Shadow of God (53 page)

For two more hours the battle raged. Tears of frustration ran down the Pasha’s cheeks as he tried to make his way to the breach in the wall. He saw the Sultan’s
Bunchuk
waver on the rampart and suddenly disappear from sight. As he moved closer to the breach, pushing and raging at his men, he could see the tall knight with the gray beard and long, gray hair. Though he had never seen or met him, he knew this must be the infamous Grand Master, de L’Isle Adam. Then, he saw the great banner waving in the air, Christ on the cross, filling the space behind the Grand Master, and he knew he was right. How foolish, he thought, to expose the leader to injury or death on the front line of the fight. He would never take such a chance with the Sultan.

Mustapha charged ahead, knocking his own men to the ground, striking them with his fists to get to the fight. He would face this gray old man and cut him to pieces there on the bastion. Nothing would stop him. With their leader gone, the knights would crumble and surrender the fortress to the Sultan.

Philippe had fought for two hours without let-up. The strategy was working, the knights plugging the gap in the walls with their bodies and their swords. The Muslims were falling away, the attack losing its momentum. His muscles ached, and he felt weak from dehydration and constant exertion. But still he pressed on.

As he fought, Philippe kept an eye on the soldiers beyond the breach, trying to assess the strength and determination of the attack. He could see the ditches filling with the bodies of the men cut down by his marksmen on the parapets and the walls. For every knight he had lost this day, there must be hundreds of Turks lying dead or wounded. As he scanned the field, he saw a figure moving counter to the retreating mob. While the mass of the army was in a slow, disorganized retreat, one man was pressing forward, his scimitar waving in the air. The noise of the battle was so great that Philippe’s ears could discern nothing, but he saw the huge mustached man screaming and raging as he pushed frantically forward. His turban had been lost and his uniform was covered in blood and dirt. As the man reached the bastion, Philippe stepped forward to face the charge. Their eyes locked, and the man stood facing Philippe for the briefest moment.

Suddenly, the knights surged forward, an unstoppable wall of armor bristling with swords. Even Philippe was surprised by the strength of the attack after so many hours of fighting. It was as if they wanted it over
now
. This very minute. They would not tolerate another Muslim within their city. The assault was so fierce that the Turks fell back at once. The force of the knights’ thrust pushed the Turks from the breach, and a general panic spread through the Turkish line. While isolated Janissaries tried to continue their attack, the tide of men began to flow backwards from the walls. They slid down the sloping embankment, stumbling and falling over the bodies of their comrades, living and dead.

Mustapha found himself caught in the retreating crush and thrashed to break free. He pushed and swung his scimitar, trying for a chance to get to the Grand Master. But he was helpless. The throng pressed close about him, forcing him backwards down from the breach. At times he was lifted from his feet. He cursed and
struck out at his men, but it was no use. He waved his sword in the air as he watched the figure of his enemy recede in the distance. Finally, he gave up his struggle.

For his part, Philippe did not have the luxury of watching the departure of the Agha. He faced still another attack, and cut another young Janissary from the fragile tether of life.

As the knights watched the armies of the Sultan retreat to their camps, they did not cheer. No swords were raised in victory. The wall of men stood facing the outer perimeters, swords at their sides. To the few Turks still able to see them, it was a chilling vision. The knights were a physical part of the stone walls. Seeing them there like that, the ordinary soldiers began to doubt that they could ever move them from their fortress.

The silent knights looked out over the ditches. As far as their vision could penetrate the coming darkness, they saw tens of thousands of soldiers waiting their turn to storm the city. There seemed no end of Turkish soldiers to replace the ones the knights had killed in this first assault.

Philippe moved back from the breach and turned to give orders to Mansell to oversee the repairs to the damaged wall. He could see his banner gently flowing in the breeze a few yards behind the knights. As a path cleared for him, he saw that it was not Henry holding the staff, but another knight of the French
langue
. At his feet lay Henry Mansell, an arrow protruding from the very center of his chest. A brother knight held Mansell in his arms, while another tried to remove the arrow. But, the armor plate held the wooden shaft tightly in its metal grasp. Philippe knelt down beside his lifelong friend and reached out to him. “Henry. Oh, Henry,” he said in a low voice.

“I’m sorry, my Lord. He is dead,” said the knight who held Mansell’s body.

Philippe touched Mansell’s forehead. Then his chest. Then his left and his right shoulders. “
Nominae Patria, Filia, Spiritus Sanctus. Amen
.
Au revoir, Henri, mon cher vieux ami.
”

Philippe rose and began the long walk back to his palace. As his knights watched him go, he seemed suddenly older and
smaller. His shoulders sagged and his head was slightly bowed. The spring in his step and the proud carriage by which they all knew him had somehow slipped away. And this, they thought, after a day of victory.

