best thing, but it would serve for now. His powder had been drying all day, although what the addition of salt might do to the mix was uncertain. Anyway, he could not fire. The sound would only bring worse danger.

Abdul returned from several forays into the dark chambers within, only to return with nothing but the stains of bat droppings on his knees and elbows. ‘And even I do not care to go farther,’ he said. ‘It is an ill place.’

He slept seated cross-legged, as if ready to flee more quickly.

Nicholas slept uneasily on his damp blanket. There was a stale odour of something ancient and unholy in this place. Above them the square of starlit sky.

He woke some time in the dead of night to hear scuttling in the darkness. He propped himself up on one elbow. It came again. Not a scuttling. A slithering. His blood froze.

‘Stanley,’ he whispered. ‘Stanley.’

The knight awoke and tousled his shaggy blond hair and stared at him.

‘Listen.’

They listened.

‘A bat,’ said Stanley. ‘Come, Ingoldsby, you are too old for such childish imaginings.’

‘Don’t condescend to me,’ hissed Nicholas, fear making him angry. ‘Your ears are so deafened with years of cannon fire, you hear as well as an old maid. I know a snake or a bat when I hear one, and that was no damned bat.’

There was another sound. Stanley looked puzzled. Beggars, orphan children seeking shelter. .?

Nevertheless he shook Smith awake. Smith was on his feet with drawn sword in an instant.

And then, with sheer terror, Nicholas saw the demon crouching in the mouth of the chamber, eerily lit by the moonlight, hollow black eyes staring at them. His face otherwise was horribly featureless. Nicholas was shaking. He could not even stand.

The palpable dread in the air had made the others stir and begin to waken too.

But Smith was already driving his sword back home in its scabbard. ‘Fine spies we make,’ he growled. ‘Gentlemen, we have been sleeping in the middle of a spital-house. A leper colony.’

Abdul was up the walls and out on to the plateau like a monkey, jabbering about leprosy.

The rest rose quickly and gathered their belongings.

‘Our brother Reynaldo, medical chaplain back on Malta,’ said Stanley, ‘always said that a strong and healthy man will not be stricken with leprosy, even if he sleep with a leprous whore.’

‘For my part,’ said Giustiniani, ‘though I esteem Fra Reynaldo as much as any, it is a thing I’d not put to the test. Gentlemen. It is time to march.’

They came out on to the plateau, rubbed their eyes and drank water.

Behind them came a strange, small figure. In the bright moonlight, Nicholas now saw that it was a boy of some thirteen or fourteen years of age. He wore a loincloth and his legs and feet were hale and bare. But his poor ravaged arms and hands were covered in filthy bandages, and his head and face completely hidden under more bandages but for his eyes. In his hand he clutched a small bell, fingers round the clapper for silence. He stared at them intently.

‘Move on,’ said Giustiniani.

Something made Nicholas hesitate. The boy wanted to communicate with them. Yet how could he talk with bandages over his mouth? What mouth he had left from the ravages of that terrible affliction. His heart went out to him.

The boy stood and watched as Nicholas went towards him. Those dark Greek eyes stared back at him. Then the boy touched his chest, gestured out to all of them, and then widely eastwards. Towards the Troödos mountains.

‘He wants to come with us.’

‘We have a dubious Moor with us already,’ said Smith, ‘and only one firearm between us, well salted. Time runs on, and Kyrenia is already fallen. All we need do now is add a leper to our party to cook up a truly filthy broth.’

‘Wait,’ said Nicholas. ‘I remember you saying about all the monasteries in the Troödos. The holy men.’

‘What of it?’

‘The holy men and. . healers.’

Stanley looked at him very steadily. ‘You think the leper boy wants to come with us to find a healer?’

Nicholas nodded. ‘And perhaps be our guide?’

‘Our guide?’ Smith snorted. ‘He cannot even speak, his tongue is rotted in his head.’

‘But he can walk. Look.’

Smith and Stanley exchanged glances.

‘And nothing happens without the hand of Providence. You have said this yourself many a time, Edward Stanley.’

Giustiniani looked undecided. The boy was inching closer to them, but not too close, like a dog many times whipped, but desperate.

A few minutes later they headed out across the plateau. Seven of them, barely armed, led by a leper, against an army of a hundred thousand.

