‘That door has stood for four centuries,’ muttered his father. ‘It’ll stand a while yet.’
‘Patience, patience,’ muttered Father Matthew, with his bundle and missal under one arm, clambering slowly and stiffly into the tiny priest’s hole beside the fireplace. ‘Unto everything there is a time and a purpose and so forth.’
There was no more violent knocking, only a curious grating sound from around the huge old iron lock. Then to Nicholas’s horror, a part of the mechanism moved as if at the hand of a ghost. The lockbar went back and the door swung slowly inwards. At first the others didn’t even realise it had happened. Father Matthew was still settling himself down in the hole, muttering about the dignity of the priesthood, Hodge standing by holding the panel.
Only when they heard the rising howl of the wind and felt a gust of chill air from the hall and saw the solitary candleflame lean and flutter did they freeze and stare.
His father cried, ‘What the devil?’
Nicholas could only stare back aghast, as if it were somehow his fault.
In the open doorway stood two hulking, thuggish men, their hoods concealing their faces, the wind whipping their travel-stained cloaks about their legs and mud-spattered boots. One had a sword already drawn from the scabbard, the other held a storm lantern. He raised it high and both were eerily illuminated. The one with the lantern pushed back his hood to reveal unkempt fair hair and a beard the colour of old tallow, and high ruddy cheeks. The other did likewise, showing a much darker, more threatening appearance. Black beard and black burning eyes, the whites bloodshot, making him look like a bull of dangerous and evil temperament. His sword hung loosely from a great right hand.
‘No, sir, no!’ cried a voice from behind Nicholas. It was Hodge. He even put out an arm to restrain his master, but old Sir Francis would have none of it. He would die defending his household if need be.
‘Out of my way, boy!’ he roared. He pulled down the sword in its scabbard that hung above the fireplace and strode out into the hall. Or strode as best he could, with his aged joints, his left leg crooked from an ancient wound.
The tallow-headed ruffian smiled to see the old warrior.
‘We have interrupted you at some game?’ he said. ‘Or perhaps some more spiritual exercise? Have you a visitor?’
Nicholas glanced back in terror to see if Father Matthew was hidden yet.
A mistake.
The fairhead said, ‘Ah, so he’s in there.’
Blackbeard beside him said nothing. He was not one for talking, it was clear. Killing was more his temper.
‘Please,’ said the first ruffian. ‘Pray continue, Sir Francis.’ And both of them took a step forward into the hall out of the rain. Blackbeard kicked the door shut behind him and lazily, insultingly, sheathed his own sword. They seemed even bigger now, infernal figures, lit only by their own lantern and the single flickering candle of a servant. The girls whimpered in terror. The youngest, little Lettice, held a tiny white handkerchief up to her eyes so she couldn’t see. Nicholas groped at his belt and found he wasn’t even carrying his dagger. Beside him, Hodge was slowly reaching out for a horsecrop that lay on the oak chest. Much good would that do him against two such men. Yet even at that slight movement, Blackbeard’s gaze turned on Hodge and his reddened eyes burned like coals in the night. Hodge froze.
‘God damn you,’ muttered Sir Francis, standing protectively before all his household, still powerfully built despite his crooked leg. ‘Coming to my home with weapons drawn. Whatever my offence may be, I have the same right to a trial as any freeborn Englishman. You are no agents of the Queen or of the Church, you are nothing but low criminals. And if you take one step further into my house, your guts will feel my sword.’
The fairhead smiled pleasantly. ‘The weapon looks rusted in its sheath.’
Sir Francis growled and pulled hard at his sword hilt — and sure enough, the scabbard leapt with it.
The fairhead gazed keenly at Sir Francis, eyes gleaming. Raindrops ran down his cheeks and beard, and water puddled on the flagstones round his battered leather boots. When he spoke his voice was strangely softened, cracked with emotion. He said words that none but Sir Francis himself could have understood, tenderly, with not a hint of sarcasm. At the sight of the old man’s dauntless courage, trying to pull a rusty sword from its scabbard in solitary defence of his ancestral home, the fairhead murmured, ‘Ah, Brother Francis. The Religion hath need of thee, and such as thee.’
Then he pulled his cloak down at the throat to reveal a brilliant silver cross on a chain. A cross with four equal arms and eight points.
Sir Francis let go of his sword. ‘My brothers!’ he gasped.
Nicholas stared rapt at the blazing silver cross, and it seemed to burn into his eyes forever.
The strangers locked the door again behind them, using the key this time. Nicholas wanted to know how they had unlocked it from without, what mysterious trickery they had used. The fairhead seemed to sense his burning curiosity, but only smiled and tapped the side of his nose.
‘My brother and I have travelled far and wide, and learnt much in our travels,’ he murmured infuriatingly. ‘From the locksmiths of Germany, the alchemists of Alexandria, the gymnosophists of India …’
‘If you come as friends,’ said Sir Francis, ‘why pick the lock of my door?’
The fairhead grinned. ‘Had you peered out of your window and seen two such figures as us — on such a night as this — would you really have let us in?’
Sir Francis guffawed. ‘Not till the crack of doom.’
‘And besides — we are in a hurry. It is better we were not seen by any others.’
Nevertheless, the two visitors insisted that the family resume the Mass. They would willingly join them.
As Father Matthew intoned the solemn church Latin, there was a chance to study the newcomers sidelong. They smelt of horsehair and leather and sweat, and somehow, distant and exotic lands. The ruddy cheeks of the fairhead were really burned a reddish brown, Nicholas now saw, as were Blackbeard’s, and their massively powerful hands too. The deep, deep brown of a hot sun.
After Mass, Father Matthew rode away into the night on his Welsh pony, and the children and servants were sent early to bed. Some lingered on the darkened stairs, peering down. This was the most exciting thing to happen in the village since the miller fell down the well.
‘To bed with you!’ bellowed Sir Francis, and they scuttled away to their rooms.
In his library, Sir Francis poured three cups of Portugal wine. His unexpected guests stood before the fire, their wet cloaks hung over the backs of chairs and steaming. Hodge still lingered in the doorway, eyes wide. Blackbeard glanced back, and then strode over and pushed the door shut in his face.
‘Along with us, Hodge,’ said Nicholas.
‘But how’ll I sleep, Master Nicholas? With them foreigners under the roof?’
Hodge thought anyone who came from across the millstream was a foreigner.
They went upstairs.
Once he had heard all the bedroom doors shut, Nicholas slipped out again, burning with curiosity. What a hypocritical villain he was, to be sure. He crept down the stairs in darkness, keeping close to the edges so as not to creak, and knelt outside the library door.
There he heard confused snatches of urgent conversation. About The Knights, and the island of Malta, the Great Sultan, war galleys, and of a Grand Master of St John, called Jean de la Valette, who was ‘dauntless’. Yet some vast and terrible threat hung over them all, and there was desperately little time left.
The two strangers continually addressed his father as Brother Francis, which baffled and intrigued Nicholas at once. As if his father was a monk or a friar! His father never talked about his own early life. It was a mysteriously forbidden subject. He married late, a much younger girl, the daughter of an old friend of his, and they were blissfully happy for nine years, until she died in childbed. Nicholas was eight when she died, and even now could not think of her and speak at the same time. Her golden hair, her radiant smile …