The Last Crusaders: Blood Red Sea (11 page)

‘Move your hand out of the way. Quickly now.’

‘I swear that my friend and I have told you—’

‘You see the wooden board there, where your hand was just lying? You see the holes and the gashes in the wood. And there in the gashes, the dark stains? That is blood, of course.’ He pointed up to the weight above. ‘No larger than an apple, but you see it is like an inverted pyramid.’ Deza spoke with soft admiration for his machines. ‘When we release this lever it will come down very fast and hard, and it will smash into the back of your hand, like this.’

He signalled to the torturer, and they pulled the lever. The heavy lead weight punched down into the wooden board and made a hole half an inch deep.

‘It both punctures and smashes at the same time, you see?’

‘I see.’

The weight was raised up again. ‘Now. Lay your hand down there once more.’

Naturally Nicholas struggled against it, but two of the torturers forced his arm back down and splayed his hand and manacled him tight.

Across the room, Hodge had closed his eyes.

‘Open your eyes,’ said another of the torturers, ‘and watch your friend.’ He touched a cold blade to Hodge’s cheek. ‘Or I will slice off your eyelids.’

Hodge knew he meant it. He opened his eyes. The tears ran down.

‘Aw,’ said the torturer. ‘There, there. Don’t cry. It’ll soon be over for him. Then it’ll be your turn.’

‘Eat shit,’ said Hodge.

The torturer grinned.

‘Look at your right hand,’ said Pedro Deza to Nicholas. ‘Thin but strong, with a nice scar or two, as befits a dashing Protestant agent and spy, in league with the Moors against Spain. I see some powder burns too. But alas, your hand is not strong enough. In perhaps – half a minute, shall we say? – this weight will slam down again, and this time it will not be bare board to meet it, but the back of your hand here. Look at the bones, delicate as chicken bones when you consider, when you compare the bones of a mortal man to a hard lead weight. And the soft flesh between. Most of all, the nerves and the sinews that make a hand strong. These will all be cut away and pulped by this machine. The first time will hurt very much. Then we will give you a sip of this special drink,’ he gestured over to the table with the coloured glass beakers, ‘to ensure that you remain conscious, though in great pain. In very great pain. Then the machine will smash down again, and again. Each time will hurt more than the last. By about the seventh or eighth time, you will have screamed yourself hoarse and no more sound will come from your throat. This will be a relief to us, as men’s screams can be very trying.

‘Finally the right hand that you knew so well and loved so much will be completely smashed. Nothing but a bloody mess of meat and bone. Little bits of it falling away over the side of the board there. Little chunks. Then we will gently take your left hand, and lay it down there and do the same. Then over here, there is a similar machine which will also pulp your right foot to nothing. Then your left foot. And you must understand: this is only the start. Yet it will be the longest hour of your life.

‘And so, one last time. Answer me these questions truthfully. What do you know of the Turkish war fleet? Where are they sailing? What did you ask of Abdul of Tripoli? What is your connection to the Moor in whose house you were found hiding? What was your code word, your name? What is the Moor planning? What are
the names and residences of all his accomplices? And where is the current hiding place of Aben Humeya and Aben Farax?’

Nicholas shook his head, preparing himself. ‘I do not know.’

Pedro Deza waited a long time. Then he said, ‘I am not a cruel man. But I have a task to do. You understand this. We must get at the truth.’

He signalled to the torturer behind to release the lever.

There came a loud thump from the passageway outside, and angry shouting. Then the unmistakable sound of tempered steel clashing with steel.

Pedro Deza glared around and touched his sword hilt. ‘Take up your pikes. You, flank the door. You – open it.’

The door was cautiously opened on to the darkened passageway, and there stood a figure dressed in an immaculate white velvet suit trimmed with ermine, pulling off his kidskin gloves and examining his fingernails for damage. He looked up, arched his eyebrows and then strolled into the chamber. He was followed by two more burly fellows. Hulking figures in dusty travelling cloaks, shaggy haired, bearded, long heavyweight swords slung at their sides. One of the torturers ill-advisedly made a movement with his pike, as if to block their entrance, and one of the two ruffians swiped him backhanded with a kind of absent-mindedness that was almost comical. Yet there was nothing comical about the effect. Such was the power behind that casual blow that the torturer reeled backwards and slammed against the wall behind him, upsetting the table of glass beakers, bringing them crashing down around him as he slithered senseless to the floor. The black-bearded ruffian strode on into the chamber, not turning a hair at the din, and stationed himself near the door.

