A Knight of the White Cross: A Tale of the Siege of Rhodes

by G. A. Henty

  CHAPTER XXIII THE REWARD OF VALOUR

  Gervaise knew nothing at the time of the final result of the battle, foras soon as the knights had burst through the circle of his opponents,he sank insensible on the body of the grand master. When he came tohimself, he was lying on a bed in the hospital of the Order. As soonas he moved, Ralph Harcourt, who was, with other knights, occupiedin tending the wounded, came to his bedside. "Thank God that you areconscious again, Gervaise! They told me that it was but faintness andloss of blood, and that none of your wounds were likely to prove mortal,and for the last twelve hours they have declared that you were asleep:but you looked so white that I could not but fear you would never wakeagain."

  "How is the grand master?" Gervaise asked eagerly. Ralph shook his head.

  "He is wounded sorely, Gervaise, and the leech declares that one atleast of his wounds is mortal; still, I cannot bring myself to believethat so great a hero will be taken away in the moment of victory, afterhaving done such marvels for the cause not only of the Order, but of allChristendom."

  "Then you beat them back again from the breach?" Gervaise said.

  "That was not all. They were in such confusion that we sallied out,captured their camp, with the pasha's banner and an enormous quantity ofspoil, and pursued them to their harbour. Then we halted, fearing thatthey might in their desperation turn upon us, and, terribly weakened aswe were by our losses, have again snatched the victory from our grasp.So we let them go on board their ships without interference, and thismorning there is not a Turkish sail in sight. The inhabitants are wellnigh mad with joy. But elated as we are at our success, our gladness issorely damped by the state of the grand master, and the loss of so manyof our comrades, though, indeed, our langue has suffered less than anyof the others, for the brunt of the attacks on St. Nicholas and thebreach did not fall upon us, still we lost heavily when at last wehurried up to win back the wall from them."

  "Who have fallen?" Gervaise asked.

  "Among the principal knights are Thomas Ben, Henry Haler, ThomasPloniton, John Vaquelin, Adam Tedbond, Henry Batasbi, and Henry Anlui.Marmaduke Lumley is dangerously wounded. Of the younger knights, somefifteen have been killed, and among them your old enemy Rivers. He dieda coward's death, the only one, thank God, of all our langue. Whenthe fray was thickest Sir John Boswell marked him crouching behind theparapet. He seized him by the gorget, and hauled him out, but his kneesshook so that he could scarcely walk, and would have slunk back whenreleased. Sir John raised his mace to slay him as a disgrace to theOrder and our langue, when a ball from one of the Turkish cannon cut himwell nigh in half, so that he fell by the hands of the Turks, and not bythe sword of one of the Order he had disgraced. Fortunately none, savehalf a dozen knights of our langue, saw the affair, and you may be surewe shall say nothing about it; and instead of Rivers' name going down toinfamy, it will appear in the list of those who died in the defence ofRhodes."

  "May God assoil his soul!" Gervaise said earnestly. "'Tis strange thatone of gentle blood should have proved a coward. Had he remained athome, and turned courtier, instead of entering the Order, he might havedied honoured, without any one ever coming to doubt his courage."

  "He would have turned out bad whatever he was," Ralph saidcontemptuously; "for my part, I never saw a single good quality in him."

  Long before Gervaise was out of hospital, the glad tidings thatD'Aubusson would recover, in spite of the prognostications of the leech,spread joy through the city, and at about the same time that Gervaiseleft the hospital the grand master was able to sit up. Two or three daysafterwards he sent for Gervaise.

  "I owe my life to you, Sir Gervaise," he said, stretching out his thin,white hand to him as he entered. "You stood by me nobly till I fell,for, though unable to stand, I was not unconscious, and saw howyou stood above me and kept the swarming Moslems at bay. No knightthroughout the siege has rendered such great service as you have done.Since I have been lying unable to move, I have thought of many things;among them, that I had forgotten to give you the letters and presentsthat came for you after you sailed away. They are in that cabinet;please bring them to me. There," he said, as Gervaise brought a bulkyparcel which the grand master opened, "this letter is from the HolyFather himself. That, as you may see from the arms on the seal, is fromFlorence. The others are from Pisa, Leghorn, and Naples. Rarely, SirGervaise, has any potentate or knight earned the thanks of so many greatcities. These caskets accompanied them. Sit down and read your letters.They must be copied in our records."

