The Religion: A Novel

by Tim Willocks

  Orlandu said, “Tannhauser.”

  Ludovico saw him too. He called out to his comrade as if he’d stop him. “Anacleto!”

  The effort clenched him up again. Anacleto did not heed him. Orlandu sensed the dark wrath hurtling across the barrens, and he craved nothing more than to see Tannhauser hale. But whatever riddles were here to be resolved, this brave knight needed the surgeon and he wanted to help him. He started forward with Ludovico’s reins.

  “Hold,” ordered Ludovico.

  Orlandu said, “Father Lazaro—”

  “No,” said Ludovico. “I am beyond the surgeon’s art. But not, perhaps, beyond honor.”

  Ludovico took the reins back. He turned his horse around to face the plain, and tossed his chin to indicate that Orlandu do the same. They watched Tannhauser bear down on his golden horse. Anacleto rode out to meet him with drawn sword.

  “God knows All,” said Ludovico. “All things that are, and all things that have been, and all things that ever there will be. Even so, Divine Election cannot be approached, and each man graves the chart of Life with his own free hand.”

  Ludovico looked at Orlandu, and Orlandu looked back into the fathomless eyes, and the sorrow there enshrined was so immense it encompassed, or so it seemed, all the wasted heartache there heaped on the destitute island around them.

  Ludovico took a breath and continued. “The scholars call this paradox ‘the Hidden Mystery’ and to such questions as these, Augustine answers, Inscrutabilia sunt judicia Dei.”

  “Sir?”

  “The judgments of God are inscrutable.”

  Ludovico turned back to the plain and so did Orlandu.

  They saw Tannhauser rein the golden horse to a halt. Anacleto charged toward him. They saw Tannhauser circle his arms around about his head and saw the blue wink of the sun on the barrel of his rifle. They saw smoke and flame plume from the muzzle and Anacleto keeled backward from his saddle. Then they heard the shot and its echo from the bone-strewn scarp. They saw Tannhauser hold the barrel upright in his fist and saw him cram a flask into its bore. They saw Anacleto roll onto his belly and clamber to his knees. They saw Tannhauser drive home a ball and lay the loaded rifle on his thighs and draw his sword. He walked the golden horse forward. They saw the gleam of the sword’s rise and fall, and Anacleto fell forward, and something rolled from his shoulders and came to a halt in the dust.

  With a strange sense of contentment that chilled Orlandu’s spine, Ludovico said, “This is where my own chart ends. Yet even in writing his end, a man may become one thing and not another. Perhaps in writing his end most of all.”

  When Tannhauser saw Anacleto ride down the hill, he realized he was drained of hatred and rage. He’d imagined taking the youth apart piece by piece, prolonging his suffering, humiliating him, leaving him certain to die but not yet dead. Now he wanted only to have it done. He unlimbered his wheel lock and shot him and the rifle ball cracked loud as it breached the chest plate. He recharged the gun and wound the lock tight with the key and primed and closed the pan. He drew his sword and as he passed the kneeling villain, he cut him down without deigning to look him in the face. He scabbarded the sword, then looked up to the shoulder of the scarp and saw their silhouettes against the azure. The man and the boy. The father and his son. Tannhauser canted the rifle against his hip. He rode up the slope to kill the one in front of the other.

  When he got there, he saw that there would be no contest of arms.

  It wasn’t the sight of the bullet hole in the belly of the monk’s armor, or of the glistening mat of blood that coated Ludovico’s thighs and saddle and which clung in sticky swaths to the flank of his horse. It was the expression on the monk’s pallid face and the glimmer from the sockets of his eyes, a glimmer such as thrown by certain stars, so that when you look at them direct they disappear.

  “I’ve asked Orlandu to wait for us in the Borgo,” said Ludovico. “But he was reluctant to leave without greeting you.”

  Tannhauser looked at Orlandu. For the first time in what seemed like an eternity, he felt something close to happiness flicker through his chest. He said, “You look to have put some flesh on your bones in your exile among the heathen.”

  “After working in Galley Creek,” said Orlandu, “working for Abbas was like a festa.”

