And behind them, the order’s galleys huddled in the broad wake of the big English merchant as if they were terrified of the Turkish onslaught.
Swan put a hand on the German sword at his waist and felt its hilt, which he already loved. It was light and responsive – heavy on the hip, but light in the hand. He had on all his armour. His leg harnesses were killing him – all he could imagine was that his legs had grown again.
Amidships, the Burgundian gun crews stood over their low gonnes – which the crew had christened ‘right pig’ and ‘left pig’ because they did look a little like feeding pigs. Slow match burned, as it did aboard the Turkish ships, and every sailor who could be spared had his English longbow to hand. Peter had his on the deck beside him, despite his armour and assumed air of knightly prowess.
Swan was playing the role of ship commander. In fact, he never gave an order – it was Sturmy’s ship, and Shipman was clearly the true captain, and the two men worked together with the ease of long and sometimes bitter familiarity.
Neither seemed concerned about the encounter.
The lead Turks came on. They had now formed into two lines. The lead line was going to ram the English round ship, and the following line was going to pass to the north and south of the wreck and attack the order’s galleys.
Just as Fra Domenico had predicted.
Swan glanced at the ring on his finger. It sparkled like Fra Diablo’s eyes as he gave the orders.
When Swan thought about the ring, his roguish notions of cleverness were largely rendered squalid by the excellence of Domenico’s gesture.
And he thought – Well, if I go to the bottom, so does the ring. Take that, Drappierro. But at another level, he had to ask – Why did he just give it to me? Eight thousand ducats?
As always seemed to happen in a sea fight, time began to compact. One moment, he had all the time in the world to empty his bladder and check the hang of his sword, to try to adjust the fit of his left leg-armour, because the greave was grinding into his instep somehow – and the next, the Turks were ten ship lengths away, at full racing speed, the grunts of their rowers audible over the darkening sea.
Swan drew his sword.
Sturmy put a hand on his arm. ‘You might put it away,’ he said with a smile. ‘Yon heathen will never make it near my deck.’
Swan nodded sheepishly and sheathed his sword.
He spent the last minute going forward to stand with the other ‘knights’ in the forecastle.
Peter grunted at him. He pointed at the Turks, close enough to touch.
‘Fucking Idiots,’ he said.
The first Turk struck them, his narrow profile almost lost behind the high bows of the English ship. But his ram, mounted above the waterline, struck the English ship like a hammer.
Against an anvil.
The Turkish ship was at full speed, and she struck hard enough to kill the Katherine Sturmy’s way for a heartbeat, but the masts held.
The Turkish ship bounced.
It bounced so hard that its mainmast came down, slewing the whole galley – the bow came round sharply, exposing the long fragile broadside to the impact of the Sturmy’s forefoot, and she ground the Turkish galley under her like a great lady treading on a snake. The Turk rolled, took on water, and was broken in half – all in three heartbeats – and every one of her two hundred Christian slaves died in ten more.
Katherine Sturmy swept on, for all the world like an aristocratic lady in a great hall, moving slowly and with vast canvas dignity.
The second Turk was caught in the ruin of the first – too close to turn, he ended by ramming the sinking galley and Katherine Sturmy needn’t have crushed his oars, but she did as she passed. The wreck of the dead Turk was already dragging his ram down, trapping the second ship the way a drowning man might kill his rescuer.
The next three Turks turned away.
The archers amidships began to have targets, and the quarter-pound arrows began to rise like lethal gulls to fall – the full weight of the sea breeze behind them – on the hapless Turks. With just a dozen archers, the Katherine Sturmy’s men – forty feet above the Turkish decks – began to inflict a catastrophe.
Right Pig belched fire.
Peter, the only archer in the forecastle, leaned out and loosed. ‘You could stop pounding my back and lend a hand, Englishman!’ Peter barked.
Swan found he was grinning like a fool. He got his Turkish bow up – his arms felt like lead in arm harnesses – but he fought off his fatigue and began to rain arrows into the Turkish galleys far below as they passed.
Left Pig barked – and a Turkish galley’s mast fell in two. It was, in fact, a wild shot. But the shot clipped the mast fifteen feet above the deck, and the whole sail fell over the rowers. They were still fighting to get the canvas off their faces when the Blessed Saint John ended their struggle, ramming them. Blessed Saint John cut the Turk in half and carried through, oars in tight, and the drowning rowers screamed as the halves filled with water. Chained to their benches, they went down with the wreck.
The fight was never close, and quickly took on the air of a massacre. One Turkish ship ran inshore and took the full weight of the artillery mounted high in the Mytilini fortress, as though all of Prince Dorino’s frustration was to be vented in one fall of shot.
Each of the order’s galleys killed one Turkish galley, as if their professional reputations demanded an equal share of the kills, but Blessed Saint John ran the Turkish squadron flagship down, well upwind. The two ships lay side by side for half an hour, wreathed in smoke from small arms, while the rest of the order’s galleys hunted other prey or rescued the handful of Christian slaves who could swim and were not chained. The Katherine Sturmy was out of the fight as soon as the Turks learned not to close with her. She couldn’t catch any of them, and couldn’t point close enough to the wind to give chase, anyway.
Before the last two Turks vanished over the horizon, Master Shipman had turned the ship and was running down the wind – waddling down, Swan thought – towards the gap in the breakwater. They entered the harbour with the rising of the moon, and dropped anchor to the cheers of thousands of townspeople, Greek and Latin, gathered on the beaches and on the slopes under the fortress.
Swan hadn’t redrawn his sword. He had loosed half a hundred arrows, but he was elated instead of exhausted. He couldn’t stop moving – he helped the English sailors unload the guns and started on their cargo.
Blessed Saint John was the last ship into the harbour. Every other ship cheered her – she had killed two Turkish galleys and taken a third by boarding, her knights moving in a thin red line across the Turkish decks until the last desperate – and demonically brave – Turk was cut down. The captured galleys were towed to mooring and their freed crews swam ashore into a riot of celebration.
Swan waited for the Blessed Saint John to land, stern first. He could tell from the way she was rowed that she’d lost men – the oars weren’t fully manned.
He held a rope while the ship beached. He waited with the first rush of oarsmen coming ashore, and then, when he heard what they had to say, he ran up a ladder and went aboard.
Fra Domenico was by the mainmast amidships. His head was in Fra Tommaso’s lap, and his eyes sparkled like the ring’s jewel. The whole right side of his breastplate was caved in, and no one had even tried to remove it.
His brilliant eyes met Swan’s.
Swan bowed, and he found that his eyes were full of tears.
‘Ah!’ Domenico whispered. ‘The English spy. Or prince.’ He laughed, and coughed, and blood sprayed across the deck. ‘You know, as long as I wore the ring, I was invincible, eh?’ He nodded.