The Disorderly Knights (33 page)

The roar, arched back by the vaulted stonework, was as frightening in its context as the roar of bursting dam water might be. For it was followed and accompanied by the crack and crash of splintering woodwork. Over the solemn ranks of nearer ordnance, crates heaved and trotted and threw jagged limbs in the air. Dust, a haze of spilled chemicals, a bursting rain of chipped stone filled the distant air like a tattered curtain; also, there were sparks.

In all the busy, boisterous confusion, the single tell-tale stream of smoke was quite lost. Jerott, clinging to the slippery bars with fists that were white to the bone, was praying with gritted teeth, the vibration of the smith’s work running unfelt through his fingers. Beside him, Lymond was silent: utterly silent, for once.

Slowly, the thunder slackened and subsided. The gigantic, canonning stones collided, rolled, blundered and stopped; the last crate fell; the last wrenched cask gave out its shower of arrowheads or bullets. The wall of gunpowder boxes had rocked with the rest. Two or three had slid jolting from the high tiers to end rakishly on a lower. One was stoved, but not yet spilt. If the fuse had escaped harm, it would be licking the boxes now.

A long second passed. Another. And another.

It was hot. Within the arsenal, silence reigned; peace fell. Whether crushed lifeless or whipped and bent from its path, the fuse had been diverted.

Behind Jerott the Spaniard de Herrera laid shaking hands on Lymond’s shoulders and said something, his voice cracked. It was lost in Jerott’s cry. ‘
Wait! Something’s happening!
’

Across the cellars, low in the falling veil of dust, to the right of where the live match had been and farther away, by two yards, from the gunpowder, a flush of pink flickered and eddied. As they watched it became more forceful in action and colour; limned itself with a flash of orange and a finger of charcoal mist, and identified itself with a thin crackling, as of ice fussing in the sun.

Except that this was no ice, but fire.

It began, no doubt, when the burning match, thrust by some chance ball back on itself, had been pressed into a wooden crate walling its passage: a crate harmless enough compared to the powder kegs for which it had been headed, but a pyre which could race to the stacked gunpowder as surely as the fuse ever did, and with twice the speed, if chance sent it first in that direction.

And even if chance did not, fed on acres of dry packing wood, the flames would get there in the end. In Jerott’s ear, Lymond’s voice said sharply, ‘
Shut the doors!
’ and spoke again to the locksmith, ‘How long?’

A ruddy man, the smith’s face was glistening with sweat over a blotched hide of ivory and red, but his hands worked steadily, testing, failing, trying again. He said, ‘Nearly … God in Heaven save us.… Nearly, I think.’

And on that slender promise, they had to prepare. The sheets and hides were already soaked. Now they drenched their own clothes; handed out brooms and axes, sticks and shovels; aware as they did so that the red glow behind the fast door was brightening second by second until, with a rush and a creak, a sheet of fire rose high into their vision and the tops of the furthermost crates between the flames and themselves began, like lichen, to burgeon and run with low scarlet fire. Smoke, yellow and thick, rolled between the vaults and over the sea of boxes towards them and someone cried aloud. ‘God save us! Mary, Mother of God!’

At that second, the iron grille creaked and swung open.

Where their eyes had stared upon the black iron pattern, like some template of hell, overprinting the gathering fire, now there was nothing but space, and thick clouds of yellow-grey smoke. Then Francis Crawford, axe in hand, a drenched cloth flung round his head, darted into the fog.

Jerott followed. De Herrera, a pace behind, stopped, alarmed by
some change in the air at his back. In that moment, against all his orders, the antechamber door was flung open; announcing, by the great swirl of air sucking behind, that every door in the arsenal corridor stood similarly ajar. De Vallier, too long left in ignorance, disturbed by rumours of running men and sudden orders, had sent a squad of soldiers, led by picked knights, to investigate.

Now, debouching into the antechamber, they stopped, paralysed, the glare coppering glazed faces; then, horror-struck, slammed the door shut. But it was too late by then. Fed on that life-giving air, the young flames around the two men inside the arsenal had leaped into full life, to become a single vast sheet of fire.

