The Great Siege

6

It was the Janizaries who attacked this time, swift and orderly, dropping two new bridges over the moat and onto Elmo’s battered points with little fuss, and beginning to move across as if on night exercise. More ranged round to the rear of the fort and began to try the strength of its only gate and the cavalier in the safety of darkness.

Yet whether it was some unexpected effect of tiredness, or some strange blessedness, the knights and the Spanish infantrymen ranged on the walls of Elmo fought like veterans of a thousand wars yet with the fire of fresh troops, and the Janizaries themselves could not make headway far over the two bridges nor up the fort’s sheer walls. Cannon fire continued to erupt out of the darkness, huge tongues of flame blaring suddenly out of the blackness that cloaked Mount Sciberras, and balls hurtle into the southern walls, yet to little avail if no men could follow it. The Spaniards formed close shoulder-to-shoulder ranks of long pikes and halberds, and the Janizaries repeatedly fell back, once their muskets were fired, saying that to run on was to run onto a dragon’s teeth. They themselves had always despised the pike as the weapon of the peasant, and refused to use it. Now they were paying for that arrogance.

The Turks were driven back from both new bridges, and once they had lost those, they made a swift and typically orderly retreat to their forward trenches to regroup. In the command tent of Işak Pasha, Janizary General, there was talk of bringing up one of the siege towers with its tall drop-bridge. But it could be moved only slowly over the rough ground, and the Christian guns would have plenty of time to blast it apart before it reached the edge of the ditch.

Then from beyond the forward trench there came a wild hubbub and howling.

‘What in Shaitan’s name …’ said Işak Pasha, standing.

It was Lanfreducci who led the crazed counter-attack, the Italian Chevalier shouting volubly and swinging his great Milanese two-hander over his head all the while. The Janizaries, pulling back, were astonished to see a small group of knights, red surcoats dark in the night, pursuing them out over the bridge.

‘To the trench!’ cried the Turkish officer. ‘Recharge your muskets and be ready for those mad dogs of Christendom!’

What hornets’ nest had they stirred up now?

Other knights paused only to rub their faces with earth and coat their armour hurriedly as best they could with more earth and spit to dull the gleam. And then within moments of their being under attack, they were dashing across the open ground to the right-hand end of the Janizaries’ forward trench. Luigi Broglia sent more after them.

Smith and Stanley went with Lanfreducci, firing on the fleeing, bewildered Janizaries, and then slamming down into the dust at the run, skidding forward, reloading their guns as fast as they could, before getting up and running again. Others brought brass firebombs and hoops, and coming to the head of the trench, fired them up and tossed them down upon the startled upturned faces of the Turks. A knight was shot at short range and spun and fell down into the trench, and then Smith and Stanley, the first knights with muskets to arrive, knelt swiftly at the head of the trench and shouldered their guns and let them loose. Medrano and De Guaras followed, firing the same, and instantly the Janizary trench was a shouting chaos, men scrabbling back into each other, knocking their comrades down, suddenly outflanked, all order gone and their trench being rolled up by these crazed, vastly outnumbered Christian musketeers.

‘Form a caracole!’ roared Stanley. ‘A levasse! The infantryman’s formation, be not proud, brothers! Leave your swords at your sides and keep reloading!’

Faces black with gunpowder, clambering awkwardly over the slain in front of them, the knights continued their extraordinary progress down the forward trench, in a repeated volley and pair formation. There was no room for them to retreat to the back of the column once they had fired, as was usual, so Smith and Stanley simply dropped down, and Medrano and De Guaras ran forwards over their prostrate bodies, knelt and fired. Only twenty feet away, two more Janizaries died, and another behind was disarmed by one of the balls continuing on. Never expecting such a counter-attack, they had built their trench dead straight, meaning there was no cornering for cover, and making this enfilading fire doubly murderous.