  Gervaise first opened the one from the Pope. It was written by his ownhand, and expressed his thanks as a temporal sovereign for the greatbenefit to the commerce of his subjects by the destruction of thecorsair fleet, and as the head of the Christian Church for the blowstruck at the Moslems. The other three letters were alike in character,expressing the gratitude of the cities for their deliverance from thedanger, and of their admiration for the action by which a fleet wasdestroyed with a single galley. Along with the letter from Pisa wasa casket containing a heavy gold chain set with gems. Florence sent acasket containing a document bestowing upon him the freedom of the city,and an order upon the treasury for five thousand ducats that had beenvoted to him by the grand council of the Republic; while Ferdinand, Kingof Naples, bestowed on him the grand cross of the Order of St. Michael.

  "The armour I had hung up in the armoury, where it has been carefullykept clean. I guessed what it was by the weight of the case when itcame, and thought it best to open it, as it might have got spoilt byrust. It is a timely gift, Sir Gervaise, for the siege has played havocwith the suit Genoa gave you; it is sorely battered, dinted, and broken,and, although you can doubtless get it repaired, if I were you I wouldkeep it in its present state as a memorial--and there could be noprouder one--of the part you bore in the siege. I have seen Carettothis morning. He sails for Genoa tomorrow, where he will, I hope, soonrecover his strength, for the wounds he received at St. Nicholas havehealed but slowly. He said"--and a momentary smile crossed the grandmaster's face--"that he thought a change might benefit you also, for hewas sure that the air here had scarce recovered from the taint ofblood. Therefore, here is a paper granting you three months' leave. Hiscommandery is a pleasant one, and well situated on the slopes of thehills; and the fresh air will, doubtless, speedily set you up. I shouldlike nothing better than a stay there myself, but there is much to do torepair the damages caused by the siege, and to place the city in a stateof defence should the Turks again lay siege to it; and methinks Mahometwill not sit down quietly under the heavy reverse his troops have metwith."

  "But I should be glad to stay here to assist in the work, yourHighness."

  "There are plenty of knights to see to that," D'Aubusson replied, "andit will be long before you are fit for such work. No, I give my ordersfor you to proceed with Caretto to Genoa--unless, indeed, you wouldprefer to go to some other locality to recruit your strength."

  "I would much rather go with Sir Fabricius, your Highness, than to anyplace where I have no acquaintances. I have a great esteem and respectfor him."

  "He is worthy of it; there is no nobler knight in the Order, and, hadI fallen, none who could more confidently have been selected to fillmy place. He has an equally high opinion of you, and spoke long andearnestly concerning you."

  A fortnight later the ship carrying the two knights arrived at Genoa.

  "I will go ashore at once, Gervaise," Caretto said. "I know not whethermy cousin is in the city or on her estate; if the former, I will staywith her for a day or two before going off to my commandery, and ofcourse you will also be her guest. I hope she will be here, for methinkswe shall both need to refit our wardrobes before we are fit to appear insociety."

  "Certainly I shall," Gervaise agreed; "for, indeed, I find that my galacostume suffered a good deal during my long absence; and, moreover,although I have not increased in height, I have broadened out a gooddeal since I was here two years ago."

  "Yes; you were a youth then, Gervaise, and now yo
u are a man, and oneof no ordinary strength and size. The sun of Tripoli, and your laboursduring the siege, have added some years to your appearance. You are, Ithink, little over twenty, but you look two or three years older. Thechange is even greater in your manner than in your appearance; you werethen new to command, doubtful as to your own powers, and diffident withthose older than yourself. Now for two years you have thought and actedfor yourself, and have shown yourself capable of making a mark evenamong men like the knights of St. John, both in valour and in fitness tocommand. You saved St. Nicholas, you saved the life of the grand master;and in the order of the day he issued on the morning we left, grantingyou three months' leave for the recovery of your wounds, he took theopportunity of recording, in the name of the council and himself, theiradmiration for the services rendered by you during the siege, and hisown gratitude for saving his life when he lay helpless and surrounded bythe Moslems--a testimony of which any knight of Christendom might wellfeel proud."

  It was three hours before Caretto returned to the ship.

