The Religion (40 page)

Tannhauser wasn't reassured. "What's his family name?"

"Orlandu di Borgo."

He laughed, but without humor. His vision of escaping the island shimmered before him and with it a nameless dread that he had to resolve with all speed.

"Who's the man at the table, with the missing arm?"

"Orlandu's friend, Tomaso."

"Wait here," said Tannhauser. He levered himself over the rim.

"Are you angry with me?"

"On the contrary. Just be patient."

He hurried to the door of the auberge and realized he'd left the towel behind. He didn't turn back. The slap of his feet on the tiles seemed abnormally loud. He reached the refectory to a peal of exuberant laughter from Bors, who looked up as he entered.

"The tide has turned!" roared Bors. The sweat marks on his cheeks looked like tears of joy. "Justice has forged her masterpiece!"

"Wake the Maltese," said Tannhauser.

Bors reacted to his tone by leaning over and prodding a finger as thick as a broomstick into the sleeping man's ribs. Tomaso jerked up, confused by his surroundings, still the worse for several pints of wine, and alarmed by the nude and dripping figure that hulked from the candlelit shadows.

"Orlandu Boccanera," said Tannhauser.

Tomaso looked about the table as if to point him out, his blurred eyes roving about the dark when he didn't find him. It was answer enough.

Tannhauser said, in Italian, "Where does he live? The house of Orlandu?"

Tomaso looked around as if for help.

"I know where Orlandu sleeps," said Amparo. Her head peeped around the door frame. She was wrapped in the towel.

"Good," said Tannhauser. "We'll get dressed at once."

As he turned away, Tomaso said something that none of them understood.
He pointed to a spot on the floor by the wall. Tannhauser rapped the table with his fist. "Bors?"

Bors turned and looked and said, "That's where Tomaso's sword and armor were stacked." He blew his cheeks. "I'd say young Orlandu must have taken them with him."

Tomaso spoke again and the words included "Sant'Elmu."

Tannhauser looked at Bors. "Tell me I just misheard him."

Bors wiped a finger across his mustache. "Well, the lad was all afire to join the broil. And I daresay we stoked it."

"He's twelve years old," said Tannhauser.

"In cuirass and helm he'd look man enough and more. He wouldn't be the first to lie about his age, to go for a soldier. And, I must say, the lad has a quick and ready tongue when he wants to wag it."

Tannhauser felt the floor falling out of his bowels.

He said, "You're coming with me, to Sant'Angelo's wharf."

"But the game," said Bors. "I have him on his knees!"

Tannhauser ran to his cell to grab his boots and a pair of breeches.

Tannhauser and Bors double-timed it through the narrow streets. Between the crenellated rim of the curtain wall and the silhouette of Castel Sant'Angelo the town was a pool of darkness. As they got closer to the fortress, voices and groans rang out, and they passed stretcher bearers hauling the day's injured to the infirmary by torchlight. The evacuees were distinguished not merely by their wounds but by an absence in their eyes, as if horror had robbed each one of something precious. They ran on.

Castel Sant'Angelo stood on its own rock, separated from the Borgo by a canal. The bridge across the canal led to the foot of the castle and to the curving wharf from which the boats set sail to Saint Elmo. The bridge was jammed with a desperate and bloody human traffic. Tannhauser browbeat his way past the provost marshal and they shoved their way through the press with all necessary callousness. On the bare stones of the wharf lay bodies that had expired during the crossing. Beside them lay a dozen more who looked unlikely to make it across the bridge. Spilled gore abounded, in puddles and gelid lumps, and it clung to his boots as he hurdled the dying and the dead. Two chaplains moved
among the moribund, smearing chrism on their foreheads and nostrils and lips.

"Through this holy unction may the Lord pardon thee whatever sins or faults thou hast committed."

The evacuees brought with them the tang of the siege across the harbor: gaping wounds, raw fear, the whiff of violent chaos. La Valette made a point of seeing off the fresh volunteers; that Tannhauser couldn't see him boded ill. They pushed on. A captive Turkish officer-bloody and half naked and festooned with chains-was driven past them, and Tannhauser heard a fragment of his murmurings.

