The Last Crusaders: Blood Red Sea (24 page)

‘Enough,’ said Giustiniani. ‘Is there any wine?’

‘Some dregs,’ said Dal Guasto. ‘You may not want a second cup after you’ve tasted it.’

They arranged themselves in a small chamber off Dal Guasto’s barracks in the heart of the city, laid out their blankets, inspected their weapons, their motley collection of armour. The sun was in the far west now, the Turkish bombardment dying off again. Perhaps they would attack tonight and finish it?

‘Perhaps,’ said Stanley. ‘Then at least we will die peacefully in our sleep.’

They ate from wooden trenchers with the soldiers, a grim stew of lentils and unnameable bones, perhaps mule, perhaps dog.

‘This,’ said Hodge, ‘has to be the worst supper I’ve ever tasted in my travels. And that’s saying something.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Stanley. ‘It’ll get worse. It always does.’

And then there was a figure in the doorway. It was Smith.

‘Brothers, I have offended,’ he said abruptly.

Giustiniani stood and bid him welcome.

Smith said, not moving, ‘I have ever been an ill judge of men, and the fault was all mine today. Forgive me.’

Smith was not a man who found it easy to admit fault, least of all before an assembled company. It was an act of true humility.

Giustiniani’s heart was full. ‘Of course you are pardoned, Brother. I spoke with a bitter tongue. You only did according to your nature. Come and eat.’

‘Thank you, I have eaten.’ He bowed and went out.

After a moment, Stanley rose and went after him. Out on the walls, in the gold light of the setting sun, they would stand side by side, in utter silence, their old friendship healed. Brothers like no other.

Nicholas and Hodge came to join them.

‘Need some fresh air?’ said Stanley.

Nicholas nodded, looking a little green. ‘That supper.’

After a while Smith said, ‘You know, I have always struggled with the vow of obedience?’

‘I know it,’ said Stanley wearily.

Smith unslung his knapsack, knelt and unstrapped it. Then he stood and triumphantly shook out a faded banner. It was the scarlet standard of the Knights of St John, emblazoned with the white cross of Malta, which he had brought from De Andrada’s galley.

The one that Giustiniani had ordered him to leave behind. The one he had pretended to bury.

‘And what was it you called me?’ said Stanley. ‘A crafty devilish schemer?’

Smith gave a rare grin, a light in his black eyes that was positively boyish. He held his arms aloft and the banner hung down listlessly in the still evening air.

‘You’ll have to confess this to Giustiniani too.’

‘I will,’ said Smith. ‘Maybe tomorrow.’

And then a fortuitous gust blew along the walls, slight but just enough for the banner to open up and show itself. Along the wall, a couple of Venetian pikemen smiled.

‘We heard there was a party of knights among us!’ they called. ‘Now that banner gives good cheer!’

‘Venice has not always looked with favour on the knights,’ Smith called back, obstreperous as usual.

They were walking over, keeping an eye always on the Ottoman lines beyond in the gathering dusk. No torches, no linstocks. Pray it might be a quiet night.

‘Whatever our Fathers of the Republic may think,’ said one pikeman, ‘it does me good anyway. Here. Use this staff.’

In a minute they had the standard strung up high, the staff in an iron flag-loop behind a morion, and the light wind opened it
up. A small thing, tiny compared to the great satin banners of the Ottomans, faded and frail compared to the magnificent sceptres with long white horsehair tassels, raised high on silver poles, standing amid the vast encampment of the besiegers. Yet the white eight-pointed cross on its scarlet background, a symbol feared and respected across the Mediterranean world, blazed out against the golden walls of Nicosia like a rose in bloom.

Nicholas looked out over the Turkish trenches, no more than two hundred yards off. And then he clearly saw a Janizary start up and stare, shielding his eyes against the sinking sun, regarding the dreaded red standard with steadfast eye. He nudged Stanley and they all watched. A few moments later, the Janizary leapt from the rear of the trench, seized a white horse by its bridle, vaulted on to its back and was away to give the unwelcome news to the Pasha.

Smith whooped and guffawed. He nearly capered.

‘Before heaven,’ said the Venetian pikeman, grinning broadly, ‘did you see that? Did you see the Turk run? Just the sight of it. Before heaven it does me good. Luigi, you saw that?’

His comrade was grinning too. ‘Couldn’t mistake it.’

