Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [71]
And, ‘Gozo,’ Lymond repeated, committing the words above Gabriel’s bowed head, and suddenly swore. ‘Gozo Island, of course. The sacrifice is to be made after all for the Order, by Oonagh O’Dwyer and the women and children of Gozo.’
The result was the same, although his trick had succeeded and Gabriel’s failed. Long before Gabriel had awakened, Lymond had guessed his intentions; had found them confirmed in the paper half-slipped from Sir Graham’s tunic as he lay, stunned still, after their fall. One side was written in Turkish. On the other, Gabriel’s big, well-formed writing conveyed a message in English. The Turkish siege was untenable. The Grand Master had sent word to Mdina. The whole force of the Order was on its way from St Angelo to trap Dragut like a rat between Mdina and Birgu. If it wished to survive, the Turkish army must fly.
The lies looked convincing. The Turkish side was more forcible still. Yet, aware now of Gabriel’s calibre, Francis Crawford could not bring himself yet to acknowledge it, or his own malicious intent. The paper was crushed in his tunic. Gabriel, he hoped, would assume it lost in the fall. ‘Da mihi castitatem et continentiam … Give me chastity and continence,’ said Francis Crawford between his teeth, looking down at the Grand Cross of Grace at his feet. ‘But pray God, not just yet.’
*
So the plan, prepared so lightly that evening in Sicily, became history. So the Receiver of Sicily’s spurious letter announcing rescue fell into Sinan Pasha’s hands as designed, and rather than leave his ships unmanned in Marsamuscetto and his cannon stuck at Mdina, the Turkish general decided to abandon the siege.
But on Gozo, the scrap of land to Malta’s north, there were good farmsteads and one or two well-plenished palaces, defended only by the Governor de Césel’s hilltop citadel, commanding the town of Rabat at its foot. Pleasing at once himself, his troops and Dragut, Sinan Pasha withdrew to his ships and set his tiller for Gozo. And this time, nothing stood in his way.
From the battlements of the citadel, her back to the square and the church, Oonagh O’Dwyer stood and watched Rabat become Turkish. Like husked seed the coloured turbans poured between the tall, flat-roofed houses, the felt caps and camel-hair cloaks of the dervishes wild in the van, and the walls rattled with the roll of the kettledrums and the screams of Allâh! Allâh! Al-hamdu lillah! as the Lions of Islâm broke through.
The nearer streets filled. You could see white teeth, flying caftáns, sashes ridged with daggers, the flashing mace, the crowded silver parings of the scimitar, the lacquered coins that were shields. Faces fair and dark: Circassian, Syrian, Greek and Bosnian, Armenian, Croatian as well as Turks; children of the House of Osman; soldiers of Suleiman the Lawgiver, forbidden to trample on roses.
She moved round to the east. Below the citadel walls the whips cracked and the slaves ran as the culverins bit by bit assembled, grew, took shape, and bent their black mouths on the fort. To the west, and there below the steepest cliff of the fortress spread the other claw of the army, between themselves and the broad escarpment of il-Harrax on its strata of rock to the north-west.
They were encircled. And there were no Knights of St John on Gozo save Galatian de Césel, its Governor. There were four rotting cannon but only one soldier to fire them: an Englishman called Luke.
Oonagh never knew his other name. Irked by the deadweight of Galatian’s fright and apathy, she had been roused to fury when, after the supreme effort of collecting and dispatching two boatloads of