The Religion: A Novel

by Tim Willocks

  On Sunday she saw Mattias not at all.

  By that evening the Turkish commander in chief, Mustafa Pasha, and the bulk of his vast army, had disembarked at Marsaxlokk Harbor. They were setting up camp in the flatlands of the Marsa, to the west of Grand Harbor. Carla learned from Bors that there’d been fierce debate as to the wisdom of letting the Turks land unopposed, but La Valette’s view, supported by Mattias, had won the day. The Christians lacked the numbers to chance open battle on the beach. Better to let the Turks splash against the walls. As darkness fell, the watch fires of the vanguard of janissaries could be seen in the hamlet of Zabbar, only one mile distant across the undulating ocher hills beyond the walls.

  Through these days Amparo said little, taking in the maelstrom of activity through watchful eyes and making of it things that only she knew. She’d set herself to revive the small garden at the rear of the house, squandering water on the struggling blooms with the justification that if all the humans were to die, as she’d heard with tedious frequency that they would, then the least they could do was leave something of beauty as their monument. Her vision stone showed nothing in these first three evenings of their residence, as if a curtain had been drawn across its window into other worlds, and Carla was not sorry, for such prognostications could only have been cheerless. They’d played no music together, as it seemed ill fitted to the general mood of gloom. Their instruments lay in Carla’s room, untouched.

  On Monday, when Mattias came to visit on his way to the opening of hostilities, Carla and Amparo were pulling weeds on their knees in the neglected garden. Carla turned to find him smiling, as if a sight so preposterous were a tonic.

  “I’m glad to see you approach our dire estate with such aplomb,” he said.

  Carla dusted fine dry dirt from her hands and walked toward him. Her heart raced at the sight of his face and the sound of his voice and she wondered how evident this was.

  “We’d like to make ourselves more useful,” she said, “but there’s little we’re allowed to do. Father Lazaro told us that the infirmary is yet another male domain. We are, of course, barred from approaching the walls.”

  “When the infirmary overflows into the streets, Lazaro will change his tune.”

  That he seemed so cheerily certain such horror would come undermined her gladness.

  “Have you turned up any sign of our boy?” he asked.

  His use of “our” boy touched her. She shook her head. “There’s no one with his birth date, or close to it, known to the camerata. In the church of the Annunciation, the closest recorded births are a week to either side. Both were girls. The monks at the infirmary were too busy to answer to my inquiry.”

  “There’ll be time, though the sooner we fly this coop the better.”

  They were standing close and for a moment neither spoke. His brawny bulk stirred her and she felt herself stiffen with anxiety. The impulse to retreat was at odds with the urge of her heart, but it was the stronger of the two. From the distance came a concert of martial harmonies: drums and horns and pipes of a foreign character that wavered with a poignant heroism, and for the first time something human attached itself to Carla’s idea of the Turk. Mattias heard the music too and cocked his head. She felt again the stab of remorse at having lured him into a conflict he’d sought to avoid.

  “Forgive me,” she said.

  “For what?” he replied.

  “I’ve brought Death into your sphere.”

  “He’s one of my oldest acquaintances. Dwell on it no further.”

  He bent his face toward hers and she realized he intended to kiss her on the mouth. Before she could conquer it, instinct made her pull her head back. She regretted it at once, but it was done. She hadn’t kissed a man in half a lifetime, but she could hardly explain that now and ask that he try again. Mattias blinked and turned away, untroubled it seemed, and it was as if the moment had existed only in her mind. He called to Amparo in Spanish.

  “Amparo, what news from your vision glass?”

  Amparo watched from a distance. At being included against her expectations, she brightened and skipped over. She seemed more at ease with Mattias than with any other person Carla had known, including, she felt with a pang, herself.

  “The glass is dark,” she said, “ever since we boarded the ship.”

  “So the Angels have abandoned us,” he said, with a carefree smile. “With all these thousands calling on their aid, it’s no surprise.”

  Amparo appeared crestfallen by her failure. Mattias rallied her.