Nicholas stared, his thoughts in a whirl. There was only one man he had ever known who could deliver a backhand blow like that. But it could not . . .

The fellow in white velvet looked around. ‘Damn it, Deza, but
this is a curious show you run here. One of your pikemen dared to stand in my path, so I had to run him through. Just in the arm. I expect he’ll live, in a vulgar sort of way. Oh, and the smell is quite
execrable
. Have you rosewater?’

‘I, I . . .’

‘No rosewater? My man, do you want me to stink like a civet? And kneel when I address you! I may be the bastard son of a bosomy German whore, bless her venereal soul, but I am also half-brother of King Philip. Down on your knees to Don John of Austria!’

Deza knelt, chewing his lip furiously.

The young prince, perhaps twenty-four years of age or so, tall and willowy of build, strolled languidly around the chamber, examining the various machines. At last he said, ‘What a
nasty
set-up. Is it really all necessary?’

‘It is, Your Excellency.’

The prince pulled a face. Then he raised an eyebrow in the direction of his two ruffians, and pointed at Nicholas and Hodge.

‘Are these your comrades?’

The two strode over. Their physical power was palpable. Their commanding presence had the other torturers skittering back to stand against the walls like naughty schoolboys before an angry master. One of the ruffians stood before Hodge and the other in front of Nicholas. Nicholas stared back at him. He was dreaming. The torture had started, and he had gone into a madman’s dream, his only escape.

The big flaxen-haired, ruddy-cheeked fellow in front of him grinned and nodded. ‘Aye, Your Highness. I’d know this reprobate anywhere.’

‘’Pon my word, Deza, you unconscionable
booby
,’ said Don John. ‘But you choose your victims carelessly. You are only torturing here two of the most gallant heroes of the entire Siege of Malta.’

Nicholas wept openly as the manacles were sprung and he and Edward Stanley embraced.

‘Aye,’ said Stanley, ‘relief can do that to a man. You came damn close to being broken for life. What a place.’ He looked over at Deza with disgust.

‘You are in my Chancellery still, Sir Knight,’ said Deza. ‘Have a care.’

Stanley turned from Nicholas, still shaking, and bore down on Pedro Deza, his broad sunburned brow furrowed with a ferocious glare. Six foot four of muscle and anger. His voice rose in volume, and the chamber echoed as with the bellowing of an enraged bull.

‘A Knight Commander of St John answers to none but his Grand Master, the Pope in Rome, and Almighty God! These two youths here that you have reduced to shivering wrecks with your vile contraptions fought at Malta as heroically as Jean de la Valette himself. While you were shuffling your papers and presiding over your interrogations,
Don Pedro Deza
. So vex me no more. Or I may lose my sweet temper altogether.’

Deza quailed visibly, but said, ‘It was important to discover more about the Morisco rebellion. We have heard rumours that the Mohammedan rebels are being armed from England. And here were two Englishmen, hiding in the house of a Moor—’

‘Then you are credulous fools!’ replied Stanley. ‘The knights have information – not rumour,
information
– that the Moriscos are being armed from Constantinople, not England.’

Pedro Deza said not another word.

Don John of Austria was pulling on his kidskin gloves again and smiling thinly.

Smith gave Hodge a drink from his flask. Stanley laid his hands on Nicholas’s shaking shoulders.

‘Easy, old friend, easy. None will hurt you now.’

Then he too gave him his flask to drink. Nicholas glugged and gasped and managed a tremulous smile.

Stanley cuffed him on the back. ‘Let’s get some air.’

They marched out of the chamber led by Don John of Austria himself. Rescued by a prince of the blood! Well, half of the blood.

Life was a dream.

Two of the torturers hovered a little too near as they departed. In the blink of an eye, and in utter silence, Smith embraced them in his mighty hands and clonked their heads together. They dropped like meal sacks.

‘I know a tavern on the quay,’ said Nicholas.

‘We don’t doubt it,’ drawled Don John of Austria, barely looking at him. ‘And a delightful stew it may be. But we have our ship out there in the harbour. Which one do you think it might be?’

