The Last Crusaders: Blood Red Sea (20 page)

Stanley loved dogs as much as any nobleman, but at that instant he could have shot the stupid beasts. Did they not know they were hunting Christians?

At last he and Smith were scrambling over into the steep gully, almost on top of each other. Smith glanced back, wondering whether to cast a handful of gunpowder over their last traces. But it was pointless, the ground was scuffed and bore the traces of where they had just been. The spoor glared back at him in the sun.

Flee, flee.

By the sea, Abdul was wild eyed, and all were staring back at
the clifftop, trying not to look stricken. Nikos and his boat, the longboat, the
St John
were all vanished.

Giustiniani said, ‘Lace your boots round your neck. Take nothing more in your bundle than you can swim with. Take too much and you drown. You judge. Then follow me.’

He was up to his waist in the water already. As an example to them, he took the musket from his shoulder, held it by the barrel and flung it far out to sea. All he had left now was a blanket, a sword and his provisions.

Then he struck out.

The deep cove was flanked by two great dark headlands, dropping almost sheer into the sea. Giustiniani was leading them westwards. No one knew what lay beyond. Drowning would be easy.

Abdul jabbered. ‘Sea does not agree with me. Nor mountain, nor forest, nor desert. I am a man of the cities, urbane, sophisticated, erudite—’

Nicholas told him to save his breath. He would need it.

Soon they were out of their depth, clawing forward through the clear water, kicking their bare feet, their clothes and the bundles on their backs making swimming hard. Smith glanced back. Still no one on the clifftop. They might just make it.

Giustiniani was already under the thin shadow of the headland, the swell washing him up and down the rock. Impossible to hang on to even the tiniest spur or crevice, the swell would only take you off again, and the skin off your hands with it. No rest.

Hodge looked hollowed out and afraid.

Smith glanced back once more and there was a silhouette on the skyline above the cove. A man with two hounds. Then another man stepped up beside him, a long musket cradled in his arms. Smith ducked down underwater and made the last few yards round the headland. No shot was fired.

‘What comes next?’ gasped Hodge, moving his arms wide in the swell, muscles already aching and beginning to tremble, desperate not to reach out and hold on to Nicholas.

‘Keep going,’ said Giustiniani. ‘There may be a cave, a break in the cliff, anything. We’re out of sight for now, so move as slowly as you can without drowning.’

‘If I move at all it’ll be a bloody miracle,’ muttered Hodge.

They floundered on. Exhaustion was approaching. Their blankets were sodden; most of them had not unburdened enough and were weighed low in the water, making swimming still harder. There were no waves but the swell was powerful. At least no currents seemed against them. But they must find rest soon.

Nicholas took his mind elsewhere and ploughed on. Salt stung his eyes. They passed beneath a tiny crystal waterspout from the gaunt cliff face, a glistening fault green with algae. No handhold there, no rest, not even safe fresh water to open the mouth to.

‘Nick,’ said Hodge suddenly, ‘I’m going.’

Nicholas grabbed the strap of Hodge’s bundle as they were both pulled underwater and wrenched it off. The bundle fell away – all Hodge’s water, his provisions, his last weapon – and Hodge surfaced again, gasping.

‘Breathe,’ said Nicholas. ‘Breathe. Lie back spreadeagled. You cannot sink in salt water, and we cannot be seen from above. Breathe.’

After a minute or more, Hodge bucked upright, hawked and spat and scooped his hair back.

‘Go on,’ he said.

‘You first,’ said Nicholas. ‘I’m behind you.’

At last they came to a sharp needle of rock just a few yards off the cliff face, and clung to it like shipwrecked men. Above them the cliff was huge and ominous, but eroded at the top so they could not see the edge. So they too could not be seen. The barking of the hounds was out of earshot. It was just them and the indifferent sea.

Stanley was already hitching his bundle over Smith’s shoulder, and then his laced boots.

‘I go to
reconnoître
, as the French would say.’

Giustiniani nodded.

The fair-skinned Englishman with sun-bleached hair and brown arms ploughed away through the sea as confident as Neptune himself. He was back a few minutes later.

‘Another couple of hundred yards and there is a low sandy beach and scrub. Very easy.’

‘And very visible.’

‘Aye.’

Giustiniani shook his head violently; droplets flew from his beard.

