Religion: A Novel

by Tim Willocks

  “He grovels for his life, as most do,” Tannhauser said. “But if I spare him he will do us further harm, you may take my word.”

  She looked Tannhauser in the eye. “Do not delay on my part.”

  Tannhauser, both shocked and relieved by her phlegm, rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth. “You’re sure.”

  She nodded. He stepped past her to the carriage doorway and studied the priest.

  “These creatures are like rats. They come out only at night.”

  The priest cringed and Tannhauser struck his hat off with his palm.

  “Who sent you on this base and unmanly errand?”

  Ambrosio’s mouth opened and closed. Tannhauser leaned in and clamped one hand to the tonsured crown of his skull. With a short stroke of the sword he docked the priest’s ear. Carla flinched as Ambrosio uttered his first, pitiful response and rivulets black as brimstone poured down his neck. His eyes flicked toward hers with bewilderment and terror. No, she told herself, you will not look away. Tannhauser turned the priest’s face toward his own.

  “Answer me, dog.”

  Ambrosio heaved for breath. “Father Gonzaga, of the Congregation of Saint Peter Martyr.”

  “Good. What were your orders?”

  “To convey the signora to the convent of the Holy Sepulchre at Santa Croce, to be retained there indefinitely for the good of her immortal soul.”

  “And what of Gonzaga’s master, Ludovico?”

  The name shocked Carla more than any of the singular events she’d so far endured. She’d not heard it uttered in thirteen years. She waited for Ambrosio’s answer.

  “I’ve not heard tell of His Eminence in months—since he went to Malta.”

  Tannhauser bent to the hole in Ambrosio’s skull. “Now you must die. And know that if your God has indeed made a Heaven and a Hell, Lucifer will rub his hands as he watches you burn.”

  “Jesu!”

  Tannhauser canted the sword steeply and drove it through the notch of his throat. Ambrosio emitted a bubbling gasp and his hand clawed at Tannhauser’s back in a final embrace. Tannhauser shoved him to the carriage floor and cleaned his blade on the dead man’s robes. The blood was tenacious and it was a moment before he was satisfied. While Carla stood and watched, as if from the window of a dark and stirring dream, Tannhauser reshaped the world like a bloodstained mason, tearing down one wall even as he threw up another. He sheathed his sword and drew a dagger.

  “Where is your good companion?” he asked. “Amparo.”

  “At the villa. My abductors were unaware of her existence. I didn’t enlighten them.”

  “Then you did right well.”

  She watched him cut the dead coachman from the traces and she stepped back as he hefted the corpse like a bale. He crammed it into the carriage on top of the priest and closed the door. He examined his goldstriped doublet as if for stains. His satisfaction in finding none was that of a man so practiced in butchery that the result was no more than he expected. He wiped his hands on his hams and stripped the breeching, crupper, and hip strap from the coach horse.

  He said, “I’ve concluded from the conspiracy mounted against us that Ludovico is the father of your boy.”

  “I regret not telling you sooner. Perhaps you’d have avoided this calamity.”

  Tannhauser shook his head. “The die was already cast. When I got back from your villa, a pack of city constables sought to ensnare me.”

  He led the coach horse free and soothed it with words and caresses. He nodded toward his own mount by the roadside. As if to forestall the impression that his offer was mere gallantry, and thus a source of contention, he said, “Please, Buraq has carried me far today and will appreciate the lesser weight.”

  In the moonlight the animal appeared as white as milk.

  “He looks as pure as an allegory of Virtue,” she said.

  Tannhauser said, “I’m sure he’d say the same of you if he could.”

  Leading the coach horse by its harness, Tannhauser steadied Buraq as Carla hiked up her skirts and mounted with ease. She saw Tannhauser take in her short leather boots, and his delectation aroused her. Buraq accepted her calmly and she felt at once his wonderful strength and poise. She thrilled to his beauty, his nobility, his smell. She thrilled to the stars and the night. She thrilled to the man who stood by her and studied her legs with such unabashed appreciation. Tannhauser handed her the coach horse’s reins.

