‘You can’t—’
Thomas raised a hand to silence him. ‘We’re wasting time. I want the galley under way as soon as possible. First, we get rid of these . . . vermin.’
He drew his sword and before anyone could intervene he ran the blade through the nearest of the corsairs, a youth in a finely embroidered jerkin, too young to grow a beard. The corsair gasped and slumped back on to the deck as a crimson stain quickly spread over the white cotton of his jerkin. He feebly clawed at the rent in the cloth and tried to press at the wound as if to staunch the flow of blood. Thomas stood over him, blinded by all but the desire to kill. He struck again, this time at the youth’s neck, cutting deep into the spine and almost severing the head. Thomas looked round at his men. ‘Now, carry out your orders! Kill them all. You first.’ He pointed at one of the men who had been guarding the prisoners. ‘Do it.’
The soldier lowered his pike and thrust it into the chest of the nearest corsair. The others began to cry out, begging for mercy in French and Spanish as well as their native tongues. Once the first two were dead, the rest of the soldiers standing around them joined in with the slaughter. Thomas stood apart, and Stokely looked on, his lips curled with disgust and horror.
‘This is. . . wrong.’ He shook his head. ‘Wrong.’
‘Then perhaps you had better reconsider your membership of the Order.’ Thomas shrugged and turned away as the last of the prisoners was killed. ‘See to it that the bodies are removed.’
As he walked towards the bows, Thomas felt nothing for a moment. He had expected to feel a sense of release, the draining of the tension that had built up during the battle, and then in the hold. But there was just a chilling numbness. The blood on the deck around him and on discarded weapons was just a detail, and his recollections of the battle were fleeting images unfreighted by emotion, remorse or even the smallest ray of triumph. All he knew was that he still lived and his comrades had won a small victory. No more than a pinprick to the vast Leviathan of Turkish might that was steadily making this sea, and the lands that bounded it, the domain of Islam. Blood would continue to flow, men would continue to die by the sword or from starvation and exhaustion chained to the oars of the galleys that swept this troubled sea. Women and children would continue to be taken as slaves to become whores or be raised as Muslims to wage war on those they had once called family. In turn the knights of St John and those who shared their cause would fight for survival. And so it would go on. Sword and scimitar locked in an endless, bloody duel whose only prize was the misery upon misery heaped upon man.
Thomas went over to the small hatch over the forward hold where he had killed the man dressed in black. He sat down heavily and unbuckled his mantlets and pulled off his gloves before fumbling with the buckles of the chinstrap of his helmet. It took a few attempts before he pulled the helmet off and placed it beside him on the deck. Sweat plastered his hair to his scalp and the morning breeze felt cool on his exposed skin. He leaned back for a moment, resting against the bulwark, until a shadow fell across his face. He blinked his eyes open and saw Stokely standing before him.
‘I’ve carried out your orders. And the Christians have been freed.’ He gestured towards the rear of the deck where forty or so skeletal figures in rags were gathered around some baskets of bread, frantically scrabbling for a loaf, and ripping chunks off and chewing vigorously. Stokely watched them a moment. ‘They weren’t so hungry that they didn’t tear the overseer to pieces first. Still, he deserved his fate.’
‘If you say so.’
Stokely glanced at the hatch. ‘Have you searched down there yet?’
Thomas shook his head.
‘Might be some more food we could give that lot.’
Thomas waved a hand towards the narrow coaming. ‘Do as you wish.’
Stokely lowered himself down the ladder into the small storage hold. A moment later Thomas heard him swear in a surprised tone, before he called up.
‘Thomas!’
‘What is it?’
‘Come down here!’
The urgency in his tone caused Thomas to quickly shift himself over the edge of the hatch and drop down into the confined space. ‘What is it?’
He turned and looked forward to where Stokely was crouching down, not far from a bundle of rags. There was not enough room to stand and Thomas shuffled over to his side. The bundle stirred and in the shafts of light that penetrated the hold through a small grille Thomas saw that it was a woman. A thin strip of cloth covered her and as she began to turn towards them, it slipped and exposed the raw welts across her shoulders and back. Her hair was long and dark and one hand was chained to a bolt in the side of the hold. She looked at the two men, eyes narrow with suspicion. Her skin was pale and there was a bruise on her cheek. Her lips parted and her tongue briefly moistened the chapped skin before she whispered, ‘Who are you?’
‘Christians,’ Sir Oliver replied. ‘We’ve taken this galley.’
‘Christians,’ she repeated, looking them over searchingly.
There was a brief silence as the woman and the two knights stared at each other. As he looked at her, Thomas realised that she was beautiful, even here, beaten, bruised and chained in her own filth. Something stirred in the coldness of his hardened heart. He shuffled round so that he could reach the ring bolt and then pulled out his dagger. The woman flinched slightly at the sight of the blade and he motioned towards the pin fastening the chains to the bolt. ‘I’ll get you out of here.’
She nodded and Thomas inserted the point of the blade and began to work the pin free. He paused briefly and looked at her. ‘What is your name?’
She licked her lips again and replied hoarsely, ‘Maria de Venici.’ Thomas nodded and again he felt something stir in his heart as he regarded her.
‘Maria,’ he repeated slowly, savouring each syllable of the name. ‘Maria.’
CHAPTER FIVE
Malta, two months later
Thin streaks of silvery cloud ringed the bright gleam of a crescent moon over Malta. A glittering finger of reflected light stretched across the waters of the harbour towards the mass of the Sciberras ridge, and the air was still and hot. Thomas paid little attention to his surroundings. On another night he would have been sensitive to the sensual aesthetics of a summer night in the Mediterranean and paused to drink in the sights and sounds and surrender to the moment.
But not now.
His heart was beating with impatience and anxiety as he stood in the shadow of the walls of Fort St Angelo, the home of the Order, built on the rocky tip of the Birgu peninsula. The fort guarded the entrance to the harbour and loomed over the small town whose red roof tiles appeared dull and grey in the moonlight. A small path ran along the base of the wall, leading down to the landing stage at the edge of the water, where Thomas stood waiting. He started nervously as the cathedral bell tolled the half-hour after midnight. Maria should have been here long ago. Edging away from the rocks beneath the wall, Thomas strained his eyes as he stared along the path, but nothing moved there. He felt a stab of fear at the thought that she might have changed her mind and decided not to take the risk of meeting him alone again.
They had already been warned not to pursue their relationship. La Valette had approached Thomas at the morning weapons drill and taken him aside for a quiet exchange. Maria de Venici, he reminded the young knight, was waiting for her brother to retrieve her from the island and pay over the reward to the Order for her rescue.
Thomas’s lips twitched with amusement. Ransom was a more accurate word for it. Not that such an infelicitous term played any part in the exchange of messages between the Order and the Venici family.