‘What news, brother?’ asked Stanley.
‘What news, what news?’ He spoke rapidly, confusedly, with a Greek accent. ‘I must see the Grand Master. Only his ears, only his.’
Medrano reappeared, holding open the tall doors. ‘The Grand Master bids you enter.’
The inner chamber was only a little less spartan than the outer. A flagstone floor, a plain table with some papers, pen and ink. At a small desk in the corner, a pale, elderly secretary, peering over his record book. A splendid triple window of diamonded lead panes, looking out onto the sunlit harbour below. And silhouetted in the bright window, his back to them, a tall man, very tall, and of proud bearing. They knelt and bowed their heads and waited in silence. Then he turned.
Jean Parisot de la Valette,48th Grand Master of the Knights of St John.
He must have been some seventy years old, but with a full head of white hair, a trim beard, and undimmed eye. He radiated power. His gaze burned into them. He said nothing. A man accustomed to the silence and solitude of the truly great, and of great responsibility, needing none other to lean upon. His frame was lean but powerful, his shoulders broad, his features extraordinarily handsome.
Then he spoke, in a voice deep and low, a voice to calm a storm. ‘You honour the Order with your coming.’ He lifted his hands and they stood again. ‘Friend from the East,’ he said, eyeing the nervous new arrival. ‘Tell me what I do not know already.’
The Greek simpleton babbled for more than a minute of how the Ottoman fleet was already sailing, of how vast it was, how he had seen it with his own eyes.
The Grand Master interrupted. ‘Numbers?’
The simpleton looked anxious. ‘Many. More than I could count. As numberless as the sands of the sea or the stars in the sky. Every port was busy with provisioning and ship building, not just the Golden Horn but Bursa too, all the ports of the Ottomans. Soldiers coming down to join the fleet from inland and from the European frontiers, from Hungary, from Bessarabia, Karamania, paid levies from Wallachia, mountain men from Albania. Many columns of marching men, singing of a new jihad.’
‘You paint a picture,’ said La Valette crisply. ‘But here is nothing new. Our other informants already tell us the Grand Fleet is only a few hours off the coast of Calabria. We thank you, brother. Go now.’
The simpleton stared and then hurried out.
‘Everything is falling into place,’ said La Valette. ‘The Order will live or die in the coming battle. As God wills.’
He did not sound discomposed. It was as if his whole life had been building to this hour, when Malta and the Knights would stand alone against the greatest military power on earth.
‘We have perhaps two more days,’ he said. He smiled and walked over. ‘Chevalier de Guaras, De la Rivière, and my last loyal Englishmen.’ He clasped their hands. ‘And the boys?’
They gave him Faraone, then Nicholas and lastly Hodge.
‘Hodge,’ repeated La Valette gravely. ‘This name could only be English. It sounds stout.’
‘They have already stood by us in a skirmish with the corsairs, Sire,’ said Stanley. ‘This one,’ he touched Nicholas on the shoulder, ‘bested five of them.’
La Valette looked at him sharply. ‘Five? Five men?’
‘Full-grown and ferocious, now in Hades. You knew his father.’
La Valette’s eyes narrowed.
‘The late Sir Francis Ingoldsby. He fought with you at Rhodes.’
Rare emotion swam in La Valette’s eyes. Nostalgia and memory. He stood before Nicholas, towering over him, and laid his hands on his shoulders. ‘The son of Sir Francis Ingoldsby,’ he said softly. ‘Lord bless you. Have you brothers?’
Nicholas shook his head. ‘Sisters. They are cared for in England. My father died some six months ago. Our estates are forfeit, we are orphans.’
‘This sounds like injustice.’
‘It is. One day I shall right it.’
La Valette nodded. ‘So you fell in with these knights of mine and sailed for Malta. In memory of your father?’
‘Yes,’ said Nicholas, his voice too quiet. Then ‘Yes’ again, more firmly.
‘Two more nights of sleep without fear. Then the storm will break. I trust you will not think you have sailed too far from England.’
‘I will not.’
La Valette addressed them all. ‘Gentlemen, you know how perilous is our situation. The Turk is almost upon us. We hasten to build what defences we can until then. We pray that God help us. The French will not, they ally with Suleiman. Nor the German princes, nor England’s Protestant Queen. King Philip of Spain remains our best hope, but so far he has sent us nothing, though the Spanish possessions of Sicily and the Kingdom of Naples would be the first to suffer invasion should Malta fall. His Holiness the Pope sends us ten thousand crowns, to buy powder and arms. Yet it is men that we desperately need, and do not have. So it seems we fight alone. Brothers-in-arms. All four hundred of us.’
He smiled grimly.
‘Eat well this evening, sleep well tonight. Tomorrow there will be work to do. This novice with you, De la Rivière. The English boys to be billeted.’
As they filed out, La Valette murmured to Stanley, ‘This Ingoldsby will fight hard, I see. He fights not merely for glory, as other volunteers, but for his family honour, and his father’s pride.’
The finest street in Birgu was the Street of the Knights, the auberge of each langue handsomely escutcheoned over the brightly painted doors.
Stanley spoke to a bread-seller on the corner. He jabbered in Maltese and pointed down a narrow side street. Stanley hailed the two boys and led them to the door, drawing out his purse as he went.
A dark, shy-looking woman answered the door, no more than twenty-seven or twenty-eight. Stanley spoke to her in Italian, she said little. Then he handed her a silver coin, and pushed them on in.
Nicholas and Hodge were given a small, windowless room off the tiny courtyard, with two straw pallets on the floor, and plentiful fleas. They dropped their packs and stretched out.
‘Well, Hodge. What do you reckon to Malta so far? Hodge?’
He was asleep.
2
‘Inglis! Inglis! Up stir your asses! Franco Briffa is returned home!’
Nicholas awoke, scratching. It was dark. A monstrous bull-voice was roaring in the tiny courtyard, just outside their thin door, his language a baffling polyglot mix of heavily accented Italian and snatches of Maltese.
‘Franco Briffa is returned from the bastard sea, with his great friend the bastard Anton Zahra, bringing fresh fish for your Inglis dinner. Appear! Stand before us! Let us see these noble heroes of England!’
Hodge and Nicholas stumbled out of the door, dopey after only two hours’ sleep. It was yet early evening, the air still as warm as an English summer noon, and the little town of Birgu was all astir once more.
Before them, seemingly filling the little courtyard from wall to wall, was a man of some thirty-five years. Of medium height, but barrel-chested, with mighty forearms, thick black hair, huge, black oiled moustache, and large, fiercely burning eyes. Strong white teeth gleamed as he grinned, but instantly vanished when he set eyes on the two skinny, weary, travel-stained young heroes.
‘You are the soldiers come to defend us against the Turk?’
They nodded.
He braced himself and swallowed down his grievous disappointment. ‘Well,’ he said. Then, returning to his customary volume, ‘Well! You are welcome into the home of Franco Briffa.’ He shook their hands violently and clapped them on the back. ‘I never meet an Inglis before now. You are no filthy Protestant like the fat Dutch? But no, you are Inglis, and gentlemen I see from your hands, at least you are, not him. Now, come and eat sardines, gentleman and his peasant both. And meet my family.’
They emerged into the little courtyard and were seated on low stools. Nicholas couldn’t believe how sweet the air was, scented with orange and lemon blossom — and how warm too. Yet it was night! What on earth would it be like in the day? And to fight in?