Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [141]
They fired the buildings as they ran through, looking for prisoners and plunder with tree branches dipped in pitch for their torchlight. They fought one another over the silver bracelets on a child’s ankle, or the earrings from an old woman’s lobes, or the coins round a girl’s canvas cap. They stuffed embroidered silks into their shirt-fronts, and rings and aspers and ducats into their pouches. They found opium, and finely chased seals, and hoards of coral and gold and pearl buttons, and spilled open chest and cupboard and market stall to find more. Girdle cakes of barley and millet bounced upset in the flickering dark with the ringing wares of the brassworker, and a basket of wild artichokes rolled with its soft leafy fists among the spilled salt, fat and cheese of the suqi dealer along the warrens of small vaulted passages, with dead men underfoot.
Two crowns for a Moor’s head; and as slaves, the women and children might be worth even more. La Valette, with great trouble, had gathered over a thousand prisoners in the dark square, ready to march them out to the ships which were so mysteriously tardy in coming, when the Moor Ali Benjiora found him: a man he knew well, who had served under him once at Tripoli.
Conspicuous by his height, and his curling white cropped hair and beard, de la Valette bent to hear the man’s words; made him repeat them; and then, raising his voice in the uproar, found and summoned Leone Strozzi. ‘There is an ambush. The Aga Morat’s army, he says, is surrounding us from two sides, half from Tripoli and the rest under the Aga from Djerba: four thousand horsemen in all, with arquebuses and bows. We are to be trapped in the city.’
Strozzi’s eyes, brilliant with excitement, glowered at the Moor. ‘How is this true?’
‘It is true,’ said de la Valette. ‘I know this man and I trust him. More than that, he was shown the troops and told where to find us by someone known to both of us: the French Envoy, Crawford of Lymond.’
‘Then it is true,’ said Strozzi slowly. He looked round. The pillage was almost over, the city was blazing; the worst had been done. More, he saw, looking beyond the smoke and the flames out to sea, his ships had at last come. It was time to cut losses. ‘Retreat! The drums will beat retreat!’ he said with energy; and flung back his bright helmeted head shouting. ‘To the shore! Retreat to the shore! All captives to the shore, and make ready to embark! The Chevalier Justiani, make your signal to the Admiral galley. All boats to the shore …’
He thrust through the uproar, shouting. A moment later the drums started, but even where de la Valette stood, in the square itself, they were hardly audible. The Knights of St John were being called on to retreat, and none of them yet knew it. The Chevalier Parisot de la Valette, opening his purse to reward the Moor Ali Benjiora, was struck by a thought. ‘You came into the city: how did you come in?’
‘Through the gates,’ said the Moor. He slipped the gold into his robe.
‘Through the gates? The commander of the companies guarding the walls let you enter?’
‘What companies?’ said the Moor. ‘There is no one, Hâkim, outside the gates. They all came in, it is said, long since to plunder.’
So for the second time that night, the gates of Zuara stood open to an invader, but this time to a succouring force; a brutal friend who was prepared to let a city die in order to trap its assailants.
Jerott landed on the shore, the other skiffs hard behind him as the Aga Morat with four thousand armed cavalry thundered into the burning city. Facing him, every gate to the sea was flung open, a yawning red mouth in the night, and the black shapes of people poured through; Moorish women and children, wailing and screaming, soldiers cursing, Knights carrying wounded. Shouldering against the tide, sword in hand, Jerott pushed through into the town, seeking for a face he knew in the dashing smoke and the distorting glare of the flames. Then he saw that pillage had stopped; and carnage had begun.
The horses, these brilliantly ridden horses of the Aga Morat’s, were the