Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [29]
There were times when M. d’Aramon believed that life would be easier if he did, since he had verified what no man in France would dare to confirm: that the Sultan of the Ottomans was a good deal more humane than any Christian prince he had discovered.
Therefore M. d’Aramon, French Ambassador to Turkey, was apprehensive when one of the foremost French knights of the Order called on him, and fatalistic when de Villegagnon told him of the expected attack. But all he said was, ‘Is Malta prepared?’
To which the Chevalier de Villegagnon replied with an explicit and no doubt sacred oath. ‘With the Spanish Grand Master we have? De Homedès has done nothing. In fifteen years, Malta and Gozo and Tripoli are as poorly fortified as when the knights first received them. Any fool,’ said de Villegagnon bitterly, ‘could see danger was coming. Didn’t the Order help the Emperor last year every time Charles asked politely for the Order’s galleys? The Emperor’s Admiral cleared the Moors from half the African coast with the Order’s help and chased Dragut temporarily off the seas; and it wasn’t because Charles was over-concerned about the free spread of the One True Faith either. It was because Dragut was becoming a little too busy attacking Spanish-owned Sicily and Calabria, and he wanted to teach him a lesson. And now the Order will suffer.’
‘And where is Spain’s High Admiral?’ asked Lymond. ‘Still at sea?’
Brought down from his high dudgeon the big man hesitated, and then grudgingly smiled. ‘Aye. After Dragut made a fool of him at sea in the spring, the Prince Doria found himself too desperately busy ferrying relatives of the Emperor back and forth to Spain to be able to fight.’ The smile went. ‘And so, since Sicily was unprotected, Charles got the Grand Master to send the Order’s galleys under Pied-de-Fer to Messina to stand by. They’re there yet.’
‘To return, of course, if Malta is attacked … backwards, if necessary,’ said Lymond. ‘Your one-eyed Grand Master must be a man of some character if he has your colleagues’ support for all this?’
‘He has a circle of Spanish knights like himself, more Imperialist than the Emperor,’ said de Villegagnon curtly. ‘With them, he can persuade the Supreme Council to vote as he wants. And he wants to obey the Pope and the Emperor and, if possible, to avoid accounting for any money he has spent in the last fifteen years. The real reason why he won’t fortify and won’t call in his knights is that the Treasury is empty. The Order has no money to keep it alive.’
‘Dear me,’ said Lymond mildly. ‘I am being taken to an unfortified island, where half the defenders and most of the defence fleet are missing, to lay down my life in defence of an Order incompetently if not culpably led, wholly divided among itself, given over to fighting for secular princes and entirely denuded of money with which to pay me for my services. Where are Prudence, Temperance, Fortitude and Justice? Where are the Eight Beatitudes of that proud White Cross? Where are the Crusaders of yesteryear, chaste and highborn, dying in virginal joy for their vows? They sound,’ said Francis Crawford abstractedly, ‘just like the Kerrs.’
‘You are forgetting Gabriel,’ said the Chevalier de Villegagnon, and with a quick smile acknowledged that this was d’Aramon’s own given name. ‘Reid Malett—de la Valette—Romegas—the skeleton