Blood Red Sea

10

Towards nightfall, Giustiniani drew the tent door closed.

‘And now we shall sing a psalm,’ he said. ‘Psalm Twenty-three seems appropriate. Yea though I walk through the Valley of Death. . Sing lustily, and,’ he dropped his voice and eyed Nicholas and Hodge, ‘for God’s sake remember to sing in Italian. Or else just hum.’

Hodge looked puzzled. ‘Must we? My throat’s as dry as sand.’

Stanley grinned. ‘You really must.’

So they began to sing loudly. The guards outside turned to stare at the tent sourly, but did not intervene. Christians. And then Nicholas and Hodge understood. Under cover of the psalm, the knights took it in turns to whisper.

Outside, the boy already positioned there by Ertugul Bey, his ear to the canvas at the back of the tent, could hear nothing but this Christian caterwauling.

Stanley whispered, ‘Interrogation from this Ertugul is going to be as hard as anything we have yet faced.’ He resumed singing.

Smith said, weary and low, ‘In a duel of wits with a weasel like that, I tell you now, I at least will soon be defeated. I know how to judge a man in a sentence or two. And there is a man of such cruel cleverness, he’ll pull us apart in moments.’

Giustiniani nodded. ‘And once he knows we are knights, we will be committed to questioning under severest torture.’

Nicholas felt icy needles on his back. On Malta he had heard the screams of the Chevalier Adrien de la Rivière as he was tortured by the Turks. He had heard the sound of skin being ripped from flesh, and would never forget it.

‘And the irony is,’ said Stanley, ‘we have nothing to tell. When will the Holy League attack? Where? What is its strength? Is King Philip of Spain with it? Who is commanding?’ He shook his head. ‘We know nothing. Perhaps there is nothing to know. So the torture may last a while.’

‘The only path left to us,’ said Giustiniani, ‘now we have escaped Nicosia, is to escape again. Ertugul will be back tomorrow morning.’

‘From what I know of Ottoman intelligence,’ said Smith, ‘and indeed, our own practices in the Order, he will be back some two or three hours past midnight. When a man’s defences are weakest, his wits most sluggish.’

‘Keep singing!’ said Giustiniani as the others fell silent for a moment.

‘As soon as night falls,’ whispered Stanley, ‘we must try and break out.’

‘How?’ said Smith. ‘There are half a dozen guards outside, and they will be watching us like hawks. They know that if they allow us to escape, they will all be killed.’

Their heads hurt. Escape was quite impossible. It had privately occurred to all three of the older knights that the only path left to them might yet be to kill each other.

Darkness fell and they sat in mental agony, unable to move, unable to sleep, ashamed even to look each other in the eye. Ertugul might return at any moment. They had not even weapons to kill each other or fight a suicidal last stand, here in this tent. At least Smith thought he might get his hands around that weasel’s throat long enough to kill him. But what was that worth anyway? Despair crept into their bones like cold.

They picked at their nails, fidgeted, heads hung low. Outside they could hear the change of guards pacing, armed, fresh and very alert.

Then there was a stir outside the tent, the flap was pulled back and a chest was dragged inside by the black slave boy. A voice beyond said, ‘Some clean robes for these unwashed Christians. Stand aside, boy.’

Nicholas looked up.

Into the tent stepped Abdul of Tripoli. He carried an oud, a Berber instrument something like a lute.

He sat down cross-legged on top of the chest and began to sing in a plangent wail, plucking the strings in accompaniment.

‘Twist my ear,’ muttered Nicholas. ‘I’m dreaming.’

Hodge twisted his ear. He wasn’t dreaming. But it was so mad a situation he almost wished he was.

After some Berber verses in praise of a beautiful she-camel — ‘Surely there is no woman as faithful and loyal as she, my ship of the desert’ — Abdul switched into a strangely accented Italian, and sang, ‘I am allowed into your tent by special permission of Ertugul Bey. I told him I knew you were Knights of St John, and could prove it.’

Smith was on his feet in a moment, mighty fist clenched.

Nicholas’s head spun. What was going on?

‘Be seated, pray,’ warbled Abdul. ‘How else was I to gain access to you, you bearded fathead?’

Giustiniani gestured, and Smith sat down, very slowly, eyes blazing.

‘In this chest beneath my fundament you will find robes.’

Smith mimed: A sword, a gun?

Abdul raised an eyebrow. ‘Don’t be stupid. You think a man like Ertugul would let that past? Ssh, and listen to my sweet song. In the chest are fine silk robes. Of dark hue. There are extra cloths that might be wrapped around the hooves of horses to silence them in the night. There are horses in a large corral on the eastern side of the camp. Last time I looked they were unguarded, Lala Mustafa so little fears a counter-attack across the plain from Famagusta.’

Giustiniani pointed in the direction of the guards walking outside.

Abdul sang, ‘I knew you would be wise enough not to drink this dangerous gift of wine. Now, here is another gift.’ He raised his elbow and from his armpit fell a small bottle.

‘Tincture of opium in alcohol. Add it to the wine, quickly.’