  "My cousin is at home, and will be delighted to see you. I am sorry thatI have kept you waiting so long, but at present Genoa, and, indeed,all Europe, is agog at the news of the defeat of the Turks, and Italyespecially sees clearly enough that, had Rhodes fallen, she would havebeen the next object of attack by Mahomet; therefore the ladies wouldnot hear of my leaving them until I had told them something at least ofthe events of the siege, and also how it came about that you were thereto share in the defence. I see that you are ready to land; therefore,let us be going at once. Most of the people will be taking their siestaat present, and we shall get through the streets without being mobbed;for I can assure you that the mantle of the Order is just at presentin such high favour that I had a hard task to wend my way through thestreets to my cousin's house."

  On arriving at the palace of the Countess of Forli, Gervaise wassurprised at the change that had taken place in the Lady Claudia. Fromwhat Caretto had said, he was prepared to find that she had grown out ofher girlhood, and had altered much. She had, however, changed even morethan he had expected, and had become, he thought, the fairest woman thathe had ever seen. The countess greeted him with great cordiality; butClaudia came forward with a timidity that contrasted strangely withthe outspoken frankness he remembered in the girl. For a time they allchatted together of the events of the siege, and of his captivity.

  "The news that you had been captured threw quite a gloom over us, SirGervaise," the countess said. "We at first consoled ourselves with thethought that you would speedily be ransomed; but when months passedby, and we heard that all the efforts of the grand master had failed todiscover where you had been taken, I should have lost all hope had itnot been that my cousin had returned after an even longer captivityamong the Moors. I am glad to hear that you did not suffer so manyhardships as he did."

  "I am in no way to be pitied, Countess," Gervaise said lightly. "I had akind master for some months, and was treated as a friend rather than asa slave; afterwards, I had the good fortune to be made the head ofthe labourers at the buildings in the sultan's palace, and although Icertainly worked with them, the labour was not greater than one couldperform without distress, and I had naught to complain of as to mycondition."

  After talking for upwards of an hour, the countess told Caretto that shehad several matters on which she needed his counsel, and retired withhim to the next room of the suite opening from the apartment in whichthey had been sitting. For a minute or two the others sat silent, andthen Claudia said,

  "You have changed much since I saw you last, Sir Gervaise. Then itseemed to me scarcely possible that you could have performed the feat ofdestroying the corsair fleet; now it is not so difficult to understand."

  "I have widened out a bit, Lady Claudia. My moustache is really amoustache, and not a pretence at one; otherwise I don't feel that I havechanged. The alteration in yourself is infinitely greater."

  "I, too, have filled out," she said, with a smile. "I was a thin girlthen--all corners and angles. No, I don' t want any compliments, ofwhich, to tell you the truth, I am heartily sick. And so," she wenton in a softer tone, "you have actually brought my gage home! Oh, SirGervaise,"--and her eyes filled with tears--"my cousin has told me! Howcould you have been so foolish as to remain voluntarily in captivity,that you might recover the gage a child had given you?"

  "Not a child, Lady Claudia. A girl not yet a woman, I admit; yet itwas not given in the spirit of a young girl, but in that of an earnestwoman. I had taken a vow never to part with it, as you had pledgedyourself to bestow no similar favour upon any other knight. I wasconfident that you would keep your vow; and although in any case, asa true knight, I was bound to preserve your gift, still more so was Ibound by the thought of the manner in which you had presented it to me."

  "But I could not have blamed you--I should never have dreamt of blamingyou," she said earnestly, "for losing it as you did."

  "I felt sure, Lady Claudia, that had it been absolutely beyond my powerto regain it you would not have blamed me; but it was not beyond mypower, and that being so had I been obliged to wait for ten years,instead of two, I would not have come back to you without it. Moreover,you must remember that I prized it beyond all things. I had oftenscoffed at knights of an order like ours wearing ladies' favours. I hadalways thought it absurd that we, pledged as we are, should thus declareourselves admirers of one woman more than another. But this seemed to mea gage of another kind; it was too sacred to be shown or spoken of, andI only mentioned it to Caretto as he cross questioned me as to why Irefused the offer of ransom; and should not have done so then, had henot been present when it was bestowed. I regarded it not as a lightlygiven favour, the result of a passing fancy by one who gave favoursfreely, but as a pledge of friendship and as a guerdon for what I haddone, and therefore, more to be honoured than the gifts of a Republicfreed from a passing danger. Had you then been what you are now, I mighthave been foolish enough to think of it in another light, regardless ofthe fact that you are a rich heiress of one of the noblest families inItaly, and I a knight with no possessions save my sword."

