Blood Red Sea

17

At dawn, word came that Astorre Baglione, Famagusta’s single finest military commander, had died in the night of his wounds. His last words were, ‘No surrender!’

Moments later, a huge bombardment opened up on the north-west corner of the city, against the sloping walls of Fort Andruzzi.

Dust went up. Flakes fell.

Nothing else.

Towards noon they stopped firing and the guns were rested.

Smith smiled grimly. ‘Think on it well, Lala Mustafa, you dog. It won’t always go your way.’

Bragadino looked grey. The responsibility was almost too much, even for so strong a man. His refusal to surrender had already sent a thousand soldiers to their deaths, perhaps another five hundred civilians. Ten thousand more, old men, women, children, depended upon him. And now he had lost Baglione.

‘He was my best commander. I have the military experience of any gentleman, but Astorre Baglione was my stay and staff. I will need your advice now.’

‘That’s why we’re here,’ said Giustiniani. ‘With our memories of Malta.’

There was another long, exhausting assault all afternoon until nightfall by countless regiments of Janizaries, infantry and dismounted Sipahis fighting as infantry as well. At one point Bragadino estimated there were as many as ten thousand men coming against them. They brought up protective barriers, huge bundles of brushwood which they rolled into the fast-filling ditch, scaling ladders, ropes and grappling hooks.

‘If the moat is completely filled,’ said Giustiniani, ‘or strongly bridged, they could bring up siege towers.’

But they had enough on their hands as it was. Turks swarmed up the walls; many were cut down by enfilading fire from the towers, but they quickly learned that the Martinengo bastion itself was now unable to offer return fire. They scaled the walls nearest to it, and scores of men came up over the battlements. Only rapid reply by Bragadino saved the day, with two whole companies of pikemen already stationed there on the wide walls, able to encircle them and then cut them down.

There were no more sorties from the defenders. They were fighting to the point of exhaustion and beyond just to hold the walls.

At dusk the Turks pulled back.

Bragadino ordered a count.

Half an hour later came the sombre tally.

Of the four thousand men he had had under his command a week ago, over two thousand were now dead or severely wounded, beyond fighting. He had around 1,800 fighting men left, and few of them were unscathed.

Hard to estimate the Turkish losses. Four, five thousand at least.

‘But that still leaves us facing an army of sixty or seventy thousand,’ he said. ‘Pietro Giustiniani, what would you judge?’

‘As I have always judged,’ said Giustiniani. ‘We can still hold out a while. We can inflict great losses on the Turks, to the bitter end, forcing them to accept a victory at high cost. But we cannot win. We can only pray for relief.’

‘Yet no relief is coming. What then?’

‘Just possibly we could hold out until the onset of winter. Then they would have to abandon the siege anyway.’

‘Winter? It is still August. You truly think we could hold them back another three or four months? Another one hundred and twenty days’ assault like today?’

Giustiniani sighed and did not reply. Both men knew they could not.

Nor was it only the day.

Lala Mustafa knew all about the power of sheer exhaustion to win battles and sieges. He sent his engineers and sappers forward at night, and they filled the moats with more bundles of brushwood and timber, drenched in heavy oil. They lit them just before dawn. With the wind on their side.

‘Plague on them,’ said Smith. ‘On it all.’

A warm, soft wind came from the west, the gentlest zephyr. Their worst possible enemy now.

The oil-drenched brushwood burned green and slow, giving off thick black coils of smoke, a roiling tarry curtain that rose as high as the walls of Famagusta and then drifted gently, blindingly, into the smarting eyes of the defenders.

Worse still, they began to smell the aroma of burning human flesh. The hundreds of corpses down in the moat were roasting, human fat seeping forth and feeding the oily flames.

Lala Mustafa, master of tactics, then threw everything into the mix.

Cannons roared against the south wall, and huge two-hundred-pound cannonballs began to curve in over the battlements and pulverise the city yet further. The streets gradually filled with dust as well as lung-searing smoke, people lost their bearings along with all hope, and the sound of the guns booming yet again was almost enough to drive them out of their senses.

Lala Mustafa piled on dread upon dread. Safe behind the vast veil of smoke, he had Sipahi drummers parade below the battered west wall on their biggest horses, and the trembling people heard, in between the booms of the guns, the harmless yet more nerve-racking boom of great goatskin kettledrums played to an ominous, relentless rhythm.