  Tannhauser smiled and Orlandu beamed. The boy’s expression faded as he looked at Ludovico. It occurred to Tannhauser that the boy had no inkling of his enmity for the monk, or at least had not, until Bors had shot the latter through the gut.

  Tannhauser said, “Brother Ludovico is right. Wait at the Borgo.”

  He threw his rifle to Orlandu and the boy caught it with both hands and swayed on the bareback horse. Tannhauser dismounted and looped his canteen around his neck and handed Buraq’s reins to the boy.

  “Take Buraq to the Grand Master’s stables. Blanket him and walk him and see he’s watered when he’s cool. No feed until I get there.” He pointed to the bulging pouches slung behind the saddle. “And don’t let my wallets out of your sight.”

  “After such a day as he’s had, Buraq should have his feet picked,” said Orlandu. “And his eyes and nostrils wiped, for the dust and smoke were something fierce.”

  “Excellent,” said Tannhauser. He looked at Ludovico. “The boy is a fiend for learning and hard work. When first we met he’d hardly touched a horse in his life.”

  Ludovico mastered a spasm and nodded his admiration.

  “The boy is all you said he was and more. Brave, proud, tall.”

  Orlandu glowed. But Tannhauser could see that his awareness that Death was the fourth member of their circle remained keen. Tannhauser said, “Now say goodbye to your savior. And thank him.”

  “He’s already thanked me,” said Ludovico.

  Tannhauser said, “Then goodbye will do.”

  Ludovico stripped a bloody gauntlet and held up his hand. “Come closer,” he said, to Orlandu. Orlandu did so and bent his head to receive the blessing. Ludovico placed his hand on the boy’s skull. The contact seemed to fill the black monk with a transcendental joy.

  “Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis”—Ludovico raised the hand and made the cross—“in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritu Sancti, Amen.”

  Orlandu crossed himself. Ludovico held out his hand. Orlandu was surprised, for knights never offered such courtesies to such as him. He shook it.

  “Honor your mother, always,” said Ludovico. “There is no wiser commandment.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” said Orlandu.

  He glanced at Tannhauser. Tannhauser nodded.

  “Goodbye,” said Orlandu.

  “Godspeed,” said Ludovico. He let go of Orlandu’s hand.

  Tannhauser and Ludovico watched the boy’s descent down the trail. They watched him through the Ruins of Bormula, and across the Grande Terre Plein, and through the Provençal Gate. Then they stood in a silence of their own, for a while, and took in the harbor, and the derelict fortresses, and the half-razed town, and the shambles of ashes and blood for which so many folk, from so many corners of the Earth, had fought and died. The bells of victory pealed. And Tannhauser remembered that it was from a spot very close to this one that he’d heard Carla play her viola da gamba in the night. And he thought of the two women playing their music together, and of the moments of rapture and beauty they’d wrought between them, and he thought of Amparo as she swam the moonlit bay, and the wind in his hair evoked her wayward spirit passing by. For Gullu was right, and she would always be with him, and he tried again to recall the last words she’d said to him, and, again, he could not.

  From the Provençal Gate a fresh pair of riders appeared, and the hooves of their mounts raised blood dust from the Grande Terre Plain. Tannhauser turned to Ludovico. The man was teetering on the saddle, as pale and gaunt and fragile as the specter of night.

  “Let me help you down,” said Tannhauser.

  Ludovico nodded and leaned across his mount’s neck. He swung one leg acros
s its back, and as he threw his weight onto its mate his strength failed him complete and Tannhauser took his bulk around the waist and the armor scraped his neck as he lowered him to the stones by the edge of the trail.

  “You’re the second man I’ve helped from his horse today.”

  “I hope the first was not so frail as I.”

  “I too. That’s a vicious hole Bors drilled into your gut.”

  Tannhauser drew the Devil’s blade, which he’d forged three decades ago, and Ludovico braced himself without a word. Tannhauser cut the straps of his Negroli armor and Ludovico watched him at it. Here on the ridge, the breeze came in torrid gusts.

  “The wind is hot,” said Tannhauser. “The sirocco, from the deserts of Libya and beyond. But after cooking inside this steel, it will feel like spring.”

