The Great Siege

2

The bodies of the unknown knights were placed in caskets and laid to rest in the crypt of the Conventual Church, to be properly buried at a later date. A less urgent time.

Meanwhile the Feast of St John the Baptist, the patron of the Order, proceeded with all due and solemn ceremony. No gunpowder was wasted in fireworks, but bonfires were lit and church bells pealed, and a general air of rejoicing began to fill the streets. For the Baptist had announced the coming of Christ, and with the coming of Christ they were saved.

Nicholas went out into the evening streets, wearing the fine sword of the Chevalier Bridier de la Gordcamp once more at his side, and gravely conscious of it. The little town was alive with light and life, and even though the vast Turkish encampment that now spread out threateningly across the whole of the heights of Santa Margherita was many times larger than Birgu and Senglea combined, and existed solely for the destruction of the town, hearing the distant shouts and sounds of rejoicing within the Turks must have wondered what these people under desperate siege were made of.

The Feast of St John, as La Valette intended, restored order and confidence after the horror of the crucified knights.

The indefatigable priest, Roberto di Eboli, preached a sermon to a packed town square, his voice even and resonant, his dark eyes burning with the faith, and his words put new strength into the people’s hearts. He spoke of the loyalty unto death of the Baptist himself, and of that evil eastern tyrant, Herod. He conjured for the illiterate people vivid images of how the Baptist had been captured by that accursed Oriental potentate, and mutilated and beheaded, and they felt how eerily full of meaning and symbol it all was, on the very night that the three crucified bodies had washed ashore from Elmo, similarly mutilated and killed by this new and godless eastern tyrant, Suleiman and his hordes.

Someone tapped Nicholas on the shoulder. He turned, a smile already spreading over his face, and there was Stanley. Pale and gaunt, but a bony, sinewy strength still in his tall broad frame. He was freshly bathed and his beard neatly shaven, and he wore the long black robe of the Hospitallers, emblazoned with a great white cross on the chest, that made him look startlingly like the monk he was. It seemed wrong to embrace a monk, so Nicholas seized his hand. Stanley clapped him on the back.

‘My one regret,’ he said, ‘is that though I am told you saved my life, I have no recollection of any of it. By the way, Dragut is dead.’

Nicholas looked startled.

‘His mortal remains gone to Africa, his soul down below. Apparently there was a hubbub at that battery on Is-Salvatur, as they tried to hit some impudent Christian swimmer crossing the harbour right under their noses. Dragut took charge, and in the haste their gun misfired and he was struck in the head by a piece of stone. He died soon after.’

Nicholas clenched his fists in front of him.

‘It could be said,’ Stanley whispered, ‘that the swimmer killed him.’

‘Well, I …’

‘But that seems an exaggeration, does it not?’ His eyes twinkled. ‘We should be listening to the words of Fra Roberto.’

Roberto di Eboli said, ‘The martyrs of Elmo too were beheaded for their faith, crucified for their Lord, on the very Eve of St John. In everything there is a pattern, to those that see with their eyes unclouded, and understand with their hearts. In everything there is the Hand of God.’

He spoke of how the Baptist today sat at the right hand of God the Father himself, as you could see in many of the paintings in the churches, his lean figure and coarse camelhair garment unmistakable. And most inspiringly of all, he reminded the people on this lonely and beleaguered island that all of Christendom this night was celebrating the same Feast with them. From Norway to Spain, from Spain to the borders of Russia, their fellow Christians were lighting bonfires in the streets to celebrate the Baptist, patron of the Knights Hospitaller. Looking down from the walls of heaven tonight, the angels would see all of Christendom as nothing but a great starry floor of bright and burning bonfires.

A new fire was kindled in their hearts at that wonderful image. The people cheered, their dread and loneliness falling away, the sound of their cheering like the cannon’s roar.

A French knight, the Chevalier St Aubin, out patrolling near the Barbary Coast, had tried to run the Turkish blockade recently and failed, and so fallen back after gallant engagement to harry the Turkish ships as best he could in a single galley. The Chevalier Romegas, too, still roamed the seas like a wolf.

So it was with surprise and delight that another Christian vessel managed to arrive in the Grand Harbour that night, flying the flag of St John. On board were a number of knights and soldiers come from Europe, including a young French knight, Henri Parisot, La Valette’s own nephew.

‘Reinforcements,’ said the Grand Master. ‘You are welcome, even at this late hour.’

To Sir Oliver Starkey he said privately, ‘Ten thousand are needed, and some seventy have come. Yet we should welcome them with grace. They have come here to die for us.’

Early the next morning, La Valette called his closest to him: Smith and Stanley, the captains of the langues, Don Pedro Mezquita, and young Parisot. Nicholas was permitted too, but not to speak. It was hard when another figure entered the room: Marshal Copier, now one-legged, but supported on a very fine olivewood peg-leg. He eyed Nicholas, seeing the boy’s pleasure at his appearance, and winked.

La Valette said it was as Mustafa Pasha had foreseen. ‘Despite the great spirit and faith of our brother Roberto di Eboli,’ said the Grand Master, ‘and his picture of all Christendom standing shoulder-to-shoulder, worshipping as one — you know this is not so.’

‘No relief is coming?’ said Smith.

La Valette shook his head. ‘Apart from the gallant few who sailed in last night — no relief is coming. Other kingdoms may burn bonfires like us, but they will send no ships. And we will hear from Venice sooner or later, I have no doubt, that the bankers who run that serene Republic’ — his voice was corrosive with bitterness — ‘ordered great celebrations when they heard of Elmo’s fall. St Marks’ Square will look like Carnival time.’

Nicholas looked baffled and agast.