"Hold fast to the rope of Allah . . ."

"That fellow's in for a nasty shock," observed Bors.

Tannhauser pressed forward, hardly listening. Bors was undeterred.

"In the dungeons of Saint Anthony, the torturers keep a giant blackamoor on hand-treat him like a king, food, wine by the bucket. When they want to loosen a fresh Turk's tongue they strip him down and bend him over a hogshead and have the blackamoor sodomize him, while they stand about cheering and laughing, and reminding him that that's how old Mohammed took his pleasure." Bors laughed himself. "The results, they say, are a wonder to behold."

Tannhauser made no comment and looked about. The waters of Grand Harbor shone like quicksilver, its surface shimmering in the wake of two departing longboats and their dipping oars. Each contained twenty-odd men and sundry supplies. At a lamplit table sat a brother serjeant with a ledger and a quartermaster whose manifests were swimming in a spilled pot of ink. Unbrotherly words flew back and forth. Tannhauser recognized the serjeant, a Lombard called Grimaldi, and he rapped his knuckles on the table to draw his attention.

"Brother Grimaldi, I must know if a certain man left with the volunteers."

"Tonight?" asked Grimaldi.

"Tonight. By the name of Orlandu Boccanera."

The quartermaster didn't appreciate the interruption. "You've no authority here. We have work to do."

"Work?" Tannhauser leaned his hands on the table and looked down on him. "This morning I directed the raid on Gallows Point. So tell me, bookkeeper, how many Turks have you slain today?"

The quartermaster rose to his feet, his hand crossing his waist to the
hilt of his sword. Despite that Tannhauser remained bent forward, the man was still obliged to look up at him.

"Who are you, sir?"

"I advise you to keep to spilling ink, my friend," said Bors, "and leave the spilling of blood to such as we."

"Sit down," said Grimaldi. "This is Starkey's man."

The quartermaster walked away, muttering a
Pater noster
to calm his ire. Grimaldi leafed through muster roll. His finger stopped near the end of a column of names.

"No Boccanera here. But we have one Orlandu di Borgo," said Grimaldi. "The fellow was as impudent as his name." He tipped his beard toward the harbor. "He's in the last boat yonder."

Tannhauser straightened and turned and gazed across the water. Far out in the night, and beyond all hope of recall, the oars of the rearmost longboat feathered the quicksilver. For the sake of a fantasia on pepper, one cup of coffee too many, or a quick dip in his tub, the cornerstone of his policy lay in pieces. Orlandu was on his way to the post of certain death. For all the ups and downs of recent weeks, Tannhauser had never succumbed to a feeling of dismay. But he did so now. He turned from the water and his spirits sunk yet lower.

Running barefoot through the blood, her hair flying wild about her shoulders, was Carla. She saw his face and stopped. And Tannhauser felt as if he'd stabbed her through the heart.

Pentecost: Sunday, June 10, 1565

Philermo Shrine-Auberge of England-Castel Sant'Angelo

The icon of Our Lady of Philermo hung in a chapel in the church of San Lorenzo. After the Right Hand of John the Baptist, the knights considered the icon their most sacred relic. Saint Luke had painted it, so some said, and a miracle had carried it to Rhodes on the waves of the sea. When Suleiman conquered Rhodes, the surviving knights had taken the icon with them. The Madonna's face was primitive, almost without expression, yet Her eyes contained all the sorrow of the world. She'd been known to weep real tears and numerous miracles had been credited to Her powers. Carla knelt before the icon and prayed, if not for a miracle,
then for guidance. On this day, when the Holy Ghost had descended upon the apostles, surely she could hope for that. Outside it was dead of night and the church was empty.

"Fate is against us," Mattias had told her, as she stood stunned and ankle-deep in the blood of the wharf. "Let me take you back to Italy. To France. To stay here is to die, and for what? Put this business behind you and start life anew."