  She collected her wits and said, “You say the constabulary waited?”

  The smile that had lurked behind his eyes that afternoon reappeared. “The Messina police force will be understrength for a while.” The ghost smile vanished and something cold fled through his spirit. “They killed young Gasparo, for standing tall in defense of Sabato Svi. They put Sabato Svi to the torture, because he is a Jew. Both men honored me with their friendship.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “When the powerful turn against us, we must act as the powerful act, which is in one’s own interest, and without morality or mercy. We killed them like dogs and my conscience rests easy. So be assured: no one is left alive to speak your name in any of this—no one except Ludovico. But he will keep his peace, for his part in this debacle would shame him before those even mightier than he.”

  He took her arm at the wrist and squeezed. His fingers bit her bones, as if his intention was to rouse her from her dream.

  “Ludovico has gone to Palermo, and thence to Rome. Go back to Amparo. The priest here never took you and of this butchery you saw naught. Say nothing and no one will ask. Take Buraq, and care for him, and return to France, tomorrow, as if none of this took place.”

  Tannhauser’s grip was painful. But he’d roused her from her dream in the moment she’d first seen him, with his face still damp with tears in the garden of roses. God had willed that she take this path and by this path He graced her. This was what she knew, here and now, with the great horse breathing between her thighs, and the stars on fire above, and the bite of a man’s fingers on her flesh.

  “I’m to Malta,” said Tannhauser. “The stronghold of the Hounds of Hell. Starkey will have his way, after all. But I will find your boy, come what may. And I will bring him home safe to your arms.”

  Carla did not doubt him. Yet she said, “I’m coming with you. That was our bargain.”

  He considered her in silence, his eyes unreadable. He released his grip and turned and walked away. She watched him maneuver the carriage to the rim of the road. He pushed it over the edge and the carriage and its morbid cargo rolled away into the dark. He returned and mounted bareback on the coach horse.

  “The red ship sails at midnight.” Tannhauser glanced at the moon with an educated eye. “If we’re to collect the girl, we must hurry.”

  “Amparo?” She’d been sure he wouldn’t welcome the added burden.

  “In an imbroglio such as this,” he said, “a scryer and her vision are not to be scorned.”

  He wheeled and set off down the hill at reckless speed. Buraq followed of his own accord, as sure as he was fleet. Carla rose from the saddle and threw back her shoulders. The wind blew through her hair. She felt as if she’d grown wings.

  Wednesday, May 16, 1565

  Messina Harbor—The Couronne

  The Couronne was half a mile offshore when the Oracle exploded. The ensuing fire was immense and the whole bay glimmered yellow with its light. Of the human chaos unleashed along the docks, all Bors could see were tiny, desperate figures etched against the flames.

  As they plowed on into the darkness, the uproar of the waterfront was drowned by the creak of timber and cordage, by the dip and sweep of fifty-two huge oars, by the boom of the gong and the crack of whips and the jangle of shackles and chains. On the open rowing deck below, slaves chained five to a bench bent over the looms. They shat and pissed where they sat, on sheepskins still sodden with the filth of the day before. Bors crammed tobacco up his nostrils and leaned against the rail. The Oracle was dead, but
life was good. The distant, desperate figures were in their world, and he was content to be in his.

  Mattias had arrived at the wharf just as Giovanni Castrucco and Oliver Starkey seemed about to come to blows over how much longer they could wait. Bors, reluctant to waste more powder than was needed when it could be used to kill the heathen, had freighted eight of the dozen quintals left in the warehouse to the Couronne, along with their war chests, harness, and supplies, and the muskets of the vanquished constabulary. Mattias, by contrast, hove up on a bareback horse, encumbered by two women and a collection of musical instruments, like a covey of troubadours who’d lost their way and found themselves bound for Perdition. For a man who’d slain two priests and three officers of the crown, Mattias conducted himself with admirable poise, and in herding his brace of femmes and his golden stallion past the eyes of the astonished knights had even exhibited a charming congeniality. But Mattias was nothing if not a firm hand in a pinch.

