by Tim Willocks
The thought of Carla burned his entrails like a fire whose embers never cooled. But patience in this matter, as in most, would bear ripe fruit. The German wouldn’t have the advantage for much longer. And Carla hadn’t yet soiled herself in his bed. He heard footsteps pound down the corridor and knew at once to whom they belonged. He opened a ledger on the desk and feigned to study it. The door irrupted open. He stared at the page a moment longer, then raised his head.
“Captain,” he said. “You’re earlier than expected.”
Tannhauser’s face was stony. A long-barreled pistol was threaded through his belt, plus a dagger with Turkish jewelwork on the hilt and sheath. There was murder in his eyes.
Ludovico said, “Amparo must place great faith in you, to spill her tale so promptly.”
Anacleto appeared behind Tannhauser, his hand on the pommel of his sword.
Without turning, Tannhauser said, “If your boy would hang on to the one eye he still owns, he should make himself scarce.”
Ludovico gestured with his head and Anacleto disappeared.
Tannhauser reached into his brigandine and pulled out a package wrapped with waxed paper. He tossed it and it bounced on the desk. “A quarter of opium, with my compliments,” he said. “A more than decent wage for bullying a girl.”
“You have my gratitude.”
“If you speak to either woman again—if you pass them in the street, if you espy them from afar, if one of them wakens from a dream and utters your name—then I’ll make you dearly rue the day you left Rome.”
“With better luck, we must hope, than your last attempt.”
Tannhauser leaned across the desk. Ludovico felt his guts shift inside him.
“That would’ve been mere murder. Next time you will watch me as I bathe in your blood.”
Tannhauser stared for a period of time that seemed longer than the battle that morning.
Ludovico held his gaze without a blink.
Tannhauser straightened and turned and walked for the door.
“Captain,” said Ludovico.
Tannhauser stopped and turned.
“I’d rather not be your enemy.”
Tannhauser emitted a short grunt of laughter.
“Carla’s one woman among many,” said Ludovico. “At least for you. If it’s a title you seek, I can raise you to a rank of nobility that would make hers seem like a fishmonger’s. Many a duke started out as a soldier and the Holy Father is generous to those who please him. Throw your hand in with me, man, and upon my promise you will prosper.”
“Become one of your familiars?” said Tannhauser. “I’d rather swallow one of your turds.”
“You’d be in august company, believe me.”
“Then they have riper palates than I.”
“Do you doubt my sincerity?” said Ludovico.
“No. I piss on it.” Tannhauser pointed a finger straight at his face. The gesture was more offensive than his words. “But take my advice, and do not be so vain as to doubt mine.”
Then Tannhauser turned and left, without shutting the door.
Ludovico picked up the opium. Not a common villain, after all. The man had his own intrigues up his sleeve. Ludovico could smell it, as a sailor smells the gathering storm. Anacleto entered. His eye fell on the package in his hand. Ludovico tossed it to him.
“Go and find the Greek,” said Ludovico. “Bring him to me here, after the French have left.” Anacleto looked at him. Ludovico nodded. “Nicodemus.”
Thursday, August 23, 1565
The Sacred Council—Castel Sant’Angelo
Oliver Starkey looked about the great council table and in the wavering light of the candles saw a black-robed company of noble old men, each mutilated by battle and resigned to death. Fresh scars disfigured their faces. Some were missing fingers; three of them a hand or an arm. Despair was not in their temper, despite their bleak situation, but no one among the Piliers, Bailiffs, and Knights Grand Cross of the Sacred Council expected the Holy Religion to prevail. Even La Valette, at whose right hand Starkey sat, seemed to share their gloom. The sense that this would be the last supreme assembly in the Order’s history was palpable, and with it, like a threnody played but unheard, a poignant melancholy hung about the room. Never again would the world know men such as these, thought Starkey, for the world that had forged them was gone. They were the last of the true.
