The Last Crusaders: Blood Red Sea

by Napier, William

  ‘That would change things,’ agreed Stanley. ‘It would mean the Ottomans mustafa new commander.’

  ‘Please,’ said Smith. ‘Not now.’

  He hung as many as a dozen grenades from his belt.

  ‘Don’t stand too near me,’ said Stanley. ‘You’ll go up like a powder store.’

  Smith’s teeth showed white. He was burning to begin.

  Nicholas swished his own light sword. He knew how Smith felt. It was the only way to manage the tension and not run mad. The only way without women.

  They stood on the walls and watched the vast Ottoman camp establish itself by torchlight. A magnificent sight, hundreds of camels and mules, companies of slaves, great squares of tents and broad avenues, just like at Nicosia.

  ‘They look like an army fresh from home still,’ muttered Smith.

  And it was true. Many of them had barely fought yet, merely sacked, and were as keen as any for the battle to begin.

  ‘Bragadino said we have four thousand men,’ said Stanley. ‘Venetian and some Spanish. You sure that’s seventy thousand out there?’

  ‘Thereabouts,’ said Smith. ‘Why, do you want more to get your teeth into?’

  Gangs of slaves began earthing up ramps for the cannon, and they saw one huge shadowy shape in the darkness, a gleaming bronze barrel like some monster from the ocean deep. Its team of twenty-four powerful draught oxen strained under the lash to drag it forward over the flat dusty earth.

  ‘The first bombardment will start tomorrow,’ said Smith. ‘Not full assault, just ranging shots, testing shots.’

  ‘Still,’ said Hodge, ‘best not try to stop the balls with your belly, eh?’

  Stanley grinned. ‘That’s the spirit, Master Hodge. That’s the spirit.’

  But the next night brought someone else into the siege. A legendary name. They were not alone.

  Famagusta harbour was closed off by a giant chain, hanging from two stone windlasses the size of castle keeps. It rendered the harbour and the few galleys within both safe and useless. The Turkish fleet bobbed at anchor beyond it on the mild summer sea.

  But at night a single galley came in among them as the sky clouded over and the stars were lost. It moved without a single torch or lantern, a black shadow on the dark sea.

  Then its guns roared out at near-point-blank range into the hulls of the sleeping Turkish ships, and three of them were sunk within minutes.

  The black galley came to the mole beside the great chain, where all but two of its passengers and crew crawled on to the harbour wall under the pikes of the guards. The last two aboard scuppered her immediately outside the chain and swam for it. The galley sank in the shallow water, forming yet another obstacle in the path of any enemy trying to break into the harbour.

  A messenger came to Bragadino, dining late with the knights.

  ‘An arrival by sea, sire!’

  ‘By sea?’

  All looked up. There in the doorway stood a man of some sixty-five years of age, perhaps seventy. It was hard to tell, for he still gave off the strength and energy of a much younger man. A long fine nose, straggly beard and deep-set eyes circled with dark rings.

  The Chevalier Romegas, Knight Commander of St John. The most feared sea-wolf in the Mediterranean.

  They embraced heartily.

  ‘Before God it does me good to see you here!’ said Giustiniani after Romegas had told his tale. ‘And leaving three Turkish galleys sunk in your wake! The Chevalier Romegas does not become any milder with the years.’

  The old sailor’s eyes gleamed. ‘I’ll become milder when the Sword of Islam is beaten into a pruning hook.’

  They drank to that.

  ‘I bring you all of six marines to fight,’ he said, ‘no galley, no supplies. But still more than Venice or any other power sends you, eh?’

  ‘Bitter truth.’

  ‘I also bring you fifty Muslim pilgrims, on the haj, whom we took captive coming here. They have been well treated. You may find them useful bargaining chips.’

  Bragadino absorbed this surprising news. ‘What of the Holy League?’

  Romegas’s dark-ringed eyes looked pained. His heart was sorrowful for this courageous governor.

  Bragadino read him instantly. ‘None?’

  Romegas shook his head. ‘In consistory they continue to argue. Don John presses very hard, but the Genoese are against any joint operation with the Venetians. The French are as elusive as ever, Philip urges caution—’

  ‘Their world is coming to an end!’ cried Smith. ‘Now is no time for caution! Why, I’d take Genoa and Venice by the scruff of their haughty necks and dash their heads together till they clanged like bells. Do they not understand what danger they are in? Do they not realise?’

