The Religion (49 page)

The glass fell from her hands into her lap. For a moment she was deaf to the roar of the guns and blind to their fire, and to the birth of the day and the smell of the sea she was numb, and to the cool of the morning breeze her skin was callused. On her tongue was a taste as flat and lifeless and bitter and cold as brass. She sealed the vision glass in its leather case. She stood up on the rock. And she threw the glass into the sea.

It disappeared without a splash. And if with the vision stone's vanishment
something precious inside her died, something new was born. She would face the future without prognostication, and the present as she'd never dared face it before: with Hope. The Angels had abandoned her. And she didn't know how to petition Almighty God, for she'd never thought to call on Him before. She turned her back on mortal chaos and closed her eyes and laced her hands.

"Please God," she said. "Protect my love from harm."

She opened her eyes. From beyond the far-most curvature of the world, a vermilion sun ascended the cloud-bruised sky. And in answer to her prayer she heard nothing but the rage of Moslem guns.

Saturday, June 16, 1565

Saint Elmo-The Ramparts-The Forge

The most surprising discovery Orlandu made about battle was that it was work. The fear, the stench, the horror, the rage, the random gusts of panic and exhilaration, the hatred and loyalty and valor, all these had formed some part of his fantasy, erected upon the tales he'd heard all his life. Because the tales were brief, the battles in his imagination were settled with a few rousing moments of crisis and high drama. But six, eight, ten hours of massed combat was mostly composed of grinding and exhausting tedium, like quarrying stone in blistering heat while somebody tried to stab you in the back. It was the most arduous and backbreaking labor ever devised and Orlandu, who'd spent his days scraping galleys, was no stranger to toil. At times a pair of depleted warriors from either camp would stop in the middle of a duel by mutual agreement, and lean upon their spears as if upon shovels while they caught their breath. Then they'd nod and start again and fight until one or the other of them was slain.

The first assault that day had been by maniacs: fiends dressed in the skins of leopards and wolves and wild dogs, the sun flashing from gold-plated helms, and utterly careless of their lives. Iayalars, Tannhauser called them, who chewed hashish and smoked hemp and chanted through the night to stoke their frenzy. Some even charged stark naked, their privities all adangle between their thighs. They waded across the swill of feces and maggots, and trampled through the black and bursting
corpses that enswathed the enceinte, and kicked a path through the flap and squawk of vultures too glutted to fly. They came at the walls with scaling irons and ladders and were slaughtered by the arquebusiers and the enfilading cannon of the salients, as if their only purpose was to fill the groaning ditches with their meat.

As the remnants crawled back up the mountain, a host of dervishes howled their way to Paradise. After them came the Azeb infantries. And from the blinding glare of the meridian sun, to the jangle of their bands and the pounding of their drums, the janissaries joined the fray. Time and again they rolled down the hill and up the pestilent counter-scarps to scale the walls, there only to tumble from the ramparts like bloody surf.

It made no sense.

Tannhauser had elected to avoid the rigors of the line by employing his marksmanship. Along with his wheel-lock rifle, he picked a Turkish seven-palm musket from the stockpile of captured weapons and with Orlandu to load the latter he crawled about the ramparts behind the pikemen, sniping from the embrasures and wreaking a horrible toll on Mustafa Pasha's officers. Half a dozen times he took a shot at the Pasha himself, who directed the theater of madness from the ravelin, with Torghoud Rais at his side. But Allah must have protected the wizened commander, for though Tannhauser dropped three guardsmen at Mustafa's very feet, that was one mark he couldn't make, nor could anyone else.

