The Great Siege

11

‘So, Matilda,’ said Edward Stanley. ‘What do you know of foreign parts?’

Hodge was whittling a stick. ‘My name’s Hodge,’ he said woodenly.

Stanley bowed low. ‘A thousand pardons.’

Hodge took a deep breath. ‘Well. I know the country round Cambridge is a flat and sodden country, not fit for any but fen-men and fish. Men of Essex are turbulent and lawless and born cheats, and men of London the same, only worse. Further north they are coarse as farmyard swine and drop their breeches without shame and make their business in the middle of the street. Men of Lincolnshire are notorious dullards and villains, and men of Lancashire and Yorkshire are worse, so quarrelsome and stiffnecked they would find fault with a fat goose.’

‘By foreign I meant … out of England.’

‘Ah, Wales,’ said Hodge. ‘They are barely of the race of men. They live in caves and eat raw mutton and speak in a tongue so barbarous it frightens the birds off the trees. Men of the south and west be Welsh too in all but name, idle and sly and deceitful from the first day out of their mother’s wombs. ’Tis only in Shropshire you’ll find honest men, and only in the parishes west of Shrewsbury. The rest are fools.’

Nicholas laughed. It felt like the first time he had laughed in months.

Hodge drew breath.

‘Across the sea they are all foreigners. Sail to Scotland or Ireland and you’ll wish you’d stayed home, even with a witch for a wife, my old dad used to say. The Scots are nought but barbarians, they go naked all year but for animal skins. The Irish are worse, with hardly the wit to feed themselves and so starve often.

‘The Germans are fat drunkards. The Danes, drunkards also. Dutchmen, drunkards and gluttons to boot, with huge swag-bellies and beards thick with grease from their last dinner. They skate over ice on cows’ shoulder bones, though it’s a wonder the ice holds ’em. The French are a vile race, slothful as swine and as evil-smelling, foppish, curtseying, arrant, vain, silk-dressed perfumed treacherous deceitful cowardly knaves one and all, forever bowing the head or bending the buttock to any who will flatter them.’

‘Hear hear,’ said Smith. ‘The lad speaks some sense.’

‘The Switzers fight well but stink of cheese, for they eat nothing else. Of the Austrians I know not and care less, also the Hungarians, the Polacks, and others to the cruel cold East. The Russians live in everlasting ice and snow and eat their own parents when they die. Your Spaniard is cruel and treacherous, conceited and a braggard, your Italian avaricious, shallow and malign, and as given to incest as any villain in Norfolk. The Greeks are swarthy and notorious fools.

‘Beyond them they are not even Christian. The infidel Turks go circumcised and have four wives apiece and murder their own brothers, and “to turn Turk” is to turn evil and worship the Devil, who they call Mahound. Their brothers the Arabs ride camels and their evil and cruelty are almost beyond telling. The Jews we know of, wandering gold-hoarders and Christ-deniers, and then there’s the Ethiop, who’s barbarous and black as coal and couples with monkeys. Beyond him is the Parsee, the Hindoo and the Chinaman, all idolaters and devils. In the New World there are none but savage men who live in trees, often with tails, who some say are not truly human at all.’

‘Well,’ said Stanley. ‘Though you have not gone far in the world, friend Hodge, yet you are as stuffed full of opinions as a puritan preacher.’

Hodge regarded him impassively.

‘I think you will enjoy your foreign travels.’

‘Enough bandying words,’ said Smith, standing abruptly. ‘Here. Take this.’

And he handed Nicholas a sword.

Of course Nicholas had many a time taken down his father’s old sword above the fireplace, when his father was not about. It felt as heavy as a sack of grain, and as he well knew, was long-rusted in its sheath.

Now Smith handed him a very different article.

‘An Iberian blade,’ he said, ‘finest Toledo steel.’

Hodge chuckled. ‘Seems funny we’re going to fight the Spaniards with their own swords.’

Stanley eyed him askance. ‘The Spaniards will be fighting alongside us.’

Hodge’s mouth fell open.

‘Look down the blade,’ said Smith. ‘See the furrow that strengthens it. Is it straight?’

It was as straight as a rule.

‘Now. Stretch out your arm and raise the sword to your shoulder height a dozen times.’

Nicholas began. At the seventh, his shoulder muscles were hot and burning. At the ninth, his arm failed. He angrily let the sword drop, nearly throwing it to the ground.

‘Have a care,’ said Stanley sharply. ‘Never let the point fall, you’ll only blunt it.’

‘I’ll be a bowman,’ said Nicholas. ‘I know a crossbow.’

‘Very useful,’ said Smith neutrally. ‘But crossbows are for foot soldiers. The noble-born use swords, and you are the son of a Knight of England.’

‘I’m not,’ said Hodge.

Smith turned to him. ‘What was your father?’

‘Bit of everythin’, really. Hedgin’ and ditchin’ mostly in the winter, shepherdin’ in the summer. He could smith too.’

‘Truly a man of universal talents,’ said Stanley.

