The Religion (48 page)

Tannhauser said, "If Mustafa had more patience and cunning-which are virtues just as leonine as courage-he would leave some few batteries, solidly defended, on the hill along with those on Gallows Point, and move the bulk of his army to besiege the Borgo. He could batter this fort from three directions at his leisure, you'd receive no further reinforcements, your morale would wither quickly, and the apple would fall from the tree. It's the fact that Saint Elmo is cast as the prize of this epic that keeps you fighting so hard. If you were relegated to a sideshow . . ." He shrugged.

"Well?" said Le Mas. "Is the dog that cunning?"

"No," said Tannhauser. "Mustafa's methods were forged in other wars, in times now past, and the leopard won't change his spots. Mustafa's counsel is his rage and the thrill of sending men to die in battle. He'll continue this offensive to the bitter end. Since you murdered his ambassador-an
insult hard to surpass-Mustafa will determine to overwhelm the fort at his next attempt. Which I guess will be in no more than three days."

A certain gloom hovered about and Tannhauser thought this the moment to make his exit. But Le Mas clapped him on the shoulder, which since it was still black-and-blue almost made him gasp with pain. "An admirable shot, by the way," said the brawny Frenchman. "Plucked him like a quail from the covey."

"At that range I could've hit him with this table," Tannhauser said.

Le Mas smiled. "I wasn't commending your marksmanship but rather your elan."

There was a ripple of mirth and their spirits were restored. A toast was raised to the hardness of Tannhauser's heart. His attempts to escape their company and sneak away to the boats were roundly thwarted, and a fine brandy from Auch was produced, and they cajoled him to tell tall tales of distant campaigning in Nakhichevan and the Shiite marches, and to describe the Temple in Jerusalem, which no other there had ever seen, and to expound on the bloodstained career of Suleiman Shah. Their prejudices were affirmed to hear that the Suleiman had ordered the strangling of his own two sons, and of their sons too, by the notorious mute eunuchs of the seraglio. They were amazed to discover how like their own were the sacred rules and customs by which the janissaries lived, and they were moved to learn that Tannhauser had once worn their colors, and the grandees looked at him through altered eyes, and Tannhauser didn't feel so alien in their company anymore. Guaras asked him why he'd left the janissaries, and Tannhauser gave a false answer, which was that he'd rediscovered Jesus Christ, and this pleased them. But not even Bors knew the true reason, for of the many dark deeds that might have caused Tannhauser shame, the deed that lay behind his disaffection was the most despicable of all.

By the time he finally left, and somewhat unsteadily, the transports had long vanished into the night. As Tannhauser made his bed in the shelter of the chapel, with Orlandu curled at his feet like a watchful dog, he felt sad for the old men of the Religion, for all of them were old in spirit, shackled as they were to a world and a dream long dead. And he thought of Amparo, and his heart knew a different ache. And he thought of Carla and her green eyes rimmed with black and her red silk dress and
her martyr's heart. And of Sabato Svi in Venice and the money they'd make. And he reminded himself, as he fell asleep, that the rare and noble brotherhood of the knights was not a thing to be seduced by, for in the end it was a cult of death, and of such fellowships as those he'd had his fill.

On the day following, Friday the 15th, the Turks renewed their bombardment. The bakery was destroyed. Sixty- and eighty-pound balls bounced around the bailey, dismembering anyone in their way. Hunched behind the breastworks and crumbling curtains, the dust-powdered defenders scuttled about like ants under assault by barbarous children. No one doubted the end was near. Tannhauser resolved to leave that night no matter what the cost.

As darkness fell, he concluded his bargain with the serjeant who marshaled the departures from the wharf, and a random pair of would-be evacuees were abandoned on their wattles by the postern. Orlandu staggered gamely down the steps, brutally overburdened with Tannhauser's knapsack and tackle. They shouldered their way to the edge of the quay through a press of stretcher-bearing slaves and crippled fugitives, cleared out a spot on which to stack their gear, and waited for the longboats to glide in.

"Why do we retreat?" asked Orlandu.