That day the Grande Turke had launched another all-out attack. No one present could remember how many such assaults they’d now endured and repulsed. The days of slaughter and exhaustion and anguish stretched back in every mind into a fiery infinity, as if war were the prime condition of all Creation, and privation was all that ever there had been. By dint of the Divine Will—for events had rendered military logic vain—the Moslem throng had once more been driven back across the blood-rutted wastes of the Grande Terre Plein. The council had been called in the aftermath by a majority of the Knights Grand Cross, who’d conceived a radical stratagem they wished to propose. It fell to Claramont, Knight Commander of the Langue of Aragon and at forty-seven the youngest of the grandees, to press the argument.
“Fra Starkey,” said Claramont, “what do the latest roll calls tell us?”
Starkey didn’t need to glance at the muster roll amongst the documents before him. “Two hundred and twenty of our brethren remain capable of bearing arms. Of the Spanish troops, gentlemen adventurers, and Maltese militia, perhaps nine hundred. All are wounded, some gravely. There are almost three thousand wounded unable to man the walls.”
“And the dead?”
“Two hundred and seventeen brother knights. Of the Spanish and Maltese soldiery, something more than six thousand have perished. Of the slaves, nearly two thousand. Of the noncombatants, seventeen hundred or so.”
“My own estimate of the infidel army,” said Claramont, “is that they can still field fifteen thousand trained men, perhaps more.”
Starkey did not contest this figure. After ninety-five days of killing Turks, with steel, shot, plague, stone, and fire, and in greater numbers than any living general would have dared dream possible, the enemy force remained overwhelming.
“And the news from Sicily and Garcia de Toledo?” asked Claramont.
“None,” said Starkey. “In his last dispatch he promised ten thousand men by the end of this month.”
“Yes. As he promised them in June, and as he promised them in July,” countered Claramont, to an angry murmur from the rest.
Starkey tried to leaven their pessimism. “The Turkish siege guns are breaking apart from overuse and their stores of powder run low,” he said. “Captain Tannhauser tells us that their morale is waning. Their imams chant different verses, of a woeful character. They begin to believe that it’s not Allah’s will that Malta be theirs.”
“Allah’s will be damned,” said Claramont. “We are an army of ghosts. Our walls are little more than a heap of stones. The very ground beneath us is a honeycomb of Turkish mines. There’s no question here of want of courage. Every man would rather die than submit their shoulders to the Turkish yoke. If the foe must inherit this island they’ll inherit a graveyard. The question is of the price we make them pay. How much longer can we defend the Borgo and Saint Michel with a thousand men? A thousand crippled men. Can we survive another mass offensive such as today’s? Another two? Another five? Another week like the last? And does anyone doubt that such onslaughts will soon come?”
Starkey didn’t answer and he glanced at the Grand Master.
La Valette sat in silence, his gaunt face unreadable, his gray eyes focused on some point infinitely distant, as if communing with spiritual powers known to him alone.
Claramont continued his brief. “This fortress in which we sit, Castel Sant’Angelo, is barely scratched. It is moated by a broad canal on the landward side and surrounded on all others by the sea. The stores are still half full with grain and pickled meats. We can charge forty thousand casks with fresh water. We have plenty of powder and ball. W
e may bring here our Holy Relics—the Hand of the Baptist, Our Lady of Philermo, the Madonna of Damascus—and our archives and standards, where they’ll be safe from Moslem desecration. Strung out on the walls like a murder of crows we’ll be destroyed, be it piece by piece or in one fell swoop. But if we pull all our fighting men back to Sant’Angelo, and blow the bridge to the Borgo, a thousand of us fastened up here could last out the Turk the whole winter long. Will anyone gainsay me?”
No one did.
Admiral Del Monte exchanged a glance with Ludovico, who sat beside him, but neither spoke. Starkey looked at La Valette. La Valette did not blink.
Claramont said, “Sound military reason therefore demands a single conclusion.” He hesitated. “We must abandon the Borgo. And Saint Michel and L’Isola too. In this I can speak for the Sacred Council, for we are all of us agreed.”