Hodge fixed him with a stare. ‘I’ll not have you make mock of my old dad, even if you are a knight and he was none.’

There was an awkward silence. Then Stanley said solemnly, ‘Forgive me, Hodge.’

Hodge nodded.

‘Here,’ added the knight. ‘You will learn to use a sword too.’

Hodge took the fine blade tentatively. Surprisingly, though of stockier build, his arm too tired quickly.

‘You see what this means,’ said Smith. ‘A few times you will raise your sword to parry the enemy’s thrust. And then one more parry, and you will fail, and you will die. In a battle, this will happen within the first minute.’

Nicholas hung his head.

‘Despair,’ said Stanley quietly but crisply, ‘is not among the knightly virtues. Raise you head, lad, and attend. You too, Hodge.’

Smith reached for another bag, a lumpy hessian sack.

‘Now we are past the coast of Brittany, it will be another two weeks of sail to Cadiz. Perhaps three, and certainly there will be more rough weather. But you will be too exhausted to fret over that.’

He indicated two barrels close by.

‘Our small beer. By day five it will taste like horse piss, but you will drink it the same. You will need it.’

He held open the sack before them.

‘Contents: sixty barley loaves, twelve flitches of bacon, four heavy cheeses, one flagon of vile wine. These are our rations until Cadiz, where we will take on more of the same. Also figs, dates, almonds, and oranges which will do the job of the scurvy grass until Malta. Spanish sailors get less of the Dutch disease. You will neither thirst nor starve, but you will have an appetite. Why? Because you will be working to put beef on your bones for the next four weeks. What we call your sword-muscles.

‘Strip to the waist.’

Smith and Stanley then prodded their white torsos as they shivered in the wind, flesh like a plucked fowl. Hodge retained a bit of meat. Nicholas was as thin as a pikestaff.

‘Saint John have mercy,’ muttered Smith. ‘Well, leave off your shirts. You’ll heat up soon enough. Take these staves.’

For half an hour on the tilting deck, Smith and Stanley had the boys raising and sweeping the staves over their heads like swords, lifting them one-handed, and finally batting at each other, slash and parry. By the end of that time, the boys’ arms were aching like fury and screaming for rest.

It didn’t help that some of the brawny mariners had come to watch. Ears gleaming with gold rings, mighty forearms inked with strange devices of mermaids and anchors and random symbols of good fortune, they stood nearby laughing and hurling abuse.

‘What ye doing, lads, swatting flies?’

‘They couldn’t fight off a pigmy with a straw!’

‘That’s a pretty couple of lilywhite lady’s maids you’ve got with you there, sir knights!’ called another. ‘But pray, where are their bubbies?’

‘You’ll hear worse insults than that in the heat of battle,’ grinned Stanley.

‘Half an hour by the sun,’ said Smith, scowling at the boys’ exhaustion. ‘When the Turks come to Malta, how long will they fight us? For a morning? For the daylight hours only? No. All day and all night, every day, every night.’

The boys drooped and panted, covered in sweat.

Smith gave them each a chunk of bread and a glug of small beer, and then told Nicholas to attack him with the stave. The boy flailed wide and at the perfect instant, the knight simply stepped backwards. The stave swept past him, Nicholas twisted after it, and Smith tripped him to the deck.

The knight glared down. ‘Which corporeal part of me were you trying to strike, lad?’

Nicholas hauled himself up on all fours, his knees and left hand painfully scuffed where he had hit the planks. The mariners’ uproarious laughter echoed in his ears, until drowned out by the master bellowing at them to get back to work or they’d feel his whip.

‘My upper arm?’ mocked Smith. ‘Which would be armoured anyway. First lesson. A blade will get to your enemy ten times more often with a straight thrust than a wide slash. One step backwards is enough to avoid such a slashing blow, but a long thrust with your weight behind it … Your man will have to take two, three steps backwards. That is far harder. If there’s a wall, breastwork, another man behind him, it’s impossible. You’ve got him.

‘So what if you’ve got no sword? What if it’s dropped or broken?’

The boys were silent.

‘You use anything you can lay your hands on. Your sword is broken? Throw the jagged hilt in your enemy’s face, and then come on after it. You inflict as much damage as possible, as quickly as possible. You go for his eyes, his throat, his stones. You want him out of the fight, and fast. For there will be many more of them coming on behind. You show no quarter, as your enemy will show no quarter.’

Nicholas felt as if his brain was already filling up, but Smith went on relentlessly.

‘There is only one kick you will need. The forward kick, planting your foot square in your man’s chest and shoving him back.’ He demonstrated swiftly on Hodge, who grunted out air and tottered backwards. Stanley grabbed him to stop him toppling back over the rail.

‘Any other kick, you will lose your balance, expose your side, end up facing the wrong way — and with a Turkish blade in your guts. Your feet are for standing on, not kicking. Mules kick. Once in a while you might stamp on a man’s foot. That hurts him. But by that time you’ll be so close to, you’ll know what he had for breakfast.

‘Never, ever, ever use your bare fist. A knight with a broken hand is useless. Guard your hand well. Never throw idle punches like a drunken varlet in the street. Here, boy. Punch me as hard as you can.’