  "Say not so, Sir Gervaise," she said impetuously. "Are you not a knighton whom Genoa and Florence have bestowed their citizenship, whom theHoly Father himself has thanked, who has been honoured by Pisa, andwhom Ferdinand of Naples has created a Knight of the Grand Cross of St.Michael, whom the grand master has singled out for praise among all thevaliant knights of the Order of St. John, who, as my cousin tells me,saved him and the fort he commanded from capture, and who stood aloneover the fallen grand master, surrounded by a crowd of foes. How can youspeak of yourself as a simple knight?"

  Then she stopped, and sat silent for a minute, while a flush of colourmounted to her cheeks.

  "Give me my gage again, Sir Gervaise," she said gently. In silenceGervaise removed it from his neck, wondering greatly what could be herintention. She turned it over and over in her hand.

  "Sir Knight," she said, "this was of no great value in my eyes when Ibestowed it upon you; it was a gage, and not a gift. Now it is to me ofvalue beyond the richest gem on earth; it is a proof of the faith andloyalty of the knight I most esteem and honour, and so in giving it toyou again, I part with it with a pang, for I have far greater reason toprize it than you can have. I gave it you before as a girl, proud thata knight who had gained such honour and applause should wear her favour,and without the thought that the trinket was a heart. I give it to younow as a woman, far prouder than before that you should wear her gage,and not blind to the meaning of the emblem."

  Gervaise took her hand as she fastened it round his neck, and kissedit; then, still holding it, he said, "Do you know what you are doing,Claudia? You are raising hopes that I have never been presumptuousenough to cherish."

  "I cannot help that," she said softly. "There is assuredly nopresumption in the hope."

  He paused a moment.

  "You would not esteem me," he said, holding both her hands now, "wereI false to my vows. I wi
ll return to Rhodes tomorrow, and ask the grandmaster to forward to the Pope and endorse my petition, that I may bereleased from my vows to the Order. I cannot think that he or the HolyFather will refuse my request. Then, when I am free, I can tell you howI love and honour you, and how, as I have in the past devoted my life tothe Order, so I will in the future devote it to your happiness."

  The girl bowed her head.

  "'Tis right it should be so," she said. "I have waited, feeling in myheart that the vow I had given would bind me for life, and I should becontent to wait years longer if needs be. But I am bound by no vows, andcan acknowledge that you have long been the lord of my life, and thatso long as you wore the heart I had given you, so long would I listen tothe wooing of no other."

  "I fear that the Countess, your mother--" Gervaise began, but sheinterrupted him.

  "You need not fear," she said. "My mother has long known, and knowingalso that I am not given to change, has ceased to importune me to listento other offers. Her sole objection was that you might never return fromcaptivity. Now that you have come back with added honours, she willnot only offer no objection, but will, I am sure, receive you gladly,especially as she knows that my cousin Sir Fabricius, for whom she hasthe greatest affection, holds you in such high esteem."

  Six months later Gervaise again landed at Genoa, after having stayedat Rome for a few days on his way back. D'Aubusson had expressed nosurprise at his return to Rhodes, or at the request he made.

  "Caretto prepared me for this," he said, smiling, "when he asked me ifyou might accompany him to Genoa. The Order will be a loser, for youwould assuredly have risen to the grand priorage of your langue someday. But we have no right to complain; you have done your duty and more,and I doubt not that should Mahomet again lay siege to Rhodes, we maycount on your hastening here to aid us?"

  "That assuredly you may, sir. Should danger threaten, my sword will beas much at the service of the Order as if I were still a member of it."

  "I by no means disapprove," D'Aubusson went on, "of knights leaving uswhen they have performed their active service, for in civil life theysometimes have it in their power to render better service to theOrder than if passing their lives in the quiet duties of a provincialcommandery. It will be so in your case: the lady is a great heiress,and, as the possessor of wide lands, your influence in Northern Italymay be very valuable to us, and in case of need you will, like mybrother De Monteuil, be able to bring a gathering of men-at-arms to ouraid. Have no fear that the Pope will refuse to you a release from yourvows. My recommendation alone would be sufficient; but as, moreover, heis himself under an obligation to you, he will do so without hesitation.Since you have been away, your friend Harcourt has been appointed acommander of a galley, and Sir John Boswell, being incapacitated bythe grievous wounds he received during the siege, has accepted a richcommandery in England, and sailed but two days since to take up hischarge. By the way, did you reply to those letters expressing yourthanks and explaining your long silence?"

