There was my research, of course, on the Great White Hunter, a project I began as soon as I got back to the house after Dr. Stanhope’s lecture, stimulated by the fear of another encounter with that dreadful man. I sat on the edge of the bed with the guidebook and a map spread out, and tried to figure out if in fact it was mere coincidence that I kept running into him. One thing I learned very quickly: Malta had the most amazing history. Almost everyone seems to have come to Malta at some point. It might be more accurate to say everyone and everything because even animals escaping the Ice Age crossed over a land bridge that linked Malta to Europe and possibly to Africa, back in the mists of time. For a while it seemed to be impossible to find any connection between my peregrinations and those of GWH, other than the somehow unlikely assumption that he, like Anthony, was a fan of Gerolamo Cassar, but in the end it proved reasonably simple.
Anna Stanhope would probably have said that the most important age for Malta was that of the temple builders, and if longevity counts, she would be right. The temple builders may have been on Malta for as many as six hundred years, and after they left, just about everyone in the Mediterranean used the island for some purpose at some time. The Phoenicians used it as a base, as did the Carthaginians. Hamilcar, Hannibal’s father, is said to have surrendered to the Romans there, for example. The Greeks were there, the Romans, even St. Paul, who is said to have been shipwrecked off Malta’s coast.
But if one were to look for the most prominent influence on the island, in terms of its landscape, its customs and practices, arguably this title would belong to the Knights. And it was here that I began to see some consistency in the places I’d seen GWH.
The story of the Knights began, I learned, in about 1085 when a group of monks known as Hospitallers began to minister to Christians who required medical attention on pilgrimages to the Holy Land. It soon became evident, though, that what these pilgrims really needed was protection from the so-called Infidel, in other words the followers of Islam, much more so than medical attention. Thus the Knights of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem came into being, an order that offered care and service to those in need, backed up by knights prepared to do battle if need be.
Gradually the Ottoman Turks began to gain the ascendancy in the Holy Land and the Knights of St. John were driven out of Jerusalem by Saladin, then out of Acre, then Cyprus, at which point they got to Rhodes. Here they stayed a while, only to be driven out again, this time by Sulieman the Magnificent. Sulieman allowed them to leave Rhodes, but this time they had no fallback position. They had nowhere to go.
Charles V of Spain, at the time Holy Roman Emperor, had various lands in his possession for which he apparently felt no great need. The island of Malta was among them. At first the Knights were not interested—they thought the island disagreeable at best—but in the end, what choice did they have? Beggars can’t be choosers. It was that or Tripoli, which was even worse, and they couldn’t argue with the rent: one falcon a year for Charles, the real Maltese falcon. After seven years of negotiation, they agreed to go to Malta, and most of Christendom heaved a collective sigh of relief, homeless knights being an embarrassment to all. Henceforth the Order came to be associated with Malta, and they built the great cities and fortifications that are so much a part of Malta today.
What was relevant for my research of the day, however, was that while Anthony had emphasized the architecture and the current use of the buildings: the Post Office, the Prime Minister’s residence, and so on, the original use of every one of these places we had gone, and everywhere I had seen GWH, lurking in that way he had, led back directly to the Knights: either the inns or auberges in which various orders of the Knights had lived, their cathedral, their hospital, and so on.
The question was: So what? It was all very interesting, but it didn’t get me anywhere. GWH was as entitled as anyone to visit those places, and maybe he was just a student of that particular period of history. In the end my research was just about as rewarding as the rest of my evenings at the house.
After the repairs and the research, the daily phone call to Toronto to check on the furniture shipment was about as exciting as it got. Dave Thomson had been right about France. A national transportation strike had shut the country down. Toronto International was still experiencing delays because of the weather, and when I wasn’t bored, I was in a state of high anxiety.
“Anthony told me about the lecture you went to last night. It sounded… interesting,” Marissa said rather hesitantly after a particularly prolonged bout of complaining on my part. She probably thought she was taking her life in her hands to talk to me, my just having had a hissy fit on the subject of the water problem.
“Actually, it was,” I said, cheering up slightly. “Whether you agree with Dr. Stanhope’s point of view or not. I had no idea a little island like this one could sustain such a rich and fascinating heritage!”
“It does.” She smiled. “One of the temple complexes the professor told you about isn’t far from here—Hagar Qim and Mnajdra. They’re very close by car.”
“I’ll bet!” I said, remembering my harried drive of the day before in crystal clear detail.
“Really!” she affirmed, then giggled. I guess Anthony had told her how lost I’d managed to get. I’d given him the edited version on the way home, omitting the part about the Great White Hunter. Tourists trying to find their way around this tiny island seemed to be a grand source of merriment for the locals.
“How far is it, exactly?” I asked.
“It’s exactly a mile… or thereabouts,” she said, not being quite as precise as I’d hoped. “You could actually walk if you wanted to.”
I thought this a much less stressful mode of travel than the car from hell, so soon I headed out with Marissa’s carefully drawn map in hand.
She was right. It was relatively easy. I just had to keep the sea on my right.
Walking is a wonderful way to see a new country and for a little while I was able to enjoy, indeed revel, in the sights and sounds and smells of a new place. It might have been the dead of winter at home, and an exceptionally harsh winter at that, but here it was already spring. There was warmth in the air and fields of poppies everywhere, bright flashes of brilliant color against the subdued pastel of the terrain.
Several times I stopped to look at tiny mauve and white flowers—I had no idea what they were—bravely clinging to existence in the thin and arid soil. I followed a rough path along the edge of the cliffs for a time, then turned inland to pick up a footpath that arched to the north and then angled back toward the water, passing just inland of the temple complex.
You could see the huge stones that formed the temple walls, megaliths indeed, their color bleached almost white in the bright sunlight, long before you reached the site. Maltese temples are circular in shape, made from huge limestone blocks, each weighing several tons, I should think. Some of the stones are covered with what look like pockmarks, put there by ancient craftsmen. The temples reminded me a little bit of the shape and grandeur of Stonehenge or some of the other stone circles you see in Northern Europe and Britain, but the Maltese temples are much older, and their design seemed more complex to my eye: circular chambers that lead into other circular chambers to form either a trefoil or a cinquefoil, three or five rounded chambers or apses leading off a central area. I knew from Dr. Stanhope’s lecture of the previous evening that these temples are the oldest freestanding stone structures in the world, and the huge statues of the Goddess that once rested there, probably the first freestanding statues anywhere as well.