The Disorderly Knights

by Dorothy Dunnett

  As soon as the day’s trial became unbearable, Galatian would come to her. Not to watch the sails, not to order the cannon, not to check his defences or his stores or to comfort his people … he would come running to her. She heard his hurried footsteps now, climbing the stairs, the rattle of the doors … and here he came. Paler than usual, his colourless hair stuck to his cheeks, his face familiarly suffused, he stopped when he saw her, half-transparent against the blue sky, and called her to come.

  She heard him. She even started indifferently to walk towards him when suddenly she veered instead to the right, to the flight of steps which led down from the battlements to the street far below.

  The noise had stopped. Below, from all those anguished, frightened throats, there came no sound but the routine sob of a child and the piping of young voices, pressing questions unanswered. Then she saw that every face was upraised to the watch on duty on the high battlements bridging the square. Turning, Oonagh fled to the parapet wall and looked.

  The fleet of Suleiman the Magnificent, rank upon rank of silken sails flashing with gold, the crescent banners like cirrus against the blue sky, was still there, far in the distance beyond the sentinel hills. But it had not swung in the wide, so-familiar arc across the blue sea to Gozo. Instead it was moving, bright scimitar of the prophet, to the distant, rich, Viceregal shores of Sicily.

  By her side, his craving forgotten, the Governor of Gozo in silence watched too. And out of that moment, that second chance, that respite from masochistic self-contempt, Oonagh saw something again clearly, with the hard, half-mystic certainty she had once had before she parted from Cormac.

  Something should be done for these people, these children. Galatian de Césel would never do it: she was his drug and his curse but, failing her, he would find others no less willing in her room. Could she not teach him other comforts, though? The comfort of planning, of action; the great panacea of success. On this stricken island there was no one who could lead, no one who knew what a leader should be like … except Oonagh O’Dwyer, who had stood at O’Connor’s right arm, and his father’s before him.

  ‘Praise be!’ said Oonagh suddenly, her eyes cool and reflective as they used to be, the fall of her black hair resting kindly on her uncouth maturity. ‘I wonder what your captains will say to this, my brave child? … I will have the Council room made ready for you.’

  And he nodded, automatically, without touching her, his eyes on the dwindling surge of bright sails.

  *

  From Birgu to St Angelo; from L’Isla to the revived villages on each ledge of crumbling rock where the families, running back with their bundles, their babies, their goats, crowded the worn, white-walled chapels, the bells jangled in the suffering heat of the air, rejoicing in the miracle of their preservation. Like pale ejaculations of surprise, the mattocks hung in the unfinished trenches; the armourers’ shops lay cold; the boats rolled idle with their empty casks on the shore of the Marsa. In the chapter hall of the fortress St Angelo, Grand Master de Homedès, relaxed on his crested throne, allowed himself to be mildly sarcastic at his Councillors’ expense.

  His knights heard him, torn between relief, uneasiness and, on the part of de Villegagnon, la Valette and those whom Gabriel led, with an apprehension verging on horror. Durand de Villegagnon sprang to his feet. ‘But, Your Eminence, the danger, surely, is only postponed. The fleet may return at any moment.’

  ‘They cannot now be said, surely, to be going to France,’ suggested Gabriel’s deep voice gently.

  ‘Why not? Why not? We are not fools, gentlemen. We study charts,’ said the Grand Master. He turned his head and his secretary, rising, spread a paper on the eminent knees. ‘There,’ said de Homedès. ‘Along the Sicilian coast to Provence and their devilish meeting with the French Ambassador. If they follow the coast, they will shorten their journey by some two hundred miles. There, Brothers in Christ, is your proof!’

  There was a painful silence. At length, ‘It is one possibility, out of many,’ said de Villegagnon curtly.

  The single princely eye was bent on the Chevalier, and his very bulk reduced to a sin. ‘Your suggestion is then, I take it, that the whole population of these islands should stand to arms; that the poor people we protect should remain crowded in Birgu and Mdina, spreading plague and consuming stores and water, while the food rots in their villages? Do you propose to let them out for the vintage, or must we house them here for ever, or until your precious Ottoman army comes, to eat, marry, squabble, breed, die in the convent of the Holy Order? I suppose from this year on, the Mass bell remains silent except for alarm; the Brothers are forever more exempt from their churchly duties in order to mix gunpowder and dig; the sunken galleys must rot? You have been too long in foreign waters, Chevalier. Our duty is not to glorify battle, but to enshrine and keep alive the fire of our Faith. The Order’s galleys are at Messina. The power of the Emperor is in the western seas. For that very reason we have done our duty; we have not importuned him for untimely help. Be satisfied, Brother Nicholas, with God’s grace as this day shown us, and do not anger Him with complaint.’

