The Religion (36 page)

"
Allahu Akabar.
Allahu Akabar.
Allahu Akabar
."

De Lugny raised his lance and the knights moved out and picked up speed. Unlike the enemy, who rode light, short-backed Arabians and Barbs, the knights rode huge beasts of mixed northern European and Andalusian blood, bred for the strength to carry two hundred pounds at a charge and trained to be as eager for blood as were their masters. Tannhauser stood on the beach and stroked Buraq's head and watched them go. He'd played his part and had no appetite for the fray, let alone a wound. Even so, it was a spectacle not to be missed. He mounted and drew his scimitar and watched from the saddle.

At five hundred feet the wedged and rampant horsemen were running flat out and nothing on Earth or above could have called them back. He saw the rind of the rising sun emerge above the armature of the point and in the oblique light streaming across the flatlands the helms and burnished backplates of the riders shone an iridescent pink. Thus gaudily
adorned by the newborn day they thundered down on the encampment and set about the sleep-dazed defenders with a gusto fueled by righteousness and hate.

Human figures leapt to their feet in panic and were just as swiftly dashed back to the ground. Maces whirled and bludgeoned and lances ran through naked flesh and axes rose and fell amid sudden sprays. Sword blades fluttered red above the roseate armor. A rising clamor of terrified mules and belated alarums and death shouts and wasted commands fractured the crystalline morning, and amid the hue and cry could be heard the names of Jesus Christ and John the Baptist, of Allah and the Prophet, and, as always when men meet their maker in a circumstance of horror, the word "mother" in various tongues from the mouths of sons who would never see her again.

Tannhauser nudged Buraq and started in at the trot.

As he reached the perimeter watch fire, in which the entrails of an unseamed corpse lay purple and steaming, a pair of fleet-footed refugees stumbled forth from the carnage. Seeing Tannhauser's white turban, and his dark green caftan and his golden Mongol horse, they ran toward him in blind hope of salvation. They had the look of Bulgars or Thracians, and were helmless, and their eyes rolled in their faces like portraits of the deranged. They weren't much more than boys. But even had he been inclined to mercy, he couldn't let them know him at some later time and place. He slew the first with a single stroke as he grabbed for Buraq's bridle and hot blood sprayed the animal's chest and he sidestepped away. The second man he clove unto the brain from behind as he abandoned his comrade and fled like doomed game. Up ahead, De Lugny's riders had swept the camp as far as the seven bronze siege guns commanding the bay and they wheeled about for a second pass in spumes of hoof-tossed sand. Tannhauser reined in Buraq and flicked the gore from his blade while it was still wet and he watched the knights' bloody venture wend to its close.

Of the seventy-odd artillerymen and levies, most lay dead or squirming with dire wounds. The rest either tried to flee or howled to Allah or rallied to the call of their commander, who stood with a red crescent standard by his saffron-colored tent. All such choices met with a similar outcome. De Lugny's knights, their steeds half blown by the charge, retrawled the camp at a canter and slaughtered the Moslems to a man.
Their weapons and harness were slathered with brains and gore. Their snorting war mounts stoved in ribs with their shoulders and crushed skulls with their iron-shod hooves and snapped at fingers and hands with their great square teeth. The encampment's commander and his guard were lanced like a bevy of swine and as the Turkish standard was brandished aloft in triumph, some knights dismounted to ransack the ruin for trophies and to finish the groaning wounded where they lay.

Tannhauser urged Buraq into the shambles. He bent across his neck to murmur a
gazel
, for the animal was gentle and a stranger to the reek of battle's consequence. As they headed for the saffron tent, the prayers of the wounded were silenced one by one, until only the sounds of victory remained. The knights, by habit so dour, were exhilarated by the totality of their success and smiles flashed abroad and jubilant praises were offered to the saints and coarse jokes cracked about this dismembered body or that severed limb. Yet this didn't curb the efficiency they brought to their chores. They slaughtered the captured mules in squealing droves and smashed the butts of drinking water apart. By the edge of the bay those detailed to demolish the artillery mounts and to hammer spikes into the touchholes of the guns went about their work with a will. Others rolled kegs of gunpowder, stacked thereabouts in abundance, into the shallows, where they stove them open with their axes and vented their contents in the brine. Sacks of flour, and provender by the barrel and the bale, followed too, until the shoreline resembled the wake of a disaster at sea. And all of this without the use of fire, though it would've been swifter, for they'd yet to make the long ride back to Mdina and their numbers were small.

