He raised his voice. ‘M. de Lymond, since you have chosen to come to this island, you may not expect to leave it without our permission. M. de Villegagnon, we thank you for bringing our dear friend the Constable’s dispatch. You have both our permission to retire.’
With nothing settled, nothing planned, these two dangerous men were being dismissed. De Villegagnon, his hat crushed to his thigh, said brusquely, ‘Jean! Graham!’ and took two impolitic steps towards the dais. One of the priests by the Secretary’s table stepped in front of him; one of the Spanish Piliers, getting up in a hurry, knocked sideways his heavy chair with the painted crest on the back. De Villegagnon had probably no physical coercion in mind: his only idea was to approach de Homedès, man to man, and persuade. But the tension in the room, the taut consciences, the sour presence of prayer-drugged fear, dragged the situation suddenly out of shape. Lymond’s eyes met Gabriel’s and both men moved not forward, but back, towards the double oak doors from the hall, both with the same thought: to fling them wide and halt the scene quickly, by making it public.
Lymond, nearer the foot of the room, reached the doors first. But as he touched them, the timber shook with invisible assault; loud voices sounded outside and a guard shouted in protest. The handle rattled. Then, as Lymond fell back to where the knights stood, arrested in turmoil, the door burst open to admit Jerott Blyth.
‘Oh, dear,’ said Lymond mildly into the sudden extreme quiet. ‘Sicily haven’t sent their two hundred men.’
Blyth looked round. Visibly, a little colour returned to his handsome face, white with rage. His fists unclenched, hesitated, and then raising one, he removed his bonnet. Behind the long tables the knights lingered, shuffling, and then with a scraping of chairs slowly resumed their seats, leaving de Villegagnon again alone on the floor, his back to the Grand Master’s dais, staring as the Grand Master was staring at Jerott Blyth’s disordered dark figure.
It was de Villegagnon, his own anger forgotten, who echoed Lymond’s words. ‘They haven’t sent the two hundred?’
The small, dark knight stalked, without speaking, from the closing doors to the foot of the dais. Arrived there, he hurled his battered black bonnet at the foot of the steps and folded his arms.
‘They have sent them,’ he said, ‘I have come with them. Had they sent two hundred sheep, you could have eaten them. Two hundred goats, and you could have milked them. Two hundred cannon balls, and you could have killed Turks with them. What they have sent,’ said Jerott Blyth, forgetting Latin, Spanish and decorum in his anger, ‘are rabbits!’
‘They promised us soldiers,’ said de Villegagnon, his voice echoing in the silence.
‘They have sent us shepherd boys,’ said Jerott, the excitement suddenly dead in his blood. ‘Youths from the hills of Calabria. Woodsmen and goatherds, tenders of vineyards. Men wise in the stars and the weather and in growing grapes and melons and pomegranate trees. Boys who have been ill with fright all the way from Messina; children who have never seen a Turk; youths who have never held a sword or a gun. ‘These,’ said Jerott, his voice shaking again, ‘are to be the defenders of Christ’s Church against the heathen in Tripoli.’
By then, moved as he was, he must have realized that his eloquence had struck no echo here: that he was to be permitted no fuel for his anger. The Grand Master had had enough of wayward emotion. Icily thanked, icily reprimanded, icily dismissed, Jerott Blyth found himself in the street without having heard a voice raised in comment; nor did he realize until joined almost at once by de Villegagnon and by Lymond, also dismissed, into what kind of crisis he had burst.
They did not know that the struggle within the Grand Council in which all three had precipitated went on all afternoon; that as the door closed behind the Chevalier de Villegagnon, the Grand Master had at last smiled. ‘Either this Frenchman is the Constable’s dupe, or he has a mind to make us his.’ And against all argument, de Homedès’s premise was unshaken. The Sultan Suleiman would never expend his wealth to take a barren rock such as this. And there must be firm news to the contrary before he would authorize a grano to be spent. The Turkish fleet was aiming at Italy, and the possessions of the Emperor Charles. And all this solicitude from France was no more than an attempt to denude Sicily and the Italian States of their defences by concentrating them uselessly on the knights.
To la Valette’s renewed urging that he should garrison Tripoli with young knights under a wise and experienced Grand Cross, to put fortifications in order and evacuate useless mouths, de Homedès replied sharply that he had no intention of bolstering Tripoli at Malta’s expense. By removing the older knights, they would merely deprive Tripoli of so much experience, as well as that stout, old-fashioned military spirit which never surrendered. The knights must stay.
