The Great Siege

10

To call Dragut a mere corsair, a pirate captain, was gravely to underestimate him. He was an engineer, cartographer, strategist, and the greatest naval commander of the age — as well as the most savage. Even Mustafa Pasha would never cross him, would bow before him. They said he had once ripped the tongue out of the throat of a Christian captive with his own hands, and eaten it before his eyes. An apocryphal tale, no doubt, but people believed it.

Fourteen years ago his brother had died on the neighbouring island of Gozo in a clumsy slave raid. In revenge, Dragut came and carried away the entire population of the island into slavery.

‘Not a man nor woman on this island but lost some cousin in that enslavement of Gozo,’ Franco Briffa told Nicholas. ‘We were the same people. What Dragut did in that island is beyond words. Those he did not enslave, whom he judged worthless to be sold as slaves — the sick, the very old or the very young, the suckling infant — what he did to them is beyond words. How he … disposed of them.

‘Knowing this, Inglis, we Maltese will only fight the harder.’ Franco looked dark indeed. ‘When Dragut comes to Birgu, he will know our anger.’

Yet Dragut came with his own fifteen hundred fresh fighting men, veterans of bloody battles and encounters numberless, and in overall command of close on ten thousand. They brought cargo ships of fresh water, barrels of balls and powder, gleaming new weapons and guns from the armouries of Tripoli and Algiers, flocks of fat-tailed Barbary sheep for fresh meat, and fresh fruit from the African shore. Luxuries indeed. His men joked that they would eat ripe figs, suck sweet oranges below the very walls of Birgu, so that the infidel wretches within could see how they were cursed and abandoned by their false god.

La Valette responded to the dreadful news as curtly as ever.

‘Send out messengers by night. Let all Malta know that it is against Dragut we now fight — as well as the most powerful Empire on earth. Make sure the nobility of Mdina know. And ask of them about cavalry. Have Don Mezquita ride out with his cavalry and demand of them, when will they begin to harry the Turk in chevauchées from Mdina? Tell them that we would be happy to hear that such operations had begun.’

‘And what of the message to Elmo?’

La Valette considered hard and long, in inward agony that all could see. ‘Tell them nothing for now.’ His brow was deep furrowed with anxiety and grief. ‘Perhaps tonight, tomorrow.’

In the Ottoman camp, Dragut immediately assumed overall command. He was especially contemptuous of Piyale, the palace-born Admiral Piyale. He heard a full report from Mustafa.

‘So,’ he summarised when he had heard. ‘The knights are still sending out and receiving intelligence. The Maltese cavalry at Mdina, few though they are, may still strike at our flank or rear at any time. You have not taken any harbour near to Birgu. You have not rolled up the island with any consistency, but attacked one small target at a time. St Elmo you could have ignored. But not now. Now you have attacked it, you must finish it, or it would look like weakness. This wretched fort must be taken, and quickly.’

He squinted through an eyeglass at the smoking ruin. ‘A hundred and fifty men or so defending it, maybe fewer. And this has gone on for ten days now?’

‘Thirteen or fourteen.’

‘Which? Thirteen or fourteen?’

‘Fourteen,’ said Mustafa through gritted teeth.

‘Hm. And this is the sacred army of the Lord Suleiman, son of Selim Khan, son of Bayezid Khan, son of Mehmet Khan who conquered the City of Konstantiniyye and the Eastern Empire of Rum. And you cannot capture this — witch’s tit of a fort!’

He slammed the eyeglass down so hard the lens dislodged.

‘Get that mended,’ he said, striding from the tent.

‘Sire,’ Sir Oliver Starkey reported to La Valette, ‘there’s a new Turkish gun emplacement being built. With all haste.’

‘Where?’

‘Across the harbour, below Sciberras. At Is-Salvatur.’

La Valette ran up to the lookout. Had he been a man who cursed, he would have cursed.

‘And what of eastward?’ he said.

Starkey squinted. ‘I cannot see, Sire. Years of study … Is there movement on Gallows Point?’

‘There is. That too will soon be a gun emplacement. A second upon Is-Salvatur. And I would guess another beyond Sciberras, across Marsamuscetto, at Tigné perhaps. The guns will be ready to fire by tomorrow. Elmo will be completely surrounded by a ring of fire, and with the battery at Is-Salvatur, cut off from us for good. There will be no more crossing the Grand Harbour then. Any here can no longer go over. And any who have gone over cannot return.’

Starkey crossed himself. ‘Our poor Brothers.’

‘Ay,’ said La Valette. ‘Dragut has most certainly taken command.’

A moment later he said, ‘A last message must go over to Elmo, to steel them unto the last. Write to them that King Philip’s relief force is now very close.’

Two Maltese volunteers came. Sturdy brothers, fine rowers and swimmers both.

‘It is late afternoon,’ said La Valette. ‘You may either row out now in daylight, under the noses of the Turks at Is-Salvatur — but knowing their guns are not yet ready. Or go over tonight — but it is a clear night, there is more than a half-moon coming up already in the tracks of the sun. The harbour will be bright till near dawn, and by then the enemy guns may be ready.’

