The Great Siege

16

‘What a bloody baptism was there,’ murmured Smith.

‘He has no after-battle sadness at such slaughter?’

‘But little.’

‘He is a soldier to the bone. If not a soldier, he could have grown into a killer of the worst sort, this country boy.’

Smith said, ‘He’d have survived on the roads of England too. Till he came to the hangman’s noose and danced the Tyburn jig.’

They brooded a little on what was in part their creation.

‘And to think, Fra John, that we provoked a fight back there in Cadiz to give them martial experience.’

‘He fights like a devil. What do the infidel call it? A fasset al-afrit. A dust devil. One who moves like the wind.’

‘There’s no meat on his bones,’ agreed Stanley, ‘and the strength of his sword arm is no match for a knight’s. Or a Janizary’s. But his speed is astonishing. When he fights, he moves in a world where every other man in his eyes seems to move like an aged pensioner. He darts in and cuts ’em open before they even see him. I glimpsed him at work once or twice. An eerie sight.’

‘Tell him nothing of this.’

Stanley shook his head. ‘Didn’t they say old Friar Bacon invented a potion which made him invisible, so he could pass among men and not be seen by them? This boy moves so fast in a fight, it’s as if he has drunk this potion.’

They replenished their water jars from a source the goatboy showed them, and sailed again the following afternoon. They would have to sail and bail all the way. It would be three days to Sardinia, three more to Sicily, and then a day south to Malta. Only a week more and it would begin.

Yet Lady Day was far gone now, it was well into April, and the Turk would be upon them soon. The knights had a dread of coming into Messina and hearing that the Turk was already on Malta, the island had fallen, and this time there had been no mercy for the Knights of St John. They pictured their severed heads already decorating the battlements of the poor fort of San Angelo, so meagre a successor to the great fortified city of their beloved Rhodes.

The six days to Sardinia and Sicily were uneventful, slow and tense. They called over to passing merchant ships in a macaronic mix of Latin tongues.

‘Les Turcs a Malta?’

Mariners called back, ‘No, signores. No escucho no armas de fuoco, no cannones. Todo paz. Paz e benevolenza.’

All is peace. Peace and goodwill.

They grimaced and hastened on to Messina.

The ancient Sicilian harbour was a clamorous babel of voices, ships loading and unloading, gulls crying, crowds jostling. The master of the Swan got a good price for the Spanish merino wool that he had picked up in Cadiz. He would take nothing on to Malta but his troublesome, stout-hearted passengers. He would set them ashore in the Grand Harbour, and then hurry back west as fast as he could, leaving the mayhem of this holy war behind him. He and his mariners were already thinking longingly of the alehouses of Bristol.

Few other masters and shipmen around the harbour showed any interest.

‘Malta?’ they grunted. ‘No trade there.’ And no more.

No others were sailing south. Many quickly changed the subject, no keener to talk of the island than to bring a cat on board ship, set sail on a Sunday, or talk of a storm in fair weather. Malta had become a name accursed.

There was some small encouragement for them, regarding the one naval commander among all the Christians who was truly feared by the Turk.

‘Is Romegas still sailing?’ asked Smith.

A Sicilian gave a slow, guarded smile. ‘Ay. Night and day, the Chevalier Romegas is still sailing.’

They had a short time before departure, while the crew laded the Swan with water and provisions, so found a hostel close by. A dark panelled interior, pleasantly cool, and four cups of wine.

‘And none of your mindless belligerence this time,’ Smith said to Nicholas. ‘Nor making love-lorn eyes at any barmaid.’

Nicholas gave him a look.

At the rear of the hostel was a private room, though the door was ajar. A fruity, well-mannered voice was saying,

‘Slay me, but if I had not spent so much time a-dallying with the Lady Maria, or her equally delectable sister, the Lady Catherine, I should have been at Malta a month ago. It is the story of my life, Don Luis.’

Stanley and Smith exchanged glances.

‘That voice is familiar,’ murmured the latter.

‘I am ever torn between the burning of the flesh and the cool of the monastery,’ continued the fruity voice. ‘And then of course, the clarion call of war.’

‘That will be for your brother to decide,’ said the older voice of Don Luis.

