The two English knights were standing in a courtyard with Nicholas and Hodge, Smith grinding his fist into his palm for want of anything better to grind. Two slim, slightly built noblemen approached them, their demeanour courtly but reserved. They might have been brothers. They had green eyes and secretive smiles, and it seemed to Nicholas that there was something indefinably dangerous about them. Each carried a pair of ivory-handled knives on his belt. One knife usually served for most men.
They bowed.
‘Ambrosio Bragadino, of Venice,’ said the first.
‘Antonio Bragadino,’ said the second.
All bowed.
‘Our father, Marc’antonio Bragadino, is the Venetian Governor of Famagusta.’
Stanley nodded. ‘We have good report of him. I do not think that Famagusta will fall easily to the Turk.’
‘We thank you,’ said Antonio. ‘But you should know that Governor Dandolo, of Nicosia is less well reputed.’
Stanley grimaced. ‘We have heard as much.’
‘We cannot go with you ourselves,’ said Ambrosio. ‘It pains us, but we cannot. Our duties lie in Italy. But we will work ceaselessly to bring our beloved but reluctant republic into the war. And understand this. If our father should come to harm at the hands of the Turk – then we will sail east. And our revenge will be terrible.’
He spoke so softly, his green eyes unblinking, that Nicholas’s heart felt chilled.
These two would indeed make evil enemies.
‘We go to fight with your father if we can,’ said Stanley. ‘Rest assured, the Turks treat their nobly born captives with respect. If only to get a ransom.’
The brothers Bragadino bowed one last time and departed with silent, padding footsteps. Like leopards.
‘Interesting,’ said Smith quietly.
‘Worth remembering,’ said Stanley.
Tempers were on edge that evening, discussions fraught, mistrust and fear of betrayal everywhere.
‘Politics,’ snarled Smith.
Over a candlelit supper, Don Luis de Requesens said courteously to his master, a silent Don John, ‘His Majesty King Philip has forbidden you to go to Cyprus, sire.’
Don John sipped his wine.
‘It is a Christian territory!’ said Smith. ‘How can Spain not go to her aid?’
‘Greek Orthodox,’ said Don Luis, ‘not true Catholic.’
‘And how can a single galley of volunteers and knights,’ said Don John, ‘even Knights of St John, defend an island the size of Cyprus?’
‘We cannot,’ said Stanley, ‘and we will not. We will go there to advise, and fight and likely die there, vastly outnumbered as we shall be. But we will die content that we have done our oath-sworn duty. That is what the Knights do. What they have always done.’
‘But we are owed better than this!’ cried Smith, beating so hard on the tabletop with his bearlike paws that several glasses jumped and one smashed to the floor.
‘Calm, Brother,’ said Stanley. ‘You should cultivate more of His Excellency’s sprezzatura.’
‘Buggery and damnation to His Excellency’s sprezzatura!’
Nicholas glanced anxiously at the prince, but Don John only smiled. Don Luis de Requesens pursed his lips.
Smith stood and strode out into the courtyard.
‘My apologies,’ said Stanley. ‘It is not in my brother’s nature to be cool and urbane.’
Don John inclined his head. ‘No apologies necessary. It is the passion of such as Fra John that will save us all from the Turk.’ He considered. ‘If I went with you to Cyprus—’
‘Your Excellency!’ said Don Luis, scandalized.
‘If I went with you to Cyprus,’ repeated Don John, ‘what is the worst that could happen?’
‘The worst?’ said Stanley. ‘We arrive offshore, in secret, ensign down.’
‘Certainly not. Don John goes nowhere in mean disguise.’
‘Ah well, in that case, we arrive offshore, and word quickly spreads among the Greeks that none other than Don John of Austria is come to the war, still flying the double-headed eagle of the Habsburgs like a damn fool – the Greeks’ words, Your Excellency, not mine. Word is passed on to the Turks, for a price. And the Pasha promptly sends out a squadron of his fastest galleys to take you hostage.’
‘I am not going to spend my time in a Turkish dungeon,’ said Don John, examining his fingernails. ‘Imagine how the ruffians there would admire me. My elegant shape and figure.’
‘Worse, we would have stupidly given ourselves away, and gifted the Turks a powerful bargaining coin. Their preparations are far advanced, and we need to exercise caution.’