‘And Gozo?’ Even one of his allies, Piero Nuñes, bailiff of la Boveda, was driven to ask. ‘The castle is indefensible. The people must surely be taken off now and sent to safety in Sicily?’
Gozo, Calypso’s island: the small, fertile rock to the north of Malta, looking across the forty-five miles of sea to Sicily, with villages, a small town and a castle, a crumbling ruin on a rock.
The Grand Master was quite explicit in his plans for Gozo. ‘Heathens who have been trounced on flat ground should not be hard to throw off a rock. Men fight better, I have found,’ said the Grand Master of the Noble Order of St John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta, ‘in the presence of their women and children. And I have the greatest trust in my Governor, the Chevalier de Césel … so brave, so skilful that there can be nothing to fear. To abandon Gozo,’ said the Grand Master repressively, ‘would merely ruin the Gozitans and dishonour the Order. Besides,’ he added, offering with bored patience his coping-stone. ‘If the Turks do not come, who will compensate the evacuated people of Gozo for their loss?’
The silence of accomplishment, of bewilderment, of surrender, was all the answer he received.
*
Through the windless airs of the Dardanelles the Mussulman fleet followed the high-banked oars of its flagship: galleys, brigantines, looming galleasses with their thousand fighting-men apiece; their cannon balls and powder and small arms; their stores of food, of water, of canvas and tents; their rolls of linen, their matches, their pots of sulphurous wildfire, their knives, their scimitars, their guns, the heavy cannon; the bamboo rods for the bastinado; the opium for the injured; the sorbet, raisins and lemons; the coffee, the bows and crossbows; the pennants and banners, the date cakes and the barrels filled with sweet grapes from Trebizond.
On the flagship travelled Dragut the corsair, and Sinan Pasha, the renegade Smyrnian Jew, in command. Because the Janissaries were on board, it was as if the Sultan Suleiman were present himself. Over its carved golden poop there stood the Grand Turk’s own private standard: a square of beaten silver, aching-bright in the sun; and above that, the yellow crescent of Islâm and a golden ball, its long, horsehair plume streaming idly behind.
Spahís, corsairs, thieves and robbers, renegade Greeks and Levantines sailed westward with the Osmanli in their great fleet. Enslaved knights of Malta tugged at the oars; whistles shrilled; gongs pulsed with the strokes on, on, on through the lapis-blue water; and at the five appointed times, day after calm day, the adhan, the ritual call to worship, ululated from their packed decks.
The Twelve Thousand, the Followers of the Prophet, were approaching. Not to harbour in France; not to capture Naples; not to seize back Bône; but to drive the Knights of St John and all their works into the sea.
*
From the moment that he hurled himself, in a blaze of anger, on to Malta with his two hundred unfortunate shepherd boys, through all that followed, Jerott Blyth spent a good deal of time, out of curiosity, at Lymond’s side.
No more than Gabriel did he attach any great significance to the encounter. But he wanted to find, and give nostalgic credence to the attraction he remembered as a boy in Scotland, before the years in France and his joining the Order: before Elizabeth’s death.
The Blyths until then had always been lucky. Like the Culters they were well-born, well-favoured, and with money enough to give Jerott the finest tutors and the best training for war. He had not known Lymond well before the battle of Solway Moss against the English in ’42; but he had allowed himself to be entertained, as had they all, by the kind of quick-witted fantasy which was Francis Crawford’s trademark at the time.
For the rest, it was Richard, the elder brother, whom most people knew best. Until Solway Moss, the tragedy which ended in the Scottish King’s death just after the birth of the child Mary who was to succeed him. In that messy rout, Jerott Blyth lost his father and saw Lymond, who had ridden and fought beside him with a kind of insane inspiration in the field unlike anything Jerott had seen before, removed a prisoner of the English to London.
Then on the eve of Jerott’s wedding, amid the mourning for his father, Elizabeth too had died, and he had barely attended to the rumours of Lymond’s wild subsequent career. Until, long settled in France, where his family were now in business, in course of taking his caravans and his vows to become a knight of Malta, Jerott had wondered now and then what the instant affinity had been that he had felt, nine years ago at Solway Moss, and whether, a man now instead of a boy, he would find it a childhood illusion.
