Shadow of God

by Anthony Goodman

  All eyes except Suleiman’s and Ibrahim’s were fixed upon the carpet at their feet. Ibrahim looked out over the faces of the Aghas. What are they thinking? he wondered. Each of them wants my position close to the ear and heart of the Sultan. Each would kill me for it, if the chance arose. Well, perhaps not Piri. But, the others would.

  Two Janissaries stood at attention outside the entrance to the tent. Otherwise, the seven men and the Sultan were alone.

  Suleiman began. “We have been on this accursed island for more than two months. Thousands of my soldiers lie dead and rotting in the ditches and fields. I cannot even bury these wretched souls, nor commend them properly to Allah. And, here we sit, no closer to evicting the Sons of Sheitan from our Empire. Piri Pasha, what do you say?”

  Piri looked up, as if surprised to be called upon to speak. He was no longer the commanding presence that Suleiman remembered from Selim’s reign. Here was a man pale and drawn, his face gaunt, his belly hanging over his sash. His mind often wandered; he spoke in stammering sentences and unfinished thoughts. Piri tried to pull himself together, and after a moment said, “Majesty, I pray that Allah will take the souls of all our dead, for they have died in a jihad, a struggle. We are, after all, in a holy war against…”

  “Speak not of the dead, my Grand Vizier,” Suleiman, interrupted gently. “I want to know your thoughts about the war we wage this day against the knights. You are the senior ranking official in my empire, and the right to speak goes to you first.”

  “Forgive me my Lord.” Piri wrinkled his brows, and then said, “I fear that we have taken on an enemy who is willing to sacrifice every man, woman, and child on this island to defend it from us. I doubt they will surrender…ever. We will have to kill everyone inside and outside the walls. Everyone. At the cost we have sustained so far, I wonder if it is worth the price. At this rate we will return to Istanbul with the bare tatters of the army that left there.”

  Suleiman sighed and said kindly, “Thank you, Piri Pasha. As always, you see things in a clear and definitive light.” He turned to his left, and said, “Bali Agha?”

  Bali Agha, commander of the Janissaries, straightened in his seat and said, “Majesty, our tactics need to be reviewed in detail. If I may?” Suleiman nodded and Bali Agha continued. “The strategy of persisting in mining the walls seems to work only at great cost to us. It took us many weeks and hundreds—maybe thousands—of lives lost to make that breach in the Bastion of England. The knights plugged the gap with a disciplined force and drove our armies back with little loss to themselves. And, still we sit here after eight long weeks no further along the road to conquest.

  “Since the battle at the Bastion of England, Majesty, we have tried the same thing again and again. Five days later, we made a breach in Provence, and we were beaten back again, with great losses and little damage to the knights. My Janissaries suffered greatly from the Greek Fire and the shot raining down from the walls. Two days later it was the same story at England, and again at Aragon. And Provence. Nothing changes. While I must say that Mustapha Pasha and his men have fought gallantly—no, murderously would be the word—it has not gained us anything of substance. A change in strategy is sorely overdue.”

  Achmed Agha rose and began to speak. But, Bali Agha could not contain his enthusiasm and jumped to his feet again, interrupting Achmed Agha and committing a serious breach of court protocol. But Suleiman let it pass. Bali Agha said, excitedly, “Majesty, it is not for nothing that the Janissaries are called the Sons of the Sultan. They would do anything for you. Your great-grandfather said, ‘The body of a Janissary is but a stepping stone for his brothers into the breach.’ These men will fill the ditches to overflowing; and their bodies and the bodies of their brothers will be the stepping stones to allow our men to march into the city and destroy the cursed Kuffar. Just give us the chance, my Lord, and we will do the job.”

  Excitement was building in the tent, and Suleiman had lost his look of weariness. He turned back to Achmed Agha. “And, how can we make it possible for the Sons of the Sultan to enter the city, as your Sultan and Bali Agha wish?”