‘We go now,’ said one, Paolo.

La Valette handed them the brief, vital message, carefully sealed with wax in a brass case. ‘This will work wonders for the morale of Elmo,’ he said. ‘Much depends on it. Do not fail us.’

‘We will not.’

People watched from the walls in speechless anguish as the little blue-painted boat moved out across the still, empty harbour. It was like a crowd watching over an arena. Many could hardly breathe. Over on the spit of Is-Salvatur near the water’s edge, it seemed the Turks at work paused momentarily, observing this crossing. Then they resumed.

They had two breastworks in place already.

From Elmo itself, as usual, came the continual sound of cannon fire and gunfire and muffled explosions.

The little boat moved fast, the two men side by side on the narrow mid-bench. It was already half-way there. Three-quarters.

People held their breath.

Behind the nearest Turkish breastwork, not two hundred yards off now, something was stirring.

The two rowers gasped and pulled as never before, not even when trying to outrun a summer storm back into harbour.

Suddenly the air erupted with a deafening explosion away to their right, and a ball struck the surface of the water just yards ahead of the little boat, sending a huge white geyser spouting high, showering down over them. They glanced over their shoulders and saw the ball itself pass on behind them and then sink below the surface.

At least one gun was already in place, and ready served. Dragut meant there to be no more crossings.

‘Row! Row!’ cried Paolo frantically, drenched, wild-eyed, shaking the saltwater from his eyes.

With his usual cunning and foresight, even while his men were still building up the earth ramp for the main guns to cover the harbour from mouth to Marsa, from Birgu to Elmo — the work of several more hours — Dragut had covertly taken down to the water’s edge a single, elegant long-barrelled culverin, firing through the crevice between two boulders. For as he well understood, when they saw the emplacement being built, the Christians would want to send along their last message of hope, perhaps some last reinforcements to their comrades in Elmo. Sidelong fire from Is-Salvatur would soon bring to ruin that little ruse.

The culverin was cleaned, swabbed and reloaded with lightning efficiency, and served with another fist-sized four-pound iron ball: quite enough to hole a small rowing boat with a single good shot, and take a rower’s leg off with it. From his pavilion on the all-commanding heights of Sciberras, Dragut ordered another team down to the shore. Half a dozen Janizary marksmen, each served by two more re-loaders. Over two or three hundred yards was a long range. But then they were very good marksmen.

From the walls of Birgu, some people could hardly bear to watch. They held their hands to their mouths, gnawed their fists. It was like watching war for the sake of amusement, as mere bystanders, and they were ashamed.

The two rowers floundered at the oars for a few seconds at the shock of coming under fire. At such a low trajectory, a short ball could easily have bounced onward over the surface of the sea and smashed into them still. Mercifully this first shot was wide before the bows. The next shot would be on target.

They had just regained their control and were rowing hard again, rising up on the oars, when a cracking volley of half a dozen long Turkish muskets rang out over the still, tense water.

They were very good marksmen.

Paolo turned his head suddenly as if looking out to sea, and when he turned back his brother saw with sick horror that half his face was gone. Another ball had struck him in the upper arm. He fell forward.

‘No!’ cried Marco, reaching for him. ‘Paolo!’

The Janizary marksmen were already levelling the next six muskets handed to them.

On the walls, people whimpered. Franco Briffa turned his back and sank his chin into his chest. In the close-knit community of Birgu, the two fishermen were like brothers to him.

Nicholas could barely tear his gaze away. But as well as the grim execution being done out there to the two poor valiant Maltese, his eyes darted back and forth across the calm water. The distance, no more than five hundred paces … on the diagonal, from the low walls below Angelo across to the rocks below Elmo, eight hundred paces, nine? The sea warm and flat calm. No powerful tides or contrary currents here, not like the strong Severn flowing down to Shrewsbury from the dark mountains of Wales, where he had swum since he was a small boy. Sea-water stings the eyes, is denser, lifts you more. How deep would a cannon ball or musket ball sheer through that water?

With a ruthlessness that seemed almost gleeful, the battery at Is-Salvatur loosed another six musket balls, peppering the side of the boat but seeming not to strike Marco, and then there came a third tight volley, followed almost immediately by another boom of the culverin. The little rowing boat spun on the surface of the water and the bow was blown away in a shower of shattered timber. Marco, the brass case clamped between his teeth, was seen to dive off the fast disappearing boat, curving down into the sea.

He surfaced again and seized hold of Paolo and cried out his name, and saw that he was dead already. He let him go with speechless grief and began to swim the last hundred paces to the rocks below Elmo. For a moment there was hope. But the Turks would not give up now. This had become a small but significant skirmish, this one man’s life of considerable significance.

