William Napier - The Great Siege

‘So: use an object. You hear me? Never, ever use your fist. Always-’ his voice rose to a sudden roar — ‘ seize the nearest object! ’

And at the same time as he bellowed these words, Smith seized the wooden stave from Hodge’s hands and charged at Nicholas like a maddened bull.

It happened in the blink of a bird’s eye, the twitch of a wren’s tail. The boy had time to glance about — fear did this, they said later, fear slowed the sun on the dial and gave you time. There was only one thing within reach, the corner of an empty hemp sack weighed down under a coil of rope. Nicholas saw the end of Smith’s stave driving hard at his belly and knew Smith would not stop. He meant to injure him.

His only weapon of defence, a scrap of hessian, flew up in Smith’s face. At the same time Nicholas twisted and the stave struck his bare flesh aslant, only lightly grazing it in passing. He fell on the stave and gripped it, until Smith wrenched it back with his far greater strength and left the boy’s hands burning from the friction.

Smith said, ‘See? You fought off an armed man with only a bit of hopsack.’

‘Not just a man either,’ said Nicholas. ‘A Knight Grand Cross of St John.’

Smith cuffed him on the side of his head with a great paw.

The closest he came to praise.

All that day the rules were drummed into them. Never use your fists. Kick but rarely. Thrust, don’t slash. Any hard object can kill a man. Care for your sword. Go for eyes, throat and stones. One backward step may be as good as a shield.

There were harder lessons the next day, and the next. Never leave an enemy merely stunned or injured. Kill him. Never go to the defence of a wounded comrade before one still fighting. He will do the same by you.

And there were the rules of chivalry. Never hurt a woman, always defend her. Nor child nor beardless boy. Never insult or spit on the enemy dead. Always honour and bury your own.

‘Beyond that,’ said Stanley, ‘there are many oaths and vows that bind a sworn Knight. But if you still mean to fight with us at Malta-’

‘We do.’

‘Then you will fight only as gentlemen volunteers.’

‘I will be a Knight of St John after.’

‘It takes years.’

‘I’ve got years.’

It was after dark with the ship sailing slow over a starlit sea before the boys finally devoured their evening ration of bread and cheese and bacon and fell asleep almost instantly. Smith and Stanley let them sleep for ten hours that night, they were so exhausted. They would be just as exhausted tomorrow night, but then they would have only eight hours. The night after, seven. By Malta, they would have learnt to live on five.

They murmured to each other of how they had gone to England for sacks of gold, for cases of guns, for knightly volunteers, and come back with a bundle of swords, a couple of purses, and two errant boys who had hardly raised a sword in their lives. A pretty success. They could guess the Grand Master’s verdict all too well. His words stung in their ears like imagined hail.

Yet tonight the sky was clear and studded with stars, the wind gentle from the west, making hardly a sound in the sails. Only the gentle swish of the bow wave below them.

The knights prayed to God for wind, for storm, for tempest. Anything but this damnable pacific calm, anything to hasten them. For they felt it in their bones.

The enemy was sailing too.

The boys fought with staves, they did endless squats, they pulled themselves up ropes and rigging and climbed to the fighting top, the master’s sour objections being silenced with gold coin. They ate their grim rations like young wolves, and on the fifth day they asked to do more sword-arm raises. Each did twelve.

After a week, Smith showed them how to wear a helmet. First he settled his own rounded morion on Nicholas’s head without its wadding inside, and then struck him lightly on the crown. It rang, and hurt.

‘Quite so,’ he said. ‘A helmet without good wadding or bombast is useless. Stuff it well.’

He packed it tight, set it on the boy’s head again, and struck hard. Nicholas reeled instinctively, eyes tight shut — but barely felt discomfort.

‘And if you’ve helmet on, don’t forget you can butt the other fellow in the face hard enough to blind him. Two pieces of armour, and two only, protect you most. Helmet and breastplate. For the rest, ’tis better your arm or leg does not encounter a Turkish blade. For you know which will come off best.’

‘The blade will come off best,’ said Stanley, ‘but your arm will come off easily also.’

‘Spare us your labouring wit, brother knight.’

‘My wit is mostly ’ armless . Like a knight careless in battle.’

‘I beg you.’

‘Like a dissolved Parliament, his members have departed.’

‘ I beg you ,’ repeated Smith.

Stanley sighed. ‘Had I not been a knight, I would have made a royal court jester.’

There was silence.

Dawn, and the sun coming up to larboard.

‘Out of France,’ said Nicholas wonderingly.

‘Out of Spain,’ corrected Stanley. ‘We sail south and west now. Look hard and you’ll see the snow-capped mountains that stand sentinel behind the Spanish coast. The mountains of Cantabria.’

They were beautiful in the sun. And the very word, Cantabria …

‘From their oak forests are made the Spanish galleons at Bilbao, which sail all the way to the Indies and back. Noble mountains, are they not, Master Hodgkin? More wild and sublime than any of your Shropshire hills?’

Hodge grunted. ‘Fatter sheep on the green hills of home, I’ll wager.’

They were rounding Cape Finisterre. Stanley was indicating eastward where Santiago da Compostela lay, the great pilgrim city where St James was buried, when the master called out from the sterndeck, ‘Storm coming in from the west. Hoist in sails!’

Sure enough, on the western horizon there were growing towering clouds, a dark and ominous grey, swollen with rain. The first gusts flurried across the sea, flinging up spray and flattening out the little waves. But the waves would be growing soon.

‘Off the coast of Galicia too,’ muttered Smith, and a look of genuine anxiety crossed Stanley’s bearded face.

‘Is that bad?’ asked Nicholas.

‘Bad?’ growled Smith. ‘It’s worse than the coast of Cornwall.’

Only a few minutes later a wall of wind hit the little ship like a backhanded swipe from Neptune himself. Every timber creaked and the ship keeled hard to larboard in the blast. The sails cracked like musket shots and the blocks rattled in the rigging. Everything started to tremble, including Hodge and Nicholas.

‘Pull her to starboard, head her into the wind!’ roared the master to Pidhook at the whipstaff. ‘She’s a tilt to the north, bless the devil. We can bring her out from the coast, or at least keep her off it.’

In another instant the air was filled with icy rain driving into them almost horizontally, stinging their noses and cheeks and making them gasp. But it was fear, raw fear that overwhelmed them. Pain was nothing to that. The black, clawed coast looked horribly near through the murk. The boys hooded their faces with their cloaks, though not being able to see the heaving waters around them made them feel instantly sick.

‘Pages, to the pump!’ roared the master. ‘Vizard, check anchor! Legge, wad up the water jars and lock down the hatches! Down below first, landsmen, ye’re nothing but a danger up on deck! Down below now, and no spewing on our cargo either. If you see a sprung leak bigger than an infant’s piss, give us the yell.’

Clutching on tight to rail and rigging, Smith moved aft to where the master stood bow-legged, holding on tight himself as the ship began to rear and buck over the growing waves. He said something, lost in the teeth of the gale, and the master stared at him, rainwater streaming down his face, and then shrugged as if he was listening to a madman.