  “I’ve a favor to ask, if I may,” he said. “There’ll be a deal of noise and shooting throughout this day. Buraq is not trained to war, and he has a sensitive soul. If you could pass an hour or two in his company, I’d be in your debt.”

  Amparo swelled with the honor. Her eyes shone with adoration. Carla’s fondness for Mattias increased in equal measure and she regretted again avoiding the swoop of his mouth.

  “Oh, gladly,” said Amparo. “Buraq has the noblest of souls.”

  “All horses are nobler than just about every man, but Buraq is a prince without equal,” Mattias agreed. “You’ll find him at the stables of the Grand Master, by Castel Sant’Angelo.”

  Amparo threw her arms around him and kissed him full on the lips. Carla felt her cheeks turn hot as Mattias slid his arm around her waist and held her close, and then closer still, and Carla had to turn away. Then he let her go and Amparo stepped back, her own color rising.

  “I’ve never gone into battle with a kiss on my lips,” he said. “It sets a most admirable precedent.”

  Carla suppressed her chagrin. She didn’t know where to look.

  “Two might serve even better,” said Mattias.

  Carla looked at him and he grinned. Her cheeks burned more fiercely still, and some perverse fit of temper almost made her refuse. Her mind was tangled with emotions she couldn’t fathom. She willed herself to lift her face and Mattias bent and kissed her on the mouth, not with the violence she expected and which she more than a little desired, but with a tenderness that stole her senses. The moment of contact stretched into forever and she clenched her eyes as tears welled up from nowhere, for his kiss seemed to plumb the abyss into which her womanhood had been cast so long ago. And no sooner had his mouth covered hers than he pulled away. She was left having sipped at a pleasure too intense to be compassed. She turned away to master her emotions.

  “I shall now be safe from all harm,” he said.

  Carla spun back toward him. “Please,” she said, “promise me you’ll take every care.”

  “Audacity is a virtue of youth,” he said, “and I’ve left both far behind.”

  They accompanied him through the auberge and paused on the threshold to Majistral Street. Two dour serjeants of the Order were passing by, and between them they dragged a strange and ancient man with eyes of uncommon brightness and a toothless crescent-moon face. His hands were tied fast behind him and as Carla wondered at his crime, she saw a dark expression cross Mattias’s face.

  “The earth calls that old man,” he said. The expression was unfamiliar to Carla, but Mattias didn’t elaborate. He said, “I’d best be to the walls.”

  “I’ll pray for you,” said Carla. “Even though you do not fear God.”

  “I welcome all prayers on my behalf, no matter which god hears them.”

  He gave them both a final glance and saluted and set off down the street. Beyond him she glimpsed the old man, his gait hopping and frantic between the relentless stride of his guards. The ancient threw back his head and emitted a mournful, yapping howl and Carla suddenly realized that in all she’d witnessed since arriving there’d been neither sight nor sound of a dog. How strange, she thought. A serjeant cuffed the ancient with a fist and the three of them disappeared around the corner.

  Mattias followed them, and though she willed him to do so, he didn’t look back.

  She turned on the step and found Amparo as doleful as she. Carla took her in her arms a
nd they held each other tight. She felt Amparo’s heartbeat and its quickness matched her own. Fear for Mattias clenched her stomach; that and perhaps something more. Perhaps she was falling in love. She looked at Amparo and wondered if the girl felt the same. Her instinct said that she did. More than instinct: it was written on Amparo’s damaged face. If so it was, Carla told herself, then it must be God’s Will and God had His reasons. She set herself to embrace whatever He ordained. Some wisdom so profound that it could only have come from Christ rose up within her. In the days that were to come, there could be no surfeit of Love, whatever its nature. Without Love they would be nothing. Worse than that, they would be damned.

  Monday, May 21, 1565

  Bastion of Castile—Bastion of Italy—Bastion of Provence

  Orlandu gazed from the high stone battlements—for hours—as a vortex of red dust bloomed above the horizon to the south and the legions of the Sultan Suleiman emerged from its coils. The Moslem horde drew up in immaculate order until they covered the ocher hills beyond the Grande Terre Plein and so glorious and brave was the spectacle that some of the knights there watching wept without shame.

