The Siege of Malta

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER IIRinaldo found himself directed to a seat beside Ramegas at the upper end of a long board which divided the centre of the hall, and in a place of honour inferior only to the smaller cross-table at the head, which was reserved for Don Manuel himself and those of his own blood.

The Commander of Vilheyna had taken the vows of the Order of St. John Baptist at an early age, and had been prominent for over forty years in the incessant struggle which had been waged between Christian and Infidel, between Charles V and the great Turkish Emperor Soliman, for the control of the Mediterranean. He had been present at the unsuccessful defence of Rhodes, when the Order had been expelled, though not without the honours of war, which their valiant resistance won: he had taken a distinguished part in the expedition which captured Tunis in 1535, and liberated 20,000 Christian slaves. Six years after that he had been present at the disastrous attack upon Algiers, from which Charles had retreated with a mere remnant of his men, leaving his baggage and artillery for a Turkish spoil.

Now—twenty-four years later—Charles V was dead, and his son, Philip II, ruled in a Spain which still increased in dominion, prestige and wealth. But while it gained in Northern Europe and the Atlantic, the course of events had caused a gradual abandonment of the Mediterranean, which had become little better than a Turkish lake.

Soliman still lived. He still warred in Europe, where he had overrun Transylvania and reduced the power of Hungary.

Forty years before, he had captured Rhodes, driving out the Knights of St. John, who had previously held the island for over two centuries. After that, they had been granted—by Charles V—possession of Malta and the adjacent islands for the quitrent of a yearly falcon to the Sicilian crown. With the bitter experience of Rhodes to urge them, they had made the fortifications of Malta strong, and had remained there during the intervening years in an apparent security, making it an eyrie from which they had preyed upon the commerce of the Mohammedan powers.

But now Soliman the Magnificent, as men had begun to call him, designed to repeat in his age the triumph which had adorned his youth. He planned, with the aid of the tributary powers of Egypt and Algiers, to dispatch a fleet and army of ample strength to drive the Knights from the refuge which Charles had given, and to complete the dominion of the Mediterranean.

But through all these changing fortunes of forty years, the Viceroy of Algiers had learnt that he had, upon the opposite coast of Spain, in the person of the Commander of Vilheyna, a ruthless and sleepless foe. This Viceroy of Soliman, Dragut by name, had become of a great and feared repute in the western waters of the Mediterranean, where, since the battle of Djerbeh four years before, there had been no nation of Europe disposed to dispute his power. But the galleys of Don Manuel still sallied out, as occasion offered, to strike some swift and disconcerting blow, and return, before retribution could overtake them, to shelter beneath the security of his fortress guns.

It was in recognition of these relentless and long-continued activities that Don Manuel had recently received from the King of Spain a present of two large and powerful galleys, to replace others which, after facing many years of battle and storm, had become unfit to be put to sea. . . .

Seated at the Commander’s right hand, Rinaldo observed his nephew, Francisco, to whom common repute gave a more direct relationship; but since a statute of the former Grand Master, De L’Isle Adam, had forbidden, under penalty of expulsion, that any knight of the Order should openly admit that he had broken his vows of chastity by recognition of children, the relationship of nephew had become so common as to be almost synonymous with a nearer word. It was, at least, clear to all who observed the youth so seated at the side of the older man, that they were of no distant blood.

Young though he was, Francisco had already received the honour of knighthood, and had seen active service on the decks of his uncle’s galleys. It was assumed that he would, in due course, himself enter the Order, and take its monastic vows.

It was a destiny to which the sons of the Maltese knights were directed, if not compelled, by the policy on which it had based its power. The estates that the Commanders controlled, originally dowered by—ancestors or others—those who had dedicated themselves to the Order’s service, had become of enormous value in all parts of the Christian world, and were now commonly held on the terms of remitting a certain yearly sum to the Treasury at Malta, beyond which they were not required to make account during peaceful days, on the understanding that threat of war, or other crisis, would place their whole resources at the Grand Master’s call.

Holding estates on such terms as these, they could make no disposition of them by gift or will to a son, whether so recognized or not. The only method of succession was by submission to the Order’s authority, and the acceptance of its monastic vows.

Seated on Don Manuel’s other hand, Rinaldo observed the Señorita Angelica, a girl little younger than Francisco, and the Commander’s actual niece, being his sister’s child.

The least houseboy in the castle well knew that, as surely as Francisco would be regarded as dedicated to the service of the Order of Malta, so Angelica—from the day when, at the age of ten, on her mother’s death, she had come under her uncle’s authority—had been engaged to enter the Convent of Holy Cross, where she would be able to confer great benefits on her family by a life of prayer.

But, having arranged this from the first, Don Manuel had seemed in no haste to part with her to her pious calling; and the Abbess of Holy Cross was in no doubt that it would be to her own interest to defer to the Commander regarding the time of introducing his niece to the house over which she ruled.

Angelica’s entrance to the holy state continued therefore to be spoken of as a settled thing, though no time was mentioned at which she would begin her novitiate. In the meantime, she had remained under the charge of Morayma, a Moorish captive, who had been her nurse at the first and her duenna in recent years.

Rinaldo had leisure enough to observe the members of Don Manuel’s household, and, in particular, to let his eyes linger as much as courtesy would permit upon a type of beauty which may have differed from those which he had previously been privileged to observe, for the Commander made it plain both by his silence and by the directions to which he would lead the conversation when he occasionally interposed, that he had no intention of allowing Rinaldo’s errand to be discussed in the common hearing of his retainers and of the menials at the lower end of the board.

