The Great Siege

1

In the morning Nicholas was called to another audience.

‘I am a busy man,’ said La Valette. ‘I have four hundred knights under my command, Spanish soldiers, citizen militia, there is Holy War to prosecute, and yet for some reason I continually find myself speaking with a single young English commoner and volunteer. Is this a right use of my time?’

It was always hard to know whether La Valette’s sense of humour was very dry, or he had none at all.

‘You spoke foul language, I hear. In Turkish captivity.’

Nicholas bowed his head. ‘I am sorry for it, Sire.’

‘Are you? Are you indeed?’ He drummed his fingers on the desk. ‘It is between you and your conscience how you pollute your tongue. But for the morale that you have given the city with that juvenile insult, the courage you have put in their hearts, even the coarse laughter you have provided for these earth-born peasants — here is a gift.’

A servant came forward holding a complete steel breastplate. Nicholas was speechless.

The servant placed the breastplate on Nicholas’s chest and he held it there while the fellow laced it top and sides to the backplate. It was very comfortably wadded with felt and leather. Hot, for sure. You’d keep out of the sun if you could. But not heavy, not really. Beautifully balanced fore and aft.

‘German,’ said La Valette. ‘Belonged to a young novice who died of a fever last year. It will not stop a musket ball at short range, naturally, but even that will be slowed. Which might make the difference between a wound and a mortal wound. Otherwise it will save you from many a cut and thrust. You have no helmet?’

He shook his head.

‘Well, there are none to spare. But there will be. When knights and soldiers being to die, you will have a helmet of your own.’

‘And Hodge?’

‘Hodge?’

‘My companion.’

‘Of course not. He may wear a leather breastplate if he finds it. Fine armour hardly befits the lowborn, any more than fine manners or high duties.’

‘He has a noble heart.’

‘Perhaps.’ La Valette’s eyes were steely. ‘Now assemble the rest of your possessions, your valued Hodge, and be ready at Galley Creek within the hour. You are crossing to Elmo this morning. The fight is about to begin, and you will be worthy.’

Nicholas ran back to the house in the Street of the Bakers and Maddalena was there, and Hodge ready with his pack.

She looked admiringly at his gleaming breastplate.

‘You go over to Elmo?’

‘Yes,’ he said hurriedly, bundling up his cinquedea and wallet in his blanket roll.

‘The guns of the Turks will fire on us soon.’

He turned and looked at her. ‘I know. I can hardly bear — How will I know … you are alive?’

Hodge stood and mumbled, ‘I’ll wait for you outside.’

She smiled.

‘No, truly, I must know. How will I know that a cannonball has not-’

‘By pigeon? No, you will not. I cannot go up on the walls nor parade about on the parapets of San Angelo waving to you.’

He seized her thin shoulders and almost shook her, his grip so tight and his eyes burning so ardent that her heart burned within her likewise, though she did all she could to keep her smile cool and composed. ‘My father …’ she said, glancing over her shoulder.

He let her go. ‘I must know.’

The flame in his blue eyes was so devouring, so beautiful.

‘Each evening …’ she said slowly. She thought. ‘There is a low wall above Kalkara Creek, by the ditch over by San Angelo. You can see Elmo from there, so you can see there from Elmo. When I was younger, before I wore the veil, I used to go down there with Mateo and Tito and they’d catch little fish, and I’d beg them to put them back in the water. Sometimes I will go back there, at sunset. Not every day. But sometimes at sunset, look for me there.’

‘In your blue dress?’

‘It is my only dress,’ she said a trifle haughtily.

‘You promise?’

She kissed him swiftly. ‘You should go now.’

He pulled her to him, her father in the house or no, and kissed her deeply. They kissed for too long, and she pushed him away. He grabbed his blanket roll and looked once more at her and said, ‘At sunset. Be there.’

‘Go!’

As she watched him down the street and round the corner, Hodge stepping out from the shade to meet him, she smiled at the thought of his last kiss, the feel of him, and touched her fingers to her lips.

Captain Miranda stood at the head of his troop of thirty tercios, and among the thirty or so more knights with Stanley and Smith, Nicholas recognised the talkative Chevalier Lanfreducci of the Italian Langue, and the young Chevalier Bridier de la Gordcamp of France, no more than twenty years of age.

