Blood Red Sea

4

For three days they nursed the two near-dead men they had dragged from the sea.

They washed the crusted salt from their skin, and dressed their terrible sunburn with bandages soaked in vinegar, two strong men holding them down as they applied the dressings. For pain could sometimes be so great that a man might arch his back from the pallet and crack his own spine. They poured water mixed with a small pinch of salt and some honey down the castaways’ throats, a few drops at a time, but constantly, hour after hour, holding their heads up. Their hands were the powerful, knotted, scarred hands of swordsmen and warriors, but now they were as gentle in their ministrations as Carmelite nuns. They continued to make the two men drink water until, long after nightfall, they urinated. That effort alone exhausted them, and they both lay back again, barely conscious.

‘I thought you medics drank a patient’s urine,’ said one of the warriors. ‘For diagnosis.’

The medic looked down at the dark bronze liquid in the bowl. A mere spoonful, but the odour was. . penetrating. ‘In this case,’ he said, ‘that will not be necessary. My diagnosis is that they are still thirsty.’

They made them drink and drink, sometimes mixing the water with a squeeze of lemon juice. They dabbed their many sores and wounds with alcohol, rubbed fat on their atrociously blistered lips, placed and regularly replaced cool cloths on their hot and feverish heads, and finally poured tincture of opium, blessed opium, down their parched throats. Both castaways soon became delirious and talked effusively.

‘Your Majesty, Your Majesty,’ slurred the fair-haired, emaciated one, ‘I am your most loyal subject. .’

‘Market day in Shrewsbury,’ muttered the other, ‘a bad business. .’

‘Malta,’ said the first. ‘Elmo is lost. .’

‘Elmo?’ repeated the knight, and stared at the medical chaplain.

The chaplain stared likewise. ‘And Englishmen? So we have been ministering to a couple of Protestants.’

Suddenly the fair-head gripped the medic’s wrist hard, eyes wide but unseeing. ‘Does the banner of St John still fly?’ he whispered.

‘Yes. . yes, it still flies.’

Again the chaplain and the knight exchanged bewildered glances. There was something very strange here. Something of destiny.

The fair-head collapsed back upon his sweat-stained pallet. ‘Christ be thanked. More opium.’

The knight nodded, and the chaplain poured a few more drops of the precious tincture on to a silver spoon.

‘May your visions be sweet ones,’ he said.

Nicholas swallowed down the few bittersweet drops. ‘I doubt it,’ he said, and slipped from the waking world.

Three days later, after the two castaways had slept many hours, and drunk numberless pints of sugared and salted water, and then taken softened bread, and finally a little meat broth, they were just strong enough to sit upright on their pallets and swing their legs round to meet the floor, and not topple over sideways.

‘If there were more opium. .’ said Nicholas.

The medical chaplain shook his head. ‘No more is needed. It creates an appetite in a man and makes him a slave.’

‘I have been a King, I have been a slave. .’ said Nicholas in a strange singsong voice.

He was not driven mad, this one — not yet. But he had seen many atrocities, and borne much in his short life. The medical chaplain could see it in his eyes. He had seen it many times before. Such a one could easily turn into the very worst, most aimless cut-throat, a man with no heart or soul left in him — or a helpless slave of opium, lying reeking and glassy eyed in some backstreet den in Tangier.

The other seemed an altogether stouter, quieter, more imperturbable fellow. If they were old friends and comrades, then the fair-head was lucky to have him.

‘Where are we?’ demanded the fair-head now. He spoke good Spanish. ‘Who are you men? Whose ship? And what year is it?’

‘With respect,’ said the medical chaplain, ‘you are our guests now. And it is we who ask the first questions.’

They were joined at that moment by a couple of knights, and a tall, noble-looking Knight Commander. He had a splendid, iron-grey forked beard, close-cropped hair of the same colour, and large, thoughtful eyes that might have been those of a scholar.

The medical chaplain stood immediately and gave a small bow.

