by Robyn Young
Several watchmen, drawn to the burning tavern by the clanging of the bell, cast their attention towards him at the cries. Goro turned away, but found his path blocked by more, moving in behind him, drawing swords. All around him suddenly, people were pushing, pointing, shouting. He spun, looking for escape, but all he could see were a whirl of snarling faces. A hundred masks of hatred.
32
The Spanish advanced on Málaga, through a burned and blistered landscape. The Moors had set fire to farmsteads and villages on the outskirts of their city, so the Christians would find nothing to sustain them. The inhabitants fled, bearing what they could carry, leading children and animals inside the walls. Smoke shrouded the sky, smouldering from blackened grain fields, on the borders of which orchards of citrus were withered by flame, blossom burning like paper, scattering on the wind.
Eyes stinging, throats parched in the rising heat of the days – the sea a blue temptation to their left, speckled with the white sails of the fleet of Spanish ships blockading the coast – the army moved in bristling columns, mules struggling to haul the gun carts up punishing hills and into sudden valleys, the land near the eastern walls as crumpled as cloth, rising into craggy mountains at their backs.
Banners were raised above the king and his royal guards, the companies of dukes and counts, hidalgos and caballeros, warriors of the Holy Brotherhood, farmers and criminals; all moving as if a single host – the very body of Spain – ready to flex steel sinews and iron muscles, ready to smash the stone might of the enemy.
The Christians were the first to gain a bloody victory, the vanguard under the Marquis of Cádiz taking the ground beyond the eastern walls in a fierce skirmish against the Muslim garrison who sallied down from the heights of the Gibralfaro that soared above the city on its invincible rock. Forced back behind their defences after a day of intense fighting, the Moors watched from their towers as on this claimed ground the Christians built an enormous timber fortress – big enough to house a battery of artillery and sixteen thousand men – augmented by defensive palisades and ditches. Protected by these barriers, the Spanish spread out around the walls, until it seemed as if all of Málaga was surrounded by a living moat of flesh.
On rocky hills the leaders of the companies set their flags and erected tents, digging more trenches and raising barriers, buttressed with packed earth for the protection of the siege engines and gun platforms the engineers and carpenters set about building. The Moors, visible in the day by their turbans and at night by their watch-fires, were not idle in this time, firing a constant barrage from the walls. Wherever defences were weak missiles found targets: stones flung from engines exploding through barricades, half-built siege towers struck ablaze by flaming arrows, men pierced with bolts sent plunging into the ditches, others ripped to red ribbons by cannon fire.
Soon, King Ferdinand ordered work to be undertaken at night and men toiled and sweated through the sultry dark, fingers fumbling with ropes, feet stumbling on ground littered with rocks and mangled limbs of fallen comrades, stinking and swarmed with flies. There was a grim sense of determination when the Christians were at last ready to answer the Moors with the roar of their own guns.
At a blast of trumpets, the first barrage was launched, the earth shuddering with the tremendous power of bombards and mortars. Smoke and flame erupted in thunder all around the trenches, as if the earth had split open and hell itself had come belching up through the fissure. Shot smashed into towers and through walkways, striking houses and the minarets of mosques. Men were dragged, screaming, from crumbling platforms, cheers resounding from the Christian camps wherever the enemy fell or a breach was made. But these walls, raised in the Moors’ first conquest of Spain, had stood for eight hundred years and the Spanish guns were, to their stone might, the bites of ants to a lion.
Day after day, the bombardment continued. Every evening, the artillery falling silent under scarlet skies veiled with dust and smoke, the Muslims’ prayers sang out from their towers to compete with Christian psalms. Every morning, the onslaught began again, missiles hurled at the defences, fiery barrels of pitch launched from siege engines exploding across rooftops, palms and pomegranate trees burning.