  There was a sombre silence.

  Then Bragadino squared his shoulders. ‘It is as before. No help will come. We are alone.’

  ‘We should get more sleep while we can,’ said Hodge.

  ‘Sleep now?’ said Nicholas. ‘That’s a joke.’

  The Ottoman miners would already be cutting into the ground with picks and shovels, behind their wooden and wickerwork screens. Among the tents, Janizaries would be sharpening their scimitars, combing and waxing their fine black moustaches, praying their last prayers to Mecca.

  ‘Well, I’m sleeping,’ said Hodge, and he vanished back to their billet. Nicholas followed a while later.

  He came down an alleyway and there in a doorway was the woman he had glimpsed on the balcony. She must have been not far off forty, yet she was a handsome woman, tall for a Greek, her dark hair piled up and offset with a red ribbon. The black dress and lace mantilla of a widow in mourning went ill with her voluptuous figure and the wicked light in her bold dark eyes.

  ‘Ah, it’s my fair-haired gallant,’ she said when she saw him. ‘Give company to a poor widow, far from home?’

  ‘Me too,’ he said. ‘Farther than you. I am from England.’

  She looked him up and down as if inspecting a ham in a butcher’s shop, almost smacking her lips. ‘A young Englishman? I am from Venice.’

  ‘That explains it,’ he said drily.

  ‘Explains what, Baby-face?’

  ‘The Greek women are more . . . guarded. Whereas your Venetian women are well known to be more generous in every way.’

  She scowled, hands on her hips. ‘Impertinent baby-faced whelp.’

  He sighed. ‘How much?’

  It was terrible how the imminent prospect of death caused such lust.

  ‘I was going to offer you a favour for nothing,’ she said, ‘seeing as the battle starts tomorrow and you’ll be stretched out dead by nightfall, while we women with more wit will live happily for many another day. Men, though, they go over the cliff like lemmings and call it heroism.’

  He considered. Then he bowed and said, ‘Madam, please pardon my impertinent words.’ Half her age he might be, but she was alluring and life was short. Besides, he had never found the mock battle between men and women so hard to engage in. Indeed, the enemy, whether wives, widows or maids, had often enough taken him by the hand and drawn him into their bedchambers without even an assault on his part. He thought of the jailer’s daughter in Djerba. That had been risky indeed.

  He smiled and took her hand now, the fingers brightly beringed, gazed into her eyes and murmured, ‘I was confused for a moment there by your unspeakable and heavenly beauty.’

  She pulled her hand free, tossed her head, and said, ‘You lie like a Roman cardinal.’ Then she put her arms around his waist and pulled him to her.

  Ah, the little feints, the charges and retreats . . .

  He could smell the perfume in her hair.

  ‘We poor widows,’ she said, ‘the downtrodden and oppressed, who are we to be proud? We need protection. Come inside, then, English soldier boy, though it feels wrong, you being about the age of my own son.’

  They stepped inside the doorway and he kissed her full and generous mouth.

  Didn’t they s
ay a woman her age was most warm and passionate? ‘Like a fine wine,’ he murmured.

  ‘You,’ she said. ‘Never trust a man so smooth with words.’ And she nudged the door shut with her bare foot.

  He had leapt from the bed and was standing naked in the chamber before he realised why.

  In his last few seconds of sleep, he had heard the distant roar of a great gun, and then the thump of an iron ball against stone.

  It was dawn. It had begun.

  She sighed and stretched, hair tousled across the pillow. ‘Come back to bed.’

  If he didn’t get his breeches on immediately, it would be too tempting.

  ‘Didn’t you hear that?’ he snapped.

  She opened her eyes. ‘What?’

  ‘The Turkish guns. It’s started.’

  14

  He hurried through the streets to their billet, and was directed to the landward bastion of the west wall. Below the bastion was a maze of tunnels, chambers, powder stores and, most important of all, gun rooms, where the dark muzzles of slim culverins and field guns nosed out through narrow niches, ready to give enfilading fire across the entire breadth of Famagusta’s walls. Any attacking enemy would be mown down like summer grass.

  He raced up the steps, head low. At the top, lying behind the sloping ramp where the defenders sheltered, he found Smith, Stanley and Hodge.

