The Last Crusaders: The Great Siege (19 page)

‘Always was,’ he said a little complacently. He handed the arquebus back to the knight. ‘My father said I was always fast, at running, archery, everything. Once some bullyboys set on us in the lane, Hodge and I, not knowing I was gentleman-born. Hodge punched them hard enough but I got behind them – we were only ten or eleven, mind, they a year or two older – and I struck ’em all across their heads with a milkpail, ding ding ding like a set of bells. They never even knew I was there. I climbed trees fast, I went up like a cat, I swam fast even—’

He stopped abruptly and bit his tongue. He was boasting like a drunk Spaniard.

‘Ay,’ said Smith, not minding overmuch. The boy had earned a boast or two. ‘You move like a Severn eel.’

He handed the arquebus to Hodge. ‘You learn too. Master Nicholas: instruct him.’

‘How do you make a Maltese Cross?’

‘Is this another of your side-splitting puns, Ned Stanley?’

‘Kick his Maltese arse!’

‘You were a loss to the jesting profession, truly.’

‘I have another.’

‘Keep it.’

‘How do you make a Spanish donkey—’

‘I said
keep it
.’

It was then that Nicholas saw something, clinging halfway up the rigging. Other eyes constantly scanned the eastern horizon, on the lookout for an armada of numberless warships. But Nicholas’s gaze was to the south.

‘I see it!’ he cried. ‘I see it!’

‘There she is,’ said Stanley, vaulting onto the prow. And both Knights of St John felt a surge of unspeakable pride.

As they sailed closer, the little ship gently rising and falling, the boy saw it was so small a place, so dirt poor and tiny an island where this great battle would be decided. He had never realised before how pathetically small and poor. Suddenly a deep, clear
calm possessed him. Just as Elizabeth’s England was no more than a small, unregarded island off the shoulder of Europe, barely considered by the mighty continental kingdoms of France and Spain, Portugal and the Holy Roman Empire, so was Malta. A sunburnt rock in the far southern Mediterranean, far closer to Africa than Rome. Too insignificant for great kings and potentates to waste their armies on. Yet one Emperor had noticed it, and understood its significance.

Suleiman had bent his dark eye upon it, the whirlwind was coming, and an army of forty thousand men was about to fall upon this one small rock of an island. Nicholas felt the glory of it stir deep in his blood. Once at school there was a small boy being bullied by four bigger lads. They taunted him and then began to whip him with hazel sticks, as you would a cowering dog, for amusement. Then Nicholas had gone in with fists flying, only six or seven himself, and the bullies scattered. His father was proud of him that day, and in the evening he ate rice pudding with plums and as much sugar as he wanted, which was a lot.

He smiled strangely to himself, hanging from the rigging, sun in his eyes, the island drawing nearer. He thought of his father, the bullied little boy, and his sisters. The green hills of Shropshire. The little lion-tawny island shimmered in its heat haze on the sea, the sun beginning to set in the west, and he smiled to himself. Here was where it had all been heading, after all. Here was his destiny.

The little English ship rounded the point and turned into the vast Grand Harbour. The master had raised the flag of St George. The red cross on white may have looked like the emblem of the Hospitallers’ ancient rivals, the Templars – but the Templars were long gone, along with the rest of the world of chivalry. Only the Knights of St John remained now, of all the Orders. And it was good to see the flag of St George today.

Nicholas stared around in wonder. High on the headland to his right was a crude little star-shaped fort of roughcut stone.

‘Fort St Elmo,’ murmured Stanley. ‘Hardly Krak des Chevaliers, but it must serve.’

On the headland opposite was Gallows Point, and between them the entrance to the Grand Harbour.

The harbour itself was vast, surrounded by tall, majestic cliffs, and bobbing with brightly painted local fishing boats, fishermen busily passing crates of the day’s catch along chains of hands. But no foreign merchant ships were anchored here, not for weeks now. None would dare. Stanley said that the very word
Malta
meant nothing more than ‘harbour’ in the ancient language of the Phoenicians. It was the island’s very reason for existence.

‘You see now why Suleiman might covet it,’ he said. ‘It is the finest harbour in the Mediterranean. God himself made it for sailors and shipwrights, surely.’

