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By Root 2481 0

and suffering, with them all, the spare allocation of precious water, Adorne began to feel his own grasp slackening. And in the thick-walled little city, with its five hundred square yards of quiet passages, of high walls and crested gateways and the squat Norman-towered cathedral packed with scared, silent people, hope was faltering too. At night, home-made ropes, despite all Adorne’s warnings, trickled over the parapets and hurried shadows, swarming over ungainly, with bundle or baby, dropped to the ditches outside Mdina and ran … ran to disembowelment and slavery, for now the Janissaries were in place, ringing the city, drawing silently closer and closer over the plain. Of the three hundred men, women and children who tried to leave Mdina on these two nights, none escaped.

So, as the last pure light slid under the sea and the fires of Islâm, like marsh magic, danced unbroken below, the Governor Adorne of Mdina sent a first and last appeal to the knights at St Angelo.

And the courier, a grim little Spanish lieutenant he could ill spare, got through. With an arm strapped to his sword belt and a cut in his thigh that showed the white bone when he knelt, the dogged messenger from the besieged capital got to Birgu while the stars were still hung like lamps in the warm, sea-washed night, and presently, standing before Juan de Homedès himself, listened as the Grand Master, calm, dry and sarcastic, reduced to trivia the news he had brought.

‘Insufficient leaders?’ said His Eminence, gently chiding. ‘But surely, great as is our calling, we must in humility remember that the virtues of courage, leadership, faith, are not ours alone. Look among your native Maltese at Mdina, my child. Such an inducement to valour as they possess must rival our own deepest pledge.’

Monotonously, committed to incredible extension of his endurance, the lieutenant replied to each sally. ‘The Maltese in Mdina are frightened. They are untrained. Under the knights of St John—under a leader such as M. de Villegagnon there—they will fight as well as any in the world. But not alone. No longer alone.’

‘Each of us,’ said the Grand Master, his voice melancholy, his patch staring affrighted at the wall, ‘each of us in this terrible world must learn to fight, and to fight alone. This great Order of ours is the bastion of God in the eastern seas. By condoning the weakness of little men, we deny our sworn support to Holy Church. I can on my conscience send no one to Mdina.’

Soaking through breeches and hose, the dark blood rolled sluggish down the Spaniard’s leg. His face, white beneath the dirt and the sweat, was a mask, but for the persevering, fixed eyes. ‘Send M. de Villegagnon at least,’ he said. ‘Of all men, he will put heart into the city as she dies.’

‘Certainly, if M. de Villegagnon wishes, he may go,’ said Juan de Homedès unexpectedly. ‘Someone, in any case, must take our message back to Brother Adorne and you, my poor man, have done enough. You have persuaded us at least, you may be sure, of your courage and virtue. M. de Villegagnon will go to Mdina. Rest assured. All will be well. See to him, Brother,’ said the Grand Master lightly to the physician among those at his side, and made to rise.

He had underestimated the opposition.

‘Your Eminence.’ Determined and tender, it was Gabriel’s voice. ‘I beg you to spare the matter a moment more of your time. You are condemning M. de Villegagnon as well as the city of Mdina to death.’

The arid face was quite composed. ‘I condemn M. de Villegagnon to nothing. I have said he may go to Mdina if he so desires.’

‘He will obey your slightest wish, I am sure, whether he desires it or not,’ said Gabriel plainly. Unspoken, the words hung in the air. ‘As will the twenty-five insubordinate knights you mean to send to sure death in Tripoli.’ Aloud, he added, ‘But if we can spare M. de Villegagnon, we can spare more. I wish to go.’

‘And I! And I!’ At last, skilfully, he had released them. The clamour of voices rose from the two long tables, from Pilier and Grand Cross, from all the Order’s great officers.

Pityingly,