To Jerott, caught suddenly between a wall of serpentine and corn powder and an advancing surge, like a wave, of towering flame, it seemed beyond believing that now, with free access to water, sand, all the help that they needed, they were going to fail. Lymond, driven back also, arrived at his side breathing painfully; said, ‘Cosy, isn’t it?’ and dragging off his smoking burnous, flung the wet folds over the nearest powder boxes and, coughing, dodged forward again …

The fire had spread between themselves and the door. Through it, Jerott saw faces, grim, terrified, sick, lit by the glare; and the sound of a weak hissing rose behind the crackle and roar of the flames. Sparks and soaring pieces of lit stuff in clouds of ash began to drift through the air. He pulled off his protective shrouding, like Lymond, and flinging it over the boxes, ran forward to join him.

The fire was running towards them, along a single line of stacks and casings; and between themselves and it was now only one stand, packed shelf upon shelf with armour. Lymond had made no attempt to get to the door. Instead, he was at the foot of the stand, hacking with all his force at the uprights with the sharp axe. After a second, Jerott took the other post and did the same.

Above them, the stand caught fire. The heat was scorching them now. Seared and blistered already by the stinging debris, Jerott worked now with timber crashing about him and pieces of flaming leather, jerked from above, falling flaring on his exposed back and head. A beam of wood, disturbed, glanced off his arm; he felt nothing at all. But for the wet cloths protecting them, the cases at his back would already have exploded in the heat. Already the thin, webbed folds were whitening; soon the fabric would be tinder-dry, a fuse in itself.

The stand rocked. He realized suddenly that the post Lymond had been working on was severed. In a moment the other man was beside him, adding his blows to Jerott’s own. The wood under the blade creaked, then grated; the towering erection shuddered; and as Lymond said quickly, ‘All right. As far back as you can!’ the unwieldy thing rocked and heeled faster and faster with its vast
platforms laden with chain mail and plated metal, away from them, to fall with a clashing roar into the heart of the flames.

A tower of orange, roof-high, shot up from its far perimeter; then died low in rolling seas of black smoke, to fumble and mutter on fresh fuel. In a moment, such was the bed of heat, it would have found fresh, renewed life. But that moment was all that the men in the doorway required. As he pressed back against the lethal boxes, blinded, coughing, half-stunned by the tumbling metal as the rack fell, Jerott saw water run streaming across the floor at his feet. Men masked in wet cloth leaped over the fallen debris towards him in a whirling, feverish spray of water and sand. Sodden bales, thrown over and over, shrouded the naked, perilous boxes behind him, and as the teams began to move inwards, pressing, extinguishing, reducing in clouds of steam the diminishing circle of fire, he saw that the powder crates, one by one, were being carried outside. Then he looked at Lymond.

Lymond was looking at him. Beaten back against the crates they had saved, his shirt charred from his body, his face blistered, his tousled hair singed, Lymond opened bloodshot eyes on Jerott Blyth and intoned rashly, ‘Receive the Lord’s yoke, for it is easy and light. We promise you bread and water without any dainties, and a modest habit of small worth.… Are you adequately supplied with water, Brother Blyth? Your habit leaves something to be desired.’

Brother Blyth, fighting hysteria, pain and exhaustion, was in no state to interpret all that. He said in a harsh whisper, ‘You should thank Him on your knees.’ And as Lymond unexpectedly did not answer, Jerott added picturesquely, ‘You draw your strength from the Devil to seduce men.’ Then shutting his eyes abruptly, he buried his face in his burned arms.

Lymond stirred. Men were coming towards them. He would have to walk, to talk, to think, to act. He said, ‘Oh Christ, Jerott, you’ve got one hero too many already. Stand on your own feet, Brother. It’s good for the soul.’ And stiffly, hauled himself upright and walked.

*

The post-mortem; the inquiry into the tomb in which nobody died, was held later in the Marshal’s room, in the presence of a white-faced des Roches, the Serving Brother from the Châtelet; the silent captain of the Calabrians; the Spanish knights, including de Herrera, Fuster and Guenara, and, for the French, de Poissieu and Blyth. Outside the unshuttered windows, steady in precise cannonade, the Turkish guns fired, flushing the silvering sky of dawn and the still, opal seas with wavering flame. To Jerott, clothed and bandaged, dark circles under his sleepless eyes, it was as cool and remote after
the hell he had endured as watermusic heard in a dream. Through the rasping ache in his brain, he concentrated on the Marshal’s words.