The ground in places was boggy with entrails and gore, and Buraq tossed his head in distaste, and Tannhauser steered around such spots as he sought out the Chevalier De Lugny. In skirting the splayed and tangled slain who'd made their final stand by the tent, Tannhauser spotted a nine-palm musket on the ground. Its match still smoldered. Its stock was pinned beneath its owner's corpse. The blue-black hue of the damascened barrel, which seemed to glow from deep within its substance, and the arabesques of silver wire with which the ebony woodwork was inlaid, announced the hand of a master gunsmith. He marked its location in the wrack and rode up to De Lugny, who was mounted and issued orders to Escobar de Corro. Corro asked some question that Tannhauser didn't catch.

"Leave for the Borgo now," said De Lugny, "and take this." He handed Corro the captured crescent-moon standard. "It will stir their spirits."

De Lugny turned to Tannhauser and nodded.

"A fine morning's work, Captain Tannhauser," said De Lugny. "The Angelus bell not yet rung and not a single man lost or wounded. Accept my compliments on behalf of Marshal Copier."

"Don't tarry too long," said Tannhauser. "When the battery fails to open fire, Torghoud will read this state of affairs and send Sipahis in the hope of an ambuscade."

"Let him do so," scoffed Escobar de Corro.

Tannhauser gave him a glance, but expressed no opinion. "With your permission, I'm away."

De Lugny raised a crimson-glistered sword in salute. "With God's blessings."

Tannhauser rode back a few yards and stopped and dismounted and retrieved the Damascus musket, which on closer encounter was finer than he'd supposed. He stripped a pouch of balls and a powder flask from the corpse. The man dead was young and exquisitely featured. He'd been lanced through the base of the skull. In his turban was a spray of rubies set in white gold. Tannhauser stripped that too. As he remounted and canted the musket against his thigh, he caught Escobar de Corro's eyes on the long blue barrel, as if it were a prize he'd marked out for himself. He looked into Tannhauser's eyes and Tannhauser paused to give him his chance; but Escobar said nothing and Tannhauser wheeled away, as eager as was Buraq to leave the stench of that reeking field behind them. The sun had cleared the horizon and they rode toward it. By nightfall he hoped to secure the boat that would take him away from this island of fanatics and fools. He stroked Buraq's neck with a sudden pang of anguish.

In Turkish, he said, "I can't take you with me, old friend, but to whom shall I bequeath you? Christian or Turk?"

Saturday, June 9, 1565

The Sacred Infirmary-Auberge of England

Carla dipped a silver spoon into a silver bowl and raised a mouthful of broth to the poor man's lips. He opened them and took the broth and
swallowed, not with hunger or enjoyment, for he was beyond such sensations, but out of some sense of duty and, she realized, to please her. His name was Angelu, a fisherman by trade who would go to sea no more, for he was now blind and his hands resembled lumps of discolored wax in which broken twigs had been embedded.

Along with scores of other seriously wounded, he'd been evacuated from Fort Saint Elmo after the eight-hour Turkish assault had been halted by nightfall. Angelu's head had been drenched in a gobbet of wildfire, hurled by his own comrades at the Turks. In scraping the incendiary jelly from his burning scalp he'd charred both hands to the bone. He sat huddled on a chair, the least agonizing posture he could find. The roasted vault of his skull was like an obscene tufted cap pulled over his ears, and it gave off a corrupt odor which overpowered that of the applied salves and lotions. Angelu had already received extreme unction and Father Lazaro didn't expect him to survive another night. Carla did not believe that Angelu wanted to.

