William Napier - The Great Siege

There was one weighty bundle that Smith had not loosened yet. At sunset that day, he laid it on the deck and untied it and there were a dozen or more gleaming swords in their scabbards, sword-belts and whetstones with them.

Nicholas and Hodge stared. Though no soldiers, they knew what such a number of swords would cost. This one bundle was worth more than a ploughman or shepherd might earn in a whole lifetime. Now they knew what the two knights’ nocturnal business in Bristol must have been.

There was a great hand-and-a-half sword, venerable but not so wieldy. And Smith said they would be fighting tight-packed, have no doubt. There were two most beautiful blades, both with richly patterned and gilded bronze hilts.

‘Ours,’ said Smith.

Finally he drew out a pair of Italian short swords, cinquedeas , with plain leathern grips about the hilt.

‘These will serve you well enough. The Roman conquered his Empire with swords much like these. You will need to close up on your man to use it, and a shield is essential for that. But a stout thrust at the belly will finish any man.’

The boys took their cinquedeas with reverence, and Nicholas immediately began to buckle his about the waist.

‘Not now,’ said Smith. ‘Store it down below, out of the salt. Time enough to flaunt it later.’

Stanley and Smith also had the boys hearing and learning their foreign languages. They would hear half a dozen at Malta. Hodge learnt grumblingly, but well enough when Smith threatened to withhold his rations. Nicholas’s French and Latin were already good, and he knew a little Italian. He learnt more now, a few phrases of the difficult Malti tongue, and picked up Spanish too, an easy language and very mellifluous to his ears.

‘ Estã bien? ’ asked Stanley.

‘ Sí, es — es una lengua hermosa .’

‘ Es soberbia la hermosura . Beauty is pride. Or pride is beauty. There is the Spanish soul in essence. Sometimes to your laughing, mocking, red-faced Englishman, Spanish pride will seem like nothing but unbearable arrogance. But it is more to do with honour than self-love. Remember that Spain is a hard country, far harder than gentle green England. Spain was born under a hard sun, out of seven hundred years of war against the Mohammedan, and every inch of sun-baked Spanish earth was bought with Spanish blood — and Spanish pride.’

For five days they sailed calmly south down the thickly wooded coast of Portugal, though moving too slowly for Smith and Stanley’s liking. Nicholas felt a growing excitement. Who would have believed, when he lay shackled as a vagrant in that stinking pound only a few weeks before, or slept shivering in freezing barns with his orphan sisters, that he would soon be sailing south to war with two Knights of St John?

As for Hodge, he seemed to look out impervious on every coast they passed, and Nicholas knew he was already homesick.

‘Don’t be downcast, Hodge. You will look on the green hills of Shropshire again, I promise. I dream of it too — and my family. What remains of it.’

Hodge remained gloomy. ‘Foreign parts don’t suit all of us.’

‘And imagine the tales you will have to tell over your ale down at the Woolpack.’

‘Ale,’ whispered Hodge longingly. ‘Shropshire ale.’

Smith too stared out gloomily from the bow at the calm seas, the gentle wind only just filling the sails. The shadow of the mast on the sea like a mocking sundial, ever moving. His brothers at Malta, steadfastly waiting. The numberless Turk coming on.

Stanley nodded over at him. ‘My brother knight is of a tragic disposition,’ he said jovially.

He spoke loudly enough for Smith to hear. The gloomy knight’s back stiffened.

‘But then he has much to feel melancholy about,’ Stanley went on. ‘His unfortunate visage, for instance. And he was once disappointed in love, when the jade ran off with another. Very fair she was too. Rather long in the face, perhaps — but lovely long legs, a rich auburn mane, huge brown eyes like honey. Altogether the prettiest horse you ever saw.’

Smith turned and snarled over his shoulder.

‘And you, Master Hodgkin. Do you pine for your native land because you left a sweetheart behind?’

‘No,’ said Hodge shortly. ‘I’d just rather bide there, is all.’

‘Ah, but the world has grown vastly of late.’ Stanley looked out over the western sea with that faraway expression of his, eyes half closed. ‘And whole new continents yet to be found, some say. The fabled antipodes, islands in the Pacific Ocean. Such travellers’ tales.’

‘Have you travelled much, then?’ asked Nicholas.

Stanley twisted back suddenly, half hanging from a rope, eyes dancing. ‘Have we? My brother knight and I, have we not sailed the known world in our time? Were we there when the Great Mughal rode into the battle on a mighty elephant dressed in scarlet silk? Have we seen the caravans pass in the shade of the palms of Mysore? Have we ascended the High Kashmirs? Have we wandered the bazaars of Bengal, seen Circassian slave girls as white as ermine pelts? Have we seen fiery macaws in the Island of Serendip, and the wooden houses of Yeddo among the Japanese lakes? Smoked Chinese opium in gold and jade pipes?’

Nicholas’s eyes roved over Stanley’s travel-stained clothes, his battered boots, his distant gaze formed by far horizons. He shivered. What kind of Knight of St John was he?

‘Have we not raided the shallow inlets of the desert Libyan coast, and spun yarns of it for our supper in the city squares of Bohemia, people throwing silver pieces into our begging bowls? Have we not crossed over the high pine-clad mountains in the depths of a snowbound December, to fight in the hard-pressed marches of Hungary? And have we not seen the very flower of Hungarian chivalry fall beneath the curved blade of the Ottoman? Seen Christian skulls whitening on the great Hungarian plain? For Suleiman was there too. And will come again.

‘Have we not gazed upon the ruins of Antioch, of Heliopolis, and the wondrous pagan temples of Isfahan? Slipped unseen through the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, beneath the bright Arabian moon? Breathed in the sweet odours of the frankincense trees of the Yemen? Walked in thick furs along the banks of the frozen Moskva, set eyes on the Czar of all the Russias himself, whom they call Ivan the Terrible? Perhaps we have even sailed the Atlantic, and seen the wild jungles of the Americas — they are only a month’s sailing away! Hummingbirds and volcanoes, conquistadors in the deep green forest, the snowcapped mountains of the Andes. Did we fight alongside Pizarro and that terrible General Carbajal, still fighting in the saddle at eighty? When they finally hanged him, he went to his death with all his satanic pride and ferocity intact, disdaining to ask for pardon. They can but kill me , he sneered.’

Stanley shook his head softly. ‘ They can but kill me . Now there’s a motto for a man.’ He fixed his wide-eyed gaze on the two boys. ‘A grave maxim. And one to remember when we come into Malta.’

The boys pondered.

Then Stanley grinned his teasing grin once more. ‘Were we sent by our Grand Master, La Valette, to league with the wild tribesmen of Daghestan against the Ottoman columns? Did they nickname us Blackbeard and Inglitz? Did we escape through the midnight streets of Trebizond from an evil Turkish jail, the manacles still on our wrists? Were we were there at the siege of Nakhichevan, when the monstrous Ottoman basilisks roared against the armies of the Qizilbashi in their red hats? Did we sail through the Straits of Hormuz, were we there at the siege of Surat on the spice-laden Malabar coast?

‘The wind is blowing in the sails, boys. The horses’ hooves are stamping, and a myriad new worlds wait to be discovered. The green hills of Shropshire are as lovely as May, and a man should know and love his native ground. But beyond the far horizon … aah …’