Nicholas, knees still stinging from where Smith had tripped him, needed no second bidding. He punched out hard. Smith could easily have dodged the punch, but he took it full on the breastbone. Nicholas pulled back his bunched fist with a gasp of pain.

‘See?’ said Smith. ‘It hurt you more than me. I’ll have a small bruise tomorrow but no more. Why? Not because you’ve no more meat on you than a sparrow — though you haven’t. But it’s a very, very rare man indeed who can really throw a hard punch. Forget it. It’s a fool’s fighting. Whereas to seize a sturdy oak joint stool and clout a fellow in the sconce. That would show some wit.

‘So: use an object. You hear me? Never, ever use your fist. Always-’ his voice rose to a sudden roar — ‘seize the nearest object!’

And at the same time as he bellowed these words, Smith seized the wooden stave from Hodge’s hands and charged at Nicholas like a maddened bull.

It happened in the blink of a bird’s eye, the twitch of a wren’s tail. The boy had time to glance about — fear did this, they said later, fear slowed the sun on the dial and gave you time. There was only one thing within reach, the corner of an empty hemp sack weighed down under a coil of rope. Nicholas saw the end of Smith’s stave driving hard at his belly and knew Smith would not stop. He meant to injure him.

His only weapon of defence, a scrap of hessian, flew up in Smith’s face. At the same time Nicholas twisted and the stave struck his bare flesh aslant, only lightly grazing it in passing. He fell on the stave and gripped it, until Smith wrenched it back with his far greater strength and left the boy’s hands burning from the friction.

Smith said, ‘See? You fought off an armed man with only a bit of hopsack.’

‘Not just a man either,’ said Nicholas. ‘A Knight Grand Cross of St John.’

Smith cuffed him on the side of his head with a great paw.

The closest he came to praise.

All that day the rules were drummed into them. Never use your fists. Kick but rarely. Thrust, don’t slash. Any hard object can kill a man. Care for your sword. Go for eyes, throat and stones. One backward step may be as good as a shield.

There were harder lessons the next day, and the next. Never leave an enemy merely stunned or injured. Kill him. Never go to the defence of a wounded comrade before one still fighting. He will do the same by you.

And there were the rules of chivalry. Never hurt a woman, always defend her. Nor child nor beardless boy. Never insult or spit on the enemy dead. Always honour and bury your own.

‘Beyond that,’ said Stanley, ‘there are many oaths and vows that bind a sworn Knight. But if you still mean to fight with us at Malta-’

‘We do.’

‘Then you will fight only as gentlemen volunteers.’

‘I will be a Knight of St John after.’

‘It takes years.’

‘I’ve got years.’

It was after dark with the ship sailing slow over a starlit sea before the boys finally devoured their evening ration of bread and cheese and bacon and fell asleep almost instantly. Smith and Stanley let them sleep for ten hours that night, they were so exhausted. They would be just as exhausted tomorrow night, but then they would have only eight hours. The night after, seven. By Malta, they would have learnt to live on five.

They murmured to each other of how they had gone to England for sacks of gold, for cases of guns, for knightly volunteers, and come back with a bundle of swords, a couple of purses, and two errant boys who had hardly raised a sword in their lives. A pretty success. They could guess the Grand Master’s verdict all too well. His words stung in their ears like imagined hail.

Yet tonight the sky was clear and studded with stars, the wind gentle from the west, making hardly a sound in the sails. Only the gentle swish of the bow wave below them.

The knights prayed to God for wind, for storm, for tempest. Anything but this damnable pacific calm, anything to hasten them. For they felt it in their bones.

The enemy was sailing too.

The boys fought with staves, they did endless squats, they pulled themselves up ropes and rigging and climbed to the fighting top, the master’s sour objections being silenced with gold coin. They ate their grim rations like young wolves, and on the fifth day they asked to do more sword-arm raises. Each did twelve.

After a week, Smith showed them how to wear a helmet. First he settled his own rounded morion on Nicholas’s head without its wadding inside, and then struck him lightly on the crown. It rang, and hurt.

‘Quite so,’ he said. ‘A helmet without good wadding or bombast is useless. Stuff it well.’

He packed it tight, set it on the boy’s head again, and struck hard. Nicholas reeled instinctively, eyes tight shut — but barely felt discomfort.

‘And if you’ve helmet on, don’t forget you can butt the other fellow in the face hard enough to blind him. Two pieces of armour, and two only, protect you most. Helmet and breastplate. For the rest, ’tis better your arm or leg does not encounter a Turkish blade. For you know which will come off best.’

‘The blade will come off best,’ said Stanley, ‘but your arm will come off easily also.’

‘Spare us your labouring wit, brother knight.’

‘My wit is mostly ’armless. Like a knight careless in battle.’

‘I beg you.’

‘Like a dissolved Parliament, his members have departed.’

‘I beg you,’ repeated Smith.

Stanley sighed. ‘Had I not been a knight, I would have made a royal court jester.’

There was silence.