Religion: A Novel

by Tim Willocks

  “Womanly?” Tannhauser took a step toward him.

  “That’s better. Look now, Le Mas is here. He calls us.”

  Tannhauser turned as Colonel Pierre Vercoyran Le Mas lumbered toward them. He limped and had a ladder of fresh stitches running across his jaw and down his neck behind his gorget. He smiled and held out both arms to clasp Tannhauser. His breastplate was thickly encased in an apron of stiffening gore.

  “Didn’t expect to see you here,” said Le Mas. “There’s surely no profit in it and I never reckoned you a suitor for martyrdom.”

  Bors said, “We were told the air here was conducive to good health.”

  Le Mas inhaled through his nose. “Truly, it is sweet. But in earnest, now.”

  “We’ve come to take a boy back to the Borgo,” said Tannhauser. “On the Grand Master’s orders. Orlandu Boccanera. A runaway. He may style himself Orlandu di Borgo.”

  “A boy of such importance must deserve a high style. I know him not, but I’ll pass the word. I’ll say this, if he was a boy when he arrived, he’s a boy no longer. But come and look for yourselves. My Provençals and a crowd of your Spaniards are going into the line.”

  Le Mas hoisted a halberd, its several vicious edges freshly honed. Bors unslung his enormous German two-hander.

  “Give Mattias a half-pike,” said Bors, “or one of those lovely Turkwhittlers.”

  “There’ll be arms aplenty up front,” said Le Mas.

  When men are gathered for a ruction it takes more than mere will to stand aside. Tannhauser submitted to events and they accompanied Le Mas to where he roused his section from their rest. Some seized the chance to empty their bowels and bladders, and they shook themselves down and shouldered their pole arms and checked one another’s gear. Tannhauser stood in line at the water butt and emptied two quart-full dippers down his throat. Then he fell in beside the colonel at the head of the column. Le Mas, despite the general din, conversed as if strolling down a country lane.

  “Who’s at the helm of your tavern, the Oracle? The Jew?”

  “The Oracle is in worse repair than this fort. Ashes are all that’s left.”

  “How so?”

  “The Inquisition.”

  “Then my conscience is even heavier. I’m glad to have the chance to beg your pardon.”

  “For what?”

  “When I blew in from Messina, I told Fra Jean—La Valette—what a bold species you were, how you’d recruited the ex-tercios as a favor to me, and so forth, and he took an uncommon interest. And, it must be said, that for all his piety he’s a dexterous and unscrupulous mind. Next I knew you were in his chamber, when you conjured Mustafa’s Greek out of thin air. So I’m to blame for you being here, if there’s blame to be placed.”

  “It took a greater parcel of rogues than you and La Valette.”

  “Did the parcel include women?”

  Tannhauser looked at him and Le Mas laughed. “He asked me, you see, Fra Jean, ‘Is he a ladies’ man?’ he said. And I said, well—” He looked at him. “Well, I ask you Mattias, what would you have wanted me to say?”

  He laughed again, and so did Tannhauser and if there was anything to forgive it was forgiven, and they marched on until the fractured limit of the curtain wall loomed to their right. There the din in Tannhauser’s ears became a Devil’s Requiem, and the entreaties to God in a dozen different tongues, the oaths and maledictions, the clang and whicker of thousands of brandished blades, the crackle of wildfire and the blast of guns mingled and whirled skyward like the clamor of fiends intoxicate. Flames brighter than day and hot enough to work brass flared up and down the line. Along the southern salient of the star-fort’s western horn, a mined section of curtain wall fifty paces wide had collapsed into a craggy embankment. Across the jagged crest of this yawning breach, an immense crowd of men fought like maddened animals for possession of a heap of stones. And despite his most earnest efforts to walk a peaceful mile and ignore the call of the Beast, Tannhauser found himself, once more, on the floor of its pit.

