The Disorderly Knights (23 page)

Drenched in seawater and bleeding roseately from the stone which had felled him, Francis Crawford lay at the feet of Brother Blyth, who had knocked him unconscious; and Jerott Blyth waited without sympathy for him to recover.

The Turks had hardly gone from Mdina when Lymond had disappeared too. ‘Where is he now?’ Gabriel had said harshly, and Jerott Blyth had replied with exaggerated unconcern, ‘Retrieving the Irish
amie
, I should suppose,’ and then retreated into silence before Gabriel’s visible dismay.

His skin paler, ‘Of course.…’ had said Graham Malett, going on rapidly. ‘Tell Nicholas I’ve gone. It’s hopeless. Francis must know it. No one can be saved from Gozo now. He must be stopped.’

‘Not by you, sir!’ It sounded firm; in fact a kind of horrified disbelief sharpened Jerott Blyth’s voice. ‘Are we
nursemaids!
He knows his own mind. Why should we stop him? Nothing here draws him or requires him now.’

‘But I do, Jerott,’ Gabriel had quietly replied. And had added, ‘I will not add criminal waste to wanton wilfulness. He must be stopped.’

‘Then I will stop him,’ Jerott had said, and white with anger, had set off.

Tracking over the used grey grass and the knotted pink and chrome sandstone where Lymond on foot had struck out from Mdina, sighting him miraculously at length when all his energy had gone and pushing out, somehow, the extra effort needed to match, to excel, to overtake that cracking pace, he had come, parched and stumbling, to this northernmost shore. Here, green through the blistering haze, was Comino; and there, across the blue straits, the long ridge of Gozo itself.

In all the crazy, sun-beaten journey they had met no one. All north Malta had fled to the west, or was in hiding. Scrambling over the great stony ridges and down into the valleys hatched with terracing, Jerott passed their empty pueblos, square box-houses blending into the hillside, with their melon-patches bright green about them. Here some hens scratched. There, frightening him with the dull clank of its bell, a goat watched him, ears drooping, from the twisted branch of a tree. He passed white waxy stephanotis, its scent staining the air, and pink Fiori de Pasqua among the olives and carobs; and the prickly pears, yellow-green, beige, Indian red on their angular stalks, masked him from the man he was following, though not from the sun.

Then he was here at Marfa, on the grey grass and the tired grey sand above the northernmost beach, where the pitted yellow-grey sandstone ran out under the water like petrified sponges, water-moiled and ribboned with weed. There was one boat only in the harbour of Marfa, and by the time Jerott came, plunging downhill into sight, the one boat was launched and Lymond, the sun blazing on his unprotected head, was thigh-deep, ready to heave himself in.

Then Jerott, easing his powerful shoulders under the soaked shirt, had bent to scoop up a rock, weighed it for an instant, poised and threw it. He aimed for the back of the other man’s head and did not greatly care how hard it struck. A moment later Lymond slid to his knees, his hands tracking down the skiff’s sides, and Jerott, splashing through the shallows, had heaved him on to the hot, salty thyme. The boat, when he turned back to sink it, had already drifted far out of reach. Chest heaving, flesh viscous with sweat, Jerott Blyth flung himself beside his briskly felled victim and waited while the sea sucked on the sandstone and the crickets shrilled, high and pulsating; the only stirring of life on all that bare strand.

Then Lymond opened his eyes and rolled over, assessing Blyth’s presence, and the far-off boat, and the aching wound in his scalp. He said, ‘Gabriel sent you?’ and as Jerott assented he added, icy
rage in his voice, ‘What a pity Sir Graham could not be present himself.’

‘A great pity,’ agreed Jerott grimly. ‘He may see a soul worth redeeming where I may see only trash.’

Lymond sat up, his back rigid, perspiration in great tears on his lashes and jaw. ‘And my God, you’re revelling in it all, aren’t you, out of sheer, schoolboy spleen. And how bloody offended you would be if I asked you how you’d feel if Elizabeth were there, and I’d stopped you reaching her. Even whores have souls, you know,
Brother
.… Why are we waiting, then? This is one game you have resoundingly won.’ And standing upright, he turned back the way he had come.

He was the first soul Gabriel had called to them who, resisting, had hit back, and hitting back, had struck so sorely home. Only at Gabriel’s order would Jerott have stirred a finger to save him: for Oonagh O’Dwyer he had no thought at all. And, indeed, the smoke haze spreading across the blue channel told that it was already too late.

