Religion: A Novel

by Tim Willocks

  “So we are still friends.”

  “Yes, lad,” said Tannhauser. “You may be the only true friend I have left.”

  “I’m sorry for the dead English, Bors of Carlisle. He said he was my friend too.”

  “Indeed he was. His last sally must have been a spectacle.”

  “Oh my God,” said Orlandu, wide-eyed. “Four against one? Four knights? It was terrible. Fantastic. But why?”

  “Because they were false knights—foul and rotten limbs, no less—and enemies of La Valette as well as ourselves.”

  “How so, false and foul?”

  “That’s a tale for another time.” He gave him a solemn look. “You must keep everything you saw a tight secret. Few men are capable of such a challenge, simple though it seems, but it’s a skill that will stand you in good stead.”

  “Like pretending,” said Orlandu.

  “Exactly so, exactly so.”

  “But, to each other, friends should not pretend,” said Orlandu.

  “No they should not,” said Tannhauser.

  “You say Fra Ludovico was a false knight.”

  Tannhauser sighed. “Within the bigger tent, his allegiances were divided. Such rivalries thrive in all big tents, for men are seldom content with the way things are and in striving to better them are intolerant of ideas contrary—or merely different—to their own. Life is often a puzzle in that respect and I’m the last man in the world to cast that stone. Certainly Ludovico was brave, and a man possessed by powerful convictions. But in my experience, any conviction strongly held is a sword with two edges, both of them sharp.”

  “He told me to honor my mother.”

  Tannhauser felt the tightrope sway beneath his feet. “A splendid notion.”

  “He wanted to take me to Mdina, to be reunited with her.”

  “He bequeathed that happy duty to me.”

  Orlandu said, “Was Fra Ludovico my father?”

  And there it was. Tannhauser pulled Buraq in, and they stopped, and he feigned some business with the bridle. It was odd, but until he’d done the deed he hadn’t considered the business of telling Orlandu that the father the boy so craved had died by his hand. Nor perhaps had he realized how much he valued the boy’s affection. He turned to look at him and Orlandu’s brown eyes bored into his, and in them that affection was so naked that Tannhauser faltered. Ludovico, after all, had decided to leave this to Carla, and had even given his blessing to the telling of a lie. But Ludovico’s shame was not Tannhauser’s. Tannhauser’s soul was his own.

  He said, “Yes. Brother Ludovico was your father.”

  Orlandu’s lips clenched.

  Tannhauser said, “I killed him.”

  Orlandu blinked, twice. He said, “Because he was false?”

  “At the last he was as true as any man may find it in himself to be.”

  “Then why?”

  In Tannhauser’s reckoning this was not the time to list Ludovico’s crimes. The boy would know them in time, but not today. He said, “I killed him because Fate ordained it.”

  Orlandu took this in and perhaps Tannhauser had underestimated him, for the answer seemed adequate, at least for now. In any case, the statement was true enough. Orlandu said, “If my father was a foul and rotten limb, and I am his blood, will I too be foul and rotten?”

  “I told you once before, it isn’t blood that matters but the way we walk through life. We’ve walked a mile or two together, you and I, and believe me, there’s nothing foul or rotten in your soul.”

  Again Orlandu absorbed this. Then he said, “Will we walk a few miles more?”

  Tannhauser felt his heart squeeze, for he wanted to say, Until the end. Yet he couldn’t make a promise that he wasn’t certain he could keep. He said, “We’ll see.”

  Then he grinned and the boy grinned too. And so all was well.

  Above the rim of the hill, rockets exploded in the sky and church bells rang. Tannhauser tossed his head yonder. “Let’s to Mdina, for Carla is waiting.” A thought struck him. “By the way, do you still have my ring? My gold ring?”

  Orlandu nodded. “Of course.”

  Tannhauser held out his hand. “Then let’s have it. Without gold I feel half naked.”