  Monday, June 11, 1565

  The Gauntlet—The Bailey—The Causeway

  Like a speck of migrant life in a forest primeval, Orlandu wriggled and crawled through the thicket of half-pikes and halberd shafts that filled the cramped gap between the front and second ranks of the defenders. As he picked his course along the boulder-cobbled gauntlet, which was coated, as was he, in a reeking compost of piss, vomit, entrails, shit, and spilled blood, his mind was occupied wholly by the task of finding the next squalid patch of ground upon which to advance. He had no surplus faculty with which to observe the progress of the fight, much less to care about its outcome. His head felt like the clapper of an alarum bell. His own vomit clung to his leather breastplate and chin and had already been trodden into the fetid paste underfoot. His anus strained painfully to open itself, even though he’d shat himself void of all but a watery mucus before he’d joined the fray. His body was a mass of bruises from the tattoo of boot heels, spear butts, and elbows that punished his passage. When he scrambled over the fallen or the dead, he minded them only as obstacles and not as men. If he felt terror, it was as the fish feels the sea, as an immersion so absolute that he was unaware of it. This was his third foray down the tunnel of wood and steel, and the work was getting no easier.

  A finger jabbed him repeatedly in the ribs but so insensible was he by now to any such insults that the hand had to grab him by the neck and heave him up to his feet from his elbows. He found a wide, bearded face yelling down at him from beneath a dented morion, the eyes demonic in the light of the flames, and he gaped at it in stunned incomprehension. The tercio jabbed his finger downward and Orlandu, open-mouthed and panting in the hot and ammoniac air, turned and looked. The tub he was dragging behind him by its rope handle was empty. The tercio spat into it to register his disgust and yelled again. Orlandu rose to his feet and changed direction, too bedazed to feel either offense at the invective or gratitude for the respite. The tercio kicked him up the arse and he lurched back through the ranks and down the embankment to the rear.

  All the warnings against snipers were forgotten. Like a creature only lately taught to walk on his hind legs he tottered across the bailey’s shot-strewn wasteland. The empty tub bounced willy-nilly behind him. At the door of what had been the stables, in the seaward lee of the eastern wall, he stopped and let go of the tub and slumped into a wall. His helmet, stuffed with sacking to make it fit, slid from his head and he let it lie where it fell and grabbed at the soaking sackcloth which still clung about his skull. He wrung out half a pint of sweat and scrubbed his face. His eyes stung and something infantile surged within him and his chest shuddered and he realized he was about to cry, not in sadness or fear or even relief, but as a child sobs, out of a boundless bewilderment and helplessness. Before he could give vent, some counter instinct rose equally unbidden, and hammered the child back down, and Orlandu gritted his teeth and caught his breath.

  For Christ and the Baptist. For the Religion and his countrymen. For Malta. His spirit recovered. He wrapped the damp sacking around his head and replaced his helmet. He dragged the empty tub into the stables, which now served as the field commissary. The cook, Stromboli, looked up from among his bottles, barrels, and baskets and waved the knife with which he chopped the loaves.

  “Where have you been?” he snapped in Italian. “The soldiers thirst.”

  Orlandu spat on the floor, set the empty tub down and gave it a kick. In Maltese he said, “I’ve been crawling in the shit, you old turd, what have you been doing?”

  Stromboli, Orlandu now learned, had spent enough time in the markets dealing with the locals to understand. He lunged over and fetched Orlandu a stiff clout around the side of the head.

  “Bread and wine from God. That is what I do. And without me the battle would be over.”

  He stabbed his knife at three other tubs which waited in a row, each filled near to the brim with hunks of bread dipped in olive oil and soaking in a marinade of r
ed wine, salt, and revitalizing herbs. Earlier, a chaplain had blessed these supplies and sprinkled them with holy water. While it was true that these refreshments kept the fighting men on their feet, Stromboli gave no credit to Orlandu for delivering them to their mouths.

  “Quickly now. And do not spill. And keep to the walls, or the food will be spoiled with your brains.”

  Orlandu held his tongue. He picked up the nearest tub by both handles, caught his balance, the tub bouncing into his bruise-blackened thighs, and staggered out of the door. There he set it down and shoveled up a dripping handful of the damp red mush, as the soldiers did when he dragged it along the battle line, and crammed it into his mouth. He gulped it down, hardly chewing at all on the soft succulent crusts, and found it more delicious than anything he’d ever tasted. It was the first time he’d had the wit to eat himself and at once he felt new strength suffuse his belly and limbs. Stromboli was a bastard, but his tubs were filled with an elixir. Bread and wine from God. He reached down for another handful and the blunt edge of Stromboli’s knife cracked down across his wrist.

