The Disorderly Knights

by Dorothy Dunnett

  Always, though taller than most, Graham Malett gave away the advantage of height. Now, holding his linked hands, he presented Lymond with a lift into the saddle and also a space in which to frame his reply. And Lymond, who had no need of either, found, thoughtfully, the courtesy to use both and said at length, looking down, ‘On the contrary. My experience has been in fighting with them. A kind of bourgeosie de robe.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Gabriel. ‘I should have realized. With Turkish prisoners freed from Spanish ships. I wished to warn you about the scimitar cut, and also that your men may find it disconcerting when the Janissaries scream.’

  No more than amused at the tact, ‘I scream too,’ said Lymond gravely. ‘And louder. But it is kind of you to advise.’

  Graham Malett said suddenly, ‘Let me find you a breastplate at least, man. Their arrows.…’

  ‘My dear Sir Graham.’ said Lymond ‘I shall be behind a bulwark of three thousand pounds of plate steel, as worn by the Order. If their arrows go through all that, they deserve to succeed. My personal cargo is a twenty-five-pound helmet, a brigantine jacket and a sword, and I need only fall off my horse to dispatch someone flattened to his houris in Heaven. As for the Cross … my habit is to fight for the Saltire.’

  ‘Then St Andrew and St John both guard you,’ said Gabriel quietly, and let him go.

  *

  In Boghall Castle, Biggar, Scotland, Joleta Malett, who had been on edge all day, apologized for inattention to Lady Fleming for the third time and added, in extenuation, ‘I feel there’s something wrong. I don’t know what. When I felt like this, it used to be Graham who was in danger.’

  And Tom Erskine, Scots Privy Councillor and Ambassador, whose news from France was recent and specific, said, ‘A professional soldier, monk or not, is always in danger. Try to forget. He has not become what he is by being vulnerable or stupid.’ And thought uneasily that the same thing applied to Francis Crawford, who had also chosen to defend Malta on grounds known only to himself, which might procure him no dispensation in heaven at all.

  *

  The temperature was in the nineties; the sky removed a man’s breath from the lip of the lung with its invisible heat. The northerly wind which had blown the fleet of the Faithful from Sicily had gone, and below the brassy blue arc of July the arid sandstone rocks, the crumbling houses, the stony terraces vibrated like blows on the nerves of the sight.

  In their riveted armour, with the long, quilted leather jacks to protect from bruising beneath, the knights riding from Birgu round Grand Harbour were assaulted like an enemy by an element more formidable still: the single, burning sun which took from every chance encounter with salade, knee-plate or harness, with shield-buckle and sword, its penalty of blistered flesh. Fair skins blazed; sweat, crusting thick with salt in straining eyes made worse the suffocating blindness brought on by heat and pressure, by the nervous stress, never lost, never admitted, of the hour before the attack.

  This, through all the four hundred years of her history, was the Order’s penance, willingly undergone, below suns hotter than Malta’s. This was how they fought; this was how they suffered; this, when they rode out to face the fanatical scimitars, was the other enemy they must overthrow. By Lymond’s side Nick Upton, vast as a staved barrel, whom neither tiltyard nor rowing bench could diminish, said in his direct English voice, ‘You’ll find us none so monkish on the field of battle.’

  ‘I have nothing against monks,’ said Lymond, his gaze scanning the rocks and dry cactus ahead; his senses attuned to noise far away from their galloping horses.

  The bulbous, kindly face, fretted by the tongues of the Venetian helmet, turned again, jerking to the horse’s gait. ‘Are ye a Protestant?’ inquired Upton in a mild shout.

  Diverted, Lymond this time looked round. ‘Because I haven’t clamoured to become a novitiate?’

  The Turcopilier gave no direct answer. Instead he said, ‘Gabriel thinks a lot of you.’

  ‘I thought I talked too much for his comfort,’ said Lymond. ‘But I hear he has a ravishing sister. I must mend my ways.’

  A surprisingly sweet smile crossed the Turcopilier’s face. ‘Nothing on earth can surprise or defeat Gabriel,’ he said. ‘As you will find out. But he would gladly welcome you—we all should—to our Church.’

