Blood Red Sea

3

It was a clean, blue September morning when they passed the Malta Channel. Beloved Malta. Nicholas inhaled the sea air. This coming battle would be different, from Malta, from Nicosia and Famagusta. It would see all of Christendom united under a blue Mediterranean sky, and no women or children caught up in the scenes of carnage. Two forces, a clean fight, and all on a single day. And a Christian commander with a ludicrous dress sense but undoubted force and charisma.

But a wind was getting up.

A cold end-of-summer wind, herald of winter. The Bora, blowing down the Adriatic from the north, from the Balkan mountains and the Carpathians.

The sea began to rise and run, the galleys to roll. The rowers flailed their oars above the waves. From La Real they watched anxiously as the six great galliasses behind lumbered and lurched in the white-combed swell, their towing galliots struggling desperately to keep control, their sails and ropes straining and groaning under the savage strain. They had visions of those great vessels, Don John’s wild gamble, going down and taking three galliots apiece with them.

‘Difficult sailing conditions,’ murmured Giustiniani.

‘We want difficult sailing conditions,’ snapped Don John.

‘Sire?’

‘Because we are better sailors than the Turks. The Genoese, the Aragonese, the Venetians have been sailing these waters since long before the Turk. What is difficult for them, this blustering chill Bora, will be quite manageable to the old sea dogs of Genoa, who have been to the Indies and back. The Aegean in October is no gentle sea. She blows up many a foul storm. We should hope for more.’

The prince needed to do everything in his power to keep his force together. Matters were not helped when Veniero hanged some mutineer Spanish soldiers on his ships. The Spanish and Venetian fleets actually primed their guns and faced each other for some hours, before Don John managed to calm them. He urged them to save their anger for the Turk.

At Corfu they took on fresh water, and heard of churches desecrated recently by Kara Hodja, around the coasts of the island. Don John and his commanders visited them. They found broken crucifixes, frescoes of saints stabbed and defaced or used for pistol practice, the sickening stench of profanation by ordure.

‘Tell all your men,’ said Don John. ‘Spread the word throughout the fleet. Not only how they tortured and killed noble Bragadino, but also this. How they have mocked and abused Christ’s handmaiden, the Church. Nothing unites men like a common enemy. Stir them to vengeance.’

A message came to Don John from another ship in his immediate squadron.

‘Sire, there is a woman on board.’

‘How lovely,’ murmured the prince. ‘What age is she? Is she dark eyed?’

The man looked shocked. The commander was missing the point. A woman aboard ship was as bad luck as a cat.

Still the prince seemed unconcerned. ‘Is she a whore?’

‘No, sire, it seems not. She is a,’ he almost spat the word, ‘a dancer by profession. Maria la Bailadora, disguised as a boy, going to war with her lover.’

Don John smiled. ‘Like an old romance. The question is, can she fire an arquebus?’

‘Can she. .’ The man swallowed. ‘Certainly not, sire.’

‘Then teach her, man, teach her. She may dance as well as Salome, it won’t save her now.’

They sailed south from Corfu, keeping within the Corfu channel. They passed by the fortified base of Parga on the coast, another recent capture by the Ottoman Empire. It was 4th October.

As they approached the wide Gulf of Patras, every man’s heart was in his mouth. The sea was grey and uneasy, winter was approaching. And all of them felt they were closer by the hour to the lair of the Turk. Around every headland and island, every spit of that broken coastline, they expected to encounter a numberless armada, bent on destroying them. Many there dreamed of turning and retreating to the safety of their old ports in the west. But Don John reminded them continually that there could be no retreat. The Turk would always come after them.

Gil de Andrada went out scouting in a fast unarmed galley, and vanished into the winter gloom. It was dirty weather, squally and buffeting. On the night of the 6th, they hove to and dropped anchor in the narrow channel between Cephalonia and Ithaca. It should have offered some shelter, yet men and oar slaves alike still vomited with the roll.