Musket balls spattered into the water around Marco’s head. The watchers on the walls in their agony saw the drift of smoke from Is-Salvatur, heard the report of the volley a moment later. There was a deathly stillness, and then a low, collective groan, the keening of a crowd already in mourning. The fisherman Marco lay on his back in the sea, face lit by the setting sun, his legs curving down into the depths. Between his teeth still glinted the brass letter-case.

There was a heart-searing cry and it was Franco Briffa, animal, inarticulate, knowing he could do nothing. Then he swore that he would kill many a Turk with his bare hands in the doomed days to come.

There was a single splash from the walls below Angelo, and someone, a single figure, was swimming out after Marco and Paolo, into the murderous heart of the Grand Harbour. People murmured and stared.

Few of the Maltese swam, and fewer knights and soldiers. Now another was going out to him, and he swam smooth and fast. A solitary hero or madman.

He was slim. His hair was fair.

They began to say it was the Inglis, the Insulter of the Pasha, he who had already fled from Elmo. There came a girl’s cry from the walls, and a girl racing down the steps below Angelo. There she saw a pair of battered leather boots pulled off and dropped in the dust, and on the low wall she found a torn patched shirt that she knew, and she took it up and held it to herself weeping, as if it was the most holy relic of a saint. As if it was the hair shirt of the Baptist himself.

‘Is that him?’ said La Valette. ‘My eyes tire.’

‘I cannot see, Master.’

La Valette demanded urgently, half turning, ‘You, Fra Girolamo, tell me — is it the boy?’

‘I believe so, Sire.’

‘He has gone out there to die,’ said La Valette. ‘The Maltese are dead already.’

Nicholas swam out fast to where the last few broken splinters of the boat still floated, and then came to the body of Marco, lying back, staring into the sky. He swam in close behind it, using the corpse as a shield. No shots came from Is-Salvatur, but the marksmen were surely watching, waiting. There could be no doubt of that. He tried not to think of the people also watching him from the walls, or of the girl. He tried not to think of why he was doing what he was doing, or what would come of it, of tomorrow, or the next minute. There was only now.

The afternoon sun burned down hard, low and blinding if he looked westward. The rocks below Elmo were a warm gold, and from up above he could hear the sound of relentless and desperate gunfire from the dying fort. That was where he was taking the message. That was where he was returning. Do not think. Do not ask.

He kept his head high in the cover of the floating body, treading water, listening. How long did a dead man float? The moment he heard a crack it would be too late, the musket ball would already have ploughed into him. Or they might blast a culverin ball at him. A culverin ball at a single swimming man.

Marco’s eyes were open and he was quite dead. The boy reached up and twisted the brass case out from his teeth and tucked it tight into his waistband under water. He hoped the wax seal was good. Then he took hold of the dead man’s shirt collar and began to drag him slowly back to the Birgu shore.

By the time he came near Kalkara Creek, there were as many as fifty people there, weeping but cheering him on. No shots were fired from the Turkish side, and now he was out of range. They had failed to get the message to Elmo, but a slain gallant son of Malta had been brought home with utmost bravery and daring. Dragut must be cursing. The strange little drama, a family’s tragedy, had been a commanding triumph for neither side.

Nicholas stopped twenty yards out and trod water. He was exhausted, his muscles burned. People crowded the shore, two or three fishermen waded in, everyone shouted praise and cried vengeance. He did not take in the words. He turned the body of Marco around, head towards the shore, and gave him a gentle push. Then he turned and swam out again. Cries went up behind him as they hauled in the dead body of the fisherman. A girl’s voice cried out, No! No! as he swam away. The people on the shore carried Marco to his mother where she lay kneeling and howling and taking up handfuls of dust, and they laid him at her feet, the very tableau of Mary and the dead Christ that they saw daily in the crude, heartfelt carvings in their mean island churches and chapels.

Nicholas did not see or hear. His attention was all turned towards the battery of Is-Salvatur.

In the glorious light of the setting sun, the people watched and thought they were witnessing something out of ancient myth. A dragon stood guarding the evil shore opposite, a fire-breathing dragon, and the fairheaded boy, as thin as a child, swam nearer and nearer beneath its black mouth. Prayers went up from a thousand witnesses. His courage was dauntless, the strength of his heart was beyond reckoning.

And where he was gone, they said, there would be no returning.

A girl wept and sank to her knees, and a woman helped her away from the walls where she could watch no longer.

A volley of Turkish muskets cracked out, and the water about the fair head of the boy spat up white. When the water had settled, the people groaned. There was no swimmer to be seen. Surely he had not gone below so easily, that fair handsome head split open by a gobbet of lead?

They waited in despair. The sea returned to its implacable silence. The sun shone down.

And then twenty yards ahead, he surfaced again and swam smoothly on. Slowly, slowly, his arms rising and falling so slowly now. But he swam on.

Behind the wicker breastwork, the Janizary corporal swore and ordered his men to fire again. He bawled out for more men down at the run. This swimmer must not get through. He could only picture the scenes of rejoicing on the walls of Birgu, and within Elmo’s stubborn, fire-blackened ruins.