‘My brother,’ repeated the fruity voice in a sarcastic tone. ‘One might as well await the conversion of the Jews. And Malta will soon be under violent siege.’

Chairs were pushed back, and then there appeared in the doorway the venerable figure of an old Spanish nobleman in a fine black surcoat, a heavy gold chain around his neck. Yet he stood back to let his superior pass through the doorway first. And into the room where they sat stepped a startling peacock of a man. Only some twenty years of age, immaculately bearded, with a pale face and high cheekbones, he was clad in a pure white velvet suit with a small jewelled belt and dagger at his waist, and soft white leather top boots reaching to just above his knee. If you hadn’t heard him talking of his mistresses, you would very much think that this was one of those gentlemen who preferred the company of other gentlemen.

He held his nose so high in the air that he would never have noticed the four scruffy wine-bibbers at their table, had not Smith and Stanley, to Nicholas’s astonishment, stood up the instant this ridiculous coxcomb appeared, and bowed very low. Nicholas then saw, to his even greater astonishment, that the white-suited coxcomb was wearing a small silver Cross of St John around his neck.

He looked at the two bowed knights and arched one immaculate jet-black eyebrow.

‘We do not recognise the crowns of your heads, gentlemen. Show us your faces, if you please.’

Smith and Stanley stood once more, and the coxcomb winced exaggeratedly at their appearance.

‘Brother Knights, we see,’ he said, and gave a minuscule nod. ‘Greetings.’

‘Majesty,’ said the knights.

Majesty. Nicholas swallowed. The fellow was a prince, of royal blood! He had never set eyes upon one of God’s appointed royalty before. Instinctively he and Hodge both bowed their heads, but they needn’t have troubled. The Prince did not even notice their existence.

‘You sail for Malta?’ said the Prince.

‘Yes, Majesty. Within the hour.’

‘Then we sail with you. Our passage here has been damnably difficult, waylaid with the most tiresome distractions.’ He drew off his white kid gloves once more and used them to fan his face. ‘Pray, finish your wine before we sail.’

The knights drank fast. Nicholas and Hodge gulped theirs even faster. In the very presence of royalty.

The Prince turned his head, and wrinkled his nose.

‘On reflection,’ he said, ‘we shall wait outside, in the purer air. Our noses will thank us for it.’ He smiled beneficently upon them as he left. ‘Pray do not hurry. Surely the Turk himself is coming but leisurely.’

Then he and the old courtier Don Luis were gone.

‘Who was that?’

Smith stepped up to the door to be sure that the Prince that departed.

‘That,’ said Stanley quietly, ‘was the natural-born brother of the King of Spain.’

Nicholas and Hodge gaped.

‘Truly,’ said Stanley. ‘We step into the first tavern in Messina, and there he is. But not so remarkable, really, since he too is a Knight of St John.’

‘Formally speaking,’ growled Smith. ‘A deal of use that fop would be when it came to war. And the meaning of the vow of chastity seems to have escaped him.’

‘He is not the only knight to have erred there,’ said Stanley. ‘And by all the evidence, he is on his way to Malta to fight with his brothers.’

Smith sneered. ‘You can well imagine what terror the sight of so gorgeous a creature would strike into the hearts of your battle-hardened Janizaries.’

‘You mean,’ said Nicholas, still digesting this magical encounter, ‘he is the brother of King Philip of Spain?’

‘Half-brother. His father, like Philip’s, was the great Charles V. Philip’s mother, of course, was Queen Isabella of Portugal. Our Prince’s here was a certain German lady of playful disposition, called Barbara Blomberg.’

‘So playful, indeed,’ said Smith, checking out of the door once more, ‘that some say there is no certainty whatever that her natural son, our friend here in the white velvet, is the son of Charles V at all. He could be the bastard offspring of two or three dozen kings or noblemen from any country in Europe.’

‘What is his name?’ asked Nicholas.

‘His name,’ said Stanley, ‘is Don John of Austria.’

A moment later there came a terrific cry from outside. A cry that was almost a howl. Stanley and Smith were running in an instant, sword in hand. Nicholas and Hodge raced after them.