They greeted him and Hodge with nods.

‘The Turkish cannon will soon be roaring at Birgu,’ joked Lanfreducci as they boarded the boat for the half-mile crossing. ‘For pity’s sake, let us flee to Elmo and save our tender skins!’

In the boat across, Bridier de la Gordcamp looked hard at Nicholas. He was a gentle-looking knight, almost girlish, with waving fair hair and blue eyes, and a voice so soft and low that one had to strain to hear him. Stanley had said that he was one of the holiest and most innocent-souled of all the brothers, and kept vigil entire nights long in the conventual church, his knees upon the cold flagstones, sword upturned in the shape of a cross clasped before him, eyes fixed on the great crucifix over the altar. He would pray for the salvation of his soul, and for Christendom, and for all the generations of his noble forebears who had fought Moors and Saracens at Tours and Antioch and Jerusalem, and who had died for the faith at Jerusalem and Acre and at the Horns of Hattin, in the lost Judaean wilderness. It was Bridier’s deepest prayer that he be worthy of his ancestors.

Now the young knight said quietly to Nicholas, fixing him with his innocent blue eyes, ‘You were the one who insulted the Pasha to his face?’

Nicholas looked uncomfortable. The Chevalier de la Gordcamp was no earthy peasant, to find such obscenities humorous. ‘I am sorry for it.’

Bridier said nothing, but gazed out to sea, the wind flicking his fair locks across his face. Then he looked back and said a most uncommon thing. He said, ‘All will be forgiven us, I think, in what is to come.’

Nicholas frowned. It seemed strange theology.

Bridier saw his frown, and said, ‘You remember the woman in the Gospels who had committed adultery. Our Saviour said, Though her sins are many, yet they are forgiven her. For she loved much.’ He looked out to sea again, and smiled a strange smile. ‘Almost as if it does not matter what we love. As long as we love much.’

The Commander of the fort was Luigi Broglia, another Italian. Lanfreducci and he greeted each other like blood brothers.

A great lover of pageantry, with a round smiling face and equally round belly, Broglia looked to Nicholas more like a cook than a commander. In the parade ground, a small band blew trumpets, banged martial drums and waved banners to herald their arrival.

‘What does Broglia think this is,’ growled Smith, ‘the carnival of Venice?’

They were each given tiny, cell-like quarters off the parade ground, truly monastic cells, and then shown the fort.

St Elmo was built of cheap limestone blocks on a star-pattern, and consisted of the small inner parade ground, a chapel, barrack rooms, some stores, and a single narrow keep as part of the western wall. There were no cellars or subterranean tunnels, no sally ports in the walls from which to burst out on attackers unexpectedly, or clear and burn the ditches of any infill.

‘And no defensive lines to fall back on,’ growled the burly Spanish soldier, Captain Miranda. He gestured around. ‘This is it. This is all we have.’

The knights said nothing. St Elmo was not the proudest of Malta’s fortifications.

The single line of defence was the outer walls, surrounded by a deep ditch. The flat-top walls lacked even battlements and embrasures, they had been so crudely and hurriedly built.

‘A good thing the Ottoman fist is to fall on Birgu,’ said Miranda. ‘This place wouldn’t last two days.’

‘But come come, we are men of stout hearts!’ said Luigi Broglia.

His words fell flat. Even Stanley looked uncharacteristically gloomy. Now he examined the Order’s only outlying fort, under hard clear sunlight, it did indeed look a pathetic piece of military architecture.

The only flourishes were the tall cavalier on the seaward side, a form of free-standing keep connected to the main fort by a narrow drawbridge across the ditch, and the outlying defence or ravelin built to La Valette’s orders, capping one of the star’s points and offering a small platform for enfilading fire down one side.

‘If we should face any Turkish attack here,’ said Broglia, still trying to sound optimistic, ‘we will have full supporting fire from our brothers across the water. San Angelo’s guns are less than half a mile off.’

‘San Angelo’s guns will have other targets to aim at,’ said Smith so savagely that Broglia’s round, boyish face fell abruptly.

