Sword and Scimitar - Scarrow Simon (читать книги онлайн полные версии .TXT) 📗
‘Save yourself, while there is still time. Leave this place, master. What does it profit an Englishman to fight and die so far from home? Get out, before the iron fist of the Sultan closes around this rock and crushes it to dust.’
‘You might ask yourself the same question. In any case . . .’ Thomas scooped up a stone the size of a plum and held it up in front of the slave’s eyes. Then he placed his other hand over the stone and clasped his hands together with all his strength, grimacing as the hard edges pressed into his palms. He held his hands there for a while before he relaxed with a gasp and eased them apart. The stone lay as before, and the skin of Thomas’s hands was impressed with marks of its edges. ‘There. The rock is unbroken and your Sultan shall be no more successful than I, when his fleet descends on Malta. Think on that.’
Thomas stood up and returned to his comrades. Sir Martin let out a deep laugh and clapped his hands together. ‘Oh, that showed him. You put the cocky little beggar in his place, Sir Thomas. Well done!’ He picked up a pebble and lobbed it at the slave who flinched as it bounced off his shoulder. ‘You’ll rue the day you ever betrayed England! Mai si le das la fe falsa del Islam, as they say in Spain.’
The slave who called himself Abdul-Ghafur glared back with cold loathing and muttered something under his breath before he looked down at his feet again. Sir Martin smiled with satisfaction and chewed another mouthful of cheese and bread before washing it down with a gulp of the watered wine. He regarded Thomas out of the corner of his eye for a moment before he cleared his throat.
‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you, Sir Thomas. For some weeks now.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes, well, it’s about the, uh, circumstances relating to your leaving the Order a while back . . . some years before my time, you understand.’
‘Really,’ Thomas said evenly. ‘What would you ask of me that you don’t already know? I assume you have approached some of the other knights about my personal business.’
Sir Martin puffed his cheeks and tilted his head to one side. ‘I have spoken to a few, yes. Of course there aren’t that many fellows who were around in your day.’
‘But enough to give you the necessary details, I’ll be bound.’
‘They were fairly tight-lipped, as it happens. All I got from them was that a woman was involved and there was something of a scandal and that you had brought dishonour on the Order. ’
‘Then you have it all. There is no more that needs to be said.’ Thomas gestured towards the open sea. ‘I think we have more pressing problems, Sir Martin. The Turks could be upon us at any moment. That is surely what we should be fixing our minds on. Not events from many years ago.’
The other knight opened his mouth to reply, paused briefly, then let out an exasperated breath and rose to his feet. ‘Need to relieve myself. Back soon.’ He turned and strode off across the stony terrain towards the shallow latrine ditch that had been dug a hundred paces beyond the ravelin’s defence ditch. Thomas bit into what was left of his cheese ration and chewed on its woody texture. Opposite him Richard swept the crumbs off his tunic and glanced round quickly before he spoke in an undertone.
‘I think it’s time that you told me the whole story.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I need to know. If my mission here is to succeed then I have to be aware of any potential dangers, or advantages, that might affect the outcome.’
‘And I suppose you might make good use of any information
that might help you to have some kind of hold over me?’
‘Of course,’ Richard replied flatly. ‘That is the nature of my employment.’
‘Then have you ever questioned the ethics of that employment? Perhaps you should.’
‘I serve Sir Francis, who serves Cecil, and both serve our Queen and country. Therefore my ethics are beyond reproach. And nothing will stand between me and my purpose here.’
‘Come now, Richard. You are not quite the iron man you pretend to be. You are well trained, but your feeling for others has not been trained out of you. I saw that clear enough in the fight on the galley. And again just now when you considered the plight of that slave.’ Thomas leaned over and tapped his squire’s breast. ‘You have a heart. Don’t try and starve it of nourishment, else you will cease to be a man and become a mere device.’
Richard glanced over towards the latrine ditch where Sir Martin was already squatting down.
‘Tell me exactly what happened, before he comes back,’ he demanded.
‘If I refuse?’
‘Then you compromise my mission.’
‘And what if I don’t care about that?’
Richard smiled shrewdly. ‘But you do care. I, too, can peer into another man’s heart. If we fail to fulfill our task then many others will suffer. That is something you, Sir Thomas, will not conscience. So tell me what I want to know.’
There was a tense silence before Thomas bowed his head and thought. Little needed to be kept secret and in any case, he could surely find out the details if he was diligent in his enquiries. Thomas ordered his memories before he began. ‘Very well. Some twenty years ago I was serving with one of the Order’s galleys off the coast of Crete. La Valette was the captain. It was clear that he was destined for one of the senior posts in the Order and it was considered an honour to be chosen to serve on his galley. It had been an uneventful voyage, we had had no luck in finding any Turkish shipping. Then we put into a port on the south coast and discovered that a galleon had passed by the day before so La Valette set off in pursuit. By the time we tracked them down to an isolated bay further along the coast they had been joined by two corsair galleys. As you have seen, the Grand Master is not the kind of man who is discouraged by unfavourable odds, so he launched a surprise attack just before sunrise. We sank one galley and captured the galleon and the other galley. I was placed in command of the galley and ordered to return to Malta. It was as we were searching the hold that we came across a captive, a woman.’ Thomas paused as he felt the familiar longing in his breast. ‘Maria was the daughter of a Neapolitan noble and betrothed to the son of an aristocratic family on Sardinia. Her ship had been taken by the corsairs and she was to be held for ransom.’
Thomas looked at Richard, feeling foolish as he continued. ‘I tell you I had never seen such a woman in my life. She was slight and darkly featured with the most beautiful brown eyes. It would not be honest to say that my first thought was of love. I was just flesh and blood, despite my vows to the Order - not that many knights strictly observed their vows. Indeed, I was not the only one captured by her charms. However, there was some spark of deeper affection between us from the outset. If you had a cynical nature you would no doubt be smiling at what you consider to be my naive feelings, scoffing at the folly of youth, but I tell you, with all my heart and experience of life, that she is the one real love I have ever known. I had never felt the fierceness of such feeling before then, and the barely endurable ache of it ever since. I tell you, Richard, love is forever balanced between a paradise of passion and infernal torment. That is its price . . . and it is the price I freely paid at the time and have regretted ever since.’ Thomas winced and shook his head. ‘No. That is not my regret. My regret is that I was not stronger.’
He was silent for a moment, struggling to restrain the rage and self-loathing that threatened to consume him.
‘Go on,’ Richard coaxed coldly. ‘Tell all.’
Thomas gritted his teeth and snatched a deep breath with a soft hiss. ‘We loved unwisely, and without restraint, during the summer months, while word was sent to her family that she had been found and was safe. We both knew the danger of what we did but could not master our desires. So we met in secret, or so I thought, until La Valette ordered me to cease contact with her. Of course I did not. And the inevitable happened. We were discovered together one night. I say discovered, but we were not. Maria had been spied upon and followed, by Sir Oliver Stokely, who had thought himself a rival for her affections because she had shown him kindness. But that had been her nature. She was kind to all. He considered it a token of something more, something he would have had, were it not for me. So he gathered some men at arms as witnesses and caught us together. We were arrested and taken before the Grand Master of the time.’
