The Last Crusaders: Blood Red Sea

by Napier, William

  Joseph Nassi was walking in the gardens of the Topkapi Palace in Constantinople, talking with a clerk from the mint, when Selim summoned him to audience.

  ‘Bragadino’s sons,’ he stammered without introduction, ‘we have heard from agents in Venice that they are accounted two of the finest naval commanders in Christendom. This Holy League is coming for us, isn’t it?’

  Nassi had prepared for this moment with luxurious frequency. ‘Admittedly, the severity of Lala Mustafa at Famagusta is in danger of uniting our Christian enemy against us, in a way that nothing else could have done.’

  ‘Y-you,’ stammered Selim, looking hunted, ‘you think he was too severe in his punishment of this wretched Bragadino? You think he made a terrible mistake, that this mighty armada now sailing against us is all his fault?’

  Nassi gracefully laid his hand on his heart, giving a little bow. ‘My Lord and Master, Shadow of God upon earth, I would not dream of suggesting such a thing. That would suggest that Lala Pasha was nothing but a vainglorious and overambitious fool, who has triggered an attack on our Empire greater than any before, by sheer stupidity and viciousness.’

  He suppressed a smile. How easy it was to put a thought in the Sultan’s head, so vividly worded, while denying it! The Greek rhetoricians called this trick paralipsis, and a most delightful one it was too.

  He continued, ‘The Pasha is, of course, Your Majesty’s greatest general. Yet in his torture and execution of this Bragadino . . . Well, as I say, it was a severe punishment, and not perhaps without some risk . . .’

  To be an enemy while seeming a friend. To destroy while seeming to defend. Such were the low arts of palace politics. Nassi excelled in them, exulting in his own abilities, even as he felt some mingled disgust. All this was only to serve a far higher purpose, God be thanked. Or his own cleverness would sicken him.

  Selim brooded uncomfortably, eyes darting.

  Yes, Nassi felt sorry for this fat little man, the weak, unhappy son of Suleiman the Magnificent. It was always a curse to have a great father. Absalom, Absalom . . . And it was a terrible fate that he had become ruler of so mighty an empire. A burden more than his puny, sloping shoulders could bear, which was why he took to gluttony, and dulled his fears with wine. He always slept badly, rising up out of bed, jabbering with nightmares, bringing his Nubian guards running, spears at the ready.

  ‘They are trying to kill me!’ he would scream, writhing in his bed. Always the same nightmares. ‘I am drowning! Save me!’

  Or he awoke thinking he was trapped underwater, or most often of all, that the palace itself had collapsed in an earthquake and buried him alive. He was in darkness, alone, beneath tons of rubble, unable to breathe . . . It needed no Persian soothsayer to interpret his dreams.

  Like all such men – burdened, anxious, weak, and knowing that they are despised as weak by all around them – Selim was given to wild, ill-considered outbursts of belligerence. Suddenly he sat upright, as befits the Lord of the Lords of this World, and snapped, ‘We must engage this Holy League. They must be destroyed!’

  ‘Majesty, is that wise? Our galleys have been at sea all summer, theirs are fresh, their guns—’

  ‘My generals will do as I say!’ screamed Selim, puce with sudden ferocity, rising up out of his seat, spittle flying. ‘They will obey me, or I shall have them and all their kin dismembered at the Edirne Gate!’

  Nassi bowed. ‘A noble threat, Your Majesty.’

  So the two massive fleets must come face to face, bow to bow, and battle be joined, he thought. They would annihilate each other, and peace would follow.

  Selim sank back in his seat, exhausted, eyes rolling.

  ‘Destroy them utterly,’ he said. ‘They must not come near.’ His gaze darted back and forth over the patterned carpets, but all he saw in his mind’s eye were triumphal Christian galleys rowing into the Golden Horn.

  ‘That is my final command. Engage and destroy them, now.’

  ‘How can we lose?’ murmured Nassi. ‘With Allah on our side?’

  Don John sent word that he wanted the survivors from Famagusta aboard his flagship, La Real. They could tell him inspiring stories as they sailed. And so it was that Stanley and Smith, Giustiniani and Mazzinghi, Nicholas and Hodge were again given space aboard that resplendent scarlet-painted galley. Romegas and De Andrada would fight from the knights’ own galley, the St John of Jerusalem.