Beyond the bobbing boats, fishing smacks and coastal barges, there towered a gilded and magnificent galley flying the flag of the two-headed Habsburg eagle of Spain.

‘That one, possibly,’ said Nicholas.

‘Your judgement is uncanny,’ said Don John. Then he looked him up and down. ‘We met at Messina, I recall. Then you and your manservant went on to fight at Malta with Sir John and Sir Edward here.’

‘We did.’

The young prince’s eyes flashed with jealousy. ‘And then you served on a corsair galley as your reward?’

‘We love rowing. Both day and night.’

Again Don John gave his thin smile. He liked this one, he recalled. Sharp tongue, fighting spirit, and he followed all his sarcasms point for point.

He looked out over the harbour, to the royal galley and beyond. ‘We are sailing first for Messina, there to await further orders from Spain and learn more news of the movements of the Turk. Will he fall upon Cyprus, upon Crete? The coast of Italy?’ The foppish young prince looked grave for once, his gaze upon the far horizon. ‘His fleet is vast, the threat to Christendom is as real as ever. There is a great sea battle coming, I am sure of it. You might as well join us again, since your native England is now under the rule of Elizabeth the flame-haired frigid heretic, who will burn you at the stake the moment you set foot on home soil.’

‘She is my Queen still,’ said Nicholas.

‘Your Holy Father in Rome has declared her no queen but a usurper.’

The English youth looked a picture of torment, his eyes pained and hunted. Don John relented a fraction. ‘Well, I do not envy you your position. But I do not think you can ever dream of England again. Come and die with us fighting the Turk, and have your troubled head blown off by an Ottoman cannon. You will sleep easier thereafter.

‘For my part, I have missed every single encounter yet with the Mohammedans, being too occupied panting in the arms of my mistress – whichever trollop it was at the time – or prevented by my caring brother Philip. But for the coming sea battle, this watery Armageddon . . .’ He touched a kidskinned finger to his own chest. ‘. . . for once, this perfumed, velveted fop and whoremonger bastard will show his royal blood.’

Such a mix of pride and self-mockery, thought Nicholas. Such quicksilver intelligence and cutting humour. He gave a small bow.

‘You acknowledge me a fop and whoremonger?’ snapped Don John.

‘I, I . . .’ stammered Nicholas.

Stanley and Smith were both grinning.

‘Mercy, Your Excellency, you test him worse than Pedro Deza.’

‘Tch. Then off to your sordid peasant tavern with you.’ Don John turned on his heel and made for the quayside. A long rowing boat with a crimson awning and elaborately curved and gilded prow and stern, something like a Venetian gondola, was bumping against the harbour wall. He turned back.

‘But come to sea with us afterwards, English vagabonds! Perhaps you’ll prove too skeleton thin for a cannonball to hit you!’

Nicholas led them back to a certain tavern on the quay.

‘We heard you were to be racked and strappadoed,’ said Stanley as they walked. ‘Word came back from Gil de Andrada that you had been picked up. We heard more from . . . other sources useful to us. And when we heard that you were to be
questioned
by the great Pedro Deza, well, we had at least to
visit
you in prison. Before you got too lean and stringy. A few sessions on the rack and you would have looked like a two-yard earthworm.

‘Then Brother Smith here was going to sing soothing lullabies to you as you were stretched, in his unusual baritone, which would surely have taken your mind off your agonies. You should hear him singing “Greensleeves”. Ladies swoon at the very sound. Some actually burst into tears and run away, unable to bear such unearthly beauty.’

Smith growled, his voice more bearlike than ever with the passing years. ‘You see that Ned Stanley has lost none of his lacerating
wit. Many’s the time I’ve burst my doublet laughing at his brilliant jests and sallies.’

Stanley roared with laughter. Smith glared from under his thick black brows. They had not changed.

Nicholas had almost forgotten why he loved their company so much. Not just their strength, their prowess at arms, their badinage, Smith’s grim sallies and Stanley’s smile. It was their nobility he loved. Their lives were a testament to lives nobly lived, strictly disciplined. Beneath those shabby cloaks, there were hearts and souls that served something higher than most men ever dreamed of. You have to serve some high ideal. Serve only yourself, and you soon shrink down to the small, petty size of yourself. Most men lived that way. But serve something high and noble, and in time you grow towards it, as an oak tree grows towards the sun. That was Smith and Stanley.