Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [126]
By that single act of humanity the defence reaped a strange reward. Some Moors refused to leave the knights they had served so long. Some left and escaped. Some left and were captured by Sinan’s outposts before they could taste freedom. It was these, in their fear, who told Sinan Pasha that the knights’ intention was to fight to the end, immolating themselves and the whole Turkish army in a final holocaust inside the city walls.
Sinan Pasha did not want to waste lives. Nor did he like to be robbed of his plunder. When, against all expectations, de Montfort appeared with his terms, Sinan Pasha received him cordially, and after the mildest haggling, agreed. Not certainly that three hundred, but that two hundred persons to be selected by the Order should be allowed with all the knights to return free to Malta, and that the Governor should be set at liberty as well.
It was an agreement laced characteristically with malice. When de Vallier, worn and trembling, returned to the castle, escorted with mischievous ceremony to the gates, it was to tell how Sinan Pasha had made his final demand for some kind of payment, and how the Marshal had pointed out that, without authority, he was helpless to comply.
‘I told him,’ said de Vallier slowly, his veined hands shifting among the useless papers on his desk, ‘that I believed and hoped that my brother knights would never agree to his terms, and that I was ready to forfeit my life in that hope.’
He raised his eyes to the driven, sleepless faces about him and Jerott, his tired body propped by the window, sick to the point of vomiting with shame and fury, thought he saw a terrible kind of ragged pride sit on his unshaven face. ‘My Brothers, the Lord has heard our prayers. At these words the Turk bowed his head before a greater will than his. Without further abjuration of mine he returned from his companions to say that, his honour being no less than ours, he would ratify the first treaty as drawn up in his camp. All Christians in Tripoli are to have instant liberty, only laying down colours and arms in the city before they leave. Ships are to be provided. I am here, Brethren in Christ, to lead you, every man, woman and little child of the Faith, to freedom. God in His mercy be praised.’
‘Then God in His mercy has arranged that we should lead them from the rear,’ said Jerott Blyth thinly from the window. ‘The entire garrison of Tripoli has just marched away.’
They all talked at once after the first second until, crowding the deep embrasure, they saw that this, the ultimate irony, was true. The soldiers, the Moors, the Calabrians, the men, women and children of Tripoli had not waited for the Order to give its sonorous command to surrender. They had not even waited for the blockades to be laboriously shifted and the city gates, with grim courage, to yawn. Through the breached walls, bundles underarm, they streamed, over the sandy ditches, past the silent cannon, through the gaps of the crumbling buttress of St Brabe, and down to the shore.
‘Freedom!’ de Vallier had called as, mobbed by struggling Tripolitains, he had fought his way from the city gates to the castle. ‘Freedom, my friends! The Turks’ own ships are to come for you. Wait, and you shall hear!’
But since Sinan Pasha might easily change his mind, the occupiers of Tripoli had not waited. In all the ancient African stronghold of Christ, only the foreign knights of the Order remained.
The rest was bitterest farce. Attired in their crumpled robes over their armour, personal belongings flung together, unfed, unwashed and swordless as requested, the Knights Hospitallers of the Order of St John of Jerusalem rallied, bickering