The Last Crusaders: Blood Red Sea

by Napier, William

  He meant it.

  They stood silent.

  A man came with a big-bladed knife, pulled Bragadino’s ear and sawed it through. The Governor came to and groaned. ‘Knife’s too blunt,’ he muttered.

  Another horseman arrived, cloak billowing. It was Joseph Nassi. He might have demanded an end, being lord of the island now, but he knew it was too dangerous for that, Lala Mustafa too far gone. He could read his eyes.

  He dropped from his horse. ‘My Lord,’ he gasped, ‘this has no dignity. I beg you, let us show clemency.’

  ‘Clemency!’ said Bragadino, neck coursing with blood. ‘That dog-fucker couldn’t even spell it.’

  ‘My Lord,’ said Nassi, ‘he is driven mad by something. By grief. I beg you, this is not the way for—’

  ‘He has provoked it,’ said Lala, his voice once again without emotion. ‘I do not know why. But now he must face the punishment. Let it be an example for the whole island.’

  Nassi, rarely for him, raised his voice. ‘Sire, I insist, on behalf of the Sultan Selim—’

  It was enough. Lala Mustafa had been humiliated already today. Who commanded the army, he or this upstart Jew? He would not be overruled by any Jew, no matter how close to Selim. He nodded to two mounted guards and they obliged Nassi to remount, hands on their sword hilts. They then escorted him back towards the city gate. As he went, Nassi’s head hung down.

  All the cruelty of the Ottomans came to the fore then, after all the valour. And Smith and Stanley, Giustiniani and Mazzinghi, witnessed it with their own eyes. They let their memories be burned with it.

  They cut off Bragadino’s ears and nose, and mounted him on an ass. He looked like a mutilated old lion. The soldiery jeered as he rode among them, and wild rumours flew that Lala Mustafa was going to allow a full-scale looting of Famagusta after all. Men rushed to their tents to collect bags and sacking.

  Bragadino was driven into the city, and his retinue insulted and then turned loose. And that was where Nicholas and Hodge, along with the rest of the citizens, saw the final horror.

  Their noble old Governor was tied to a post before the cathedral of St Nicholas and left for a night to suffer. Meanwhile the Turks began to run riot, and there was no order for them to stop. They bullied people of all ages and estates into gangs to clear away the corpses, and then they began to beat people, ravish the women in alleyways and cellars, and help themselves to any valuables they found. Fights broke out, and more people were briskly put to the sword.

  ‘Remember every detail,’ murmured Stanley, his face stricken. ‘Be a witness, a chronicle.’

  The next day, Friday, the Muslim day of prayer, Bragadino was marched with drums and cheers to the harbourside and tied to a chair. He was hoisted to the top of a galley’s mast and then ducked in the sea. Raised up, ducked, raised up, ducked. In salt water. With his open wounds.

  The cruelty of it was beyond all reckoning and sense.

  Finally, almost delirious with pain, he was dragged back to the Cathedral square, and there a weeping butcher was ordered at spear-point to skin him alive. The butcher refused, saying he would rather die. So they killed him, and found an animal skinner. He too refused, but they found his wife and daughter, and said they would kill them before his eyes if he did not do their bidding. The animal skinner begged for wine, drained a pint jug, and then began the work. Some said afterwards that Bragadino had murmured to him as he was dying that he forgave him. It was not his fault, and he would not be held to account for it before God.

  Bragadino cried out, Domine, in manus tuas commendo spiritum meum!’

  He died before the animal skinner reached his waist.

  He was quartered and each quarter was blown out of a gun on the wall.

  His skin was stuffed with straw, dressed in crimson robes and shielded by a red parasol, mounted on a cow and paraded through the streets, crowned with thorns.

  Nicholas heard a man in the crowd say to his neighbour, ‘Christ forgive us, why did we not resist these savages harder? What madness made us think we would live as well under their rule as the Venetians?’

  ‘This will not go unpunished,’ said his neighbour. ‘It cannot.’

  20

  The Cathedral square was cleaned of blood and the cathedral itself reconsecrated as a mosque. Lala Mustafa himself sat on the high altar as if on a throne for the prayers of dedication.

  ‘We sail west after nightfall,’ said Giustiniani. ‘Romegas will get us there somehow.’