Claramont sat down. A long silence followed, notable for the absence of dissension from any of the supreme assembly’s members, and for the intensity with which all studied their Grand Master and awaited his decree. They knew that in abandoning the outer fortifications, they would be abandoning the surviving population—twelve thousand or more Maltese, largely women and children, all virtually helpless—to their immediate doom. La Valette at last rose to his feet, one hand on the table to favor his wounds.
“My beloved and honorable brethren,” he said, “I’ve listened to your counsel with the greatest care, and the highest respect. But I reject it.”
The council members stiffened in their chairs. Some leaned forward.
“The military case for abandoning the town is powerful, and you make it well. Perhaps, as you suggest, it is incontrovertible. But we are not here for a military purpose alone.”
A head nodded once, discreetly. Starkey noted that it was Ludovico.
La Valette continued. “God has willed that we face this moment for a reason. Our Faith now meets its sternest test and we must ask ourselves: What does our Holy Religion mean?”
He looked about the table.
“What is its justification? Its essence? What is its reason for being?”
No one answered, for they knew he would.
“We are not mere soldiers, noble though that calling may be. We are the Knights of the Hospital of Saint John the Baptist of Jerusalem. We are the Hospitallers. The defense of the faithful pilgrims to Jerusalem was our original calling. Tuitio fidei et obsequium pauperum. It is the first and last rule of our Order: Defenders of the Faith and servants of the poor. We defend the Faith most truly not by feats of arms but through our service to the poor. And in return, our service to the poor strengthens and protects our Faith. You all will recall that on our profession as knights we made a solemn promise: to be servants—slaves—to the poor of Jesus Christ. To the Blessed, to Our Lords the Sick. Do they not belong to Our Lord Jesus Christ? And are they not to be treated—and protected—as we would treat and protect Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself?”
He spoke with a quiet but intense passion.
Amongst the old knights, Starkey saw some with tears rolling into their beards.
“We are by dens of lions encompassed,” said La Valette. “Is this, then, the time to abandon Our Lords the Sick? To fling our numberless wounded upon the mercy of Moslem fiends? To condemn our brave Maltese brothers in arms, and their women and their children too, to the chains of the Turkish galleys? Are we to forsake our most Sacred Infirmary in its hour of greatest peril?”
He looked about the table. Many were too ashamed to meet his gaze.
“This fortress will not accommodate more than a thousand, you are right. But outside its walls are many thousands more. It may well be the Divine Will that our Holy Religion be buried in these ruins, and that our Order will be no more. That in itself is not something to be feared, for God and His Angels and Saints await our coming. But if we leave our sick and our poor to die without us, the Religion will have perished already—and for Nothing. For without our sick and poor, we are Nothing. The Religion is Nothing. And even should it then endure, its honor would be stained in the eyes of God, if not the eyes of men, until the End of Time.”
La Valette sat down.
That every man had been persuaded was not in doubt, but an awkward pause succeeded in which the council lacked a spokesman.
Admiral Del Monte finally stood up. Had Ludovico pressed him to do so? Starkey hadn’t noticed. The rise of Ludovico’s prestige within the Order had amazed Starkey, not least because the man remained impeccably modest in manner. So had his valor on the field. That no one resented his presence was more amazing still.
“As always,” said Del Monte, “His Excellency shows us where our duty lies. If we fall into error, we beg his forgiveness and pray that he remember we are but his children. We will defend the Borgo, and the people of Malta, to the last drop of our blood. Whatever their fate shall be, we will share it. The choice between Defeat and Damnation is no choice at all.”
With relief, the rest affirmed their support one by one, Claramont, the last, displaying particular penitence, which La Valette forestalled with a raised hand. La Valette gave Starkey a familiar glance, which indicated he resume the chair.
“Are there any other matters for the council to consider?” asked Starkey.
Ludovico rose. His sonorous baritone seemed too soft to carry the length of the table, yet it filled the room. “With Your Excellency’s permission, two matters,” he said. “The first of a delicate nature that I pray gives no offense.”
“Speak freely, Fra Ludovico,” said La Valette. “The Holy Father’s guidance is always esteemed and you are his voice.”
