The Great Siege

3

On the morning of the 18th May, Nicholas was on the walls with Hodge when a Spanish soldier ahead of them suddenly stood very stiff-backed, staring out to sea. He was as still as a hunting dog on the trace.

They raced to his side. ‘What? What?’

He said nothing, still staring. He was young, twenty-two or so, and his eyes were good. They stared also. Nothing. No, but … wait. The blue horizon there … what was that? As if flecked with white. As if edged with white horses. But on so calm a day …

Everything seemed to go silent, time stopped. And then they saw them. Sails.

The Spanish soldier crossed himself. ‘They are coming.’

Nicholas couldn’t move. He thought of a hare, frozen under the fixed, yellow-eyed gaze of a wolf.

Then there rose up over the horizon, some twelve miles distant, great sail upon sail. They stretched from left to right, from north to south, a myriad of sails, white and red, green and yellow. They came on slow and steady, the wind but sparsely with them, their lashed slaves rowing hard. More appeared. The horizon was nothing now but a huge crescent of sails and just discerned galleys.

‘Sweet Jesu,’ breathed the soldier. ‘How many?’

‘Hodge,’ said Nicholas urgently, ‘find Smith and Stanley, bring them here.’

Hodge vanished. Nicholas raced the other way, down the stone steps to the street.

An old woman caught the look on his face, and seized his arm. ‘You have seen them?’

Nicholas pulled free. ‘Yes,’ he said.

The old woman dropped her bundle and covered her face with her hands and wept.

He raced on.

La Valette received the message without expression.

The church bells tolled and the startled pigeons flapped up into the blue air. Many citizens sank to their knees and prayed. From below the walls came a groaning and creaking of the mighty capstan at the mouth of Galley Creek, more than twenty men heaving at the windlasses, and the huge chain rose dripping from the seabed like some creature of the deep. Barefoot fishermen rowed out and pushed wooden rafts beneath it in the centre where it sagged, lashing them all together with smaller chains and the strongest ropes.

San Angelo with its moat dividing it from Birgu was a supremely defensible island, linked to the town only by a high arched viaduct. But now Birgu was cut off as well, an island surrounded by high walls, those on the Galley Creek side inaccessible anyway. Only the landward walls could realistically be attacked by infantry, though the massive Turkish guns might reach anywhere. It was infantry that took a town, and it was the landward walls of Birgu that must hold them.

Nicholas raced back up to the walls.

The different langues were despatched to their posts, the Spanish tercios being held in reserve. San Angelo itself was left virtually unmanned for now. The first knights would die fighting for the town.

The langues of Provence, Auvergne and France ranged up along the south-facing walls, looking out over the desolate and unpeopled country. Castile held the mighty bastion next to them, and Aragon, Catalonia and Navarre held the westward curtain wall running up to San Angelo, overlooking Kalkara Creek. The small number of Germans occupied the eastward walls over Galley Creek.

So few of them, stretched so thin.

The Grand Fleet had sailed out of the Bosphorus on 29th March, exactly as Don John of Austria had known. The embarkation of an armada this size could hardly be a secret. Spies raced ahead overland, travelling by relays of horses, beacon fires dancing from one rocky headland to the next.

Mustafa Pasha stood lean on the sterncastle of his flagship, Al-Mansour, stony eyes in the wrinkled sallow face looking westward. The more aristocratic Piyale Pasha, charming and black-bearded, might have seemed his junior, but Suleiman had commanded them to work together as joint commanders.

‘You can only have one commander,’ said Mustafa.

Suleiman looked at him keenly. ‘Would you serve as second?’

Mustafa lowered his eyes. ‘As you decree, Shadow of the Sun.’

Suleiman had viewed the departure of his fleet from the Golden Horn. He felt some regret that he was not commanding himself. But let Mustafa and Piyale first take Malta, then he himself would lead his victorious army on into the heart of Europe. How sweet it would be to ride into Rome.

