Smith clutched a squat, four-foot half-pike in his meaty fist, and eyed the fearsome blade at the end, half axe, half spear, with a thick spike on the reverse for good measure. ‘When the guns overheat and the powder runs out,’ he growled, ‘it’ll be these that keep ’em off the walls. A half-pike may blunt, but it never wears out.’ He tossed it at Nicholas. ‘Remember that.’
‘But meanwhile,’ said Stanley firmly, ‘you and Hodge are in the role of squires and servants, not front line fighters. You will serve the guns, bring up munitions and stores. You will leave your sword below, it will only hinder you.’
‘I will not,’ said Nicholas.
‘You will.’
‘No. You cannot command me, any more than Copier could.’
‘That I can. You are now in Elmo, in a fort of St John, and so directly under the command of the Order. Unless you wish to leave, and reside elsewhere.’
Nicholas felt a welling of angry frustration.
‘There may yet come a time to fight,’ said Smith. ‘But there’s much to be done besides, and you and Hodge will be more than useful that way.’
‘I spent most of my life humping stuff,’ said Hodge. ‘Hay bales, wattle fences, sacks of dung for the cabbage patch. So I s’pose it won’t hurt me doin’ some more, even under this sweatin’ hot sky.’
Nicholas bit his lip and gave in.
‘Your sword?’ said Stanley. ‘It will only hinder you.’
‘But keep on that breastplate,’ added Smith. ‘It’s a fine piece, and would stop all but a close shot.’
Nicholas unbelted the Italian short sword that they had given him on the ship, and left it on his pallet.
‘Now to the walls. There’s work to do.’
Elmo’s crude paparets were attacked with mallet and chisel to make some sort of crude embrasures for musket barrels, crossbows and the small field guns, repositioned now on the landward walls and up on the bastion. They were served not with smooth iron balls meant for holing incoming ships, but with chain shot and grapeshot, for wreaking atrocious damage on close-packed men at short range.
Equally fearsome were the weapons of wildfire: stacks of fire hoops the size of cartwheels, soaked in oil and wrapped in cotton bandaging, dipped in more oil, saltpetre, tallow, more cotton, rope, grass … Whatever would burn and scald and melt the fat off a man’s bones. These would be lit and blazing in an instant and then hurled out over the walls with tongs, to set alight the robes of any assailants. They had been used at Rhodes to devastating effect. There were also flame throwers, long brass pipes that could be poked out over the cracked embrasures, or even through low ducts and vents in the walls. Each pipe had a bowl at the end, something like an ale-yard, and in the bowl, a scorching mix of oil, naphtha and turpentine would be lit, often with some kind of jelly added. Even a minor explosion would erupt in a long gouting tongue of superheated flame. The admixture of the jelly — honey, date wine, anything sugary and sticky — made the flame stick to a man’s robes, his flesh, his hair, and not be put out. It was a form of the ancient terror called Greek Fire.
Butts of water were brought up with scoops tied to the rim-hoops, but food was all kept below in the stores. They would eat in the evening, when the guns went quiet.
In the largest storeroom, dimly lit with rushlights, four chaplains of St John did what they could to ready the few beds and their store of bandages and medicaments. But for the best treatment, the wounded would need to be shipped back to the Sacred Infirmary after dark. As long as the Turks left the Grand Harbour ungunned, that might still be possible.
‘Though the infidels will fire on a wounded man as readily as a fighting man, I suppose,’ said one chaplain.
‘Though infidel,’ said the Chevalier Medrano, ‘the Turks can be just as chivalrous, or as cruel, as any other men.’
The infidel too worked on through the night beneath the brilliant moon. Turkish sappers and trenchers established their forward positions, throwing up earthen ramps, great rocky barricades and defences, gun platforms growing steadily out of a flat and barren promontory. Far beyond them, nearly a mile off, the new permanent Turkish encampment spread out over the low land at the head of the Marsa.
And over on Senglea and Birgu too, the reinforcing of all defences continued. When they saw that Elmo was to be destroyed first, the knights said that the daughter was buying the mother fort precious time by her own sacrifice.
Finally a chaplain, Fra Giacomo, came round and gave them all the last rites. The wine on Nicholas’s tongue never tasted so sweet, the bread never so white and pure. Still, despite his careful prayers, not asking for health or life, as a boy he still believed he would not die. Or he feared it, but did not believe. His father used to say a man’s heart could easily hold two contradictory things true at once.
They would fight the Turks gloriously on and on until eventually they fell back, or the army of Spain would arrive from Sicily, or La Valette would send reinforcements over and drive them off. Or he and Hodge and the knights would take flight in a longboat by night, or he pictured himself diving into the sea and swimming away with the water around him whipped to a storm by musket balls. He would not die. You could not die as young as he. There was too much ahead, waiting for him. There was a girl waiting for him.
Smith and Stanley saw his lack of fear and understood. They had been young once, and thought they would never die.
Hodge was less deluded, and braver. Racked with fear, often trembling, white-faced, yet he mastered his fear. That was true bravery. He worked like a mule shifting munitions and sandbags, and if the fighting came to him, he would fight as stoutly as any.
A scout from the forward trenches came to Mustafa’s pavilion, where general and admiral sat late, eating by lantern light.
‘A priest is giving them bread and wine.’
‘They eat the body of Christ,’ said the Pasha with distaste.
‘I think it is the Last Rites,’ said Piyale.
Mustafa raised a black eyebrow.
‘You remember the ancient tale of Thermopylae,’ said Piyale. ‘When the Greeks fought the Persians in a narrow pass. A tribe of Greeks called the Spartans, much outnumbered.’
‘Persians,’ sneered Mustafa. Almost as inveterate enemies to the Turks as Christendom itself.
‘But a spy brought news to the Persian generals,’ said Piyale, ‘that the Spartans were combing their hair for battle. The Persians laughed at such women. Then the spy explained that Spartans comb their hair when they are preparing to die. And the Persians stopped laughing.’
Mustafa regarded his admiral, his stony eyes glittering. ‘I have heard this tale,’ he said. ‘The Greeks of old were not all women.’
‘It is the same with the knights,’ said Piyale. ‘These Last Rites of theirs. They are Spartans combing their hair.’
‘Preparing to die,’ said Mustafa. His thin lips twitched with a smile. ‘And so they should.’
At last it was done. They had made all the preparations they could, they snatched a few hours of sleep, and then dawn began to grey the sky.
The conical tents of Central Asia spread out over the narrow rocky peninsula of Sciberras: the tents of the East at the gates of the West. St Elmo, small and squat, stood against them. Silent and waiting. It looked trapped, like a creature driven to the end of the promontory from where it could go no further and must turn at last and fight.
The Turkish artillery squadrons had twenty-four guns in place already, protected behind wooden battlements and earth ramparts. They also brought up squat, open-mouthed mortars and bombards, crude but effective devices which looked like little more than fat flower pots. But with enough charge they could belch out stone balls high into the air, over Elmo’s walls and straight down onto parapets, roofs and walls, doing much damage.