Medrano and De Guaras lay flat and two more arquebusiers moved over them, firing from the hip. Lanfreducci bellowed somewhere behind that he hadn’t brought a gun, and then in the brief moment that two of his fellow knights were reloading, he dashed onward and dropped down into the trench only two or three feet behind the scrabbling Janizary fugitives, sheathed his two-handed sword in the scabbard strapped across his back, and snatched up one of the guns of the fallen. One turned and hacked angrily at him, but he butted him hard in the face with the Turkish musket and clubbed him to the ground. Then he vaulted out of the side of the trench and sprinted back to his comrades. The moment he was out of the trench, there came two more shots and the Janizaries continued to be mown down.

Fire, drop, reload, fire, drop. Ramrod, wadding, powder, ball, ramrod. Check your matchlock or blow your wheel lock clean again, shoulder arms, brace, fire, hear the steel wheel whirr and fizz, the powder crackle and then bang, feel the big gun rear and recoil against you. Ignore your bruised shoulder, feeling like steak under a hammer. And no time to see who you hit. Drop, get walked over, kneel up. Ramrod, wadding, powder, ball, ramrod …

The advancing column, spitting out two arquebus balls every three or four seconds, was like a lethal snake uncoiling down the trench, and even a soldiery as fine and disciplined as the Janizaries reeled and broke and struggled to regain order. Their officer had been one of the first to die, which didn’t help. They piled back against each other like rats, and every shot could not fail to find a mark in Turkish flesh. Soon the knights were wading through a mulch of red earth.

Yet the resilience of the Turks was extraordinary, their capacity to take punishment and then hit back never to be underestimated. Some gallant souls who tried to run at the smoking, spitting guns of the knights with swords drawn, or paused to reload their own muskets, were quickly targeted and shot down. As they had always known — numbers aside — these accursed Knights of Saint John were every bit a match for them, in every respect. In cunning, ruthlessness, stark courage, there was nothing between them. In religion only did they differ from each other.

The moment of crazed counter-attack could not last.

A cry went up. It was Lanfreducci who first spotted the ominous white wave arising out of the darkness to their right. Coming up from the second trench in strict order, muskets held at hip height, and advancing through the night. A drum beat began to sound the slow, sonorous, unnerving dead-march rhythm of the Janizaries, feared from the windy plains of Hungary to the palm-fringed shores of India.

For a moment the knights were undismayed even by this prospect. Twelve of them in a trench with two hundred men ahead and another three hundred approaching from the right. Smith and Stanley took another shot forward, Medrano and De Guaras turned their guns over the back wall of the trench and fired into the oncoming line. One fell, one turned, but the rest continued at their steady march, implacable, heads held high, muskets lowered, only to fire when the order came. Truly princes among men, for all their infidel faith.

‘Time to pull back!’ cried Lanfreducci. ‘We are nearly surrounded!’

How they made it back out of the trench and over the rough ground and across the cavalier bridge into Elmo without another loss seemed afterwards a miracle. Reloading and ramming as they ran, turning and dropping to one knee, firing into the oncoming horde, as if a single ball could stop that mass of hundreds, now at a battlefield run. Smith pulled his horse-pistol from his belt where it sat pre-loaded and the wheel spun, sparks flew and the huge handgun roared. A Janizary fell to the earth clutching his thigh, spouting bright gore from a severed artery. Another stumbled over him but more came on.

Lanfreducci turned and swung his great two-hander over his head in the face of the approaching horde and cried out, ‘For San Marco and the Two Kingdoms!’ and a ball cut through his mail and grooved his upper arm. Another kicked up dust between his feet and he turned and ran on, cursing this first time in twenty-eight years he had ever shown his back to the enemy.

Somehow they all got home alive, Lanfreducci and De Guaras both hit but neither fallen.

Panting and grinning, Lanfreducci tore off his bloody tabard and breastplate and padded shirt and stood there on the walls, naked to the waist, his great muscled chest bare, his handsome face thrown back, his thick dark hair curling down his neck, teeth gleaming in the moonlight. Entirely exposed to the Janizary muskets and utterly unafraid, laughing down at them … Nicholas saw him then as some ancient hero, Hector or Sarpedon on the walls of Troy, casting mockery down on the foe, magnificently careless. Not even glancing down at his own bloody arm, the Italian knight took a strip of clean white linen in his teeth and tore it in two and tossed the narrower strip to Nicholas. He extended his muscled, blood-slathered arm.