  Hodge eyed him. ‘You look drained. Refreshing night’s sleep?’

  ‘Just jealousy.’

  ‘Where’s your helmet, you ass?’ growled Smith.

  In his hurry he had left it at the widow’s.

  Running back with the helmet he heard a voice call from behind.

  ‘Master Nicholas of England!’

  It couldn’t be. He spun round.

  It was. Abdul of Tripoli.

  ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were stalking me. How the devil did you get into the city?’

  ‘The fortunes of war,’ said Abdul, typically vague. ‘Look.’ And he produced a long, slender object wrapped in oiled white linen. ‘Where is your friend Smit?’

  ‘Follow me. That’s not . . . is it?’

  It was. Abdul knelt before Smith and unwrapped the bundle. There lay his beloved Persian jezail.

  Smith snatched it up, eyes shining like a boy’s on his birthday. He leaned on the wall and sighted down the barrel. It was perfect.

  Behind him, Abdul coughed. ‘I am glad you like my musket, sire.’

  Smith snapped back, ‘Your musket?’

  ‘Indeed. Many dangers I endured to keep it to myself. Now I will sell it to you.’

  ‘Sell it to me?’ Smith looked as if he was about to reach out and wring Abdul’s neck where he knelt.

  ‘He’s right, Smith,’ said Stanley mildly. ‘It was yours. Now it is his. You must pay the man.’

  Eyes now shining with a darker, more dangerous light, Smith said, ‘How much?’

  Abdul named his price.

  ‘Curses and leprosy on you, Moor, I don’t have that kind of money.’

  ‘Yet you know it is worth twice that amount.’

  The damnable thing was, the Moor was right.

  ‘I will take a promissory oath from you, for the full amount to be paid within the month.’

  ‘We’ll be dead in a month.’

  ‘You, perhaps. Not me. Then I will just take back the jezail from your cold hands. Like a pawnbroker. Otherwise, that is my price. Plus ten per cent.’

  ‘You sure you have no Jewish blood?’

  Abdul just smiled.

  ‘And why the devil is a Moor selling guns to a Christian?’

  ‘Christians sell guns to Moors often enough,’ said Abdul sharply. ‘I have seen English arms merchants with my own eyes in Casablanca and Marrakesh. In return they take back good quantities of saltpetre, that key ingredient in the single most delicious recipe ever cooked up by the hand of man: ten parts saltpetre, two parts charcoal, a measure and a half of sulphur. Grind to a fine powder, and there you have it. Boom!’

  Smith scowled furiously.

  ‘Yes,’ said Abdul, enjoying himself very much now, ‘you Christians may have plenty of sulphur and charcoal, but the very finest saltpetre is in Morocco, Syria, Egypt and Iraq. The lands of Islam! It is all ours, and yet Christendom cannot run without it! Truly we are blessed by Allah.’

  ‘Devil.’

  ‘I watch,’ said Abdul. ‘Others see but I observe. I wait, and I take my chance when it comes. I intend to die a very rich man.’

  ‘What’s the point of that?’ said Nicholas. ‘You can’t take it with you.’

  Abdul smiled and tapped the side of his long thin nose. ‘I shall find a way. I shall negotiate with Azrael, the Angel of Death himself.’

  ‘He bloody well will too,’ said Hodge.

  ‘Observe now,’ said Abdul, ‘while we have been talking. The guns have been pulled back. I think Lala Mustafa is going to have a parade.’

  ‘A parade?’

  He nodded. ‘To dishearten you. I overheard them discussing it, not forty-eight hours ago.’

  And he was right.

  The guns were rested after their brief opening barrage of ranging shots, and instead the great plain between the Ottoman encampment and the city walls began to fill with division after division of the Ottoman army on full dress parade.

  ‘Is this a siege or isn’t it?’ grumbled Smith.

  ‘Mental warfare,’ said Stanley. ‘Good tactics.’

  At a safe distance of half a mile away was spread out what seemed like all the manpower of the Ottoman empire: Constantinople, Antioch, Damascus, Alexandria . . . Those ancient, teeming cities of the East were inexhaustible.

  A rumour was spreading along the city walls that the Mohammedan army numbered a quarter of a million. Another rumour said that Lala Mustafa had promised to make a pyramid of severed heads. Panic was spreading, the Turks were already winning.