Stanley said to him sotto voce, ‘To assure the many Ottoman diplomats and spies in Venice that the Venetians value peace and trade with the Empire above all else, and have no love for the Knights of St John. They say we are no more than troublesome pirates, causing wars and ruining Mediterranean trade.’

Smith growled, ‘A Venetian would sell his own daughter for a ducat.’

The stench of politics was worse than corpses under a midday sun.

‘No, gentlemen.’ La Valette spread his hands on the tabletop. ‘We fight on alone, as God wills it. Dragut’s ten thousand are now under Mustafa’s command, of course, making a total still of at least thirty thousand in all. And there are the cut-throats of Candelissa and Hassan, itching to get into the city and loot and … worse. Remember that Hassan Ali is the son-in-law of Dragut himself. So for him, it will be vengeance. And for the Mohammedans of North Africa, to fight against Christendom is always vengeance for the loss of Spain. For seven centuries, their beloved Al-Andalus was their home, and then the Catholic Kings cast them out and they were exiled to the barren African shore. They became corsairs with all of Christendom theirs to sack, sailing out in their low galleys from their lairs at Tlemcen and Tenes, Bizerta and Susa, Djerbah and Monastir, to fill their pockets and honour Allah simultaneously. If they break into the town, it will be terrible.

‘We lost nearly two hundred at Elmo, nothing to the Turks but a great deal to us. We are left with fighting men but two or three thousand in number. You know I like precision, but do I count fourteen year old Maltese militia boys, armed with butcher’s cleavers, protected by nothing more than jerkins wadded with sheep’s wool?’

His face was heavy with care. The burden of responsibility, thought Nicholas, for the lives not only of his soldiers but of all the people of Malta, nursing mothers and eager ignorant boys and babes in cradles — it must be well-nigh more than any man could bear.

La Valette said, ‘Elmo was a month of heroes, and sheer bloody attrition. Janizary faced knight across a single ditch, and both died. It was a simple affair. The siege of Birgu will be very different. More mobile and varied, fought over a much wider front, and I do not doubt that the wily dog Mustafa will try many tricks to break in on us. We have tricks prepared too. But — we also have women and children. It will be a very different battle in this never-ending war. And you will see not only your fellow knights and soldiers maimed and killed. Be ready for it.’

He gestured to his secretary, and Oliver Starkey spread a map over the table.

‘We hold Birgu and Senglea, both promontories largely surrounded by water, and protected on the landward side by their curtain walls. The Turkish fleet still cannot sail into the Grand Harbour itself, or they will be blasted in pieces by the guns of San Angelo. I do not expect any attack over the water.’

‘But then you should expect the unexpected,’ said Mezquita, stroking his fine moustaches.

‘Quite so. Every gun on the harbourside is primed and ready, manned day and night.’

‘Senglea,’ murmured Don Pedro, waving an aristocratic hand over the map, slender fingers gleaming with jewelled rings, raising his delicate eyebrows. His bloodline went back to the Visigothic kings, it was said, and even to the Spanish Emperor Hadrian. Yet he was a very fine soldier. ‘Is it worth holding?’

The others could see what he meant. Birgu was a populous, tight-packed city, the beating heart of Malta. But the neighbouring promontory of Senglea was thinly inhabited, with a few mean houses and some creaking windmills, and the little fort of St Michel at its tip overlooking the harbour. To defend it was to stretch defensive lines thin indeed.

‘You mean pull back, consolidate? Abandon Senglea, defend only Birgu? Yet you see that Senglea is already conjoined to Birgu in three ways, by the great chain across Galley Creek, by a pontoon bridge behind, and by an inner chain boom we have laid across as well.’ La Valette’s voice was steely. ‘No. We surrender not one inch, no matter what the military textbooks and manuals might advise. As at Elmo, we give not a handful of dust away. The Turks must fight and bleed and die for every forward footstep.’

He indicated again. ‘The Turkish main camp and field hospital remain at Marsa. The forward camp is here, on Santa Margherita, and their biggest guns. They have further gun emplacements on the Corradino Heights, on Mount Salvatore across Kalkara — very close indeed to your post, Don Pedro — and also on Gallows Point, and across at Sciberras, albeit at long range.’

‘That is truly a ring of fire,’ said Smith softly.

‘The main attack will come from land, against our walls. And no matter how many tens of thousands Mustafa commands, only a wave of a thousand or so can attack at a time. They will also try to get miners in close as soon as possible — as they are already. They may attack across the creeks in small boats. They will try everything. But we will be prepared.’

They stood and shook hands.

‘To your posts, gentlemen. And God go with you.’

After he had spoken with them, La Valette had a private matter to attend to, and he could not bear that any man should even know of it. He had assessed the amount of food left in the city, and it was not good news. There was no choice.

He buckled on his dagger, opened a door in the corner of the great state-room, and two lean and beautiful hunting dogs bounded out. They leapt at him with joyful little yaps, licking his hands in panting excitement. It had been so long since they had hunted out over the island. Surely today was the day. La Valette fondled their silken ears and they playfully bit his hands, their great jaws as gentle as a maiden’s handshake.

Everything about a dog was noble. Its candour and affection, its love unto death, its freedom from words, and therefore from lies. Dogs knew everything about loyalty and fidelity, the beauty of running with the wind, the joy of the world. And they knew nothing of princes and politics, bankers and gold, treachery and war. He embraced them around their powerful necks and lean ribbed sides in a manner that was strange to them, and gazed long at them, and they saw it in his eyes. They looked uncertain, crestfallen, knowing there was to be no hunt today. But there was something else. They snuffled at him pleadingly, tails curling between their legs. And when he came to lead them down the steep stone stairs to the cellar below — they followed him obediently, of course, to the very end — he had to go slowly, holding on to the rail, for his eyes were so blurred with tears.