‘Moor, drop your bundle. You are almost drowned.’

Abdul did as ordered. ‘Your worshipful magnanimity—’

‘Mazzinghi, you are struggling too. Lose your sword.’

‘My father and my grandfather fought with this sword, my father at Djerba.’

‘It will drown you.’

‘Then, Commander, I ask permission to drown with it.’

Giustiniani swiped his brow with the back of his hand. They were all sweating, even in the sea. ‘Permission granted. Young fool.’

He looked in the direction of the beach.

‘We make towards it and huddle out of sight there until nightfall.’ He pushed off from the rock. ‘And pray for cloud tonight.’

Nicholas glanced up. The sky mocked them with its benevolent azure from east to west. Tonight would be as bright and moonlit as ever.

They huddled, panting, half in and half out of the water, on the seaward side of one last broken outcrop of rock before the coast flattened out into a wide sandy bay. The sun was halfway down the western sky. They fumbled for flasks in their bundles with white wrinkled fingers, and each tasted. Two of them were turned salt.

‘Damn it all,’ said Smith savagely.

‘Speak only necessities,’ said Giustiniani.

The other flasks were handed round and they drank small draughts. They would take more every half-hour or so. The summer day was long, nightfall was far off. They covered their heads with cloths. Waiting like this, sun-baked yet waterlogged, their mission already half ruined, was more exhausting than swimming.

At last it was dusk, and then darkness, and their hearts were as heavy as their sodden possessions. They would have an hour before the moon came up on their left as they walked north. They would have to go.

They crawled on to the sandy beach, all eyes, all ears. Not a sound came to them. They left off their boots and Giustiniani began the long walk, just in the shallows to kill the scent. But moving painfully slowly so as not to make a splash. They walked out across the wide bay feeling like actors crossing a bright stage. The whipcrack of Turkish musket, the skull-splitting impact, their slow fall into the small waves, the billowing red stain . . . They could picture it all.

Yet they made it across the bay without mishap. They knelt in the deeper shadows below a ridge of rock, and Mazzinghi began to unbundle so he could wring out his blanket.

‘Not yet,’ said Giustiniani.

The young knight looked puzzled. ‘It weighs so heavy. Like carrying a mule on my back.’

Giustiniani gestured back towards the sea.

Mazzinghi rolled his eyes. ‘Oh no, for the love of—’

‘For the love of God and our duty,’ said Giustiniani, ‘it is back to sea with us. The country is swarming with Turks, the moon is nearly up, and we must put miles between them and us. So it is round the coast we go, weary as we are. And in darkness.’

Mazzinghi hung his handsome head, curly locks plastered to his cheek.

‘But come, Brother, we are still young and vigorous, are we not?’ said Giustiniani. Born in the Year of Grace 1509.

Mazzinghi managed a weary smile. If this old dog could do it, so could he.

They were allowed a hard biscuit or two, salty and damp, and more freshwater. ‘But pray we find a decent spring soon,’ said Smith.

The coast beyond was more broken and rocky, and there was less danger of drowning. But the water was now liquid black, spangled with starlight, the rocks eroded and rough, their hands and feet already pitted and scratched, stinging and humming with the salt sting. There was little wind and small waves, but strong currents and eddies hauled them to and fro, dragged at their leaden limbs, tormented them. Water slopped and boomed in caves beneath the cliffs so dark they could not even see into them. What monsters lurked there? Nicholas and Hodge could not help but picture huge dark-finned fish circling, jagged jaws agape. This was the landscape Andromeda was chained in. The thought of a beautiful naked girl chained to a rock might usually heat the loins. But no, thought Nicholas with bitter humour, squeezing his reddened eyes free of blinding salt water. Not a stirring. Nor would any Perseus come to save them. It was just them and the sea and the sky, and their strength and stubborn will to embrace their predestined fate.

They scrambled repeatedly up over rock, dripping wet, boots laced round their necks cascading water, descended the other side, dropped back into the water, swam a few yards, scrambled out over another rock; or swam along a sheer cliff face, trying to clutch to whatever tiny fragments of mica or embedded quartz they could find, fingers torn, fingernails now as soft as wet rag, bony flanks buffeted and bruised by the swell.

And then, their eyes now accustomed to the starlit darkness, they were suddenly blinded by the appearance of the moon over the western sea. No comfort at all. Like a white burning torch, a flare of pure magnesia, held in their faces, burning their eyeballs. A cold interrogator.

