The Religion (96 page)

From the Provençal Gate a fresh pair of riders appeared, and the hooves of their mounts raised blood dust from the Grande Terre Plain. Tannhauser turned to Ludovico. The man was teetering on the saddle, as pale and gaunt and fragile as the specter of night.

"Let me help you down," said Tannhauser.

Ludovico nodded and leaned across his mount's neck. He swung one leg across its back, and as he threw his weight onto its mate his strength failed him complete and Tannhauser took his bulk around the waist and the armor scraped his neck as he lowered him to the stones by the edge of the trail.

"You're the second man I've helped from his horse today."

"I hope the first was not so frail as I."

"I too. That's a vicious hole Bors drilled into your gut."

Tannhauser drew the Devil's blade, which he'd forged three decades ago, and Ludovico braced himself without a word. Tannhauser cut the straps of his Negroli armor and Ludovico watched him at it. Here on the ridge, the breeze came in torrid gusts.

"The wind is hot," said Tannhauser. "The sirocco, from the deserts of Libya and beyond. But after cooking inside this steel, it will feel like spring."

He opened the vambraces like the shells of clams, and uncapped the pauldrons from the shoulders. He lifted free the great black breastplate and set it to one aside. He peeled away the bloody padding underneath, and though Ludovico's ruptured belly was as tight as a drumskin, and the bowels inside were dissolving in their own filth, not once did the monk make a sound. Against his skin he wore the plain black habit of Saint John, with the white eight-pointed cross stitched on the breast.

"Better?" asked Tannhauser.

"I'm grateful."

Tannhauser uncorked the canteen and held it to Ludovico's lips. Ludovico took two swallows and nodded. Tannhauser drank himself.

"Does the Grand Master live?" asked Ludovico.

"La Valette lives."

"Good," said Ludovico. "At least I don't have that upon my soul."

Tannhauser studied him. "You're not the man I last saw in the Guva."

Ludovico looked at him. "Perhaps I had a wise man for an enemy."

"I'd hazard it took more than that."

"When I saw Orlandu on the field," said Ludovico. "When I called his name and he turned waist-deep in the water, and for the first time I saw his face. So brave, so-" He struggled for words, and his shoulders lapsed back against the rock and he rolled his great head and looked up at the sky. The black eyes filmed with emotion. "Oh God," he said. "Oh my Lord God."

In those words was a regret too monumental to be compassed. Tannhauser wondered it didn't kill him. He said, "That's answer enough. Does Orlandu know who you are?"

"No."

"Why didn't you tell him?"

"I leave that choice to Carla."

"Do you think she'd lie?"

Ludovico's lips were parted, and he panted in short gasps. His mouth didn't move, but some glancing of the light in his eyes suggested a smile.

"Perhaps she has a wise man for a friend," he said.

"I'd thought to tell the boy you were a coward and a traitor," said Tannhauser. "But the one would be a falsehood, and in a world as degenerate as this one, what man is not a traitor to his own best promise?"

"Tell Carla I'm sorry."

"I know," said Tannhauser. "I will."

Ludovico blinked. "I didn't intend for Amparo to die."

Tannhauser studied him. Then said, "I know that too."

"I wonder if God will forgive me."

"Christ will."

"You speak of Christ, at last?"

Tannhauser smiled. "A religion that makes room for the good thief has much to recommend it to the likes of me."

Ludovico's eyes bored into him and for a moment he was the Inquisitor of old, the man in search of other men's hidden truths. He said, "Then much else has changed since the Guva."

"You told me in Messina that Sorrow opens the gate to the Grace of God. And you asked, if such were the case, what right man might shun it."

Ludovico's eyes shifted, as if recalling that conversation from far away.

"Those were merely words," he said. "Scholarly words."

"Life inclines to making such words flesh," Tannhauser replied.

Ludovico nodded. He put the palms of his hands to his chest, and breathed deeply of the rank and dusty air. He let it out through his mouth. He essayed a smile. He looked up. Their eyes locked across the mighty gulf that had divided them. Ludovico had made his Peace.

"You were right," said Ludovico. "It feels like spring."

Tannhauser stabbed him through the heart and Ludovico died on the instant.

The blade forged in a devil's blood had found its destined home. And there it rested.

Tannhauser let go of the precious garnet hilt. His throat was thick with emotions he couldn't name and he swallowed them down. He picked up Ludovico in his arms. Burned down to the sinew by the siege as he was-as were they all-he remained a big man. He carried him into a chest-deep Turkish entrenchment and laid him down. He rolled him in a length of canvas scavenged from an abandoned magazine. He covered him with timbers and gun stones and pieces of rock. He left no marker but the dagger lodged in his heart. He climbed back up onto the trail. He baled the Negroli armor and tied it to the saddle of Ludovico's horse. As he was about to mount up, the Grand Master, Jean Parisot de La Valette, and his distinguished Latin Secretary, Oliver Starkey, emerged from beneath the hill's rim. They both saw the monk's black armor.

"Captain Tannhauser," said La Valette. "How goes the day?"

"The day is yours."

La Valette nodded and dismounted. He favored his injured leg but his vigor remained a wonderment. He drew his sword. Tannhauser looked at him.

"Would you be rid of me too?" Tannhauser asked.

La Valette laughed. Tannhauser had never heard him laugh before. It was a pirate's laugh. And something more. The laugh of one able to send
everyone he loved to their deaths, and, at that, for a monstrous ideal. La Valette shook his head.

"There's no better place than a battlefield," he said, "on which to be dubbed a knight."

Tannhauser stared at him.

"I know there are few you would kneel for," said La Valette. "Will you kneel for the Prince of the Religion?"

Still, Tannhauser stared.

"Do you doubt that such a gift is in my power?" asked La Valette.

