5
For a while he thought he was in the pound with Hodge. It was dark, his head throbbed, his mouth tasted of steel.
‘Is that you, Hodge?’ he muttered, the words thick and clumsy on his lips.
‘Grace à Dieu,’ said a man’s voice softly. ‘Brother — I mean, English boy. Can you hear me?’
Nicholas nodded. His head throbbed worse with every movement. And he could see nothing. ‘I am blindfolded, yes?’
‘We three,’ said De la Rivière. ‘We are captured.’ He sounded exhausted by these few words, and paused to draw strength. ‘Do you have any blade left on you, boy?’
Nicholas shook his head, and then laughed weakly. The knight couldn’t see him. ‘No,’ he said. ‘None.’
There was a long silence.
‘What will become of us?’
‘It would be better,’ said De la Rivière slowly, ‘if we had a blade. It would be a better way out.’ He gasped with sudden pain. ‘Have you faith, boy? Do you fear to die, to go to Christ in heaven?’
‘No. No I do not. Nor to join the souls that have gone before.’
‘Then make your prayers.’ He drew breath. ‘I believe this battle is over for us now.’
A door was kicked open, there were heavy footfalls and their blindfolds were ripped off.
They were huddled on the beaten earth floor of the tiny bare chapel of the village they had fought for. It contained nothing but a plain altar table and one high window. Their hands were tied behind their backs. Faraone was still naked, curled up like a child, shivering, hiding his shame. De la Rivière seemed baptised in blood from head to toe, now dried black and crusted. The shaft of a broken arrow still protruded from his shoulder. He breathed with pain. Nicholas himself had a bad head, and his vision swam if he moved too quickly. But he could move little. He felt very tired and very afraid, and desperately thirsty.
Before them stood the Turks come to torture them, led by Mustafa himself. There was a tall thin fellow, naked to the waist, wearing a wolf’s tooth necklace on a rawhide string, and with a simple bare curved yatagan dagger at his belt, and there were two senior Janizaries. Now Nicholas could see them close to and study them, they were magnificent men, with a far gaze, oiled dark hair, noble features. They wore broad billowing white robes beneath tight mail jerkins, high domed helmets, and immense curved scimitars at their sides. The weapons had beautiful damascened scrollwork along the blade, the tiny grooves still showing the dark rust-red of old blood. One wore a brass quill through the skin above his deep furrowed brow.
Mustafa’s expression was of glowering anger at the insolent attack. He nodded at De la Rivière. ‘You are a Knight of St John. These are acolytes, yes?’
‘They are nuns,’ said De la Rivière.
‘If we put you to the torture, you may prove brave. So shall we start with torturing your acolytes? Or should I say, catamites?’
The knight said, ‘The moment you begin to torture either of these, I will bite through my own tongue and spit it in the dust. Besides, they know nothing of worth.’
‘So you do? Then tell us. What is the weakest point of Birgu?’
De la Rivière just smiled through broken teeth and split lips.
‘Drag him onto that table there,’ commanded Mustafa.
‘It is called an altar.’
‘How fitting.’
With their backs turned, Nicholas shuffled up close to the naked Faraone, now shaking like a leaf. It was the only comfort he could give. The boy was already far gone. Nicholas tried to warm him. But it was not cold that made him shiver. Hearing the tortured screams would finally destroy his reason.
For a minute or two, De la Rivière made no sound. The torturer also worked in silence. Blood dripped, spotting the floor beneath the altar, and at one point there was a ripping sound, like fine leather being torn. Nicholas closed his eyes and hung his head. Faraone’s eyes were wide open, staring wildly into the chapel’s roof space.
‘Be elsewhere,’ whispered Nicholas. ‘Think yourself another place, hear birdsong, the sea.’
But the other boy could not. He was trapped in hell.
Behind them, Mustafa said, ‘Speak. Talk to us.’
They heard De la Rivière praying. He spoke the names of St John and the Blessed Virgin and his Saviour, Christ the Lord.
The torture continued, and then quite suddenly, without warning, the knight broke. He arched his back and screamed out, ‘Castile! The bastion of Castile!’
He subsided and sobbed.
‘Wash him down,’ said Mustafa, already turning and striding for the door. ‘And watch these two.’ He bent an evil eye on Nicholas. ‘Especially this one. He is a snake.’
Piyale asked, ‘You trust the word of a tortured man?’
Mustafa said, ‘Few men would suffer torture so long, only to lie. Nevertheless he is a Knight Hospitaller, our ancient enemy, and trustworthy as Shaitan himself. We will not send in the Janizaries. Not yet.’ He turned to a senior officer. ‘Call up the first division of the Bektaşis. We attack the bastion of Castile tomorrow dawn.’
‘Where is Copier’s scouting party?’ demanded La Valette.
The lookout shook his head.
All day from the land walls of Birgu they kept their eyes on the southern horizon and the heights of Santa Margherita. The night watches leaned on the battlements and strained their eyes under the starlight. The land lay still. Not a dog barked. The stars wheeled silently in a velvet sky.
Then at dawn they heard the sound of a deep, distant rumbling in the earth. Citizens clutched tables, doorposts, thinking it was an earthquake. Some lay on the ground in the street.
‘Little that will avail you!’ cried a German knight, striding past to his post, clanking with armour.
People scowled at the arrogant knight. The Hospitallers had always looked down on them. One said sullenly, ‘It is no terramoto?’
‘No terramoto. The guns are coming.’
Stanley and Smith shared an eyeglass, looking out at the heights of Santa Margherita. There came another sound, of drums approaching. Cries rang out all around the walls, and immediately every man was donning his armour and seizing his weapons and running to battle stations, heart thumping. Above the drums sounded a braying brass horn. They were truly coming.
And then over the heights came line upon line of attackers. Gilded flags and waves of white silk robes casting long shadows, early sunlight flashing, dancing on polished shields and scabbards decorated with coloured glass, drums beating out a relentless dead-march rhythm.
Arquebusiers on the walls loaded and set their pans and checked their fuses. Crossbowmen stepped in their foot stirrups and ratcheted back and levered and set in the bolts and stood to the battlements again. They sighted.
The attackers stopped. An Imam pronounced the blessing of Allah on them, and they cried out with one huge voice,
‘Allahu akbar!’
The sound of that roar of faith was more terrible than any battery of guns.
Then the ranks of men parted, and the black mouths of bronze cannon appeared in their midst. The infantrymen retreated a long way, giving the guns plenty of room. The Turks had brought up a battery of eight on wheeled carriages. Gunners moved busily about their beasts, wedging the carriages against recoil, priming and loading, while a gunnery master surveyed the walls, estimating trajectories with a superbly practised eye.
‘Those are big guns,’ said Stanley.
‘But far from the biggest.’
‘Testing shots. They seem to be ranging on Castile. I wonder …’
Then knights along the walls were bowing low. It was the Grand Master, bringing up the Spanish tercios in reserve, and come to take personal command of the south walls.
At a barked order from La Valette, seeing instantly that the attack was to be concentrated on Castile, the knights of Provence, Auvergne and France moved out onto their own flanking towers and walls in neat order, turning their arquebuses towards the bastion of Castile, ready for enfilading fire.