Tim Willocks

by Tim Willocks

  For the Religion he would have volunteered for anything. Like all the lads, he looked upon the knights as gods on earth. He’d been given a boning knife—honed to a crescent by long use and razor sharp—and told that since they’d soon be killing Moslems, they might as well start on dogs, who before God were but beasts of a similar order, the principal difference being that the latter smelled less vile and would not go to Hell. This observation set Orlandu to wondering whether or not dogs had souls. He was assured by the chaplain, Father Guillaume, who blessed the juvenile butchers before they set off on their crusade, that they did not, any more than a sheep or a hare, but so particular was the way in which each canine met its death, and so poignant was its love of life, that by the first sundown Orlandu was convinced to the contrary.

  When each dog was killed the boy took the carcass to a wagon by the Provençal Gate, where the dead dog was gutted so that its entrails could be used to poison the wells of the Marsa once the Turks arrived. What remained was taken to the bonfire of hair and bone outside the walls. By the end of the second day, by which time most of the boys had begged to be excused these hideous duties, Orlandu’s tattered clothes were stiff with the excrement and gore of the animals he’d killed and gutted and hauled off to the pyre. His inflamed flesh ached with more bites than he could count. He was nauseated. He was drained. He was glutted and revolted by slaughter. And he decided that Father Guillaume was right about their souls after all, for to believe otherwise made the work too harrowing to bear.

  He slept on the docks alone, on a pallet of sacked grain. When he rose and scouted the alleyways for prey, people stepped aside, as if he were a bedlamite lately escaped from a refuge for the deranged. At first he imagined that this was because he stank, but the look in the eyes of the baker from whom he bought a breakfast loaf told him that it was because he inspired a repellent awe. The baker feared him. After this he walked taller and wore a stern and impassive countenance in the manner of the knights. From the tanner he procured a piece of sheepskin, and he rubbed the hide in chicken fat, and tied it nap-to-skin around one forearm. Thus armored, he was able to tempt a dog’s jaws before cutting its throat.

  Even so, the teeth bruised his arm to the bone, for it was the fiercest and canniest of the outlaw curs that had survived the cull to date, and by the second nightfall his left hand was blue to the knuckles. The watchmen on the docks shared sweetbreads and kidneys, roasted on the coals of their brazier, and they pressed him for news of the hunt, and he joined in their vulgar laughter at things he’d not found funny at the time. They asked him how many he’d killed. He couldn’t remember. Twenty, thirty, more? They glanced at his bruises and wounds when they thought him distracted and exchanged mysterious looks and thought him strange. He left them to their fire, and by the time he lay down again upon his sacks and looked up at the stars, he was not the boy who’d risen the day before. Not yet a man, perhaps, but a killer of sorts, which was almost as good. How much harder could it be to kill a Moslem?

  He was a bastard and, because an outcast whether he liked it or no, he’d chosen a life on the waterfront over slavery on the pig farm where he’d been raised. He labored in the docks, careening the galleys, boiling pitch and graving the filth-sodden hulls. Repulsive work, but he was free. And free to dream: of being a pilot in the Religion’s navy. Tonight he stared at the sky and watched the polestar in the Little Bear’s tail. He fell asleep and his slumbers were troubled by malevolent spirits and menacing dreams, which were dark and bloody and bereft of consolation.

  Daybreak brought the beautiful pure white greyhound, watching Orlandu as if it knew his dreams and had stood a sentinel’s vigil over his sleep. At first he thought it a spirit, and with that his belief in canine souls was restored, not to be shaken again even when the vision proved corporeal. When the white greyhound fled into the purple-shadowed streets, Orlandu followed.

  Like a ghost in a fable that expounded the nature of futility, the white hound led him through the hovels of Kalkara Creek, and on into the city, and toward the voices raised in praise of the reborn day. The conventual church of San Lorenzo stood shrouded in a spectral violet light. Its open doors pulsed yellow against the monumental façade and Orlandu’s soul was drawn through the sacred portal. He left his knife by a buttress and tiptoed through the arch. The flagstones were cold against his feet. The plainsong made him shiver. He dipped his fingers in holy water, genuflected and crossed himself, and crept toward the yellow shimmer within. San Lorenzo was the church of the Knights of Saint John the Baptist. Orlandu had never been inside its doors before. His heart pounded and he hardly dared breathe as he pushed on through the vestibule. Beyond the two broad pillars that flanked the nave, the interior opened before him and his senses were stunned.