‘Brothers,’ said the Commander. ‘Fra Bernardo. And. . newcomers. I am glad that you have lived through your ordeal. You are strong.’

‘We were on the galleys.’

The Commander nodded. ‘We guessed as much. What happened?’

Nicholas shook his head and told the tale of the Rus and the gunpowder. The Commander gave a low whistle. ‘You have survived by a miracle. The Rus must have been maddened — but that is not unusual on a galley. You would have died, but by a strange irony, it was the explosion of gunpowder that we heard, and the plume of black smoke that set us rowing towards you. A murderous act became a distress beacon. We thought it might be an engagement between corsairs and Christians.’

‘The Rus knew we two were unmanacled. He might have thought we could survive, at least.’ The fair-head looked down. ‘His was an act of sacrifice, maybe. Another small sacrifice in this unending war.’

The Commander asked, ‘Your names?’

‘Nicholas Ingoldsby.’

‘Matthew Hodgkin,’ said the other. ‘Hodge.’

‘You are Englishmen, and Protestants?’

‘Englishmen, and Catholics.’

‘Ah,’ said the Commander. ‘I like this better.’

‘You will like this better yet, if you believe it,’ said Nicholas Ingoldsby. ‘My father’s name was Sir John Ingoldsby. Long before I was born, when our King Henry attacked the monasteries and destroyed them, he also abolished the Order of the Knights of St John in England.’

‘I know this.’

‘But before that,’ said Nicholas, ‘my father was a Knight of St John. Of the English Langue.’

The Knight Commander stared at the emaciated youth on his pallet. His blue eyes were exhausted but unflinching.

‘My father even fought at Rhodes, in 1521. He knew Grand Master Jean de la Valette, and he-’

‘Hold,’ said the Knight Commander. ‘You mean you are. . you are the two English volunteers who fought with our brothers at Malta? Even in the inferno of Elmo?’

‘That was us.’

There was a long silence. The chaplain, Fra Bernardo, could have sunk down on his knees before the two of them. He had heard of them both, and of their exploits. Who had not?

‘I was fighting at sea that summer,’ said the Commander softly, surveying them. ‘But truly Christ is with us today. Look what a fine couple of fish we just plucked from the water.’

He reached out and clasped first Nicholas’s and then Hodge’s hands in his own, and his face shone with heartfelt emotion ‘My name is Gil de Andrada. Truly you are welcome aboard this ship. Truly.’

Nicholas felt shaken within. Let me not weep, he thought, and bit his blistered lip.

‘But this is a corsair galley?’ he said.

‘We captured it. We have been patrolling the east coast of Spain against the Turk, along with the Chevalier Romegas — you remember the great Romegas?’

Nicholas smiled very faintly. ‘We met him. He still sails?’

‘Of course. Still the greatest sailor among all the knights, and an unceasing terror to the Ottoman ships. We captured this mean little galley off Tripoli and are now sailing back to Malta. You will be greeted royally there.’

‘I cannot go back to Malta,’ said Nicholas. ‘I beg you, this one favour. Do not take us back to Malta.’

The chaplain moved swiftly to the side of his captain and had low words with him. ‘It is said, Captain, if you recall, that the English boy was in love with a Maltese girl during the Great Siege. And she was killed by a cannonball, near the very last day of the battle.’

The Commander bowed his head briefly. Now he remembered. So sad and heroic a tale.

‘Then it is settled,’ he said briskly. ‘It is the least we can do. We are equal sailing now from Malta or Cadiz. You will go to Cadiz. But what then?’

‘Then home,’ said Nicholas. ‘We want to go home to England. We are. .’ He searched for the word. ‘We are very tired.’

‘But you are Catholics.’

‘Aye.’ Nicholas looked puzzled. ‘But Englishmen still.’

Fra Bernardo and Gil de Andrada exchanged agonized glances. It was such a curse to bear bad tidings.

‘England,’ said De Andrada — he clenched his fist. Damn it, so sad a tale for these broken heroes, these boy volunteers at Malta, the greatest siege in Christendom’s history. Afterwards they should have been welcomed home with hymns of praise and palms before their feet. But it would not happen. And damn the fate that it should be he, De Andrada, who must tell them.