  They stowed aboard the small, crowded galley with nearly fifty wide-eyed Christians, lately Muslims. People everywhere were fleeing Cyprus, many for Crete, and the Turks did nothing to stop them. They would bring their own people in from the Turkish mainland soon enough.

  They sailed through a hot starlit night on a south-east wind out of Egypt. Nicholas stared down into the black depths, thinking of pyramids and Pharaoh and Joseph. And then he feel asleep on deck, exhausted and defeated, and woke up screaming, seeing the flensed skull of Bragadino, red as raw meat, the skin hanging down around his neck like an obscene ruff, the eyes staring, the ruined lips still moving in prayer.

  Stanley laid a heavy hand on him. ‘He is free of it all now. Rest, little brother, rest. It will pass.’

  Messina, eight days later. A Byzantine council chamber.

  All the greatest warriors of Christendom were there. The Chevalier Mathurin Romegas and Gil de Andrada for the Knights of St John, Gian’andrea Doria for Genoa, great-nephew of that famous Andrea Doria who had been the most brilliant naval commander of his age. Don John of Austria for Spain, and doughty Spanish admiral Don Álvaro de Bazán, Marqués de Santa Cruz. Two brothers from one of Venice’s finest families, Antonio and Ambrosio Bragadino, quietly and steadfastly pressing for war against the caution of Genoa and Spain. There was Marco Colonna, commander of the papal galleys, adamant that Pius V still believed in a new crusade.

  And a late arrival, striding belligerently into the chamber, salt spray still in his white beard, the ferocious old lion of seventy years or more, commander of the Venetian galleys. Sebastiano Veniero.

  ‘Truly a meeting of Olympians,’ murmured Don John of Austria. Half their age, a third of Veniero’s age, he may have been, but not a whit abashed. He was still, after all, half royal.

  Veniero glared first at Doria, his ancient enemy, and then at this puppy of a bastard prince. His lip curled in contempt. Veniero was never a man to hide his feelings or fake courtesy for anyone. They could call him a sullen and difficult cur, but at least he was an honest cur.

  This Don John, this Spanish-Austrian-German mongrel prince, looked nothing like a veteran commander. Ridiculously young, slender, all of twenty-four, clad from top to toe in pale green, gold-trimmed velvet, and high soft boots with ornamental golden spurs. Moustaches and beard immaculately trimmed. He sported the insignia of the Order of the Golden Fleece, and on a table beside him lay a fancy lion-mask helmet. The most arrant fop you’d see this side of the French court.

  ‘Christ’s wounds,’ growled Veniero, loud enough for all to hear.

  The papal nuncio winced.

  ‘Sebastiano Veniero,’ said Don John, bowing low. ‘You are most welcome.’

  He didn’t falter for a moment. Others there already knew that beneath the foppery, this prince had a sharp wit and steely determination. It seemed nothing could dismay him.

  ‘So what have we come to?’ demanded Veniero. ‘We haven’t the guns, galleys or manpower to take on the Turk. Why are you still discussing it?’

  ‘Veniero is a great and venerable seaman, no doubt,’ said Gian’andrea Doria sarcastically, ‘but is ill placed to judge such matters. For alas, he has had no opportunity to fight the Turk face to face, since his own beloved Venice and Constantinople have been living in such close harmony for so long.’

  ‘Unlike Genoa and Spain,’ snapped Veniero, ‘such famous enemies of the Turk, though they gad about the sea and never quite dare to come to blows. When the Lion of Venice goes to war, b
elieve me,’ he thumped the table so that Don John’s helmet rattled, ‘she goes to war!’

  Don John intervened. His greatest achievement so far, he thought with private bitterness, was to have prevented Venice and Genoa going to war with each other.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I still say, now that we have the beginnings of a League, if we do not sail east and defeat the Turk, we are lost. This great force is assembling to do one thing only: destroy the Ottoman fleet, and with it any Ottoman plans of jihad against the West.’

  ‘Hear hear!’ cried a deep voice, as the doors flew open. The assembled commanders looked and saw a group of ruffianly travellers straight from the sea.

  ‘Knights of St John from Famagusta, my lords!’ said a herald.

  There was a great hubbub. Romegas and De Andrada embraced the newcomers, others demanded to know news.

  ‘Grave news,’ said Giustiniani simply. ‘Famagusta is fallen. Cyprus is lost.’

