The Religion

by Tim Willocks

  Starkey seemed to enjoy hearing the language as much as he did. “You have a mighty task on your hands.”

  “Mattias was taken by the Mussulmen when only a boy, and saw his family butchered in the bargain, so I beg you to forgive his blasphemies, which are indeed many. Christ still speaks to his heart, if he would but listen.”

  Starkey studied him and said, “I do believe you’re sincere.”

  Bors blinked. What kind of scoundrel did Starkey take him for? “In matters of religion I am always sincere.”

  “No doubt you discuss things of great importance,” said Mattias in Italian, “but I’ve matters of my own to broach.”

  “The subject was eternal salvation,” said Starkey. “Your salvation.”

  “Then you can help me,” said Mattias. “I’ve a mind to visit Mdina, but in the bazaar I learned that Marshal Copier’s cavalry regard any foragers, scouts, or watering parties much as wolves regard rabbits. I’d rather not be hacked to pieces and need more protection than that afforded by my wits.”

  “They’ve served you well enough to date,” replied Starkey.

  “The Turks aren’t so quick to indulge their bloodlust,” said Mattias. “They’re a civilized race. They enjoy talking. Armored knights on horseback are poor of hearing, especially when they see a man in a turban.”

  “Would you take Lady Carla with you?” asked Starkey.

  This took Bors by surprise, and he would have stumbled, but Mattias reacted as if no question could have been more natural. “Not today, though it is her wish, as she’d like to be with her father through these dark days. But without a passe porte—for her and her guardians—I wouldn’t be allowed to take them beyond the walls. May I take this as an offer to provide us with such a safe conduct?”

  Guardians, by God, thought Bors. Just like that. With a passe porte through Kalkara Gate—and a boat—they’d all be gone.

  “Then my lady hasn’t found this boy of hers,” said Starkey.

  Mattias had intended the high command to remain ignorant of this matter, lest they interpret it for what it was, a motive for treachery. But again Mattias replied without a blink.

  “Do you know the boy and where he might be?”

  It was Starkey, rather, who blinked. He shook his head. “In the years before our Grand Master was elected, the moral conduct of the Order became degenerate. Men are only men. Young knights join the Order full of pride and chivalric dreams, and find a life of fasting and privation at the edge of the world. Holy Vows were made but not always kept. There was dicing, whoring, drunkenness, even dueling. Only the severest discipline can stop young men from doing what young men do. La Valette imposed it. As he says, ‘Our vows are inhumanly hard by design. They are the hammer and the anvil by which our strength is forged.’ ”

  “You’ve avoided my question,” said Mattias. “Do you know the boy?”

  “I’ve no idea who Lady Carla’s son might be—nor with whom she transgressed.” He looked discomfited. “Was it a member of the Order?”

  “The contessa’s boy was born on All Hallows’ Eve,” said Mattias.

  He’d avoided revealing the boy’s pedigree. That the Inquisitor, Ludovico, was his father was reason enough.

  “I wouldn’t count on the boy knowing that,” said Starkey. “The Maltese are a primitive, insular breed and very pious. What will you do if you find him?”

  “I shall reunite him with his mother.”

  “She may be unpleasantly surprised. The life of a swineherd can eradicate every vestige of noble blood.”

  “The contessa has a tender heart.”

  “And after that? Can we continue to rely on your allegiance?”

  “I’ve proved my fidelity to the Religion.”

  “A careful answer,” said Starkey.

  “To a question some would take as a mortal insult,” Mattias replied.

  Starkey retreated with good grace. “No man stands higher in the Grand Master’s esteem.”

  “Then I’ll give you reason to raise it even further—and to send me to Mdina as well.”

  Mattias pointed over Starkey’s shoulder. Starkey turned. They all looked toward Gallows Point, the spit of land that, with Fort Saint Elmo, formed the jaws of the entrance to Grand Harbor from the open sea. True to Mattias’s predictions, Torghoud Rais had arrived with his fleet on May 30. He’d installed his siege guns on Gallows Point and these now battered Saint Elmo from the east. Even as they watched, these batteries fired a cannonade at the smoking fort.

