As the sun rose higher over Gallows Point, expert Ottoman and Mameluke engineers were already adjusting gun platforms to steady the guns and achieve the highest accuracy, earthing up ramps further for better trajectories, doing calculations by arithmetic and rule of thumb, squinting, holding up their fingers, surveying, checking the length of shadows.
Meanwhile slave gangs were set to digging trenches down the scarp towards the fort. The ochre earth was all of an inch or two deep before they hit solid rock. After that it was pick and mallet. Sometimes foxholes were blown out with carefully placed packs of gunpowder. Other teams of slaves were ordered to bring up sacks of earth from the lowlands or pebbles from the beach for extra cover.
Everything proceeded swift and orderly and with an absolute sense of mastery. It was an awesome and dismaying sight. Ottoman siegecraft was, as reputed, the finest in the world. They had laid waste to the greatest fortresses from Persia to Hungary. The idea that Elmo might stand against such expertise and determination was almost laughable.
The moment the first transverse trenches were deep enough for a man to crawl in, a crack company of Janizaries was sent up at the run. They carried long, slender decorated muskets. Snipers’ muskets.
Smith took up his jezail.
‘Let us at least have first blood.’
His posture at the wall reminded Nicholas of nothing so much as his own stalking a hare or a partridge on his father’s lands. The silent waiting for the single shot that must count and kill, the infinite patience, looking out for the smallest movement, the stir of a leaf, or of a feather above the Ottoman trench line.
A single blurred movement of that white feather and Smith was onto it. He shifted his muzzle a fraction left and dropped it another fraction and fired a ball into the soft, loose earth that banked the top of the trench, aiming it just a couple of inches below where he had glimpsed movement. There was a cry and a Janizary fell against the inner trench wall, white headfeather sprayed with his own blood, his turban rapidly staining. The ball had holed his turban and cut a groove across the top of his skull.
‘Bravo!’ called Chevalier Lanfreducci down the line. ‘A fine shot — for an Englishman!’
‘Damn!’ cried Smith. ‘Had I another jezail readily loaded I could take him now where he’s slumped.’
Then hands pulled the lightly wounded man down into cover and angry cries rang out.
‘Nevertheless, first blood is ours,’ said Stanley. And he cried out in Turkish, ‘Baş kan!’
More angry cries, screams of vengeance, and throughout, Smith furiously reloading his jezail. In less than a minute he had the barrel back in the rough-hewn niche and was waiting for another vainglorious Janizary to stand and hurl abuse, and then he would have him clean. But none did. The Janizaries were as disciplined as any soldiers on earth.
‘God, let it begin,’ muttered Smith.
He was furious to fight, and Nicholas knew how he felt. He too longed for it, ached for it, with an ache as deep as love. It would be terrible and bloody and glorious, and after you might be dead or crippled or limbless, but if alive you would never know such glory again as in that wild heat of battle, and the rest of life would taste like stale bread beside it. From only that brief murderous skirmish aboard the Swan, and the mad charge on the plain with Copier, he had learnt so much already, about war, and about himself. Princes and kings, sultans and emperors, talks and treaties would come and go, but men would always fight. Only let the fight be just, and let it come soon.
For the Lord has given the horse his might, has clothed his neck with strength. He paws in the valley, he smells the battle from afar, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting. For the Lord is a man of war …
3
It was late on the morning of May 20th 1565 that the guns of the Turks began their bombardment of St Elmo.
The Ottoman guns were so near that the watchers on the walls could glimpse the gunners moving behind their ramps and earthworks with their linstocks, even the flare of the matchcords as they put them to the powder. Then it was time to duck back down and pray.
‘Coming in!’ roared Captain Miranda.
There was nothing they could do but sit and huddle behind the walls and wait, and hope that a ball did not come straight through the wall that sheltered them and blast them through the air in pieces, like red rose petals on the wind.
But this first was ranging fire, only one ball struck home near the central wall, while two or three more hissed overhead. There came a pause while the gunners adjusted their trajectories, and Smith was up with his jezail in an instant. Answering shots rang out immediately from Turkish snipers in the forward trenches, under strict orders to keep the enemy pinned down behind his walls, and not let him harass the gunners. But Smith took the risk, keeping low and taking his time, sighting on one of the big guns. Men moved round her breech, mostly out of sight, but here and there was an obvious movement.
The jezail cracked out almost the same instant a Turkish musket ball hit the stonework inches from Smith’s face.
‘Damn!’ he bellowed, turning away from the splinters, but too late. A sliver had lodged in his cheek — but no real damage done. He glanced back. A flurry of panic around one of the guns. He clenched his fist and dropped back down behind the wall. He’d hit.
‘You’re cheek’s bloody,’ said Stanley.
Smith grubbed in his beard and pulled out a half-inch splinter and tossed it over his shoulder at the Turks. ‘The other fellow’s worse off.’
‘How that’ll mar your boyish looks,’ said Stanley.
‘You’ll not praise me for my marksmanship? That was a master engineer I just trimmed of his head.’
‘I won’t. You might grow proud.’
‘Coming in again!’ came Miranda’s cry. ‘On target now!’ Knights bowed their heads and crossed themselves. The air erupted.
The Ottomans knew exactly what they were doing. The basilisks were not used. There was no need against so feeble a target. But the biggest field guns alone threw balls of eighty pounds, striking the walls of Elmo in a relentless barrage, and soon the lime and sandstone walls began to flake and crumble. With expert eye, the master gunners had ordered concentration on the points of the stars themselves as the weakest salients.
But the noise was the worst. Nicholas and Hodge were sent crawling about giving out cotton wadding for ears. Still, by the time the hand-to-hand fighting came, they would all be half deaf.
It seemed like hours that they huddled in what shade they could, taking the inescapable punishment, the untroubled sun rising above them in the clear blue sky. Peek out over the eastern walls and the sun glittered on the sea, you could snuff the sea breeze, and there were still birds flying and dipping out there, catching sardines, as on any other day. Then look back west and there were forty thousand men come all the way over that Orient sea to kill you.
It was late afternoon when the guns fell silent. Perhaps Mustafa hoped that the day would be cooling now, but no luck. It burned as hot as ever. The two forward corners of Elmo were beginning to collapse into rubble ridges, overtopping the deep defensive ditch below. Yet that ditch at least still seemed like as much of an abyss as ever. It was their first and now best line of defence. A mere ditch. But the Turks would have to bring up wagonloads of fascines and infill to get across that barrier, or else wrestle with unwieldy bridges and scaffolding. The defenders would yet have time to wreak some damage on them.
It seemed only seconds after the great guns fell silent that a great wave of sound arose as if from the ground itself, rising and rising in volume behind the hanging white curtain of dust and smoke. It was the Bektaşis coming in first, thirsting for Christian blood and crying the names of God.