The Siege of Malta

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER I“You are one,” Captain Antonio said, “for whom I would do much. If it would not ruffle your pride, I would call you friend. But there is a length to which you cannot ask me to go. I will not be hanged for that slut.”

Francisco controlled his anger in a way which, had he considered it, might have been surprise to himself. It was an evidence of the strait in which he stood, which he was coming to see, and which a quarrel with the Genoese sailor would not relieve. But it was the most he could do to reply in temperate words.

“I must ask you to take that back, after which we can talk of that which is on your mind.”

“Why, so I do, if you wish,” Antonio replied, in a ready way. “I will call her La Cerda’s mistress, or what you will, but you must allow for this, that I have known her before.”

“I should say that you do not know her at all.”

“Well, so you may. It is a thing I have never sought. So of what she is, or is not, I will say no more, except that she is one for whom I am loth to hang.”

“So you have said once before. But you are not asked. Do you know where she is now?”

“I could make a most excellent guess.”

“So might the Provost-Marshal himself and guess wrong. They cannot hang you for that.”

“Yet if there be signs littered before my eyes——”

“Which you have no occasion to see.”

“Which it might be said that I have. . . . And it is not for myself that I fear alone. For who does that which I must say that I do not know that you do—he is in a most perilous pass, for the Grand Master is one that not only the Turks may dread.”

“Yet he may threaten that which he would not dare, or for which his strength would be too weak at a test. I am more in my own land than was he in his, and there are Spanish knights who would be my friends, should he seek to abuse his power.”

“Do you think that? It is a test that you should not try. You would go down like a straw. . . . Even La Cerda is more than most in his own land.”

“He was not long held. He was soon free.”

“So he was. But it was said that the Grand Master did it himself, both to bind and loose, his friends looking another way. . . . They say that there is none but one to whom the Grand Master will give more than a moment’s heed when his mind is set; and your friend that was has his ear, as the talk goes. It is Sir Oliver that I mean, as it may be needless to say. But you have quarrelled now with your friend, so that there would be little comfort in that, even were there more at the most.”

“I know little of what you mean. I have quarrelled with none.”

“Well, you should know of that better than I. . . . But I had observed that you do not meet since you took—I will say since you took what was there from his own room, and came away with a shortened sword.”

“It was not broken as you suppose: the point caught by chance in a chair’s arm.”

“I have never doubted your word. But I may conclude that the point was bare.”

“You must conclude as you will, but it was not pointed at him; nor did he draw upon me, as he never would.”

“You may be right there, for I should say that he is not one whose sword would be quickly out. Yet I have a doubt when I say that, for I should not think him one who is poorly dowered either with courage or pride. . . . There have been times when I have thought that he would make a better maid than some are. But when I have seen how Sir Oliver sends him forth in most perilous ways I have put it by. I suppose that there are so few here wearing shift or gown that our eyes can no longer compare in a true way. . . . But I have vexed you again, and I know not why? I will be resolved to say naught, and to see no more. I will not even know that your sword snapped. For I am resolved of two things beyond that. I will neither hang for her nor will I quarrel with you.”

Francisco felt that their words could not end in that way. He had found Captain Antonio, though not of his rank or race, and though they were of many alien habits and thoughts, yet to be a man of some good parts, and with the will of a loyal friend, and he had became aware that his friends were few. He was young, and of a reserve which was partly shyness and partly pride. The Knights of Malta, for the most, were much older men. He had been brought up to regard the Order as the first cause for which men must live and be very willing to die. To that extent he was one with the spirit that drew them there from ease and honour in many lands, to be at the Grand Master’s command and to die for Malta’s defence. But, beyond that, he had little in common with most of those among whom he moved, and though he might have made some friends of the right kind had he been placed on the wall amid the knights of his own land, yet, being in command of a battery that stood somewhat apart, and having to keep station there for long hours of each day, he knew little more of the knights of Castile who were lined on the eastern wall than when he had landed two months before.

He felt, rather than thought, that it would be a fool’s part to let Antonio sulk, and the little Captain’s face showed more offence than his words held. Yet he did not ask for a full confidence which, indeed, he might have good cause not to desire. Francisco answered with such measure of frankness as Antonio might be likely to take in the right way.

“If you had asked, I would not have held it from you, though it is not to be widely told. It was La Cerda drew upon me, Don Garcio not being there. When he came he made peace, being my friend in that, for I was reduced to two feet of blade and such aid as a dagger gives. . . . But it was true that the sword had snapped as I told you before. It was a mischance of the narrow room.”

“Well,” Antonio replied, “I did not doubt what you said. Nor do I ask what she did in the bedchamber of the one, nor why the other should have drawn upon you. But I may conclude that he is less than your friend; and it is a fact I cannot fail to observe that since the day you have walked aside of where Don Garcio goes, while I had thought before that you used some contrivance to meet. . . . I have no concern with the cause of this, but I must suppose that, if you were in the Grand Master’s peril for aught you do, the Knights of Sicily would be dumb, and there might be those of your own land who would say no more, and I would rather see you with more friends and to need them less.”

“So would I,” Francisco replied, “and it is a friend’s thought, and I must thank you for that. Yet I do not feel in more peril than I may lightly endure, for even if that should be laid bare of which it is agreed that we shall not speak, you must not disregard that I have not taken the Order’s vows, to which it cannot be held that I should therefore conform in their monkish way, nor am I in the Grand Master’s danger to that degree.”