The barb in this encomium was not lost on Starkey nor, he was sure, on Ludovico, but the Inquisitor merely proffered a gracious bow. “In last Saturday’s battle, Your Excellency was valiantly wounded, and the carelessness in which he holds his own life is both well known and an inspiration to all.”
Grunts of approval for the Grand Master’s valor rippled around the table.
“It is also a source of concern,” continued Ludovico, to more of the same. “In these dire days, death may visit any in the blink of an eye. As events that day proved, the loss of Your Excellency would leave a void which, if not immediately filled, would prove catastrophic.”
He paused, his eyes rock steady on La Valette’s.
La Valette, with equal poise, gestured that he continue.
“If I may be so bold, I suggest that the Sacred Council nominate and approve Your Excellency’s successor, so that if that dreadful disaster should indeed befall us, our army would not be robbed of that leadership so vital to its courage and morale.”
The tension about the table was evident. Every man had considered this possibility; none other would have dared speak of it.
“I realize that this would mean waiving the formal electoral process,” Ludovico went on. “But in such circumstances as we’ve considered, three days of uncertainty would be calamitous.”
La Valette replied without hesitation. “You have the council’s gratitude for introducing this matter, Fra Ludovico. I have been remiss in not doing so myself. Your argument enjoys my full support, and I hope that of our fellow brethren.”
He cast about the table for disputants, and found none. He looked at Ludovico. “I trust you have a nominee in mind.”
Ludovico said, “Admiral Pietro Del Monte of the Italian langue.”
No one stirred. Every eye was on La Valette. La Valette looked at Del Monte.
“Fra Pietro and I have sailed on the same deck,” said La Valette. The warmth and relief in his voice at once allayed the tension abroad. “In brilliance and gallantry, his defense of Saint Michel can only be compared to that of Saint Elmo—which epic, we will agree, can be compared to none. If there is any man in Christendom better suited to the task, I should like to know his name.”
One by one the council members added their eulogies and Del Monte was anointed La Valette’s successor to the throne.
As the admiral a
ccepted, with characteristic humility and no more words than were necessary, Starkey reflected on Ludovico’s subtlety. Such unanimity in the matter of an election was unprecedented. Even La Valette’s elevation, though also ultimately unanimous, had been attended by a frenzy of machination, bribery, and coercion in which Starkey himself had played a key role. If, as now seemed evident, Ludovico had been at work on Del Monte’s behalf, he’d managed to keep Starkey in ignorance, a fact he found unsettling. That Ludovico had picked a candidate who was not only superb but would also, presumably, delight his masters in Rome, was further testament to his ingenuity.
“Fra Ludovico, what is the second, less delicate, matter you would raise?” asked La Valette.
Ludovico stooped by his chair and produced a stout leather valise. He opened it and removed a silver reliquary ornamented with precious stones. He carried the reliquary the length of the table and set it down before La Valette.
“I hope I’ve not betrayed the trust of our Holy Father in Rome, which was to delay the conveyance of this sacred instrument until the hour of greatest peril.”
La Valette indicated that Starkey open the casket, and he did so. He took a sudden breath. The casket was lined with crimson velvet. Nestled in a sculpted recess and held in place by golden cords was the hilt of a sword and two inches of snapped-off blade. The tang and blade were rusted and eaten away by the passage of time. Of what would have been the wooden dudgeon a single fragment, held by a rivet, remained. The style was that of the Roman gladius of antiquity. His heart raced with emotion. He dared not presume its origin. He looked at Ludovico.
Ludovico nodded. “Its existence is a great secret,” he said. He looked at La Valette. “This is the sword which Peter used to protect Our Lord, when he cut off the ear of the Roman soldier in the Garden of Gethsemane.”
La Valette pushed back his chair and sank to one knee and made the sign of the cross. The other council members followed. La Valette rose and pored over the casket. He stood back as the other knights filed past the relic in awe, their eyes brimming, prayers on their lips. Starkey saw La Valette study Fra Ludovico. Each man’s expression was as impenetrable as that of the other.