The Moors’ war machines kept up their own continuous assault, catapults firing javelins into the seething masses, skewering men, arrows picking off the unwary. One morning, soon after the Christians launched their daily attack, enemy engineers managed, by luck or skill, to shoot a flaming barrel of naptha into a gunpowder cart near one of the main Spanish positions. Shouts of alarm sounded as the barrel struck and men rushed to try to remove it, but in the thunder of the guns only a few heard the warnings. The explosion ripped through the Spanish lines, blasting men into bloody mist, tearing through animals, wagons and tents, leaving behind a smoking crater of broken rock, splintered timbers and shredded bodies.
Still, the Christians continued, pounding at the walls, day after shattering day. Spring was marching on and the sun baked down. Sweat, blood, smoke and dirt turned men’s skin dark; beards and hair grew long and lice festered in mud-crusted blankets and clothes, the foetid soup of latrines reeking in the heat. Men and women slipped in from nearby villages, looking to sell the enemy their wares; fruit for the eating, herbs for healing, a warm mouth to satisfy. But, when rumour spread of a plague swelling in some of these settlements, the soldiers became fearful. The desertions began, most of them peasants and townsmen with little to gain by staying, trickling away in the dark.
King Ferdinand grew troubled. The city walls, although pitted and scarred, stood fast against him. He was still tied in an uneasy peace with Boabdil in Granada, but there were reports that the emir’s uncle, Muhammad al-Zagal, was raising a force to tackle him from the rear. His army was being supplied by sea, but although food was plentiful, the black powder was not and the assaults were growing shorter. When Queen Isabella, in Córdoba, heard of his perilous position she begged him to raise the siege and retreat, but, in turn, he implored her to come; let her grace breathe new life into his flagging forces. And so, on the dusty winds of early summer, Isabella came, with her train of prelates and royal guards, servants and ladies-in-waiting.
The men of the Spanish forces were so overcome by the sight of their queen, walking through their midst on the front line of battle, pausing to speak to the captains about the siege and to comfort the wounded, her red hair flaming in the sun, that when they returned to the assault – the queen, her ladies and priests clasping hands over their ears at the shuddering din of the guns – it was as if it were the first day again.
A few days into her visit, the queen, noting the danger in the dwindling supplies of powder, sent emissaries to the gates of Málaga to offer terms for surrender and a threat if these were not accepted. The Moorish garrison, led by an experienced commander and supported by soldiers from towns and fortresses that had fallen to the Spanish, refused. But, while the Christians were troubled by the enemy’s defiance, the citizens of Málaga were themselves not without worry.
Some inhabitants, escaping the beleaguered city to throw themselves on the mercy of the Spanish, told of the worsening situation within the walls. What the Christians lacked in gunpowder, the Moors lacked in provisions. Rations were so low that people, forced to kill horses and dogs for food, were now eating leaves and hides cooked over fires. Flies and rats were said to be growing fat on the corpses that littered the streets, while the living starved.
As the siege ground on and the old and young and sick succumbed to ravishing hunger, more citizens began to quail, begging their captains to accept the Christians’ terms. Faced with the brutal choice of slow starvation or enslavement, the inhabitants chose the latter. And so it was that Málaga, one of the biggest and brightest jewels of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada, surrendered to the Christian king and queen.
Harry Vaughan stood in the shade of a broken archway that would have once opened on to a lush expanse of lawns. Now, the area was covered with debris, the grand buildings that overlo
oked the gardens turned in places to rubble, the grass burned brown, fountains choked with dust, trees charred. Scraps of clothing protruding from a pile of stones and a putrid smell told him there were bodies still buried here. He tugged the perfumed cloth tighter over his mouth and nose, eyes smarting at the grit blowing on the hot wind.
Beyond, the shattered city stretched away. Smoke still hung on the air from fires that had ravaged some quarters in the final days. The four horsemen had ridden wild through Málaga and the trail of their destruction was laid bare in every place: bodies crushed by stones and pierced by arrows, the elderly and young withered to bones in their beds, others sick or dying of disease. Isabella and Ferdinand had not yet entered their new city, waiting for the corpses to be cleared from the streets and survivors to be turfed out of homes and hiding places, and corralled for their fates. Combatants were to be executed and citizens enslaved – all fifteen thousand of them.
