Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [83]
She and Galatian, she found, were not on the flagship but with Dragut, whose brother had burned like a dog on Gozo seven years before.
It was not a coincidence. For her, the squat old warrior with the powerful, peasant face showed only contempt. Towards Galatian he showed a child’s capacity for taunting. With exaggerated respect, he had him freed when he complained of his fetters, and had the wounds rubbed, not with oil but with salt. When he was thirsty, he was given a sherbet of aloes; when he called Oonagh’s name, and cried, they bandied among themselves, audibly, tales Oonagh had never heard of his supposed amorous prowess since taking his vows.
Afterwards, she realized such things must be common gossip among the Gozitans brought back so often on these raids. And when the Governor whined, Dragut said, with sudden violence, that the dog should suffer no longer from this unseemly itch, and Galatian was taken from her sight. When he returned, bloodsoaked on a litter, Galatian de Césel, Knight of St John, had embraced chastity at last.
It was Galatian’s servant, Maltese and therefore an Arabic-speaker, who told her that they had stopped off Tagiura, twelve miles east of Tripoli. Wandering in France and Ireland, fighting for the sovereignty of her nation and ultimately of Cormac O’Connor her lover, Oonagh had yet heard of the great corsair Barbarossa who had extended the Sultan’s empire over North Africa and the Mediterranean, to be made at last Beylerbey of Africa, with two thousand soldiers and orders from Constantinople to levy whatever army he might need from corsair, Berber, Moor or renegade and give them the standing of Janissaries.
So, with bitter fighting over the years, the great seaports of Africa had been torn between Turkey and Spain; now the Emperor’s and Christian: now Suleiman’s and an infidel strength. Tagiura, rich oasis so close to Tripoli, was Turkish, and the Aga Morat, lord of Tagiura, was Barbarossa’s successor and an officer in Africa for Suleiman the Magnificent, King of Kings. As the silken fleet floated inshore under the wide skies of sunset the batteries echoed from ship to tawny-green shore, and the banquet for Sinan Chasse Diable and his two naval commanders went on, they said, all night.
Oonagh saw nothing of it. Sometimes, at night, as she nursed Galatian in his fever, she thought she heard, stifled by decking, the whimpering of the people of Gozo, spread through the battered holds of the fleet. On Dragut’s galleass there were none save herself and Galatian, with a servant apiece. Attending her patient with diamond efficiency, neither pity nor distaste crossed her face, reduced against its bone by heat, and strange foods, and pregnancy. Like a sea animal she could and did close in upon herself against affliction and shock, assimilate the suffering and show meanwhile an uncaring face.
For Galatian she felt only contempt. As suddenly as it had come, her own fever had gone. She felt an arid, fighting spinsterhood upon her, and glanced, with new purpose, at the fleshy, alien faces about her.
If Galatian lived, he would be ransomed back and she might be saved. If he died, she would accept her fate and wrest some pride out of it. Even while carrying the thick-skinned spawn of Cormac O’Connor. Francis Crawford had in any event passed her by, lightly and coldly as, of course, she desired.
For a few days, the fleet rested at anchor; then Sinan Pasha sent a message to Tripoli: a white-robed Moor on one of their small, swift horses bearing a white flag. Before the gates of the city he dismounted, and planting a cane in the pallid sand in front of the ditch, fastened to it the Osmanli call to surrender.
Surrender yourselves to the mercy of the Grand Seigneur, who has ordered me to reduce this place under his obedience. I will allow you the liberty