‘Some trick of Pedro Deza’s,’ muttered Nicholas.

Part joke, part exhausted hallucination.

They were all in a dream when they heard a bell tower tolling midnight from far inland. Some priest would be kneeling defiantly in a lonely church, dedicated to some saint they knew nothing of – St Spiridon, St Mamas – before a single taper, an icon of the Virgin, praying for the destruction of the Turks.

Giustiniani lay on his belly on a flat white rock. Soon the others were sitting around him, heads bowed, puddles of water spreading round them.

‘That priest should learn to worship in silence,’ said Abdul. ‘Or the Turks will teach him soon.’

Smith said at last, ‘I suppose we walk now.’

Giustiniani raised his head, and then rolled over and hauled himself up from his undignified position.

‘We walk until dawn,’ he said, pulling on his boots. ‘But let us get over there, under those trees.’

They drained their flasks and ate half their cheese and some biscuit. After half an hour’s rest they felt slightly more alive again.

They stood and wrung out their woollen blankets – a two-man job, one at each end.

‘I can’t believe we brought blankets,’ said Nicholas. ‘In this heat.’

‘They make fine sacks,’ said Stanley, ‘soft bedding on hard ground, and in the Troödos, you will be glad of their warmth,
believe me. It snows in winter there as hard as in England, and in spring the snowmelt comes down the gorges in torrents.’

They wiped their swords dry as best they could, and the last firearm among them was broodingly inspected. Smith and his treasured Persian jezail. There was no way he would have abandoned that. But it needed a soak in fresh water soon, and then a good oil. As for their gunpowder – it would need a week of drying. Until then, they felt as vulnerable as lambs.

‘Do you think Nikos sold us to the Turks?’ asked Nicholas.

Smith shook his head. ‘He didn’t have time. There was a marching column there anyway. Just our ill luck. Turks everywhere. The island is swarming.’

Lala Pasha had brought an army of a hundred thousand men to Cyprus, it was said. An exaggeration, surely. Yet some forty thousand had come to Malta, six years before. The Ottoman Empire seemed inexhaustible.

‘Don’t look now,’ said Stanley, and all froze at his tone. ‘But there is a pair of yellow eyes watching us from behind that carob tree.’

Nicholas whipped round – he couldn’t help himself. And there was a curious goat, staring at them out of the darkness.

He sighed. ‘I’d call you a damned fool if you weren’t a knight and I a mere penniless vagabond.’

‘And don’t you forget it,’ said Stanley.

Smith was reaching slowly for his crossbow, salt-encrusted though it was, his eyes never leaving the munching goat. But just as he brought the quarrel towards the stock, the goat turned and ambled off unhurriedly, soon lost to view in the thorn scrub.

‘Run after it,’ suggested Stanley helpfully.

Smith dropped the crossbow, scowling. ‘You run after it, blubberguts.’

‘We can’t risk a cooking fire anyway,’ said Mazzinghi.

‘You mean you have never eaten raw goat?’ said Stanley. ‘Bloody liver, still warm from the paunch? Brother John here wouldn’t eat it any other way. Though admittedly he is rather
primitive
.’

‘On your feet, you gossiping women,’ said Giustiniani. ‘The Turks are wasting no time at Nicosia, be sure of that. So neither may we.’ He glanced up. ‘Five hours till dawn. I want to be fifteen
miles along the coast by then. You can sleep in the day. And after that, it’s inland, and the mountains.’

Even getting to their feet was weary work. Their boots were sodden and chafing.

They went west.

After hours of walking, stumbling, eyes closing as they walked, they came to a desolate peninsula. The moon now hanging in the west, the faintest hint of grey dawn out over the sea. It was a barren spit of land, wind-scoured rock and scrub, soon baking under the burning sun. There were small caves cut in the rocks.

Nicholas came to the edge of a drop and there before him, entirely below ground level, hidden from view until now, was a substantial courtyard with fine stone columns, and further chambers opening off into darkness so thick it was like black dust.

‘What is this place?’ he murmured.

‘Some kind of ancient burial ground,’ said Stanley. ‘But a good place to find shelter in the day.’

Hodge said, ‘I’m not steppin’ down there. This place is brimful of witchery or my name’s not Hodge.’