  Carla sat in the gloom of the Casa Manduca. Despite the celebrations in the streets, she felt alone. Don Ignacio was dead. He’d been buried in the Manduca crypt in Saint Paul’s cathedral. A single mourner, the old steward, Ruggiero, had attended, as he now attended her. Ruggiero had begged her forgiveness for deeds and sins committed long ago, and she gave it free and full, for too much horror in the present was born from the horror of the past, and he fell to his knees and kissed her hands, and she sent him away. She forgave her father too and sadness filled her, for he’d died friendless and alone, and need not have done so. Ruggiero had told her that the house, and her father’s farmland in the Pawles Valley, and his shipping interests and gold, now belonged to her. The news had surprised her but left her unmoved.

  The house oppressed her. The ghosts who’d squandered their lives in loveless misery stalked its halls. In the wane of the day she went to the walled garden and stood beneath the lengthening shade of the orange trees. It was the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin, and a Saturday, and during the first decade of the rosary she would meditate on the mystery of the Annunciation, when the Archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary and told Her She was to bear God’s child. It was one of the joyful mysteries, and perhaps it would help. She knelt on the grass and kissed the crucifix on her rosary. She made the sign of the cross and began the credo.

  “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth: and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended into hell. The third day He rose from the dead, He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence He shall come again to judge the quick and the dead.”

  She heard the door of the casa creak open. Then footsteps. And a cough from the garden behind her. She crossed herself and looked over her shoulder. She expected Ruggiero.

  Mattias stood framed in the arbor.

  Carla’s heart almost stopped. She rose to her feet. His cheeks were scored with exhaustion. Something nameless, something anguished, haunted his eyes. He started down the path and—as when first she saw him, in another garden long ago and far away—she was put in mind of a wolf. She hastened toward him and he opened his arms and she fell into them. He held her while she caught her breath, her mind so full of questions that her tongue was stilled.

  “Ludovico and his cohorts are dead,” Mattias said.

  She felt nothing but a wave of relief. Then she saw Mattias’s eyes.

  He said, “Bors too. And Nicodemus.” He hesitated. “And Amparo.”

  Pain knifed her soul and her eyes welled with tears. Mattias put a finger to her lips.

  “Please,” he said. “There will be time enough for mourning. And in that we’ll not be alone. Speaking for myself, a moment of joy would be most welcome. And despite that much has been taken, much endures, and we’ve reason to smile.”

  On instinct she looked past his shoulder. Beyond the threshold of the casa doorway she sensed a presence. Mattias turned in that direction, and Carla’s tears began to fall, and in them joy and hope and grief were intermingled. She wiped her face.

  “Orlandu,” he called.

  Orlandu emerged from the door. He walked toward her stiffly, with his shoulders back and his head held high, as if under instruction to put his best foot forward. His skin glowed, and his eyes were deep and honest, and Carla knew she’d never seen a being more beautiful in her life. He stopped before her and bowed, his face as serious as a judge. Her tears welled again, with sentiments too complex and numerous to name, and this time she couldn’t contain them.

  “Smile, boy,” said Mattias. “And watch your manners.”

  He smiled himself.


  “For this is your mother.”

  Carla threw her arms around Orlandu and held him tight.

  Sunday, September 9, 1565

  Hal Saflieni

  The tombs of Hal Saflieni had been carved from the living rock before iron was known, before bronze was known. Perhaps, for no one could know, before Prometheus stole fire from the gods. Carved, then, with bones and flints when the world of men was young, when the Creator of the universe was Woman, when these ancient masons worshipped a goddess alone: a goddess whose belly swelled with perpetual fecundity. Carved in an age when War was but a dream and waited for the sleepers to awaken. Here at Hal Saflieni, in the chambers and the side chambers, and in the serried niches and vaults beneath ceilings spiraled and honeycombed with red ocher, skeletons by the thousand lay at rest.

  To Carla, Hal Saflieni had been a refuge whose solace was mysterious but profound. Though its precincts had been forbidden, her girl’s heart had been drawn here. When her soul was troubled she’d kneel before the Great Stone Mother and feel the wisdom of Time. The priests said this was a pagan place, and as such to be shunned. But young Carla had felt no sense of sin. She’d prayed here to the Virgin, in the city of the dead, and Virgin and Stone Mother both had given her peace. She hadn’t been to this site for many years. Today, in need of solace, in need of peace, she determined to take her friend there and commit her to eternity.