His eyes surveyed the hundred and eighty-one ships, a hundred and thirty of them oared war galleys, with unlikely names such as The Pearl and The Sun, The Gate of Neptune, The Rose of Algiers, The Golden Lemon Tree. Thirty huge troop-carrying galliots, each carrying six hundred men. Eleven fat-bodied merchant ships laden with supplies. Six thousand barrels of gunpowder, thirteen hundred cannon balls. Six thousand Janizaries, acknowledged even by the Christ-worshippers as the finest fighting troops in the world. Four thousand Bektaşis, willing shock troops, longing for martyrdom. Nine thousand cavalry Sipahis, and many thousands of paid peasant levies, quite expendable.

As the fleet moved majestically down the Bosphorus, from the minarets came the ancient cry of the desert in all its stark certainty.

‘There is no God but God, and Mohammed is the Prophet of God!’

As if in answer, offshore winds caught the sails of the galleys and they billowed eagerly forward, the green pennants with their embroidered gold crescents streaming likewise from the mastheads.

In time the armada’s vast numbers had been swelled even further by thousands more North African corsairs. Even as they sailed south across the Aegean, outlaws and bandits joined them, slipping out from remote Greek or Levantine inlets, leaving unknown islands, the dens of thieves and robbers, to pursue a richer prey, matters of divinity far from their minds. Christian? Muslim? What did they care? They would sail with the devil himself if there was gold in it. They were cut-throats, opportunists, nationless men, who inspired fables among the vulgar of heroic deeds or fanciful freedoms upon the boundless ocean. They were savages to a man, without kin or country, honour or nobility, the dregs of mankind. They would latch on to the Ottoman fleet like fleas on a dog, bringing nothing but their knives and their murderous hearts.

From the walls of San Angelo they could now see the oars slowly rising and falling, unhurried, implacable. Stanley said they were fifteen miles away, not twelve. They would be here in three hours or so.

‘We should go.’

Yet still they stood, even the two knights, as if fascinated by this vast armada of death that filled the sea from northern to southern horizon. The Grand Fleet of the greatest empire on earth.

‘Your eyes sparkle, Master Ingoldsby,’ said Stanley, glancing at him. ‘As if this were a spectacle sent for our entertainment.’

‘It is magnificent, for all that.’

‘It is coming to kill us.’

The guns of San Angelo roared out three shots in quick succession. Only a moment later, St Elmo answered with three identical shots, and the standard of St John was raised over the battlements. A few minutes after the same volley came from five miles inland: from the ancient walled capital of Mdina in the rocky heart of the island, the small proud city on the hill, with its winding shadowy streets and its frigid nobility in their dark palaces. Valette had little faith in them. They would keep to their own.

The Grand Master understood well what the Turkish strategy would be. Direct attack on all fronts, by land and sea. With such numerical superiority that was inevitable. But the focus of the attack would clearly be the Grand Harbour and San Angelo itself. The Knights were far too few in number to oppose a general landing. It would all be about their resistance to siege from within the fortified town. Until relief came, from God alone knew where.

Nevertheless La Valette ordered the French knight, Marshal Copier, to assemble a small troop of cavalry and reconnoitre the coast. With an Ottoman force commanded by that most cunning of adversaries, Mustafa Pasha, there was no knowing what tricks and diversions might be planned. The Turks knew even now that their mission would not be easy. They knew the Knights of old.

Copier was ordered to harass any landing forces from a distance, but more importantly to glean all intelligence possible, and retreat to San Angelo in good time.

He took command of six mounted Spanish soldiers, and summoned knight volunteers before the Palace. Soon he was joined by his fellow countryman, the Chevalier Adrien de la Rivière, the Portuguese knight, Pedro Mezquita, sitting high and haughty in his decorated saddle as befitted a knight who was also the nephew of the Governor of Mdina, and the novice of his langue, Bartolomeo Faraone.

Nicholas begged Stanley to let him ride out with them.

‘These are knights and veteran soldiers, boy. This is a cavalry sortie, and very fast moving.’

‘I can ride as well as any in Shropshire.’

‘You have no horse.’

‘Your stables are full of them. I saw a fine white mare.’

‘It is safer out there,’ said Smith, hoping to dissuade the young hothead. ‘This is where the fight will be.’