Lazaro had brought her to the Sacred Infirmary that morning. Carla had asked to serve yet she'd been fearful. Fearful of her lack of skill and knowledge, of the stern-faced brethren, of the fortress-like infirmary itself. Part of her wished she hadn't complained about her uselessness. She despised it, yet days passed in emptiness passed quickly. Easy to gaze at the world until sunset threw a veil on it. Easy to dream without remembering of what. Lazaro marched her to the infirmary as if to a gallows, or so it felt to her. In fact it was to something more daunting by far.

The main ward of the infirmary was two hundred feet long with a series of shuttered windows along its southern aspect. The arched entrance was framed by Maltese stone. Above the arch was carved
TUITIO FIDEI ET OBSEQUIUM PAUPERUM
, the Order's motto, which she read to mean
Defenders of the faith and servants of the poor
. Two rows of fifty beds each faced each other across the center aisle. Each bed had a red curtained canopy over its head, with a good mattress and fine linen. Armor, clothing, and weapons were bundled beneath. The patients were served their food on silver plate, for the monks placed great store in purity. The floor was tiled in marble and swabbed thrice a day. Thyrus wood burned in censers to cleanse the air and mask putrefaction and drive forth the flies. At the far end was an altar for the twice-daily celebration of the Mass and behind was mounted the crucified Christ. On the wall facing the windows
hung the treasured banner under which the knights had abandoned their stronghold of Rhodes. It displayed the Virgin and the Infant Christ above the legend:
AFFLICTIS TU SPES UNICA REBUS
.

In all that afflicts us You are our only Hope
.

Father Lazaro proclaimed it the finest hospital in the world, with surgeons and physicians to match. "Our Lords the sick," said Lazaro, "want for nothing that we can give them. It is here in the Sacred Infirmary that the true heart of the Religion is to be found."

The drifting incense, the murmur of prayer, the reverential concentration of the monks as they moved from bed to bed to wash and feed and dress the wounds of their Lords, gave the hospital the atmosphere of a chapel and this induced a sense of tranquillity otherwise unimaginable among so much suffering. It also enabled Carla to master the horror of her first encounter.

After the flood of wounded in recent days the ward was almost full. Though fresh corpses were carried from the ward each dawn and the wounded were discharged as soon as their lives were out of danger, space would soon run out. Like Angelu, most of the patients were young men of the Maltese militia or Spanish
tercios
. Few of them would be whole again. Lazaro and his colleagues had performed numerous amputations and trepannings and, as best they could, had repaired the grotesque facial injuries that abounded. Those pierced or shot through the gut lay stiff as planks, panting lightly and slowly turning gray with the agony of death. Those afflicted with monstrous burns suffered most of all. From the distance beyond the protecting walls came the constant rumble of cannon fire.

On arrival she was to wash her hands and feet in the lavatorium, and change into slippers to keep out the dust of the streets, for cleanliness was pleasing to God. She was forbidden to touch any wounds or dressings. She could serve food, wine, and water but could not wash the patients. If they needed to pass water or defecate she was to inform one of the brothers. If she noticed fresh bleeding, fever, or pox, she was to inform one of the brothers. If a man requested confession or Holy Communion, or appeared close to death, she was to inform one of the brothers. She was to speak in a soft, gentle voice. As much as possible she was to encourage Our Lords to pray, not only for their own souls but for peace, victory, the Pope, the liberation of Jerusalem and the Holy Land, the
Grand Master, the brothers of the Order, the prisoners in the hands of Islam, and for their own parents, whether alive or dead. Because the sick were the closest to Christ, their prayers were the most powerful of all, more, even, than those of the cardinals in Rome.

Lazaro took her down the ward, where she was conscious of the eyes turned at once upon her. Those of the serving brothers were shocked. Those of the wounded flickered, as if glimpsing a divine apparition from within a nightmare. Some of the seasoned troopers licked their lips and exhaled sighs. She felt herself blushing and her grand intentions teetered. What good could she do here? She was in the middle of more raw pain than should ever be assembled underneath one roof. However, she'd be damned, at least to herself, if she retreated. She wasn't without tools, she told herself. She had Faith, and it was strong; she had much of Love to give; she even had a modicum of Hope. She steeled herself and walked tall. Then Lazaro stopped and introduced her to poor Angelu. Silent, blinded, helpless. Deformed beyond the wildest dreams of cruelty.