The Religion

by Tim Willocks

  Starkey tented his fingers against his lips. He pondered the lawful scenario.

  “Serjeants at arms invading the Courts of Law. Arrests. Trials. Executions. The Italian langue disgraced, with much bad blood. Our victory sullied. Open conflict with the Roman Inquisition—perhaps the Vatican too.”

  He shook his head in distaste. He looked at Tannhauser.

  “This ugly matter would be best buried deep.”

  Tannhauser said, “Give me your warrant and I’ll bury them all.”

  “Warrant?” said Starkey. “If Ludovico survives—and you’re taken alive—this conversation never took place. You’ll almost certainly be hanged.”

  Tannhauser felt a flicker of surprise, then amazement that he should have expected loyalty. He knew these creatures. He was, after all, the man who’d been sent to murder the Sultan’s grandchild. By the Sultan. Sultan, Vatican, Religion. Islam or Rome. All these cults sought only power and the submission of peoples. The people themselves, the little people, like him, like Gullu Cakie, like Amparo, were no more than grist to their mill. La Valette, Ludovico, the Pope, Mustafa, Suleiman—what scum they were, one and all. Swathed in pomp and orchestrating carnage to coddle their unreckonable vanity. In his heart he’d have killed them all without a qualm, and counted it a service to mankind. Yet there’d never be a shortage of candidates to fill their shoes and to deplore this fact was an errand only fit for a fool.

  Tannhauser nodded. He said, “Of course.”

  “Ludovico left for Mdina with a troop of cavalry,” said Starkey. “They intend to join the attack on the Turkish withdrawal. If he should die on the battlefield, this scandal would die with him.”

  Tannhauser and his rifle had a new employer. “And Bruno Marra? Escobar de Corro?”

  “Foul and rotten limbs to be severed from the Order’s tree,” said Starkey. “They accompanied their new master to Mdina.”

  “Was Lady Carla with them?”

  “I believe she was.”

  Tannhauser handed him the torch. “Keep Pandolfo in your sights.”

  “He’ll be escorted from the church doors directly to the Guva.”

  Tannhauser slid back the pan cover on his rifle to freshen the priming. He slung the wheel lock across his back. He pulled the pistol and rechecked it. He’d wiped the bores and loaded each gun himself with a double charge of powder.

  “Why did Ludovico trust you?” asked Starkey.

  “He had a need to make me his dog.” The cold rage stirred. His limbs felt light; his head clear. He belted the pistol. He thought of Gullu Cakie and looked at Starkey. “And he failed to take the measure of my allegiances.”

  Starkey said, “Perhaps of your character too.”

  “No,” said Tannhauser. “My character he weighed with precision. For if Gullu Cakie hadn’t agreed to help me, your Grand Master would be dead.”

  To the west the sky was indigo. Cassiopeia sat her throne above Saint Elmo. To the south the Dog Star was bright. Above San Lorenzo the night had already faded to a lilac blue. Where the blunted ridge of San Salvatore distinguished the eastern horizon, a nimbus of palest gold crowned the dawn. Tannhauser walked down the street toward the Courts of Law.

  The building was two stories of sandstone, with a stab at juridical grandeur in the portico. Turkish cannon had left their mark as elsewhere. Tannhauser reckoned up the likely opposition: the two familiars from Messina, Tasso and Ponti; the Spaniard Remigio. Seasoned fighters—there was no one left in the city who was not so—but they didn’t expect him. He drew his Running Wolf sword and the Devil-bladed dagger, right and left. He ascended the stairs. The twin doors of the entrance stood wide open. Something like a ship’s lantern hung on a chain from the roof of the lobby. By its light he saw no one. He’d expected some kind of sentry—someone to signal Amparo’s murder, should it be required—and this disturbed him. He walked inside.

  Passageways led off to his either side. A flight of stairs led into darkness straight ahead. A search might take more minutes than he had left. He decided to stir the rats from their nest directly. He raised his voice by an octave to disguise it and shouted as if in alarm.

  “The Grand Master is dead!”

  He waited. Seconds later he heard rapid footsteps from the passageway to his left. He concealed himself by its mouth. He heard a muffled exchange. A laugh. Remigio emerged from the passage. Behind him, two abreast, came Tasso and Ponti. Only Ponti wore a cuirass. They carried sheathed swords in their hands. Remigio was chewing and Tasso wore a bib, as if they’d been interrupted eating breakfast.

