John le Grant said, ‘They’re not fools, you know. Some of these fellows will be veterans of Caffa. They know what a feint is.’
‘But they don’t know what your little bundles can do,’ Nicholas said. ‘And they haven’t the strength for heavy digging. There hasn’t been a longbow on those walls for two days. Even if they suspect, they can’t cover all three places at once. And there remains double bluff. We can always attack from the south, at a pinch.’
‘At a hell of a pinch,’ said John le Grant. Tonight, two of the piles, including the highest bridge, would be offered nothing but brushwood. The third, already made half of stone, would be raised through the night to ground level and across that, the attack would be made in the dark just before dawn. But long before that, he and John and two chosen men would have planted the mines with their fuses. When the army attacked, they would attack a collapsed wall, over rubble.
‘If you’ve got your sums right,’ Nicholas said. ‘You don’t look as if you could get anything right. Go off and sleep. It’ll be dark soon enough. I’ve sent Pesaro away, and Astorre will keep the gunners at work.’
He watched John trudge off. On him and on Astorre had rested the burden of maintaining the guns, for the noise of the cannonade was vital to their stratagem. Even so, they might all be shot as they crossed the moat with their explosives, or wounded before they could leave, having planted them. Not a bad way to go, in a blaze of your own gunpowder. Either way, it would damage the walls, and Astorre and Pesaro between them might manage to scale them. John had made quite a serious attempt to stop him joining the mining expedition, and then had dropped it. After all, the work was done, and anyone could take Famagusta now who was willing to pay the price in lives from both sides. They would possibly attack with all the more force, to avenge him. Which was not to say that he intended to be a martyr tonight, if he could help it.
He slept a little, waking in his pavilion at dusk of his own accord. The rain had stopped its vibrating patter above him, although the air was laden with moisture and the planked floor of the tent moved on its bedding of grey sand and mud. It was not really cold. Except on the mountains, it never became cold in this island. It seemed a long way, though, from the summer perfume of myrtle and orange-blossom, the brilliance of white fluted marble, the wreathing steam, the orderly practices of the sugar-yards, the worksongs of the scything and the vintage, the glory of the sun setting, of the sun rising out of the sea. From a valley full of doubt and serpents and mischief, sunlight and another manner of glory.
He was glad that the design of his own life seemed, in the end, to be taking a shape that was not entirely haphazard. If, in the real world, you couldn’t always realise the perfection of the model, the miniature, the diagram, at least the pattern had something in it to be pleased about. His friends would never lack: his Bank would see to that. Equally, his young step-daughters in Bruges would be protected. Here, if he didn’t return, Primaflora would receive his letter, and his parcel, and would understand why he had done what he had done. And far away, his child would grow, in peace henceforth, with a father who would never know he was not his own, and who, with Nicholas gone, would have no reason for spleen or for bitterness. To be his friend, the boy would have Diniz, who would think him his cousin, and who would grow to gentle manhood in the vineyards of Portugal, and honour Tristão his father. And for a loving mother the child would have Katelina, who would cherish him now, and make what she could of her marriage, for the sake of what she had found in Kalopetra.
For himself, nothing bound him. He was vaguely surprised that what sense of loss he did have seemed to be connected in some way with Cyprus. It was the first place he had come to in his own right, with something to give. He had had no time to acquaint himself with his fief, twice seen, and well enough served by its own. Two-thirds of the land he had never visited. He had done what the Phoenicians had done, and the Byzantines, the Romans, the Crusaders, the Genoese and the Mamelukes. He had come for his own ends to this island, and used it. Of his conscious will he had given it nothing, except a single ruler where there had been two. And a sugar factory.
John le Grant said, ‘Nicholas? We would go. They’ve broken through, and the tunnel is ready.’ And very willingly, he got up to prepare.
They wore brigandines and soft boots and dulled metal helms strapped over a coif of thick wool. Each had a heavy satchel, a pick, and a knife sheathed at his belt. In addition, Nicholas carried a short bow at his shoulder, with a quiver. They entered the trench, leaving Astorre and Thomas and Pesaro standing silently at the entrance. Then they made their way crouching along it, their feet splashing through muddy water. The way was lined with long narrow carts, each piled with stone, ready for its last journey. They avoided them by touch, for here there was no glimmer of light. Overhead, the nightly bombardment had started.
The night was so dark that the end of the trench was perceptible only as a lightening of the murk, where the ditch of the town lay ahead. Before that, on their left, was a speck of light that didn’t come from ditch or cutting, but from the tunnel so laboriously bored, and whose end John’s sappers had now finally opened. The men who had pierced the final aperture were waiting to greet them: identifiable as a body of sweat, and heat and small movements that resolved into a murmur, a clink of spade and a clap on shoulder or back. Then they withdrew, leaving the task force of four at the foot of the ditch of Famagusta.
This was immense, and hewn out of bare rock, although clothed now with dirt and bushes and rubbish. Walking to the right in its shadowy depths, one would come sooner or later to one of the three great heaps of rubble that now patched it. Further south was another, and bigger one. But to reach the third, Nicholas bent low and, crossing the ditch like a lizard, reached the base of the wall and, in its shadow, followed it round to the left, John and the other two following.
