The fresh troop of soldiers were led by the powerful Captain Miranda himself, and had been guided across by a local fisherman: Luqa Briffa, the celebrated scoundrel, the greatest swimmer of the island, suspected ‘liberator’ of various jewels and costly trinkets from the houses of the Maltese nobility in Mdina, and older brother of Franco Briffa himself.
Miranda saluted smartly. Broglia returned the salute. ‘By God, you are welcome here, Captain, more welcome than a hundred of the most beautiful courtesans in Venice.’
‘We fight better too,’ said Miranda dryly.
‘Which is the Inglis, the Insulter?’ demanded the short, bandy-legged, loosely turbanned Luqa Briffa. ‘It is you, is it not?’ He prodded a stubby forefinger in Nicholas’s chest. The boy nodded. ‘My brother sends greetings, and his good wife. He says God bless you and keep you. You are a crusader for the island. He prays you come home.’
Nicholas smiled forlornly. Sick and dizzy with tiredness, muzzy with opium and wine yet his parched gullet still sore, his mind still full of pictures of atrocity from the past days, made bearable only by those rare, brief lightbeams of heroism he had seen … he felt like no crusader. He felt like an unwashed, exhausted fugitive wretch and exile, trapped here in a war to the death with an enemy never to be defeated. Yet it was good to hear of the family across the water, and good to see the grimly determined tercios come to join them.
‘You also have a cake,’ said Luqa Briffa. And to general surprise, he brought out a small, beautiful white cake wrapped in a clean white cloth.
‘Cake,’ said Stanley close by. ‘Just what we need most. Not musket balls, powder, medicines or bandages. Our greatest need is for cake.’
Luqa Briffa shrugged. ‘This is not my brother. If Franco bake a cake, it come out looking like a donkey’s pat, and tasting much the same. This is baked by his daughter, my niece. Maddalena. For you, Inglis.’ He eyed Nicholas sternly under his bushy eyebrows. ‘Especially for you. Yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘You understand?’
‘Yes.’ He could think of nothing to add except, ‘Thank you. Say thank you.’
Stanley said, ‘Tell us some good news, Captain.’
‘The news,’ said Miranda, ‘like life itself, is good and bad. The Spanish relief force for Malta is now being fitted out in earnest, in Barcelona. But meanwhile another relief force, ready to sail, is being held up by rough seas in Genoa.’
‘That is reasonable,’ said a hoarse voice nearby. It was Smith, on his feet again, quite expressionless, using a broken pikestaff for a crutch. His neck wound was making him feverish, dizzy, and he swayed abominably without support.
‘For all the saints,’ muttered Stanley, trying to look annoyed and failing, ‘is there no putting the man down?’
Smith went on, ‘It is reasonable that our comrades in Genoa should not wish to come and fight beside us, for fear they might feel a touch queasy on the sea crossing. That is understandable. They should wait for seas as smooth as glass. We are happy to fight on here without them, outnumbered as we are by a mere four hundred to one. We will be pleased to see them when they can finally make it over.’
The sarcasm was hardly subtle, but the tercios guffawed. Zacosta slapped the knight on the back, impertinently. They had taken to this gruff blackbearded Englishman like one of their own.
Luqa Briffa was heading for the gates. ‘As for me, I go back. What more can I say? You are men among men. You are as stout as Maltese. There, there is a blessing. May Christ and the Virgin watch over you, St Michael and all angels fight for you.’
From the rocks below the south-east point, scrambling down to his fellow rowers in the longboat, he called back, ‘Enjoy the cake!’
Nicholas passed it round. It was very fine, filled with almonds and honey.
‘And made with love,’ joked García.
Nicholas flushed, looking down.
Behind him, Stanley touched García on the shoulder, to silence his mockery. He said no more.
When they had eaten, many fell asleep where they sat. For the first time in days they felt some contentment, some hope. Another fifty fresh men on the walls tomorrow would tell significantly. They would fight on, good for another week perhaps. Then maybe they would never eat cake again, never taste honey. Some thought they would never taste a woman’s lips or lie between a woman’s thighs again. Some thought in silence of far families. All prayed. Even García and Zacosta prayed, to whatever God made sense to them.
The mood was different in the pavilion of Mustafa Pasha.
He said to Işak Agha, ‘Why have you not taken it?’
Işak looked riven with shame. ‘They are few, Pasha, but they fight like lions.’
‘And the Janizaries fight like, what? Like women? Like girls? Like lambs?’
Işak Agha bowed his head.
Suddenly Mustafa’s infamous, furious rage rose up in him. He strode towards Işak Agha, almost into him, put his hands around the Agha’s throat and shook him, raging, ‘Tomorrow is the eleventh day. The eleventh. And still not a single Janizary has stood inside that fort, even to die there like a hero. Take it! Allah damn you and your seed and your family for ever, if you do not soon take that accursed pox-ridden Christian nest of snakes!’
Işak had his hands on Mustafa’s hands, his eyes bulging, the words squeezed dry in his throat.
Mustafa raged, ‘For more than a week now that cesspit of a fort has stood against us, the dogs of St John in San Angelo looking on and laughing. Laughing! Have the Janizaries no sense of shame, of dishonour? Two thousand of my men, two thousand …! Shit on them, rip them apart, rip their livers out! Rip their hearts out of their splintered ribs, do you hear me? Kill them! Take that place NOW and KILL THEM ALL!’
And in his fury he hurled the muscular Agha of Janizaries backwards out of his tent as if he were a wrestler of twenty-five.
Smith was on his feet the next day at dawn, his whole neck and throat swollen and sore beneath the linen wrappings, his left arm strangely numb and tingling and stiff to move. But it could clutch his broken pike-crutch well enough, and he swung his right arm, his sword-arm, vigorously, readying for the fight.
Stanley said wonderingly, ‘I have given him enough opium to put a draught horse to sleep.’
‘How?’ said Nicholas. ‘He suspected you. He’d drink nothing that tasted of opium.’
‘I had one of the chaplains steep his fresh bandage in opium and brandy. Straight into his blood that way. A slight risk, it might have proved too much.’ Smith was swishing his sword now sharply left and right, parry and thrust. ‘Yet clearly not enough. The man would have outwrestled the angel at the Brook Jabbok that defeated Jacob himself.’
Smith stumped over and glared down at them.
‘What are you two idlers gossiping about, like women at a well? On your feet.’
They stood.
‘Strike me,’ said Stanley, ‘but you’ve a broken fingernail, Fra John.’
Smith stared down. Amid his multiple wounds and bruises, and a lead ball festering in the muscles of his mighty neck, he had indeed broken a fingernail half through, leaving a small scab of blood.
Stanley clucked like a hen. ‘That must sting painfully. You should see a physician.’
Smith growled like a bear and stumped off.
How could they joke like this, with death imminent? wondered Nicholas. Yet he had seen enough jesters going up to the gallows in Shrewsbury Town. Laughing at death as they went. Perhaps it was the best that man’s wisdom could do.