Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [55]
‘They cannot now be said, surely, to be going to France,’ suggested Gabriel’s deep voice gently.
‘Why not? Why not? We are not fools, gentlemen. We study charts,’ said the Grand Master. He turned his head and his secretary, rising, spread a paper on the eminent knees. ‘There,’ said de Homedès. ‘Along the Sicilian coast to Provence and their devilish meeting with the French Ambassador. If they follow the coast, they will shorten their journey by some two hundred miles. There, Brothers in Christ, is your proof!’
There was a painful silence. At length, ‘It is one possibility, out of many,’ said de Villegagnon curtly.
The single princely eye was bent on the Chevalier, and his very bulk reduced to a sin. ‘Your suggestion is then, I take it, that the whole population of these islands should stand to arms; that the poor people we protect should remain crowded in Birgu and Mdina, spreading plague and consuming stores and water, while the food rots in their villages? Do you propose to let them out for the vintage, or must we house them here for ever, or until your precious Ottoman army comes, to eat, marry, squabble, breed, die in the convent of the Holy Order? I suppose from this year on, the Mass bell remains silent except for alarm; the Brothers are forever more exempt from their churchly duties in order to mix gunpowder and dig; the sunken galleys must rot? You have been too long in foreign waters, Chevalier. Our duty is not to glorify battle, but to enshrine and keep alive the fire of our Faith. The Order’s galleys are at Messina. The power of the Emperor is in the western seas. For that very reason we have done our duty; we have not importuned him for untimely help. Be satisfied, Brother Nicholas, with God’s grace as this day shown us, and do not anger Him with complaint.’
Which was all very well but, as Gabriel said with unexpected wry humour afterwards, it was not the Deity who seemed to be principally offended.
Sanctioned to ordinary routine; unable, even had they wished, to force Maltese and mercenaries to carry on the hopeless, arduous task of defence, the knights gathered in groups indoors as the new afternoon heat beat down, uneasily conferring, avoiding disloyalty and blasphemy as they might; praying always for relief. Outside, in the shimmering refractions of July, the hills and houses of Sicily hung all afternoon in the northern air, the painted sails of Suleiman’s fleet suspended below them; and from the coast, creaming column after column of black smoke began to rise until it seemed as if all Sicily were Etna, and the sky itself a curdled ocean of lava.
Whatever their ultimate purpose, the Ottoman fleet was in no haste to leave these waters. Sinan Pasha, Dragut Rais and Salah Rais had landed in the lemon groves of Sicily itself, and were killing and burning unhindered across forty-three short miles of sea.
That evening, as the afterglow lay like watered wine on the long pool of Grand Harbour and stitched with pink the smoky seas of the east, two fishing boats came in past the point of St Elmo and laboured through the long harbour towards Galley Creek.
In the clear, rosy light there was a strangeness about them. More: as the sentries of St Angelo peered down from their blind Arab walls, they could hear sounds thinly rising from the flat water; an ill-tuned chorus of voices joined in shrill Christian praise. Crowding the battlements, they watched as the two high-prowed boats drew still nearer, rounding the point below Fort St Angelo and slowing before the shining chain across Galley Creek. The oars moved then, raggedly, to backpaddle, and the small lamps on the quay, in the gathering dusk, glimmered on the rowers, their brown faces upturned to the fort: on black, shawled heads and strong, knotted brown arms; on rolls and parcels and baskets and bundles which were silent and others which moved strongly and cried. It shone on a bent wicker cage in which a linnet lay dying; on a