Shadow of God (74 page)

He wrapped his black robes closer about him, and sighed deeply. Then he leaned over the rail and peered for the last time back toward Rhodes. Now the shadow of her mountains were gone, and the stars dipped down to touch the surface of the sea.

Shortly after the fall of Rhodes, word was brought to the newly installed Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. When he heard the news of the knights’ defeat, with tears in his eyes he said, “Nothing in the world was ever so well lost as Rhodes.”

On January 2nd, 1523, Suleiman led a Muslim service in his new mosque in the city of Rhodes. Under the knights, the building had been the Conventual Church of St. John. With the graven Christian images removed, the Faithful joined their Sultan in prayer. When he watched the departure of the knights, he is said to have told Ibrahim, “It breaks my heart to see this old man evicted from his home of so many years.”

Suleiman commanded over one thousand Janissaries and troops to remain on the island and assure order. On January 6th, he began the return trip to Marmarice; then across Asia Minor to a triumphal reception in Istanbul.

Flushed with the exultation of finally driving the Knights of St. John from Rhodes after two hundred years of occupation, Suleiman settled down to the task of consolidating his Empire and extending its massive reach. But despite his costly victory, Suleiman and the Knights of St. John were destined to meet in battle again.

Philippe and his defeated knights sailed from Rhodes to the island of Crete. There, at the port of Khaniá, the remnants of the Knights Hospitaller of St. John waited out the terrible storms of winter. The knights resupplied their ships and tended to the recovery of the remaining wounded. When the weather improved, the
knights set out for Messina, at the eastern edge of Sicily. Upon their arrival, plague erupted among the ships, and the Order was quarantined for several weeks. Finally, Philippe was invited by the Pope to sail with his small fleet to Civitavecchia, near Rome.

In November, 1523, Giulio de Medici was elected Pope Clement VII. The new Pope had himself been a Knight Hospitaller, and was sympathetic to the plight of the Order. While turbulence and war erupted all around him, Philippe made it his sole task to secure a new home for his knights. The German Lutherans of Charles V were pillaging Rome, and slaughtering the Pope’s monks and nuns. For the next several years, Philippe visited the monarchs of Europe, enlisting supplies and arms. The knights wandered from city to city, still seeking a place of their own. Antonio Bosio even made secret return visits to Rhodes to assess the possibility of recapturing the island paradise for the knights. But, it was not to be.

Finally, in 1530, Charles V was crowned Emperor. Philippe and the Order petitioned Charles for possession of the island of Malta as a new home for the knights. While Malta was little more than a rocky desert, it did have two excellent natural harbors. Philippe immediately appreciated Malta’s strategic position in the Mediterranean Sea. From there, the knights could once again harass shipping between Africa and Asia Minor or Europe. Charles granted Philippe’s request, with the proviso that he also garrison Tripoli, on the African coast directly south of Malta. With these two posts, the knights could control all the regional shipping, while protecting Charles from attacks against his territories in Sicily and Italy.

In 1530, the Order of the Knight of St. John Hospitaller became known as the Knights of Malta. It would be decades before the knights would give up their hopes for a return to Rhodes. Unknown to the Order, they still had another rendezvous with their sworn enemy, Suleiman.

For his part, Suleiman wished never to see or hear of Rhodes again. Many of the Christians remained on their island home and took up life under the Muslim’s generous terms. Though there was some inevitable violence and rancor, peace finally settled on the
island. Eventually, some three thousand Latin Christians left Rhodes to follow the knights to Malta.

Though Philippe de L’Isle Adam would die on Malta in 1534, the knights would continue to make life miserable for the Ottoman fleet plying the Mediterranean. Eventually, regretting his merciful and generous behavior towards the knights at Rhodes, Suleiman would lead his armies against the knights once more, this time against Grand Master Jean Parisot de la Valette.

In 1565, on the island of Malta, two strong men from the ends of the Earth would once again stand face to face.

As an avid reader of historical fiction, I often find myself anxious to know exactly where the author has drawn the line between history and fiction.

This is a work of fiction. I have drawn extensively upon both current and historical documents collected over twenty years to try to paint the most accurate picture of both the times and the personalities of the characters.

One cannot know the thoughts of people who have been dead for nearly five hundred years, but contemporaneous letters and descriptions can give us a fairly accurate peek into their thoughts and their lives.

As for the characters, all were drawn from real people except the following:

Hélène did not exist outside the imagination of the author. There is no evidence that Philippe Villiers de l’Isle Adam had ever strayed from his vows of celibacy from the day he entered the Order of the Knights of St. John until the day he died.

Melina, Jean, and their twin girls are
legendary
characters. There is a substantial folklore about a woman who did see her knight slain on the battlements of Rhodes, and then killed her children before entering the battle herself and being killed by the Janissaries. It is said that the Turks retreated after they saw she was a woman in knight’s armor.

The fisherman, Basilios, is an historical figure, while his three associates are not.