Aside from the seaward cavalier and the hastily added ravelin, there were no towers, no high places or vantage points, and the heights of Mount Sciberras rose like a gaunt backbone of rock to the west. Turkish guns and musket barrels might point straight down into the fort.

‘They’ll never lug their guns up onto Sciberras,’ said Broglia.

‘Pray it be so,’ said Smith. ‘As defensive positions go, we might as well be sitting in a cherry tree.’

They prayed that night, and in the morning saw with obscure shame and guilt that the guns had indeed been drawn up against Birgu.

Nicholas could think of one thing and one thing only. A beautiful young girl in a pale blue dress, the most beautiful girl in the world. Her kiss. And the black muzzles of the Turkish guns pointing straight at her.

After the farce of the initial assault on Castile, Mustafa had given the order not to hold back.

‘Let the first salvo be the basilisks,’ he told his gunnery master. ‘Two at once. Let them know the power of our siege guns, let them be dismayed, and let them know we are here to win.’

The Turkish gunners wadded their ears with cotton. The moment the long fuse was lit, they scurried back for cover and huddled near the earth, a good distance behind the beasts. There were numerous tales of those who had remained too close, novices who had taken shelter only just behind the earthed-up wheels of a gun, only for the massive recoil to cause the wheels to erupt backwards, and cut them clean in two.

The detonation was an obscenity even to the gunners themselves. It rattled your very skeleton, hollowed in your belly, stunned your heart and brain. But experienced gunners knew an ominous silence was even worse. It meant a faulty fuse or bad powder, and they would have to return to the breech. It was like going up to the flanks of a sleeping dragon, never knowing when it might awake and devour you.

But the first salvo of the two basilisks fired true. The roar was unbelievable in its power. Even across the water at Elmo, the roar of those bronze monsters was terrible. Nicholas prayed with all his soul.

The waters of the Grand Harbour rippled and stirred, the earth shook, and some inland swore they saw birds flying high overhead knocked senseless and falling to the ground. Others clenched their fists and their jaws, fearing their teeth would shatter in their skulls.

In Birgu it was as if hell was erupting.

In the houses, jars smashed to the floor, plaster flaked from the walls, wine barrels wobbled where they stood. Dogs howled, horses reared and tore at their tethers, cats went stiff and wide-eyed and then crept away into corners, children sobbed, weakened roofs fell in. In Sicily, sixty miles north, they heard the noise a few minutes later and thought at first it was Etna.

The massive balls thumped into the southern landwalls, and when the huge plumes of dust finally settled or drifted away, the besiegers saw that one of the two hits had already caused an ominous crack from battlement to midway down.

‘Hit them again,’ said Mustafa. ‘With all the guns, all day long. Never stop except to rest and cool the barrels. Balls of iron then stone then marble, in steady rotation. You know the drill. Give them hell.’

‘Sire, crack opened up below the post of Provence!’

‘Then bag it up, man. Fortify it with everything you’ve got.’

‘We have done, Sire.’

‘Good. What else?’

The soldier looked around uncertainly. ‘Nothing else, Sire.’

‘Then back to your position.’

La Valette looked out grimly from the post of Castile. How he longed to sally out and cut down those infidel gunners where they worked. Faces already black with powder and smoke, slaves of the Sultan, enemies of Christ. Such lightning sallies by the besieged and beleaguered were always good for morale, and for denting that of the enemy. And morale was of incalculable value. The Turks would never know when the next attack might come, in darkness, or the low grey light just before sunrise … But the knights were too few in number. They could not afford it. And any captive the Turks took, they would torture for information, like De la Rivière. Yet who else would be so brave as he?

He squared his shoulders. They would only win through defence, and faith in Christ.

It was growing dark when the Turkish guns finally fell silent.

The sudden silence was deafening, almost worse than the eight-hour barrage. Ears rang. Women sobbed. Babies cried.

And then the work of rebuilding began.

None of Birgu’s walls was down, but many were shaken, and cracks had opened up in several places. La Valette seemed everywhere at once, inspecting damage, prescribing repairs, his calmness and confidence infectious.

An hour later a messenger found him.

‘Sire, the Turks are retreating.’

He frowned. ‘You are mistaken.’

‘They are pulling back their guns.’