It was not des Roches’s fault that the two hundred frightened lads had lost their heads in the Châtelet; nor was it the young captain’s that he had failed to discover, until they confessed, returning panic-stricken from the dismantled brigantine, that the castle was in danger.

News of the revolt had been confined so far to themselves. Since escape was now hopeless, the Calabrians might indeed settle to helping the defence as the only alternative. Defending this viewpoint, des Roches said flatly, ‘They will know for example, that if we allowed this hysterical attempt at slaughter to be known, the garrison would turn and kill them.’

‘That which they intended was treason in the field and the wholesale murder of innocent men, women and children,’ said de Herrera. Like Jerott, the Treasurer showed the strain of the night’s disasters, but through the weals and grazes on his face, the anger was plain. ‘They are vermin, and should be shot like vermin.’

‘If you want to help the Turks, that’s exactly what you should do,’ said Jerott grimly. ‘How long d’you think the rest will hold out when they know that their own protectors have tried to kill them?’

The Marshal turned to the captain. ‘The burden so far has fallen on you. Is there any means of controlling these men? Or must we treat them, as the Treasurer says, as tried and condemned?’

‘They’re boys, sir,’ said the young man. Tears, Jerott saw, were not far away, though fright and pride were so far upholding him. ‘The noise, the foreign tongues, the heat, the fear of the Turks and of the walls falling in on them … they’re driven crazy with it, that’s all. They wouldn’t think what damage the gunpowder would do—they’d have no idea of the danger. They wanted to stop pursuit, that’s all … cause a distraction, and pay back, if you like, the men who made them come here at all. They’re only—’

‘—Boys,’ said the Marshal drily. ‘And the men who risked their lives to put the fuse out were little more. Compare them, some time, in your thoughts. Des Roches?’

‘For our sakes and theirs, be circumspect,’ said the Brother. ‘Keep silent. Spread them about the garrison with the strongest and bravest we have. Give them hope, and an example, and they may redeem what they did last night.’

‘Or infect the rest,’ said Jerott. ‘That’s the danger. You know that as well as I do. But if St Brabe is being damaged, we need all the men we can get for the entrenchments inside. I don’t see there’s an alternative. But I think you should see to it that if they’re frightened of us, they’re even more scared of the Turks. We’d look foolish if they threw the gates open and surrendered.’

‘No one will surrender,’ said the Marshal sharply. It was what Blyth wanted to hear him say. But watching the Spanish knights, he did not miss the glance they exchanged. The Marshal said, ‘We shall do as our Brother suggests and disperse these men quietly among those we can trust. In the meantime—’ his tired gaze softened—‘you have all done more than any man could require of you, and you must be yearning to rest. You have leave to retire. Your posts will be held for you. Tell this also to the men who helped you.… Where is M. Crawford, for example? I trust he has taken no hurt. We owe him much.’

‘He is well, but tired, like ourselves,’ said Jerott. Answered like that, there might be no more questions meantime—not that he cared, but he was too damned tired to trouble; to tell them that Lymond wasn’t in Tripoli at all. That after the fire, he had recovered to find that Francis Crawford and the Moor he had rescued had both gone, with a small band of freed slaves. And gone, he had realized blankly long ago, straight to the Turkish camp.

IX
T
he
I
nvalid
C
ross

(
Tripoli, August 1551
)

‘T
HE
guns have begun again,’ Galatian had said in the darkest part of the night when, thought forcibly suspended, she had willed herself to sleep despite the heat and the sand flies and the thickening opacity of her body through which, dully distorted, came the effervescence and pangs and plebeian protests of abdominal routine abused. Unthinkingly strong all her life; her flesh a mere vessel for the violent, untamed artistry of the mind, Cormac O’Connor’s mistress had never suffered this indignity, or troubled to imagine it. But, keeping herself alive on goat’s milk and fruit, and feeding too on the strange and deep resources of near mysticism which sometimes before she had called upon at need, she bore the days better than Galatian, who feared everything and voiced his fear. When just after dawn, the curtain trembled and Graham Malett quietly entered, she felt, however, nothing but relief.