It was only as the meal drew to its end that he said, in a voice of authority that brought instant silence upon the hall: “We have with us to-night one who brings word that the invasion of Malta, of which there have been many rumours of late, is no less than a certain thing, and the Sultan’s fleet may be already upon the sea. At such a need, we can have neither choice nor wish but to go there with our utmost speed, and with all the rescue that we can raise. I will, therefore, that you shall forthwith address your minds to that end, while awaiting further orders from me. . . . Señor Ramegas, you shall remain to take counsel with me hereon.”

His words were sufficient to clear the hall in a brief space, the murmur of excited voices only rising outside the doors. When none but Ramegas and Rinaldo remained, he addressed the latter in the tone of authority which he was accustomed to use.

“I may not ask you to tell where my duty lies, which I am not needing to know, but if you have knowledge of the Sultan’s latest designs, or of any special cause from which this invasion springs, you have the season to tell me now.”

“There has been something of special cause,” Rinaldo replied, “though it may surely be said that the very principles on which the Order is founded are such that there can be no peace between it and the Sultan’s power; and the species of piracy”—here he paused as he observed that the word was ill received, and substituted another expression—“or rather of sea-warfare as practised by us against the commerce of the Moslem states, could not fail to sustain the traditional enmity which divides the Christian world from the followers of Mahomet; but the immediate cause of the invasion that threatens now is said to be the pressure put upon the Sultan by some odalisques that his seraglio holds.

“It appears that a number of these ladies united the gold that his favour gave in a trading venture that would have brought them fortune had it arrived at its intended harbour.

“They equipped a vessel of the largest size with one of the richest cargoes that have ever been loaded into a single hold. To secure its safety, it was mounted with many guns, and half a thousand janizaries manned its upper decks to secure it from capture, if an enemy should succeed in grappling it on the sea. Its commander was one of the most famous officers in the Sultan’s fleet.

“But the Knights of Malta, having obtained secret knowledge of when this vessel would put to sea, had made preparations of equal magnitude. In a word, ship and cargo were captured: the captain was mortally wounded: the crew and janizaries who survived the combat were chained to the benches of Maltese galleys, or sold in the slave-market of Venice.

“The odalisques were furious both at the loss and indignity of this issue of their adventure into the merchant’s perilous ways, and they had voices which Soliman could not decline to hear. They were extremely offended on finding that it was not a simple matter to obtain redress from a Master whose power they were taught to believe was absolute in extent as well as in kind.

“There is no doubt that the capture of this vessel was felt by the Sultan to be of the nature of a personal affront, and that it roused him to extremities of effort against the Order of Malta, which he might otherwise have directed toward the more active prosecution of the Hungarian war.”

“I have heard something of this before,” Don Manuel replied, “though in a less detailed way. Can you tell me further to what extent the Sultan’s anger is shown in the force he assembles for Malta’s end?”

It was a question to which Rinaldo appeared to have no difficulty in finding a full reply. He said, as Don Manuel knew to be no more than a constant truth, that there could be little happening at Byzantium, even in the palace itself, which would not be betrayed for sufficient gold, such as the Grand Master would not neglect to provide for so great a need; but he went on to describe the counsels the Sultan had received, both from Mustapha, the Egyptian Pasha (now an old man, but of a high military repute, and having been in his youth the general in command when the Knights were driven from Rhodes), and other of his greatest lords, at a secret conference he had called, with such detailed particularity that Don Manuel was led to express some wonder that he could be so fully informed.

“I am somewhat puzzled,” he said, “to understand how you can have acquired information so complete, and that even of a conference which, by your own showing, was entirely protected from hearing or observation.”

For a moment, the pursuivant appeared to be disconcerted by this criticism, even beyond reasonable expectation; but, if that were so, he recovered himself very quickly, and his explanation was plausible and adroit.

“So I can suppose that it may appear, and had I not thought that personal reference would have approached impertinence, I should have mentioned before that not only have I had, owing to the nature of the office I hold, a full acquaintance with all the information that has reached the Grand Master during the last year, but I have a particular familiarity with the places and individuals of whom I am now speaking, as I was captured by the Turks at the battle of Djerbeh, and was in captivity in Egypt, and afterwards in Byzantium, for nearly three years before my friends were able to effect my ransom.”

“May I conclude,” Señor Ramegas interposed, with a deferential gesture toward the Commander, as though to speak unasked were in the nature of a liberty in that formidable presence, “that it is to the circumstance of your captivity that you owe the fact that you are somewhat darker in complexion than is common either in this country or your native Florence?”

“I have no doubt that you may,” Rinaldo replied very readily, “though, as a fact, those who are native of Malta are sometimes even darker than the hue to which I have been burned by Egyptian suns.”

“That is so,” Don Manuel confirmed, as one who closes an interruption which had already exceeded its occasion, “for so I have seen it to be. . . . I would now have you proceed.”

He addressed a few further questions to Rinaldo concerning the strength and leadership of the Turkish fleet and army, from which he learnt that Mustapha had somewhat reluctantly consented, at the Sultan’s urging, to take the military control of the expedition, while the Admiral Piali would command the fleet, and Dragut, with his Barbary corsairs, would bring not only a strong support to the forces that would be engaged in the coming siege, but an experience in Mediterranean warfare, which, by the Sultan’s orders, his colleagues were not lightly to overrule.

And then, having learnt all that he wished to know, Don Manuel rose with an abrupt word that he would talk again on the next day.