  The whole convent of the Religion stood assembled as one and the stones shook as half a thousand soldiers of the Cross raised their voices to God. The monks of war stood rank upon rank in their plain black robes, meeker than lambs and fiercer than tigers, bound by love of Christ and Saint John the Baptist, proud of bearing and fearless, and singing, singing with a roaring exaltation. Smoking incense drifted about the aisle and made him dizzy. The vast space glowed and flickered with countless burning candles. Yet it seemed that every ray of light emanated from the tortured figure of Christ raised high above the altar. That was where Orlandu’s gaze, along with that of every other in that mighty congregation, was drawn: to the gaunt and noble visage of He who’d suffered and died for all mankind, to the bloody crown of thorns and the hands clawed in pain, to the pierced and emaciated body that twisted on the Cross, as if His final throes were not yet over.

  Orlandu was filled with sorrow. He knew that Jesus loved him. A sob escaped from his chest and he clasped his bruised and bloody hands and fell to his knees.

  “I confess to almighty God, to blessed Mary ever Virgin, to blessed Michael the archangel, to blessed John the Baptist, to the holy apostles Peter and Paul, and to all the saints that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word, and deed, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.”

  He was not alone in his plea for forgiveness, nor in his weeping. Tears shone without shame on the faces of many monks. Sorrow and joy filled the church to its vaulted rafters. Not since the tragedy of Rhodes had so many brothers of the Religion assembled in one place. If no man among them believed that such a number would ever gather again, it was because every man there had come to Malta to die for his Faith. God had called their monastery to war. Fire and sword were the holy tools of their creed. Caught up in the vortex of worship around him, Orlandu embraced this fate as willingly as any. He too yearned to die for Christ the Redeemer. Yet his instincts didn’t desert him. He turned in time to see the chaplain, Father Guillaume, bear down from the corner, his face a mask of fury at the ragged intruder. Orlandu scrambled to his feet and fled through the vestibule into the lilac light of day. He snatched his knife from where it lay by the buttress and sprinted around the corner of the church.

  There, as if engaged in a game whose rules and finale he could not be expected to grasp, the pure white greyhound stood waiting.

  In the improved light Orlandu saw that the hound’s sleek flanks—the ribs jutting out, though he wasn’t poorly fed—were disfigured by recent knife wounds. Others had tried to kill him, then, and had failed. With his eyes still wet and his chest still close to bursting from his communion with the knights, Orlandu’s stomach cringed at the prospect of butchery. But La Valette had killed his hounds, the hounds he’d loved above all living things. He’d killed them for the people and for the Religion and for God. To tempt the animal closer, Orlandu considered extending the fatsoaked hide still bound about his arm; but to trick this dog, as he’d tricked the feral curs of yesterday, seemed ignoble, and perhaps unholy. He displayed the knife to the greyhound.

  The greyhound turned and skipped away.

  Orlandu ran after him.

  Throughout the morning, as the cool was broken and the heat
rose fierce and high, Orlandu pursued and lost and tracked and found, and lost and tracked again, the fugitive hound. Back and forth across the Borgo, from the Provençal Gate in the huge landward walls to the dockyards of Galley Creek, from Kalkara to Sant’Angelo, through markets and middens, through sunlight and through shadow. And as boy and dog charted every alley and street, the town itself was transformed into a hive of terror.

  Drums pounded and trumpets echoed and bells tolled. Bewilderment and turmoil rippled through the population. The common folk had not expected the Turks for another month. Every hard-worn face was pallid with dismay. Many ran into their houses and locked their doors. Others ran hither and thither with a frantic want of purpose. And all across the island those not yet inside the walls rushed toward the Borgo to claim sanctuary. The peasants brought with them every living beast that could be worked or eaten. On the backs of donkeys and carts, and across their own stubborn shoulders, they loaded the last of the crops they’d harvested early and the fruits of which every orchard had been stripped. They brought their children and their wives, and their vegetables and goats, and those small precious things that remind a person of their life and what they have been. They brought their icons and prayers, their courage and their fear. And in every direction smoke spiraled into the sky. Every blade and morsel of crops not fit to reap and of provisions that couldn’t be carried were put to the torch and burned. They scorched the land. Their own land. They poisoned every well with the entrails of dogs and lethal herbs and feces. Nothing was left behind them for the Turk, for the Turk was here.