“That is true; and it is what, at such a pass, you would be certain to say. But I should be loth that my own life should hang on so thin a thread. For it is time of war, and you are under his rule, and I should say that the Grand Master’s regard for any logic of speech would be of less than a groat’s worth when his wrath is high.”

“He has such repute,” Francisco agreed; “but my uncle called him a friend, and I would not think him to be without some recollection of that. And it might be thought that there are foes enough over the wall, even for him, that he need not be stubborn to vex his friends.”

This conversation took place three weeks from John Baptist’s day, when St. Elmo fell. Francisco had become slow to leave the battery now and quick to return, even though Antonio might be in charge, for none knew when or where the Turks might attack next, either by water or land. Now their fleet was anchored in the harbour waters over Scebarras ridge, and the whole army was camped round the landward walls. St. Angelo could no longer hear the sound of guns which were pointed another way, and look across at an agony which it did not feel. The shots shook their own walls and battered the houses within the town.

The hardest part must now be sustained by those who manned the fort of St. Michael which stood on the Sanglea spur, and the outer walls of the Sanglea, for the inlet which was its southern side was neither deep nor of great breadth, and the Turkish batteries rose on the height of the opposite shore and Turkish troops swarmed at its landward end. But the Turks were now on all sides, and so closely drawn both by land and sea that there was no point at which instant watch must not be kept; none from which peril might not suddenly rise to a deadly height; none which was safe from the risk of a flying death.

Compassed thus, there was a show of reason in Francisco’s complaint that even La Valette might be content with the count of his outer foes, and shun the making of more from those who would be his friends.

The Turks blew what boast they could of St. Elmo’s fall. They loaded the wreckage of thirty guns into a galley which would bear them as trophies to Byzantium’s quay. If Dragut were dead (which could not be denied), De Broglio was dead too, having spoken no further word since he made the Grand Master his parting jape. The Turks made a list of the great knights who had died in defence of St. Elmo’s wall, and it was better reading to them than it would be in the Christian lands.

Had the Viceroy yet sent the relief which should have come on John Baptist’s day? He would have said yes, which the Grand Master would have denied. He should have sent a great fleet, and an army which would have enabled Couppier to draw the Turks from St. Angelo’s walls to guard their own heads on an open field. He read orders from his master, the Spanish king, which were not meant to be clear to any except himself and, if he read them aright, they were such as he did not like.

He had pledged his word to Valette, and he knew where his honour lay. It was Spain’s honour alike. Yet could he go against the King’s will?

He ordered that the two galleys which had belonged to the Maltese knights should put to sea, and he added two which flew the ensign of Spain. He filled them with volunteers, who crowded Sicily at this time, seeking to aid Malta’s defence from love of race, or love of God, or of what we will.

He put the four galleys under command of Don Juan de Cardona, a good knight, with written orders that he should approach the island in such a way as would be most likely to avoid the Turkish fleet, and to learn whether St. Elmo yet stood.

If it had fallen, he was to bring back the troops, for what use would there be in so small a force, if the strife went ill, and the Turks were already crowding round St. Angelo’s walls? But if St. Elmo stood, and the Turks had the worse loss, he was to land them during the night, and leave promise of more to come.

Cardona read this order and may have thought it good, or may have cursed those whom he would not name. There is no record of that. But he sailed his galleys under cloak of night, to cast anchor outside Pietro Negri, and there he landed a knight who learnt that St. Elmo had fallen some days before.

There is some doubt of his name, by which we lack that of a valiant man, but he was one who had come to Sicily with the purpose of aiding the Christian cause, and having now landed in Malta, he had no mind to go back. He returned to Cardona’s ship, where he lied in God’s name, and we may suppose that the saints were glad. He said that St. Elmo stood and the Cross prevailed. Cardona did not question that which he may have been hoping to hear. He landed forty knights and seven hundred other soldiers of sundry sorts. He sailed back to Palermo with empty decks, having avoided the Turks again, and bringing a tale which he held for true, though it was soon changed by other reports.

The men who had landed thus in the night did that which made sport of the rules of war, as courage so often will. They marched where they wished to go, and so passed through the Turkish lines in a silent file, entering St. Angelo’s gate without sound of a hostile shot, the Turks not having kept a good watch against that which was unlikely to be.

The Grand Master was glad of the aid that came and saw that its meaning was clear. For the time he had got all that he would from the crown of Spain. He did not despond for that, but he observed that he must prepare for a lengthened siege. He went over his stores. When he had done that, he made an order that Turkish prisoners were not to be taken, as food would be needed for better mouths. There had been little of quarter or mercy on either side before now, but there was none from this day. To each side their foes came to be held as no more than pestilent rats, till the last should be slain or gone, and Cross or Crescent should float in the only peace that either side could conceive in a single land. . . .

The news of St. Elmo’s fall spread through the lands of Christ, and there were many of every faith whose hearts were heavy thereat. Even the English Queen, though it was by her will that those of the Order of St. John had been chased away, forgot the bitter Protestant feud, and ordered that there should be prayer for the Maltese knights in all the churches of which she was called the head.

Caring nothing for Christian prayers, Mustapha Pasha tightened his lines of siege and made his batteries strong.