The deep harbour gave way southwards into several narrow but deepwater creeks, perfect for shipbuilding or safe anchorage. Kalkara Creek, Galley Creek and French Creek. At the mouth of
Galley Creek, the most important of them, a massive chain hung down into the water from a gigantic capstan embedded deep in the rock, made not of a single tree trunk but of seven, lashed together. Across the creek, the chain was attached to a huge old anchor, also embedded in solid rock. Loosened for now, the mighty barrier lay on the bed of the creek to allow ships passage. But the moment the first Ottoman galley was seen, the cry would go out, the mighty windlasses would be turned, the capstan would groan into action, and the chain would be hoisted, rising dripping from the depths.

‘Hand-forged in Venice,’ said Stanley. ‘Each link cost ten ducats. Strong as adamant.’

Nicholas could believe it. The chain links vanishing from the capstan down into the water were as thick as his thigh. No war galley no matter how powerful could break through those.

‘The galleys are out, scouring the seas, of course,’ said Stanley.

‘Under this Chevalier Romegas?’

Stanley grinned. ‘You learn fast. The most savage sea-wolf of them all. Fortunately he is on our side. But you may admire the warship there in the creek. That is the
Great Carrack
of Rhodes.’

She was magnificent, a towering structure whose wooden walls rose like a fortified city, sides studded with gunports, forecastle and sterncastle rising yet higher like miniature castles.

‘Will she be brought into play against the Turk?’

Stanley looked anguished. ‘She needs work, and we need money for the work. Timber must be imported from Sicily or Spain. The
Great Carrack
is no longer young. But let us hope.’

Between each of the creeks rose narrow rocky promontories, small clusters of houses and churches crowning each one.

‘Birgu,’ said Stanley, nodding at the principal. ‘The city. And the other, with its few houses and windmills, is Senglea.’

At the tip of Birgu rose a sterner fortification, its gun ports commanding a wide range over the entire Grand Harbour.

‘San Angelo,’ said Stanley. ‘The fortress of the knights.’

People lined the walls of the small towns and cheered as the
Swan
dropped her anchor with a splash, and two longboats came out to unload her.

‘No gun salute, then,’ said Stanley.

‘Keeping their powder for other arrivals,’ said Smith.

They stepped up onto a narrow harbour wall, and a tall knight in black surcoat with a white cross came through the crowds of Maltese sailors and lightermen to greet them.

‘The Chevalier Medrano, Knight of the Langue of Aragon!’ said Stanley.

They clasped each other.

‘In God’s name,’ said the Spanish knight, ‘you are welcome at this time, Fra Edward. How many are you?’

‘Four knights come to join you,’ said Stanley cheerfully. Medrano did well to keep his expression from betraying disappointment. ‘Some good silver, some arms. John Smith and myself, De Guaras and De la Rivière here. A novice of Portugal, and these two lad … these two gentlemen volunteers of England. I give you Master Ingoldsby and Master Hodgkin of the County of Shropshire.’

The Chevalier Medrano bowed gravely. ‘You are young. I trust you are brave for your years.’

‘Do not doubt them,’ said Stanley quietly.

Medrano’s eyes rested on them a moment longer and then he turned swiftly. ‘Come,’ he said.

A voice called from behind. It was the master of the
Swan
. He stepped off his ship onto Maltese rock, for the only time in his life.

‘Well, master,’ said Stanley. ‘Our thanks for an eventful voyage. May God keep you on the return.’

‘We pray likewise,’ said the master. He gazed around at the towering walls of Birgu and San Angelo, and the vast stretch of the harbour, burnished copper under the setting sun. ‘’Tis a fine anchorage,’ he said. ‘But before God, a poor and waterless island that you fight for.’

‘It is not the island we fight for, at the last,’ said Stanley quietly. ‘It is a greater cause than that.’

He and the master exchanged a handshake and a long look, and then the master said, ‘My prayers go with you, and the prayers of my mariners.’

He leapt aboard his ship and glanced back one last time. ‘For all that the prayers of such heathen dogs as my men may be worth!’

Medrano led them hurriedly through the crowd.

‘The Grand Master has already demanded to know who arrives from England,’ he muttered. ‘And as you know, the Grand Master is not a man who likes waiting.’