  He opened the vambraces like the shells of clams, and uncapped the pauldrons from the shoulders. He lifted free the great black breastplate and set it to one aside. He peeled away the bloody padding underneath, and though Ludovico’s ruptured belly was as tight as a drumskin, and the bowels inside were dissolving in their own filth, not once did the monk make a sound. Against his skin he wore the plain black habit of Saint John, with the white eight-pointed cross stitched on the breast.

  “Better?” asked Tannhauser.

  “I’m grateful.”

  Tannhauser uncorked the canteen and held it to Ludovico’s lips. Ludovico took two swallows and nodded. Tannhauser drank himself.

  “Does the Grand Master live?” asked Ludovico.

  “La Valette lives.”

  “Good,” said Ludovico. “At least I don’t have that upon my soul.”

  Tannhauser studied him. “You’re not the man I last saw in the Guva.”

  Ludovico looked at him. “Perhaps I had a wise man for an enemy.”

  “I’d hazard it took more than that.”

  “When I saw Orlandu on the field,” said Ludovico. “When I called his name and he turned waist-deep in the water, and for the first time I saw his face. So brave, so—” He struggled for words, and his shoulders lapsed back against the rock and he rolled his great head and looked up at the sky. The black eyes filmed with emotion. “Oh God,” he said. “Oh my Lord God.”

  In those words was a regret too monumental to be compassed. Tannhauser wondered it didn’t kill him. He said, “That’s answer enough. Does Orlandu know who you are?”

  “No.”

  “Why didn’t you tell him?”

  “I leave that choice to Carla.”

  “Do you think she’d lie?”

  Ludovico’s lips were parted, and he panted in short gasps. His mouth didn’t move, but some glancing of the light in his eyes suggested a smile.

  “Perhaps she has a wise man for a friend,” he said.

  “I’d thought to tell the boy you were a coward and a traitor,” said Tannhauser. “But the one would be a falsehood, and in a world as degenerate as this one, what man is not a traitor to his own best promise?”

  “Tell Carla I’m sorry.”

  “I know,” said Tannhauser. “I will.”

  Ludovico blinked. “I didn’t intend for Amparo to die.”

  Tannhauser studied him. Then said, “I know that too.”

  “I wonder if God will forgive me.”

  “Christ will.”

  “You speak of Christ, at last?”

  Tannhauser smiled. “A religion that makes room for the good thief has much to recommend it to the likes of me.”

  Ludovico’s eyes bored into him and for a moment he was the Inquisitor of old, the man in search of other men’s hidden truths. He said, “Then much else has changed since the Guva.”

  “You told me in Messina that Sorrow opens the gate to the Grace of God. And you asked, if such were the case, what right man might shun it.”

  Ludovico’s eyes shifted, as if recalling that conversation from far away.

  “Those were merely words,” he said. “Scholarly words.”

  “Life inclines to making such words flesh,” Tannhauser replied.

  Ludovico nodded. He put the palms of his hands to his chest, and breathed deeply of the rank and dusty air. He let it out through his mouth. He essayed a smile. He looked up. Their eyes locked across the mighty gulf that had divided them. Ludovico had made his Peace.

  “You were right,” said Ludovico. “It feels like spring.”

  Tannhauser stabbed him through the heart and Ludovico died on the instant.

  The blade forged in a devil’s blood had found its destined home. And there it rested.

  Tannhauser let go of the precious garnet hilt. His throat was thick with emotions he couldn’t name and he swallowed them down. He picked up Ludovico in his arms. Burned down to the sinew by the siege as he was—as were they all—he remained a big man. He carried him into a chest-deep Turkish entrenchment and laid him down. He rolled him in a length of canvas scavenged from an abandoned magazine. He covered him with timbers and gun stones and pieces of rock. He left no marker but the dagger lodged in his heart. He climbed back up onto the trail. He baled the Negroli armor and tied it to the saddle of Ludovico’s horse. As he was about to mount up, the Grand Master, Jean Parisot de La Valette, and his distinguished Latin Secretary, Oliver Starkey, emerged from beneath the hill’s rim. They both saw the monk’s black armor.

  “Captain Tannhauser,” said La Valette. “How goes the day?”

  “The day is yours.”

  La Valette nodded and dismounted. He favored his injured leg but his vigor remained a wonderment. He drew his sword. Tannhauser looked at him.

