Blood Red Sea

19

That candlelit dinner was a strange and magical interlude between two horrors. The power of Joseph Nassi to charm, to make peace, could not embrace everyone. Lala Mustafa still had his grievances, and the mummified body of his son in a lead casket.

‘Hear me now,’ said Bragadino, his voice more grave than they had ever heard it. The tone of a man who has made a decision which is not merely important but fateful. ‘We believe that Joseph Nassi is a just man, and will rule Cyprus fairly. But let us not be deceived. Christendom has suffered a terrible loss. Without some desperate act, it will barely realise it. There will still be no Holy League. Next year the Turks will push further west, and further. They will attack small heroic Malta again, and Sicily. There will be no stopping them. And so I am going now as summoned, to the tent of Lala Mustafa, a cruel and vindictive man. And I shall insult him in such a way that he will kill me.’

They were stunned and silent.

‘By my sacrifice, Venice will be brought into the war.’

‘Sire,’ said Stanley, ‘if the loss of Cyprus could not rouse Venice, how will your death?’

‘I believe it will,’ said Bragadino. ‘Because of my sons. They will rouse Venice, for they are powerful characters. Though it sounds a little absurd,’ he looked down, ‘I had a dream last night. I saw my sons breathe out vengeance upon the heathen like the sons of an Old Testament king slain in battle. So I am going now to my death. On my walk there, I shall take pleasure in thinking up the foulest insults I can heap upon a Turkish head. This will provide entertainment and distraction as I go.

‘But you must promise me this. You will get back to Venice with the story. I know not how. But you have done special service, Smith and Stanley. I know you have travelled in strange and Orient lands, you are more than ordinary soldiers. You have picked locks, opened dungeon doors, you speak many languages, wear many disguises, know how to handle weapons of which I have never even heard. .’

Stanley tried to protest, ‘It is not that easy, My Lord,’ but Bragadino raised his hand.

‘I know this. You need not deny it. Not now, not to an old man going to his death.’

Stanley felt his eyes blur despite himself. In the fallen world there was still nobility, like fire in the dark.

‘So. Promise me only this, you will get to Italy. Tell my story. Rouse the Lion of Venice.’ Bragadino rose too, and stood like an old greying lion himself. ‘Rouse that mighty Lion! Let her shake out her golden mane and roar! And let the Turk know that at last he has brought ruin upon himself, with his vaunting ambition and his false creed. And his empire will come to dust, like all empires of this world.’ His voice softened again. ‘Let me not die in vain.’

Then Stanley seized the old man’s right hand in his own mighty hands and clasped him as he would his father, and said, ‘You shall not. By God, old comrade, you shall not.’

At Vespers on 5th August, Bragadino went to take the keys of the city to Lala Mustafa with all solemnity. He went with a small retinue of unarmed advisers.

Lala Mustafa’s was a large, plain white tent with horses tied outside. No ostentation. He made them wait, and then they were admitted before him. They saw a man of small stature, grey moustache, short grey hair brushed back hard off his lined forehead, and cold hard eyes.

‘You are welcome,’ he said, voice flat. He took the proffered keys. No drinks were brought.

Bragadino gave an insultingly faint bow. ‘It has pleased Almighty God to permit you this victory. This temporary victory.’

‘It is the will of Allah. If you had acknowledged this earlier, many lives could have been spared.’

‘Including your son’s. If you had not come conquering other people’s lands, your son would not have died.’

Stanley thought he saw those cold, hard eyes waver a little. But the mouth was compressed hard.

Bragadino pressed on. ‘Cyprus so far must have cost you twenty thousand men-’

‘A wild exaggeration.’

‘But you will lose many more. How many sons have you left?’

The cold eyes burned. Grief, hatred, and fury that this whipped dog of a governor should dare to humiliate him before his generals.

‘Have a care, my friend,’ he said.

‘I have many,’ snapped Bragadino. ‘Why are we here? Can we now depart, and leave you to your treasure?’

‘Where are the Muslim pilgrims?’

This was an unexpected turn.

‘The fifty pilgrims on the haj? We know you took them prisoner.’

He meant the fifty pilgrims captured at sea by the Chevalier Romegas. This was difficult. Bragadino couldn’t tell Lala they had converted to Christianity and were ready to sail west. His fury would know no bounds. He would demand they were handed over, and then kill them all as apostates from Islam, in accordance with the law of the Koran.

‘They were all killed in the bombardment,’ said Bragadino.

‘All? All fifty, clean killed? Not one even injured?’

‘All killed,’ he said, ‘by a single ball. A most unusual occurrence.’

The cold eyes glittered. ‘You mock me, Christian.’

‘Indeed not, sire. They were all killed, and then they were drowned at sea, then they were burned to death in a great fire, and then. .’ He laid his hand on his heart. ‘We ate them.’