They unstoppered the bottles and did as he said. Stanley began to smile. It was just dawning on the six prisoners that they might yet escape, thanks to this extraordinary, devious, brilliant Moor.

‘Now there is enough drug in each bottle,’ sang Abdul, ‘to make an elephant dream it is Emperor of China.’ He sprang to his feet and strummed the oud in staccato little chords and sang very rapidly now. ‘I shall offer the wine to the guards as I go. You should pray to your God on his little wooden cross that the guards take the risk of a swig. Then I am going straight back to Ertugul to tell him you are Knights of St John. His tent is fifteen minutes’ leisurely stroll away. I will take five minutes to tell him, with much characteristic Moorish circumlocution and flattering slipperiness of tongue. The kind that so sickens you pure-hearted Christians. He may be back just ten minutes after that, with his favourite box of pincers and tongs.’ He stopped singing and bowed low.

‘Gentlemen.’

Giustiniani mimed a last, puzzled Why?

‘Out of the great love I bear you, my brothers,’ said Abdul softly, with a reproachful look. Then he beamed. ‘But if we meet up again in Famagusta, as is my plan — Famagusta, reputed wealthiest city in the world — then perhaps you will bestow on me some reward? Your Order is rich, and so is Venice. My own weight in gold should suffice.’

Then the tent flap whipped open and shut and he vanished.

There were quiet voices outside. Tones of casual offer and decline. A shared joke. Hesitation.

Inside the tent they could hardly breathe. Stanley was scratching letters on a flat stone.

And then there was the sound of a bottle being unstoppered. Abdul himself took a fake swig, hoping that the mere touch of that drugged wine to his lips was not enough to put him in a swoon.

Smith and Stanley were on their feet already, throwing open the chest and passing out silk robes. All of black or midnight blue. And extra squares of silk and cotton too. That Moor was as cunning as a thousand foxes.

Then Smith began counting to four hundred.

‘Make it six hundred,’ said Stanley. He pulled on his boots and flexed his powerful hands, rubbed his arms and stretched his broad shoulders.

On Giustiniani’s orders, Smith and Stanley alone came out of the tent, fast and silent as panthers. There were muffled grunts and groans, a single drowsy shout of surprise, and the sound of bodies slumping to the ground. Then the other four slipped out to join them.

Six guards lay dead or unconscious on the ground, heads twisted at strange angles.

Smith looked swiftly around.

‘That was close,’ muttered Stanley. ‘None of them were entirely asleep even then. Just slow witted.’

‘I’m getting too old for this,’ said Smith.

Stanley reached down and tucked the flat stone he had been writing on into the jerkin of one of the guards still breathing.

‘Come,’ said Giustiniani, already heading off into the darkness among the farther tents.

Mazzinghi bent to pick up one of the guards’ spears.

‘Leave it,’ said Giustiniani. ‘Move.’

‘What was that stone you wrote on?’ asked Smith.

Stanley said, ‘If you wake, flee. Save yourselves.’

Smith grimaced. ‘In a foul war, that was not a bad deed.’

They walked confidently through the camp in their dark robes, looping round south and then east.

‘Heads up, not too hurried,’ said Giustiniani. ‘Walk as if you were born and bred in this camp. Walk as if you own the very ground beneath you.’

He and Stanley conversed in Turkish, audibly, Stanley’s shaggy flaxen hair and beard quite evident in the half-moonlight.

Most of the Turkish army were asleep, wine-parched mouths agape, though some were awake, admiring their loot or dicing. The six greeted all they met with calm authority. A guard dog lunged and barked at Smith, its chain jangling. He took time to hold the back of his hand out to its nose, pet it. The dog wagged its tail.

Sweat ran down Nicholas’s back in rivulets.

No one had challenged them yet.

But it was a long walk.

They reached the huge, wooden-fenced horse corral just as a shout went up from the heart of the camp. Then a loud bugle call.

Too late to use those cloths to silence the horses’ hooves.

They vaulted into the corral and seized their horses by the manes, calmed them, drew them to the side, using the fence itself to mount them. No saddle, stirrups, bridle — nothing.

‘Hold on tight!’ said Stanley.

Smith kicked his horse into the centre of the corral, where the horses clustered, watching them, uncertain. Then he leaned forward and began to growl at them, a low lupine growl, baring his teeth. His own horse shied and others skittered backwards, one or two rearing half-heartedly. He lashed out and caught one a blow on the muzzle. They nickered and began to panic, rolling their eyes, ears back, and then starting to move in a great circle. Dust arose silvery in the moonlight.

There came a shout, a crossbow bolt thocked into the wooden rail of the corral, followed by an angrier shout.

Giustiniani and Stanley leaned from their mounts and drew the gates open and the six galloped forward. The panicked herd came after them.

‘There’ll be other horses!’ cried Mazzinghi.

‘Of course!’ said Giustiniani. ‘With stirrup and bridle too. So move!’

The panicked herd covered the plain to the east of the camp with hoofprints and kicked up an immense cloud of dust from the hard summer earth. But soon they began to fall back, and the six were out on their own. Then behind them they could hear another, more determined drumming of hooves. Ottoman lancers, Sipahis, armed and in full pursuit.