‘I’ll be back for it,’ said Nicholas. ‘But I want to ride out.’

‘What of Hodge?’

Hodge looked unhappy.

Nicholas said, ‘He can sit on a palfrey and fairly imitate a sack of mangels. Can you not, Hodge?’

‘Me and horses don’t get on,’ said Hodge.

Stanley said, ‘Very well, Hodge, you shall be my squire, and as they say in Rome, the servus servorum dei.’

‘What’s that when it’s put in English then?’

‘It means you’ll do what you’re told.’ He turned on Nicholas. ‘Well, get to the stables, lad. You’ll have no armour, and you know nothing of turning a lance. Only your short sword, which is no cavalry sword. So make sure you choose a fast mount.’

Nicholas ran.

‘Was that wise?’ muttered Smith.

‘He’ll be back in a wink,’ said Stanley with a grin. ‘Grand Marshal Copier will never take him. Let him learn.’

Trotting down to the south gate, Copier reined in his troop of nine and glared back over his shoulder.

‘That man at the back. Ride up, sir!’

Nicholas came up smartly on his white mare.

‘Who the devil may you be?’

‘English gentleman and volunteer, sir!’

‘Good. Now back to your wall, and quick about it.’

‘I was told I could ride with you.’

‘Well, you can’t. Who told you? The Grand Master?’

‘No,’ said Nicholas, ‘the Chevalier Edward St-’

‘I only take orders from the Grand Master and from God.’ Copier heeled his horse. The troop moved forward.

Nicholas rode after them.

A few last refugees came in through the gate before Copier and his troop rode out. Infants and aged women, skinny dogs and scraggy chickens in wicker cages, pitiful possessions borne on donkeys and primitive carts, or in wooden wheelbarrows with creaking wheels.

They looked up at the squadron of cavalry with their lances and muskets, long swords and tall helmets, so fine in the sun. One old woman made the sign of the cross in the air.

Outside the gate, Copier looked back again and bellowed with anger. ‘God damn you for a fool and a knave, I ordered you back inside!’

‘I came to Malta as a volunteer,’ said Nicholas. ‘I am not under your command. I ride where I will.’

Just in front of him, Pedro Mezquita suppressed a laugh. This English boy had spirit.

‘Then you are not under my command, and you are not under my protection!’ roared Copier, red-faced and furious. ‘The Turk lands on this island in two hours, and he will have your balls for his breakfast!’

He spurred furiously and his startled horse leapt forward. ‘Troop, at all speed!’

They were just about to leave the walls of San Angelo and row over to St Elmo when Stanley paused. ‘They’re turning.’

‘What?’

‘Look. They’re turning.’

It was true. The Ottoman crescent was sailing southwards, away from the entrance to the Grand Harbour.

‘Why the devil?’

‘They must be going south round to Marsasirocco. It’s the only other bay will take ’em. Then coming back overland.’

Without another word, Smith went to inform La Valette. But La Valette already knew. Smith thought he even saw something like a smile play on the Grand Master’s lips. A rare occurrence indeed.

‘It will be harder for them, Sire,’ said Smith, puzzled. ‘To carry all those great guns overland.’

‘Quite so. But several months ago, I had one of our double agents in Constantinople convince their Admiral Piyale that St Elmo was ferociously served with the best cannon, and that the gregale, our north-east wind, would play havoc with their fleet in the east-facing Marsamuscetto.’

‘But the gregale barely blows in the summer months.’

Now La Valette was unmistakably smiling.

Smith said, ‘Mustafa Pasha must know this. He knows every bay, every wind and current in the Mediterranean.’

‘But Piyale does not. This tells us something of their command structure for the campaign. Clearly Piyale is commander of the fleet, as Mustafa is commander of the land forces.’

‘You can only have one commander.’

‘When Suleiman was younger, he would have commanded himself. But now he is old, and growing foolish. Dividing his command was the first mistake. Sailing for Marsasirocco, they have made two.’

Smith regarded his Grand Master with more reverence than ever, if that were possible. This great battle was one that La Valette had already been fighting for months. Years.