Hodge and Nicholas huddled below the ramp on the west wall with the four knights. Nicholas’s leg was still bandaged where it had been deeply cut as he detonated the pot-bomb beneath the arch. But he was young and in the last few days he had healed fast. All had kerchiefs around their mouths, eyes tight shut. Fists around the hilts of their weapons, but nothing to fight except this blinding smoke and growing terror.

‘Come at us again, damn you,’ murmured Stanley. ‘We are ready for you. Smoke will not take a city.’

Smith began coughing violently.

Stanley said sharply, ‘Do not encourage them, Brother.’

Smith, red eyes streaming, looked ready to strike him. ‘There must be something we can do!’ he spluttered at last.

‘Blow the smoke back in their faces? Cut it to pieces with our swords?’

‘Can we not try to blow up our own moat?’ wondered Nicholas. ‘Just with grenades, dislodge the tinder, scatter it. .’ He tailed off.

Stanley shook his head, hesitated, then told him. ‘We do not have enough grenades or powder left.’

The smoke thinned for a moment and Mazzinghi saw something.

‘They’ve brought up a wooden catapult in the old style, and another. . four, five in all.’ He dropped down again. ‘I pray they don’t start catapulting in putrefied bodies. I hate that.’

‘You’ve never experienced it,’ said Smith.

‘No, I’ve read about it. The Turks did it at Constantinople.’

‘It’s not as bad as you think,’ said Stanley.

‘No?’

‘No. It’s worse.’

‘You are a great consolation.’

‘Here’s a real consolation. A besieging army is far more likely to get sick than people in a fortified city, with fresh wells, water cisterns, latrines. .’

‘But they are all being smashed to pieces even as we speak.’

Stanley had no reply. The young knight was right.

A massive stone cannonball came in from the south, whining unseen through the clouds of smoke so that no one could even cry out a warning, One in the air! It smashed home not fifty yards from them, still unseen. The west wall juddered to its foundations, and Mazzinghi threw himself flat. Then he sat upright again, looking ashamed, shaking.

For all his bravado, he was frightened. The bravado was an act. That only made his bravery all the greater.

They heard the muffled release of a catapult beam and then the mighty thump against the padded crossbar.

‘Report!’ cried out Giustiniani. ‘Anyone?’

Now a distant screaming was added to the din of cannonade and kettledrum, and strident Janizary trumpets not far off through the smoke.

They could not abandon the walls, the attack might recommence at any moment. Smith said they’d send the Bektasis again. ‘Coming dancing barefoot and burnt across the flaming moat, inhaling the smoke like incense. As happy as drunken stoats.’

Then a messenger was running along the walls, head and face heavily wrapped in wet cloths, his lungs seared.

‘What are the catapults for, man?’

He knelt, wheezing, eyes streaming.

Another catapult thumped. Then another. Through the smoke and din, they saw flashes of light, and in the city below, Nicholas thought he saw the bright lick of flame.

‘Incendiaries!’ gasped the messenger. ‘Some sort of sack, filled with metal fragments, perhaps salt of magnesia, and tar and Greek fire and the bleeding Jesus knows what-’

‘Mind your blasphemous tongue,’ said Smith.

The messenger wheezed at him, wiped his eyes, then stood and ran on at a crouch.

Their facecloths were drying out and no sign of the water boy.

‘I’ll go,’ said Nicholas.

‘I too,’ said Hodge.

Two more catapults thumped, sounding as if they were right up to the edge of the moat and still unseen through that pitch-dark pall. Down the steps and into the narrow street, the smoke was thinner and they saw buildings aflame. The nearest well was shattered, filled with stone, and near it lay a dead boy still holding a pail. Nicholas took the pail from his stiff fingers and he and Hodge ran. They found a marble fountain in a ruined courtyard, sweetly decorated with nymphs and dolphins, laid the pail on its side and half filled it, ran back.

There was a wooden warehouse aflame, a roaring inferno, too hot to approach. Another near by, already burning down to a smouldering ruin, a stench like burnt sheep.

‘Listen, Nick,’ said Hodge, gasping. ‘You take the water. It is more than I can stand to be up there, doin’ nothing. I am for the Franciscans in the hospital, where I can do some good. I know a little medicine, and if nothing else I can mop up the blood.’

Nicholas clapped him on the shoulder. ‘We will meet later.’

Clawing his way back up the half-shattered steps one-handed, pail in the other, lungs poisoned, leg still hurting, he felt the city hot behind him. The incendiaries were taking hold.