Don John went tirelessly from galley to galley in a longboat, his fine clothes drenched with salt spray. With brilliant eloquence, he reminded Veniero and the Venetians of their many losses, of Rhodes and Cyprus, not to mention the bloody insult of Famagusta. He told the ardent Spanish that when they met their turbaned enemy, they should give the unbelievers no chance to sneer, Where is your Jewish Saviour now?

‘Show them our right cause with your swords,’ he cried, ‘and win yourselves everlasting fame!’

In the heart of the night, sailing dangerously over seas black as pitch, Gil de Andrada returned. His face in the lantern light was as grim as the face of a storm-dark sea.

‘Speak, man,’ snapped Don John. ‘Do you expect us to sob like girls at your news?’

Gil de Andrada drew breath and said, ‘They are certainly not fleeing back to safe port, but are readying to meet us. Selim has clearly given order for battle. The whole Gulf of Corinth is full of them. An armada from horizon to horizon. Two hundred sail in the foreground, but more beyond. And they will move to pick up more fighting men from the garrison at Galata.’

‘Excellent,’ said Don John, ‘excellent.’

‘There are Algerine ships among them as well. I know the rigging. Corsairs of the Barbary Coast, and Kara Hodja’s too, of course, which explains their vast numbers. We face all the power of both Africa and Asia combined. Kara Hodja will take their left wing, if I know him.’

‘Then he will face Doria and Genoa on our right,’ said Don John.

Doria said quietly, ‘The city of Genoa against the whole coast of Africa. And I have faced Kara Hodja before. He knows how to fight, an enemy of great skill.’

‘And the Turks have the harbour of Lepanto to fall back on,’ said Gil de Andrada, ‘we have none.’

‘All the more reason why we must destroy them utterly and win,’ said Don John.

He retired to his cabin with his valet to arm, and soon reappeared in a golden suit of armour with silver clasps, which blazed out even in the night. A relic of the True Cross hung about his neck, and he wore a sheepskin cape of the Order of the Golden Fleece of Castile.

He found his commanders downcast and perturbed, full of foreboding. Gil de Andrada was not a man to mince his words or gild a harsh truth.

The Ottoman force they faced, he reckoned, both in ships and fighting men, outnumbered them by two to one.

Veniero looked grim, Doria’s eyes darted about with anxiety. The knights kept a silent composure, but they were men long since sworn to die in battle, not to live long. What of the mariners and the foot soldiers? And what of the brothers Bragadino, so silent in their black grief? They were full of thoughts of vengeance but they might lack steadiness if they did not mind dying, so long as they took many Turks with them. The outcome of the battle, the fate of Christendom, mattered little to them. Let doom come, so long as many thousands of Turks were sacrificed with it, in expiation of their father’s atrocious death.

‘So,’ said Don John, ‘we are certainly outnumbered. They crowd together so, we cannot fail to hit them.’

‘That is true,’ said Veniero. ‘Look on the bright side.’

Don John ignored his glum sarcasm. ‘This battle will be about gunpowder and gun power, and ours is far superior. Numbers are nothing. If you saw a sea battle between one ship versus a hundred, who would win?’

‘The hundred,’ said the old Venetian sea dog.

‘Wrong. You have not asked for enough information. If the one was a great galliass, and the hundred were mere fishing skiffs. .’

‘Those Ottoman galleys are no fishing skiffs.’

‘But many of them are barely more gunned. They still fight as soldiers on floating platforms, dispatching a few cannonball but really wanting to close and board us with scimitar and pike. But they will not even get near before our great guns roar.’

‘I pray God it is true.’

‘Make it so, my gallant captains, make it so!’ His tone was not scolding but inspiring, full of the belief that they could and would win, that they were truly gallant captains. It was infectious.

‘If your gunners follow orders, if they work hard and do not rest, we will win. I have every confidence. Are they not the finest gunners in the world?’

‘They are very well drilled.’

‘Then numbers are irrelevant! The Turks are sitting ducks. If the wind is against them, so much the better.’