"Retreat?" scoffed Tannhauser. "You begin to sound like Bors. If we stay, we will die, and popular though that ambition is hereabouts, it forms no part of our plan."

"Everyone here will die? Guaras? Miranda? De Medran?" He paused as if stunned by his own imagination. "Colonel Le Mas?"

Perhaps battle had so befogged his wits that he thought his heroes immortal.

"All of them," Tannhauser replied. "It is their choice and their calling, but not mine. Nor should it be yours." He inclined his beard across the water. "Somewhere beyond this lunacy a wider world awaits, in which men such as we may prosper and make a mark more seemly than a florid inscription on a tomb. Indeed, no one at Saint Elmo will leave so much as that."

"They will leave their names."

"Those few who will are more than welcome to. I've already outlived Alexander and that's a mightier comfort to me than his name is to him. For what that name was worth, the poet Dante consigned him to the bowels of Hell."

"Alexander?" said Orlandu.

"You see? Your ignorance shames you. You're equipped for little more than lugging a tub of swill through the mire. Is that craft or achievement to be proud of?"

The light in Orlandu's eyes dimmed and he lowered his face to hide his hurt at amounting to so little in his hero's reckoning. Tannhauser quelled a pang. It would do the boy good. To aim high required some knowledge of where one stood.

"Couple your vitality to my counsel," he said, "and you'll learn that there are joys beyond the worship of martyrs."

Orlandu rallied. "What is your plan?"

"Our plan, boy."

Orlandu brightened. Not a sulker then. Good.

"Yes," repeated Tannhauser. "Our plan. But if we don't get off this wharf we fall at the first rub, so more of the plan later, for here come our transports."

The first of three longboats had appeared to the southeast, the oars sparkling silver as they rose and fell. The Milky Way teemed about the Archer, and the moon, only two days on the wane, was an hour up. The bay, then, could not have been brighter. The longboat was loaded with men and supplies and, as became lamentably apparent at thirty yards' distance, a chest-high barrel of fresh Greek fire was roped into place amidships. It was at this range that the Turkish guns opened up.

Tannhauser realized at once that this was the purpose of the new Turkish palisade whose location had baffled the onlookers from the fort. It was a screen of wooden piles, earth, and gabions that ran down the eastern slope of Monte Sciberras right to the water's edge. Here, it was now clear, a battery of light cannon and a unit of Tüfekchi musketeers had been stationed, thus craftily shielded from the guns of both Saint Elmo and Sant'Angelo. The flash of their muzzle blasts on the surface of Grand Harbor and the unspooling tendrils of gun smoke were all that could be seen. That and the calamitous results of their marksmanship.

A spray of splinters, water, and airborne body parts exploded from the
foremost transport, which foundered, oars wheeling, as Tannhauser's gut roiled inside him. An instant later, the butt of wildfire, smashed open by a ball and ignited by the gun match of a seaborne arquebusier, erupted in a yellow volcano which lit up the bay for a quarter of a mile around and sent flaming balls of the sticky incendiary liquor spouting aloft.

A number of fiery projectiles arced toward the crowd of lame and wounded on the wharf, and panic swept the throng and a frenzied scuffle for safety broke out around him. Agonized screams vied with shouts of desperation as loaded wattles tumbled in the scrimmage. Tannhauser, his prime site at the quay's edge now precarious, started to claw his way farther landward. Then a pair of fist-size fireballs splattered square among the press and the whole mass recoiled in two separate and expanding circles from their respective points of impact. One circle collided with the other and chaos was compounded as those scourged with flame barged to find relief in the water. The pressure of the mob was irresistible. For all his strength, Tannhauser was shoved backward. The Milky Way flashed overhead and his back crashed into the water and his ears fell abruptly deaf to the dockside uproar.

For an instant the coolness was a delight, then he realized he was sinking with a flailing, human millstone atop his chest. He shoved and caught a kick in the gut and sank farther down. The coolness reached his feet as his high boots filled to their tops. He kicked out with no more effect than if he'd been buried alive in sand. He ripped off his helmet and waved his arms, his bearings lost in the void. Nothingness gaped beneath him. His lungs refused his commands not to burst and convulsed of their own accord. Panic shot through him, as swift and brief as lightning. When the water rushed through his nostrils and throat, the sensation was a marked improvement. The blackness in which he was immersed spread like warmth through his mind and with it came a relief he hadn't thought possible. An image of Amparo came and went. And then he heard, as clear as a bell, his mother's voice call out his name. "
Mattie
."