No challenge came from above. The wall towered, impossibly high, its profile distorted by the hide-covered galleries. Designed long ago, the defences of Famagusta consisted of towers and wall-walks, battlements and arrow slits, without proper seating for cannon, or for the ventilation that cannon demanded. And on this stretch, in particular, there was no provision for crossfire. So the wall here was stronger and higher, and the manning of its towers stretched thinnest. Especially when the defending force was painfully slight. And especially when all its fire was being drawn to the southern stretch. All the time he was running, Nicholas was half deaf from the open-air thud of Astorre’s guns, maintaining their pre-arranged and regular sequence. In response, there came the pop of fire from the battlements. Against that noise, their presence would hardly be heard, or the stealthy sounds John would make, sinking his petards. Or, later, the manhandling of the carts and the completion of the bridge that, sooner or later, would conduct the whole army across to a ruined wall.
Before he expected, his feet met blocks of stone, and he realised that he had come to the edge of the great sprawling tip of the infill. He waited, and stopped John and the others. Then, keeping close to the wall, they began the swift, careful climb over the rubble. Then John gripped his arm briefly and left him. One of the sappers went with him. The other went on and up, his hand holding his satchel. Nicholas stood, watching the place where the wails met the sky, and the towers, and the galleries, and unslung his bow and bent it.
They had practised this, through these last days. Pesaro knew Famagusta, and had found others who could describe the walls, and their thickness, and their character. From as close as he dared, John had surveyed them himself, over and over. He knew exactly where he wished to slot his explosive, and how long a fuse he needed to give it. The largest explosion would take place at the base, where he was now working and that, too, would take the longest to plant. The guns continued to fire. There were men, Nicholas saw, on the wall-top above him, although not many. Twice, he saw the glint of metal and once, when the cannon fell silent, he heard distant voices. Beyond the opposite rim of the ditch lay the stretch of rutted wasteland
that lay exposed and empty between Famagusta and the bivouacs of his army. Within it, grey and white in their sockets, lay balls fallen short of their target. They reminded him of his puzzles. He looked up suddenly at a noise.
Someone or something had tumbled. Someone. One of the sappers, from a precarious perch a third of the way up the wall. Nicholas could see where he lay, his limbs cocked and black against the paler stone of the wall. Whoever he was, he had had the guts not to shout. John? John?
No. John was ahead of him, softly running and climbing. Nicholas followed, his eyes searching above. The line of the wall-walk was not suddenly crowded. Of the two galleries he could see, he had already decided that one was unmanned. But the other had somebody in it. Several men, all of them at the end closest above them, and peering.
Nicholas caught John by the arm and they stood, their backs pressed to the wall. Far to one side, Nicholas now saw the remaining sapper, also frozen, his eyes on the gallery. The fallen man lay in the ditch, black upon black, and made no sound. A long moment passed. A gun boomed; then another, blanching the sky to the south. They stood in the shadows, unmoving. Then suddenly the sky above them flashed a stuttering crimson, and iron balls and lead shot rapped into the ditch from above, in a din of sharp hackbut explosions. Chipped rock flew, and the noise of it ricochetted from wall to wall of the ditch and then faded. He could hear John breathing, and in the distance, distinguish the dim shape of the sapper. He hadn’t moved. They hadn’t been seen. It had been a nervous reaction – a test – an act of meaningless defiance from the worn soldiers watching above. They waited. Voices came from the battlements, and a twinkle of steel. Voices from the gallery. A more authoritative voice from above, and dwindling noise, and an absence of glitter. And finally, only the gallery, silent again, with the men on duty watching unspeaking.
After a long spell, John touched Nicholas on the shoulder and pointed. Nicholas nodded. Then, as John began to climb to where the other had been, Nicholas felt his way to the fallen sapper.
He was dead. Nicholas knelt, then lifted him to the base of the wall and knelt again, to make certain. He felt a touch on his shoulder. The other sapper was looking at his partner. Then he whispered, ‘Ser Niccolò? You too?’
After that scything spray of stone he had felt the blood, but whatever had cut him, it was minor. He shook his head. The man said, ‘Broke my arm. You’ve to finish mine off. Master John’s going up for the high one.’
A one-armed man was no use. Nicholas sent him off back to the tunnel, and glanced upwards. Master John, a natural chimpanzee, was always going for the high one. If he had been able to shout, Nicholas would have told John to let well alone. But he couldn’t, so he climbed to the disabled man’s perch, and began a sensitive, confident probe, and discovered quite soon how far the man had progressed, and finished the work, fast and easily. He had wanted to do this job with John alone, but miners were professionals, and didn’t like laymen interfering. He cut the correct length of fuse, and set it, and lit it, and looked to see how John was doing.
The last mine was giving him trouble, partly because his position on the wall was so insecure. Once, this had been an expanse of perfect, squared masonry, but three years of siege and three months of heavy bombardment had produced enough gouges and bruising to offer some kind of a foothold. Where there was a real flaw was where the explosive itself was being planted.