They dunked their facecloths in the water, retied them, drank the rest.

‘This smoke must clear!’ said Smith, almost shouting.

‘Be thankful,’ said Stanley. ‘The chronicles also say the Turks at Constantinople used flame throwers mounted on siege towers, trumpets the size of cannon belching out flames fifty feet long and as hot as hell itself.’

‘Fool,’ said Smith. ‘Now you’ve said it, you’ll probably bring it. And you’ll be the first one to burn up like. .’

He started to cough again violently.

Giustiniani got to his feet, keeping low. ‘Time to get below,’ he ordered. ‘We’re dying up here, and we need to report to Bragadino.’

They found him in the hall of the palace. His left hand was wounded and bandaged. Three men were speaking to him at once. He looked exhausted beyond death.

A plump, hysterical merchant held his arms wide and cried, ‘The entire warehouse! Filled with priceless carpets of Tabriz and Kurdistan! I am ruined!’

‘Aye,’ snapped Bragadino, ‘and at the Franciscan hospital is a child of two covered with burns from crown to toe, whom I confess it pains me to think of even more than your precious carpets, Signor Spinelli.’

The merchant stamped his slippered foot, until Smith moved him bodily out of the way.

Bragadino looked at them with relief. ‘Gentlemen.’

Signor Spinelli looked at them with disgust, his nose wrinkled.

Bragadino said, ‘We have heard news that Lala Mustafa’s own son has been killed. Do you think this can be true?’

They were speechless for a moment. This complicated things.

‘It is possible, I suppose,’ said Stanley. ‘A long-range shot. .’

Bragadino turned back on the merchant. ‘But now we cannot surrender, do you understand? If we make terms, they will not be honoured. It is now a personal matter. Lala Mustafa will lie, we will open the gates, and he will kill us all.’

Twice, rumours ran through the frantic city that the Turks had broken in, twice they had to be quashed. There were further rumours that the wells and cisterns had been poisoned. Bragadino went out and drank from them himself to show it for a lie. But still a sense of barely suppressed panic dominated.

Then one of the biggest grain stores in the city went up in flames.

Everywhere, rich merchants and bankers talked of surrender, looking at their fine houses, their glittering wardrobes, the classical statues from Salamis in their courtyards.

‘Think of the women and children,’ they said.

They slept that last night on the walls, huddled in blankets for comfort, not for warmth. The smoke had at last died down. Their lungs burned, they coughed frequently.

‘I think it will come tomorrow,’ whispered Smith, passing Stanley the last of the bottle.

‘Aye,’ said Stanley. He saw Nicholas’s eyes shine. ‘You awake, boy?’

Nicholas sat upright and held out his hand for the bottle. A church bell struck three. After he had drunk he said, ‘Will it be like Nicosia?’

‘Perhaps worse,’ said Smith. ‘Lala Mustafa has lost many more men here than at Nicosia, as well as his son. So if he wants revenge. .’

There was a long, brooding silence. Then Nicholas said, ‘Still, if we are to die here tomorrow — I am glad of it, though I wish Hodge were with me too.’ His throat was full. ‘I know I had more to do-’

‘We all had more to do, old friend,’ said Stanley. ‘Life is always an unfinished story.’

Nicholas nodded. ‘But I am glad enough to die here as anywhere. I am happy you found me, took me to Malta, and all that followed. Even the pains and the griefs. What it has all been about, I do not know. But you always say it is not ours to understand much, as mortal men. Ours to do and die.’

‘So I do.’

Smith looked over the walls. Beyond the last shreds of drifting smoke there were many lights out on the dark plain.

‘I think they will come just before dawn,’ he said. ‘Maybe two hours from now.’

He was right.

The sky was grey, the sun not yet above the horizon, and it seemed the whole Ottoman army came at once.

Columns surged towards the walls at the fast trot, five thousand skilled musketeers spread out and keeping up a steady rate of fire at the defenders pinned on the walls. As many more archers, Armenians and Syrians, did likewise. Smith’s jezail cracked out and a musketeer spun and fell. Another took his place. Thirty seconds later it cracked out again. Another died.

They began to come over the blackened, foul-smelling moat on wide pontoons, carrying scaling ladders and ropes. They were concentrated particularly on the towers, to try to capture them and silence the murderous enfilading fire of grapeshot and chain-shot.

And then a mine went up.