  Orlandu, in recognition of wounds sustained in the slaughter of the dogs, had won a coveted place on the bastion of Castile, which jutted forth from the left of the enceinte at the base of Kalkara Bay. The outer bulwark was lined with arquebusiers and the acrid smoke of their matchcords stung his eyes. Most of them were Castilians from the tercios of Sicily and Naples. Their corselets and gear varied, for each man managed for himself. Their uniform, such as it was, was a small red-burgundy cross patched onto their jerkins. They were grouped in bands of six, and called themselves las camaradas. Behind them stood the Maltese infantry with their half-pikes. They were dressed in homemade leather armor and simple casques. Interspersed among the foremost ranks, the Spanish and Portuguese knights sounded the only note of grandeur, their shining armor covered by their crimson war coats, each breast emblazoned with the plain white cross of Crusaders. Orlandu squatted on the lid of a water butt, at the rear of these lines, and from this vantage took stock of the enemy deployment. The contrast in brilliance between the opposing armies stunned his senses.

  The Grande Terre Plein was an apron of flatland, a thousand feet across, which unrolled from the ditch outside the city walls to the heights of Santa Margharita. Upon these heights the horde was now assembled. The Turks were caparisoned in more splendor than Orlandu knew existed, a dazzling array of vivid greens and blues, of radiant yellows and fierce reds, of gleaming musketry and pole arms and damascened blades, of massed white turbans and high bonnets, of fluttering pennants and gigantic standards garnished with scorpions and elephants and herons and hawks, and with crescent moons and the Star of David, and with twin-bladed swords and exotic calligraphs wondrous to behold. Even the mounts of the cavalry, drawn up in two huge squares on either flank of the summit, were chamfroned in gold and armored with polished bronze. And all this pageant was iridescent with shimmering silks and sparkled like the surface of the sea as the sun winked from a fortune in gilded ornament and jewels, as if this mighty host had journeyed to this distant field not to fight a battle but to mount a festival of wild and exorbitant splendor.

  Orlandu suddenly wondered why indeed they were all here, and what had brought them so far, and why God had blessed him by placing him here to see it, and his chest filled with an excitement so intense that he could hardly breathe. If the Sultan’s extravagant multitude appeared inexorable, then the immense city walls toothed by the Religion appeared impregnable, and so absolute was this contradiction that Orlandu thought that these two foes must reach some cordial agreement and go their ways. For a moment he felt fear: that all this might indeed melt away, like an unforgettable dream that ended unfinished. He didn’t want the horde to turn back. A cataclysm such as this now poised before him was given to few to witness from one end of Time to the other. The faces of the knights told him so. The stones beneath his bare feet told him so. Something rooted in his gut and bone told him so. And because everyone there present beneath that burning azure sky knew that this was so too, Orlandu realized that the cataclysm was already here, and that it stood unhindered by all jurisdictions and controls, and that nothing in Heaven or on Earth could stop it now.

  He turned at a sudden disturbance. Two serjeants at arms manhandled a manacled figure along the alure. The prisoner had a strange, bobbing gait and as Orlandu gained a clearer view through the staves of the pikes, he saw that it was Omar, the old karagöz. His mouth was jammed with a knot from a ship’s rope. As Omar was dragged along the wall walk to the bastion of Italy, Orlandu lost sight of him. Then he looked beyond and saw that canted over the ditch, on the wall’s foremost prominence above the Provençal Gate, a gallows had been erected. From the gallows swung a noose, etched as black as ink against the turquoise sky.

  When Omar reappeared it was beneath the gallows. They stripped him naked of his rags and his bones poked like deformities through the shriveled mantle of his skin. Orlandu watched as they pushed the karagöz to the wall’s sheer edge and looped the noose around his neck. Omar was too old and crazy to be a spy. And he never strayed far from his barrel. Orlandu looked out at the heathen massed on the hills. Their every eye seemed fixed on the bowlegged ancient, who stooped and jiggled and drooled beneath the long arm. And Orlandu understood.