  Tannhauser shoved twelve inches of Passau steel through Remigio’s belly and cranked the hilt. Remigio’s hands flew to the blade but it was gone and Tannhauser slashed his throat backhand and opened his neck to the spine and sidestepped as he fell. He lunged at Tasso’s face and the sword slid clean through Tasso’s forearm as he threw it up as a guard and the point split the arm bones and stuck him through the lip below the nose. Tannhauser cleared his sword smartly and closed and stabbed Tasso in the privities with the dagger and took out his legs with a foot sweep. He landed a shallow slash to his chest as he hit the stones. Then he stepped back.

  Ponti had retreated to jettison his scabbard but came back into the fray as Tasso fell. Tannhauser parried blows, the attack bold and fierce, head, thigh, arm, head, thigh, and he gave ground toward the center of the lobby to leave Tasso out of range, to give Ponti headlong momentum, then he opened Ponti’s guard up high, quillions locked to blade, and lunged forward and braced him, their breastplates clashing, swords aloft, Tannhauser’s weight gaining the vantage and Ponti winded, his left hand grappling for the throat as Tannhauser dropped a headbutt into his nose. The tip of his dagger sought the armhole in Ponti’s cuirass, and Ponti clenched his elbow to his side and forced the dagger away and abandoned the throat grab, for Tannhauser’s neck was too thick, and he grabbed instead for his balls and Tannhauser stuck the dagger through Ponti’s hand and pricked his own thigh as Ponti jerked back. He threaded his leg between Ponti’s knees and hooked his calf and shoved from the hip and Ponti toppled backward, sword flailing—and here was Tasso charging back in—and as Ponti hit the flagstones Tannhauser stabbed him in the groin and Ponti rolled and Tannhauser sliced him again at the back of the knee, but could find no killing blow. He warded Tasso’s charge with a slash and a turn and he retreated, hacking Ponti a good deep bite through the elbow of his sword arm as he clambered to his knees, then two, three steps across the lobby and Tannhauser turned again and stopped and sucked for breath.

  Tannhauser stared at the Italians while they all three caught their wind. He sheathed the dagger, drew the pistol left-handed and heeled back the dog. He’d wanted to avoid a shot, as the sound might alert unknown others and endanger Amparo. Ponti swayed in the aftershock of his wounds, his right arm broken, his sword swapped over to his injured left hand. His eyes were hooded with rage. Tasso was more unhinged. He stared at the black stain spreading from his crotch. Blood tumbled from his beard from his half-severed lip.

  “He’s cut my bollocks off,” he said, with disbelief.

  “I want Bors and the girl,” said Tannhauser.

  “The English is down below,” said Ponti. “The turnkey watches him. The girl is locked upstairs. We don’t know where. The women were tended by the Sicilian hag.”

  Tannhauser said, “Then who was to kill Amparo?”

  The Italians swapped a glance to confirm each other’s ignorance.

  “We know not of what you speak.”

  “You had no such orders?”

  Their faces answered and Tannhauser felt sick. “Where’s the crone?”

  Ponti said, “We don’t know.”

  “Is it true the Grand Master’s dead?” blurted Tasso.

  “No,” said Tannhauser. “He prepares your gallows. Ludovico’s too.”

  Their shoulders sagged with the resignation of those who’ve gambled all and lost.

  “Yield,” said Tannhauser, “and at lea
st you’ll see a priest before you die.”

  The thought of hellfire was enough for Tasso. He threw down his sword.

  “I’ll not go to the Devil,” he said. “God will forgive us yet.”

  Ponti howled and lumbered at Tannhauser, his sword upraised. Tannhauser parried and stepped aside and severed Ponti’s hand through the root of the thumb. He clubbed him to his knees with a blow from the pommel. He stepped back and set his stance firm. Then he rotated his hips and swung and hacked Ponti’s head from his shoulders with a single stroke.

  Tannhauser waded through the spew of blood toward Tasso and Tasso darted for the outer doors. Tannhauser moved to cut him off. Both stopped as Gullu Cakie mounted the threshold. He held the Sicilian crone before him with her arm cranked up between her shoulders. The crone looked at the slain and at the great puddles of gore that befouled the lobby. She let out a terrible wail. As well she might. Tasso turned back to Tannhauser and spread his empty hands.