The plateau was burning hot and exposed in the day, and the rock glaring white. Their eyeballs throbbed, their heads hurt.

‘Speak if you see a fire-pit,’ said Smith.

After a time Hodge pointed. Giustiniani called a halt and Smith went over and squatted beside a shallow blackened pit. He laid his hand flat in the ash.

‘Not recent.’ He picked among the cinders. ‘Take up a handful of black ash, spit, and then blacken around your eyes.’

‘All of you,’ said Giustiniani. ‘Help each other. It will lessen the glare off the ground, and keep us dark as blackamoors in the night.’

Stanley smeared Nicholas’s face. He stood back. ‘You look like a beaten husband.’ He grinned. ‘Such is marriage.’

Later a thorn went right through Hodge’s boot and they had to stop to dig it out. Even then the tip remained, reddening and painful. Smith made him bandage it. ‘It’ll dissolve in your flesh in time.’

They walked on a while more, Hodge limping. At last they stopped as the sun rose high, lying up in the paltry shade of sparse thorn trees, pouring with sweat, dry with thirst. The mountains seemed far off.

‘Prickles and thorns,’ cursed Mazzinghi. ‘Every leaf on this island is barbed.’

After a long while Smith said, ‘What’s the difference between a cypress leaf and a French rapier?’

They shook their heads wearily.

‘A cypress leaf has a prick at one end, a French rapier has a prick at both ends.’

Stanley raised his head and stared, mouth agape. ‘Brother John has made a jest!’

‘It’s the delivery,’ said Nicholas.

‘A crude and amateur sort of jest, admittedly,’ said Stanley. ‘Well laboured. But for him to summon enough wit in his battered head to make any jest at all is indeed a historic occasion. O for a bottle of hock to celebrate this remarkable event.’

‘Ah, shut your trap,’ said Smith. ‘Save spit.’

At night they approached the village on the hill that Nikos had spoken of, setting dogs barking and straining on their chains. They skirted round and into a wood of pines, and ever deeper darkness. The leper boy led them. Once they lost him, he had gone so far ahead, scampering over rocks and up steep slopes as if he were in perfect health. And then they heard the silvery tinkle of his bell, and made towards it, and there he was, squatting beside a boulder, unable to smile. But his eyes shining.

‘We must find water,’ said Giustiniani. He mimicked the action of drinking from a flask.

The boy nodded and gestured ahead. They followed him. Always uphill.

And then abruptly downhill again, slithering on steep slopes of pine needles, and a strange coolness in the air, rising up from below. And the sound of water.

He had brought them down into a great gorge, thickly grown, full of boulders and fallen tree trunks. One great black pine was smashed in two by a boulder that lay alongside, hurled into it by the force of the torrent. But the gorge was well hidden and, best of all, held fresh flowing water, even at this time of year.

The gorge deepened and the walls rose either side of them, dank and ominous. The rock was clay and chalk, thick with ferns, slippery as eel-skin, impossible to escape from now. They felt horribly trapped.

‘If the Turks find us here,’ said Giustiniani, ‘if they have dogs, or if some goatherd sees us and betrays us — we are dead men.’

The leper boy gestured onward.

At last the gorge rose up steeply and they had to climb hand and foot the last hundred feet out on to a plateau, their breathing shallow, afraid, clutching on to ferns and roots and dubious rock. Nicholas glanced back at one point. But for a jutting spur it was a sheer drop behind.

They made it out alive. The leper boy managed to climb too, even with his withered and bandaged hands. What it must cost him. Then Nicholas remembered that at least lepers feel no pain in their diseased limbs. A tingling then a numbness are the first signs of that affliction.

They came to a village more like the skeleton of a village. A mill creaked in the desolate wind. They moved cautiously between the huts, hands on their sword hilts. They called out. Deserted.

The well was poisoned and foul smelling. Some carcass was down there, sheep or goat, and fattened flies arose in clouds.

‘Many villages will be like this,’ said Giustiniani. ‘Many Greeks have fled to Crete, or drowned on the crossing. We can expect no great welcome here.’

A bell tinkled. It was the leper boy, summoning them onward.

It was a day of the uncanny. Once there came a loud boom from the mountains ahead.