‘How it’ll rattle ’em!’ bellowed Smith, his voice unnecessarily loud considering they were right next to him. ‘The sight of the old red standard will be about as welcome to them as an outbreak of galloping pox!’

Indeed, word was already spreading fast through the Turkish camp: the almost unbelievable news that, despite Nicosia being ringed around with Ottoman besiegers, it seemed Knights of St John, those devils and djinns, were now among the defenders. How many, no one knew. Some said it was a feint, a bluff, a mere piece of cloth. Others doubted. And among older soldiers, the terrible shadow of Malta rose in their minds.

Those Knights Hospitaller, those Knights of St John . . .

They were the soldiers of Shaitan.

They were the mad dogs of Christendom.

Smith unslung his Persian jezail. Since its soaking in the sea, he had spent hours cleaning and polishing it, and once in Nicosia he had stripped it completely, oiled every part and reassembled it as lovingly as a Geneva clockmaker.

Now it was time to put it to the test. While cleaning the barrel one last time, wadding it with guncotton and powder and ball and tamping it well, he said to Nicholas, ‘Boy, is it my ageing eyes or do I see a Habsburg banner out there? On the highest hill there, the hill of St Marina, I think.’

Nicholas had already seen that banner: the two-headed eagle of the Habsburgs before one of the largest tents on the plain, with clear ground all around. ‘Is that the tent of Lala Mustafa?’

‘I presume so. And that’s a captured banner, to taunt us. Well, let’s see.’

The air was clear, the wind was light. But the tent of the Pasha might have been half a mile off.

‘Waste of a ball, Brother,’ said Stanley.

Smith ignored him, crouched silently behind the battlements, the long smooth barrel of the musket resting on the stonework. He took his time, sighted, measured his breathing, tightened his finger on the trigger. Moments passed.

The tension was unbearable.

Then he said, ‘Maybe, instead . . .’

And he swivelled the barrel just a couple of inches to the right, sighted swiftly once more, breathed out and fired.

It still must have been two or three hundred yards off, an
astonishing shot. But a moment after the musket fired, a tall Janizary half out of a trench turned sharply, clutching his upper arm. Then he turned back and howled at the walls of Nicosia: cries, Stanley said, of considerable irritation.

‘Keep ’em on their toes,’ said Smith. ‘We’re not beaten yet.’

In the night, Nicholas and Hodge walked the half-ruined streets of Nicosia, hungry and weary yet unable to sleep. People begged at every corner, nobody was asleep. The night air still hot, wind rustling the palm trees, everything a dream.

‘These mighty Venetian walls that seem so solid,’ said Nicholas, waving the nearly empty flask of vile wine, ‘cities of men, kings and their thrones, everything . . . It was all built to fall. All but the dream of God.’

There were old women in black, praying by candlelight in a small but beautiful church, a black-bearded priest intoning the ancient liturgy of Byzantium. The church of the Virgin of Chrysaliniotissa, its walls covered with icons, the air heady with incense. They lurched in half drunk, and the old women glared. They peered into the mystery of the inner sanctum behind the screen, the priest muttering, ‘Franks and barbarians,’ moving over to throw them out. But there was nothing in there but a table and a bottle of oil. God doesn’t wait in some inner room for you. The mystery is not to be seen with such pragmatic eyes.

They finished the wine sitting by a fountain, heads warm and cloudy, stars winking through the acacia tree overhead. So peaceful, in this city about to fall in slaughter to the Turks.

‘We might be in the Orient,’ said Hodge softly.

‘We are nearly,’ said Nicholas. ‘Much closer to Jerusalem than London. Not so far from Damascus, even Baghdad. Listen hard and you can hear the muezzin cry from Rhodes, from Beirut. Soon there’ll be mosques in Nicosia.’

‘You really think it?’

‘Of course. We are finished here, before we even started.’

‘I’m not going back on the galleys in Turkish chains.’

‘Nor me. God knows how.’

Maybe they would die soon. Nicholas drained the bottle.

Hodge shivered, not from cold. ‘The farther I get from England, the more I love her. But you like it here.’

‘We are exiles, old friend. I have not kept you from England. Prisons and galleys and slavery and damned war have kept us.’

‘Aye,’ said Hodge. ‘We must lay our heads on what pillows we find.’

‘But you never give up hope of England, eh, Hodge?’

‘Never.’

‘One day we will go back.’

Hodge regarded him. ‘You would rather wander and drift in and out of danger than come home to it all. The daily round.’