  Which was all very well but, as Gabriel said with unexpected wry humour afterwards, it was not the Deity who seemed to be principally offended.

  Sanctioned to ordinary routine; unable, even had they wished, to force Maltese and mercenaries to carry on the hopeless, arduous task of defence, the knights gathered in groups indoors as the new afternoon heat beat down, uneasily conferring, avoiding disloyalty and blasphemy as they might; praying always for relief. Outside, in the shimmering refractions of July, the hills and houses of Sicily hung all afternoon in the northern air, the painted sails of Suleiman’s fleet suspended below them; and from the coast, creaming column after column of black smoke began to rise until it seemed as if all Sicily were Etna, and the sky itself a curdled ocean of lava.

  Whatever their ultimate purpose, the Ottoman fleet was in no haste to leave these waters. Sinan Pasha, Dragut Rais and Salah Rais had landed in the lemon groves of Sicily itself, and were killing and burning unhindered across forty-three short miles of sea.

  That evening, as the afterglow lay like watered wine on the long pool of Grand Harbour and stitched with pink the smoky seas of the east, two fishing boats came in past the point of St Elmo and laboured through the long harbour towards Galley Creek.

  In the clear, rosy light there was a strangeness about them. More: as the sentries of St Angelo peered down from their blind Arab walls, they could hear sounds thinly rising from the flat water; an ill-tuned chorus of voices joined in shrill Christian praise. Crowding the battlements, they watched as the two high-prowed boats drew still nearer, rounding the point below Fort St Angelo and slowing before the shining chain across Galley Creek. The oars moved then, raggedly, to backpaddle, and the small lamps on the quay, in the gathering dusk, glimmered on the rowers, their brown faces upturned to the fort: on black, shawled heads and strong, knotted brown arms; on rolls and parcels and baskets and bundles which were silent and others which moved strongly and cried. It shone on a bent wicker cage in which a linnet lay dying; on a snoring child, clutching a doll sodden with tears; on the upturned eyes and untutored throats of the women and children of Gozo, who had rowed through the straits of Comino, past Mellieha Bay, past the bay where, fifteen centuries before, St Paul had been wrecked and had come, like St Paul, to seek sanctuary.

  Gabriel took the news to the Grand Master. De Homedès, early in bed, found it easy to disbelieve him. After explanation, corroboration, delay, His Eminence at length had himself dressed and moved through his garden, past his menagerie and down to the rail overlooking the quay and the rocky ledge on which the great capstan stood for unwinding the chain. In the falling dark, the two boats far below could hardly be seen, except as two shadows barring the yellow columns of L’Isla’s mirrored lights.

  The ragged anthems had stopped. Instead, monotonously across the water, came the thin voice of a spokesman appealing, in the name of the Governor of Gozo
who had sent them, for the Grand Master’s permission to land.

  ‘Take the chain up?’ said the Grand Master testily. ‘What non-sense is this? These are women and children.’

  ‘They have come all the way from Gozo,’ said Gabriel, sharpness audible even in that unshaken voice. ‘If as you say the Turks have gone.…’

  ‘Then they have no right to encumber us here. And if the Turks have not gone, as you are so fond of reiterating,’ said Juan de Homedès with devastating precision, ‘then what are these but useless mouths obstructing the garrison?’

  ‘And if Gozo is attacked, and not Malta?’ asked Gabriel bluntly.

  The Grand Master turned away, his velvet cloak pressed peevishly against his thin flesh, the eight-pointed cross glimmering in the scented dark. ‘Exactly my point, Brother,’ he said. ‘How do you suppose these poor men of Gozo will fight if we withdraw the very thing they want most to save? Send these people back.’