  In the Borgo, in the darkness before dawn, Vespers and Matins for the dead were performed at the church of the Annunciation. Although the fighting was over, many had died the day before, and many would die yet among the gravely wounded. Psalms were sung, and nocturnes from the Book of Job were recited. O Lord, grant them eternal rest, and let everlasting light shine upon them. Among those mourned were Amparo and Nicodemus and Bors. Deliver me, O Lord, from eternal death in that awful day when the heavens and earth shall be shaken, and Thou shalt come to judge the world by fire. Lauds followed, and the Miserere was sung, and the Canticle of Ezechias, and the Antiphon of John. I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die. Then the sins of those souls dead to this world, but not to the next, were absolved, and the mourners emerged into the dawn.

  At Carla’s bidding, Tannhauser and Orlandu loaded the bodies of Bors and Amparo into a two-wheeled cart. That of Nicodemus could not be found. As a pale white sun ascended above the rim of Monte San Salvatore, they hauled them up to the necropolis at Hal Saflieni, and there they laid them to rest among ancient companions. At Carla’s bidding too came Father Lazaro, and though he quailed at that pagan landscape, she was one he could not refuse, and he consecrated the niches that they chose, for according to the canon law each man may choose for himself the ground of his burial. He sprinkled the bodies with holy water, and the Kyrie and the Canticle Benedictus were recited, and Lazaro performed with all fidelity the rites of the Catholic faith. Then Lazaro left, reciting the De profundis as they watched him go, and they three and their departed friends were left in the catacombs, in a silence painful to bear.

  From the cart Tannhauser took out the viola da gamba. And Carla played.

  She played until she thought her heart would break. And looking at Tannhauser, it seemed to her that his had already done so, and she realized that she’d lost him to grief. When Carla knew she could play no more, she looked at Orlandu, and he looked back, his eyes strong and warm and steady, and he smiled, a little shyly, and she played on from the flame of happiness he kindled.

  They rode back to the Borgo and Mattias told her that he’d determined to sail for Venice on the earliest ship. Carla’s love for him had not dwindled; rather, its heat and her yearning were all the more intense. But Amparo’s death lay as heavily upon him as it did on her, perhaps much more so, and a grief mutually shared made poor soil for passion to grow in. He made no mention of their bargain, and neither did she. He asked if she would stay in Malta, and she said she would not. She would settle her father’s affairs and return to Aquitaine, with Orlandu, and Mattias understood, for the knights now claimed the island by right of blood, and not merely residence, and they would turn it into a shrine consecrate to War. As they approached the Kalkara Gate, they dismounted and Tannhauser turned to Carla.

  “The night we were taken in the gatehouse,” he said. “Do you remember the last words Amparo said to me?”

  “Yes, of course,” replied Carla. “What did they mean?”

  She saw the pain in his face. “I cannot recall them,” he said. “It has brought me considerable torment.”

  “The nightingale is happy,” said Carla.

  Tannhauser nodded. “Of course.” He smiled, yet his eyes filmed with sadness.

  Carla said, “What did she mean?”

  “She meant that I was her bloodred rose,” said Tannhauser.

  Carla looked at him, intrigued, and waited for more.

  “It is a tale the Arabs tell,” he said. “Amparo admired it.”

  “Will you tell me?”

  Tannhauser took her in his arms and squeezed until she feared that he would crush away her life. She felt him make some decision that tore him in two and his arms relaxed. He looked at her and in the fierce blue coals of his eyes she saw a sorrow too deep to fathom, and she felt a sudden dread. Her voice wavered.

  “Will you tell me the tale?” she asked, again.

  “Yes,” said Tannhauser. “Someday.”

