Grapeshot from the roof of the ravelin, fired down on a single wounded man.
Medrano lost his cool composure then and cried out in anger. He fired an angry shot up at the ravelin, but it was wasted.
The smoke drifted across the ditch from the fired gun, and Lanfreducci’s prostrate form was momentarily lost to view. In the moment before, Stanley thought he had glimpsed the terrible sight of the knight arching up from the ground, head thrown back, as the balls spat into him. But then the smoke finally cleared — and he was nowhere to be seen.
His brother knights clenched their fists.
On the ravelin, another sniper took careful aim. The Turks could see what they could not. He was in no hurry. Then the muzzle flared and a shot rang out, and distraught, they heard the sniper crew erupt in a great cheer and saw them exchange a flurry of shoulder slaps.
Medrano and Stanley both crossed themselves. Fra Francesco Lanfreducci had left Elmo far behind. It was but consummation.
Nothing more came. The ravelin remained. The snipers looked down on them and reloaded their fine bore muskets.
Then they all suddenly looked back aghast.
The defenders peered out.
Round the corner of the shattered point came a figure dragging his leg. His breastplate and backplate so pocked and ruptured with lead that he looked squilled like a porcupine. He was grinning.
‘My God is a burning fire!’ he cried out.
He was hit again where he stood, and calmly sat down against the back wall, in full view of the ravelin. He removed his helmet and set it by his side, and leaned his head back like a man tired with a hot morning’s walk. Eyes crinkled in the sun, white teeth showing in a smile.
The Turks took aim again.
He called out to them with tattered lungs, ‘More haste, more haste, you uncomely sons of Oriental whores! I tire here. You must be using mouse turds for balls!’
Then there came a full blast of half a dozen muskets at no more than twenty yards’ range, and the Hospitaller slid sideways to the ground, a smear of blood on the wall at his back, eyes closed in peace.
The Turks did not celebrate this time. It had been a man among men they had killed, whatever insults he had hurled at them in dying, and he had a contempt for death as fine as any Janizary could muster. Let him lie there and sleep undisturbed.
The world was ruptured by an explosion so vast that it was some time before any there, defender or attacker, could shake his thoughts into sense. With animal instinct, Nicholas simply cowered behind the cordon, his face pressed so hard against the wickerwork of a gabion that it left an imprint on his cheek, his arms over his head, lumps of rock and stone showering down around him. None struck him, mercifully. One alone might have broken his arm.
A long time passed. The darkened sky gradually cleared, the ringing in their ears slowly subsided. There was stunned silence from all sides.
They squinted out. Clouds of dust and smoke hung like ragged veils over the ravelin. Or where the ravelin had been. As the veils slowly cleared they saw nothing but a field of rubble. They could not even discern any human remains.
Medrano said, ‘When we laid the charge, as you see, we still had plenty of powder. In those far-off days.’
The water itself was now foul to the taste, but men’s tongues and lips were black with thirst. There were no more frontal attacks that day. Medrano thought he knew why, but he said nothing to the men.
Stanley understood too. He said quietly, ‘They are confident of breaking in soon another way.’
Medrano’s lean, sallow face looked at its most grave and composed. ‘I think they will soon blow the main gates at the cavalier. A mining gang was round there. Then they will be in. There is no more we can do.’
‘But look what we have done,’ said Stanley. ‘How many days did we win for Birgu?’
‘Many,’ said Medrano, and his sweat-streaked, dirt-streaked face showed a distant smile. ‘We lost count how many. But many days we bought for our brothers over the water. Our Grand Master will have made sure Birgu is now defended as best as it can be.’
‘And we died honourably, did we not?’ said Stanley, his voice soft and low.
Medrano liked the past tense. ‘We died honourably,’ he said. ‘As at Acre, as at Jerusalem. As Knights Hospitaller should die.’
14
Before a huge column of Janizaries, fresh and armed and bathed and scented with rosewater for the fall, Mustapha Pasha strode and screamed derision. They shifted with painful discomfort, looked down at their feet and bore it in silence as they must.
‘So-called Sons of the Sultan!’ he raged. ‘You have fought these last days and weeks like women! The dogs and pigs of Christendom, they laugh at you, they call you little girls, daughters of Eve, of Lilith! They think you are men with breasts, fit only for sewing and baking!’
The Janizaries glowered and clutched their sword hilts tighter.
‘Now go out and destroy them, your most ancient enemies! They who have killed so many of your beloved brothers. Instruct them in the way of the Janizary, teach them that there can never be forgiveness and mercy between Islam and the Cross, and show them that you are men, not women, and understand how to kill.’
Dusk fell on Elmo, and with it an ominous, oppressive sense of expectation. Now they were only waiting for the end.
Stanley spoke to the boy. ‘You are not mortally injured.’
‘I’m bad enough.’ He hurt all over. Even tiredness could not dull it.
‘The Turks will be in very soon now. I think tonight. You must escape. Go over the south-east wall and down to the rocks. I know you can swim.’
‘I go if you go.’
‘I can’t swim. And I will not abandon my brothers. I am a knight, you are-’
‘Just a vagabond orphan and exile.’
‘No.’ Stanley smiled gently. ‘You are a deal more than that.’
‘So you’ll not try to come?’
He shook his head. ‘It is not the way for me.’
‘Smith still lives, but mortally wounded.’
Stanley looked enquiring.
‘If he set eyes on you again, lying there in the Sacred Infirmary — you know he would rally. That would be better medicine for him than all the skill and art of Fra Reynaud. You know how he would come to himself then, fight off his sickness and fevers with all his strength. And then you could both join in the fight for Birgu. You know you will be needed there.’
‘You argue with all the guile of a Vatican cardinal, boy.’
‘Besides, La Valette will want to hear of the Battle of Elmo from survivors.’
‘You will survive. But not I. As I say, here is the way to death for me. Here at Elmo.’
The boy looked so haunted and sad in the gathering darkness, fitfully lit by guttering fires. Stanley knew that he and Smith between them were something like fathers to him now. And he would only lose them again. Yet a knight’s duty was not to his fellow men, but with all stern unbending piety towards God alone.
‘When the Turks come in, you will go,’ he said. ‘I will give you the shove myself. Return to Smith, and to Birgu. The family, and — the girl.’
Nicholas looked at him sharply, but Stanley was beyond teasing now.
Nicholas said, ‘If you look out from the south-east wall — what’s left of it — on the rocks below you will see a broad flat timber washed up. From the boat of the two fishermen, destroyed by the guns of Is-Salvatur.’
‘Yes?’
‘Immediately below on the rocks,’ persisted the boy. ‘You say you cannot swim. Wood floats. Do you follow me?’
‘I follow your meaning,’ said Stanley. ‘Surely you should be a wily diplomat for the Vatican when you are grown. But-’
It was not a big explosion, but measured just sufficient by the expert Mameluke engineers to blow open an entrance below the cavalier, and then swiftly another charge was placed at the foot of the stout wooden gates into the fort. One or two knights hauled themselves to their feet where they lay in the inner yard, and tried to make it up the steps to fire down on the miners. But it was hopeless. The Turks proceeded with ruthless speed and efficiency, knowing that the defenders were now too reduced and exhausted to pose a threat to them as they worked, and the snipers and gunners out on the ravelin gave them added cover. There came a muffled crump from beyond the gates and the gates shuddered. Another few moments and they would be in.