  This last, delivered to the knight standing ready, lantern in hand, to signal for duty at the capstan, produced absolute silence. Even from the two crowded boats, now quite invisible in the dark, arose no whimper, no cry. The Grand Master raised his voice, impatient of their slow understanding, and repeated irritably what he had said. ‘Hail them, sir! And tell them they are to go back to Gozo.’

  ‘And if they refuse?’

  Black patch and cold eye, turning together, expressed the Grand Master’s unqualified disapproval. ‘Then sink them,’ he said.

  *

  ‘That for the Order!’ shouted Jerott Blyth, hurling the ripped shreds of his robe of St John to the floor; and the circle of French knights about him, stirring, murmured and looked at one another, and at Gabriel.

  ‘You are making it awkward for the Pilier, Jerott,’ said Sir Graham sharply. He had just brought them news of last night’s pilgrimage from Gozo and its outcome; and throughout the Auberge of France the knights, stunned, had come to hear.

  De Villegagnon spoke, almost as sharply returning Gabriel’s rebuke. ‘None of us is shamed by M. Blyth’s words. He is right. The Grand Master is insane. Let him go on, and we shall be the butt of Osmanli and Christian alike. For God’s sake, Gabriel, take command for him. There isn’t a man who would not willingly follow you. Damn humility! Damn modesty! Lead us, Graham!’ And answering him, before Gabriel could speak, was a firm, an angry, a masculine rumble of assent: the deep voice of war, and not the ritual litany of the Order’s daily utterance.

  ‘May I ask,’ said someone peaceably, ‘why Sir Graham did not bring us this news last night?’

  Calm within the clamour about him, Gabriel met Francis Crawford’s neutral blue stare over the heads swirling between them, and smiled. ‘Do you really think,’ he said to that detached presence, ‘that I would allow old women and young children to make that journey to Gozo without respite?’

  ‘No,’ said Lymond after some thought, and Jerott, sensing flippancy, pushed his way exasperated out of the crowded circle and gripped a windowsill, the light white on his face. ‘What did you do?’ asked de Villegagnon, his thick brows drawn.

  ‘Put them in the sail loft overnight,’ said Gabriel calmly. ‘La Valette and a Serving Brother helped me. The Grand Master and the other knights are not aware of it, and the sempsters are sworn to secrecy. The Gozitans left this morning.’

  ‘Left!’ said Jerott, whipped from his sulks by the window.

  ‘They have gone back to Gozo. Wait!’ said Gabriel quickly; and his resonant voice for once was formidable. ‘Wait before you judge. We have an obligation here: to all the people of Birgu and L’Isla, all the villages in east Malta, all the women and children who fled here the other day when we thought the Turk had arrived. And even that obligation we must dishonour if—as seems certain to me—Dragut attacks on his way back. He won’t waste guns on Gozo; don’t think it. His blow will be struck against us, the Order, where we are accessible to his ships. I would wager my hope of heaven if I had any such,’ said Gabriel deliberately, ‘that Sinan Pasha and Dragut mean to destroy us, here at St Angelo. You know our exact resources of food, our full store of water. We shall die fighting, I hope, of honourable wounds. The women and children with us will die of hunger and thirst, or will fall helpless to the Turk. The Order’s duty is to fight Islâm, and in a last extremity, for the Religion, the Order has first claim on all reserves to survive.… They are better on Gozo.’

  He had satisfied them, but he had not turned them from their new thought. De Villegagnon voiced it again. ‘Lead us,’ he said.

  For a moment Graham Malett was silent, collecting his thoughts. Then with unaffected patience he answered. ‘The Grand Mastership is dissolved only by death; and new Masters are made by the full Council, the Emperor and the Pope. This is an old, sick priest, given way a little to selfish concerns; unable now to bring balanced thought to his problems; unable to find comfort in prayer. To begin with, pity him.’

  ‘Pity us!’ retorted Jerott bitterly.