  Mazzinghi grumbled, ‘What action will we see aboard a flagship? None.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’ said Stanley. ‘From what I know of our commander, we could be right in the heart of it.’

  ‘I s’pose it means we’ll get better food, at least,’ said Hodge.

  Smith took his place upon the fighting deck immediately, sword drawn, as if the great battle was about to begin in a minute or two.

  ‘We have suffered much defeat lately,’ he rumbled, ‘a whole damnable summer of it. And Sir John Smith, Knight Grand Cross,’ he thumped his sword on the deck, ‘does not like defeat!’

  ‘Mind your sword there, Brother.’

  He shot it back in its sheath and glared balefully round, black eyes burning. ‘But this summer will have a better ending. I demand it.’

  A messenger came to Don John.

  ‘How many?’ he asked crisply.

  ‘Some fifty sailing down from Venice to join us at Brindisi. And here already, over a hundred, sire.’

  ‘I did not ask for an estimate,’ Don John snapped, sibilants hissing, ‘I asked for a number. Come back with a precise number within ten minutes or I throw you in the sea.’

  The messenger was back in six minutes. ‘One hundred and eight galleys and supply ships in all, sir.’

  Don John nodded. ‘Apart from mariners, we will have some eight thousand soldiers aboard, all told. What say you, brother knights? Is that enough?’

  ‘It is never enough,’ said Smith. ‘But it will serve.’

  In the harbour there was one particularly striking galley, low and lean and predatory, draped all in black.

  ‘The Bragadino brothers,’ said Stanley. ‘Truly, something even in my blood chills to think of them.’

  At night, a strange boat slipped into the main harbour under cover of darkness. A spy party sent by Kara Hodja, surprised to enter Messina so easily, unchallenged.

  ‘Deliberate,’ drawled Don John the next morning. ‘They will have counted the ships in the main harbour and come to about sixty. We spied on them spying on us. They entirely missed the other forty or so galleys in the inner harbour, and have not reckoned on the Venetian party either. An enemy’s false sense of superiority can be very useful.’

  The oar slaves appeared in a shuffling column on the quayside. They had been kept busy mending sails with needle and cord, loading pebble ballast, even polishing cannonballs. Now they were stripped naked and searched. One was found with a hidden needle. An inch-thick rope-end was wetted in seawater and he was condemned to fifty blows. Don John stopped them after ten.

  ‘I need him for rowing my ship,’ he said.

  ‘But discipline, sire—’ said the boatswain.

  ‘Enough,’ he snapped.

  Their heads were shaved and they were driven up the ridged gangplank.

  ‘Give me your blasphemers, your sodomites, your forgers and drunks,’ murmured Don John, ‘and I shall set you free.’

  They were chained to the benches below by one leg. The benches were roofed over with planks to make for easier movement above. They would row in sunless gloom, blind as moles, though once they began to sweat they would be glad to be sunless. In the heat of battle they would hear the din and bellow of the guns above them, the deafening explosions, the ship lurching, and shake in terror that any moment an iron cannonball might erupt through the hull and smash them into pieces where they sat. It was all a matter of luck who survived.

  ‘Tell me, boatswain, who we have here.’

  The boatswain indicated each grimy, despairing face in turn.

  ‘Bern
ardino here: took three wives. The devil knows how, to look at his poxy face. Sentence, five years at the oar.

  ‘This scumbag, Ercole di Benedetto, cheesemaker: sodomy. He can row till he rots.

  ‘This is Lorenzo di Niccolucci: heretic.’

  ‘The Book of Revelations says—’ began Di Niccolucci, before a mariner struck him a blow on the shoulder with an ugly-looking maul.

  ‘This gallant fellow, Senso de Giusto: rape and deflowering of a thirteen-year-old girl. Two years at the oar.

  ‘This one, Ahmed, a Turk—’

  ‘Syrian,’ corrected Ahmed.

  ‘Shut it, shitskin. Next to him, Salem, moor of Tunis, half lame. Next to him, Il Cazzogrosso, missing his two front teeth, and blind. But he can still row.’

  Il Cazzogrosso grinned miserably.

  ‘They’re all under sentence of beneplacito.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning until whoever is well pleased to set them free.’

  ‘A rather vague and sinister sentence.’

