The carnage was terrible. Twelve Christian galleys were sunk and one captured, with losses of 15,000 officers and men. Of the Turks, 113 galleys were sunk, and another 117 captured. Tens of thousands of Turks were killed, 8,000 were captured, and 15,000 Christian galley slaves were freed.
The best known casualty of the battle was Miguel Cervantes, whose left hand was carried away by a cannon ball. He survived to write Don Quixote.
LEPANTO
by Gilbert Keith Chesterton
White founts falling in the courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard,
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips,
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross,
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
From evening isles rings faint the Spanish gun,
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,
Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,
Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half-attainted stall,
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,
The last lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,
That once went singing southward when all the world was young,
In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,
Don John of Austria is going to the war,
Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold
In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold,
Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,
Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.
Don John laughing in the brave beard curled,
Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world,
Holding his head up for a flag of all the free.
Love-light of Spain—hurrah!
Death-light of Africa!
Don John of Austria
Is riding to the sea.
Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri’s knees,
His turban that is woven of the sunset and the seas.
He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease,
And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees,
And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring
Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.
Giants and the Genii,
Multiplex of wing and eye,
Whose strong obedience broke the sky
When Solomon was king.
They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn,
From temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn;
They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea
Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be;
On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl,
Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl;
They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,—
They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound.
And he saith, “Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk may hide,
And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide,
And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest,
For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west.
We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun,
Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done,
But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know
The voice that shook our palaces—four hundred years ago:
It is he that saith not ‘Kismet’; it is he that knows not Fate;
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey in the gate!
It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth,
Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth.”
For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
Sudden and still—hurrah!
Bolt from Iberia!
Don John of Austria
Is gone by Alcalar.
St. Michael’s on his Mountain in the sea-roads of the north
(Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.)
Where the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift
And the sea folk labour and the red sails lift.
He shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone;
The noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone;
The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes.
And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise,
And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room,
And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom,
And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,
But Don John of Austria is riding out to the sea.
Don John calling through the blast and the eclipse
Crying with the trumpet, with the trumpet of his lips,
Trumpet that sayeth ha!
Domino gloria!
Don John of Austria
Is shouting to the ships.
King Philip’s in his closet with the Fleece about his neck
(Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.)
The walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin,
And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in.
He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon,
He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon,
And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey
Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day,
And death is in the phial, and the end of noble work,
But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk.
Don John’s hunting, and his hounds have bayed–
Booms away past Italy the rumour of his raid.
Gun upon gun, ha! ha!
Gun upon gun, hurrah!
Don John of Austria
Has loosed the cannonade.
The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke,
(Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.)
The hidden room in a man’s house where God sits all the year,
The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.
He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea
The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery;
They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark,
They veil the plumed lions on the galleys of St. Mark;
And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs,
And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs,
Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines
Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines.
They are lost like slaves that swat, and in the skies of morning hung
The stairwa
ys of the tallest gods when tyranny was young.
They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on
Before the high Kings’ horses in the granite of Babylon.
And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell
Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell,
And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign—
(But Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!)
Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,
Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate’s sloop,
Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,
Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,
Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea
White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.
Vivat Hispania!
Domino Gloria!
Don John of Austria
Has set his people free!
Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,
Up which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain
And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade…
(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)
Editor's Introduction to:
A CURE FOR CROUP
by Edward P. Hughes
Edward Hughes lives in Britain. In his masterful future history there have been wars and rumors of war; civilization has fallen, taking much of the ecology with it. Staying alive is a struggle; but the people of the small Irish village of Barley Cross are determined to live normal lives despite the fall. Protected by The O’Meara, Master of the Fist and onetime Sergeant Major of Her Majesty’s forces, Barley Cross has been an island of civilized life among the ruins.
The beginning was told in the story “In The Name Of The Father,” Volume II of this series; “A Cure For Croup” continues the tale.
A CURE FOR CROUP
by Edward P. Hughes
The sound of a tolling bell woke Liam McGrath. He nudged his sleeping wife.
“Hear that racket, Eileen!”
Eileen McGrath stirred in her sleep. She had been up half the night nursing their one-year-old son through an attack of croup, and she was in no mood for conversation.
Liam frowned at the bell’s clamor. That could only be the village church bell—and Father Con never allowed it to be sounded as a warning.
Eileen opened her eyes. “What time is it?”
Liam reached across her to consult the ancient windup alarm his mother had given them as a wedding present.
“Only five-thirty, by God! D’you think there’s something wrong?”
She said drowsily, “Sounds like a death knell to me.”
He swung his legs out of bed. Their cottage clung close to the root of Kirkogue Mountain and was a mere cockstride out of the village of Barley Cross. From his bedroom window Liam could see along the village’s one and only main street. He peered through the curtains. Figures moved on the distant roadway.
And the bell tolled.
He grabbed his trousers from the chair back and began to dress.
Eileen raised herself on one elbow. “Where are you going?”
He buckled his belt. “I’m off to see what’s happened. It may be an emergency.”
She sighed. “Don’t wake Tommy. I’ve only just got him off.”
Liam nodded. Their son’s harsh breathing and racking cough had demanded the village doctor’s attention the previous night. Liam could hear stertorous respiration from the next room. He tiptoed downstairs, lifted his jacket from the newel post, and slipped out into the morning light.
Seamus Murray stood at the door of his forge. The smith’s face was unduly solemn. He seemed not to notice Liam’s presence.
Liam shook his arm. “What’s happened, man? What’s the bell for?”