  Mattias stood now up on the quarterdeck, conversing with the famous Italian captain and the Lieutenant Turcopolier as if for all the world he were their equal and not, as was now the case, the most wanted man in Sicily, if not the empire. Bors grinned. The man was a marvel. And look at the expression on his face, as if he were as perplexed by the waterfront inferno as were they. It was no surprise to Bors that the Grand Master wanted him for the fight. But the old pirate would get double value, for when it came to slaughter Bors could show these fighting monks a trick or two himself.

  The women that Mattias had taken under his wing? Only God knew what further trouble they would bring. They stood beside Bors at the gunwale of the rambardes watching the shore, the contessa and the wild-eyed girl. He’d given each a half a lemon with which to combat the stench of the slaves and they wafted the fruit beneath their noses with a dainty air. The contessa kept looking at Mattias on the bridge. Bors could see that all her hopes—and who knew what dreams?— were now firmly invested in his friend, and a woman’s hopes and dreams were as heavy as any burden known to man, especially when going to war. The girl beside her took no interest in the ship and its malodorous hurly-burly, but stared at the flames, the only thing still visible on the dark and distant shore, as if they exerted an enchanting force, as if she could see something in them that others could not. The women would make life more hazardous. Decisions would be blurred. Love would poison the well and whoever drank from it. But Bors’s sacred vocation was to watch Mattias’s back, and watch he would.

  At an over-respectful distance from the women, and looking at the vanishing shore of Europe, were a score or so of knights in black doublets. Their breasts bore white eight-pointed crosses cut from silk, and these crosses shone with an eerie glow in the moonlight. They spanned forty years in age, but most looked under thirty. All sported strong, warlike beards. All murmured Pater nosters. The knights were obliged to recite one hundred and fifty Pater nosters every day, but since accuracy in the count was hard to keep, they rarely stopped, and at sea they prayed for hours in a mystic trance. Each man gradually fell into the rhythm of another, until they chanted the prayer in unison, and Bors felt a chill down his spine, for the sound of so many killers in perfect harmony was a sound to set a block of stone atremble. He saw that the contessa had joined the knights in their incantation, and that the girl had not.

  Bors looked back to Sicily. They were sailing to a bloodbath, yet he craved it. Craved it more than gold, more than honor. Only in battle were the shackles of morality broken. Only on the field of blood, where all prior investitures were rendered null and void, was a man stripped to the nub of his being. Only there could transcendence be found. The greater part of humankind toiled and died without ever knowing such ecstasy. Once known, all else lost its savor. Horror—in which the world abounded anyway—was a small price to pay to know it again. With a rattle of blocks and the snap of canvas and rigging, the huge red lateens dropped from the yards and swelled in the breeze. An enormous cross of gold shone on the mainsail. Mattias appeared at his side and slipped an arm through the crook of Bors’s elbow.

  “So,” said Mattias, “your wish is granted. The natural order is fulfilled.”

  “I wouldn’t have wished it at quite so hefty a price,” Bors replied.

  “At the least you’ll fetch back some tales to tell by the fireside.”

  Bors tipped his head toward the women. “And you’ve brought minstrels in skirts to accompany our revels.”

  “Where we’re going, music will be more precious than rubies,” said Mattias. “But mark me now and remember. I’ve no mind to see this fight through to its end. We’re going to spirit a boy from the jaws of war.”

  At the age of nine, or thereabouts, Bors had struck his father to the ground with a hoe and stowed away on a curragh out of Carlisle to join the army of the King of Connaught. Thinking of this, he frowned. “What boy would want to be thus spirited?”

  “Perhaps he will not. But I don’t intend to offer him the choice.”

  “Whoever he is,” said Bors, “I’m in his debt.”

  Mattias shook his head and grinned. And Bors thanked God Almighty that somehow on the long and crooked road he’d earned such love. Bors would have ridden with Mattias if he’d planned to kidnap Satan from his deep and fiery throne. With a squeeze of Bors’s arm, Mattias disengaged and joined the women.