V
H
ospitallers

(
Birgu, August 1551
)

T
WO
days after this, the French Ambassador to Turkey, sailing from Marseilles to resume his office at Constantinople, was informed by a fishing boat that the Ottoman army had overrun Gozo.

The spokesman, whose name, oddly, turned out to be Stephenson, had a strange story to tell, and after listening to him with much interest, Gabriel de Luetz, Baron and Seigneur d’Aramon et de Valabrègues, invited him to sail to Birgu in his company.

Since Messieurs de Villegagnon and Crawford of Lymond had met him at Marseilles, M. d’Aramon had been a month at sea, and if he carried gold for Suleiman, it would be too tardy by now to finance the present Maltese attack. Lingering in Algiers, calling at Pantellaria, he diplomatically wasted time.

Three ships wouldn’t save Malta. They would only endanger the King of France’s tenuous friendship with the Turks, not to mention his substantial trading concessions. M. de Luetz, Baron d’Aramon, temporized; and only when he was fairly sure that Sinan Pasha had left Malta not to return, did he allow his captain to approach the Grand Harbour. Then he saw that the scarlet flag of the Order flew still over St Angelo, and despite his training, water stood, surprisingly in his eyes. Soon the welcoming salvoes broke over the still water, and in salute the Ambassadorial ships replied.

Close to St Angelo, d’Aramon observed more. The white walls of the fort were untouched. Birgu stood beyond, its stone unblackened by fire; and across Galley Creek, L’Isla was unmarked. Then the Order’s boat drew swiftly alongside, and in it were de Villegagnon, the Chevalier de la Valette and Sir Graham Malett, the red sun coppering his hair.

Again, la Valette was unharmed, though de Villegagnon had a fresh scar and ‘Gabriel’, the man whose nickname, he remembered, was his own, wore a thin dressing over the bone of his cheek. They exchanged greetings with grave courtesy; then d’Aramon, ushering them into the poop pavilion where his own entourage waited, heard the story of the landing, of the repulse by Nicholas Upton and Gimeran,
of the defence of Mdina under de Villegagnon, and of the sack of Gozo. During the whole invasion, the knights’ only loss by death was Nicholas Upton; the only knight the Turks carried off was Galatian de Césel, Governor of Gozo.

That uncertain story, brought back quavering by a pack of senile old men, was corrected by the Grand Master himself. At supper at St Angelo, with the chain lifted and the galleys anchored snugly in Galley Creek, surrounded by the names all Europe knew; the incense in his nostrils from their black robes, the Eight-Pointed Cross repeated over and over in the candlelight, the Ambassador heard how Galatian de Césel had defended the citadel of Gozo with his life; how, so long as he was living, the people of Gozo, in obedience to his orders and in imitation of his example, had repulsed the attacks of the infidel with valour until at length their brave Governor had been killed on the ramparts by a cannon ball. Then the people, losing their leader and their courage at once, had been obliged to capitulate. The Grand Master, crossing himself, folded his hands in stricken prayer and M. d’Aramon, repeating the gesture, watched the other faces about the board with his shrewd, sun-pursed eyes.

The story didn’t ring true. More, there was an air of unrest among the Order itself, noticed as soon as la Valette came aboard, which made him uneasy. He would not press the knights of France to divide their loyalties, and he expected no disclosures. But in all the detail, the tales of the grain ships sent for, the parties already on Gozo repairing the wrecked citadel and burying the dead, the soldiers working side by side with the Maltese to mend the shattered casals, the crowded hospital and the food, water, medicines taken daily to Mdina and the burned townships—he could not learn how many knights there had been at Gozo, or even Mdina, and why the whole Osmanli army had been able to move from Marsamuscetto to Mdina and from Mdina to Gozo unmolested.

Walking back afterwards with the Grand Master to his lodging, which with an attention he found almost too overwhelming, was in the Grand Master’s own suite, the Ambassador said, ‘I have a supplicant for you, Your Eminence, from the fishing barque whose false message from Messina caused the Turks to abandon the Mdina siege. The captain of the vessel was taken hostage, it seems, by Sinan Pasha. His lieutenant intercepted me outside Pantelleria in order to beg you to pay his principal’s ransom.’

Beside him, Juan de Homedès’s stiff walk had not faltered, but in the flare of the porters’ cressets his face looked a little severe. ‘There is no obligation on the Order to ransom this man,’ he said at last. ‘The boat is the responsibility of the Viceroy of Sicily, not ours.’