  “The Turks are pouring three hundred rounds an hour into the fort,” said Tannhauser. He indicated the channel across Grand Harbor. “And Torghoud’s guns menace your resupply boats. Instead of killing water boys and camel drovers, let Copier’s cavalry do some man’s work. Send me to Mdina and I’ll guide a company of his horse to Gallows Point.”

  “As always,” said Starkey, “your boldness shames me.”

  “And the passe portes?” said Mattias.

  A sixteen-pounder roared from the cavalier and Bors watched the ball in its flight across the bay. It landed amid a covey of blackamoors extending a Turkish trench and left a tangle of yowling human wreckage as it bounced on down the slit.

  “Come with me,” said Starkey, “and I’ll draw up the necessary papers. I can also tell you where to find Lady Carla’s father, Don Ignacio. He’s in ill health, and may not be sympathetic, but if anyone knows something of the boy, it will be him.”

  Starkey made for the steps. Mattias followed. Bors felt a pang at losing this Olympian vista. “Your Excellency,” he said. Starkey stopped. “With your permission, I’ll stay and spot for the gunners. I see a good number of their shots going to waste.”

  Starkey nodded. “I’ll instruct the crews.”

  Mattias said, “Today is the Moslem Sabbath, so their attack will be unusually fierce.” He took Bors by the shoulder and pointed to the Turkish redoubts on Monte Sciberras. “You see the big white turban?”

  Bors scanned the tiny figures through the powder haze. “I see a thousand white turbans.”

  “One is larger than the rest, to indicate high rank. The green robe. There above the six-gun emplacement, the dragon-mouthed culverins.”

  Bors, still scouring the battlefield, stopped as he found a huge white turban balanced on a green-robed figure the size of a pin. “I have him.”

  “That’s Torghoud Rais.”

  Bors felt his lip curl.

  “He sleeps in the trenches with his men,” said Mattias. “He shares their food. They adore him. His death would be worth a division. Lob some shot his way and chance may do the rest.”

  Mattias turned and Bors grabbed his arm. “Good fortune, my friend.”

  “Tell the women I’ll be back tomorrow night.”

  Bors watched Starkey and Mattias descend the wall stair and cross the roof. A sixteen-pounder boomed from the cavalier and Bors turned to watch the ball’s trajectory and judge any necessary correction. He inhaled with joy. This was the life God had given him. He crossed himself and gave thanks to Jesus Christ.

  Friday, June 8, 1565

  Mdina

  In the heat-stunned wane of the day the winding streets of Mdina put Tannhauser in mind of Palermo. The houses were grand in the Norman style but gloomy, as if built by men too much in awe of their own importance. At the end of a blind alley off King Ferdinand Street he found, as directed, the Casa Manduca. He knocked and a sallow, gray-haired steward, perhaps sixty years in age, opened the door. He wore a dark blue velvet coat from which stains had recently been sponged. He looked and smelled as if he rarely left the building. He bowed as if to do so pained his back. He stared at Tannhauser’s chest without meeting his eyes. Strange servants served strange masters and Tannhauser wondered what he’d find inside.

  “Captain Tannhauser,” he said, “for Don Ignacio.”

  The steward led him down a hall in which the lamplight flickered on lugubrious family portraits and depictions of martyrdom, none of them, in Tannhauser’s
view, of high artistic merit. They passed an unlit staircase and a number of closed doors. The rugs underfoot were moth-eaten, the furniture dour and as heavy as the building itself. It felt like a mausoleum, built to inter a fantasy of grandeur lost. This was where Carla had grown up. In a dark and suffocating tomb of provincial piety. He imagined her youthful spirit struggling to soar in such a prison. His own already gasped after twenty paces. He felt pity for the girl who she’d once been and understood better the restraint that marked her as a woman. Tannhauser felt no surprise that she’d never returned and his tenderness toward her deepened. He couldn’t avoid the thought that by sending the girl into exile, no matter how cruelly, Don Ignacio had done his daughter a favor.

  The steward opened a pair of lacquered doors and stood aside without making an announcement. The air that gusted forth was musty and stifling, a fetor saturate with urine, flatus, and decay. It filled Tannhauser with the urge to flee—from loneliness, from despair, from life sustained at a price not worth the paying. He looked at the steward. Familiar though he must have been, the steward bore the expression of a man trying to quell an intolerable nausea. He bowed from the waist and indicated that Tannhauser enter alone. Tannhauser, regretting that he didn’t have to hand a sprig of rosemary with which to cram his nostrils, walked inside as if stepping in a bath of vomit, and the steward closed the lacquered doors behind him.

