The Last Crusaders: The Great Siege Read Online Free PDF Page A

fell.
    ‘You are a confounded disobedient dog, and obedience is one of the truest virtues. Have you learnt nothing in all your schooling?’
    Nicholas’s face was red with shame. ‘I am heartily sorry, sir. My curiosity was greater than my judgement.’
    ‘Hm.’ He stumped back to his chair. ‘Prettily said, if not done.’
    ‘Is the boy discreet, brother?’ asked the fairhead.
    ‘Is he?’ His father glared at him. ‘Well, boy? Are you?’
    ‘Have you ever known me not, sir?’
    Sir Francis rubbed his white beard. ‘You mean we let him stay and hear?’
    Blackbeard spoke for the first time, his voice a bearlike growl. ‘If only all stayed to hear what we say. All of Christendom. Our news is bitter, and time is damnably short.’
    ‘Very well.’ Sir Francis nodded. ‘Sit, boy. Listen and learn, and speak not a word. Not now, not hereafter, not to any living soul. Or countless lives will be sacrificed for it.’
    Then the three men resumed speaking, as if Nicholas were invisible.
    The fairhead said, ‘If Christendom would stop tearing itself apartfor just one moment – like a dog tearing open its own stomach – and stop, and look up towards the eastern horizon – then it would see a far, far greater danger approaching like a whirlwind. A danger that will make all arguments between Catholics and Protestants, Greeks, Calvinists, Anabaptists and whatever other sectaries seem lunatic in their pettiness. For this is a danger that will, if it is not faced and conquered, destroy all of Europe. It is a danger that has never ceased to menace Christendom since that damned Mohammedan creed first arose like a demon out of the sands of Arabia, a thousand years ago. It will never cease to threaten us. It is the religion of perpetual warfare. The religion of the Barbary corsairs, the Moors, the Saracens, of Saladin, of the drug-maddened Assassins in the Alborz mountains of Persia. It is the perpetually drawn Sword of Islam. Now that sword is wielded by the most fearsome enemy we have yet faced. Suleiman the Magnificent. He who calls himself the Lord of All Under Heaven.’
    ‘And this single battle,’ added Blackbeard, ‘this one last, desperate stand against the numberless army of the Ottomans, will decide the fate of Christendom for ever.’
    The fire gave a loud crack, and Nicholas jumped.
    Blackbeard remained unmoved.
    Sir Francis said, ‘The Christian powers will send no aid?’
    The fairhead smiled bitterly. ‘They are too busy fighting each other, as usual. The German Protestant princes, and of course this fair realm of England, regard us as wicked Catholics. Why would they help us? Italy is torn apart by perpetual war, and the competing ambitions of the French, the Spanish, even the Papal States. The great republics of Venice and Genoa, their treasuries overflowing, still care only to amass more gold. If we receive any help at all, it will be from King Philip of Spain. But he has troubles of his own. The Protestants are stirring to revolt in the Spanish Netherlands. English privateers – as they are called – relentlessly harry his treasure ships. His mad son, Don Carlos, is a perpetual torment to him.’
    ‘Mad ever since he fell down the stairs, going to a midnight assignation with a porter’s daughter,’ said Blackbeard.
    ‘So there he sits in his gloomy palace of the Escorial and dithers. We cannot rely even on him. And so we wait, we four hundredknights, on our barren rock, for the wrath of the entire Ottoman Empire to fall on us. And soon.’
    ‘And if Malta falls,’ said Blackbeard, ‘then you know what will follow. The Rock of the Mediterranean guards those straits for the whole of Western Europe. The war galleys of the knights plough those seas unceasingly, to the terror of the Barbary corsairs, and even Suleiman himself.’
    Sir Francis nodded. ‘But if Malta falls …’
    ‘If Malta falls,’ said the fairhead, ‘and our Great Harbour is lost, then Suleiman is free to roam westwards as