  Bors turned back to the spume churned up from the deep by the blades of the oars. On some other quarter of this ancient sea, tens of thousands of gazi approached their own moment of truth. Fifty grueling days crammed cheek by jowl in the Sultan’s ships. After such confinement, landfall would see them howling for Christian blood. Bors had never fought the Lions of Islam, but if Mattias was any guide they’d be a handful. The prospect made his thighs and bowels shake. The reasons that had brought them here, Mattias and his women too, no longer mattered. The God of War had spoken and they’d rallied to his call. The rhythmic litany of the knights seeped into his chest.

  “Pater noster, qui est in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen.”

  On a red-and-black ship, across a black-and-silver sea, they sailed by the light of the moon toward Hell’s Gate. When the knights began their litany afresh, Bors joined them.

  Friday, May 18, 1565

  Kalkara Bay—The Borgo—Malta

  Orlandu had hunted the greyhound since first light, when a cannon shot had woken him from his roofless billet by the creek and he’d seen the animal’s lean silhouette against the sky. Crimson corrugations of cloud broke from the east, like an army of the night in flight from the scourge of day, and the breeze, never cooler or sweeter than at dawn, carried on its wings the voices of men singing Psalms.

  At the second cannon shot the greyhound turned toward him. They weren’t more than a dozen feet apart, the dog looking down from a stack of canvas-bound crates on the Kalkara dock. A beam of early light escaped the clouds and he saw that the dog was pure white. Its ears snapped erect and they studied each other, the dog and the barefoot boy, the one as clean of limb as God could have made him, the other scabbed with bites and tarnished with gore. Orlandu grabbed his butcher knife from the capstones by his head and slowly stood up. The hound’s eyes were mournful and bright. His soul was unconcealed. His nobility pierced Orlandu’s heart.

  As far as Orlandu knew, this white greyhound was the last living dog on the island. Whether it was so or not, not a bark or a howl was to be heard throughout the town. Whether it was so or not, Orlandu intended to kill this beautiful white hound before the morning was done.

  At the third cannon shot, the greyhound leapt from his station and vanished into the streets with the stealth of a phantom. Orlandu plunged into the Borgo in pursuit, and so intent he was on tracking down his prey that the sun had cleared the horizon before he remembered. H
e stopped. Three shots from Castel Sant’Angelo was the signal all had awaited with measureless dread. The Turkish armada had been spotted out in the offing. The Hordes of Islam had arrived at Malta’s shores.

  The slaughter of the dogs had taken three days. This was the fourth. Their extermination had been decreed by Grand Master La Valette. In the siege of Rhodes, it was said, La Valette had seen the people eat rats and dogs. Furthermore, the dogs had eaten the corpses of the slain. He had determined that, on Malta, death would come to all before any such degradation would be tolerated. Orlandu had heard it said also that of all living things La Valette’s most tender love was reserved for his hunting dogs. Before making his decree public, La Valette had taken his sword and killed his six beloved hounds by his own hand. Afterward, it was said, La Valette had wept with pity.

  If the decree was simple enough, its execution proved more taxing than anyone expected. Many whose dogs were to hand followed La Valette’s example and killed them themselves. But the policy couldn’t be concealed from the animals so condemned. By nightfall of the first day, alerted by the yowls of their fellows and with their masters turning against them on every side, dogs domestic and feral alike had banded together in wild-eyed packs in which they roamed the streets and alleys of the city. Since the city was walled and surrounded by the sea, escape was not possible, and sanctuary was denied.

  Since dogs are strangely like men in this respect, the packs were led by the most savage and cunning among them. In such large numbers, and fueled by terror and the stench of the pyres on which their carcasses were daily burned, these packs proved highly dangerous and ever more bold. Since the hunting and killing of dogs was a lowly task, beneath the dignity of the fighting men and knights, and since everyone who could walk was engaged in preparations for the war, and since it was not fit work for women, a serjeant at arms lit on the idea of using the water boys recruited to serve the battlements during the siege. Orlandu, who’d been assigned to the bastion of Castile, had been among the first to volunteer.