Nicholas said no more, but Hodge knew him well. He had come to love danger, and she would destroy him before long. But it was the daily round he feared.

They weaved down a dark street that had some promising lanterns on hooks over open doorways. There was a young girl on the step. She looked at them boldly and stroked her bare leg as they passed.

They went into a small chamber with an old woman eating pistachio nuts, the floor around her stool strewn with shells, and a plump girl who looked Greek or maybe Bulgarian. The girl on the step was young and fair skinned.

‘What coin have you?’ mumbled the old woman, her mouth full of nuts and no teeth.

‘We’ll all be dead in the morning,’ said Nicholas, as the fair-skinned girl took his hand and pulled him towards an inner room.

The old woman scowled and held out her hand. He gave her a ducat.

She peered down at it and then stared at him. ‘A Venetian ducat! Who do you think she is, Helen of Troy?’

Nicholas just shrugged and said again, ‘We’ll all be dead in the morning.’

Once in the inner chamber, drawing the curtains behind them, the girl said, ‘Will the city really fall to the Turks so soon?’

‘Aye. What will you do then?’

‘Be taken captive, no doubt.’

‘Does it not worry you?’

She shrugged off her dress and sat naked on his knee. ‘Whores
are survivors. And I’ve lived through worse. Now stop talking and kiss me.’

They got back to their quarters in the early hours, stumbling over the prostrate forms of their comrades. Stanley stirred and looked at them as they collapsed on to their blankets.

‘Happy now?’ he said.

‘Not particularly,’ said Nicholas. ‘But I’ll sleep better. You?’

‘Perfectly well, thank you.’

After a while Nicholas said, ‘I don’t know how you do it. The celibacy.’

‘It’s because it’s so difficult that it’s worth doing. Like anything else. I like the melancholy of celibacy. The spartan melancholy of saying no. No night with a whore is worth the pride of that.’

‘You haven’t met my whore here,’ mumbled Nicholas, already asleep.

Stanley lay back and grinned, despite himself. Whoremonger Ingoldsby. He’d learn.

Nicholas awoke from a sweaty nightmare of falling towers, infants smashing to the ground. He lay panting, and then Stanley kicked him.

‘Up, up, tosspot and whoremonger. It’s a filthy conscience gives you bad dreams.’

‘Go to hell.’

‘Here. Some bread. The mould adds flavour.’

There was a mighty hubbub outside.

Smith came back to say that Governor Dandolo himself was riding out their way. ‘On the finest white charger left in the city uneaten, and a very heavy bodyguard too. I wonder why. Can he not be popular?’

They hurried out, buckling on swords, Nicholas and Hodge still swallowing down mouldy bread and stale water. They found Captain Paolo dal Guasto locked in argument with a stout, impassive fellow in a tall helmet.

‘The Jews?’ Dal Guasto was saying angrily. ‘Why the devil are we to round up the Jews?’

The fellow shrugged. ‘Order from the Governor’s palace. All Jews in the city to be driven to the Famagusta Gate.’

A crowd came surging round the far end of the street, some wailing.

‘There you are,’ said the fellow. ‘There’s your first batch.’

And behind them came a finely dressed gentleman on a white horse fringed with scarlet trappings, and a mounted bodyguard of eight men around him, all with long lances at the ready.

Giustiniani snapped. He hurried up the street, pushing his way through the crowd of Jewish men, women and children, clutching the few pitiful possessions they could carry, and stood four-square before a disdainful-looking Dandolo. Smith, Stanley and Mazzinghi followed close behind, and Nicholas and Hodge hovered near by. On adjacent steps, unnoticed by any, Paolo dal Guasto ordered four of his men to load up their crossbows.

‘Any moment now the Turkish bombardment is going to start up anew!’ roared Giustiniani, so loudly that Dandolo’s horse shied and backed up, colliding with the one behind. ‘Or maybe the Janizaries will just come marching in direct. And we are busy herding the Jews like sheep. What in hell is
going on
?’

Dandolo was white faced and furious. ‘I understood that I was Governor of this city, not you, sir knight. Now out of our way. Guards! Ready the sally port!’

Suddenly Dandolo and his eight bodyguards found themselves facing not one but four tough-looking Knights Hospitaller, hands on their swords, and those two tatterdemalion English volunteers lurking near by too. Among the Jews, some of the men were beginning to mutter and refuse to be driven any farther. Damn it all.

Dandolo tightened his reins and held still. Composed. Lordly.