In the bright Sicilian sunlight, the white-clad figure of Don John of Austria at the harbourside was almost dazzling. He was in no danger. It was but a scrap of paper that had discomposed him. He read it over once more, hand held to his mouth in disbelief. Don Luis stood gravely by, and the message-bearer more awkwardly. All down the street waited Don John’s retinue, his personal bodyguard, and the porters for his numerous chests of clothes, weapons and personal accoutrements. There were three wagonloads, piled high.

Don John turned on the two knights as they ran up, hardly aware of who they were, and said glassy-eyed, ‘My brother, God bless him and save him and make his reign long and prosperous — my brother, has decided that it would not be politic for us to proceed to Malta at this time. We are summoned home to Spain, there to await his further pleasure.’

‘It is understandable that His Majesty should-’ began Don Luis.

But he was cut short by another infuriated cry, as the Prince momentarily lost his royal froideur, crumpled up the letter and dashed it the ground. Just for a moment, Nicholas saw him not as a ridiculous coxcomb, but as a passionate young man only a few years older than him, with all the same dreams of glory.

The Prince seized Stanley by the shoulder, his gaze still distant.

‘I will fight the Turk, I will fight him. I will make my name a byword for war, and we will conquer. Fra, Fra …’

‘Fra Edward, sire. Fra Edward Stanley, Knight Grand Cross.’

‘Fra Eduardo.’ Don John released his grip, a little embarrassed, and patted Stanley’s rucked shirt back into place. ‘Damn it all, Sir Englishman, how I envy you your common blood.’

‘Common as muck, sire. Descended merely from English nobility, and the Earls of Derby.’

Don John smiled faintly, a moment of fraternal warmth. Nicholas saw then that he was proud but not arrogant, of haughty bearing but not cold or unapproachable, and he looked upon the world around him with a bright sparkle of pleasure in his eyes. Then the mask of royalty snapped back on, and he was as formal as before. He clicked his fingers rapidly, and the message-bearer scurried forward, head bowed, and retrieved the crumpled letter from the ground. The boy wiped it on his own sleeve lest it should have gathered any dirt, folded it carefully, and handed it back to Don Luis.

Don John pulled on his white kid gloves again.

‘We should give thanks to God for the wise caution of our dear brother,’ he said crisply. ‘Our brother the King, who is indeed so cautious that he will not relieve himself in his close stool before it has first been checked for sharks.’

He smiled around, and for the first time his gaze descended on Nicholas and Hodge.

‘These are your squires?’

‘We are gentlemen volunteers,’ interrupted Nicholas firmly, breaking at least three cardinal rules of etiquette in a single blow. Don John merely raised an eyebrow. These were but red-faced, dusty-booted English churls, from a barbaric Protestant island famed for nothing but sheep’s wool, heresy and fog. They could hardly be expected to know the intricacies of Spanish court etiquette. Besides, there was a fire in this one’s eye that he liked. He had always loved the impetuous, the ardent-hearted — so unlike that watchful, wary, frosty-arsed throne-squatter that was his damned dear brother.

‘Gentleman volunteers,’ he repeated, and bowed to the lad. ‘We crave your pardon.’

Nicholas could think of nothing to say. Stanley almost choked.

Don John sighed. ‘We envy you. Vaya con Dios, my English volunteers.’ He raised a gloved hand. ‘You and all my brother knights. For this coming battle of Malta will be hard.’

‘May it please your excellency …’

Don John nodded, allowing Stanley a question.

‘Does the Court of Spain have any intelligence of the Grand Turk’s progress?’

‘The Turk left Stamboul three weeks ago. Twenty-ninth of March. He will be at Malta any day now. Any hour.’ He smiled, but not unkindly. ‘I should delay you no longer. You are needed there.’

As for him, it was back to the slim white arms of the Lady Maria, the stiff cold court of Madrid, and the waiting.

‘But our day will come,’ he murmured.

The English party had already bowed and gone.

‘Three weeks ago! Jesu save us.’

‘I expect to hear the roar of guns in the south at any moment.’

Smith said, ‘Only thank God we have not heard them yet.’

‘They sail into a contrary wind much of the way.’

‘They will be here in less than another week, all the same.’

Racing after them, Nicholas instinctively dropped his hand down onto his sword hilt. It would come soon now.