  “Would you be rid of me too?” Tannhauser asked.

  La Valette laughed. Tannhauser had never heard him laugh before. It was a pirate’s laugh. And something more. The laugh of one able to send everyone he loved to their deaths, and, at that, for a monstrous ideal. La Valette shook his head.

  “There’s no better place than a battlefield,” he said, “on which to be dubbed a knight.”

  Tannhauser stared at him.

  “I know there are few you would kneel for,” said La Valette. “Will you kneel for the Prince of the Religion?”

  Still, Tannhauser stared.

  “Do you doubt that such a gift is in my power?” asked La Valette.

  “No,” said Tannhauser, at last arousing his mind from its stupor. “I doubt only what it might commit me to. I’m not about to make vows I cannot keep. I’ve made such mistakes before.”

  La Valette seemed impressed by such integrity. “When the Order sees fit to honor a man of singular service, it may confer upon him the Habit of Magistral Grace. The usual requirements of nobility are waived—clearly a necessity in this case—the probationary period is dispensed with, and you’re not obliged to make a full profession of our vows. Nevertheless, you belong to the Religion, and wherever the brethren gather you may claim your right of allowance and canteen.”

  Tannhauser considered this. “May I indulge in commerce?”

  “Only the Vatican itself is richer than the Religion,” said Starkey. “With this victory, our donations may well outstrip theirs, though the Holy Father will never know by just how much.”

  “And may I style myself ‘Chevalier’ or some other such worthy appellation?”

  “Of course,” said La Valette. The pirate’s smile creased his eyes. “You will also be immune to the arm of the Civil Law.”

  Tannhauser caught his jaw before it dropped. What brotherhood of criminals was ever more ingeniously conceived? “The law has no jurisdiction over the brethren?”

  “You will answer only to our laws,” said La Valette. “Since you’re the only man alive who’s outlasted the Guva, I trust you will keep them.”

  At the risk of appearing unappreciative, Tannhauser said, “Is celibacy a requirement?”

  “No, it is not. Though I might say I recommend it if you’d live a long life.”

  Tannhauser sank to one knee and squared his shoulders.

  “In that case, Your Excel
lency, you may wield your sword with gladness.”

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

  Mdina

  Without walls and entrenchments and gunfire—and the homicidal patrols of either flag—Tannhauser realized how tiny Malta was. The journey from the Borgo to Mdina, which at times had seemed a trip to tax Odysseus, was a mere eight miles. With the horses recruited, and some food and wine in their bellies, he and Orlandu rode up the mountain to the sound of numberless bells. They passed a deal of jubilant traffic on the way, for it was as if the gates of an enormous jail had been opened and its prisoners released to revel as they would. But Tannhauser was somber, and ignored the gay halloos, and Orlandu riding beside him caught his mood.

  “You’re angry with me?” he asked.

  Tannhauser considered him. The boy looked as lively as a slaughterhouse dog. If any could be said to have come through all this madness unscathed, it was he. He was sound in limb, sharp of mind, and had—as far as Tannhauser knew—no murders or cruelties to tarnish his immortal soul. And it occurred to Tannhauser, as if out of the blue, that he himself could claim no small share of credit in this triumph, and with this thought his disposition improved.

  “Let me put it this way,” he said. “If I’d known what your existence was going to cost me—in more blood, sweat, and tears than I knew I had to shed—I’d have made my way to Malta twelve years ago and strangled you in your crib.”

  Orlandu recoiled as if slapped and Tannhauser grinned. “If we’re going to walk the road ahead together,” he said, “you must acquaint yourself with my drollery, which tends to the grim.”

  “Then you’re not angry.”

  “Have you given me reason to be so?”

  “Then why do you wish you had strangled me in my crib?”

  “When we met on the woeful gauntlet at Saint Elmo, I told you that you’d led me a merry dance. I didn’t know then that the jig had hardly begun. But now that it’s almost over, I would say that the sight of you makes every bloody step worthwhile.”

  He thought of Amparo. And Bors. Not every step, then. But the boy was not accountable for that. If Orlandu could not make head nor tail of this, it was not for want of acumen. He struck, instead, right to the essence.