The Religion (79 page)

"Sanjak Cheder," said the youth.

The Sanjak had vowed to take Saint Michel or die in the attempt. Orlandu said a silent prayer for Admiral Del Monte. There was a rough shout from behind and Orlandu turned. The hostler was calling them back to work. Orlandu took one last look at the distant battle. The Turks occupied the wall in fantastic numbers.

Monday, August 20, 1565

Grand Master's Stables-Auberge of England-Auberge of Italy

The Spanish girl was comely. Few men of refinement would have called her pretty; indeed, she was strange in looks and manner both. Yet she evinced her own wayward aura, an unpredictability of temper, a sensuality in movement, an inborn lasciviousness primal as an unmapped forest. He knew that the German had chosen her and this incited the voluptuary within himself. Tannhauser was everything he was not, the antithesis of everything he'd set himself to be and represent. An apostate, a criminal, a libertine; a consort of atheists, Moslems, and Jews; a man proud to be steeped in cupidity and sin. Despite that, Ludovico felt that they were bound together, twinned in contrariety, mirrored as in a glass darkly.

Amparo worked in the broad central passageway that ran between the facing rows of box stalls. In the shafts of light that fell from the high windows, motes of straw and dirt danced about her. She was brushing scurf from the flank and stifle of Tannhauser's golden horse. She wore a leaf-green dress, faded by the sun to the color of early autumn and worn ragged and thin by use. She wore nothing beneath it, like a street whore. At first glance she was all bone and sinew, lean as a greyhound, but as she brandished the dandy brush the fullness of her buttocks and breasts was revealed, and the cloth clung to her loins in patches of sweat and her hair swayed in luxuriant curls, and Ludovico was persuaded of her beauty.

He stood inside in the stable doorway, out of the sun, and watched her
for a long time. The raw smells of the place were a tonic for he'd come direct from the fouler stench of the battle renewed that day for Saint Michel. It was strange that the shit of horses should be so much less noxious than the shit of men, but so it was. War generated shit in even greater abundance than blood and Ludovico was sick of both.

The janissaries had attacked that morning for the third day running and had almost overwhelmed the crumbling fortress. Ludovico, his newly cracked ribs robbing him of breath, had been dispatched with a contingent of Italians and Aragonese across the boat bridge. After hours of rabid killing amid rivers of fire, their counterattack had left the Sanjak dead on the field and his ravaged corps in retreat. There'd been no pursuit. Saint Michel had started the day with less than seven hundred men, none of them lacking for wounds, and they hadn't the numbers. More than that, those still standing by the finish hadn't the heart.

After such an episode it was sweet to watch a pretty girl as she groomed a horse, and reason enough to be here of itself, but he had another purpose. Sweeping a patch of the stable floor that was already quite spotless was a wrinkled Sicilian crone inches shorter than her broomstick. As Ludovico entered he glanced at her and she bent in a servile curtsy and shook her head. He motioned to the door. She scurried out. He walked on down the passageway and Amparo looked over her shoulder and saw him and stopped and straightened up. She put a protective hand on the horse's flaxen mane and continued to stroke his shoulder with the brush. She looked Ludovico in the chest, rather than the face, but without alarm. Her odd, asymmetrical face was untouched by either weariness or fear, and it occurred to him that no one in Malta looked this way, not anymore. He wondered what power had allowed her to sustain such serenity. The mere sight of it lifted his spirit. His insight deepened into Tannhauser and his choice. He smiled and bowed his head.

"Greetings, my child," he said, in Spanish.

She curtsied, as if she found the practice unnatural, one hand still steadying the horse. Ludovico held his hand out to the horse's muzzle and it licked the salt from his fingers. Its tongue was at once rough and soft.

"This conflict is hard on the animals," he said. "The noise, the confinement. They also sense death and sorrow."

She watched the horse lick him without replying.

"Amparo, is it not?" She nodded. "Does the horse have a name?"

"Buraq," she said.