For Orlandu, carrying twelve pounds of musket, a ten-pound sack of balls, and a heavy flask of powder was hardly less brutal than dragging the tub of mush, and more terrifyingly onerous by far. It took twenty-two steps to load and fire a musket, and twenty-one of them were left to him. Under fire, the game became a nightmare. The misfires shamed him. The overloads and double loads, whose recoil almost blew his hero off the alure, earned him a curse and a clout. The pike butts and elbows were as heedless as before. And the overheated barrel scorched his hands. Sparks fell in streams down the neck of his breastplate, which was itself an oven. Black powder stung his eyes and smoke peeled his throat. At times he found himself weeping as his fingers dropped the flask. He wasn't allowed to shoot because he'd waste a precious shot. Yet despite his bouts of anger, Tannhauser carried him through. With a word of praise or a piece of advice. With a slap on the back or a grimy smile. With a jest and
a peal of laughter. With unguarded looks of affection that Orlandu had never seen in his life before.

The maelstrom roiled about the teetering walls from one end of the day to the other. When the bloodred round at last went down on another festering harvest of bloating dead, the Moslems bent before Allah's will and retired, and the defenders knelt by their weapons and praised Christ. Orlandu had no breath left for his Savior. He slumped against a merlon, musket in his lap, and fell at once into a slumber. Before he could dream a hand hauled him upright and held him firm while he found his wits. Tannhauser cradled both long guns in his arm. His eyes were shadowy hollows in his skull.

"Come, boy," he said. "Keep me company while I eat."

That evening Tannhauser fell into melancholy and said little. As soon as he'd finished his meal, Orlandu fell asleep on the ground where he sat. He woke on an instinct, in the silence of the early hours, and saw Tannhauser's long silhouette cross the moonlit bailey. Sleep called Orlandu back and his aching body begged him to pay heed, but something stronger pushed him to his feet and he followed, picking his way through the gun stones that littered his path.

Orlandu caught up with him at the door to the armorer's workshop. Tannhauser carried a helmet and a lamp and seemed amused yet glad to see him. Neither spoke as they went inside and there Tannhauser paused to inhale the smells, which were of sacking and bear grease and cinders and coal, and notably wholesome after the pestilential miasma that reigned outside. Orlandu watched as he strode to the forge and set down the lamp and helm and raked the ashes for a coral-pink residue of embers. From these he coaxed flames and he called Orlandu to work the bellows-gently now-and showed him how to feed in the coke and build the coal bed, and once again Orlandu was in awe of his expertise and felt the crush of shame that he was such a know-nothing. Tannhauser stripped the helm of its padding and laid it on the coals and they watched the seep of color into the steel.

"When I was your age," said Tannhauser, "this was my intended trade. A blacksmith was all I wanted to be, and I thought it the greatest art in the world." He shrugged. "No doubt I was right. But it wasn't to be. I've
lost what little knack I had, but it soothes me to shoe a horse from time to time, or work a piece of metal in the fire." Orlandu was about to ask him why it wasn't to be, but Tannhauser said, "See how the color turns." He pointed. "Fetch me that peen hammer."

Tannhauser grabbed the helmet with tongs and set the heated portion over the anvil's horn and set to working it four inches from the crown.

"After I lost my own in the harbor last night I couldn't find another helm to fit me." He looked up from the anvil. "You're a fine swimmer. A strong one too."

Orlandu glowed. "I could teach you," he said.

Tannhauser smiled and went on hammering. "I daresay so, but not in the time we have left. Could you swim the bay to Sant'Angelo, as the messengers do?"

"Oh yes, easily." Easily was a boast, but he could do it.

Tannhauser returned the helmet to the coals and pumped the bellows.

"Then that is what you must do. Tonight."

Orlandu stared at him. The fierce blue eyes were in earnest. Orlandu felt sick without knowing why. He shook his head.

"I order it," said Tannhauser.

Orlandu felt a pressure in his chest he couldn't resist. He said, "No."

"Have you not had enough of battle? Of weariness and filth?"

"I serve you," said Orlandu. He took a step backward.

"That is a start. The first rule of serving is to obey."

"I'm not a coward." Such was the strange panic in his gut, the heat inside his head, that this statement seemed false on his tongue. He was full of fear.

"Nothing could be clearer. Nevertheless, you must go."

"Nevertheless, I will not."

"You have the makings of a very poor soldier."