‘It is for them now, it blows from the north-east, more behind them than us.’

‘It will change by noon, and then it will begin. And then they will see our fighting spirit, our martial fire! Courage, gentlemen! It is courage that wins battles, in the end, and I also think cheerfulness a weapon of no little power. All else aside, cheerfulness certainly vexes the enemy mightily. And are we not Christian men, proud Italians, fiery Spaniards? Santa Cruz, does not the blood of El Cid run hot in your veins? Generations of great crusades, of high chivalry? Doria, I know today you will do honour to the memory of Andrea Doria. Do your family not claim descent from Scipio Africanus himself? Rome ruled the world once, and perhaps it will again. .’

Gian’andrea Doria swelled at the compliment.

‘And God knows, dear sons of Marc’antonio Bragadino, you have reason enough to be here.’ Don John waved his hand. ‘The Turks are nothing — those turbaned upstarts! They are just bitter because of their frightful food, their harsh braying music and their lamentably hairy women. They know ours are so much prettier.’

Laughter.

‘Now go forth and teach them a lesson: Europe is not theirs for the taking! Let them know that Christendom does not bow before them and never will. They can never defeat us. We are greater men than they. Let them learn the taste of defeat. Destroy their dreams of conquest. Win yourselves glory, glory that will redound across the nations, and for centuries hence! And when they hear the news, they will ring every church bell in Christendom at our feats of arms. Crowds will cheer your name, men will curse themselves they were not here at your sides, beautiful maidens will swoon at the very mention of Bragadino and Veniero, Doria and Santa Cruz!’

The commanders smiled despite themselves. Don John painted a picture.

‘No beautiful maidens for me, alas,’ said De Andrada.

‘Fear not, my dear monkish brother,’ said Don John. ‘In a great act of personal self-sacrifice, I shall take up your complement of girlish admirers myself.’

They laughed again, even Veniero smiling in his tangled white beard and shaking his head.

‘And as for me, I shall lead from the front!’

‘Are you certain, sire?’ said Santa Cruz. ‘It will be a firestorm once the guns open up.’

‘Of course I am certain! I might even have a stool drawn up for me to stand on, to get a better view of our glorious victory!’

He would too, the mad prince. No point reasoning with him. He was as stubborn as a mule, and possibly as brave as a lion. His spirit was irresistible.

Suddenly Veniero shoved his chair back so hard it fell to the floor, stood and roared, ‘By God, I think you are right!’ He slapped the startled Doria on the back as if they were brothers. ‘Sire, bastard you may be, and barely a third of my years, and I dislike the colour of your armour mightily, but I think you are the man to lead us after all! Let us go out together and give ’em hell!’

And as one, the formerly forlorn commanders stood and cheered their prince, and themselves, amid a flurry of backslaps and bear-hugs, and then went back to their longboats and their ships, still burning with rivalry, but rivalry now turned outwards, not upon each other but upon the Turk.

The energy of Don John, the sheer self-belief, burned in their veins like raw grape spirit, and now it spread throughout the fleet as each commander called his own captains to him, each squadron and each ship heard that, though they were outnumbered, they had more guns and better gunners, and Don John of Austria, their royal leader, had every confidence in a famous victory.

Above all, they were impressed to hear that their dauntless, dashing captain-general would be in the heart of the battle, upon the fighting stand of his flagship, La Real, in his blazing golden armour, beneath the gorgeous yellow standard of Holy Spain — perched on a stool, so he could witness the glorious victory! Caps were snatched off and thrown in the air, and a mighty rippling cheer spread over the dark waters of the Gulf of Patras.

The Turks had intelligence of the enemy too, and soon the harbour of Lepanto and the Gulf of Corinth were filled with the rattle of mighty anchor chains. Trumpets blared, kettledrums boomed. Marine Janizaries whetted their scimitars, Barbary corsairs their daggers. Gold earrings flashed, teeth gleamed white in the darkness. At last it had come to battle.