Everything passed in a whirl. Nicholas shouldered his small pack with his sword and provisions at a jog-trot, as they filed up through busy streets between tall, sunless houses. Among the many voices he heard snatches of Spanish and Italian, though of strange dialect, the Italian of Naples and Sicily, not the schoolbook Tuscan Italian he had learnt. And then with a thrill he also began to pick out conversations in the native tongue: Maltese. A soft and slurring tongue, the language of Phoenicia, of Dido and Hannibal, and sailors out of old Tyre and Sidon. He felt a sense of unimaginable ancientness. As if he was in the East already.

It was a poor place, but like the poor the world over, the people had lavished on it all the care and love they could. As he followed the striding Medrano and his fellow knights, Nicholas glimpsed, through little doorways, courtyards exquisitely tended, filled with blue pots containing lemon trees, walls bright with painted tiles. Children playing and tethered goats munching. The warm aroma of a bakery, the fetid stink from runnels of greyish water flowing from laundresses’ houses. And high above, grilles and porticoes and narrow stone balconies, and tantalising glimpses of women looking down upon the handsome chaste knights, jewelled rings on their fingers and smiles on their lips.

They were led into a high, gloomy hall. A few shields, swords and lances decorated the flaking walls, but otherwise bare. Medrano went on into an inner chamber. They waited.

Another fellow stepped in from the street. He was grimy and sweaty and his eyes darted nervously about.

‘What news, brother?’ asked Stanley.

‘What news, what news?’ He spoke rapidly, confusedly, with a Greek accent. ‘I must see the Grand Master. Only his ears, only his.’

Medrano reappeared, holding open the tall doors. ‘The Grand Master bids you enter.’

The inner chamber was only a little less spartan than the outer. A flagstone floor, a plain table with some papers, pen and ink. At a
small desk in the corner, a pale, elderly secretary, peering over his record book. A splendid triple window of diamonded lead panes, looking out onto the sunlit harbour below. And silhouetted in the bright window, his back to them, a tall man, very tall, and of proud bearing. They knelt and bowed their heads and waited in silence. Then he turned.

Jean Parisot de la Valette,48th Grand Master of the Knights of St John.

He must have been some seventy years old, but with a full head of white hair, a trim beard, and undimmed eye. He radiated power. His gaze burned into them. He said nothing. A man accustomed to the silence and solitude of the truly great, and of great responsibility, needing none other to lean upon. His frame was lean but powerful, his shoulders broad, his features extraordinarily handsome.

Then he spoke, in a voice deep and low, a voice to calm a storm. ‘You honour the Order with your coming.’ He lifted his hands and they stood again. ‘Friend from the East,’ he said, eyeing the nervous new arrival. ‘Tell me what I do not know already.’

The Greek simpleton babbled for more than a minute of how the Ottoman fleet was already sailing, of how vast it was, how he had seen it with his own eyes.

The Grand Master interrupted. ‘Numbers?’

The simpleton looked anxious. ‘Many. More than I could count. As numberless as the sands of the sea or the stars in the sky. Every port was busy with provisioning and ship building, not just the Golden Horn but Bursa too, all the ports of the Ottomans. Soldiers coming down to join the fleet from inland and from the European frontiers, from Hungary, from Bessarabia, Karamania, paid levies from Wallachia, mountain men from Albania. Many columns of marching men, singing of a new jihad.’

‘You paint a picture,’ said La Valette crisply. ‘But here is nothing new. Our other informants already tell us the Grand Fleet is only a few hours off the coast of Calabria. We thank you, brother. Go now.’

The simpleton stared and then hurried out.

‘Everything is falling into place,’ said La Valette. ‘The Order will live or die in the coming battle. As God wills.’

He did not sound discomposed. It was as if his whole life had
been building to this hour, when Malta and the Knights would stand alone against the greatest military power on earth.

‘We have perhaps two more days,’ he said. He smiled and walked over. ‘Chevalier de Guaras, De la Rivière, and my last loyal Englishmen.’ He clasped their hands. ‘And the boys?’

They gave him Faraone, then Nicholas and lastly Hodge.

‘Hodge,’ repeated La Valette gravely. ‘This name could only be English. It sounds stout.’

‘They have already stood by us in a skirmish with the corsairs, Sire,’ said Stanley. ‘This one,’ he touched Nicholas on the shoulder, ‘bested five of them.’

La Valette looked at him sharply. ‘Five? Five men?’