The words seemed an insult yet Tannhauser spoke them with approval. He transferred the glowing steel to the anvil and for some time said nothing, lost in his smithing as he extended the newly fashioned bulge around the helm's circumference and expanded the heat-dulled steel toward the rim. Orlandu prayed that the argument was won and that he wouldn't be banished from Tannhauser's side. The prospect of such exile filled him with a horror so intense he wanted to vomit. Nothing he'd felt while crawling along the gauntlet came close to the terror that filled
him now. He watched Tannhauser's hands, drawn in by the hypnotic rhythm of the hammer and the gradual submission of that which wasn't meant to yield.

"It takes earth and water and fire and wind to make steel," said Tannhauser. "Therein lies its strength. My father told me that God forged men from the same materials, but simply in different proportions. It is the proportions allocated of each that determine the qualities of a piece of steel. This helm must be hard but not flexible, therefore the heat we use is gentle and we will quench it only once. But a sword must bend without breaking or losing its fettle, and a gun barrel must contain the explosions unleashed within it, so these steels require diverse techniques and proportions proper to their purpose. And so it goes. Do you understand?"

Tannhauser looked at him and Orlandu nodded, again lamenting his ignorance but thrilled by the thought of such mysteries. His terror was fading away.

Tannhauser continued. "The solving of these riddles-of matching the most apt of an infinitude of possible proportions to a particular purpose-has been the work of millennia, passed down from fathers to sons, and from master to pupil, each, with luck, learning more than the last. And so it should be in the blending of those elements that make up the temper of a man. The knowledge is there, if we would but listen. But in the matter of forging their own mettle, men are stubborn and vain, and place more faith in the voice of their own inclinations than in the counsel of the wise."

Tannhauser treated him to a smile, but one which disturbed him.

"Yet stubborn though men are, and hard to believe as it may be, boys are more stubborn still."

Orlandu shuffled and the panic returned as he realized that the argument was far from over. He tried to change the subject. "Where is your father?" he said, with exaggerated curiosity.

Tannhauser chortled at the crudity of this stratagem. He returned the fire-blackened helm to the coals and exchanged the hammer for a lighter one.

"My father is far away, and my prayer is that his peace is rarely disturbed by any thought of me. But you will not escape the issue. I came to this cesspool for one reason only, and that was not to die-for Jesus
Christ, the Baptist, the Religion or anyone else. I came here to take you back to the Borgo."

"You came for me?" said Orlandu.

Tannhauser nodded.

"Why?"

"I've asked myself that question many times over, and found many different answers, none of them satisfactory. At a certain point 'Why?' is no longer important. De Medran died today and so did Pepe de Ruvo. Miranda has a bullet in his chest. Le Mas is burned by wildfire. Again, there are many reasons why, and at this point none of them matter. You'll swim back to the Borgo, if not because I order it then because I ask it. Go to the Auberge of England. You may serve Bors and Lady Carla until I return."

"But how will you return? The boats were shot to pieces again tonight and, well-I'm sorry to say this-but you can't swim."

Tannhauser pulled the helmet from the fire, frowned, buried it in the ash to cool. "I have my own way out of here, but it's not for you. Now do as I say. Go."

Orlandu felt his eyes film with tears, and a sadness clenched his throat with a pain more intense than any he could remember. He felt grief and the fear that verged once more on blind terror. He would lose Tannhauser forever. He'd never had anything to lose before. Without Tannhauser there was-what? These days in his company, despite the exhaustion and madness, were the most precious of his life. The fullest. The dearest. Before Tannhauser there had been nothing. All he could recall of it was emptiness. To be cast out, to return to that emptiness, seemed worse than death. Tannhauser took him by the shoulders and stooped so their faces were level. The eyes that had looked at him-smiled at him-with such comradeship now stared at him from the shadows with no more warmth than a pair of blue stones.

"The Borgo is where I need you. You have no place here. I don't want you around."

Tannhauser pushed him away and turned back to the forge.