Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [76]
He was the first soul Gabriel had called to them who, resisting, had hit back, and hitting back, had struck so sorely home. Only at Gabriel’s order would Jerott have stirred a finger to save him: for Oonagh O’Dwyer he had no thought at all. And, indeed, the smoke haze spreading across the blue channel told that it was already too late.
V
Hospitallers
(Birgu, August 1551)
TWO days after this, the French Ambassador to Turkey, sailing from Marseilles to resume his office at Constantinople, was informed by a fishing boat that the Ottoman army had overrun Gozo.
The spokesman, whose name, oddly, turned out to be Stephenson, had a strange story to tell, and after listening to him with much interest, Gabriel de Luetz, Baron and Seigneur d’Aramon et de Valabrègues, invited him to sail to Birgu in his company.
Since Messieurs de Villegagnon and Crawford of Lymond had met him at Marseilles, M. d’Aramon had been a month at sea, and if he carried gold for Suleiman, it would be too tardy by now to finance the present Maltese attack. Lingering in Algiers, calling at Pantellaria, he diplomatically wasted time.
Three ships wouldn’t save Malta. They would only endanger the King of France’s tenuous friendship with the Turks, not to mention his substantial trading concessions. M. de Luetz, Baron d’Aramon, temporized; and only when he was fairly sure that Sinan Pasha had left Malta not to return, did he allow his captain to approach the Grand Harbour. Then he saw that the scarlet flag of the Order flew still over St Angelo, and despite his training, water stood, surprisingly in his eyes. Soon the welcoming salvoes broke over the still water, and in salute the Ambassadorial ships replied.
Close to St Angelo, d’Aramon observed more. The white walls of the fort were untouched. Birgu stood beyond, its stone unblackened by fire; and across Galley Creek, L’Isla was unmarked. Then the Order’s boat drew swiftly alongside, and in it were de Villegagnon, the Chevalier de la Valette and Sir Graham Malett, the red sun coppering his hair.
Again, la Valette was unharmed, though de Villegagnon had a fresh scar and ‘Gabriel’, the man whose nickname, he remembered, was his own, wore a thin dressing over the bone of his cheek. They exchanged greetings with grave courtesy; then d’Aramon, ushering them into the poop pavilion where his own entourage waited, heard the story of the landing, of the repulse by Nicholas Upton and Gimeran, of the defence of Mdina under de Villegagnon, and of the sack of Gozo. During the whole invasion, the knights’ only loss by death was Nicholas Upton; the only knight the Turks carried off was Galatian de Césel, Governor of Gozo.
That uncertain story, brought back quavering by a pack of senile old men, was corrected by the Grand Master himself. At supper at St Angelo, with the chain lifted and the galleys anchored snugly in Galley Creek, surrounded by the names all Europe knew; the incense in his nostrils from their black robes, the Eight-Pointed Cross repeated over and over in the candlelight, the Ambassador heard how Galatian de Césel had defended the citadel of Gozo with his life; how, so long as he was living, the people of Gozo, in obedience to his orders and in imitation of his example, had repulsed the attacks of the infidel with valour until at length their brave Governor had been killed on the ramparts by a cannon ball. Then the people, losing their leader and their courage at once, had been obliged to capitulate. The Grand Master, crossing himself, folded his hands in stricken prayer and M. d’Aramon, repeating the gesture, watched the other faces about the board with his shrewd, sun-pursed eyes.
The story didn’t ring true. More, there was an air of unrest among the Order itself, noticed as soon as la Valette came aboard, which made him uneasy. He would not press the knights of France to divide their loyalties, and he expected no disclosures. But in all the