Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [84]
The following day, the courier returned to Tagiura with the reply of Gaspard de Vallier, Marshal of Tripoli and Knight of St John, affixed to the same cane.
The Government of Tripoli has been entrusted to me by my Order; I cannot surrender it up to anyone but to him whom the Grand Master and the Council of the Order shall nominate; and I will defend it against all others to the last drop of my blood.
*
On the brief journey from Malta to Tripoli, Jerott Blyth was able without undue trouble to avoid conversation with Francis Crawford. But during these same two days, from Gabriel who had seen service there, and Nicolas de Nicolay who had charted it, Lymond learned all he could about the knights’ African home.
There was little that was good. Built almost at the end of the green and fertile strip of North Africa, Tripoli stood behind walls, on a plain, with five hundred miles of sand and salt marsh stretching to the east towards Egypt. To the west lay a succession of corsair strongholds, alternating with outposts of Spain. To the south lay the desert, broken by the blue ridge of the mountains of Gharian, a Berber stronghold. Beyond that was the Sahara, through which Tripoli offered one of the narrowest crossings. For Tripoli was the centre for three great African caravan routes, and at the mouth of the shortest and safest sea route to Europe, through Malta and Sicily. Because of this, Charles V had issued his ultimatum: If you wish to receive Malta as a home for the Order, you must defend Tripoli for the Empire.
It was a command of heroic proportions. The rough map scratched on the ship’s rail by Nicolay’s dagger showed a rocky corner, jutting out from the palm groves and enclosing a harbour, sheltered in that land of errant winds by a spit of rock with a fort on it where the corner, attenuated, ran out finally into the sea.
In the angle between spit and bay sat the city, ringed by sloping stone walls and washed by the sea on south and west; and within the city but cut off from it in turn by its own walls and battlements, was the square edifice of the castle, on its seaward side commanding the whole bay of Tripoli, and on its landward, overlooking the great wall and gates giving on to the eastern plain.
But the old castle of Tripoli, Roman, Byzantine, Spanish in turn, was a huddle of courts, rooms, passages and inadequate battlements for which neither Charles nor Juan de Homedès had opened their purses.
And its Governor, Gaspard de Vallier, was an old man: a knight of the Auvergne Langue who, having achieved the prime dignities and posts of the Order, presented a challenge to the Grand Master de Homedès, and thus had been removed here. Speaking of all this to Lymond, ‘Everything depends on the Ambassador,’ Gabriel had said. ‘If he cannot persuade Sinan Pasha to give up the siege, then Tripoli will almost certainly fall.’ He then stopped a moment and added, ‘The lady … is she young? As young as yourself?’
Lymond, Jerott noted with satisfaction, did not take it at all well. He said, ‘She is sufficiently young for the seraglio, if that’s what you mean.’
Gabriel said gently, ‘They are well treated, you know. The Osmanlis believe in marrying the wives and daughters of their conquered. The mixed blood is their strength. You would do better to look for your pirate friend. They may take de Césel and the woman ashore, but they will leave the other captives with the fleet.’
‘He saved Mdina with his false dispatches from Sicily. The Lord, surely, will look after his own?’ said Lymond, causing another burst of anger, as doubtless he knew, not in Gabriel but in Jerott listening beyond. But it was Gabriel who bent forward and, leaving Lymond leaning back on the rail, the sea racing behind his bright, sardonic face, drew Jerott beside them. ‘Come and be baited in comfort,’ said Graham Malett.
Jerott Blyth shrugged his shoulders. ‘Let him joke. Mr Crawford is here, I believe, to display his heroism in reclaiming