Shadow of God

by Anthony Goodman

  Suleiman did not answer, his mind acknowledging the fact that Ibrahim had said almost exactly the same words to him.

  Piri knew this was a Sultan who could take good advice. After about ten more minutes, Suleiman turned to Piri Pasha and said, “I have heard that there are more than six hundred merchants here from Egypt who have been rotting in my father’s prisons. I am told that they have committed no crime other than that of angering Selim. See if this is true, and if so, free them. They may then stay within our city and resume their trade, or they are free to return to Egypt. Make this happen.”

  Piri nodded. Suleiman went on. “Also, it has come to my ears that there are officers in my army and an admiral of the fleet who have taken terrible liberty with the laws of the Empire. They have cheated and stolen. They have meted out unjust and harsh punishment to those they should be protecting. Bring them to trial, and if the charges are true, have them publicly beheaded. The people must know we are a nation of law.” Piri made note of this, too. He knew exactly which high-ranking officers and which admiral were soon to publicly lose their heads.

  “Do you know, my friends,” he said to both Piri and Ibrahim, “the Kutadgu Bilig?” Neither Ibrahim nor Piri answered. “Almost five hundred years ago, the Turkish ruler of the Karakhanids wrote on the ideal principles of government.” Ibrahim smiled and nodded as he remembered reading this with his master. Suleiman continued, “He wrote, ‘To control the state requires a large army; to support the army requires great wealth; to obtain great wealth the people must prosper; for the people to prosper the laws must be just. If a single one of these is neglected, the empire will collapse!’ We will see that the laws are just, and that our people prosper, and that our empire does not collapse.”

  Suleiman would make good his words. Though he was to become known in Europe as Suleiman, the Magnificent, his own people would call him Kanuni, the Lawgiver.

  A while later, the procession approached the gates to the city, and Suleiman saw the Janissaries guarding the entrance.

  Suleiman leaned over toward Ibrahim and whispered, “The payment! The payment!” mimicking the cries he had heard at the ferry. “Yes, we will make the cursed payment!”

  Piri and Ibrahim both laughed aloud, secretly relieved that Suleiman had remembered without their having to remind him again.

  “For my personal guard, each man will get exactly what Selim has paid them. No more. For the rest of the army, give every man a bonus in keeping with his station.”

  When the payment was announced, Suleiman could not tell whether the Janissaries were pleased or not. His guards stood impassive at their posts, and nothing revealed their thoughts. Their eyes were fixed straight ahead at attention, and they saluted their Sultan as he passed. They were a splendid army, Suleiman thought as he rode past, dressed in perfect uniforms of blue cotton, topped with white, felt hats. Their swords, polished and honed, gleamed in the bright light. But, who could read their hearts? How could this new Sultan forget that in the flash of a sword stroke, they had turned against his grandfather, Bayazid, to follow Selim?

  Marseilles, France

  September, 1521

  The stagecoach careened down the muddy road toward the harbor, its six horses lathered and blowing as they struggled to keep their footing on the treacherous surface. The horses were covered with a layer of caked mud mixed with the foam that sprayed from their mouths. The coach, too, showed the scars and marks of the difficult overland journey from Paris to Marseilles.

  The driver leaned back hard against the reins, straining to keep the horses in hand and control the speed of the coach as they pulled into the final run for the port. He ran the horses onto the old wooden wharf and reined up abruptly in front of two knights dressed in full shining battle armor, immaculate scarlet surcoats, and broadswords hanging at their sides. Both men paced nervously, stopping only when the coach stopped at the edge of the wharf.

  Almost before the wheels had stopped, the righthand door swung open. Philippe Villiers de L’Isle Adam, Grand Prior of the Order of the Knights of St. John in France, jumped to the ground. He, too, was dressed in full battle gear with identical surcoat and markings. Older than the others, he had a weathered face and long, white hair hanging down nearly to his shoulders.