  There fell a dejected silence. Marco Colonna put his head in his hands, Veniero clenched his fists.

  Stanley took up the task, speaking quickly, in the heat. ‘Next they will fall on Crete, then on Corfu. Kara Hodja already holds Ragusa and Avlona on the Adriatic. Then Venice, then all of Italy. Sooner or later you must take your stand against them. You cannot appease them for ever.’

  After a moment, a calm voice said, ‘What of our father? Is he in captivity? What is the ransom demanded?’

  It was Ambrosio Bragadino.

  Then the knights called for chairs, and sat before the two brothers. The rest listened in silence. The very air felt cold.

  A few minutes into the account, Don John said quietly, ‘Knights, you have looked on horrors, but – brave brothers Bragadino – are you certain you wish to hear all this story in company? If you wish to go away in private . . .’

  ‘No!’ cried Ambrosio. Then more quietly, ‘No. You will all hear this tale of our father. All of you.’

  Giustiniani told everything. Not a detail was spared.

  Half an hour later the sons of Governor Bragadino were white faced, jaws clenched, but they shed not a tear.

  Then Sebastiano Veniero came before them and bowed and said, ‘Sons of a noble father, Marc’antonio Bragadino was a dear friend of mine. The galleys of Venice are in my command, and now they are in yours. I wait for your word.’

  The brothers’ green eyes were cold like emeralds shining under water.

  ‘For my part,’ said Don John quietly, ‘I shall show myself a bastard to the Turk in more ways than one.’

  ‘Listen to me, all of you,’ said Veniero. ‘It is true what I said, that all of Christendom united would still be outnumbered by the Turk and his great empire. Nevertheless, there are sixteen thousand Venetian shipwrights working round the clock in the vast docks of Venice. They complete a new galley in only seven hours from ready-cut timbers. The Men of St Mark have fifty ships or more to add to this fleet when last I heard. If Spain is with the League, then so is Venice. I await the final word of the Senate, but I know now what it will be. This insult to our much-loved Bragadino cannot go unavenged. When the Lion of Venice finally stirs herself, knowing the time for peace and commerce is over, then believe me, it is a sight to see, and even Suleiman might give pause. And that is what his fat drunk of a son has to face now.’

  Don John could have taken his old hand and kissed it.

  The knights had done it. Bragadino’s sacrifice had done it.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ said Don John, ‘are you for me, for Christ and the Holy League?’

  ‘Aye!’ said Veniero. ‘For Bragadino and for Venice!’

  ‘Aye,’ said the papal nuncio, ‘you know the papal galleys are with you.’

  ‘I believe my King will now command it,’ said Santa Cruz with a little more care. ‘Holy Spain sails east.’

  ‘At last,’ muttered Veniero.

  All felt a fire within them. With Holy Spain came also her vast dominions in the Americas, and those in Italy too: Naples, Sicily, Milan, all subject to Philip of Spain.

  ‘The Knights of St John I need hardly ask,’ said Don John. ‘They know a little about fighting the Turk.’

  Romegas stared, unsmiling. Superb naval commander, thought Don John, but never noted for his sense of humour.

  ‘And Genoa?’

  Genoa’s thirty or forty galleys were crucial, but even more so, her centuries of experience fighting at sea. Gian’andrea Doria looked from man to man, Veniero last. The old white-maned lion stared him down. He nodded. ‘Aye. If Spain is in, then Genoa is also with you. For better or worse.’

  At last, it was forged. The Holy League. An alliance of Christian powers that might just be a match for the Ottoman fleet.

  Part III

  THE RED SEA

  1

  There was a furious bustle for days after, lading ships with provisions, caulking and tarring, checking cannon, loading powder and shot, bickering, trying to keep the whores off the galleys at night. Two whores were even found, stark naked, aboard the galley of the knights, celibate as they were. Puzzling.

  There was endless paperwork and administration, which Don John swiftly delegated to secretaries. He preferred to spend time on the quayside.

  ‘I know nothing whatever of sea battles, ships, sailing, ropes or any of that tarry nastiness,’ he said gaily. ‘I couldn’t float a cork in a bathtub. Which is why my saintly half-brother Philip has made me Supreme Commander of the Fleet. It makes sense, does it not? The blood of the Emperor Charles flows in my veins, along with the blood of a German trollop, my beloved mother, and I am therefore but a bastard and misshapen homunculus of the great Emperor. But this is enough for me to be Supreme Commander, is it not? No need for any vulgar knowledge of how to command ships at sea, or wage a battle?’

