The corsair moved in for the snakelike kill, thinking to seize the wounded helpless one and push him forward hard into the other as his shield, sticking the white shrimp in the ribs below the wounded fellow’s arm before cutting his throat and tossing them both over the side. But first for amusement he jumped and came down hard and the pontoon rippled and rolled on its wooden barrels. The boy staggered and leaned, nearly slipping on the wet planking. Then Parisot with his last strength pulled away from Nicholas’s grasp and sank to his knees before the corsair. He was deliberately freeing the boy to fight, though it might mean his own death. Unburdened, Nicholas sprang forward like a cat, the corsair open-mouthed with horror at the sudden agility of this blood-streaked infidel, who seemed to be flying through the air towards him. He heard the whip of his sword blade rather than saw it, and then he was cut open once, twice, a deadly flurry of slashes and then a long clean thrust to the heart.
Nicholas pulled back and whipped the blade once more through the air to clear it of blood. The Egyptian was still standing, looking shocked, as men eerily may who do not realise they are dead yet. Then he fell sideways into the water, and it seemed to Nicholas that dead men made less splash than the living, their bodies already lightened by the flight of their souls.
‘The bridge is going!’ they shouted from the Birgu side.
If Copier went in the water he would drown, heavily armoured as he was. He stepped backwards to Nicholas, the Turks pushing forwards. Copier hauled up Parisot and Nicholas whirled his sword through the air in front of the oncoming enemy. They saw something crazed in his eyes and hesitated. He glanced back and the powerful Copier was hauling Parisot fast, almost carrying him under one arm, his peg-leg clomping. Nicholas hurried after, knowing that if he slipped, the Turks would be on him and he would die. But as soon as a gap opened up, an order to fire came from the Birgu shore and a murderous volley of arquebus hit the nearest Turks without risk to the last fugitives. Amid the volley sounded the deep distinctive crack of Smith’s jezail. Bullets sang, the bridge rippled under the footfall of numerous Turks, the thump of bodies, cries and splashes. And then someone was dragging Nicholas onto the stone creekside. Another volley came, a grenade exploded far behind, the pontoon was cut loose, and sank under the weight of men a fathom deep.
7
Nicholas came in under the steep shadow of Birgu’s cracked western walls after Copier and Parisot, the youth unbelievably carried slung over the Marshal’s shoulder. Then Nicholas was half pulled up a ladder. A soldier took the sword from his tight fist firmly and encouraged him in over the parapet. A fair-haired sunburnt giant was clapping him on the shoulder and saying in a voice he knew well, with inimitable humour, ‘Late again, Master Ingoldsby. Why so tardy?’
He grinned and reeled and nearly fainted, and Stanley held him upright.
‘And why so weary? Anyone would think you had just run a mile, lad.’
‘Give him some water,’ growled Smith, busily cleaning the blackened barrel of his jezail. ‘He’s done more good works than you today, you fat tallow-haired lummox.’
When he had wet his throat and could speak again, Nicholas asked weakly, ‘How’s it been with Birgu?’
Smith said, ‘Busy.’
They moved at a crouch along the parapet to the post of Provence, and the stench that arose from the ditches below the riven walls was the stench of Elmo. Janizaries, Bektaşis, Sipahis, Berbers and corsairs lay in indistinguishable heaps.
‘We held the walls,’ said Stanley, ‘while the townsmen mounted charge after charge into the breeches in support. They fought with long-handled billhooks, scythes, fishing spears bound to wooden poles with wet rope, which serve to gut a man as well as a fish. It is good to fight with them.’
‘And the women are all turned builders,’ said Smith. ‘The girls, the grandmothers. All of them.’
Though the walls of Birgu still stood, to the Turks’ frustration, the effect of the bombardment took its toll in other ways. The guns raged on and on and never stopped. Every man and woman in the city must hold their nerve. The endless battering explosions frayed the soul. Already the weaker-minded had begun to gibber and go mad, to grip tables and walls, to walk slowly, eyes staring, or hold their hands to their ears and beg it to stop. They began to cry and say that they must get away, they must escape. Some took to the rooftops and gazed up into the sky and prayed to God to take them. And often they were killed there, standing stark and terrified under the cannon-torn sky.
An hour later they were under attack again. A troop of boys came up onto the blasted parapet, and scrambled out onto perilous crumbling heights and fought too. They cried ‘Vittoria!’ in high piping voices as they fought with their only weapons, which were birding slings. For the people of Malta were passionate bird-hunters, so much so that few birds survived on the island. The knights martialled the boys carefully and had them loose their stones in a flanking hail at the Janizary onrush as they tried once more to come in over the rugged rampart of the breech.
The Janizaries glanced up and one yelled out, ‘We are under attack from boys!’ As if not knowing whether to be amused or indignant. Yet the rounded stones hurtling forth from those whirring leather straps were no toys. Flying stones struck exposed throats and temples, shattered wrist bones, hands and knee caps, and David slew Goliath once more as he did in the Valley of Elah in ancient times.
Perhaps eight hundred Janizaries had been killed at the land walls, and astonishingly, not one had broken into the town. But the losses of the defenders had been grievous, far worse in proportion, and the little victories of St Michel and the waterfront battery were small comfort.
In the evening, La Valette heard the roll of the dead from Sir Oliver Starkey.
‘The Chevaliers Federico Sangrigorio; Giovanni Malespina; Raffaele Salvago …’ The list went on and on.
At one point La Valette interrupted, ‘Do you have news of the English boy? The Ingoldsby boy?’
Starkey scanned the list for his countryman. ‘No, Sire. He is still with us. I know he fought at Senglea-’
‘Did he?’ La Valette clenched his mouth.
‘He came back almost last, with the Marshal Copier himself, moments before they blew the bridge.’
La Valette’s eyes gleamed. ‘Continue.’
‘Javier, the nephew of Don Pedro Mezquita.’
‘What age was he?’
‘Eighteen. Don Pedro was wounded trying to save him. Slain Janizaries lay around the boy like mown flowers.’
La Valette buried his face in his hands for a moment and then looked up again. Starkey had never seen him look so tired. How much longer could a man of his years go on, barely sleeping, barely eating, grief-stricken to the heart but refusing to weep? Starkey wished he could take some of the burden from him. But La Valette would not share it. The grief and the burden would lie on his old shoulders until the end.
‘The young always die soonest,’ said La Valette softly. ‘With their brave, reckless hearts. And?’
‘Don Federique de Toledo.’
‘Slain?’
‘Yes, Sire. A grenade misfired, he lost his hand, and still he fought on until he collapsed from loss of blood. The medics could not save him.’
‘Age?’
‘Also eighteen.’
The son of Don García de Toledo, Viceroy of Sicily. How would that help or hinder the relief plans? It was a sad loss. They were all sad losses.