  ‘Why?’ said Gabriel swiftly. ‘Because you are in your twenties and young and importunate, and the Order is four hundred years old and patient? The Order has survived weak leadership before. It will again. If we have complaints—’ he held up his hand against the comment—‘the time to make them is after we have driven Dragut from Malta, and the place to make them is in full Council, in the presence of the Viceroy. I beg you …’ he looked round, half rueful at his own rhetoric, half in pain with the sheer urgency of his wish to persuade, ‘I beg you, do nothing now. Can you not see? The best leader in the world could not in the last weeks have forced the Emperor to give us ships and troops. The best soldier in Christendom, given our defences as they have stood this last month, could do little now to improve them. There is nothing material to be gained by rebellion now, and every possible loss, physical and spiritual. We should be accused of personal ambition, subversive nationalism, panic and cowardice in the face of danger, How could you deny it? Jerott—Nicholas—Brother Nick—dearest children in Christ.… Did you not say once, as I said, “I vow to God. …” ’ And the tall, fair-haired knight quoted suddenly in his remarkable voice.

  ‘I vow to God, to Saint Mary, ever a Virgin, Mother of God; to St John the Baptist, to render henceforth and for ever, by the grace of God, a true obedience to the Superior which it pleases him to give me, and who will be the choice of our Religion.’

  Sir Graham Malett paused, and in the shared silence added the words heard for the first time by each of them on the day of his initiation. ‘ “Receive the yoke of the Lord, because it is sweet and light … under which you will find repose for your soul.” Receive with humility, Jerott, the lessons you are taught, and do not lightly forget that we have a Leader who will not fail us.

  ‘Let us go to Church,’ said Gabriel quietly. ‘And then work as we may on the defence of our island, to the last shred of our strength.’

  *

  On the morning of the 16th July, before the sun was more than a mellow radiance outside the white, sleeping walls of Birgu, the bells of St Lawrence started to ring and after them, erratically, slow, swift, shrill, sonorous, the jangling bells of every church on the island. The sound wrangled through the dark Arab windows: the grilled windows of the knights, the open shutters and the dark courtyards, and danced in the slumbering air.

  Jerott Blyth, asleep dirty-handed where he had thrown himself in Gabriel’s fine guest-chamber, looked across to where Lymond slept, worn as they all were with heavy, self-disciplined labour, his bleached head still on the pillow.

  Then he realized that Lymond, too, was awake, and tensed. As he watched, the other man rolled to his feet and made for the door, snatching a cloak, for decency’s sake, as he went. Jerott followed; and saw.

  The bells were not for Mass. They were for the bright armada of Suleiman, sail on silken sail, moving past the mouth of Grand Harbour to anchor in Marsamuscetto Bay.

  *

  Before Lymond left with the others, Gabriel stopped him, a hand laid for a second
on his shoulder.

  Against the desires of the Grand Master, who wished the Order secure in the fastnesses of St Angelo and Mdina, presenting a barren country and a blank wall to the invader, Gabriel, de Villegagnon and la Valette in Grand Council had won their way. One swift and violent blow was to be struck at Dragut’s hordes as they landed: one sally to let the Sultan feel the knights’ steadfastness and anger.

  It would only by a miracle cause Sinan Pasha and Dragut to draw off. But it would perhaps remind them that this would be no easy siege, and that two months only of fine weather remained in which to win the island and sail home in safety to Constantinople. One blow; and then, retiring to Birgu and its fortress, the knights would await what God ordained for them.

  And the sally was to be a double one. Under the Commander de Gimeran of Spain, three hundred arquebusiers and a hundred knights on foot were to take skiff from Birgu across the Grand Harbour to Mount Sciberras, the rocky tongue separating the long water inlet of the Order from the Bay of Marsamuscetto, where the Ottoman fleet lay at anchor, to reconnoitre and do such damage from land as they could.

  The other party, of thirty knights and four hundred Maltese on horseback, under Turcopilier Nicholas Upton, with Lymond at his side, were to ride round Galley Creek and crossing the neck of the Mount Sciberras peninsula, circumvent the end of Grand Harbour to reach Marsamuscetto Bay by land, to harry the Turkish landing parties as they arrived.

  In the roaring chaos of the town square where the refugees, goats, hens, children, bundles of food and jars of water squeezed against the blazing stone of the houses to make room for the gathering knights, Gabriel moved his gaze from the dancing, sun-hazed droves of thick-bodied horses, the dazzle of plate-armour and helmets swinging with plumes, the shifting bright disks of shields of Auberge and Order, and the jerking pennants, congested with quarterings. ‘Since you wear no armour and subscribe to no symbol of faith, would a soldier’s advice offend you?’ said Gabriel to Francis Crawford. ‘You have not, I think, fought the Turk before.’