The Last Crusaders: The Great Siege (27 page)

‘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.’

In the pavilion of Mustafa Pasha, there had been a brief council.

‘I dislike the main fleet being anchored in the south, in this Marsasirocco,’ Admiral Piyale had declared. ‘Better to keep our forces together, better to anchor in Marsamuscetto, close to our main encampment.’

‘But you feared the havoc the east wind, the
gregale
, would cause,’ said Mustafa.

‘I believe it will not,’ said Piyale shortly. ‘I believe I was misinformed.’

Mustafa’s eyes glittered with cold amusement. It was as he had said to the aristocratic young admiral, but Piyale had refused to listen to him. Now he was humbled before him, and Mustafa was content.

‘And what of that small fort on the headland?’ said the Pasha.

Piyale said, ‘We will have to reduce it.’

Mustafa nodded. ‘We will flatten it. It takes a decade or more to make a good fortress, but this one is of a sorry build, and can only be thinly defended. It will be taken in a day or two.’

Seeing that they were shortly to be under attack, there was no sleep that night in Elmo. The place was a frenzy of activity. And though he never lost his cheery smile, Luigi Broglia suddenly showed himself a very determined commander indeed.

He appointed Medrano to succeed him should he be killed.

‘Broglia will survive longer than any of us,’ said Lanfreducci. ‘That belly of his would stop a ball from a basilisk.’

The jokes grew blacker and blacker, and ever more frequent. Imagining the very worst horrors, and laughing at them, inured a man to real horrors when they came. Between the joking, every man prayed with all the serious fervour of his faith.

‘
Dear Christ and Blessed Virgin
,’ prayed Nicholas. ‘
Be with us in our fighting, and in our dying. May we fight with justice and honour
.’ He paused. There was no praying for health and long life, nor even an easy death. The suffering were closest to Christ, and the suffering of the dying purged their souls in preparation for the sweet afterlife. A worldly fool prayed for an easy and painless life, a simple peasant prayed to the Almighty Creator to look down and cure his rheumatic aches. But he added, ‘
If it be God’s will, may Hodge survive. May he make it safe back to England after. Amen
.
’

And like all those who worked and prayed, he felt the presence of the Father and the Son and all the Saints, looking down in sorrow and compassion upon this bitter and bloody little human drama.

From the ramparts of Elmo, fewer than fifty knights and a hundred infantrymen watched in awe as the Ottoman siege train moved out onto Mount Sciberras. The bump and rattle of war wagons on the stony ground sounded across the peaceful waters all night long. Wagons piled high with tents and provisions, cannonballs and best corned gunpowder, lead musket balls, arrows, helmets, entrenching tools, picks, shovels, staves, ropes, iron bars, timbers, pre-assembled wooden frames for breastwork, lightweight latticed fences for cover and shade, hides, woollen sacks, sail canvas, casks of flour, rice, lentils, dried fruit and dried meat.

All drawn by donkeys and mules, horses and oxen, vast numbers of draught animals, all needing to be fed and watered. The iron laws of the material world applied to the Ottomans as much as to any Christian army. Every 1,000lbs of ordnance required a pair of draught animals to shift. So those 20,000lb basilisks alone each required a team of a staggering forty beasts. All requiring fodder, on this bare, stark, grassless island providing none. Could the very size of the Turkish forces prove a weakness? How many provisions had the Ottomans brought, even in that huge flotilla of ships? How long could they hold out?