The Religion (76 page)

At this litany of slurs Carla saw Ludovico's head crane back and his eyes narrow to slits. It was the first and only crack in his façade, and quickly repaired. Yet he didn't dare look at her.

"Fra Starkey, I'm sure, would find these conspiracies fascinating," he said. "Why not enlighten him?"

"Honest men are hard-pressed to understand duplicity," said Mattias, "especially on so extravagant a scale. I flatter myself that I'm almost as sly
as you, but I've not the advantage of the fraudulent robes and lofty doctorates, and the trick bag of relics and bulls."

"It's as well, then," said Ludovico, "that our interests don't conflict."

He tossed the heel of bread back into the basket and picked up his helm. He rose to his feet, as did Mattias, and bowed to Carla.

"I'm happy to learn that our son is alive after all," he said, "albeit in the hands of Moslem demons."

"He could do much worse," said Mattias. "He could be within the ambit of his father."

A movement of the wide blue jaw told her that even Ludovico's patience had worn thin.

He turned to Mattias. "Nevertheless, I pray for his safe return to the fold of Christ. He's occupied my thoughts a great deal. And he's filled my heart with a substance I'd not known existed, thanks be to God." His eyes were sincere, and for a moment Carla felt for him. "Tell me, truly now, what kind of fellow is my son?"

Ludovico had opened his heart. Mattias shoved his hand in and squeezed.

"An account of his virtues would detain you until dawn," Mattias replied. "Suffice to say that it's damnable hard to believe that he sprang from your seed."

Ludovico's face closed like a bear trap.

Mattias tipped him a salute.
"Assalaamu alaykum."

"Pax vobiscum."

As she watched Ludovico limp away into the fiery night, she couldn't suppress her pity. She'd never seen a man so lost in his own darkness-except, perhaps, her father.

Mattias peered out into the murk. "Anacleto is out there somewhere. I wonder he didn't shoot me. Without you so near, perhaps he'd have done so."

"Anacleto?"

"Ludovico's factotum, his shadow, his knife in the back. A man of striking beauty and virulent character. He puts me in mind of the Sultan's assassins, the deaf-mutes of the seraglio-his footsteps make no sound." He took her arm. "Let's back to the infirmary. I'll feel easier knowing you're there, at least for tonight."

She acquiesced without argument and they walked back through the town.

"You treated him so roughly I feared you'd provoke a duel," she said. "Was that what you wanted?"

"I'd not contest a duel with a man I don't honor. Rather, I'd cut his throat while he slept. But he endured enough insolence for half-a-dozen mortal disputes and swallowed the lot. And Ludovico is no coward. This tells me that in his mind, I'm already dead. And that you're already his chattel. He's just biding his time until the moment suits him." He frowned. "Tell me, Carla, what passed between you and him while I was gone?"

"I kept it to myself because-"

"That's not material."

"He came to my room in the auberge at the dead of night." She saw a look flit across his face that justified her fear of telling him sooner.

"What of Bors and Nicodemus?"

"Bors was on duty, Nicodemus asleep."

Mattias scowled.

She said, "Ludovico's footsteps also make no sound."

"What did he say?"

"He's lost his senses. He said he wanted to marry me, and to have another child to replace Orlandu."

"Mad with war and mad with love. In his case, mad with power too."

"His whole life stands before him as a dreadful error, and he seeks to repair it through me. To hold him at bay I told him I loved another, and he knew at once that I spoke of you."

"I hope that wasn't purely a ruse." He grinned. "Dwell no further on Ludovico. He'll bother you no more. Think only on our escape, and if you might be persuaded."

"I'm already persuaded."

"Good. Say nothing of all this to anyone else, not even Amparo."

She feared that some betrayal was afoot and stopped. The street was narrow and dark. She stood close to look at his face. She said, "Amparo must come with us."

He looked so affronted she felt an instant of fear.

"What manner of man do you take me for?"

Before she could apologize, he waved it aside.

