Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [37]
Malta, Comino and Gozo, the three islands of the Maltese Archipelago. Melita, island of honey, navel of the great, tideless waterway. Comino, island of cumin and spice.…
He had spoken aloud. ‘And Gozo,’ said the Chevalier de Villegagnon gravely at his shoulder. ‘Isle of Calypso, the long-haired enchantress, alluring Odysseus with her voice at the loom.’
There was a respectful silence to the shade of Calypso, during which Nicholas Durand and Lymond were thinking of two quite different women. Then they were close enough to smell the hot sandstone rock, the dazzle of sea in their eyes; and under bare poles, the rowers drawing the brigantine through water like hazy blue glass, they slid into the long fjord with three left turnings: the historic deepwater harbour of Malta.
On their right, the scarlet flag of the Order moved, and then dipped ceremoniously from the watch-tower of St Elmo below the baked yellow heights of Mount Sciberras. The Order already knew, by fast boat from Sicily, that de Villegagnon was coming, and why.
But that was all. No galleys moved in or out of the long inlet, no metal glittered; no scramble of men building, digging, defensive, was visible on either side. On the brigantine, no one spoke save the master and the bo’s’n, repeating orders, as she crept into Malta in the blazing midsummer silence; and Malta slept, sullenly, all around.
One precaution only the Order had taken. The chain was across Galley Creek, the hand-forged Venetian chain whose every link had cost the knights ten golden ducats. It sealed the mouth of the middle of the three blind seaways entering the long southern coast of the fjord, and from its vast capstan on the left to its rock bed on the right, joined the two tongues of land between which all the galleys and brigantines of the Order usually lay. On the left tongue was Birgu, the fishing village the knights had made convent and home of the Order, with the fort of St Angelo at its tip. On the right was the peninsula called L’Isla, with a watch-tower and scattered houses which stared across Galley Creek to Birgu.
Now, above the tiered, windowless walls of Fort St Angelo rising white from sea and rock on their left, a second scarlet flag dipped in turn; and a puff of smoke, followed by the dull thud of a gun, reported to the piled, yellow-white town of Birgu at its back that de Villegagnon had come. A skiff, running alongside the shallow boats supporting the great chain from side to side of the creek, freed the middle stretch from supports, and the taut line sagged and dipped as, invisibly, the slaves below St Angelo flung their weight on the capstan bars. De Villegagnon, silent in the bows, turned and nodded to the Master, and the brigantine slowly gained speed and slid over the line.
Slid, and then stopped, for the Chevalier, leaning over the rail, had seen the sloop turn and dart to the brigantine’s side, and caught sight of paler faces within it among the olive skins of the crew, and a swing of black cloth. Neatly balancing amidships, a man stood and hailed the incoming ship.
Without approaching the rail, Lymond studied de Villegagnon as the rowers backpaddled and the big ship was stubbed to a halt. ‘A welcoming party?’
A change had come over Durand de Villegagnon’s face. For the first time you saw that, even to such a soldier—travelled, accepted, assured—coming to Malta was coming home; was coming to his Church and his friends, and to the only altar he knew where he could lay down his burdens for a space. De Villegagnon said, ‘Yes.… It seems so. The knight on the left is the Pilier of the French Tongue. The man next to him is the Grand Master’s secretary. The fat one is Nick Upton, the Turcopilier in charge of Malta’s defences—he’s English.’
‘And the Grand Cross who hailed you?’ Moving to de Villegagnon’s side, Lymond watched as, below, the rope ladder swung down