‘Tell him nothing of this.’
Stanley shook his head. ‘Didn’t they say old Friar Bacon invented a potion which made him invisible, so he could pass among men and not be seen by them? This boy moves so fast in a fight, it’s as if he has drunk this potion.’
They replenished their water jars from a source the goatboy showed them, and sailed again the following afternoon. They would have to sail and bail all the way. It would be three days to Sardinia, three more to Sicily, and then a day south to Malta. Only a week more and it would begin.
Yet Lady Day was far gone now, it was well into April, and the Turk would be upon them soon. The knights had a dread of coming into Messina and hearing that the Turk was already on Malta, the island had fallen, and this time there had been no mercy for the Knights of St John. They pictured their severed heads already decorating the battlements of the poor fort of San Angelo, so meagre a successor to the great fortified city of their beloved Rhodes.
The six days to Sardinia and Sicily were uneventful, slow and tense. They called over to passing merchant ships in a macaronic mix of Latin tongues.
‘Les Turcs a Malta?’
Mariners called back, ‘No, signores. No escucho no armas de fuoco, no cannones. Todo paz. Paz e benevolenza.’
All is peace. Peace and goodwill.
They grimaced and hastened on to Messina.
The ancient Sicilian harbour was a clamorous babel of voices, ships loading and unloading, gulls crying, crowds jostling. The master of the Swan got a good price for the Spanish merino wool that he had picked up in Cadiz. He would take nothing on to Malta but his troublesome, stout-hearted passengers. He would set them ashore in the Grand Harbour, and then hurry back west as fast as he could, leaving the mayhem of this holy war behind him. He and his mariners were already thinking longingly of the alehouses of Bristol.
Few other masters and shipmen around the harbour showed any interest.
‘Malta?’ they grunted. ‘No trade there.’ And no more.
No others were sailing south. Many quickly changed the subject, no keener to talk of the island than to bring a cat on board ship, set sail on a Sunday, or talk of a storm in fair weather. Malta had become a name accursed.
There was some small encouragement for them, regarding the one naval commander among all the Christians who was truly feared by the Turk.
‘Is Romegas still sailing?’ asked Smith.
A Sicilian gave a slow, guarded smile. ‘Ay. Night and day, the Chevalier Romegas is still sailing.’
They had a short time before departure, while the crew laded the Swan with water and provisions, so found a hostel close by. A dark panelled interior, pleasantly cool, and four cups of wine.
‘And none of your mindless belligerence this time,’ Smith said to Nicholas. ‘Nor making love-lorn eyes at any barmaid.’
Nicholas gave him a look.
At the rear of the hostel was a private room, though the door was ajar. A fruity, well-mannered voice was saying,
‘Slay me, but if I had not spent so much time a-dallying with the Lady Maria, or her equally delectable sister, the Lady Catherine, I should have been at Malta a month ago. It is the story of my life, Don Luis.’
Stanley and Smith exchanged glances.
‘That voice is familiar,’ murmured the latter.
‘I am ever torn between the burning of the flesh and the cool of the monastery,’ continued the fruity voice. ‘And then of course, the clarion call of war.’
‘That will be for your brother to decide,’ said the older voice of Don Luis.
‘My brother,’ repeated the fruity voice in a sarcastic tone. ‘One might as well await the conversion of the Jews. And Malta will soon be under violent siege.’
Chairs were pushed back, and then there appeared in the doorway the venerable figure of an old Spanish nobleman in a fine black surcoat, a heavy gold chain around his neck. Yet he stood back to let his superior pass through the doorway first. And into the room where they sat stepped a startling peacock of a man. Only some twenty years of age, immaculately bearded, with a pale face and high cheekbones, he was clad in a pure white velvet suit with a small jewelled belt and dagger at his waist, and soft white leather top boots reaching to just above his knee. If you hadn’t heard him talking of his mistresses, you would very much think that this was one of those gentlemen who preferred the company of other gentlemen.
He held his nose so high in the air that he would never have noticed the four scruffy wine-bibbers at their table, had not Smith and Stanley, to Nicholas’s astonishment, stood up the instant this ridiculous coxcomb appeared, and bowed very low. Nicholas then saw, to his even greater astonishment, that the white-suited coxcomb was wearing a small silver Cross of St John around his neck.
He looked at the two bowed knights and arched one immaculate jet-black eyebrow.
‘We do not recognise the crowns of your heads, gentlemen. Show us your faces, if you please.’
Smith and Stanley stood once more, and the coxcomb winced exaggeratedly at their appearance.
‘Brother Knights, we see,’ he said, and gave a minuscule nod. ‘Greetings.’
‘Majesty,’ said the knights.
Majesty. Nicholas swallowed. The fellow was a prince, of royal blood! He had never set eyes upon one of God’s appointed royalty before. Instinctively he and Hodge both bowed their heads, but they needn’t have troubled. The Prince did not even notice their existence.
‘You sail for Malta?’ said the Prince.
‘Yes, Majesty. Within the hour.’
‘Then we sail with you. Our passage here has been damnably difficult, waylaid with the most tiresome distractions.’ He drew off his white kid gloves once more and used them to fan his face. ‘Pray, finish your wine before we sail.’
The knights drank fast. Nicholas and Hodge gulped theirs even faster. In the very presence of royalty.
The Prince turned his head, and wrinkled his nose.
‘On reflection,’ he said, ‘we shall wait outside, in the purer air. Our noses will thank us for it.’ He smiled beneficently upon them as he left. ‘Pray do not hurry. Surely the Turk himself is coming but leisurely.’
Then he and the old courtier Don Luis were gone.
‘Who was that?’
Smith stepped up to the door to be sure that the Prince that departed.
‘That,’ said Stanley quietly, ‘was the natural-born brother of the King of Spain.’
Nicholas and Hodge gaped.
‘Truly,’ said Stanley. ‘We step into the first tavern in Messina, and there he is. But not so remarkable, really, since he too is a Knight of St John.’
‘Formally speaking,’ growled Smith. ‘A deal of use that fop would be when it came to war. And the meaning of the vow of chastity seems to have escaped him.’
‘He is not the only knight to have erred there,’ said Stanley. ‘And by all the evidence, he is on his way to Malta to fight with his brothers.’
Smith sneered. ‘You can well imagine what terror the sight of so gorgeous a creature would strike into the hearts of your battle-hardened Janizaries.’
‘You mean,’ said Nicholas, still digesting this magical encounter, ‘he is the brother of King Philip of Spain?’
‘Half-brother. His father, like Philip’s, was the great Charles V. Philip’s mother, of course, was Queen Isabella of Portugal. Our Prince’s here was a certain German lady of playful disposition, called Barbara Blomberg.’
‘So playful, indeed,’ said Smith, checking out of the door once more, ‘that some say there is no certainty whatever that her natural son, our friend here in the white velvet, is the son of Charles V at all. He could be the bastard offspring of two or three dozen kings or noblemen from any country in Europe.’