The Grand Master ran up the stone steps to the south wall like a thirty-year-old. It was true. By torchlight and lantern light, the Turkish army was undoing its own vast labours, and pulling its guns back from the heights of Santa Margherita.

Some of the younger knights were foolish enough to begin celebrations, but this was no time to celebrate. La Valette silenced them with a word.

This was no retreat. His eyes roved across the land. This was only a change of plan.

The four Englishmen at Elmo were eating simple rations at dusk when the cry came from the walls above them. It was a cry not of triumph but of desolation.

They immediately ran up the steps to the parapet, Stanley and Smith both carrying scabbard and swordbelt. Nicholas arrived first and looked out.

The Turkish army was clearly visible, moving round the head of the Marsa. It made no sense. Not a gun was being left on the Heights of Corradino or Santa Margharita for the bombardment of Birgu. They seemed to be pulling back. And then as they rounded the calm waters at the end of the great harbour, the mounted Sipahi vanguard turned their horses and began the ascent of Mount Sciberras.

‘So,’ said Smith softly, ‘the Ottoman fist is to fall on us first after all.’

‘What will we do?’ said Hodge, wide-eyed.

‘What we always do,’ said Smith. ‘We will fight.’

Stanley already had his hand on his hilt, his customary stance. ‘Come, brothers,’ he said, ‘let us finish our last peaceful supper.’

When they had eaten, Smith wiped his mouth, cleaned his knife on his sleeve, returned it to his belt and looked keenly at Nicholas and said, ‘I have asked you before, boy, but I ask you again — you do not fear to die? For there may still be time to return over the water beneath the headland.’

Instead of answering directly, Nicholas only said with slow reflectiveness, ‘I came here for reasons I do not fully understand.’

‘I fear to die,’ said Hodge bluntly. ‘I do not wish to. I dream of home.’

‘Hodge,’ said Nicholas, turning to him. ‘I will go home with you when this is done.’

Hodge looked at him and said nothing. He knew it was a promise that his master and companion could not keep.

Even La Valette’s flint heart was moved when he understood what was coming next. The citizens of Birgu, the women and children and the innocent, would not be under attack tomorrow. Instead, against all his best predictions and the dictates of military science, the Turks would fall first upon Elmo. Presumably so that they might have free access to the northern harbour of Marsamuscetto. And all Elmo’s defenders would be killed. Within two or three days.

For some reason he thought of that ardent-hearted, insolent English boy. The Ingoldsby boy, only son of his old comrade-in-arms, Sir Francis Ingoldsby. They had fought side by side on the walls of Rhodes over forty years ago. Now his son would fight on the humbler walls of St Elmo of Malta. It was a strange sad tale, how the last of the Ingoldsbys died. But all of them. It was a sad loss. They had already gone to their deaths.

He sent orders for there to be no idling on Birgu’s landward walls. Everything must be brought up for bulking and repair. This respite would be brief indeed, and it was bought with their brothers’ lives, across the water. Let them use it well. The Turks would be back into the main attack within three days.

As he watched the torchlit advance from the walls of San Angelo, looking out across the Grand Harbour, a stooped, hesitant figure beside him said, ‘I fear they are in terrible danger, our Elmo volunteers.’

It was his Latin secretary, Sir Oliver Starkey. La Valette grimaced into the dark. The scholarly Starkey had never quite understood the exigencies of war.

‘The profession of our oath,’ said the Grand Master, ‘is to sacrifice our lives for Christendom. Those at Elmo must hold it as long as they can.’

Starkey glanced at him in the darkness, and saw that familiar face worn and lined with suffering and — far more wearing — ceaseless responsibility for other men’s lives and deaths. It takes courage to die. But it takes still greater courage to send other men to their deaths. In La Valette’s features were all the signs of sorrow strongly mastered, and also a strange serenity. They said that some men and women found serenity in the most adverse of circumstances, especially the great of soul; that serenity is the attribute and accompaniment of true power. Certainly to think the Grand Master a man lacking in passion was grossly to misunderstand. He was a man of the deepest passions, most powerfully mastered and directed. You could feel that power in his presence. Like a flow of lava just below the surface of the earth.

‘But they will all die there,’ said Starkey sadly.

‘Yes,’ said La Valette. ‘They will all die there.’