"Ah," said Ludovico, "the horse of the Prophet Mohammed, which was said to have wings. The Arabs love such fanciful myths. But this beast looks fleet enough to deserve the honor. He belongs to Captain Tannhauser."

She nodded. Still she didn't look at his face.

"And you are Tannhauser's sweetheart."

She shuffled, a little uneasy.

"Forgive my discourtesy. I'm Fra Ludovico." He dipped his head, and realized his armor was freshly badged with blood and other unsavory fluids violently spilled. "Forgive also my foul appearance, which you and Buraq both must find quite repugnant."

She turned away and set to brushing Buraq's neck.

He was entitled to take offense at this, but didn't. "I'm told by some of the soldiers that you read palms," he said. "They place great store in your skill."

She continued brushing.

"Will you read mine?" he asked. "I'll pay you."

"I don't take pay," she said. "It isn't something to be sold."

"It's something sacred, then."

She didn't turn. "It's something that comes not from me, and so is not mine to sell."

"From a world beyond this one?" he said.

"If the power speaks in this world, how can it be beyond it?"

He hadn't expected dialectics. Yet she appeared to state what to her seemed utter simplicity.

He said, "Is it the power of God?"

She paused, as if she'd not considered this before, then said, "The power of God speaks through all things."

"All things? Ravens, choughs, cats?"

"And stones and trees and the sea and the sky above. Of course."

"And the Church?" he said.

She shrugged, as if she reckoned it by far the poorest of such vehicles. "That too."

Ludovico held out his palm. As if it were a chore to be quickly dismissed Amparo stuck the brush beneath her arm and took his hand. She stroked its lines and calluses with her fingertips. Her touch pleased him. Her face revealed nothing.

"Some hands speak, some do not," she said. She let go of his hand. "Your hand does not."

She said it not as a rebuff, but as a matter of fact. Nevertheless, and even though he set no store by such black mischief, he was disappointed. He also found that he despised her. The feeling came to him suddenly, like nausea. Her manner offended him. This slip of a girl, this exotic slut, whose contribution to the siege was what? Or to anything else of value on this earth? She groomed her master's horse and spread her legs for him. She traded augury and superstition with the vulgar soldiery. She flaunted her breasts in her flimsy wanton's dress. He'd seen her like before, in every stratum high and low. Women who justified their existence by the hole between their legs and nothing more. Who traded their flesh for a living; for vanity and a smattering of power; for this abomination falsely labeled Love. They were a disease. He noticed for the first time that her eyes were of different colors. One brown, one gray. As plain a stigma of witchery as any catalogued or known, as authorities as diverse as Apollonides and Kramer and Sprenger had attested. The efflux of beams from such eyes, being the conveyers of evil spirits, were able to strike through the eyes of those they met and thence fly to the heart, from whence they rose to condense in the blood and infect the inward parts. Aristotle himself had averred that a mirror dreads the eyes of an unclean woman, for its sheen grows cloudy and dull at her gaze.

He said, "Is it God who speaks in so curious a manner? Or the Devil?"

"I know nothing of the Devil," she said. "And if he exists, what help needs he from me? Most of all here?"

A cunning reply, again innocently framed. He considered exploring this subject more, but she'd said more than enough of a necromantic character to condemn her should the need arise, and witnesses to that effect were plentiful. He didn't doubt the actuality of witchcraft. Who did? It was overdiagnosed to be sure: warts and bristles on an old haggard's chin and a cow whose milk had gone sour were grounds enough for the peasantry; lurid accounts of flying through the air and the ritual devouring of children were crude fantasies; and the Inquisition was skeptical of supernatural forces, as was he. Yet commerce with Satan took place. On this the Church was unequivocal. Amparo took up her brush and continued her work on the horse.

"I would have you do me a service," he said.