Not the troublesome mine of the saboteurs, weakening a wall already under attack, but a mine laid over the past two weeks by teams of Ottoman engineers working all day and all night, with the labour of hundreds of roped slaves. And it went off where they least expected it. The south wall.

An entire thirty-yard section of the wall seemed to lift into the air and then settle back into place, albeit leaning forward more than before. An agonised wait, and then the whole thirty yards leaned out further. . further. . ripped from its own foundations, and toppled forward into the moat.

A column of two thousand Janizaries was a minute away.

‘To the tower!’ cried Smith.

They ran past a hospital with walking wounded spilling out on to the street, worse wounded under awnings, shielded from the hot sun as they lay dying. Flies were everywhere, fever and a universal stench of death.

‘Remember Malta!’ they cried.

They scrambled up the spiral stairs of the tower and found two gunners lying dead beside a small culverin. The Janizaries were crossing the fallen wall.

‘Pull the gun round!’ cried Smith. ‘Bring me that grapeshot!’

They cleaned the gun out and rammed it with powder and Nicholas brought a fistful of grapeshot, tripping over one of the dead gunners.

‘Cover!’

The breech hole fizzed, the gun bellowed, and the grapeshot tore into the entering Janizaries.

‘Pull her back, reload! Find me more powder!’

Down below, a Janizary officer had already got his men under cover within the walls and sent a party to take the tower.

They heard footfalls on the stairs. Stanley drew his sword.

‘More powder, damn it!’ cried Smith.

‘Patience,’ said Stanley. ‘Occupied at present.’ He gripped the stair column in his left hand and held his sword low. A Janizary’s tall white hat appeared and then ducked back. A moment later a grenade landed between Stanley’s feet.

‘Fire!’

The gun roared and tore into more of the enemy picking their way in. The forward company of Janizaries inside was feeling trapped. Where was the follow-up? And down the street came a company of grim-faced Spanish pikemen.

Stanley fumbled for the grenade. A pistol fired and the ball ricocheted off the wall and clanged off his breastplate. A spear jabbed at him, he swiped it aside and thrust forward. A fellow rolled back down the stairs. He reached for the grenade. The fuse stuttered and went out.

He stared at it, cursed and tossed it down anyway.

A split second later he felt the full blast of the explosion as hot air in his face, knocking him backwards. He sat up and felt his face, his ears. Nothing missing.

‘What are you doing?’ roared Smith. ‘The gun’s cracked, get downstairs!’

They came out into a ferocious mêlée of pikemen and Janizaries. If the whole enemy column had pushed forward they would have carried everything before them, but for some reason the column commander held them back and the forward company, isolated and bewildered, was cut to pieces.

There was a respite. The defenders stood and sagged, leaning on pike butts and spears.

It was hopeless. The wall before them could never be rebuilt in time. The Janizaries could be back in at any moment.

‘Sire, the guns are overheating,’ reported a gunnery sergeant to Bragadino. ‘We must cease fire a while.’

‘Then bring down the guns from the Andruzzi bastion.’

‘Only two still working there, sire. The rest are out of action. Also they are low on powder and no more is being brought up.’

‘We haven’t the manpower to hold them otherwise!’ cried Bragadino.

The gunnery sergeant hesitated, and then said quietly, ‘No, sir. We haven’t.’

Bragadino turned his head and regarded him. No plump merchant this, but a tired-looking, hard-bitten, clear-eyed professional soldier. He carried two wounds on him already, bloody-bandaged knee and thigh. His face and hands were caked black with powder smoke, his eyes reddened, his lips chapped dry and cracked by the heat.

‘Envoy from the enemy camp, sire,’ said a breathless messenger. ‘Do we wish to seek terms?’

Bragadino hung his head.

Then he raised it again and cried, ‘Would to God I had died here!’

It seemed an ominous cry.

Smith, Stanley and Nicholas, nearly ready to fall to their knees in the street and weep for defeated exhaustion, raised their swords one last time with trembling arms and shot them home in their sheaths.

‘I want to find Hodge,’ said Nicholas.

They went back through the streets towards the Franciscan hospital. Women were weeping, and in the middle of the street there was a powder monkey curled up and still, a young boy, the black shining powder leaking from his leather satchel.

Nicholas cried, ‘No!’ and fell to his knees beside him and rolled him over.

His face was pocked with scabs and young scars. It was little Andreas.

Nicholas raised him up in his arms and wept.

Smith and Stanley stood close either side of him, as if guarding him from greater grief.