Seamus’s mouth opened and closed like a fish in a jar. Then the words gushed out. “The O’Meara’s dead! They found him at the foot of the stairs when the guard went in to report the ‘all clear’ this morning. He’d had a heart attack.”
Liam stared, his brain refusing to accept the smith’s news. Patrick O’Meara, Lord of Barley Cross, Master of the Fist, and focus of village life for as long as Liam could remember, dead? It was like hearing the village clock had vanished.
He said stupidly, “How come they found him so early?”
Seamus Murray shot him a pitying look. “The Master always wanted a report as soon as it grew light enough to see the O’Toole cottage. We’ve done it that way for years— though I doubt a lad of your age would appreciate why.”
Liam knew why. He had suffered the saga of Barley Cross versus the Rest of Ireland from his elders ever since he had been old enough to pay attention.
He ignored Murray’s dig. “So who found him?”
The smith scanned the road. Liam’s face appeared to be the last thing he wanted to look at. “Christ, man, how should I know? I don’t stand guard at the Fist anymore. Does it matter? We’ve lost our protector—the man who kept us from death and destruction in the years gone by—and all you want to know is who found him!”
All Barley Cross went to the funeral, that being the villagers’ normal procedure. But many a wife shed more than customary tears for the deceased. Patrick O’Meara, the ram of Barra Hill, had left no widow to mourn his passing, but in a very real way he had been a father to the community, and many of the women had particularly fond memories of him.
The O’Meara’s henchmen met in the dining hall of the Fist as soon as the obsequies were done.
General Larry Desmond drained a tumbler of poteen with scant regard for its potency. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, then set the empty glass on the carpet between his feet. “Well,” he said. “We’re in a pickle now.”
At the other end of the broken-backed settee, Kevin Murphy, the vet, stared gloomily into his own glass. “God dammit!” he muttered. “I loved that bloody man. Why could it not have happened to one of us instead?”
Celia Larkin, MA, schoolmistress and spinster, sipped a cup of herb tea brewed especially for her by Michael, the O’Meara’s servant. Neglected runnels in her face powder showed where the tears had flowed. She sniffed. “Maybe it’s the Lord’s judgment on our presumption. Father Con ranted about it often enough.”
Denny Mallon, MD, dwarfed in the great, shiny armchair, sucked at an empty pipe. “Father Con’s views on delegated procreation don’t necessarily reflect those of our Maker. Think about Judah’s advice to Onan in Genesis. And anyway, this is no time to be questioning tenets. But for Patrick O’Meara, Barley Cross would be a futureless dormitory by now. I can’t imagine that even Father Con would want that.”
General Desmond refilled his glass from the bottle on the floor. “Denny, you are overly pessimistic as usual. A few of us here still have a kick or two left in us. Point is—where are we going to find a man to father the next generation of kids in Barley Cross?”
“That child of the Kellys–” began Celia Larkin.
Kevin Murphy grunted. “Christ, Celia, he’s only ten or eleven years old. We’re surely not counting on adolescent precocity to—
General Desmond choked over his drink. “God love us! Let the little fellow grow up first! We’re not even sure he’s fertile. The Kellys never had any more kids.”
Celia Larkin compressed prim lips. “You misunderstand me, gentlemen. It was the father I had in mind. And my idea was for it to be done surgically. Presumably the way Kevin achieves it with his beasts.”
Kevin Murphy jerked upright. “Hold on now! I’m no gynecologist. Better ask Denny about that kind of maneuver.”
Doctor Denny Mallon lowered his pipe. “The Kelly boy might be a possibility in a year or two—if he is his father’s son. But Con Kelly
never managed another child. As for artificial insemination, I have no equipment and no skill—nor the wish to employ either. We have discussed this idea before and rejected it. We agreed, if I rightly recall, that women are not cattle. And anyway, to go in now for clinical insemination would explode our carefully nurtured fiction that the husbands of Barley Cross are the fathers of their children. No, my friends, what we need is a new seigneur to exercise his droits.”
General Desmond’s eyes narrowed in sudden suspicion. He glowered at the doctor. “Just what have you hidden up your sleeve, Denny lad?”
Denny Mallon picked at the charcoaled bowl of his pipe with a black thumbnail. He closed his eyes, as though weighing a doubtful course. Then he shook his head.
“It’s not professional ethics to betray a patient’s confidence.”
“Denny!” squealed Celia Larkin.
“But if you’ll each give me your word to preserve—
“Christ, man! Yes, yes!” interrupted Kevin Murphy.
Denny Mallon swiveled arched eyebrows at the general and the schoolmistress. “You too—both of you?”
“God, man! Give up! Yes!”
“Anything, Denny. Just tell us!”
The doctor tapped his pipe on the heel of his hand. His listeners strained forward to catch his soft-spoken words.
“Eileen McGrath tells me she’s missed her menses for the second month in succession. I think she’s pregnant with her second child!”
Larry Desmond’s breath came out in a low whistle. “Young Liam McGrath?”
Denny Mallon nodded. “Who else?”
Celia Larkin’s eyes flashed behind her rimless spectacles. “What exactly does that mean, Denny? You’re the expert.”
Denny Mallon grimaced. “It could mean that our dear Patrick passed on his fertility to Liam McGrath—for which mercy I would be grateful. Or it could be that our ozone layer is repairing itself since we stopped assaulting it with fluorocarbons. Which is unlikely. Alternatively, it could be that some of our children have developed an immunity to heavy ultraviolet doses. And that would be the best answer of all.”
There Will Be War Volume IV Page 13