‘Semper non paratus,’ snapped the prince, and stood abruptly. ‘Caution is the daughter of punctuality and the mother of gastric disquietude.’
The rest of the table stared.
Don John forgot his dandyish poise for a moment and laughed out loud. A harsh little hah! Then he turned on his high heels and departed, Don Luis hurrying after him.
Nicholas laughed too. He was really beginning to like this preposterous prince.
‘Mad bastard,’ muttered Smith, standing in the opposite doorway. ‘Words merely descriptive, not disparaging.’
‘And he is to lead us against the Turk?’ said Hodge. ‘Christendom must be desperate.’
The comrades met again soon after the early summer dawn. A breeze was blowing and the eastern sky was red.
‘You should go,’ said Don John, regret in his voice.
‘Excellency?’
‘Get aboard your own galley. There she rides at anchor, look, under her Maltese Cross so red. I stay here. Thence to Rome, and perhaps to Venice after. Not out of milk-livered obedience to my brother. But my task is here. The delicate, unheroic work of diplomacy, forging the Christian princes into a unity. Like herding cats.’
Stanley and Smith both bowed.
‘Get you to Cyprus, and my bitter envy go with you. I mean, my heartfelt blessings.’ He smiled a wan smile. ‘To Famagusta, right under the glare of the Grand Turk. In his very courtyard. If Cyprus falls, then it will all come down to the great sea battle at last. But I need you back for that. I need you by my side for it.’
They shook hands, and then the prince lowered himself to shake the hands of Nicholas and Hodge as well.
‘English gentlemen volunteers. Believe me when I say, I hope we may meet again on a happier day.’
They bowed.
The ladder was being lowered with a clunk, a longboat pulling alongside.
‘Get your bags,’ said Smith. ‘The fate of Cyprus will decide much.’
When they came aboard the galley of the knights – she was called the St John of Jerusalem – there was Gil de Andrada to greet them with a broad smile.
‘We meet again.’
‘Don John has other business,’ said Smith. ‘A deal more tedious. But we are for Cyprus.’
‘And happy to have you as captain,’ said Stanley.
‘Vice-captain,’ corrected De Andrada. But he looked quite content about it.
‘Then who . . . ?’
Up from below appeared an older man with a long, fine nose, a thin beard, and extraordinary, burning eyes, deep set and circled with dark rings.
All bowed.
The Chevalier Mathurin Romegas. The most brilliant naval commander among all the Knights of St John, the most feared sea-wolf in the Mediterranean.
Nicholas knew all about Romegas. It would be an experience to sail with him.
‘Gentlemen,’ said Romegas. ‘We sail at sundown.’
‘There is a Moor travelling with us. Might he sit below?’
‘A Moor?’ said Romegas. ‘Why?’
‘It will become clear in time, I think.’
On the second day out of Messina, far to the south upon the burning sea, there was a small sun-brown island. Malta.
Malta of the knights.
Nicholas’s heart ached to see her. But they would not step ashore there. Most of those he had l
oved there were dead. Jean de la Valette in his grand stone catafalque in Valetta’s new cathedral. Bridier and Lanfreducci and Medrano and all the brave knights who were slain. And a young girl called Maddalena, too, lay sleeping in her narrow grave until the Judgement Day.
The handsome young Florentine knight, Luigi Mazzinghi, was standing by him.
‘She is so small a place, our island home. The island that you fought for, you and your comrade Odge.’
‘Hodge,’ said Nicholas. ‘H. H.’
‘Hodge,’ said Mazzinghi carefully. He smiled. ‘And while you and he fought, I was bent over my desk in a room in a Florence palazzo, learning my mathematics and my Latin grammar. How old are you now?’
‘Twenty-two.’
Mazzinghi tapped his chest. ‘Nineteen. Thirteen when the guns of Malta roared all summer long. Yet there were boys of thirteen fighting at the siege?’
Nicholas nodded. ‘Boys of ten, boys of eight. Boy soldiers, slingers, women, entire families fighting near the end.’
‘Everyone thinks Cyprus will be different.’
‘I think both better, and worse.’
‘I pray God,’ said Luigi Mazzinghi softly, crossing himself, ‘I only pray that I am worthy in the battles to come of the heroes of Malta.’