  ‘We need to do something,’ said Smith.

  Upon the plain, long trumpets blared, cannons fired blanks, pipes wailed and cymbals clashed. The great squares of Janizaries in their white silk robes and plumes of heron and ostrich feathers turned and wheeled in perfect order, to the audible shouts of their captains. There were holy men in green turbans carrying banners inscribed with the names of Allah in gold embroidery, horses champing and lavishly caparisoned, great goatskin drums beating out a slow stately march. The numbers of their besiegers were beyond telling.

  And out in front of the vast parade rode a man in a midnight-blue robe on a white stallion, a drawn scimitar in his hand. Lala Mustafa.

  Stanley pointed along the wall. ‘Bragadino’s having words with the gunnery team there, look.’

  ‘Guess what he’s planning.’

  They went over, passing by a young Venetian arquebusier who was watching this intimidating display with eyes flared wide like those of a frightened horse. He was shaking so much, the barrel of his arquebus rattled on the top of the wall.

  Stanley laid his big, heavy hand on the fellow’s arm and he shook a little less. ‘Watch this display of ours, son,’ he said. ‘It’ll put new mettle in you.’

  A gunner was just ramming home a fist-sized iron ball when they came alongside.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ said Bragadino with a quick bow. ‘A reply was called for. Now,’ he said to the gunnery team. ‘Hit them.’

  ‘That’ll have to be a mighty good shot,’ said the gunnery sergeant.

  ‘Then make it a mighty good shot,’ snapped Bragadino.

  Nicholas caught Stanley’s eye and they both smiled. Who did that remind them of? Grand Master Jean de la Valette, victor of Malta. To the very letter.

  They quickly rolled the gun carriage forward into position, the muzzle at the niche. A gunner held the smoking linstock to the powder hole at the cannon’s breech.

  ‘Permission to fire too, sire?’ said Smith.

  ‘Knights of St John rarely take orders from any but their own,’ said Bragadino drily.

  Then Smith w
as a blur of movement, astonishingly deft and precise. He slid the rod free from the long musket, cleaned the barrel, loaded it with paper cartridge and musket ball, and took position with eye along the barrel and finger on the trigger, all by the time the cannon near by roared out.

  The gunnery sergeant had calculated both detonation and elevation finely. The iron ball arced high into the air, perfectly visible to both defenders and besiegers, watching in irritation the moment they heard the cannon. And then it began its descent towards the close-packed front ranks of the Sipahi cavalry.

  It would just make it.

  There was an unseemly sidestepping and barging of horses, wild shouting, a cavalry commander galloping down the lines in fury, before the iron ball smacked into the earth where moments before it would have killed both man and horse.

  Out in front of his army, the figure in a midnight-blue robe on a white stallion pulled angrily around and glared at the walls of accursed Famagusta. And then, in violent lèse-majesté, a single musket shot rang out from the walls. Evidently a musket of incredible power and accuracy, for the expertly aimed ball kicked up dust not ten feet from his horse’s hooves. The horse reared; the rider remained in his saddle – but he dropped his scimitar.

  He settled his horse. A moment’s ominous silence.

  Smith rapidly reloaded.

  ‘Why bother?’ said Stanley. ‘You missed.’

  Smith said, ‘You’d not have hit within a hundred yards of him.’

  Even at this distance, Nicholas thought he could see the expression on Lala Mustafa’s face. As black as a burnt stubble field.

  Then a slave ran out and retrieved the fallen scimitar and handed it back to the Pasha, head bowed.

  Lala Mustafa looked down at the slave as if contemplating beheading him where he stood. Then he raised the scimitar high and bellowed out an order, voice like a lion’s roar.

  ‘In the name of God,’ said Stanley softly.

  ‘What?’ said Nicholas, palms sweating, scalp prickling ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’ll be bloody murder. He’s sending in the Bektasis already.’

  They came racing across the dusty plain to paradise. Thousands of them, with not a square foot of armour between them. Naked but for turbans and loincloths, otherwise just bare skin and fanatic hearts. They clutched spears and daggers, and some had slashed themselves already in their zeal, blood coursing down their arms and legs, while others had battered their own foreheads with stones for the love of Allah.