  It seemed as if the whole of Malta were on fire.

  Only once did Orlandu pause in his pursuit, at the harbor where he’d begun and which now seethed with tumultuous commotion. He’d taken neither food nor drink since the brazier of the watchmen the night before, and out of nowhere he felt sick, and the faces of the horses and the people began to spin before his eyes. He found himself retching on elbows and knees, the earthy tang of mule droppings in his nostrils and the acid scalding his throat. He pressed his forehead to the cobblestones and retched a mouthful of gall. Then a pair of bony hands seized his shoulders and hauled him to his feet.

  He closed his eyes to stop the whirling and was guided to an upturned bucket for a seat. Something wet and sourly sweet was pushed into his mouth and he chewed and swallowed. His stomach clenched on the wine-soaked bread. He held it down as bony fingers filled his mouth with more. As quickly as it had come the nausea and giddiness retreated. He blinked and discovered his rescuer.

  The old man’s eyes were as bright as those of a child, and his nose was so hooked that it seemed to meet the bristles on his pointy chin. Orlandu knew him at once. It was Omar, the old karagöz. Behind him stood the tiny, ramshackle theatre at which he plied his singular trade. The karagöz had been a feature of the docks for longer than any could remember. Some said he’d been here since before the knights had arrived. He was the oldest person Orlandu had ever seen, older even than La Valette or Luigi Broglia, and along with every other child, and many a weary seaman and stevedore too, he’d often delighted at the antics of the shadow puppets the old man brought to life on the muslin screen. Apart from the slaves who trudged by in chains, Omar was the only Turk on Malta. No one knew how he’d got there or why he’d stayed, and perhaps by now old Omar knew not himself. He was harmless and brought laughter and so no one seemed to care that he was a Moslem. He was also thought to be crazy, for he lived alone in a barrel, and he accompanied the mime of his paper marionettes with gargles and grunts and squeals such as no sane person would ever know how to make.

  “Aha! Aha!” cackled Omar, pointing at Orlandu’s bites. “The dogs it is! The dogs!”

  He followed the garbled Maltese with a diverse series of barks of remarkable accuracy and finished with a mournful howl and a toothless grin. Orlandu nodded and Omar offered him more bread and wine and Orlandu ate.

  “The Grand Master knows. He knows all!” Omar pointed to the tower of Castel Sant’Angelo. “They dance for his tune! Turks! Romans! Demons! All! They serve his will. Yes!”

  Orlandu, bewildered, nodded encouragement, as one does with a madman.

  “Dogs, men, children, women, poof!” Omar mimed an eruption with his hands then dusted them clean with an extravagant gesture and presented his empty palms. “The dogs show the way!” He mimed the sharpening of a knife. “The Master spits upon the whetstone. Yes!”

  Orlandu understood not a word the old man had said. Out of gratitude he replied, “Yes!” and was rewarded by another display of Omar’s gums. Orlandu’s strength had returned. This talk of the Grand Master stoked his will to complete his task. He stood up from the bucket, towering over the karagöz, and found his limbs to be sound. For the first time he noticed that a galley had berthed at the dockside. Its mariners swarmed the rigging to reef the red sails. A new contingent of knights was disembarking.

  The Navy of the Religion consisted of seven galleys. He’d scraped barnacle and weed from the excrement-saturated timbers of every one. This was the Couronne. Among the lads of the town, especially those honored to serve as water boys, it was a matter of pride to recognize and name as many of their noble heroes as they could. Each sighting was noted and recounted with much argument as to who were the deadliest fighters, the most intrepid mariners, the closest to God. But all the knights on the Couronne, supervising the unloading of their horses and gear, were unknown to him. These late arrivals must have traveled from the most distant of the Order’s commanderies, perhaps in Poland or Scandinavia, or even Muscovy, fabled lands at the far end of the earth, where magic flourished and pagan tribes still roasted captured knights in their armor.