‘Tie me up tight but not too tight, boy. You know the drill.’

Nicholas did his best.

‘Hm.’ Lanfreducci eyed the reddening dressing. ‘Not so bad. You are the English boy, the Insulter? You tie a good bandage. You’ve done this before.’

‘First time.’

Lanfreducci grinned. ‘Well, good enough for first time. Come, let us drink some wine, and the wound in my arm may have some too. We have earned it, little English brother. They say your father was a Hospitaller, is this so?’

Exhausted and still terrified and now elated all at once, Nicholas bowed his head, near overwhelmed with emotion, as the Italian knight laid his good arm over the boy’s thin shoulders and they went down to the inner yard to drink wine.

A hospital chaplain came to urge Lanfreducci inside the store too, to lie down so he could dress his wound.

‘’Tis done, Fra Gianni,’ said the knight. ‘But a splash of brandy …’

He drank wine while his arm was doused in brandy, and showed no reaction until the chaplain had gone back inside. Then he screwed up his face. ‘By the arse of Mohammed, that stings.’

Nicholas grinned.

‘So you wish to become a brother too, to follow after your father?’ said Lanfreducci. ‘You know about the rule of chastity?’

He looked away. ‘I will not be a knight, I think.’

‘Then why are you here? There is no compulsion. And you know we are in terrible danger.’ He hesitated a moment. ‘Indeed, most of us here will die.’

He passed Nicholas the cup of wine and he drank.

‘I suppose,’ said the boy, wiping his mouth, ‘I think I won’t die. And I am here because of my father.’

Lanfreducci nodded in the darkness. ‘The Blessed Virgin look over you, boy. There is no need for you to fight. Bring up water, wine, casks of powder. Bulk the walls. Help the chaplains here. Tie a good bandage. Keep your head down, and keep away from the front line. My heart would be heavy if boys like you died here.’ And he hugged him hard.

They might snatch a couple more hours’ sleep before dawn. But first Nicholas needed a word with someone.

‘Stanley?’

‘Hnn.’

‘Stanley.’

Stanley snorted and stirred. ‘What is it, boy?’

Nicholas hesitated.

‘For all the saints. Be quick. I was dreaming of roast beef.’

‘It’s about Lanfreducci.’

‘What of him?’

‘Forgive me, only I need to ask you … he’s not … he’s not, is he?’

‘Not what?’

‘A … un sodomità?’

Stanley said in a tight voice, ‘Lanfreducci?’

‘Yes.’

‘No.’ He gave a strangulated laugh. ‘No, the Chevalier Francesco di Lanfreducci is most certainly not un sodomità.’

‘Only — he kept putting his arm around me, and then he hugged me.’

‘Ay. And soon enough he’ll be telling you he loves you,’ growled another voice out of the darkness. It was Smith. ‘It means nothing, boy. He’s just Italian.’

‘In fact,’ said Stanley, ‘Brother Francesco is one of our order who is most troubled by the vow of chastity.’

‘He’s not troubled by it at all,’ said Smith. ‘He’s quite happy with his mistress over in Birgu.’

‘Mistress?’ said Nicholas.

Stanley nodded, looking serious. ‘We are knights, boy, not saints. Though it is a shameful thing for a knight to break a vow. Yet the Chevalier Lanfreducci fights as valiantly as any knight in the Order — you have seen — and besides, it must be said, he has the looks of some ancient god, and the women will pursue him to exhaustion, like hounds after their quarry. And he is too lazy and smiling and-’

‘And Italian,’ said Smith.

‘And Italian,’ said Stanley, ‘to say no. Hence the mistress — the very pretty mistress, I acknowledge — in Birgu.’

‘And the one in Naples,’ said Smith.

‘And in Messina,’ said Stanley.

‘The two in Messina.’

Stanley looked over his shoulder. ‘Two?’

‘Ay. The Contessa as well.’

Stanley looked back, reflective, his eyes distant. ‘Well,’ he said. Then he focused on the boy again. ‘Unseemly talk for your ears, boy. Get some sleep. And have no anxieties about Lanfreducci that way. He is not interested in you for your — fleshly configuration. But you might pray for his soul. He needs it.’