"No," said Tannhauser, at last arousing his mind from its stupor. "I doubt only what it might commit me to. I'm not about to make vows I cannot keep. I've made such mistakes before."

La Valette seemed impressed by such integrity. "When the Order sees fit to honor a man of singular service, it may confer upon him the Habit of Magistral Grace. The usual requirements of nobility are waived-clearly a necessity in this case-the probationary period is dispensed with, and you're not obliged to make a full profession of our vows. Nevertheless, you belong to the Religion, and wherever the brethren gather you may claim your right of allowance and canteen."

Tannhauser considered this. "May I indulge in commerce?"

"Only the Vatican itself is richer than the Religion," said Starkey. "With this victory, our donations may well outstrip theirs, though the Holy Father will never know by just how much."

"And may I style myself 'Chevalier' or some other such worthy appellation?"

"Of course," said La Valette. The pirate's smile creased his eyes. "You will also be immune to the arm of the Civil Law."

Tannhauser caught his jaw before it dropped. What brotherhood of criminals was ever more ingeniously conceived? "The law has no jurisdiction over the brethren?"

"You will answer only to our laws," said La Valette. "Since you're the only man alive who's outlasted the Guva, I trust you will keep them."

At the risk of appearing unappreciative, Tannhauser said, "Is celibacy a requirement?"

"No, it is not. Though I might say I recommend it if you'd live a long life."

Tannhauser sank to one knee and squared his shoulders.

"In that case, Your Excellency, you may wield your sword with gladness."

The Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin: Saturday, September 8, 1565

Mdina

Without walls and entrenchments and gunfire-and the homicidal patrols of either flag-Tannhauser realized how tiny Malta was. The journey from the Borgo to Mdina, which at times had seemed a trip to tax Odysseus, was a mere eight miles. With the horses recruited, and some food and wine in their bellies, he and Orlandu rode up the mountain to the sound of numberless bells. They passed a deal of jubilant traffic on the way, for it was as if the gates of an enormous jail had been opened and its prisoners released to revel as they would. But Tannhauser was somber, and ignored the gay halloos, and Orlandu riding beside him caught his mood.

"You're angry with me?" he asked.

Tannhauser considered him. The boy looked as lively as a slaughterhouse dog. If any could be said to have come through all this madness unscathed, it was he. He was sound in limb, sharp of mind, and had-as far as Tannhauser knew-no murders or cruelties to tarnish his immortal soul. And it occurred to Tannhauser, as if out of the blue, that he himself could claim no small share of credit in this triumph, and with this thought his disposition improved.

"Let me put it this way," he said. "If I'd known what your existence was going to cost me-in more blood, sweat, and tears than I knew I had to shed-I'd have made my way to Malta twelve years ago and strangled you in your crib."

Orlandu recoiled as if slapped and Tannhauser grinned. "If we're going to walk the road ahead together," he said, "you must acquaint yourself with my drollery, which tends to the grim."

"Then you're not angry."

"Have you given me reason to be so?"

"Then why do you wish you had strangled me in my crib?"

"When we met on the woeful gauntlet at Saint Elmo, I told you that you'd led me a merry dance. I didn't know then that the jig had hardly begun. But now that it's almost over, I would say that the sight of you makes every bloody step worthwhile."

He thought of Amparo. And Bors. Not every step, then. But the boy was not accountable for that. If Orlandu could not make head nor tail of
this, it was not for want of acumen. He struck, instead, right to the essence.

"So we are still friends."

"Yes, lad," said Tannhauser. "You may be the only true friend I have left."

"I'm sorry for the dead English, Bors of Carlisle. He said he was my friend too."

"Indeed he was. His last sally must have been a spectacle."

"Oh my God," said Orlandu, wide-eyed. "Four against one? Four
knights
? It was terrible. Fantastic. But why?"

"Because they were false knights-foul and rotten limbs, no less-and enemies of La Valette as well as ourselves."

"How so, false and foul?"

"That's a tale for another time." He gave him a solemn look. "You must keep everything you saw a tight secret. Few men are capable of such a challenge, simple though it seems, but it's a skill that will stand you in good stead."

"Like pretending," said Orlandu.

"Exactly so, exactly so."

"But, to each other, friends should not pretend," said Orlandu.

"No they should not," said Tannhauser.

"You say Fra Ludovico was a false knight."

Tannhauser sighed. "Within the bigger tent, his allegiances were divided. Such rivalries thrive in all big tents, for men are seldom content with the way things are and in striving to better them are intolerant of ideas contrary-or merely different-to their own. Life is often a puzzle in that respect and I'm the last man in the world to cast that stone. Certainly Ludovico was brave, and a man possessed by powerful convictions. But in my experience, any conviction strongly held is a sword with two edges, both of them sharp."

"He told me to honor my mother."

Tannhauser felt the tightrope sway beneath his feet. "A splendid notion."

"He wanted to take me to Mdina, to be reunited with her."

"He bequeathed that happy duty to me."

Orlandu said, "Was Fra Ludovico my father?"

And there it was. Tannhauser pulled Buraq in, and they stopped, and he feigned some business with the bridle. It was odd, but until he'd done the deed he hadn't considered the business of telling Orlandu that the father
the boy so craved had died by his hand. Nor perhaps had he realized how much he valued the boy's affection. He turned to look at him and Orlandu's brown eyes bored into his, and in them that affection was so naked that Tannhauser faltered. Ludovico, after all, had decided to leave this to Carla, and had even given his blessing to the telling of a lie. But Ludovico's shame was not Tannhauser's. Tannhauser's soul was his own.

He said, "Yes. Brother Ludovico was your father."

Orlandu's lips clenched.

Tannhauser said, "I killed him."

Orlandu blinked, twice. He said, "Because he was false?"