All the remaining characters existed in real life. If there is any discrepancy between the lives and actions of the real characters and this story, the errors are entirely mine.

Word origins: a = Arabic; t = Turkish; f = French; mf = Middle French; e = English; me = Middle English; g = Greek; i = Italian; s = Spanish.

Agha.
(t) Military: a general officer. Any high-ranking officer. Similar to
Pasha
.

aigrette.
(f) Decorative tuft of long, white herons’ plumes, generally used in a headdress.

Allah.
(a) God.

arquebus.
(mf) Small-caliber long gun, operated by matchlock mechanism.

asper.
(t) Silver coin of low value.

Ayyüb.
(a) Ayyüb al Ansari (also Eyyüb al Enseri). Companion and standard bearer to the Prophet. Also a section of Istanbul where his small tomb was built.

Azab.
(t) Military soldier, equivalent to current-day Marine.

bastinado.
(s) Corporal punishment by striking the soles of the feet with a stiff stick.

Beylerbey.
(t) Provincial Governor and/or general of a feudal cavalry.

Bunchuk.
(t) Military standard made of varying number of horses’ tails mounted on a wooden bar. The Sultan’s
Bunchuk
—the highest—held seven black horses’ tails.

caravanserai.
(t) Rural wayside inn. A stopping place for caravans.

Chorbaji.
(t) Soup Kitchen. Title of Janissary officer.

Collachio.
(i) Convent of the knights.

corsair.
(f) Pirate.

dervish.
(t) Muslim monk who has taken vows of celibacy, austerity, and poverty.

Devshirmé.
(t) The levy of young non-Muslim (generally Christian) boys for conscription into the service of the Sultan. Usually admitted to military or government posts depending upon the results of rigorous testing.

dhimmi.
(t) Protected People. Designation given to Jews and Christians, as People of the Book (Bible). The
Qur’an
prescribed protection of these people within Muslim society.

Divan.
(t) Ottoman council of state. Taken from the Turkish word for a low couch—the seats upon which members of the council would be seated.

Eis teen polin.
(g) Literally, “into the city.” Origin of the word “Istanbul,” the major city of Turkey and the Ottomans.

enceinte.
(f) An enclosure; a fence; a girdling. Refers to the encircling battlelines.

firman.
(t) A legal decree issued by the Sultan. Also, “ferman.”

ferenghi.
(t) Europeans or foreigners in general. Pejorative.

fetvà.
(a) A judicial ruling made by the Sheik-ul-Islam, the chief Islamic scholar of the community.

Grand Vizier.
(t) Chief advisor to the Sultan in both military and civil affairs. Highest rank attainable in the Devshirmé system.

Gülbehar.
(t) Literally, “Flower of Spring.” Name of Suleiman’s First Lady.

harem.
(a) Area of palace or Muslim house where the women live. Set apart from the remainder of the palace. Literally, “inviolable area.”

Ixarette.
Sign language used by the Palace mutes and by Suleiman to converse with servants.

Inch’ Allah.
(a) “God be willing.”

Janissary.
(t) Elite military guard or force. Corruption of the Turkish, “
yeni cheri,”
or “young soldiers.”

jihad.
(a) Literally, “a struggle.” Often used by Muslims to describe a holy war.

Kadin.
(t) Literally “first girl,” or the woman most special to the Sultan at the time. Sultans rarely married the mothers of their children.

Kapudan.
(t) Fleet admiral.

Khürrem.
(t) Literally, “Smiling or laughing one.” The name of the second wife of Suleiman.

kilim.
(t) Woven rug or tapestry, without a pile.

kohl.
(t) Eye shadow.

Kubbealti.
(t) Another term for the Imperial Council.
See
Divan
.

Kuffar.
(a) Infidels. Foreigners.

langue.
(f) Literally, “tongue.” Refers to the divisions by language and country among the Knights Hospitaller of St. John.

Loggia.
(l) An architectural arcade open to the outside on at least one side.

Mameluke.
(Egyptian) Military order that seized control over Egypt from 1254–1811.

Mufti.
(t) The definitive authority on Muslim law and the Muslim Institution.

odalisque.
(f) Female slave or resident in a Turkish harem.

Osmanli.
(t) Refers to the House of Osman, founder of the Ottoman Empire. “Ottoman” in Italian.

Ottoman.
(t) Dynasty founded in the fourteenth century by Osman, and reaching its pinnacle under Suleiman the Magnificent in the sixteenth century.

Pasha.
(t) Any high-ranking Turkish official, either military or civil. Agha.

Pilier.
(f) High-ranking officer of a langue.

rambade.
(f) A wooden platform at the bow of galleys. Used to ram, grapple, and board the enemy galley.

Reis.
(t) Naval Commander-in-Chief.

quarrel.
(me) Square-headed bolt or arrow used with the crossbow.

Qur’an.
(a) The Koran. Muslim Holy Book.