  Ahead, minute in the shining air, was a sparkle of sunshine on jewels and drawn steel. ‘O England, thou garden of delights,’ said Lymond, lyrically intent. ‘Set aside these thoughts of religion, and let us go and chase Turks.’

  *

  The Janissaries screamed: that was true. Not when they were hit; not when the two-handed sword slit through the puffed silk of the turban, nor when the fire-hoops of wood rubbed with brandy touched the light robes of muslin and silk and flared orange in the white sunlight—robe, sash, beard, eyebrows and turban a white cypress of flame. Then they called on Allâh, rapt in ecstasy, and died fixed on certain Paradise and an eternity in the light. But before they were attacked; when the parties moving inland from Marsamuscetto with their superb hackbuts from the Hungary wars, their bows, their scimitars, their jewelled daggers, raced onwards from the firing of a hovel, the burning of stored corn and carob seeds, the tearing down of a lemon grove or a vine to see the knights approach—then the Jannissaries gave their high, wailing cries and gleaming teeth and black eyes, streaming herons’ plumes and black moustaches under the golden crescent and three-cornered silk banners, airy as their white robes in the cruel heat, the Janissaries charged, and the dark Imams urged on the Faithful.

  With Upton, tireless in full armour, swinging sword and axe in the lead, knights and Maltese came across band after band on that ride, burning, destroying, plundering the poor wreckage of the empty pueblos on their way to the plains of Curmi to muster for battle. Because of Upton, the Ottoman landing parties came to Curmi not in well-groomed companies, but angry and harried by stinging attacks, by the small, orderly army of Upton’s light horse.

  And the knights endured remarkably well. Rarely conscious of them as faces, Upton was yet aware that both they and the Maltese like a single arm obeyed his desires; that no order of his remained ambiguous, that no slip went unrectified; and later, drawing them together among the low hills at the edge of the great plain, where to cries and drumbeats the white figures streamed and mingled, he realized that throughout he had directed through the mouth and limbs of the Scotsman, in his plated jerkin, riding back and forth at his side. And naturally, as it seemed to him, in acknowledgement of this powerful staff work at his shoulder, he said to Lymond, ‘We can do no more, once they have mustered, unless.…’

  ‘Unless we give the illusion of charging?’ said Lymond, answering the bold thought.

  The lunacy of the notion was plain: Nick Upton wanted to feel his hands on a Turk. But there was some sense in it, too. Behind them were thirty knights and four hundred Maltese; in front, the rallying-ground of twelve thousand Turks. Not all had landed; not all had reached the plain; not all were as whole or as single-minded as when leaving their ships. It was possible that, without horses and heavy cannon ashore, they might not relish yet a pitched battle against the whole strength of the Order, as it might appear. The Order they would rightly expect to remain tight in St Angelo until besieged. The Turk might run. He might equally stand fast and attack. Nicholas Upton had no intention of crossing that plain, but he stood a good chance, if his bluff were called, of being chased all the way back to St Angelo.

  Before odds so great, there was no advantage in too much delay or too much thought. Shouting as loudly as their dry throats would allow, and followed by a thunderous torrent of brown figures screeching, ‘Allâh! Allâh!’ in the very timbre of Barbary; deployed to look like more than they were and the vanguard of more still, the Knights of St John pounded down the low hills.

  They were seen. For a moment, swirled like pond life under a cataract, the Turkish troops leaped patternless about the wide plain. Then, perceptibly, they began to move purposefully, to coalesce, to str
eam slowly, scimitars flashing, in a single direction. Nicholas Upton put out an arm and, obedient, the cavalcade behind him reduced speed. There was no need to hurry; only to give the illusion of haste. The Turks were running away.

  Leaving the plain, hazed with their dust, they ran back: back through the smoking ruins of Maltese farm and casal; back through Birchircara; back to the weedy rocks sliding under gloved feet, the salt crusting their gauzy brocades, the stinging air cracking gaped lips. They ran to their boats and rowed swiftly, accurately, sullenly (for someone had commanded them not to take risks) back to their ships.

  Hearts thudding; parched with excitement, with heat, with relief, the knights followed. Not so fast that they overtook the main body of Ottomans, but fast enough to separate and squash each small company of stragglers, to gnaw at the slippered heels of the army until it slid into the sea.

