Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [127]
These, dismounting, closed cheerfully with the stunned Brethren; felled, stripped and robbed them in the rough proportion of eight to one, and laid them in neat rows on the sandy ground, chained like parrots in pairs.
To the impetuous soldiers and citizens of Tripoli, it appeared, the same treatment had already been meted out on the shore. Then, all herded together under the shimmering sun, the hilarious task of selecting victims for punishment was begun.
The sweet death by wild honey which Dragut had once promised Lymond was familiar to Jerott Blyth by the end of that day. He saw de Chabas, an old Dauphine cannonier and battle companion, thrust alive into the sand, nose and fists severed, and stuck full of arrows until he died. His sin had been to shoot off the hand of Sinan’s favourite henchman. Others fared worse. In the end, blinded by heat, aching, sickened by the screaming, Jerott turned his head aside and abandoning all effort to apportion blame and honour wished simply and furiously that he were dead. Gabriel and the Frenchmen in the Turkish camp, he supposed, already were. He wondered, as at intervals for two days he had wondered, what cynical seraglio Francis Crawford had managed to set up for himself, almost certainly unharmed, unmoved and in favour with the reigning power, the willing mistress restored to his bed. The final irony, which struck him just before he lost consciousness, was that the honour and reputation of the Order would today be intact if he and Lymond had not laboured quite so hard that night in the arsenal.
He did not see, later, the crack infantry of the Turkish army—Spahis, Ghourebas, Ulafaje, Janissaries—marching in silent triumph, magnificently trained, below the great banners, drums beating, into the vanquished city, with Sinan Pasha at its head, mounted on an Arabian horse, turban flashing and sleeveless cloak falling stiff over the saddle above the long embroidered robe. The soft-booted feet of the infantry paced in unison, the white dust clouding the air and powdering the robes kirtled above gartered trousers, the laced tunics, the dark, bearded faces—almost every one smooth, fresh and scatheless, and fiery with scorn: the flower of the Sultan’s army and all, save for a few gunners, the armchair conquerers of Tripoli, for which they had not had to strike a blow.
De Vallier watched them, lying on the ground like the rest, manacles again on his chafed wrists, and tears he could not control ran down his seamed, dust-coated face to the sand. Until, behind the Aga Morat’s dancing horses with their booty-stuffed packs came the French Ambassador’s party, walking between ranks of armed Janissaries; ranks through which the Sieur d’Aramon, reckless of risk, broke when he saw the iron carpet of human debris huddled, prone, raging, unconscious, stretching from his feet to the shore.
D’Aramon paused only to hear the Marshal’s story, kneeling at the old man’s side, his fingers on the clasped hands of the other; then he resumed his place in the derisive procession until, livid with suppressed anger, he was inside the abandoned castle and forcing an audience on Sinan Pasha himself.
It was the time then for plain speaking. ‘The world will learn,’ said the French Ambassador without preamble, ‘of this act of injustice and of the tainted coin of the Ottoman oath. By treaty these men and two hundred more were to go free and unmolested provided they laid down their arms. This was done, yet they lie, robbed, naked, suffering insult, torture and death at your gates. My lord and most Christian Majesty the King of France,’ said M. d’Aramon distinctly, ‘will require reprisals for each of his subjects so treated. The Order will exact the same for its