"I'd leave my corpse behind before I'd leave Amparo." He grimaced with perplexity. "But let me grasp this nettle now. I love Amparo dearly, but not as I love you. Not less. Perhaps even more. Bear with now, for
who can measure these things? Man or woman? I mean no deceit and confess myself beleaguered in this matter. The heart and loins won't always accept a harness. And you and she are a sublime pair. What else can I say? In the catalogue of my present tribulations, this vexation doesn't rate high for urgency, though it's the root of all the others, true enough, for if not for the two of you I wouldn't be here. And if I've sinned, it's a trifle compared to my other felonies. Withal, if we survive these hardships and perils, and I bring Orlandu home, and if you're still willing, we'll marry, you and I, and Amparo will endure, and what will be will be."

He waited and Carla nodded.

"Until then, I'm prone to let things stand as they are. The sea is already stormy, so why rock the boat? Can you accept this?"

What he gave with one hand he took with the other; yet he dared to be who he was and his forthrightness stirred her. If she was a fool, then let that be so too. Her body ached and without knowing it she raised her mouth and he kissed her. He scooped her against him and lifted her onto tiptoe and she felt his own ache against her belly. The urge to surrender, there, in the alley seized her. Some counterinstinct fought it but his mouth was hot on her throat and his hands encircled her waist and her breath was taken away. She felt her skirt rustle on her skin as he pulled it up and gathered it in, and his callused palms caressed her thighs, and her insides convulsed and she felt dizzy. A war broke out within her. She thought,
I will not deny this out of fear or false piety
. But she didn't find either in her heart, and this itself was victory. She had other reasons-fine reasons-for not wanting to consummate her passion in an alley, like a drab. And if he was willing to fail Amparo-and he was a man just walked off a field of blood, and she would not judge him-she was not. His fingers slid between her legs and caressed her wetness-
Oh God, my Lord God
-and she clenched them hard against him and pulled away. In defiance of her every natural instinct she put her hand against his chest. He understood at once, and though his eyes drooped with lust, he didn't press her. He stood back and swiped his hair from his face.

She said, "Until then, let things stand as they are."

"Forgive me," he said, his voice gruff. "Madness rides the wind tonight. And more than one wild beast is yoked to his wagon." His eyes cleared. He gave her a rueful smile. "On this occasion, at least, you're wiser than I." He glanced to the end of the alley and the infirmary piazza
beyond. "It's as well you're almost home," he said. "And I have urgent matters that need my direct attention. So I'll bid you farewell."

She felt a suspicion without clear substance. "What urgent matters?"

"Military matters."

She sensed that same cold-blooded absence in his psyche that she'd felt on the Syracuse Road, before he killed the priest. She saw he had no intention of telling her more. Without warning he whipped his sweatdrenched scarf from out his sleeve and dabbed at her neck.

"I've sullied you," he said.

His crooked teeth flashed bright in his sooty face.

Then she watched him lope away toward the front.

Carla found Amparo asleep on the cot. She lay down beside her and the girl shifted without waking and Carla wrapped her in her arms. She felt no self-reproach for her heart was too full of love. Love for all of her beloved. She thanked God for the companionship in which she was rich. She prayed to Jesus to understand, and to forgive her, though what, exactly, it was that required absolution she wasn't certain. Surely, amid so much cruelty, love in any form was good. Mattias's for both women; even Ludovico's for her. She prayed for Mattias and Amparo. She prayed for Orlandu. She prayed for Ludovico that his madness and pain might be healed.

She fell into a deep and exhausted slumber. She dreamed in vivid, fantastical spasms in which her spirit flew through uncharted astral realms and mystic vortices unknowable to waking sense, and which left her breathless and in awe and yearning for worlds whose discovery prohibited return. And of these worlds, when she woke, she remembered little, except that they contained nothing of horror and fear.

And as well that was, for the new day dawning brought more of both in plenty.

The night assault on the wall had given out at first light. Casualties were heavy. Carla woke to find Amparo gone, and she ventured out with her poke of bandages and needles and twine to do what she could. Burned timbers subsided in sparking gusts. Children watched her walk by with the stunned and vacant expressions evoked by Mattias. Knights and soldiers-and lamenting widows searching for the source of their
grief-staggered about the calamity amazed, like the Angels expelled from Paradise to their smoking and infernal fiefdom newly arrived. The sun crawled up as if loath to illuminate such squalor. And vultures descended from their gyres on silent wings and roosted on the ricks of carrion unperturbed, like hunched and black-robed arbiters of some dispute on the essence of woe.