  EPILOGUE

  The Grace of God

  1566

  The Spanish Viceroy of Sicily, Garcia de Toledo, arrived on Malta a week after the siege was lifted, and so overcome he was by the extremities of suffering he found there that some said he wept tears of pity, and some said of shame. Toledo was taken on a tour of the blood-soaked ground, and he heard of the valiant deeds thereon enacted, and he claimed from the crypt the body of his son, Federico, who had died in the battle for the first of the Turkish siege towers. Three days later, Toledo left. He never returned to Malta and passed thereafter into obscurity.

  Obscurity did not wait for La Valette or the Holy Religion. The Grand Master was acclaimed the bravest man in Christendom, its most brilliant soldier and statesman, the bulwark of the Church Militant. La Valette himself was indifferent to the honors heaped upon him. He did not go to Rome despite the promise of a Triumph. Indeed, he never left the island again, declining invitations from every palace in Europe, and he appreciated glorification only because it brought a colossal influx of gold and eager new recruits to replenish the Order. With characteristic vigor, he at once set about the design and construction of a massive new stronghold on the slopes of Monte Sciberras, a citadel that would be the most impregnable ever built, and which would be christened “Valletta” in honor of his fame. His distinguished Latin Secretary, Oliver Starkey, worked alongside him night and day, for the labor and its complexities were fantastic, and absorbed in this task for their Holy Religion, both men found contentment for the rest of their days.

  Mustafa Pasha and his commanders left forty thousand gazi in the dust of Malta and with those unburied dead their reputations too. After sixty bleak days at sea they returned to the Golden Horn to face their Sultan’s scorn. To their own surprise most of all, they were spared the eunuch’s bowstring, and Suleiman bowed his head to Allah’s Will. He then ordered preparations for a second assault on the island the following year, one that he himself would lead to a famous victory. But this was not to be. Late in the summer of 1566, at the age of seventy-two, the mighty Shah died in Hungary while conducting the siege of Szigetvár. He died as he had lived, making war, and so stunning was this catastrophe that his doctors were strangled in his tent and his death kept a secret from his agas for forty-three days, until his embalmed corpse was buried in the tomb Sinan had built for him, by the Suleymaniye Mosque in Old Stambouli.

  Suleiman the Magnificent was succeeded by his last surviving son, Selim, known, for excellent reasons, as “The Sot.” Thus did the O
ttoman sun begin its slow descent, for in the passing of God’s Shadow on this Earth, so too passed its zenith and meridian.

  In Rome an attempt was made on the life of Pope Pius IV, Giovanni Medici. His would-be murderer was one of those lone, mad assassins well known to historians of every age, and the villain died in custody before he could betray his phantom coconspirators. The Will of God, however, was not so easily thwarted. Medici succumbed to a crueler hand, that of Roman fever, in December of 1565. Michele Ghisleri stepped into the Shoes of the Fisherman, as long planned, and provoked much callous mirth among his inner circle by taking the pontifical name of Pius V. Under his reign the Inquisition flourished anew. Ghisleri fomented further wars against the Mohammedans, and against Protestants throughout the rest of Europe. Intellectual darkness benighted the Catholic world and a long and needless decline was blindly embraced. For these egregious crimes, the inquisitor pope would one day be canonized a saint.

  To the heroic natives of Malta fell the task of rebuilding the island in Hell’s wake. Out of a total population of some twenty-odd thousand, seven thousand adult males had perished in the siege. Their fields lay scorched and barren, their houses smashed to rubble, and many of those spared death remained crippled for life. They endured in the shadows thrown by the Religion’s radiance and their feelings about what had passed were never recorded, for while the knights were i nostri, the Maltese remained la basse plèbe, and all that needed to be known of the lower orders was that they’d done what was required of them by their betters.

  In August of 1566, the granddaughter of Gullu Cakie gave birth to a son. On taking the patriarch’s counsel, she had the newborn babe christened “Matheu.”

  The Chevalier Mattias Tannhauser, Magistral Knight of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, remained unaware that he’d been honored by a second namesake. For all his lifelong intimacy with the evils and fortunes of war, the Maltese Iliad left him in a deep melancholia, one for which he knew no balm, and he left the island on the first galley bound for Sicily.