  The Religion was hanging Omar because he was Moslem.

  And it was true, thought Orlandu.

  The old karagöz was a Moslem.

  And his world of dreams was over.

  Somehow Orlandu knew that so too was his own.

  Tannhauser had been honored with a station on the bastion of Provence. La Valette himself was but a few yards distant on the alure and with him stood his young page, Andreas, and the great Colonel Le Mas, and a clutch of other stern grandees. Tannhauser had never encountered a society so concerned with rank and purity of blood. In the empire of the Ottomans a slave could become a general or a vizier, if such was his quality. Admiral Piyale, whose ships even now surrounded Malta, was a Serbian foundling from Belgrade. Yet if it had to be said that for the mass of Frankish nobles knighthood had become a charade, the elite of the Religion were as lusty a fraternity of killers as ever Tannhauser had seen. They were twelfth-century barbarians with modern arms. And without doubt they were spoiling for a fight.

  As the army to which he’d devoted a third of his life spread across the heights, turbulent waves of memory rolled through his heart. The soldiers of God’s Shadow on This Earth had never looked more beautiful. No other word would do. They were also terrifying, in a way he’d never been privy to before. The flawless precision with which forty thousand troops arrayed themselves across the hills was alone enough to loosen a man’s entrails. The quality of their weapons was outstanding, as was, too, the quality of the men. To have transplanted all this wholesale—to a scorched rock halfway around the world—was a marvel of raw power.

  He saw the Topchu artillery crews drag colossal serpent-mouthed culverins into place. He saw the Sipahi and Iayalars, and the Yellow Banners of the Sari Bayrak and the crimson of the Kirmizi Bayrak, and between these latter cavalry corps he saw the silk pavilion of Mustafa Pasha as it suddenly arose, shining like an orb of gold on the rugged skyline. Above Mustafa’s pavilion the Sanjak i-sherif was unfurled, the black war banner of the Prophet, inscribed with the Shahada: THERE IS NO GOD BUT ALLAH AND MOHAMMED IS HIS MESSENGER. Mustafa’s blood ancestor had carried that same banner into battle for the Prophet himself. This fact too filled Tannhauser with awe, for the ghost of the Prophet hovered atop that hill; and Mustafa and his legions knew it, for they felt His sacred hand on every shoulder.

  Tannhauser saw pennants identifying regiments he’d once known for their deeds and temper, and alongside whom he’d fought in the wastelands around Lake Van. But among the ortas of janissaries he didn’t see the standard of his own—the Sacred Wheel of the Fourth of the Agha Boluks. The janissaries were as close to a notion of cou
ntry as Tannhauser had ever known. His feelings for their hearthstone, his loyalty, his love, had been as profound as La Valette’s for his Holy Religion. In abandoning their ranks so many years ago, he’d abandoned part of his soul; yet had he not done so, he’d have lost his soul entire, for such would have been the price of the dark deed required of him. Despite that their pipes and tambours still stirred his blood and his heart, he now faced his former brothers on the field of battle. He waited with a pounding in his chest and a tightness in his throat for a sound he’d never heard but had only voiced.

  The mighty Lions of Islam were about to roar.

  When each of the great squares of troops, mounted and afoot, had finally taken its position in the order of battle, the haunting ululations of the marshaling horns and the rousing melodies of the Mehterhane band abruptly ceased, and the great wheeling movements stilled, and a vast and unearthly silence fell across the field. A silence and a stillness such as that which must have reigned over the first dawn of Creation. Amid that stunned tranquillity tens of thousands of souls, Christian and Moslem, considered one another across the gulf for which they would sacrifice their lives, and the merged beat of their hearts was all that sent a ripple through the silence or the stillness of either one. A strip of dirt and a pile of stones lay between them. This dirt and these stones they would contest as a proxy for eternity.