  “The food is for the soldiers, not the pigs!”

  Orlandu hefted the tub and lurched off into the darkness that shrouded the bailey. The ropes cut into his fingers and his forearms burned, as then did his arms and shoulders and chest, his back, his belly, his hams and calves. The cheap leather cuirass he’d stolen from the barrel-chested Tomaso had chafed his hips and elbows to the bone. His breath scorched his throat. He thought of John the Baptist in the desert, surviving on only locusts and wild honey. He thought of Christ at the pillar. He thought of the knights in the forefront of the broil, already hours and hours in the breach and with God only knew how many hours more to go. He was weak, but he would become strong. He’d already carried this tub farther than the others. His body screamed. The ropes slipped in his blistered fingers. He would have to set it down. No. Another ten paces. At eight the rope slid from his left hand, taking his skin with it, and the tub canted over and a great wave slopped from the lip and onto the ground.

  He glanced back, mortified, but Stromboli was gone. He thanked Saint Catherine that here in the lee of the wall the flagstones were sound and not pulverized to dust. With both hands he scooped the spillage back into the tub. Fat green flies from the mass of decomposing bodies heaped outside the walls buzzed down in swarms to claim their share and he waved them away without effect. The wine stung his skinless palms but he left not a crust behind. He rolled up his sleeve and buried what he’d scraped up within the unspilled portion and gave it all a good stir and then swallowed another handful. It tasted just as marvelous as the first. The burning in his muscles had gone. He took off his helm and dropped it by the wall. Let the Turks split his skull, he didn’t care. He cut the damp sackcloth with his knife and wrapped the pieces around his hands. The sweat stung too. He’d give himself two more rest stops before reaching the front, and next time only two all told. He looked across the yard to the seething nocturnal encounter.

  Flares and incendiary rockets exploded above the toiling man-killers. At a distance from the foot of the slope a fresh section of men had drawn up. At their head Orlandu recognized—in part because he was laughing—the celebrated French adventurer Colonel Le Mas, bravest of the brave and even in this company reckoned a man amongst men. Who else could find something to laugh about in such a dire place? With a thrill Orlandu wondered if Le Mas might take God’s bread and wine from this very tub. Imagine. He swore to keep his head up this time. In any case he should wait until he knew he wouldn’t obstruct their maneuver. Le Mas gesticulated to two large companions, larger even than he, and they laughed too, and one, a bull of a man, threw to his shoulder the longest musket Orlandu had ever seen, its barrel feathered with silver under the flares, and a plume of white smoke flew toward something high on the unbreached parapet. A body fell, and as the bull lowered the gun with a proud cock of his head toward the others, the second man removed his helmet and handed it to him, and Orlandu saw that this was Captain Tannhauser, and that the other must then be Bors, who’d called Orlandu “my friend” and promised to teach him backgammon. Tannhauser too snapped a long gun to his shoulder and fired, with great speed it seemed. A second bundle of colorful robes plunged from the wall. A pair of Turkish snipers picked off like hares. What marksmen. Tannhauser spoke as he retrieved and replaced his morion and the three of them laughed again. Imagine. Laughing!

  Orlandu lifted the tub by the ropes and started forward. His hands sang with pain. No spilling, he swore. He hoped they wouldn’t notice him until after his next rest stop, when perhaps he could convey greater strength than he possessed. He began running in short, reeling steps, the mush swilling around, and the burning returned to his muscles almost at once. His face contorted and his lungs roared. He kept his eyes peeled for any sign that the three men might see him, but he was in shadow and they were not. He had to move out from the wall. He felt the ropes slip again and he stopped and grounded the tub and cursed it. He planned the next leg to take him closer than necessary to Bors, who would surely call him over and introduce him to Tannhauser and Le Mas, as any friend would. Or he could offer them the food. And Bors would tell Le Mas that his good friend Orlandu deserved more fitting duty than hauling a tub of wine through the shit and—

  Strange horns ululated and an exhausted cheer intermixed with obscene jeers suggested that the Turkish assault had been driven back. Orlandu thanked the Virgin, for perhaps now the troops could go and get their own bread and wine. The three men looked up the slope, where the mass of defenders were moving aside in good order to open a gap in their center. Tannhauser and Bors handed their long guns to an orderly and donned their gauntlets. Then each drew a sword and rolled his shoulders. Another horn, this time a Christian trumpet. Whistles. Banners with various insignia waved to instruct their respective companies. Le Mas’s section formed up in a wedge. The wedge pointed its apex at the gap still opening at the top of the bloody slope, and the reserve started up the embankment through the curtain of hot ocher smoke.