  "Yes, your Highness, I wrote the same evening you gave them to me."

  "That is right. The money voted you by Florence will be useful to younow, and there is still a sum sent by your commandery owing to you bythe treasury. I will give you an order for it. However rich an heiress aknight may win, 'tis pleasant for him to have money of his own; not thatyou will need it greatly, for, among the presents you have received, thejewels are valuable enough for a wedding gift to a princess."

  Gervaise was well received at Rome, and the Pope, after reading thegrand master's letter, and learning from him his reason for wishingto leave the Order, without hesitation granted him absolution from hisvows. A few months later there was a grand wedding at the cathedral ofGenoa, the doge and all the nobles of the Republic being present.

  Ralph Harcourt and nine other young knights had accompanied Gervaisefrom Rhodes by the permission, and indeed at the suggestion, of thegrand master, who was anxious to show that Gervaise had his fullapproval and countenance in leaving the Order. Caretto, who had beenappointed grand prior of Italy, had brought the knights from all thecommanderies in the northern republics to do honour to the occasion,and the whole, in their rich armour and the mantles of the Order, made adistinguishing feature in the scene.

  The defeat of the Turks created such enthusiasm throughout Europe thatwhen the grand prior of England laid before the king letters he hadreceived from the grand master and Sir John Kendall, speaking in thehighest terms of the various great services Gervaise had rendered to theOrder, Edward granted his request that the act of attainder against SirThomas Tresham and his descendants should be reversed and the estatesrestored to Gervaise. The latter made, with his wife, occasionaljourneys to England, staying a few months on his estates in Kent; and assoon as his second son became old enough, he sent him to England tobe educated, and settled the estate upon him. He himself had but fewpleasant memories of England; he had spent indeed but a very short timethere before he entered the house of the Order in Clerkenwell, and thattime had been marked by constant anxiety, and concluded with the lossof his father. The great estates that were now his in Italy demanded hisfull attention, and, as one of the most powerful nobles of Genoa, he hadcome to take a prominent part in the affairs of the Republic.

  He was not called upon to fulfil his promise to aid in the defence ofRhodes, for the death of Mahomet just at the time when he was preparinga vast expedition against it, freed the Island for a long time fromfear of an invasion. From time to time they received visits from RalphHarcourt, who, after five years longer service at Rhodes, received acommandery in England. He held it a few years only, and then returned tothe Island, where he obtained a high official appointment.

  In 1489 Sir John Boswell became bailiff of the English langue, and SirFabricius Caretto was in 1513 elected grand master of the Order, andheld the office eight years, dying in 1521.

  When, in 1522, forty-two years after the first siege, Rhodes was againbeleaguered, Gervaise, who had, on the death of the countess, becomeCount of Forli, raised a large body of men-at-arms, and sent them, underthe command of his eldest son, to take part in the defence. His thirdson had, at the age of sixteen, entered the Order, and rose to high rankin it.

  The defence, though even more obstinate and desperate than the first,was attended with less success, for after inflicting enormous lossesupon the great army, commanded by the Sultan Solyman himself, the townwas forced to yield; for although the Grand Master L'Isle Adam, andmost of his knights, would have preferred to bury themselves beneaththe ruins rather than yield, they were deterred from doing so, by theknowledge that it would have entailed the massacre of the whole ofthe inhabitants, who had throughout the siege fought valiantly in thedefence of the town. Solyman had suffered such enormous losses that hewas glad to grant favourable conditions, and the knights sailed awayfrom the city they had held so long and with such honour, and afterwardsestablished themselves in Malta, where they erected another stronghold,which in the end proved an even more valuable bulwark to Christendomthan Rhodes had been. There were none who assisted more generously andlargely, by gifts of money, in the establishment of the Order at Maltathan Gervaise. His wife, while she lived, was as eager to aid in thecause as he was himself, holding that it was to the Order she owed herhusband. And of all their wide possessions there were none so valued bythem both, as the little coral heart set in pearls that she, as a girl,had given him, and he had so faithfully brought back to her.

  THE END