In the squalor and poverty of the last two years, Nicholas had half forgotten about the knights. Not only Europe’s most elite warriors, but monks too. Most devout swordsmen. Now Mazzinghi prayed he would be worthy of the heroes of Malta – such as himself! A whoring, drunken, roving, brawling English vagabond, lost in the world, with neither family nor home, nor country.
He smiled a bitter smile. In whatever firestorm was to come, he prayed he would be worthy of such simple, noble souls as the Chevalier Luigi Mazzinghi.
And the firestorm would surely be upon them soon.
Time was hurrying on. The sun sailed across the sky.
The Turk was coming.
15
The rugged outline of Crete lay ahead, with Cape Matapan to larboard, backed by the mountains of the Peloponnese. A fresh wind out of the north-east, the St John under oar only. The lookout called down. Something approaching.
‘More detail,’ said Romegas.
There was a tense silence while the lookout, a boy of fifteen, strained his eyes. The best lookouts were boys of eleven or twelve.
‘Squadron!’ he called.
Smith moved to the hatchway.
‘Black sails!’
Smith grinned. ‘Time to arm up, ladies.’ And he was gone below for his treasured Persian jezail, an elegant, long-barrelled weapon that those at the Great Siege said was the most accurate musket they had ever seen in battle.
Smith invariably retorted, ‘Depends who fires it.’
Stanley waited a while longer. A squadron. Knights disdained to turn and run, and Romegas would attack an entire armada single handed. The Turks feared him as they would a mad dog – but a mad dog with exceptional tactical intelligence. An entire squadron of enemy galleys was quite a challenge, nevertheless. They would need a plan.
‘Gunners to your stations!’ roared Romegas. ‘All guns primed and loaded. Crew at the munitions hatches, ready to serve the guns!’
‘Six!’ called down the lookout boy. ‘Six galleys under slow oar and sail. In a loose file.’
Romegas was squinting down his brass eyeglass, set on a tripod clamped to the rail. His hands shook badly. It wasn’t fear. Once his galley was capsized by a monstrous sea, and he was trapped underwater for twelve hours with his head in an air pocket. There was nervous damage. Men were supposed to grow more fearful as they grew older, and Romegas was past sixty now. But he still hadn’t learnt the meaning of fear.
His eyes strained. He prayed to God to give him better sight. God never answered that prayer. But the eyeglass would do. It confirmed that there were six galleys under oar, they were rounding Cape Matapan westwards and so heading for the Adriatic ports, and they weren’t Venetian. And something – a sailor’s deep, inborn sixth sense – could discern relaxation and relief in their very oar stroke. They were sailing into home waters.
There was more to be deduced. The squadron could see the St John of Jerusalem and vice versa. But they were not turning to attack, although so superior in numbers. Was that because they were heavily laden with booty, and only wanted to make landfall back in their pirate lair, Ragusa or Avlona?
‘The standard they fly!’ called Romegas. ‘Tell me it is a black standard with a white crescent!’
‘I cannot see, Captain.’
Romegas stroked his beard. ‘Then we will have to row closer.’ And he gave the order. The boatswain blew his whistle and the mariners got stirring, the helmsman leaning hard on the whipstaff to move the great stern rudder round a few perfectly judged degrees.
Smith came back up through the hatchway carrying his jezail in a roll of finest oilcloth and singing a psalm.
‘I shall give the heathen for thine inheritance, Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron, thou shalt break them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.’
‘I’ve heard crows sing sweeter,’ said Stanley. ‘Recite it rather than sing it, Brother, I pray you. You’ll bring Leviathan up from the deep with that caterwauling, and in a foul humour too.’
Smith sang on.
Nicholas and Hodge stood upon the larboard walkway near to where a pair of gunners were rapidly readying the verso, a small cannon that swivelled broadly left and right on its pivot and could deliver a hefty fistful of grapeshot at close quarters.
‘Remember our first corsair skirmish, Matthew Hodge?’ murmured Nicholas.
‘Well enough,’ said Hodge. ‘Considerin’ I got a blow to me poll that I never quite came right from again.’
The St John of Jerusalem was now rowing fast due north, towards the lead galley of the six, as if to hit it broadside. Which would also leave the St John’s own broadside exposed to the following five galleys. Lunacy.