  They had only begun this work when Nick Upton, visible only as shining red skin between steel and steel of his helmet, gave a violent gasp and let all his plated bulk slither sideways, so that his horse stumbled and stopped. His hand quick on the bridle, Lymond twisted Upton’s beast round and supported the man, pinning his own horse hard; feeling the steel burn his hands through Upton’s fine scarlet surcoat with its dusty white cross. Then, as fighting broke out suddenly on their left flank and someone called him, he consigned the great burden, deftly, to other arms, and drew Upton’s men onwards without him. There was no balm he could offer Upton but rest while the fighting continued. And the Turcopilier’s company followed him, their swords bloody, their horses lathered with sweat, and beat the invader to the edge of the sea.

  They came back, when it was over, to the same spot: weary, jubilant but with time now for concern. They had unbuckled Nicholas Upton’s armour and he lay still on the ground, great belly upwards, eyes shut, his face puffed and glazed by the sun; his frame shaken by shuddering sighs. Francis Crawford knelt, holding his pulse for a moment; then rising without comment, gave all the necessary instructions. The Turcopilier did not waken when four men heaved his inert body into the sling, nor did his stertorous breathing change on the slow ride back to Birgu. To the knights who rode out from the arched gateway to greet him; to all those who pressed at their sides as they rode up the steep crowned streets of the town, Lymond made the same answer. ‘Sir Nicholas has no wound. He is a fat man over-exerting himself under a tropical sun while carrying a hundred pounds of plate armour. Blame the sun. Blame the armour. Blame your own numbskull habits. Blame the courage of a man with a heart a good deal bigger than his body ever became. But don’t blame the Turks. The Order of the Knights Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta killed this one.’

  In fact, Sir Nicholas Upton of England died later that evening, in his white-curtained bed in the hospital, his face turned to the doors of the Chapel of the Most Holy Saint. A moment later the French physician, laying down the silver cup engraved with the arms of de Homedès, rose and went quietly out, while the Prior continued in a low voice to recite the offices, and de Villegagnon, Blyth and the two knights closest to him in his years on Malta knelt beside the Turcopilier and prayed.

  The ludicrous death of the fat knight was the only loss that day. Lymond had brought back his company of three hundred and more without greater loss than scars and arrow-pricks; and Gimeran, in ambush across the water among the rocks of Mount Sciberras, had surprised the Turkish Admiral’s galley itself sailing close in to reconnoitre, and had fired on it, causing the crew to drop oars in disorder and eventually to retreat. Sinan Pasha, furious, had ordered a landing on Mount Sciberras to engage the small party of knights, but having done what damage they could, prudently Gimeran’s men had withdrawn, and re-embarking on their skiffs, had crossed safely back to Birgu.

  Since when St Angelo, inspired by the Grand Master, had rung with the Spanish knight’s praises. Jerott Blyth, who saw both homecomings and watched Lymond turn away, his men dispersed, after Upton’s sagging stretcher had been borne through the pomegranate-wreathed door of the hospital, overtook him on the way back to Gabriel’s. ‘Well?’

  Crawford of Lymond, Comte de Sevigny, who had respected Nicholas Upton, met this studied nonchalance blankly. ‘For all I know, excellent. Hercules, as you observe, brûla son corps, pour se rendre immortel. For the rest, you could scarcely claim yet they were blooded. But they lost a prime lot of weight.’

  *

  Very soon after that a skiff, unseen, put off from the Turkish flagship at anchor in Marsamuscetto Bay; and presently, their jewels bright in the sun, Sinan Pasha and his officers climbed that rocky peninsula where, hours before, Gimeran’s party had stood, and in their turn looked across Grand Harbour to the fortress of St Angelo, high on its sea-girt rock, with the town of Birgu behind.

  And, ‘Is this the castle which thou toldest the Grand Seigneur might so easily be taken?’ said Sinan Pasha, white between turban and beard, to the square and silent Dragut at his side. ‘Surely,’ said Sinan Pasha bitterly, ‘the eagle could never have chosen the point of a steeper rock for her eyrie.’

  Then the seamed, lashless eyes of Dragut surveyed them; surveyed Salah Rais his fellow corsair and Sinan the Jew his general, and closed as the flat, turbaned face with its grey spade-beard clenched in a smile.