In search of enlightenment, Jerott Blyth attached himself with great firmness that evening to the party which went to dine, after the Council meeting broke up, in the Auberge of France. As well as Lymond, de Villegagnon was there, and Graham Malett, with Nicholas Upton the Turcopilier, refugee from the non-existent English Langue.
For the sake of coolness the meal was set in the courtyard, visible through the crested doorway, its barrel arch lozenged in colour. For sixty scudi a year, the Pilier could clearly serve his knights’ hunger most handsomely. The platter from which each quartet of knights ate was of silver; the food oily but surprisingly varied. Jerott Blyth listened, crumbling his brown, loose-textured bread, to Gabriel’s level and accurate account of all that had happened in Council since they left. Nothing had convinced de Homedès of Malta’s danger, and for his own reasons nothing ever would. He had given sanction for limited safeguards and, short of violence, could be made to do no more. It was for the knights themselves to stretch these as far as possible, and without equipment, without prospect of help from Sicily or the Emperor, to arm the citadel of Malta ‘with straw and sea air’, as de Villegagnon said bitterly, as best they might.
Throughout the heat of the argument Lymond had, Jerott noted, restrained comment. It was, after all, the Order’s own dirty linen which was being turned over. A thought struck him. Leaning over, he said in an undertone, ‘Have you been to Gozo yet?’ From Birgu to the north tip of Malta was only a dozen miles or so, and four miles across the channel from that was the island of Gozo, where that woman was. Or where he supposed she was, if the Governor hadn’t got tired of her.
Hoping for some observable reaction, he was disappointed. Lymond, watching Gabriel as he talked of fortifications, simply shook his head.
‘It will be a little awkward now, surely, that you can’t leave the island?’ Jerott persevered.
He had spoken more loudly than he meant and Gabriel, who had a disconcerting trick of following conversations on several levels at once, broke off and said, ‘If Mr Crawford wants to cross to Gozo, I can take him.’
With no perceptible pause Lymond answered as easily. ‘I should like to see all the fortifications of both Gozo and Malta, but we should perhaps draw up our plan first. The Turcopilier and yourself have all the local knowledge we need.’ And Jerott, noting the evasion, was rather gratified by the results of his impulse.
It was only later, as they settled down to the detail of the defence, that he realized that Lymond had spoken the truth, if not the whole truth. His grasp of the fortifications of Birgu and St Angelo was already uncomfortably accurate; his analysis damning in its lack of colour. Nick Upton, in whose bailiwick the deficient fortresses fell, interrupted once or twice, his colour heightened, until Gabriel in his deep voice said, ‘Nick, this is the fault of no one but the Grand Master. If we are going to make the best of it we must accept the facts as they are. It is too late to make sea palisades; the hoops are rotten and there are no long chains in store. Soil must be brought from the Marsa for trenches—that means sacks, spades, wheel-barrows and boats. Water.… How many clay water bottles have you?’
Nick Upton pulled in a stool beside the four and lowered his great bulk. ‘We shouldn’t need bottles, Sir Graham. The underground cisterns will be enough.’
Graham Malett’s eyes met Lymond’s, and it was Lymond who answered the Turcopilier. ‘Not if the cannon vibration cracks the rock,’ he said briefly. ‘You’ll need seawater too, all the barrels you can spare. Sinan Pasha likes to use limpet fireworks, I believe, against men in armour. What about fire weapons of your own? Wildfire? Trumps?’
‘We’ve enough saltpetre,’ said Upton. ‘Pitch, turpentine, sulphur, resin, oil.…’
‘Where?’
Jerott didn’t see the point until Gabriel said, ‘In one of the warehouses you saw on the quay. We’ll need hides, Nick; as many as you can raise, and some of those barrels of seawater.’ For the warehouse, as Jerott realized, was itself a living bombard, which soaked hides at need might protect.
The discussion went on. Wheat, barley, oil, fish, cheese, wine and biscuit in the rock vats. Too late to lay mines, with only six feet of topsoil over the sand, and limestone below. Weapons checked—partisans, pikes, glaives, battleaxes and daggers and the knights’ own two-handed swords; powder, balls and arquebuses, bombards and fireworks; the cannon and mortars at St Angelo itself.