  “By using our superior numbers to greatest advantage, Majesty. We must attack and enter the city in force. A general assault, not on one bastion, but on all fronts at once. We must not depend upon the entry into a single breach. We need to spread their defenders thin and capitalize on our strength in numbers. I propose a general assault, after a week of unceasing bombardment with all the artillery in our possession. We will keep them at it day and night; repairing, rearming, defending. They will have no sleep. No respite. Then we will attack the entire southern perimeter of the Fortress. Aragon! Italy! England! Provence! This way, they will not have enough defenders to plug all the gaps. We will enter the city and run wild through the streets. The Sons of the Sultan will command the fortress before nightfall.”

  The Aghas buzzed with excitement. Suleiman smiled, and for the first time in weeks seemed to swell with the prospect of victory. Even the passive Ibrahim caught the energy in the air and began to nod in agreement with the new plan.

  Suleiman waved his hand, signaling the Aghas to return to their posts and plan the attack.

  The constant bombardment had caused relatively little damage within the city walls. The people had grown used to the noises of war. But, living conditions were deteriorating.

  There was no room within the walls of the city to bury the dead, and unburied, untended corpses were now beginning to rot. In spite of covering the bodies with quicklime, the smells of death and decay inside the walls permeated the air. Citizens walked about with cloths dipped in oil of camphor pressed to their noses to mask the odors. The nighttime breezes brought the added stench from the thousands of Turkish bodies rotting in the ditches.

  Sewers were clogged with debris, and polluted waters overflowed into the houses. Drinking water was in short supply. In June, the knights had poisoned the wells outside the city to prevent the Turks from using them. Now, their own wells inside the fortress were running low, as the rainless summer gave way to autumn.

  Fresh food ran out early in August, and tempers flared more easily after a long diet on dried foods and stale mealy breads. Many of the people grew ill. The hospital, always there to help them in the past, was now overflowing with the wounded. The people sick with fever and dehydration from diarrhea could only wait on the outside stairs and in the open courtyard, hoping for help and some medicine between breaks in the fighting.

  Now as the casualties increased, there was virtually no break in the workload for the knights tending the sick. Renato, Melina, and Hélène had not had more than a few hours sleep at one time in several weeks. They had dark bags under their eyes, and their faces showed the strain. Renato’s hands shook as he worked on the endless procession of bodies moving through the doors. At the other end of the ward, the knights removed those who had died silently in the night. But, once outside the hospital, they were hard pressed to find a place to put the corpses. No one wanted another heap of rotting flesh next to his house, yet nobody could offer a solution.

  Pockets of discontentment were springing up all throughout the city of Rhodes. Citizens were sent by their neighbors to the Grand Master pleading for him to surrender. How could life under the Muslims be worse than the hell in which they now lived? No person was untouched. By mid-September, nearly everyone had lost a friend, a neighbor, a husband, a wife, a child. How could the Muslims hurt them any more? How could the mother who has lost her child suffer more than she suffers now?

  Rumors spread of an insurrection being planned by the Rhodians, to overthrow the Order and surrender the city. As the end of the month approached, morale was at its lowest since the siege had begun. Though the Turkish losses exceeded those of the knights and the Rhodians by ten or twenty to one, their deaths were little consolation. Life inside the city was hell. The realization became clear to them all: if the knights surrendered and left Rhodes, there would be peace again, and plenty. Life on their island par
adise would return to normal. The faces of the rulers would change, but that was a common occurrence in the history of these Greek islands, and especially on Rhodes.

  Philippe Villiers de L’Isle Adam sat in an upper meeting room of the Palace of the Grand Master. The windows were shut against the heat and the constant bombardment by the Turkish guns. The room was stuffy. Nothing could keep out the odors that permeated the air, the wood, and even the clothing of the knights themselves.