She turned back toward him, her fraudulent mask of innocence replaced
by a feral wariness. He realized that she hadn't once looked him in the face, let alone the eye, as if she knew that if she did so he'd see her true nature. He was more than ever convinced that her soul was polluted and her character pernicious. How easily he'd been fooled into ignoring the facts. How insidious was the Fascination cast by a woman's erotic allure. Was Carla really any better? Perhaps she was worse. Time would tell. He could have matched the divot in Amparo's face with another, and dragged her to the bales in the feed room and torn the threadbare linen from her skin, and profaned himself upon her flesh. It would have been no more than his right, earned and sanctified by the blood he'd spilled in battle. But he didn't. He contained himself.

"Come with me," he said.

He stared at her until she understood that refusal wasn't a choice. She followed him outside where Castel Sant'Angelo loomed above them. Anacleto rose from a bench. His whole body was rigid with the effort of containing the agony that racked him. His right cheekbone was gone; Ludovico had held him down while the surgeons extracted the fragments, along with his eye. He'd wept at his friend's valor, for Anacleto had clenched the gag between his jaws and made not a sound. What skin was left had been sutured together like a purse string and pus oozed yellow from the puckered mass. His eye socket was a moist black hole, painted with a poultice brayed from moss found growing on a human skull.

"This is Anacleto," said Ludovico. "He is my friend. Mark his deformities well."

Amparo wouldn't look at him. Ludovico grabbed her by the hair and jerked her face upward. She gasped as she saw Anacleto's wounds and closed her eyes. Anacleto flinched.

"Mark his deformities well," Ludovico repeated, "for your captain was likely the perpetrator."

Amparo squirmed away and he let go.

"Anacleto needs opium to heal his wounds and help allay his anguish." At great cost Ludovico had purchased a thimbleful from the Maltese scoundrel, Gullu Cakie. The time had come where gold had little value, for no one expected ever to be able to spend it. Cakie had told him, under menace, where he might get more. "Tannhauser possesses this medicine, which is in rare supply," said Ludovico. "You will bring some to me, tonight, at the Auberge of Italy."

"You'd have me steal?" she asked.

"The means of obtaining it are your concern. I'll be in your debt, which is something you'd be wise to value. See that it's done."

"And if I do not?"

Ludovico took her arm, in a kindly fashion, and walked her away from Anacleto. He leaned toward her ear and spoke softly. "Tannhauser intends to marry your mistress."

Amparo blinked but seemed unperturbed. "It's their bargain," she said. "It's been their bargain from the start."

"The marriage is by way of payment?"

Amparo nodded, her eyes turned down.

Carla had deceived him, then. Fresh hope flourished in his breast.

"Nevertheless," he said, "Tannhauser is in love with Carla now."

"He loves her," she corrected, "as I love her."

"He is a man. As you know better than any." He saw the seed of doubt take hold. "He told me himself that he loved her. And they were seen in the throes of a tryst. You are betrayed."

The words pierced her heart. She put both hands to her mouth and shook her head.

"Ask poor Anacleto-and tell that he lies."

She tried to pull away but he held on to her. "Look for yourself and you will see." He let go. "Now, do as I bid. Regard my request as the errand of mercy which it is, and God will guide you in this, as in all things."

Tannhauser sat in his tub and watched the sun go down behind Sciberras. The solar disc was a dark and violent red, and was wreathed with tendrils of smoke that rose from the corpse-choked no-man's-land below. He tried, briefly, to read some significance beyond the obvious into the spectacle, but his mind was too blunted for such conceits, and he gave in to a stupefied awe that left no space for Philosophy.

His body was a mass of pain, lacerations, and swellings. His skin was a mottled patchwork of yellow and blue. Sheep-gut stitches protruded here and there, some of his own insertion. The climb into the water had almost defeated him. The brine exacerbated the bite of his wounds. His eyes were gritty with powder black and dust. His hands felt bloated and clublike, his fingers swollen as tubers. If a stone from a Turkish culverin had landed on his head, he wouldn't have found it cause for great regret,
but the likelihood was remote for the siege guns were silent, and their Topchu crews no doubt as weary as he.