The most easily quarried stone and earth to be brought to build up the outer walls of Birgu. There was no time to deal with Mdina, the other city, and de Homedès had refused guns, troops and defences to Gozo. Horses, to be placed at Mdina to keep contact with the north of Malta, Gozo and thence Sicily. Planks and brushwood to hide snipers. Some of the Order’s remaining galleys to be accessibly sunk; the rest to be taken into the canal joining the fort of St Angelo with Birgu. The chain to be checked and maintained between St Angelo and L’Isla.
St Angelo, the only strong fortress and home of the Grand Master, would hold all the knights and, surrounded on three sides by sea and on the fourth by its narrow canal, would be their last stronghold. Birgu, and Mdina six miles away, the only towns, would have to hold all the refugee Maltese who, with their beasts and belongings, would be expected to stream for shelter as soon as the attack came.
Dragut, for this his fifth attack on the Maltese islands, would not risk sailing into the tongue of the sea, chain-stopped, between the St Angelo and L’Isla peninsulas. Instead, as before, he was likely to choose one of the sea inlets on either side—Marsasirocco on the south-west, or Marsamuscetto, the long inlet to the north hidden from Birgu and St Angelo by the spine of Mount Sciberras.
If Dragut chose this last place to anchor, he had only to climb Mount Sciberras to have the knights’ headquarters below him, in full view across the water. He had only to drag his ships and his cannon across the neck of land between Marsamuscetto and Galley Creek to be able to sail right across to Birgu, within the chain at the neck of the creek.…
Plainer and plainer, as the talks progressed, was the knights’ vulnerability. And plainer the queer congruity between Gabriel and Lymond: not in style or in temperament, but in coolness and, above all, in a sense of balance. Malett, the older man, with the peace of maturity within him, had a physical magnificence which had helped, Jerott knew, to create his legend, but which was only the vessel for his special brand of power.
Beside him, they all looked pale. Even de Villegagnon with his honest passions and his brilliant career seemed slow-witted and crude; Nick Upton looked a sheepish, fat schoolboy and Lymond an ashen-haired, soft-voiced clerk, pattering solutions in court. Only Gabriel, Jerott noted, talked of the Maltese as if they were flesh and blood. Only Gabriel spoke o
f the hospital, and those who must serve there; and only Gabriel referred with simplicity to their strongest defence: their dedication to God.
And there only did Jerott’s new-found enigma fail him a little. For none of the crusading zeal, clearly, was in Lymond’s blood; and he did nothing, as Gabriel would have done, to avoid giving hurt. Instead, presently he remarked, ‘Could we persuade the Order, do you suppose, to put their trust in the Lord and wear brigantines or plain leather jackets as the soldiers do? Or is a knight not a knight without his hundred pounds of plate metal, no matter how heavy or hot?’
Gabriel smiled, and forestalling de Villegagnon, said, ‘There is no answer but armour to arquebus shot and scimitars, M. le Comte. Ours is made and seamed like glove leather in Germany, and in our armoury here. With the surcoat of the Order to protect us from the direct sun, we do very well … have done very well, perhaps, for a thousand years.’
He paused. Lymond added nothing. Upton was busily writing on a dog-eared sheaf of notes and de Villegagnon was looking over the Turcopilier’s shoulder. Gabriel said suddenly in a low voice, but with great clarity, ‘Mr Crawford, you have come to us at a time when the Order was never in greater need of friends. You must understand that to men who have taken vows and offered their lives as these have, the Moslem faith is an insult to the Church we adore; a pit into which all that is noble in mankind may well fall and be swallowed. We here on this fragment of rock are the shield of Christianity, of culture, of humanity, of all the great arts for which men have died. Think of that, and don’t despise us. We are not simpletons. We are not poor spirits fled to a cloister. We are men as you are, who have foresworn the pleasures of men; who will forego home and life itself if need be, to defend our heritage from the hosts of the fiend.’
Breathing quickly, Graham Malett suddenly stopped. Sweat, beading the fair skin, sparkled in the lamplight; and below his eyes, clear as seawater, dark shadows remained from the stress of the day. For a moment, raising his cupped hands, he masked his face from the circle of silent eyes. Then, dropping his hands open upon the table he added, his voice not quite clear, ‘Do you not think that I am human too? Do you think my vows are simple to keep?’