  He saw a well-known figure descend the gangway, though not one rated high for his ferocity. It was Oliver Starkey. Behind him came two strangers of fearsome stature and mettlesome bearing, who by their dress were clearly not knights at all. He guessed they were soldados particulares—gentlemen adventurers—drawn to Malta by chivalry and faith and the prospect of action and glory. They drew no pay and answered to no one and fought with whom they chose. These two suggested little that was chivalrous or gentlemanly, though for action they surely were born. The first was as broad as an oxcart, with rough-cropped hair, an iron-gray beard, and many scars. He wore a brass-studded brigandine war vest and had festooned himself with weapons, including a two-handed German breach sword slung over his back and, cradled in one arm, a wall gun whose bore could accommodate the handle of a broom.

  The taller of the men was more striking still. He had a lion’s mane of hair that flamed like burnished bronze in the high sun. Among the plainer garb of the knights, his doublet striped with gold struck a note of bravado, and he wore high, cuffed boots that came halfway up his brawny thighs. At his hip he wore a sword and in his belt was a long-barreled pistol of intricate design. A martial kind of man, whether noble or not. Orlandu conceived a new fantasy. He’d never be a knight, for his blood was lowborn and impure, but he might aspire one day to be such a man as these.

  Behind them came two women. He hadn’t seen a woman disembark in months, but felt little curiosity. In the presence of such giants as now bestrode the gangway, women were tiny birds of the dullest plumage. He was far more taken by the magnificent golden stallion that the younger of the women led behind her. He’d never seen its like and he’d seen many, for the horseflesh of the knights was of the finest. The steed could not be the girl’s, or even—at least so he hoped—her mistress’s. It had to belong to the man with the lion’s hair. Splendid as it was, his interest switched abruptly as Grand Master La Valette came to greet the newcomers.

  Orlandu straightened his shoulders and stiffened his spine. Perhaps La Valette would glance his way and see his wounds and realize that, like him, Orlandu too was a killer of dogs and thus be proud of him. See him stride along the quay, like a panther despite his years and taller by a head than most, the bustle of the dock parting as he approached, his black habit swishing about his feet, a sim
ple dagger belted at his waist, his hawk’s eyes fixed forward yet seeing everything. Yes, surely seeing Orlandu too, though he didn’t look his way.

  La Valette had fought in eighty-seven sea battles, some said eighty-nine. La Valette had slain a thousand Turks by his own hand. La Valette had survived the galley bench of the evil Abd-ur Rahman. La Valette had survived the terrible siege of Rhodes and had been dragged to the ships by his comrades because, despite that all was lost, he’d wanted to fight on. Not even the Emperor Philip in far-off Castile, or the Holy Father in Rome, could sway La Valette. His harangue of the militia, the week before, was quoted by the boys as if it were scripture.

  “Today our faith is at stake. The battle to be fought on Malta will determine if the Gospels—the words and deeds of Christ—must yield to the Koran. God has asked us to sacrifice the lives that we have pledged Him. Happy are those who die in His sacred cause.”

  Happiness filled Orlandu’s chest. When he prayed to God, God, in his mind’s eye, looked like La Valette.

  La Valette now welcomed the two intrepid adventurers and, with brief but impeccable graciousness, the women, then he fell at once into conversation with the lion-haired stranger and the two walked back along the dock toward Castel Sant’Angelo. They passed not ten paces from where Orlandu stood and he held his breath. As La Valette spoke, and pointed out various landmarks, the stranger shot a glance across the quay, through the toiling figures of the stevedores, and Orlandu found himself pierced by flame-blue eyes. He almost reeled, as if a physical force had shoved him, but he held his ground and the blue gaze turned away.

  As the women passed by, Orlandu paid little attention to the older and more regal of the two. Her face was turned in conversation with Oliver Starkey. But the girl who led the golden stallion stared at him directly, with an expression he couldn’t read. Her face was unbalanced and strange, and he wondered if she had the power to curse him, for she looked at him over her shoulder as she passed out of sight. Orlandu attributed her interest to his grotesque appearance. He hoped that his bloody demeanor had impressed the blue-eyed stranger. The oxlike bruiser brought up the rear, nodding congenially to the laborers about as if they’d turned out to welcome his arrival. When he saw Orlandu, he laughed and tipped the long barrel of his musket in salute. Orlandu tingled with pride. What a day! What men! He thanked God that he was here and now, among such remarkable fellows and in such remarkable times.