  Did this mean the battle wasn’t over? Would the Turks be crazy enough to come back? Orlandu grabbed his tub and tottered along the wall to find out.

  Le Mas’s section spread themselves across the breach and the men who’d held it until midnight withdrew. They were steeped as if in mud by the liquid products of combat, and relief precipitated in them a sudden exhaustion. Le Mas’s Spaniards piked the Turkish wounded where they lay and what corpses remained they kicked down into the ditch. Under cover of the fight, the Turkish sappers had filled in several sections of the ditch to form short causeways. They’d also thrown across bridges fashioned from masts. Out among the foul eddies of smoke there must have been four hundred fresh bodies in ragged piles, some still moving and muttering from the Koran. Many were charred and still smoldered in pools of wildfire. Beyond the fallen, Tannhauser saw bands of yerikulu limping from the field, dragging maimed comrades between them as they trudged back to the scorn of their aga.

  Bors said, “Your janissaries have decided on an early supper.”

  Tannhauser shook his head and pointed to the green robes and white turbans tangled in the ditch. “Regular infantry, Azebs of the yerikulu. The janissaries will come next.”

  Bors pointed, “What are those in aid of?”

  At twenty-pace intervals at the foot of the breach, orderlies had rolled huge butts into place and nailed plank footbridges to their rims. They were filling them with seawater from barrels on a cart.

  “If you get a taste of wildfire,” said Le Mas, “you jump in the butts to cool down.”

  He indicated the parapets to either side of the breach, where the wildfire crews assembled their batteries. Brimstone, saltpeter, linseed oil, sal ammoniac, turpentine, pitch, and naphtha. The Turks added frankincense and tow to make the wildfire stick, the Venetians hammered glass and aqua vitae. Against the parapet walls, the crews stacked, mouthupward, rows of trumps—brass pipes fixed to pike shafts that were filled with
the incendiary brew. When lit and pointed, the boil within the pipe belched forth streams of fireballs. The crews stacked crates of fire pipkins by the crenels. The Turks called them humbaras: fist-size clay pots sealed with paper, pierced by a fuse and filled with jellied wildfire. The most ingenious of the fireworks were credited to La Valette’s invention: hoops of pithy cane were soaked in brandy and oil of Peter, then wrapped in wool and steeped in the same inflammable liquors used in the trumps. When ignited they were hurled with tongs into the advancing Moslem ranks to horrible effect. The crews had a hellish job. Tannhauser grabbed Bors and shifted position in the line to be farther out of range of an accidental spill.

  A pot of camphorated balsam was passed about and they rubbed it into their beards against the stench. A smatter of sniper fire buzzed overhead. One of the tercios was hit in the face and his comrades dragged him to his feet and sent him stumbling rearward.

  “Give me some room,” said Bors.

  He needed it to wield the twelve-inch grip and scalloped sixty-inch blade of his German two-hander. He whirled the sword around his head to warm his sinews and the blade whistled in a huge figure of eight about and before him. With the dexterity of a lady folding a fan, Bors fetched the huge sword in and planted it between his feet.

  Tannhauser donned his gauntlets and examined the sword he’d taken from the chapel. The blade was three feet long with a flattened diamond cross-section. He judged it something over two pounds in weight. Italian. Hopefully Milanese. He put his tongue to the edge and tasted blood but felt no pain. He strode to the stack of fallen arms collected by the orderlies from the breach. He chose a five-pound mace with a steel haft and seven flanged blades welded to the core. A spiked finial four inches long was screwed into the top. He headed back to the line and turned to the man on his right—a short but powerful veteran with flinty eyes.