From Lazaro she heard in passing that, during the night, Fra Ludovico, of the Italian langue, and his shield-bearer, Anacleto of Crato, had both been shot down during the battle by a volley of musketry. Both were still alive in the Italian infirmary, though Lazaro was uncertain of their condition.

Carla's intuition, by contrast, was in no doubt. While she'd traveled to distant worlds on a chimera of Peace, Mattias had attended-directly-to his military matters. But she had no chance to ponder this news any further, for as the sun cleared Monte San Salvatore the Turks attacked again along the whole of the front.

Siege guns bellowed from the heights. Tambours rolled and pipes and imams shrilled. And with ominous creaks and groans, and to the snapping of whips and a chorus of anguish from the numberless blackamoor slaves straining at the ropes, the Moslems hauled up with them from the Marsaxlokk road a siege tower of gigantic proportion. As this cyclopean engine shunted across the Grande Terre Plein, the slaves laid greased planks beneath its wheels, laying a roadway toward the bastion of Provence. In the monster's train came a winding column of musketmen.

Carla watched the tower's progress with a giddy sense of lunacy. If her lost dreams that night had seemed fantastical, the outlandish spectacle unfolding in the arid dust made them seem banal. She looked at the faces of the defenders. The approach of the Leviathan sowed a crop of despair in every Christian breast. Yet to a man and a woman they rose from the ruins when the alarum trumpet called, and they unlimbered their arms and unfurled the colors of the Baptist, and stepped up once more to the gore-boltered rim to defend the Holy Religion against the heathen.

Sunday, August 19, 1565

Auberge of England-Bastion of Provence

Tannhauser awoke to the squeeze of a thick-fingered hand upon his shoulder. As he emerged from a world free of pain and erotic limitation, and in which he'd hoped to abide forever and a day, he opened his eyes and saw Bors.

"No," grunted Tannhauser.

"Yes," said Bors.

Bors proffered a bowl from which arose the smell of coffee. Over previous weeks he'd broken all of Tannhauser's Izmit cups. Somewhere in the distance the sound of gunfire was general. Tannhauser hoisted himself on one elbow and took the thick-rimmed bowl and drank. Despite the rim, the taste afforded him bliss, but he didn't let on.

"You skimped on the sugar," he said.

"I don't know how you can drink that swill."

"Its properties are medicinal and I'm in need."

Bors disappeared. With luck he would never return. Tannhauser glanced sideways and found Amparo peering at him from beneath the sheet. In a state of reckless arousal he'd stolen her from the infirmary while Carla slept. His bargain with the latter, after all, had been to maintain the status quo. Amparo's eyes were bright and saucy. He felt her hand slide across his belly to locate what he realized was an especially splendid erection. He realized also, with dismay, that it would be wasted, for a harsh clatter drew his attention. Bors had returned with Tannhauser's harness and rattled it before him.

"We're summoned before the Grand Master," said Bors.

"I'm sick of the sight and sound of the Grand Master," said Tannhauser. "I'm sick of the war. I'm sick of the Turks. Most of all, I'm sick of you interrupting my connubials."

A snort. "So that's what you call them." With an even more disagreeable racket Bors dropped the armor by the bed and left.

With a deal of unmanly groans and foul blasphemies, Tannhauser clambered to his feet and got into his clothes. With every bone and joint proclaiming its anguish, he felt close on a hundred years old. Amparo pranced around him and helped where she could, but undermined her efforts,
not to say his own, by virtue of being quite nude. As he contemplated the armor and its evil weight, and being still in possession of the means, his spirit rebelled against the Grand Master's authority and he wrestled Amparo to her knees on the mattress's edge. Still standing, he entered her from behind. She made no protest, though the maneuver was accompanied by screams of delectation that might have been mistaken for such. He heard Bors cough violently outside the door and as a concession to public seemliness he clapped one hand around Amparo's mouth. She bit the web of his thumb and the screams were muffled to whimpers. Both the bite and the sounds served to further fan his abandon. His other hand he cupped around her breast and with the leverage thus provided he swived her with gusto until his seed erupted inside her. In the normal run he wouldn't have been quite so brisk, for in indulging his pleasures he inclined toward the leisurely rather than the frantic, but if the Grand Master was kept waiting overlong, agents less delicate than Bors might happen along, and that wouldn't do. To Amparo's strident chagrin he withdrew, his sweat dripping onto her arse. He smothered her mouth with a compensatory kiss.