  “Mercy and a priest for a fellow soldier,” he begged.

  Tannhauser stabbed him up beneath the basket of his ribs and through the liver. The man gave him a woeful look. Tannhauser unseamed him to the belt buckle and let him fall at the old hag’s feet. He sheathed his sword and grabbed the hag by her knot of white hair.

  “Take me to Amparo.”

  Her toothless mouth clamped shut. Her face incarnated that peculiar malice unique to the withered female in the winter of her days. Her eyes were tiny and quavered from side to side with blind fear. Tannhauser dragged her screaming and threw her facedown in the merging burgundy pools of Ponti’s and Remigio’s blood. She shrieked and slithered in the gore like a newly happened member of the Damned. She tried to regain her feet and failed and swashed back into the welter and rolled about in the waste like a panicked dog.

  Tannhauser turned away and handed the pistol to Gullu Cakie.

  “Bors is somewhere below. There’s a turnkey on guard.”

  Gullu took the gun and nodded. As he circled the lobby he picked up Tasso’s sword. Tannhauser grabbed the hag from the cooling swill and shoved her toward the stairs. She clambered up them like a frantic black spider, shuddering with sobs of horror and retching gobs of bile down her reeking dress, and Tannhauser heard from his conscience not a whisper of pity. At the top of the stair a lamp burned on a stand and Tannhauser took it and prodded the hag in the back. She stumbled away and stopped at a heavy door. She fumbled at her throat and produced a key on the end of a string. She turned it in the lock and pushed the door open, then fell to her knees at his feet and threw her arms about his ankles and babbled. And he knew by then that Ludovico had lied and that he was already too late by far.

  He looked down at the crone. Her face was a mask of crimson wrinkles.

  He said, “Who?”

  “Anacleto,” she wailed.

  He kicked the old crone into the room and she left a slimy trail as she crawled into a corner and chewed on her knuckles with her gums.

  Tannhauser walked inside.

  A lemony first light streamed through a high window and fell across the bed where Amparo lay. He set down the lamp and walked over. She was nude and cold and the fabric with which she’d been strangled was still drawn tight about her neck. He peeled the garrote away. It was silk, and the dark red of a pomegranate, and had left no mark on her throat. He realized it was Carla’s dress. The dress she’d packed on his word. He threw it to the floor. He saw the bruises on Amparo’s arms, days old, and he knew she’d been raped—over and again—for at least that long. These observations struck him mute and numb. He sat on the mattress and lifted her head in his hands. Her hair was still soft and smooth. Her skin was as white as a pearl. Her lips were drained of color. Her eyes were open, one brown, one gray, and each was filmed with death. He couldn’t bring himself to close them. He stroked her left cheek and traced the flawed bone that had somehow revealed her strange and incomparable beauty. He touched her mouth. Of all the many thousands who had died on this scourged shore, she had been the purest in heart. She’d died alone and violate and without a defender to count on, and his numbness broke and an awesome grief overwhelmed him, and this time there was no Abbas to stay his tears. He’d failed to protect her, and worse. He’d failed in the courage to love her as she’d deserved. To love her as she’d loved him, despite that he’d not earned it. To love her as in fact he had, which was beyond his power to voice, then and now. He hadn’t dared to meet such love on the square. He’d hidden from it like a cur. And he realized how mean a vision of courage he had owned, and how true and indomitable the courage of Amparo had been. He tried to recall the last thing he’d heard her say to him, and he could not, and his heart was cleaved apart inside him. Through that wound the Grace of God flowed into him. He was filled with a sorrow too enormous to contain and he groaned and squeezed her to his chest and buried his face in her hair and grunted with pain. And he begged Jesus Christ for His Mercy and he implored Amparo’s spirit to forgive him.

  Thus and so did Gullu Cakie find him. Tannhauser felt the old rogue’s hand on his shoulder and looked up. In the deep clefts scored in Gullu’s cheeks, in the sun-creased eyes, he saw a smoky mirror of himself, for Gullu too had lost many he had loved, and though in loss all felt alone, all here had a deal of fellowship. Tannhauser lowered Amparo to the bed. Her eyes were still open. Even in death they seemed luminous with some essence that refused extinction. He closed them. He stood up.

  “See,” said Gullu Cakie.

  He pointed to Amparo’s hand. It clutched the ivory-and-silver comb that he’d bought in the bazaar. Tannhauser worked it loose. The teeth were crusted with blood.