From his vantage, Harry could see the masts of the ships crowding the harbour in the shadow of the towering walls of the Alcazabar. He’d heard that the noise and stink down there were unbearable: children wailing, men shouting, bodies floating in the polluted water, wretched lines of emaciated citizens, stricken dumb with shock and grief, being led on to the waiting vessels. The king and queen had divided the population into three: one third to be exchanged for Christians in North African prisons and mines, another to be gifted to the leaders of the siege, the remainder to be sold in the markets of Christendom. With so much human cargo to process, a number of slavers had been brought in, but chief among them were Gianotto Berardi and Christopher Columbus.
Harry turned sharply, disturbed by a harsh cry. It was just a bird, one of the many carrion eaters that circled over the dead city. Still, though, his eyes raked the ruins, drooping fronds of palms rustling in the breeze making his neck prickle with unease. He wore a studded brigandine over his shirt, but had discarded his cumbersome helm and breastplate weeks ago. He now felt naked, vulnerable without the armour. The king’s guards had declared that this quarter had been thoroughly swept of citizens, but that was before another company had been surprised down near the western walls by a knot of enemy soldiers hiding in a cellar. The desperate Moors had cut a bloody swathe through the king’s men before they’d been surrounded and put down.
Harry curled his hand around the hilt of his sword, feeling the comfort in its grip. The blade, gifted to him by the king and well christened now with infidel blood, hung from his hip alongside his dagger. But it hadn’t been protection he’d had in mind when he’d strapped on his belt that morning alone in his tent, the knowledge of what he intended today – planned for all these months – throbbing in him like a second heartbeat. One of these blades would taste blood today. Not the blood of the enemy, but a fellow Christian.
‘Sir Harry Vaughan?’
He started round to see a figure approaching across the rubble-strewn courtyard of the abandoned building. Harry had only seen Columbus once, at his first meeting with the queen in Córdoba, almost a year ago now. But he recognised the man immediately: six feet tall and broad with it, his red face a startling contrast to his crop of white-blond hair. The sailor with the dream. The man the Spanish called el Loco.
Harry searched the courtyard behind him, but it seemed Columbus had come alone, as Harry had requested when he asked Don Luys Carrillo to set up this meeting in a place of his choosing. Don Luys had been only too happy to oblige, so long as Harry kept his word and wrote to King Henry about renewing the hunt for Wynter. It was a promise Harry had no intention of keeping, but Don Luys need never know that. He tugged down the perfumed cloth and forced a smile out of his tight lips, inclining his head to Columbus. ‘Thank you for meeting me.’ His voice was dry and he had to clear his throat. ‘I wanted somewhere we could speak in private. I’m afraid there is not much in the way of comfort. But I can at least offer you a drink.’ Harry picked up the flask of wine he’d brought, saved from his rations.
Columbus barely glanced at it, keeping his ice-blue eyes fixed on Harry. ‘Señor Luys said you are England’s ambassador?’ His Castilian was rendered blunt by his native accent.
Harry found his frank manner unsettling. He needed time here. Time to gather himself. To prepare. He gestured through the archway to the gardens. ‘Come, let us sit.’ He made his way to where a stone bench stood among withered bushes, grateful that Columbus followed him.
Columbus paused at the bench, but then sat beside him, large callused hands resting on his knees, his white hair whipped by the acrid wind. ‘I’m told your king may be interested in supporting my venture?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Harry. That wasn’t exactly what he’d advised Don Luys to tell the sailor, but if the man’s interest had been piqued enough to bring him here then so be it. ‘Lord Henry is certainly keen to know more.’
‘I am glad to hear it.’ Columbus’s gruff tone didn’t change, despite his assertion. ‘There are too few men, I have found, with minds and hearts open to the possibilities of this world. Tell me, what does King Henry of England want to know?’
Harry tugged the cork from the flask and took a swig to settle his nerves. The wine was strong and burned his throat. He passed it to Columbus, who took it with a curt nod and drank. Harry had brought it with him in the hope it would make the man drowsy and slow, but he’d forgotten how huge the sailor was. Watching him drink, he thought it would take a barrel to fell him. ‘My lord king is interested to know how you hope to realise your dream?’