Because it was difficult, John was unable, he could see, to keep watch around him. The battlements offered small danger: such was the slope of the wall that a man would have had to lean far out to see him. The penthouse above them was different. For the present, John’s position was wholly in shadow and the bombardment, if the single, continuous shots could be called so, was lighting the sky from emplacements which, as they planned, left their stretch of wall in welcome shadow. It was possible that flares might be dropped. The real threat was more substantial, and imminent. Somewhere in that clouded black sky there was a moon due to rise very soon now. The disturbance had slowed them, and so had the loss of two workers. Now he and John were still on the wall and, caught by light, would be fully in view from the gallery.
John was not far away, and the stretch of wall that lay between them was not wholly smooth. Bit by bit, Nicholas began to inch towards him. He had progressed halfway when John raised his head and noticed. Nicholas pointed to the sky, made a gesture, and then clutched the wall, swearing. It was his year for skinned fingers, and climbing. It was the end of his year. He knew anyway what John was doing, which was setting the fuse. He waited, watching John’s hands shielding the spark from the tinder, and the moment he finished, he turned to descend at his back.
He had taken two steps when the guns stopped.
It had happened before: a mortar would jam, overheat, miss its turn. If caught climbing you checked and adhered to the wall, until the bombardment resumed to cover the rasp of your movements again.
It was not a good place to have to wait, this time. His handholds were slight, and his footholds were almost non-existent: from the way John was clinging, he was worse off. And to the right and above them were the black floor and lighter awning and sides of the gallery, which contained three nervous men who had already let off their handguns at random. His fingers scraping, Nicholas let his mind dwell for a moment on fuses. They were lit, but they were long. They had been deliberately set to defer the explosions. There was intended to be time to descend, to retire through the covert and to supervise the fast, careful infill of stone that would give them their bridge when the walls fell. Of course, if a random ball hit a mine, the wall would collapse before that, killing them, and the men in the gallery.
He had cramp in both the hands stretched above him. On his right, John suddenly changed his grip, grunting. The guns had not begun again. None of them. Why? His ears sang. It was silent, and they were marooned in the silence. He turned his head, and saw John’s face, tilted enquiringly. There was no point in waiting. He jerked his head, and began to move down.
As if he had thrown a torch into oil, light exploded. Radiance spread from the sky, and every object in the wide landscape stood revealed by it. The wall, the ditch, the countryside, the camps, the immobile guns and their gunners appeared painted with light on stark vellum. Above, the cloud banks had parted: the moon poured down its drenching blue brilliance. Below, a serpent of flame wreathed the ground: a burning river of light which wound from behind a dark knoll and spilled, slow as honey, towards the blind gates of Famagusta.
He witnessed a great procession, black-edged, bearing hundreds of flambeaux. The torches blazed upon tall tasselled banners, and lit robes of white and scarlet and gold, borne by men with innocent faces. In their hands shone the emblems and harness of sanctity: gold rood glimmered, and monstrance and thurible; and the Crucifix from St Sophia itself rode the night like a ship on their shoulders. Behind it, rank upon quiet rank, marched the Knights of St John of Jerusalem, the white linen cross on their mantles. And the singing was not in his head, but rose from the cowled, slow-moving figures who edged the bright file with their tapers. Their petition reached to the walls, clear and pure, low and rhythmic, invoking God, and forgiveness, and pity.
Behind that, laden with food, came the wagons.
Nicholas turned his face to his arms, and was silent.
He couldn’t tell when the singing came to an end, or the Archbishop’s voice was first raised, addressing the city; offering it God’s peace and succour so long as the Feast of Christ lasted. He didn’t move until John’s hand smote his weak shoulder, and John’s voice said, with desperate hoarseness, ‘You thrawn God-damned fiend of a Fleming!’
He lifted his head, and they looked at one another. John’s face was furrowed with tears. Nicholas said, ‘I didn’t know if they would do it.’ His arms over his head were an agony. He began to bring them down, still in a daze, and then remembered, with terrible clarity, where he was and what he was doing. At the same moment, he saw John’s eyes suddenly widen. The fuses. The fuses
must be put out, or the miracle that was happening out there would be useless.
They scrambled, this time, as if secrecy didn’t matter, although of course it did. If they were seen, they’d be picked off. If they failed to reach the fuses in time, they’d be killed with the rest on the wall, and only a little earlier than the men of both sides who would open fire, without doubt, claiming treachery. They shared the task between them, descending first to the biggest mine, by the base of the wall. Next, the one fixed by the dead man. And lastly, the two higher up.
By then, the fuses were short, and there was no time to be nice about quietness. In any case, the wall-walk above them was empty. Only the hide-covered penthouse was occupied, and the three men in that were jammed at the opposite end, craning to watch the brilliant theatre; the exchange at the gates upon which their survival depended. Breathless and dizzy, Nicholas found and pinched out his fuse, and looked across gasping to John. The task was almost done. In a moment, they could take stock, and be thankful together.
Hampered by his terrible perch, the engineer, as before, was making slow work of it. As before, he had not wasted energy in trying to keep watch about him. Not as before, someone this time was leaning out, watching him from the gallery.
Race of Scorpions Page 60