  “Jesus triumphed over Death, and so will she, for that is His promise,” said Cakie. “She’ll be forever with you if you so want it. But life goes on. And you have work to do.”

  Tannhauser’s heart sank. He was sickened and weary. He’d had enough. Sorrow was no fit baggage for the killing fields. He wanted to nurture his tears. He wanted to run. To the boat at Zonra. To the Turkish ships. To a bottle and a wedge of opium. But Carla was still out there. And Orlandu. And Ludovico and his foul and rotten limbs. Tannhauser stuck the ivory comb in his own hair. He laid Amparo out straight and folded her arms across her chest. He saw once again the bruises yellow and blue on her slender arms and the bite marks profaning her breasts. The sorrow retreated to some hidden haven within, and with good reason, for something terrible rose in his chest to take its place. And this was as well, for he’d terrible things to do. He took the crumpled sheet from the bed and unfurled it and it fell across her body like a caress. And it was done and Amparo was gone.

  With the onset of day, the bells of San Lorenzo broke into peals of victory.

  Tannhauser crossed the room and hauled the trembling crone from her corner.

  He turned to Gullu Cakie. “I’m going to find the boy, Orlandu. Will you ride with us?”

  He followed Gullu Cakie down to the dungeons and he dragged the squalling crone along by her hair. Bors had been confined in a hole in the floor, and on his release had set about the turnkey with such outrageous violence that Gullu had skipped from the cell and locked the door. As they approached down the dank corridor they heard Bors bellowing, and they heard the blood-muffled whimpers of his victim. Gullu opened the door and Bors turned to face them with clawed hands. On the floor behind him sprawled the turnkey, his limbs twisted about at unnatural angles and the sockets of his eyes gouged clean. The trapdoor of an oubliette lay open.

  “Bors,” said Tannhauser. “Are you steady?”

  Bors’s eyes cleared. For a moment Tannhauser got a glimpse of something gentle, something young that predated all the violent roads he’d traveled. Then Bors, without even knowing it, banished it for good. “Steady as a rock,” he said.

  “Throw him in the hole and let’s go.”

  Bors wiped his mouth and picked up the wretched turnkey like a sack. He pitched him headfirst underground and stomped him from sight. He reached for the trapd
oor to close it.

  “This hag was Amparo’s keeper,” Tannhauser said. “Amparo is dead.”

  Bors blinked and his viciousness was tempered by grief, for he’d considered Amparo his friend, and he too had failed to protect her. Tannhauser shoved the crone across the dungeon floor and she gibbered with fear as Bors seized her by the neck. Tannhauser pointed to the oubliette and the broken and caterwauling turnkey crammed within.

  “Let the hag keep him company.”

  The Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin: Saturday, September 8, 1565

  The Grande Terre Plein—Naxxar Ridge—Saint Paul’s Bay

  With their reprieve from certain doom the townsfolk had succumbed to a festive frenzy. So crowded were the churches that the Te Deum was sung in the streets while chaplains celebrated Mass in the piazza and the market square. Icons of the Virgin were brandished and bells of salvation pealed. People embraced in the rubble and wept. The Hand of Saint John the Baptist was taken from the conventual sacristy and paraded for adoration. Their prayers had been answered and their stoical heroism rewarded. The Will of God had been determined. The Knights of the Holy Religion stood vindicated before eternity and the world.

  Yet through this joy three riders rode whose hearts were closed to rapture.

  Their mounts stepped over the shot that littered the cobbles as they threaded the abandoned barricades and wended to the Provençal Gate. Tannhauser looked up. On the bastion above he saw the launch from the gallows of the last, the unlucky, the one hundred and eleventh Moslem sacrifice of the siege. As if the stones themselves protested at this enormity a section of the breached wall moaned and crumbled with a sigh of dust into the ditch. But if anyone heard, none cared. No more would the call of the muezzin echo from the hills.

  The gates stood open and they passed through and out and over the Grande Terre Plein. Thousands of forsaken corpses lay bloated and liquefying in the sun, and if the Turks had been vanquished, the blowflies in their multitudes had not, and they reveled about the black and stinking wasteland in whirling vortices of blue. Vultures hopped about the putrefaction and ravens and seagulls and crows cawed and squawked as they wheeled and swooped in their own grim ovation to victory.