She'd promised him an answer by morning. She'd come to the shrine of Philermo to find one. She was yet in shock from the knowledge that Orlandu was her son. At a distance of inches and despite an exposure lasting hours she'd failed to recognize her own flesh. She'd allowed him to slip through her hands into certain death.

She didn't doubt his identity. As soon as Amparo had told her she'd known it was so. Ruggiero's story of the baptism, the letter of Father Benadotti: of these confirmations she'd had no need. She'd felt a bond with the boy, had warmed to him at once, yet she'd put it down to his urchin charm, his friendship with Amparo, the power of Christ's love that had filled her soul in the Sacred Infirmary. Amid all that she'd felt no explicit sense of maternal recognition. Vanity. Vanity. What had she expected? To feel pangs and spasms in her womb? To see a halo glow about his head? She was no mother. She'd never given suck. How could she expect to know him? Her fantasy of herself had condemned him. That and also, she realized with shame, her social bigotry. Charming as he'd been, he was filthy and uncouth, a barefoot lout who'd boasted of killing dogs. Some inbuilt sense of station had blinded her eyes and stifled her heart, the curse of her supposed nobility. She thought of her father, Don Ignacio. Mattias had seen him.

"Your father begged your forgiveness for stealing your child," said Mattias. "And for condemning the boy to a life of such lowly character. The most bitter of his regrets were for the heinous cruelty he inflicted upon you. If I may quote his very words: 'I loved her more dearly than any living soul.'"

At this she'd wept, for the thought of her father's hatred had been a wound.

"Don Ignacio was dying," said Mattias. "When I left he could count his time in this world in hours. The priest was with him. Your father took great consolation in the thought that you'd returned. I presumed to tell him that he still enjoyed your affection and respect, and that your forgiveness was
already certain, and for this he blessed me. Perhaps I misrepresented you, but a dying man deserves charity, despite that his sins were vile."

Carla wept again before the icon. With love for the kindness of Mattias. With grief at her father's passing. With desperate gratitude for Don Ignacio's love, for in some small corner of her heart she'd never lost her belief in it. With sorrow for Orlandu and the pain of her own folly. She sensed a figure enter the side chapel behind her and she stopped her tears.

It was La Valette.

He knelt at the rail beside her and fell at once into deep devotions. He did not acknowledge her. He seemed almost in a trance. She thought of the burdens upon his conscience. His fears for the Maltese people. The men he dispatched daily across the harbor to their deaths. The mistakes-his own most of all-that must have dispatched even more. Carla looked up at the figure of Our Lady and asked Her what she should do. And Our Lady told her.

After his labors of recent days Mattias was entitled to his rest and Carla waited until he awoke before seeking him out. He stayed in bed into the afternoon and she wondered if he'd taken a soporific. Or perhaps he was preoccupied with Amparo. The thought of them still caused waves of nausea, but for this she chastised herself and not them. When Mattias at last emerged he seemed low in spirits. They met alone in the refectory, where he ate his food without appetite. They talked of this and that, then he asked after her intentions concerning the future.

"My right place in the world is here," she said.

He took this with a grim glance across his coffee cup. The cup was tiny and beautiful and looked absurdly dainty in his walnut-knuckled fist. "Orlandu won't be coming back," he said. "At least not whole."

"My place is here whether I ever see Orlandu again or not." She watched him attempt to contain a bleak frustration. He was not a man much given to dejection-indeed his resilience in the face of misfortune astounded her-and it hurt her to see him so dispirited. Especially on her part. She reached out her hand and touched the back of his. "You want me to leave the island and I understand why-"

"That I doubt very much." His voice was curt and she felt rebuffed. He added a rider. "You've never seen the Turks sack a town. You'd be
raped for hours, perhaps days. Then, with luck, you would be butchered. Without luck, you'd be sold and shipped to a brothel in North Africa."

She flinched at the brutality of his language. "But it's impossible to leave Malta."

"Have I lost your confidence?" he said.

"Certainly that is impossible." She smiled but he didn't reciprocate. "No. God has granted me the vocation-the calling-that's eluded me all my life. That's why I must stay."