  Philippe was haggard. He had been at the front of virtually every battle and conflict that took place. He rushed to any breach to fight in the front lines with his men. Since the death of Henry Mansell, Philippe’s banner flew constantly behind him, held by the new standard bearer, Joachim de Cluys, of the French langue. The huge flag with Christ upon the cross was now a familiar sight to the Muslims. It betrayed the presence of the leader of the knights and made a target of the man the Muslims wanted so fervently to kill. To the Turks, Philippe symbolized the determination and bravery of the knights. To the Muslim, he was the earthly representative of the Devil. Though it was a wonderment that he fought alongside his knights, not a man among the Turks wondered why the Sultan, Suleiman, remained in safety at the rear. Not one of them would think of placing the Shadow of God on Earth in harm’s way.

  But, as the banner of the Crucifixion betrayed Philippe’s presence, so his survival after so many battles also supported the rumor among the Muslims that this banner provided some measure of protection from harm. The duel might now reduce itself to the strength of the belief in the power of Allah and His Prophet against that of the Christ.

  As he waited for the last of his officers to assemble, Philippe again let his mind wander back to his beloved Hélène. He was torn between his happiness at having her near to him again, at her desire to be with him in this awful time, and the reality of the danger they were both in.

  “My lord…?” It was Tadini. “We are all here…”

  Philippe was momentarily startled. Fatigue had eroded his calm and even manner. He was on the edge almost constantly now, and rarely slept more than an hour or two in a night. He coughed, as if he had been caught in some embarrassing moment. Then he began. “Gentlemen,” he said, “our time is short. We cannot waste a moment off the battlements. So let’s get directly to the plans for the next several engagements, and be back at our stations as soon as we may. Gabriele, what news?”

  “My Lord,” Tadini said, “they have not slowed down the campaign to mine the walls. The more we kill them, the more they send after us. I think that every dead Turkish miner spawns ten more from his corpse. They are everywhere. More than five-sixths of the enceinte is undermined with tunnels, theirs and my own. Every day we blow up two or three of their tunnels, killing many men. Sometimes hundreds. And, the mines that they have detonated have, grâce à Dieu, detonated harmlessly up the air shafts without doing much damage.

  “Yesterday, the Janissaries gathered for an attack on the langue d’Italie. They were, apparently, too close to the mine when it detonated, and more than two hundred were killed on the spot. Their artillery have increased in activity, ceaselessly firing at the whole southern sector. This could be a diversion for an attack from the west or the northern sectors; or it could be a preliminary to a general attack on the city.” Philippe nodded, and Tadini continued. “I have no idea, and we have no intelligence from their lines.” Tadini paused, then said, “My Lord, is there any hope of more knights arriving from Europe?”

  “I think we should make all our plans as if there were not. We have received word now from every envoy I have sent but one. All requests were turned down. I have not yet heard from Thomas Newport. He is seeking help from the knights still in King Henry’s domains. If he succeeds, we might expect a hundred knights or more. If not…” He shrugged and inclined his head.

  “Thank you, my Lord,” Tadini said, and sat down.

  “John Buck?”

  “My Lord, I have little to add. I agree with Gabriele. I think they have seen the failure of intense attacks at one breach, and may try to divide our strength among many breaches at once. We have had to stop chasing the Turks when they retreat. Mustapha Pasha has dug protective holes along the trenches and manned them with arquebusiers and musketeers to cover their retreats. It is too dangerous for us to follow.”

  Tadini interrupted. “My Lord, Jacques de Bourbon sends his apologies. He says that because he can no longer follow the enemy and change the retreat into a rout, he has captured no more Turkish standards since the attack on England. Il est desolé.”

  Buck continued. “We continue to punish the Turks severely. I should think there are more than three thousand dead out there. But, we continue to take strategic losses we cannot sustain. Guyot de Marseille was the best of our artillerymen, and he is wounded so badly that he cannot return to action. Your standard bearer, Joachim de Cluys, has lost the eye that was injured at Provence yesterday. Though he rages to get back into battle, he will be too handicapped to guard your back. One miraculous occurrence was the survival of de Bidoux.” Prejean de Bidoux was the Prior of the langue of Provence, who successfully defended the observation post on the island of Kos, though he had his horse shot out from under him in the battle. “He had his throat cut nearly from ear to ear with a scimitar yesterday. But, he is alive and demanding to be released from the hospital to fight again.”