  The boatswain grunted with satisfaction. ‘That’s the idea. You want more, My Lord? There’s every vice under the sun down here.’

  ‘I get the picture,’ said Don John. Then he raised his voice. ‘Listen to me, you scum of the earth. Most of you will die at the oar if you do not die in this coming battle. And it will be a terrible battle, we are still hugely outnumbered by the enemy. The sea will foam with blood. Most of it will be yours. You are as good as dead already. But – I give you one thin lifeline. When our galleys hit theirs, and heads start rolling, the boatswain here will unlock your chains. Every man that rows for us or fights for us and lives to tell the tale will be set free. Even the sodomites and heretics.’

  The oar slaves stared. Nothing seemed real to them for now but their misery and the huge, heavy oar before them.

  ‘Good,’ said Don John. ‘I’m glad that cheered you so well.’

  It was late afternoon when the boatswain blew his silver whistle. Gradually a wave of whistles sounded across the harbour.

  The mighty fifty-foot oars creaked in their leather collars, between four and six men chained to each haft, and slowly, slowly, La Real’s gleaming prow eased forward through the sluggish harbour waters and towards the open sea.

  Nicholas and Hodge looked at each other with excitement and dread. They were going. No turning back now.

  On the harbour mole stood Don Luis de Requesens.

  ‘Be nothing rash!’ he called in a quavering voice. ‘Remember the wise caution of princes!’

  ‘Caution,’ Don John called back, waving a white-gloved hand, ‘is the daughter of lechery and the wet nurse of impertinence!’

  Don Luis muttered and crossed himself. Beside him stood the papal nuncio in his crimson robes, arms raised in blessing upon the departing fleet.

  ‘We need it,’ murmured Stanley. ‘After Preveza, Djerba . . . We’ve lost every major battle at sea with the Turk these past fifty years.’

  ‘That’s because I wasn’t there,’ said Smith.

  Stanley roared with laughter and clapped him on the shoulder. Nicholas wasn’t so sure Smith was joking.

  2

  At Brindisi they were joined by the fifty Venetian galleys, as promised. Cannon salutes rang out, and huge cheers echoed across the sea.

  As the great flotilla went east, they communicated with each other constantly by signals, and in person in smaller, faster boats. On the third evening, Sebastiano Veniero came over to La Real.

  Don John questioned him closely.

  ‘Aye,’ said Veniero, ‘the longer a ship has been at sea, the more its hull is fouled with weed and barnacles, the timbers half eaten with shipworms. And the crew sick and hungry, the pitch and caulking going, the slaves working ever harder daily to pump the bilges clear, and the sea leaking in faster all the same . . .’

  ‘And the Turks have been at sea all summer, as we know. Many at Cyprus?’

  ‘Most of ’em, aye.’

  ‘And our galleys are all clean of hull?’

  ‘That is true.’

  ‘Then we go faster than them? And are more manoeuvrable?’

  ‘In theory. But if the Turks head for home, the autumn winds are with them—’

  ‘They must not! We must meet them now and finish this.’

  Veniero rubbed his beard. ‘I hope for it too. But . . . By October the storms in the Mediterranean are terrible, especially the eastern Mediterranean, the Aegean. The winds—’

  ‘Then now is our chance.’

  ‘In truth, it is not the season for fighting sea battles, sire.’

  ‘Because it is not considered the season,’ said Don John, slow and solemn, ‘. . . it is the season.’

  ‘If only the Holy League could have sailed earlier, and saved Famagusta,’ said Giustiniani with a sigh.

  ‘My fellow knights,’ said Don John, ‘my brothers. Let me at last confide in you. I too delayed the League, by multiple evasions and lies.’

  They stared at him, astonished. ‘You, My Lord?’

  The young prince spread a map on the cabin table and spoke crisply, every inch the most seasoned military commander. ‘Famagusta would have divided our forces. I wanted the Turk in one place: one great armada. Let Famagusta fall, let the Turks garrison it with some two thousand men, let the rest rejoin the fleet to meet us. Then let us fall on them and destroy them altogether. A knockout blow.’

  Stanley said dully, ‘You never intended to come to the relief of Famagusta after all?’