‘The Turkish guns?’ said Mazzinghi.

Stanley shook his head. ‘Only thunder.’

Yet there was not a cloud in the sky.

In the dusk they came to a small rocky outcrop with a thin cross atop it and a cave below, and in the mouth of the cave sat a starveling figure in goatskins.

They paused. The figure did not move but only stared at them with hollow eyes. Not one of them there did not feel a chill. Then the figure stirred and said, with a voice like the wind among dead leaves, ‘You have come.’

Giustiniani stepped forward. ‘Who are you?’

The skeletal figure raised a stick-like arm, spotted with unhealed sores, and pointed up to the cross on the rocks above. ‘As for my name,’ he said, ‘it was long since taken from me.’

‘You are a healer?’

‘For the healing of the nations and the sins of mankind,’ he said, then took a deep breath, as if already exhausted. ‘And for my soul, I pray.’

‘Have Turks passed this way? Is there fighting?’

Eyes rolled white in his skull. Smith muttered that there was little point in speaking with this creature, more crackbrain than hermit or holy man.

‘We are haunted by dogs, by Turks, by the moon itself. The mountains are against us, the pines groan all night in their sickness.’

Smith was already turning away in disgust.

‘The Turkish cannons roar, they tear open the sky, heaven itself bleeds, red rain rains down.’

‘Peace, old father,’ said Giustiniani more gently, then, catching Stanley’s eye, shook his head and indicated they should press on.

They began to move away, bowing uncertainly, disconsolate, half afraid. Everything they had seen on Cyprus so far had filled them with foreboding, made them feel accursed.

Then the hermit said, ‘The leper boy has come far to see me. Kneel, boy.’

And they watched astonished as the leper boy went slowly back to him and kneeled down, and the hermit laid his hand on the boy’s bandaged head.

‘Whatever healing may come, Lord, send it soon,’ said the hermit softly.

Finally the boy rose again. Then he held his bell up and tinkled it and marched onward.

They slept in a dry gully. The mountains rose ahead of them and a cooler wind came off them. Nicholas drew his blanket round him, against the cool night air, and some nameless fear.

In the morning the leper boy had gone.

‘Look to your weapons,’ said Smith, ‘he may have betrayed us.’

‘He has not!’ said Nicholas hotly. ‘Unlike most men he has no speech, he is wordless and so as innocent as a faithful hound that has no language and so cannot lie.’

Smith looked at him broodingly from under his black brows. ‘I’ll track him,’ he said. ‘Wait here.’

It was half an hour before he returned, and his expression was distant and strange. He sat down as if in no hurry, though they must press onward, ever onward.

‘Brother?’ said Stanley.

‘He lies up yonder,’ said Smith. ‘Half covered in leaves, lying as if asleep. He led us so far, and then went away from us in the night in solitude, to commit himself into the hands of God.’

Nicholas bowed his head.

Smith stood again and briefly laid his huge hand on him.

Stanley said, ‘So that was his healing. Death’s ending, which is the great beginning.’

On the brow of the hill, Smith looked back one last time and said to Nicholas, ‘God will make it right. This life is but a chapter, and there is more to come.’

Nicholas said bitterly, ‘I trust so. Otherwise,’ he held his arms wide, ‘this whole majestic starry universe is not worth a dunghill.’

Then they could see the mist among the pine-clad slopes of the Troödos, as Nikos had said, and they were climbing steeply into mountains higher than any in all of Britain.

There were springs of water, and bramble and ivy, ‘just like Shropshire,’ said Hodge delightedly. And there were wild brown trout in the streams. Hodge took great pride in tickling them and providing good fish for their supper.

‘’S not tickling really,’ he said. ‘It’s more sliding your hand gently under, and’ — he gave a deft flick — ‘scoopin’ ’em out on the bank before they can escape. Like that.’

Giustiniani said they could risk a small cooking fire, and so they ate trout skewered on greenwood twigs over a spitting pinewood fire, and this journey of theirs, hitherto so sad and strange, did not seem so bad. Though ahead of them, as they well knew, lay only the Turkish guns and the agony of Nicosia.

Nicholas wished they could fight up here, in the coolness and the pine-scented air. But it would be down below, there on the burning plain, that they would fight, and some of them would die.