The Last Crusaders: The Great Siege Read Online Free Page B

and tapped the side of his nose.
    ‘My brother and I have travelled far and wide, and learnt much in our travels,’ he murmured infuriatingly. ‘From the locksmiths of Germany, the alchemists of Alexandria, the gymnosophists of India …’
    ‘If you come as friends,’ said Sir Francis, ‘why pick the lock of my door?’
    The fairhead grinned. ‘Had you peered out of your window and seen two such figures as us – on such a night as this – would you really have let us in?’
    Sir Francis guffawed. ‘Not till the crack of doom.’
    ‘And besides – we are in a hurry. It is better we were not seen by any others.’
    Nevertheless, the two visitors insisted that the family resume the Mass. They would willingly join them.
    As Father Matthew intoned the solemn church Latin, there was a chance to study the newcomers sidelong. They smelt of horsehairand leather and sweat, and somehow, distant and exotic lands. The ruddy cheeks of the fairhead were really burned a reddish brown, Nicholas now saw, as were Blackbeard’s, and their massively powerful hands too. The deep, deep brown of a hot sun.
    After Mass, Father Matthew rode away into the night on his Welsh pony, and the children and servants were sent early to bed. Some lingered on the darkened stairs, peering down. This was the most exciting thing to happen in the village since the miller fell down the well.
    ‘To bed with you!’ bellowed Sir Francis, and they scuttled away to their rooms.
    In his library, Sir Francis poured three cups of Portugal wine. His unexpected guests stood before the fire, their wet cloaks hung over the backs of chairs and steaming. Hodge still lingered in the doorway, eyes wide. Blackbeard glanced back, and then strode over and pushed the door shut in his face.
    ‘Along with us, Hodge,’ said Nicholas.
    ‘But how’ll I sleep, Master Nicholas? With them foreigners under the roof?’
    Hodge thought anyone who came from across the millstream was a foreigner.
    They went upstairs.
    Once he had heard all the bedroom doors shut, Nicholas slipped out again, burning with curiosity. What a hypocritical villain he was, to be sure. He crept down the stairs in darkness, keeping close to the edges so as not to creak, and knelt outside the library door.
    There he heard confused snatches of urgent conversation. About The Knights, and the island of Malta, the Great Sultan, war galleys, and of a Grand Master of St John, called Jean de la Valette, who was ‘dauntless’. Yet some vast and terrible threat hung over them all, and there was desperately little time left.
    The two strangers continually addressed his father as Brother Francis, which baffled and intrigued Nicholas at once. As if his father was a monk or a friar! His father never talked about his own early life. It was a mysteriously forbidden subject. He married late, a much younger girl, the daughter of an old friend of his, and they were blissfully happy for nine years, until she died in childbed.Nicholas was eight when she died, and even now could not think of her and speak at the same time. Her golden hair, her radiant smile …
    He made no sound now, hardly able to hear himself breathe. Yet the strangers knew he was there. The door was abruptly flung open and Blackbeard seized him by the collar of his jerkin, hauling him inside and slamming the door again behind him.
    His father rose up from the table with a thunderous expression.
    ‘How dare you, boy! How dare you eavesdrop like some petty sneakthief on a private conversation, and one of such consequence. I’ll give you such a beating, you disobedient wretch!’
    Blackbeard let the boy go and he slumped, head bowed in shame.
    Sir Francis was just raising his fist to strike him when the fairhead murmured,
    ‘Ay, I was young too once, and thrilled by tales of voyages and adventures.’ And he laid his hand on Sir Francis’s arm.
    Sir Francis scowled at him, then slowly, very slowly, the thunder subsided from his face and his arm