  ‘Warriors of the Faith, why then are we here?’ said the old man agreeably. ‘The Unbelievers who harry the Edifice of God are within the Fort St Angelo, there before thee. Is thy quarrel with peasants and fishermen? God the Master of Worlds requires thee to cleanse that vile rock of its reptiles. God,’ said Dragut coldly, ‘and the shadow of Allâh on earth, the Sultan Suleiman Khan, son of the Sultan Selim Khan, son of Sultan Bayezid Khan, will meet failure with the righteous anger that slays.’

  And in the council of war which followed, under the flagship’s silken canopy, Dragut the Drawn Sword of Islâm and sworn enemy of the Knights of St John, partly prevailed. Tripoli was to be their main objective. Suleiman’s order to his general had been to take Malta and Gozo if he could; but to risk nothing that would endanger the taking of Tripoli.

  But first, the Emperor Charles was to be given a last chance. So, sailing beforehand to Sicily, Sinan Pasha had reminded the Viceroy of the treaties binding Charles and himself, and had asked to receive back in good faith the Sultan’s former city of Bône.

  Temporizing; all too clearly temporizing until the fine sailing days should pass and the fleet be constrained to set out harmlessly for the Sublime Porte, the Viceroy replied that having no advice on that score, he must refer the case back to his Master.

  It was his last chance; Malta’s last chance; Tripoli’s last chance. Silently, the envoy had bowed himself out; silently, Sinan Pasha had heard the news and, lifting anchor that night, had turned south and burned and plundered his way down the Sicilian coast. Suleiman’s orders had been to do nothing on Malta which would weaken the major onslaught on Tripoli. But they were not women, or bath attendants. To land on Malta and return empty handed would demean even these.

  Dragut could not persuade them to attack Birgu and St Angelo; not even his tongue or his presence could stiffen Sinan Pasha to that. But he did convince them, at last, that they must march on Mdina, six miles to the north-west, where undefended, the Maltese nobles, their people and their riches would have recoiled in fright. And so, because of the courage of Nicholas Upton and Gimeran the Spaniard, the Chevalier George Adorne of Genoa, Commander of Mdina, with thirteen thousand refugees, three Knights of St John and almost no other soldiers at all, suffered Sinan Pasha’s attack.

  *

  For thirty-six hours the little capital Mdina waited, gently mannered, classical in thought and in form; and perched like a rock-dove above the baked plains of Malta, looked for help which failed to arrive.

  From the first indication of danger—the distant columns of steel, the hazy columns of smoke—they had done what they could. On the second evening, as prepared as he could ever hope to be, the Governor Adorne, with residents and refugees pressed into
makeshift companies under his handful of knights, stood with his men and watched the Turkish army encamp.

  Behind him were eight courageous attempts at ambush. Eight times he had sent out a knight with a troop of his ablest men to fire and harry the oncoming Turks. But three leaders were not enough; and he had no more. Bleeding, fly-coated, asleep on their feet, the knights were wholly spent. Sleepless himself for two days and a night and suffering, with them all, the spare allocation of precious water, Adorne began to feel his own grasp slackening. And in the thick-walled little city, with its five hundred square yards of quiet passages, of high walls and crested gateways and the squat Norman-towered cathedral packed with scared, silent people, hope was faltering too. At night, home-made ropes, despite all Adorne’s warnings, trickled over the parapets and hurried shadows, swarming over ungainly, with bundle or baby, dropped to the ditches outside Mdina and ran … ran to disembowelment and slavery, for now the Janissaries were in place, ringing the city, drawing silently closer and closer over the plain. Of the three hundred men, women and children who tried to leave Mdina on these two nights, none escaped.

  So, as the last pure light slid under the sea and the fires of Islâm, like marsh magic, danced unbroken below, the Governor Adorne of Mdina sent a first and last appeal to the knights at St Angelo.

  And the courier, a grim little Spanish lieutenant he could ill spare, got through. With an arm strapped to his sword belt and a cut in his thigh that showed the white bone when he knelt, the dogged messenger from the besieged capital got to Birgu while the stars were still hung like lamps in the warm, sea-washed night, and presently, standing before Juan de Homedès himself, listened as the Grand Master, calm, dry and sarcastic, reduced to trivia the news he had brought.