Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [19]
Evangelista Donati he also got to know. An Italian lady of unquestionable birth, Madame Donati had made her home on Malta for many years and had shared with the nuns of Joleta’s convent the task of rearing the parentless child. Without resources of her own, she had been well paid for it, Richard assumed, by the girl’s brother.
Of Sir Graham Malett himself, Madame Donati spoke sparingly and with embarrassing reverence. Like all fighting men, Richard Crawford respected the Knights of St John, the soldiers of Christ who cared for the poor and the sick in Palestine, four hundred years before, and protected the pilgrims against the Saracen on their way to the Holy Land. To fight the Saracen and care for the sick remained the essence of the Order, even after Jerusalem fell and Acre was lost; and instead of defending the Holy Land the knights found themselves pushed into the isles of the Mediterranean, taking their hospital and their fighting men to Cyprus, then to Rhodes, and now to the island of Malta, halfway between Gibraltar and Cyprus, in the Mediterranean Sea.
Twenty-one years ago, the Order had received the gift of Malta from the Emperor Charles V, ‘in order that they might perform in peace the duties of their Religion for the benefit of the Christian community, and employ their forces and arms against the perfidious enemies of Holy Faith’. And so, men of all nations took their vows and went where in prayer and humility the Knights of the Order lived, nursed the poor and sick in their great hospital and fought to sweep the Turk out of the Mediterranean Sea and off the coast of North Africa.
From a land force, theirs became the finest sea-fighting school in the world. And from these medical knights, these pirate knights, these priestly knights with their holy vows and monastic seclusion on the sandstone rocks of Malta under the hot African sun, there came men like the Chevalier de Villegagnon, like Leone Strozzi, and like the knight Graham Malett, or Gabriel, Joleta’s brother.
Gabriel, Joleta’s brother, who after all these years was sending Joleta home to Scotland. ‘Home?’ said Madame Donati sardonically. ‘The child’s home is in Malta, in the sun. But he fears for her. There are always rumours, that this time the Turks will attack Malta, and that their fleet is so large, their Janissaries so ruthless, Dragut so invincible.…’
‘Dragut is only a man,’ Joleta had broken in swiftly. ‘A Moslem corsair in the pay of the Turk. How could the knights, with their Faith behind them, fail to conquer?’
‘Dragut is a seaman to match any in the Order,’ said Richard drily. ‘Your brother is wise to send you home.’
‘Except that she has no home,’ retorted Madame Donati, her faded eyebrows pushing up the thin, sallow skin. ‘As you must know very well, Sir Graham’s home near the Scottish Border was destroyed during the English wars, his lands wasted and his tenants dispersed. He has no possessions at all except what is allowed him through the Treasury at Malta, and his jewels. He sold them to send Joleta here.’
And to pay you, thought Richard. He knew the rest of the story. The girl was to go to Sir James Sandilands, the head of the Order in Scotland. At his home in Torphichen she would rest from her journey before being placed, with the Order’s powerful backing, in the best convent for her years. Madame Donati, staying with her, would continue to instruct in the gentle arts; and when the danger was over, Gabriel would come for her.
Richard, hearing these plans, had said nothing because he was nearly certain that Sandilands of Torphichen, lazy, rich-living and slipshod in faith, was the last person a Knight Hospitaller of St John of Jerusalem would wish to trust with the care of