The Great Siege

10

Istanbul: Winter 1564 — Spring 1565

All that winter Istanbul had been in a ferment, devoted to the coming war.

From the forests of the Crimea came timber, from the high plains of Anatolia came hemp and flax. Out of the vast Imperial workshops came coils of rope and bales of sailcloth, while in the naval dockyards, they said a new war galley was being built every week. Saltpetre for gunpowder came in from Belgrade, sulphur from Lake Van, copper from the mines of Kastamonu, and church bells throughout the conquered Balkans were melted down, turning the Christian’s own iron and bronze against them.

Day and night there was the ring of hammer on anvil, the steady tapping of shipwrights and the hot stink of burning pitch poured over the caulking ropes, tamped down into the seams of the wooden hulls to make them watertight. Oxen drew carts bringing vats of tallow straight from the slaughterhouses, steering them carefully down to the dry docks where they would be used to grease the galleys’ hulls, making them slip still faster over the waves of the White Sea.

Day and night, too, the great forges of the Ottoman arsenals on the Bosphorus glowed red, while within, shovelling charcoal into hungry cast-iron mouths, super-heated by giant bellows, the faces of the slaves dripped with sweat. The bellows roared, oil burned, the winter sky was filled with smoke, and at night the very moon and stars were obscured. Greek fishermen along the shore muttered among themselves, and clutched the evil eye amulets around their brawny necks, saying the red glow of the Sultan’s furnaces was like the fires of hell.

Overseeing the frenzy of activity in the arsenals from a high walkway was a figure in a plain black robe, hook-nosed, deep-set eyes missing not one detail. From the huge casts, monstrous cannon of solid bronze emerged, each one requiring a team of forty or fifty slaves to move on iron axles and wheels. One basilisk, Ghadb-al Lah — the Anger of Allah — required its own galley. The destructive power of these monsters when unleashed would be unimaginable. They could hurl balls of marble or iron in excess of two hundred pounds. The roar would deafen any nearby, and their effect on walls of mere stone would be devastating.

‘The whole island of Malta will rock about on the sea,’ said the forgemaster, spitting out a mouthful of charcoal dust and swiping his sweaty face with the back of his hand. ‘Like a fisherman’s boat in a storm.’

Mustafa’s eyes gleamed.

He interrogated provisioners and quartermasters, inspected warehouses filled with everything from gunstocks to biscuits to opium supplies to massive pyramids of cannonballs, surveyed acres of hundredweight gunpowder barrels. There were wooden frames for making speedy breastworks, hides for protecting siege towers, sacking for trenches, and crates full of double-baked biscuit that would last for ever, though they would also break your teeth.

There were stables full of horses and oxen, all needing to be transported and fed, so they could drag gun carriages and platforms at the siege. When their strength finally failed, they would be eaten.

He questioned the shipmasters, and looked in on the Christian slaves, waiting in their pens to be chained to the rowing bench again.

‘Only a little while yet,’ he rasped through the bars at the huddled wretches within. ‘We must catch the spring tide, when there’s war in the air!’

On a windy day in early March, Mustafa for the first time stepped aboard his fig-wood flagship with its high stern and its twenty-eight rowing benches aside. Al-Mansour. The Victorious. She would fly like the wind. From the mast above fluttered and snapped the green silk banner of Islam with its crescent moon and its verses from the Koran, and at the stern was planted the standard of the Sultan: a golden globe with horsehair tassels, symbolising the globe of the world, which he was destined to rule.

Mustafa gripped the taffrail hard, his lips clenched, and glared back ferociously at the workshops and furnaces of the Bosphorus. When? It was time to sail. It was time to fight.

Cannons firing salutes, pipes wailing and cymbals clashing. Janizaries in their plumes of heron and ostrich feather, holy men in green turbans, great drums beating, marching in a slow stately rhythm out under Palace Point to the waiting galleys. The greatest naval venture in four centuries of Ottoman history. Wind batting the sails, salt tang on the air. The ground trembling under the weight of those sixteen-team ox-carts and their monstrous cannon, and the remorseless thunder of the drums.

All Europe knew of the frenetic preparations in the empire of the Turk. But where would his scimitar fall? Some said Cyprus, some said Sicily.

One man knew, and sent out word. Grand Master Jean Parisot de la Valette, of the Knights of St John of Malta.

He knew.

Across Europe, old men with bent backs and white beards shook out their time-worn tabards. White cross on red. The tabard of war. Elderly retainers oiled old-fashioned hauberks of mail and whetted ancient blades.

The sword of Islam was raised, pointing straight at the heart of the Christian Sea. And if Europe’s kings and princes would not go to the aid of that small beleaguered island, then loyal knights might yet.

Let him laugh and mock, l’uomo nuovo, l’uomo universale, and count his ducats, and say that money and science, knowledge and advancement were now the thing. The Age of Machiavelli was come, the Age of Chivalry was dead. From the villages of Spain and Italy, Provence and Auvergne they still came, the old knights, the old brothers. Some on horses, some on donkeys, some on dusty mules.

Some sang the old ballad for company as they rode.

Then rising from a doubtful seat and half-attainted stall,

The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,

The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,

That once went singing southward when all the world was young.

In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,

Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade …

A song to keep them company on the perilous voyage to Malta, and into the eye of the coming storm.