  “As well as a miracle, there is also the skill of our surgeons,” said Philippe.

  Philippe waited to see if any of the other knights wished to speak. When none did, he stood, leaned forward, and placed his fists upon the table. “One thing more. I have heard much talk of an insurrection among the people. Be on your guard, gentlemen. Report any such activity to me, and I will deal with it immediately. Severely. Any traitors in our midst must be made an example to the others. They must fear our wrath more than they fear the Turks.”

  As the knights were reviewing their losses and their options, and unknown to Philippe, Thomas Newport had been immensely successful in his request. More than one hundred English knights set sail from England at the very time the knights on Rhodes were conferring with Philippe. But, there his luck ended. After a few days at sea, while off the coast of France in the Bay of Biscay, a terrible storm drove his ship upon the rocks. He and all his knights and crew were lost. No great force of knights was coming to relieve the besieged Order of St. John.

  Long after dark, Jean strode into the hospital to find Melina busy changing dressings and washing wounds with salt water. She saw Jean and called his name. He turned and made his way through the overcrowded ward. Soldiers and citizens were everywhere. All the hundred beds were full, and barely a place was left on the floor. Blankets served as mattresses for the wounded. Patients leaned like spokes of a wheel against the huge stone columns that ran down the center of the ward and supported the high vaulted ceiling. The air was dense and reeked with the sickly sweet smell of infection and gangrene.

  Jean walked through the aisle that had been cleared for the purpose, and knelt down beside Melina.

  “How are you?” he said.

  “I’m fine, Jean. And the girls are fine. They feed as if it were their last meal, and I think they’re almost fat. Hélène is a godsend. She has become more brave than anyone, and never rests.”

  She handed Jean some clean dressings, and said, “Hold these for me. You can talk to me while I work.”

  Jean looked at the clean amputation stump and raised his eyebrows. “How long ago did that happen?”

  “Three days ago.” Melina looked at Jean, and waited for the question she knew would come next.

  “But, how? It’s too clean; no burns; it’s too well healed.”

  “Amazing, isn’t it? Three nights ago, we ran out of oil for cautery. Doctor Renato was beside himself with worry. But, there was nothing he could do. So he made an ointment with oil of willow and turpentine. He placed it on the wounds, with nothing else.”

  “But, how did he stop the bleeding. And what of th
e sheep-bladder dressings?”

  “Compression. We packed the wounds and held the dressing tightly. It hurt them terribly, but much less than the boiling oil. We have no more sheep bladders anyway—there are no more sheep—so we wrapped them in clean rags. Renato could hardly sleep with worry. He was sure that without the cautery, the gunpowder and the dirt would cause infection and the poor men would be dead by morning. But, instead, when we changed the dressing, we found them to be clean and even healthier than the ones we burned with oil. He could hardly believe it. So now every wound is treated with willow and turpentine, and I wash the wounds every day with salt water. Nothing more. It is all we have to work with anyway. It’s amazing. When I told him what a miracle his cure was, he quoted a French surgeon to me. Paré, I think he said. Ambroise Paré. ‘Je le pansay;Dieu le guarit.’”

  “‘I dress the wound; God heals the patient.‘” Jean translated. “It’s amazing.” Jean looked about the ward, and said, “Where’s the doctor? It’s the first time I haven’t seen him here. Is he off getting some sleep?”

  “No. He told me to carry on while he went to visit some of the patients in the city. He’s been gone for hours, now. He should be back any minute.”

  “Good.” Jean shrugged and kissed Melina. He rose to go. “I’m needed at the Palace. The Grand Master summoned me a while ago. I sent word that I would be there in a moment. Here is my duty.” He kissed Melina again, this time on the lips, and long. “I’ll kiss the girls, too, and be back when I can.”