  Veniero’s habitual scowl deepened, his sunburned face riven with new creases. This one was clever and dangerous and talked half-gibberish. Was he mocking himself, or Veniero, or Philip of Spain? He would arch a fine eyebrow and mock God himself, this one. Veniero didn’t know what to make of him. You never knew what he was going to say or do next.

  And still there was fighting in the streets of Naples and Messina between the squabbling factions. There was a widespread rumour that King Philip had secretly commanded Santa Cruz to hold back the Spanish fleet and let the rest take the brunt of it. A rumour impossible to disprove.

  Don John received several urgent missives from Madrid which he read swiftly and then tore to shreds and dropped in the harbour.

  ‘What news, sire?’ his old tutor, Don Luis de Requesens, would anxiously ask.

  Don John looked blank. ‘Dear me, I’ve forgotten already.’

  There was a threatened mutiny at La Spezia over pay. Don John rode down in person, arriving with the words, ‘I do beg your pardon, I was detained tupping my fille de chambre.’ He smoothed out his waxed moustache. ‘What is the problem here?’

  He quelled the mutiny with personal assurances and promises, earning a grudging respect from the hard-bitten, low-paid veterans.

  As he was leaving he dropped his sword. A mariner retrieved it and said pointedly, ‘Fine piece of work. The handle alone is worth more than a year of my pay.’

  Don John smiled. ‘Well said, sir. Take it. It is yours.’

  The mariner gawped.

  ‘On one condition. You sail hard against those damned dog Turks and use that blade to part at least a dozen of ’em in two.’ The mariner scowled and grinned at the same time. For a velvet fop he wasn’t such a bad bugger.

  Nicholas and Hodge were accosted on the quayside one evening by a fellow they vaguely recognized. Lean and pale and sickly looking, with an effortful moustache that looked like a drooping bootlace, he seized them by an arm each and said, ‘You are the English gentlemen volunteers? You fought at both Malta and Cyprus?’

  They acknowledged it warily.

  ‘Ah,’ sighed the fellow, ‘would that I had been there, in the midst of all that glory and heroical death!’
>
  ‘You’re right about the death, anyhow,’ said Hodge.

  ‘You seem familiar,’ said Nicholas. ‘Did we meet at Messina before?’

  He bowed low. ‘My name is Don Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, from Alcalá de Henares, in Old Castile. My father is the universally renowned Rodrigo de Cervantes, knight at arms and sometime apothecary-surgeon, in reduced circumstances. Through him I claim descent—’

  ‘I remember now,’ said Nicholas.

  ‘—from the ancient kings of Castile, from Alfonso and Pedro, as well as Eleanor of Navarre, and ultimately from the Visigothic kings themselves, Rodrigo being the name of—’

  ‘Aye, truly, engaging stuff. And you are a poet, are you not?’

  The fellow gave another small bow. ‘I follow the muse Calliope where’er she leads me. It is my dream to write a great epic of this noble war between Christian and Turk, to rival that of Homer. A vaunting ambition, perhaps. Yet is it not true that this great conflict takes place over the same lands and seas as that of the Achaeans and Trojans, the eternal battle between East and West, in which Achilles—’

  ‘I don’t know as I’d turn out a heroic epic, from what I’ve seen of it all,’ said Hodge.

  ‘Would you not? Yet you were there, in the very midst?’

  ‘So I was. And if wrote an epic about it, which is fair to middlin’ unlikely, I admit, I’d make it full of wrong starts and false turns, dreams and daftness. More like a comedy, only with a lot of knocked-about heads and fallin’ off horses. If you could of seen us landing on Cyprus that first time, and skedaddlin’ down a cliff to get away as soon as we were landed, you’d know what I mean. And if you could see that damn fool Niccolo Dandolo, who thought he was such a fine commander of men, you’d know too. War’s full of it. Piss and wind, just as much as your heroism and martial glory, if you want my version of it.’

  Miguel de Cervantes stared at Hodge. Nicholas smiled to himself. The Spanish poet seemed momentarily lost for words.

  ‘And on that note we bid you farewell,’ he said. ‘May luck go with you in the days to come.’