‘Alas,’ he said, ‘it is now the year of salvation 1571. April, with Easter just past. You do not know? Malta was six years ago.’

‘Six years?’ whispered Hodge.

‘Where did it go?’ said Nicholas.

‘In Algiers prison,’ said Hodge. ‘On the galleys. In the desert hills. But mostly in Algiers prison.’

‘What befell you after Malta?’ asked Gil de Andrada.

‘There was a family,’ said Nicholas softly, ‘that we had grown close to. The Maltese family of a man called Franco Briffa, a fisherman. After the Siege, my friend Hodge and I stayed on with that family, for four happy years. And we helped to build the fine new city of Valletta, over the water.’

‘Where else had we to go?’ said Hodge. ‘And as the city took shape we were proud of it. Maybe it will stand as our finest work.’

De Andrada nodded. ‘Valletta is a wonder.’

‘But at last our hearts sickened for home,’ said Nicholas, ‘as men’s do. And though we were still penniless vagabonds, and had come to love our new island home of Malta very much — yet it was not truly our home. Not our native land. So finally we said sad farewells to our friends there, and sailed for England. But luck was a little against us, and our voyage home was interrupted — by corsairs.’

‘And they had other plans for us,’ said Hodge.

‘Yet for two years we survived, by God’s grace alone. On their stinking galleys, in their jails, or trying to flee. Hiding, afraid-’

Gil de Andrada said, ‘No need to hide more. You are with the knights again now.’

A thought struck him. ‘Smith and Stanley. Our comrades-in-arms at Elmo, and at-’

At last some happier news. Gil de Andrada smiled broadly. ‘Fra Eduardo Stanley and Fra Gianni Smith live and breathe and quarrel and fight still like true brothers. They may have a few grey hairs now, and move a little slower — but they remain among the most ferocious of the Knights. And the keenest for this last great sea battle to begin.’

Nicholas looked questioning.

‘Later. But as for England — my friends, my heart is heavy beyond telling.’ De Andrada took a deep breath. ‘Only last year, the Holy Father in Rome, Pope Pius V, issued a bull declaring your Queen Elizabeth excommunicate.’

The words sank slowly in. Excommunicate. Denied membership of the true Church, and eternal salvation. Pronounced a heretic, and so a false claimant to the throne of England. Now it was the duty of every Catholic prince in Europe to bring her down.

And Nicholas and Hodge were Catholics — and therefore traitors. They could never go home.

The silence was bitterly painful to all there. Fra Bernardo and Gil de Andrada could have wept for sorrow. These two were like Odysseus the wanderer, forever kept from his home in Ithaca by the malice of the gods.

At last Nicholas reached out his hand and laid it on the shoulder of his friend and comrade Hodge. Exiles and eternal wanderers together.

Hodge’s shoulders began to shake.

‘Bring them wine,’ rapped Gil de Andrada.

They drank only a little before they felt they could sleep again, heavy with weariness and sorrow.

‘There is more to discuss, but enough for now,’ said Gil de Andrada. ‘What is past is past. What is yet to come is in the hands of God. All things rest in God.’

Hodge and Nicholas lay down in the gently rocking cabin. Perhaps each time they slept would be less nightmare-ridden than the last. Perhaps their minds would heal eventually, along with their bodies.

‘When your skin can bear them,’ said De Andrada in the doorway, ‘there are clothes in that chest. And there is also this trinket that came off your neck.’

He was holding up the diamond necklace. Nicholas had quite forgotten it, a worthless thing compared to life itself.

‘I am no great judge of stones,’ said De Andrada. ‘You’ll need an Antwerp Jew for that. But I would hazard a guess this necklace is worth more than a peso or two.’ He tossed it over with a smile, and then a leather belt. ‘The belt has a hidden pouch within it, like a snakeskin. Hide the thing well in there. Perhaps you might even live long enough to change it into gold one day.’