  The journey from Paris to Marseilles was long and difficult. Philippe’s bones ached from the pounding, and his joints were stiff from inactivity. He had allowed stops only to change horses and to buy food for his drivers. The route had been treacherous. Several times they had nearly ended their journey in a collision. At night, as now, there were no lights along the way. The wars between Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, and Francis I, of France, had brought chaos to the region. The roads remained unprepared, and bands of undisciplined soldiers roamed the countryside.

  But, after more than four days of travel, Philippe debarked safely at the wharf, where his heavily armed knights awaited him.

  “Quickly, my Lord,” said the captain of the knights, “the ships are ready. We can sail on the next tide, which is only an hour away. Your knights are all aboard. We have sufficient food and water for the trip.”

  Philippe stared into the dark night, but could not see the waiting ships. His mind recoiled at yet another long journey. He did, however, welcome the relative comfort of this large ship. “What ships are waiting here?”

  “The Sancta Maria, my Lord, the largest ship of our fleet. The one we captured from the Egyptians, and rearmed at Rhodes. And we have four smaller escort galleys, heavily armed with knights and cannon.”

  The carrack, Sancta Maria, was the flagship of the Knights of St. John, and was one of the most heavily armed sailing ships afloat in the world. It was the sea-going headquarters for the Grand Master of the knights, as well as a formidable platform for cannon, men, and supplies. This ship had previously been the Mogarbina, captured from the Egyptian Mamelukes in 1507 at a battle near Candia in Crete. The treasure on board alone had been worth the fight. She was longer and sleeker than the old round ships, and had four tall masts with square rigged sails. A large cabin, perched high in the stern, served as both meeting room and captain’s quarters. Her new powerful cannons could reach out and destroy whole cities while staying out of range of shore batteries. She could carry a crew of over two hundred fighting men. The Sancta Maria was a machine of war.

  Philippe nodded as he remembered how powerful his new ship really was. He quickly stepped into the small tender waiting at the dock. As the band of knights rowed into the darkness, he breathed easier than he had since he left Paris nearly five days before. The departure from Paris was so fast…so painful. He had no time to do what needed to be done. Never enough time, he thought.

  The summons had been delivered to Philippe in Paris by two of the Knights Hospitaller of St. John, who had been dispatched from the island fortress of Rhodes by the Grand Council. The note informed Philippe that the Council had elected him Grand Master of the Knights of St. John on Rhodes. The former Grand Master, Fabrizio del Caretto, had died eight months earlier, in January, after a long illness. The letter went on to warn Philippe of several problems he would have to face in very short order. “The election was not easy, my Lord,” the note read. “Of the three candidates, you and Thomas Docwra of England were separated by only one vote. And while Thomas Docwra took his defeat with the equanimity and nobility expected of a Knight of the Order of St. John, the third candidate—Chancellor Andrea d’Amaral—did not.”

  Philippe realized that this was, indeed, a serious matter. D’Amaral was an arrogant and difficult leader, immensely unpopular even among his own men.

  The letter went on, “To make matters worse, d’Amaral did not receive a single vote, and has retired to his quarters at the Inn of Aragon, where I understand he is brooding over this perceived insult.”

  D’Amaral was Portuguese by birth, and his relationship with the French-born Philippe was tenuous at best. Most of the time it was intensely hostile. As Chancellor and head of the langue of Spain, d�
��Amaral wielded much power. His anger and pouting could do a great deal of harm to the unity of the knights.

  Philippe had just turned fifty-eight years old when he was summoned back to Rhodes. He was a big man, over six feet and nearly two hundred pounds. He was well muscled, and wore a full, white beard. His silver hair made him look older than he was, but the rigorous physical conditioning of the knights kept him fit and active. His face was distinguished by high cheekbones, and a sharp, aquiline nose. He moved with a gracefulness unexpected of such a large man, and his quick reflexes had been finely tuned after decades of fighting alongside his brother knights. He wore his long, scarlet cloak with the white, eight-pointed cross of the Knights of St. John over the left breast, and another cross in the center of the back. He carried his broadsword in the leather belt at his left side, handle tilted forward, always within easy reach of his right hand.