Columbus’s ruddy face hardened at this. ‘It is no dream. Nothing so flimsy. So intangible. No, Sir Harry.’ He swigged at the flask again and gestured to a wooden bucket, lying on its side by a fountain. ‘What I seek is as real as that.’ Shrugging off his black cloak, he rose. His shirt was stained yellow with sweat under his arms and down his broad back. Leaving the flask on the bench, he strode to the bucket. ‘The only question is how far it is between here and there.’ He halted. ‘You have heard of Toscanelli? The great scholar and astronomer of Florence?’
Harry shook his head, but he was only half listening. Sweat was threading greasy lines down his face and his mouth was dust dry. Talk was not what he’d come here for. He needed the man to sit still beside him, drink some more wine; be unsuspecting when the dagger was slipped between his ribs.
Columbus’s brow furrowed at his lack of knowledge. ‘Fifty years ago, the banker, Cosimo de’ Medici, hosted a council in his republic to which men came from across Christendom and as far as Byzantium, Rus and Tartary. Toscanelli – by questioning these men and gauging the times and distances of their journeys, as well as hearing the stories of travellers from other lands to their own – came to the conclusion that a man sailing west would eventually reach Cathay, Cipangu and, indeed, the Spice Islands. Seventeen years ago, he wrote to the King of Portugal of his theory and, shortly before his death, he confirmed it to me in a letter.’ Columbus put his foot on the bucket. ‘Men say the earth is too large for such a journey – that a ship could never carry enough food and water to reach those lands. The ancient Greeks believed eleven thousand miles lie between the Pillars of Hercules in the west and the golden cities of Cathay in the east.’ Columbus gave the bucket a shove with his foot.
Harry watched it roll across the withered grass towards him.
‘By Toscanelli’s reckoning it is five thousand.’ Columbus walked to the bucket, shoved it again and followed in its wake. ‘Since his letter, I have read countless books, studied maps and travelled the seas in many directions. Based on all I have discovered, I believe it is a mere three thousand miles.’
Harry followed the bucket’s last clumsy roll, as Columbus returned to sit beside him.
‘No dream,’ the man repeated, his pale blue eyes alight.
Harry took another sip of the sour wine. His heart was thumping furiously. He had planned for this moment all these past weeks, since the city had fallen and the sailor had come. A deserted place, where they would meet alone. He would say they w
ere attacked without warning – an enemy, overlooked in the search. He had tried to save the man, but failed, the Moor fleeing before he could catch him. He would cut himself, to make the struggle real. Not that he thought many would mourn the sailor’s death. Columbus was a sailor, a slave trader. He wasn’t a lord or a knight. Isabella might be interested in his plan, but most men thought him a fool.
Harry set down the flask, shifted his hand to his belt, fingers creeping to the dagger. He had seen so much blood spilled here; faces caved in, stomachs split, legs torn away. He should be inured. What was keeping him? He thought of Prince Edward, small limbs fighting against him as he bundled the boy back into that cell in the Tower. Thought of Wynter tied at his feet, thrashing and helpless as he’d set the flames around him. Thought of Edward Woodville’s neck bared for the barb in his hand, the Smiler twitching beneath him, skin parting with every slash of his dagger, and all the nameless meat into which he’d thrust his steel these past weeks. But those had been moments of hate and fury, rage and need. This felt as though he were about to leap off a cliff into an icy lake.
Columbus was watching him closely. He shook his head, the creases in his sun-scorched brow deepening. ‘All these men who doubt me,’ he murmured. ‘Few of them have even been to sea. I know what the Spaniards call me. Men said the same in the court of King John of Portugal, behind my back and to my face. But if they had seen what I had, their minds would change.’
‘What you have seen?’ Harry asked the question to keep the man occupied and talking, while his fingers grazed the cold hilt of the dagger, but as he did so an image of the map from the Trinity drifted into his mind. Had Columbus seen what those sailors had? That strange coastline trailing off the edges?