The French Ambassador waited a moment, then said reasonably, ‘I gather that no seamen of the Viceroy’s would take the risk. This
boat, which had nothing to gain but a little money, was manned by a Scotsman.’

‘A Scots fisherman in the Mediterranean?’ said the Grand Master lightly. ‘You astonish me.’

And by then, M. d’Aramon was fairly certain that the Grand Master was perfectly familiar with the identity of the captain who had taken the biggest gamble any Christian could: who had sailed into the hands of the Turks so that the misleading letter should fall into their hands. ‘His name is Thompson,’ said d’Aramon, with no hope of the Grand Master but a sudden very strong conviction of his own.

‘The Scottish pirate! Dear me, M. d’Aramon, you speak of a man who deserves all the chastisement that this life or the next may provide. He is the scourge of the Order. I cannot count the number of times he has raided ships of the Religion.’

‘He plunders us all,’ said d’Aramon patiently. ‘He none the less saved Mdina and most likely Malta that day.’

‘A small remittance which will barely cover the least of his sins. No, no,’ said the Grand Master, preceding d’Aramon into his chamber and signing him to be seated. ‘I have much more serious affairs to discuss with you tonight. Here, in the privacy of this room, I must tell you what has reached my ears from the survivors of Gozo. We may not hope that the heathen, having done his worst, is sailing, distended with Christian blood, to his master at the Porte. No. Sinan Pasha, Dragut Rais and the Turkish fleet have gone to their real objective, Sir Ambassador; and their real objective is the taking of Tripoli.

‘Therefore,’ said the Grand Master of the Order of St John, standing old, tall and noble in his ancient office over Gabriel d’Aramon’s head, ‘Therefore in the name of Jesus Christ, in the name of the monarch your master who glories in the title of the
Most Christian King
, I must ask you to sail forthwith to Tripoli and to dissuade this wild and sinful pagan from his design. You, by virtue of your office, have been compelled to acquaint yourself with this vicious race,’ said Juan de Homedès sternly. ‘It is open to you now to make godly use of the commerce with which you have soiled your hands. Go to the heathen, sir, and order them to desist.’

*

Years of intrigue in his native France; years of exile as military attaché to the French Ambassador at Venice; years at the Porte, travelling all over Asia Minor in the Sultan’s train, bickering over rights in Jerusalem and enticing concessions from viziers, had made the Baron d’Aramon’s political senses very sharp. Long before this
ominous walk with the Grand Master he had put in hand, discreetly, an inquiry among the soldiers, the mercenaries, the Maltese, to find out what really had happened at Mdina and Gozo, with no successes at all.

His train was big. Henri of France, ashamed perhaps at last of the treatment d’Aramon had received at home in return for long and painstaking service, had made him a Gentleman of the Bedchamber before he left and had given him two of the best-equipped galleys in the fleet, with Michel de Seurre, Knight of the Order, to accompany him in his galliot. Besides his own relatives and his captains, there were several noblemen, several Gascon gentlemen, the King’s secretary, and three men who knew the Eastern Mediterranean as well as he did; of whom one was Nicolas de Nicolay, royal cosmographer to France and de Villegagnon’s friend.

It was just before the famous dinner that the French Ambassador, courteously supervised into aseptic seclusion, called de Seurre and de Nicolay to him and said, shutting the door, ‘I am a little mystified by what has happened here. We are not to be allowed, it seems, to ask questions in Birgu, and I will not ask M. de Villegagnon or his friends to betray their vows. But M. de Villegagnon has with him an independent observer, a Scotsman named Crawford.’

‘I know him,’ said de Seurre equably. ‘He has a reputation in Scotland. A man of eccentricity.’

‘I thought you had met,’ said d’Aramon, relieved. ‘M. de Villegagnon tells me that this Scottish gentleman is at present in hospital. The reason is not clear. It may even be,’ said the Ambassador without stress, ‘that the patient is not sick and does not wish to be in hospital. However that may be, it would be fitting if you were to visit him.’

‘Would we be admitted?’ The geographer’s elf-like face jammed freakishly into ruts of perplexity, and he ran his hand through his short, rough grey hair.

It stuck up, and M. d’Aramon eyed him thoughtfully. He had chosen M. de Seurre because he knew from de Villegagnon that he had been on the Scots campaign, and because he was a Knight of the Order of St John of an absolute integrity. He had chosen the geographer because he knew Scotland, because he was endlessly inquisitive and a shrewd judge of character, and because he was the kind of innocent enthusiast who could get himself into (and out of) any corner he chose.