  From the earliest days of the crusades, the Knights of St. John had established fortifications at several places along the Middle East and Asia Minor. Their mission was to provide food and shelter for pilgrims to the Holy Land, as well as hospitals for the sick. During the five centuries of the Crusades, the Muslims had driven them from one stronghold to another in the Holy Land. Their worst defeats came after long and costly battles all along the Mediterranean coast, at Jerusalem in 1187, at Krak de Chevaliers in 1271, and then again in 1291 at St. Jean d’Acre, when they were driven from their last foothold. Nearly all of the knights perished in the flames of Acre, including their leader, William de Henley of England. Only seven of the Knights escaped. The survivors fled to Cyprus, where they began to rebuild the Order of the Knights Hospitaller. Finally, in 1309, they landed on the island of Rhodes. There, they were to remain for over two hundred years, tending to the sick and making life generally miserable for Muslim vessels sailing the Mediterranean. They preyed upon shipping between Africa and Turkey, took slaves, and amassed huge fortunes in booty.

  Philippe was born of noble lineage, a kinsman of Jean de Villiers, who had been at St. Jean d’Acre at the time of its defeat by the Muslims in 1291. Philippe followed his family’s tradition of service to the Order. He joined the Knights of St. John when he was still a teenager, arriving at Rhodes just after the terrible siege of 1480. By age forty-six, he was Captain of the Galleys, and at age fifty he was elected Grand Prior of the langue of France. For eight years, he led the langue from his quarters in Paris.

  The knights, nearly five hundred of them, came from France, Provence, England, Aragon, Auvergne, Castile, Italy, and Germany. Each lived in a separate inn, or Auberge.

  That they were perceived by their Muslim neighbors as nothing more than pirates did not appear to influence the activities of the knights. They continued to raid and plunder virtually all the shipping that passed near their stronghold on Rhodes. The knights were expert seamen, and they had little difficulty in taking almost any prize that caught their eyes. The location of the fortress at Rhodes gave them the perfect starting point for ambushing the Ottoman merchant fleets that plied the waters between Africa, Asia Minor, and Europe. They controlled several other islands in the region, where they kept lookout posts and small bands of knights and ships. The knights could board merchant vessels at will, taking the cargo and the ship itself. The enemy crews would be kept as slaves for the knights or sold off in the slave markets of Africa and Asia Minor. There seemed little the Muslims could do to stop the slaughter.

  In 1480, Suleiman’s great-grandfather, Mehmet, the Conqueror, attacked Rhodes with a massive armada. He hoped to destroy the knights and reclaim the Aegean as his own Ottoman Lake. But, the siege was repulsed, and Mehmet’s troops returned to Istanbul in disgrace. Mehmet died on the way home, just fifty miles from the city. When Suleiman’s father, Selim, died in Edirne in the fall of 1520, he was preparing a fleet and armies to attack the knights again.

  With the enemy in full preparation to attack Rhodes, Philippe was on his way to lead the Knights of St. John in the defense of their island.

  Philippe stood in the stern of the small tender and reflected quietly on the problems that he would have to face with Andrea d’Amaral as his Chancellor. The quarrel between Philippe and d’Amaral had started eleven years earlier, when both were lowerranking Knights of St. John. In 1510, Suleiman’s grandfather, Bayazid, had attacked Portuguese shipping from a naval base at Laiazzo, in Asia Minor, north of Cyprus. There the Sultan was resupplying his ship builders with timber from the rich forests of Edirne, near the Greek border. The knights had hoped to destroy the Turkish fleet, which had been harassing the lucrative trade routes in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. Then they would destroy the Sultan’s ship-building base at Laiazzo.