So that was it, he thought. That was my life. Did I do so badly?

He thought: You could have done worse. But it would have taken a mighty effort.

He came to with his face pressed into a slab of wet capstone. It was dark and he had the sensation that someone was jumping on his back. Salt water gushed from his mouth and stung his sinuses. He couldn't
move and the pounding continued. He realized he was alive and that the place he was returning from had been one of a peace so profound it could only have been his death. The pounding on his shoulder blades was more than he could bear and he mustered the strength to throw an elbow behind him. He hit something solid and the assault stopped. Hands rolled him over onto his back and he flopped there and wheezed. Orlandu, his hair dripping water, looked down at him and grinned.

"Lugging a tub of swill through the mire?" he said, with glee. "Oh yes, and lugging a tub of lard out of the water."

Friday, June 15, 1565

Amparo's Rock

Amparo sat on a craggy outcrop of the island of Sant'Angelo and watched two bullet-splintered longboats return across the black-and-silver bay. She shivered in the cool of the night and her heart ached inside her breast and she felt inconsolably alone, and this she found strange, because alone was her most familiar home and hearthstone.

She knew that Tannhauser wasn't with the boats, as he'd not been with the boats of previous nights. She'd watched them all since Bors had returned. She'd watched every oar stroke, every ripple that they'd made on the water. Why Bors and not Tannhauser? From the bloody cargoes of the boats now pulling past her, from the explosion that she'd seen light up the harbor, she knew that from now on the desolated fort across the bay was beyond all help and reinforcement. But she knew Tannhauser was alive. She'd seen his face just moments ago. He'd found a great peace and had wanted her to know it. Then he'd gone, and she'd been afraid, for she couldn't find him in her heart and she thought him dead. And then she'd felt him again. No longer at peace, it was true, but alive. In that moment she conceived the notion that as long as he knew she loved him, he wouldn't die. Yet of her love she'd never spoken. How could she? There were no words sufficient to convey it. How then could he know? And how could she make it so?

From the leather cylinder around her neck she took out her vision stone and put her eye to its bore and pointed the brass tube at the moon.
She spun the wheels of stained glass. She saw nothing but a vortex of colors. Since coming to the island she'd lost her power to see. Perhaps her loss was due to the malign aura of war. Or perhaps because she had fallen so far in love.

She sat on the rock until the moon completed its journey through the night and hung as if sad and haunted over the western rim of creation. The eastern horizon purpled at her back and in the pale violet light she saw that twoscore Turkish warships had entered the bay, and were drawn up stem to stern in an unbroken chain that curved out of sight beyond the headland where Tannhauser was trapped. At the seaward tip of the peninsula flares bloomed in a garland of fire around Saint Elmo's throat. A vast arc of gunfire rippled across the mountain's slopes as four thousand musketmen, in a single immense rank, discharged their pieces. The galleys rolled at anchor as their deck guns boomed. The face of Monte Sciberras seemed to vomit forth the contents of the molten earth beneath it as a hundred diabolic siege guns roared in unison. Somewhere at the center of that inferno stood her love.

A stain spilled down the mountainside and she watched without blinking and her heart shrank within her and her blood ran cold as ten thousand voices raised in hatred raped her soul. From the fractured rim of the fort a meager salvo crackled in reply and a tattered banner was brandished against the retreat of the night.

She realized that she had seen this in her shew stone after all. Endless chaos. The rule of misrule. The abyss into which all harmony and structure had been cast forever. She raised the vision glass one more time and aimed it at the not-yet-risen sun. She spun the wheels. The colors turned and slowed, and redness flooded into her, and drenched her mind, and she thought it was blood, then for an instant, an instant terrible and infinite and true, the red became a dress, and a woman wore it, and the woman in red swung from the end of a rope tied about her neck.