Suleiman watched the attack from the vantage point of his horse. Ibrahim was at his side. The small Janissary guard was deployed in a crescent around the Sultan, and all watched the battle in silence. The green banner of the Prophet sagged in the stillness of dusk, a backdrop to the Sultan’s unfolding drama.

When the fighting was over, Suleiman stayed on his horse. He watched as his troops retreated over their hard-won terrain. They crossed the ditches and the escarpment, leaving the bodies of the wounded and the dead in their paths. Here and there, a soldier carried a comrade or helped a wounded man back to the lines. But, the overwhelming picture before the Sultan was that of an army, dead and dying, in a wretched grave dug to protect the walls of this hateful citadel.

Soon the troops reached the safety of their lines. The harassing musket fire slowed, and then stopped as the last of the Turks moved out of range. A silence permeated the air. After the hours of noise and chaos, the absence of sound was alarming. Not even the birds sang. In the silence, Suleiman was keenly aware of the movement of the fabric of his men’s uniforms, the soft rattle of their weapons against armor as they walked and staggered back to their camps. The smell of gun smoke and burnt flesh drifted into his nose. He saw the looks on their faces. The fury and the hopefulness of the initial assault had been replaced by no expressions at all. Where he had expected to see pain and disappointment, he saw nothing.

The Sultan took a deep breath. He looked right past Ibrahim and turned his brown stallion west to his camp on Mount Saint Stephen. He thought of how bravely his army had fought; how many young lives were lost that day; how much pain his people had suffered at the hands of the knights. And he wondered what price he—his army—would pay for taking this wretched island.

Ibrahim followed behind, leaving his master alone with his thoughts.

Later, as darkness covered the no-man’s land between the armies, the soldiers on both sides of the walls began the process of healing their wounds and burying their dead. The Turks lost more than two thousand brave soldiers in the field that day. The knights lost Henry Mansell and Commander Gabriel de Pommerols. Michel d’Argillemont died of his terrible wound without ever regaining consciousness. Nobody had counted the number of dead and wounded Rhodians and mercenaries.

For hours, in the ditches, the Turkish wounded lay crying and calling for help. Their voices reached out to the ears of both armies. Just after midnight, Philippe sent a party of knights to violate the most basic rule of warfare that had guided soldiers since war had begun. The knights went out into the fields, and with swords and pikes, moved among the wounded, executing them one by one. The knights wandered about in slow motion, stopping only long enough to pick out the wounded from among the dead. Here and there they poked and prodded with the sharp steel of their lances and swords. Then, with neither anger nor remorse, but with cold deliberation, they ran their swords straight in between the ribs nearest the breast bone. Withdrawing the swords from the chests of the Turks, the knights wandered on again to find another soldier who failed to die in the battle. Not a man was spared. Not a prisoner taken. For all the remaining hours of darkness, a savage war was waged in total silence.

At dawn, the knights walked back in through the St. John’s Gate and across the city to the
Collachio.
They returned to their Inns, where they put away their bloodied weapons and changed into their clean scarlet capes with the white cross of St. John. Then they met at the chapel as the bells rang for Matins.

Rhodes
September, 1522

Suleiman sat in his tent in silence
.
His face was lined and pale, for in spite of the fierce summer heat, the Sultan had spent much of his time under the cover of his battle pavilion. Like Xerxes at Salamis, his own hero of two thousand years earlier, Suleiman ordered a raised platform built on the hillside west of the city. His throne was set in place, his Viziers and advisers surrounding him as he watched the progress of the battle from a safe distance. And, like Xerxes before him, the Sultan’s heart ached at the carnage he saw unfolding in the field.

After more than eight weeks of siege, the bodies of his armies now nearly filled the ditches at the southern bastions of the fortress. In the summer heat, the stench was intolerable. Flies swarmed over the swollen corpses. The soothing sea breezes of the early fall were replaced by nauseating smells driven back into the faces of the Turks. Soon diseases spread among the men and the merchant camp followers.

And still, not a single Turkish soldier had set a foot inside the city of the knights.

Suleiman sighed deeply, staring into the closed space of his tent. The servants had been dismissed, and the Sultan waited for a few moments before beginning the
Divan.
All of the Sultan’s commanding officers, Piri Pasha, Mustapha Pasha, Bali Agha, Achmed
Agha, Ayas Agha, and Qasim Pasha, sat in a crescent around him. All immobile, impassive. Ibrahim sat to the Sultan’s right, facing the generals. Several of the Aghas wondered at Ibrahim’s position at the right hand of the Sultan. None said anything aloud.

Suleiman wondered who among these men would serve him best. Piri Pasha was still his Grand Vizier, but clearly because of his lack of enthusiasm for the battle, his usefulness was waning. Ibrahim had been Suleiman’s loyal friend and servant for nearly a decade, but there was much resistance in the court to any further elevation of his rank. And as for the rest of the Aghas, what of them? They fought among themselves like children. They sought power and riches. Though they served the Sultan today, what would they do if their position was suddenly threatened?