  The Order dispatched an armada from Rhodes to attack the Sultan’s naval forces and then to attack the base itself. D’Amaral commanded the oared galleys, which were the main striking force of the fleet. These three-tiered vessels were low and sleek. Their oars gave them complete independence of movement. They were wholly free from the vagaries of the local winds. The galleys were armed with a pointed bowsprit for ramming the enemy near the water line. Boarding planks with grappling hooks held the enemy ships fast. The armored knights would fire a salvo of arrows, then scramble aboard to destroy the enemy in hand-to-hand combat with their heavy broadswords. Some of the galleys had small cannons mounted in the bows as well, but the main striking power came from the knights themselves. The principles of battle were those of land warfare carried out on a sea-going platform. As commander of the galleys, d’Amaral had technically been the commander-in-chief of the entire naval force.

  Philippe was Commander of Ships, by which was meant the sail-powered vessels. These larger vessels carried knights as well, but additionally were heavily armed with cannon. They had superior firepower, but were at the mercy of the winds. The oar-powered galleys could maintain their maneuverability in calm waters, but were handicapped in high winds and rough seas.

  It was the difference between these two kinds of ships that brought the commanders into open conflict. The two met aboard Philippe’s flagship the night before the planned attack. Philippe was dressed for battle, his sword hanging as always within reach on a wooden peg near the door. The men were alone in the main cabin. Philippe sat at the side of the small table bolted to the wall. D’Amaral stood, rather than sit on the edge of Philippe’s bunk bed. D’Amaral was a large man, heavy boned and broad. He had a huge chest and arms, which he used to good advantage in battle. He was dark-skinned and had shining black hair that covered his ears and neck.

  There was just enough room to move about the cabin, and d’Amaral kept pacing the entire time. The strain between the men was apparent even before d’Amaral had insisted on leading the attack into the protected harbor with his galleys. The argument had reached its second hour, and both men were feeling the strain.

  D’Amaral spoke again, his voice weary and tense. His tone was that of an exasperated teacher lecturing a backward student. The implication was not lost on Philippe. D’Amaral said, “We can be in and out of there before the Turk knows we are upon them. We will row in under the cover of darkness and take them in the night. Why, my knights and guns will have it over in minutes. Your ships can bombard the shore and their ships, set fire to the land base, and destroy all the timber they have. We will be gone before dawn!”

  Philippe let him finish and then said quietly, “And what of these capricious winds of August. They shift hourly. My ships could enter that harbor and be becalmed in a moment.” D’Amaral began to object, but Philippe raised his hand and went on. “Worse yet, we could sail in, and a change of wind could blow us into the range of their shore batteries. You would get out to sea, and my men would be slaughtered. I cannot allow the risk, and neither would the Grand Master risk our most powerful forces to the chance changing of an August wind.”

  “Grand Master d’Amboise is in Rhodes, and I am here! In command!” D’Amaral was red-faced and furious. His fists were clenched and some spittle showed in the corner o
f his mouth. He could barely contain his fury, and Philippe thought for a moment that d’Amaral might actually attack him.

  Philippe remained completely calm as he spoke, and this infuriated the angry d’Amaral even more. Philippe continued. “I will not allow the pride of our fleet to be jeopardized by an irresponsible attack on uncertain ground. My ships will not be allowed to fall under the shore batteries of the Turk and Mameluke!”

  The argument raged for several hours more. Though d’Amaral was technically in command of the entire fleet, somehow Philippe prevailed in the end.

  The very next day, the knights’ ships sat at rest outside the harbor, a decoy target too tempting to be passed up by the Turk and Mameluke commanders. They rushed out of the harbor at first light to meet the knights in open water. In moments, the battle turned to a one-sided slaughter.

  The knights met the onrushing forces with a few deadly salvos of cannon fire from their big sailing carracks. Next, the knights’ galleys closed with their own cannon fire, and then moved in to grapple the enemy ships. Just before the knights boarded, the archers sent thousands of arrows streaking into the sky and down onto the waiting bodies of the Turks. Chain was fired from the cannons, shredding the rigging and sails of the Turkish ships. When the knights boarded, the fighting was fierce. But, the Sultan’s armies proved no match for the knights. After two terrible and bloody hours, the Turks surrendered eleven ships and four galleys. The survivors of the enemy were taken prisoner, and the Sultan’s nephew was killed while in command of one of his own fleets of galleys.