  A deep armchair with a footstool was set within the light of a blazing fireplace. In it sat an old man, his skull as hairless and pale as a maggot. He was wrapped in a fur-lined robe, its color dark brown in the firelight. The robe gleamed down one breast with mucus, though whether from the bloodless slit that passed for his mouth or from the enormous lesion distorting his lips and invading his right cheek, Tannhauser couldn’t tell. The man’s white beard was clotted and sticky too. The body within the robe appeared as shriveled as a waterless plant and the etiolate hands protruding from the sleeves were blotched with large brown spots. The eyes that peered out at him were black, with yellow rims about the irises. Tannhauser couldn’t tell how much the old man could see, but sensed that it wasn’t much more than the blur of the fire. This was Don Ignacio Manduca. Tannhauser decided it would be premature to introduce himself as Don Ignacio’s son-in-law-to-be.

  “Do not be alarmed by my affliction,” said Don Ignacio. He spoke Italian with the local accent. His voice was without a quaver, the last manifestation of a strength that barely clung to existence. “It was sent by God as punishment for my sins. If I were to rail against His judgment, I would forfeit the mercies of Purgatory, and so I ask you to accept it, as do I.”

  Tannhauser took a step closer and looked at the lesion again. It was a purple-edged crater with a raw, weeping floor and extended from the rim of his ear to the edge of one nostril, and from his temple to the angle of his jaw. Beneath the jaw, his neck bulged with tumors, as if a cluster of quail’s eggs had been buried beneath the skin.

  Tannhauser said, “Only the vain fear ugliness of the flesh, Don Ignacio. And of all the vices, vanity is the one which least befits a man.”

  “Well said, Captain Tannhauser, well said.” He squinted. “That has the ring of a nom de guerre, if I may so note.”

  “You have the instinct of an adventurer,” Tannhauser replied.

  “An adventurer?” Don Ignacio nodded and grimaced with what Tannhauser took to be pleasure. “Yes, yes, though you might not think so seeing me now. Do I take it you’re wanted for a crime in some far-flung corner of this sick and benighted world?”

  “For many crimes, in many corners.”

  Don Ignacio laughed like a crow at his carrion. “Then you may count on sanctuary here. I fought for Charles Quintus at Tunis, thirty years ago. Under Andrea Doria. I knew many a Landsknecht back then. Didn’t they torch Rome for Quintus too?”

  “And imprisoned the Pope in his own jail.”

  Another dry cackle. “Bold fighters, the Germans, but only as good as their pay. Does La Valette pay you well?”

  “The Grand Master pays me not at all.”

  “Then he’s a fool, though that’s no news to me. If you wish to speak of vanity speak of the knights. The Religion. Bah.” Scorn further contorted his deformed lips. “You’d think Christ was nailed to the Cross for them alone. And Frenchmen to boot, or controlled by them, more or less. More vanity in a Frenchman than lies howling in the bilges of Hell. You’ll forgive my blasphemies, I know, for all Germans are godless at heart. Too much of forest and wilderness in their souls. But the knights vex me, strutting about our island, reshaping our polity to their convenience. And with not so much as a by your leave. Nor am I alone in these sentiments. Without their crusade the Turks would’ve left us alone. Corsairs, yes, we’ve been seeing off those dogs for five hundred years. But an army fit for the reconquest of Granada?” He snorted and slavered and drew a trembling hand across his mouth. “But I take up your time. How may a dying man help the mighty Religion?”

  “I’m not here on behalf of the Religion,” said Tannhauser, “but to ask a personal boon.”

  “I enjoy a rogue’s company and it’s been a good while. Ask what you wish.”

  “I represent Lady Carla, your daughter.”

  The grotesque face turned toward him, as if trying to make out Tannhauser’s features in the gloom. “I have no daughter.” His voice was like a trap snapping shut. “I will die childless and without heirs. By God’s will my line is over, and I am the last of the Manduca.” He indicated the house above them. “All this will go to Mother Church if, God willing, She survives this invasion to claim it.”