‘Standard flies!’ cried the lookout boy. ‘Black standard with a white crescent.’
‘And on the forward ship,’ Romegas shouted up to him, ‘tell me there is a shaven-headed villain with a topknot, who still wears the tattered robe of a Dominican friar!’
The boy strained his eyes, swaying back and forth in the tiny netted crow’s nest as if that would help, then called back, ‘There’s a fellow in a long black robe, I think, looking our way. Cannot tell the style of his hair.’
Smith gave a strange guttural growl, and Romegas drummed his fists on the rail. ‘That dung-munching, idol-serving Gibraltar baboon!’ Then he plucked the eyeglass from the tripod, stowed it inside his doublet and leapt back to the captain’s lookout position with the eagerness of a man half his age.
Stanley saw Nicholas’s and Hodge’s enquiring expressions.
‘Kara Hodja,’ he said. ‘The Black Priest, and the evillest corsair in all the eastern sea. Shame on him that he was once a Christian. He still wears his Dominican robe in mockery, even as he is beheading Christian captives on the deck of his ship.’ He looked out across the narrowing gap. ‘But Judgement Day is coming.’
‘Six galleys against one,’ said Hodge.
Gil de Andrada joined them. ‘Watch and learn.’
The six galleys had slowed and were hoving to uncertainly.
‘Fire the centre-line!’ called Romegas.
A few moments later the great centre-line gun roared and they heard the rush of the forty-pound iron ball through the air, then saw the geyser of white water where it struck, many yards short of the enemy.
‘Well out of range,’ said Hodge. ‘Waste of good powder and shot.’
Gil de Andrada shook his head. ‘Shows we mean business. Romegas wants them to think we are bent on attacking with all guns blazing, and he reckons on a certain response.’
And he got it. Moments later all six corsair galleys were seen turning sharply to the north. They were fleeing. Now the sharpest eyes on the St John, Nicholas and Hodge included, could see their b
lack sails straining and filling as they turned into the nor-easter. Their mariners scurried about the decks and up the rigging. And they could hear the drumbeat sound.
‘Romegas bewitches men’s minds,’ said De Andrada. ‘Makes them see things which are not, makes them do his bidding like whipped slaves.’
Meanwhile Romegas stood leaning hungrily forward from his post, dark-circled eyes burning, muttering like an incantation, ‘Give us a shot, God rot your bones! Just one shot.’
Then it came. A vague, half-hearted warning shot from one of the fleeing galleys’ stern guns. The ball fell nearer its source than its target.
But it was enough.
‘Helm about! Battle speed due east, and don’t spare the lash down below there!’
‘Now I am truly confused,’ said Nicholas. ‘We are going into battle against, what, thin air? And hurrying due east, with our enemy now rowing away north? Chevalier Gil de Andrada, we need a commentary.’
The St John came sharp about, sails tight reefed, and surged into the oncoming waves. They could hear the groaning slaves, the creak of the thole pins down below.
‘Even I cannot always read Romegas’s mind,’ said De Andrada. ‘And he rarely shares his thoughts. But here is my interpretation. We encounter an enemy, far more numerous than us. We feign an attack. They flee. This tells Romegas the enemy has valuable booty, and wants to keep it. They will row fast north, almost into the wind. What else does it tell us? That they judge they can row faster than us. What, laden with booty? Then they must be carrying very few heavy guns. Unlike us. So we outgun them.’
‘Romegas indeed reads men’s minds,’ murmured Stanley.
‘And of course he reads the wind,’ said De Andrada, ‘and knows every rock, every current, every vagary of the sea. So then he waits until the enemy return fire – as they did, just that one feeble shot – and then feigns to flee east. At battle speed. Not to attack anything, young Ingoldsby, simply because that is the fastest sustainable oar speed there is. Only ramming is faster, but that can be kept up by the slaves below for only a few hundred yards. Meanwhile our guns are all readied and waiting. The enemy are heading north in file. Then there comes a moment . . .’
The St John was already a mile east of the vanishing corsair squadron, apparently heading away fast. The squadron finally rounded Cape Matapan and the mad dog Romegas was out of their sight.
The Last Crusaders: Blood Red Sea Page 13