  ‘We had to bring Venice into the war. The Vengeance of Venice.’ Don John looked at him and his eyes had less of the dancing light, more of an older man’s sorrow. ‘Brother Eduardo,’ he said softly, ‘war is never separate from politics. If you know what agonies such delay cost me – what thoughts were mine, as I danced in a golden mask at that ballo in maschera in Genoa, knowing that even as I laughed and danced, brave men fought and died for a Cyprus that was already lost . . .’ He tailed off.

  Stanley looked away. ‘I would not have to make such decisions as yours for all the world.’

  ‘The privilege of princes,’ murmured Don John.

  Even now they went painfully slowly.

  It was those six great lumbering supply ships, the galliasses, that the Venetians had brought down from the basin of St Mark where they had lain up mothballed for months, even years. High sided, wide beamed, round at stem and stern, they took a tow from three oared galleys each to shift at all.

  On their broad flat decks, each had a curious round tower with black portholes.

  ‘New-fangled rubbish,’ muttered Smith impatiently. ‘Do we really need so many supplies with us? Can we not use Corfu, Crete?’

  Don John ordered a jug of wine and gave them each a cup. ‘Let me tell you about our six galliasses,’ he said.

  When they were still fighting at Nicosia, Don John visited the Venetian dockyards. He tracked down that genius of a shipwright, Master Franco Bressano, who had the heavily bowed legs of a horseman, beetling grey eyebrows and a permanent scowl.

  They talked about ships and guns.

  Don John said, ‘If we wanted more guns aboard—’

  ‘You can’t,’ said Bressano. ‘There’s a pay-off. On La Real, you have five forward guns, with a centre-line culverin, no?’

  Don John raised an eyebrow. ‘You are well informed, Master Bressano.’

  ‘There’s nothing about ships I don’t know. I know how many barnacles there are on your hull.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Same as every other ship on God’s ocean. Too bloody many, that’s how many.’

  Don John smiled. A pleasant if rough-hewn wit.

  ‘But there’s always a pay-off,’ said Bressano. ‘Guns weigh heavy. And every extra pound of bronze and iron has to be rowed by men. Men have to be fed and watered – so more food and water have to be carried. The ship gets bigger and bigger, moves slower and slower . . . Follow? The Turks go lightly gunned so they can stay mobile and fast, and I’
m not sure they’re wrong. There’s a limit to how many guns any galley can carry and still move herself, and your Real is about at that limit now.’

  ‘What if,’ said Don John slowly and carefully, ‘forgive a prince as ignorant of ships as of shrimp fishing, for the Lord be praised, I have spent little of my pampered life hammering nails, and . . . sawing, and that sort of thing –’

  Franco Bressano eyed him dourly. He was a funny one, this bastard royal.

  ‘But what if you loaded up multiple guns on to a ship that didn’t have to move?’

  Bressano scowled. ‘Then you’d have a godalmighty big hulk of a ship laden with ordnance, half sunk in your own harbour. Where’s the bloody point in that?’

  ‘The biggest ships afloat are Venice’s own merchant galleys, are they not? The galia grosse, the galliasses.’

  ‘Aye. Fat lumbering beasts that move at a snail’s pace, but carry their grain or cloth or whatever cargo there eventually. What use are they to you?’

  ‘How many in the basin now?’

  ‘In dry dock, half a dozen or so.’

  ‘Take them,’ said Don John. ‘Strip them down, remove all the ballast—’

  ‘They’ll tip over.’

  ‘Remove all the ballast – and replace it with guns.’

  ‘Guns sit too high on their decks. They’re merchantmen, not men-o’-war.’

  ‘Then put them on the lower decks, make portholes through the walls, what do you call them . . .?’

  ‘Bulwarks.’

  ‘Bulwarks. Fit the guns down among the rowing benches, even number of guns on each side.’

  ‘A heavy sea will swamp ’em, a storm sink ’em.’

  ‘They don’t have to endure for years, not even for a summer. Just three weeks, until we meet the Turk. Then they may sink. Before that, they do not have my permission.’

  Bressano made a noise like a bull hawking phlegm.

  ‘All this done in secrecy, of course. As much as possible. Imagine a galliass stripped of everything, shorn of all fittings, cabins, quarters, stores – no other cargo except guns, cannonball, powder and gun teams, and maybe a squadron of heavily armoured marines to repel boarders.’