  “Lady Carla doesn’t seek your property, or even your acknowledgment.”

  “Lady Carla is a whore.” Don Ignacio’s liver-hued lips contorted and gouts of malodorous phlegm sizzled into the grate. “As was her mother before her. Truly it is said, that marriage is a bargain in which only the entrance is free.”

  Veins seemed to writhe on his flaking scalp and the tumors bulged in his neck and the malignant crater shone like evil in the firelight, as if he were already chained and screaming in some lower circle of Perdition. Tannhauser waited while the old man lanced his own boils.

  “Not a drop of my blood flows in Carla’s veins. A chevalier of Auvergne was her father, one of the pure and holy knights—oh yes—who cavorted in my bed while I defended the empire. And no sooner was Carla herself of an age to spread her legs, than another of the glorious brethren stepped into the breach. They deposit their sacred seed between trips to the confessional.” His spidery fists clenched, the thumbs and forefingers rendered immobile and twisted by gouty deformities. “My forefathers built this house as conquerors. In my custody it was turned into a brothel.”

  The news that Carla shared no kinship with this creature could hardly have been more welcome. Tannhauser kept the contempt from his voice. “Does Carla know she’s not your daughter?”

  Don Ignacio stabbed a knobby finger at the ulcer eating his face, and no doubt eating his mind away too. “What do you think is the cause of this obscenity? Decades of deception and pretense. Lies. Lies. Lechery and lies. And shame and sham and fornication and whispers of mockery and laughter behind my back. No. Carla knows nothing.”

  Don Ignacio leaned forward with a doleful expression. He exchanged his morbid self-loathing for a more poignant torment. “I raised her as my own,” he said, his voice not far short of a wail. “And not merely to protect my honor but because I loved her more dearly than any other living soul. Ask her to swear—by the Virgin of Sorrows—and she will tell you as much herself.”

  The man seemed to think he deserved some sympathy, perhaps even admiration.

  Tannhauser could not have been more revolted by this display.

  “And yet for all that—for all that I loved her—she betrayed me and the name I’d bequeathed her with a whoreson of the Baptist.”

  “Her lover was no knight of the convent but a Dominican priest.”

  “Knight, priest, Dominican, a pox on them all.”


  The old man’s histrionics confirmed Tannhauser in his view that when misfortune befell the privileged they bore it with far less dignity, and a great deal more self-pity, than did the rest of the human race. He said, “Tell me, Your Excellency, what was the fate of Carla’s child? Her son. What was his name? Who raised him and where?”

  Ignacio’s eyes gleamed with malice. “So at last her conscience pricks her. Believe me when I say that it’s better that my daughter never knows.”

  Tannhauser sighed and wiped his brow. The heat and the fetor were appalling. “I’m as keen to find this boy as she is,” he said. “I ask this favor as a personal courtesy to me.”

  Don Ignacio summoned a degenerate leer, made the more grotesque by his deformity. “So she’s opened her thighs for you too.”

  Tannhauser grabbed him by the rabbit-fur lapels of his robe and hoisted him from the chair. Beneath the heavy velvet he was even more wasted than Tannhauser expected and he flew into the air with a wail of outrage. Tannhauser crammed him to the hearthstone and grabbed his neck, his own stomach turning as the tumorous eggs undulated under his fingers. Don Ignacio’s outrage vanished and turned to terror as Tannhauser pushed his diseased face to within inches of the searing flames crackling in the grate. The raw pink floor of the crater glazed over and its leaking suppurations popped and sputtered in the heat. Don Ignacio screamed.

  “You disgusting old cuckold. Tell me how to find the boy, you turd, or this night will prove a long one, even for you.”

  The old man cried out into the flames that charred his brows.

  “The boy is dead!”

  Tannhauser dragged him from the hearth and hurled him back into the chair. His hand was sticky with the slime from the robe. He wiped it across the unravaged half of Don Ignacio’s face. The skin was so fragile he felt it almost tear. As the old man heaved for breath, Tannhauser leaned over him, one hand on either of the armrests.

  “How do you know this?”

  The slit mouth gaped and closed. “He was rowed out to sea and tied in a sack and—” He stopped as he sensed how close he was to further torture. “He was not the first. The sea floor is littered with bastards!”