Lala Mustafa sprang up roaring and hurled a table over on its side. ‘You damned Christian dog, I will have you whipped of your hide!’

There was chaos, shouting, drawn swords, and Bragadino shouting back, even as he was grappled from behind by two huge bodyguards, ‘Did you not eat your own son, you filthy Mohammedan hog? Curses on you and your family! I fart in your father’s beard and wipe my arse with your stinking Koran!’

Lala Mustafa nodded and the bodyguard knocked Bragadino unconscious.

Lala stared down at him. The fellow was mad. But he would pay.

The four knights looked on in grim silence, their own wrists bound with rope, as Bragadino was tied to a horse-post.

‘Cut off his ears and nose,’ said Lala.

‘My Lord, no!’ cried Giustiniani, stepping forward.

Lala turned on him. ‘One more word from you,’ he said, ‘and I will cut out his eyes.’

He meant it.

They stood silent.

A man came with a big-bladed knife, pulled Bragadino’s ear and sawed it through. The Governor came to and groaned. ‘Knife’s too blunt,’ he muttered.

Another horseman arrived, cloak billowing. It was Joseph Nassi. He might have demanded an end, being lord of the island now, but he knew it was too dangerous for that, Lala Mustafa too far gone. He could read his eyes.

He dropped from his horse. ‘My Lord,’ he gasped, ‘this has no dignity. I beg you, let us show clemency.’

‘Clemency!’ said Bragadino, neck coursing with blood. ‘That dog-fucker couldn’t even spell it.’

‘My Lord,’ said Nassi, ‘he is driven mad by something. By grief. I beg you, this is not the way for-’

‘He has provoked it,’ said Lala, his voice once again without emotion. ‘I do not know why. But now he must face the punishment. Let it be an example for the whole island.’

Nassi, rarely for him, raised his voice. ‘Sire, I insist, on behalf of the Sultan Selim-’

It was enough. Lala Mustafa had been humiliated already today. Who commanded the army, he or this upstart Jew? He would not be overruled by any Jew, no matter how close to Selim. He nodded to two mounted guards and they obliged Nassi to remount, hands on their sword hilts. They then escorted him back towards the city gate. As he went, Nassi’s head hung down.

All the cruelty of the Ottomans came to the fore then, after all the valour. And Smith and Stanley, Giustiniani and Mazzinghi, witnessed it with their own eyes. They let their memories be burned with it.

They cut off Bragadino’s ears and nose, and mounted him on an ass. He looked like a mutilated old lion. The soldiery jeered as he rode among them, and wild rumours flew that Lala Mustafa was going to allow a full-scale looting of Famagusta after all. Men rushed to their tents to collect bags and sacking.

Bragadino was driven into the city, and his retinue insulted and then turned loose. And that was where Nicholas and Hodge, along with the rest of the citizens, saw the final horror.

Their noble old Governor was tied to a post before the cathedral of St Nicholas and left for a night to suffer. Meanwhile the Turks began to run riot, and there was no order for them to stop. They bullied people of all ages and estates into gangs to clear away the corpses, and then they began to beat people, ravish the women in alleyways and cellars, and help themselves to any valuables they found. Fights broke out, and more people were briskly put to the sword.

‘Remember every detail,’ murmured Stanley, his face stricken. ‘Be a witness, a chronicle.’

The next day, Friday, the Muslim day of prayer, Bragadino was marched with drums and cheers to the harbourside and tied to a chair. He was hoisted to the top of a galley’s mast and then ducked in the sea. Raised up, ducked, raised up, ducked. In salt water. With his open wounds.

The cruelty of it was beyond all reckoning and sense.

Finally, almost delirious with pain, he was dragged back to the Cathedral square, and there a weeping butcher was ordered at spear-point to skin him alive. The butcher refused, saying he would rather die. So they killed him, and found an animal skinner. He too refused, but they found his wife and daughter, and said they would kill them before his eyes if he did not do their bidding. The animal skinner begged for wine, drained a pint jug, and then began the work. Some said afterwards that Bragadino had murmured to him as he was dying that he forgave him. It was not his fault, and he would not be held to account for it before God.

Bragadino cried out, Domine, in manus tuas commendo spiritum meum!’

He died before the animal skinner reached his waist.

He was quartered and each quarter was blown out of a gun on the wall.

His skin was stuffed with straw, dressed in crimson robes and shielded by a red parasol, mounted on a cow and paraded through the streets, crowned with thorns.

Nicholas heard a man in the crowd say to his neighbour, ‘Christ forgive us, why did we not resist these savages harder? What madness made us think we would live as well under their rule as the Venetians?’

‘This will not go unpunished,’ said his neighbour. ‘It cannot.’