A Knight of the White Cross: A Tale of the Siege of Rhodes

“There is a letter from our grand prior which I have brought to you,” Sir Guy said. “He commended the lad to me warmly, and seems to be greatly pleased with his conduct.”

D’Aubusson cut the silken string that bound the missive together, and read the letter.

“He does indeed speak warmly,” he said, as he laid it down on the table.

“He tells me that the lad, young as he was, had been well trained when he came, and that he worked with great diligence during the five months he was in the House, and displayed such skill and strength for his age, as to surprise his preceptors, who prophesied that he would turn out a stout swordsman, and would be a credit to the Order.”

“He is well furnished with garments both for ordinary and state occasions,” Sir Guy said; “and in this packet are some sixty gold crowns, which are the last remains of his patrimony, and which I was to hand to you in order to pay the necessary expenses during his pageship.”

“He could have done without that,” D’Aubusson said. “Recommended to me as he is, I would have seen that he lacked nothing, but was provided with all necessaries for his position. I will in the future take care that in all things he is on a par with his companions.” He touched a bell on the table, and a servitor entered.

“Tell Richard de Deauville to come here,” he said.

A minute later the hangings at the door were pushed aside, and a lad about a year older than Gervaise appeared, and, bowing deeply to the knight, stood in a respectful attitude, awaiting his orders.

“Deauville, take this youth, Gervaise Tresham to your room. He is appointed one of the pages of the grand master. He is English, but he speaks French as well as you do, having lived in France for some years. Take him to your apartment and treat him kindly and well, seeing that he is a stranger and new to all here. Tomorrow he will go to the palace.”

Gervaise bowed deeply to the two knights, and then followed the page.

“I suppose you arrived in that ship which came in today,” the latter said, as soon as they had left the room. “You are in luck indeed to have obtained a pageship at the grand master’s. You begin to count your time at once, while we do not begin to count ours until we are seventeen. Still, good luck may befall us yet, for if the grand master dies, Sir Peter is sure to be chosen to succeed him. Then, you see, we too shall be pages of the grand master.”

“How many are there of you?”

“Only De Lille and myself. Of course D’Aubusson will take on the grand master’s present pages; but as there are five vacancies on an average every year, he will be able to find room for us among the number.”

“Why, how many pages has the grand master?” Gervaise asked, in surprise.

“Sixteen of them, so you may guess the duties are easy enough, as only two are generally employed, except, of course on solemn occasions.”

“Are there any other English besides myself?”

The boy shook his head. “There are eight belonging to the French langues; the others are Spaniards, Italians, or Germans. There, this is our room and this is De Lille. De Lille, this is the grand master’s new page, Master Gervaise Tresham, and our lord says we are to treat him kindly and entertain him well until tomorrow, when he will go to the palace. He speaks our language, and has been some years in France.”

“How came you to be there?” De Lille asked Gervaise.

“My father was a Lancastrian, and my mother a great friend of our Queen Margaret of Anjou, and they were with her all the time she was in exile.”

“How quarrelsome you English are!” De Lille said. “You seem to be always fighting among yourselves.”

“I don’t think,” Gervaise said, with a smile, “there is any love lost between Louis of France and the Duke of Burgundy, to say nothing of other great lords.”

“No; you are right there. But though we talk a great deal about fighting, it is only occasionally that we engage in it.”

The pages’ room was a small one. It contained two pallets, which served as seats by day, and two wooden chests, in which they kept their clothes.

Their conversation was interrupted by the ringing of a bell.

“That is supper,” De Lille said, jumping up. “We will leave you here while we go down to stand behind our lord’s chair. When the meal is over we will bring a pasty or something else good, and a measure of wine, and have our supper together up here; and we will tell the servitors to bring up another pallet for you. Of course, you can go down with us if you like.”

“Thank you, I would much rather stay here. Every one would be strange to me, and having nothing to do I should feel in the way.”

The boys nodded, and taking their caps ran off, while Gervaise, tired by the excitement of the day, lay down on the bed which a servant brought up a few minutes after they had left him, and slept soundly until their return.

“I think I have been asleep,” he said, starting up when they entered the room again.

“You look as if you had, anyhow,” De Lille laughed. “It was the best thing you could do. We have brought up supper. We generally sit down and eat after the knights have done, but this is much better, as you are here.” They sat down on the beds, carved the pasty with their daggers, and after they had finished Gervaise gladly accepted the proposal of the others to take a walk round the walls.

They started from the corner of the castle looking down upon the spit of land dividing the two ports.

“You see,” De Lille said, “there is a row of small islands across the mouth of the outer port, and the guns of St. Nicholas, and those on this wall, would prevent any hostile fleet from entering.”

“I hardly see what use that port is, for it lies altogether outside the town, and vessels could not unload there.”

“No. Still, it forms a useful place of refuge. In case a great fleet came to attack us, our galleys would lay up in the inner port, which would be cleared of all the merchant craft, as these would hamper the defence; they would, therefore, be sent round into the outer port, where they would be safe from any attack by sea, although they would doubtless be burnt did an army besiege the town.”

Passing along the walls of the grand master’s palace, which was a strongly fortified building, and formed a citadel that could be defended after the lower town and the rest of the castle had been taken, they came to the western angle of the fortifications.

“You must know that each langue has charge of a separate part of the wall. From the foot of the mole of St. Nicholas to the grand master’s palace it is in charge of France. On the line where we now are, between the palace and the gate of St. George, it is held by Germany. From that gate to the Spanish tower Auvergne is posted. England takes the wall between the Spanish tower and that of St. Mary. You defend only the lower storey of that tower, the upper part being held by Aragon, whose charge extends up to the gate of St. John. Thence to the tower of Italy—behind which lies the Jews’ quarter—Provence is in charge, while the sea front thence to the mole of St. Nicholas, is held by Italy and Castile, each taking half. Not only have the langues the charge of defending each its portion of the wall, but of keeping it in order at all times; and I may say that nowhere is the wall better kept or more fairly decorated with carvings than where England holds.”

“You have not told me who defends the palace itself.”

“That is in charge of a force composed of equal numbers of picked knights from each langue.”

Gervaise leant on the battlement and looked with admiration at the scene beyond. The land side was surrounded by hills, the ground rising very gradually from the foot of the walls. Every yard of ground was cultivated, and was covered with brilliant vegetation. Groves and orchards occurred thickly, while the slopes were dotted with chapels, summer houses—in which the natives of the city spent most of their time in the hot season—and other rustic buildings.

“What a rich and beautiful country!” he said.

“It is very pleasant to look at,” De Lille agreed. “But all this would be a sore disadvantage to us if the Turks were besieging us, for the groves and orchards would conceal their approaches, the walls and buildings would give them shelter, and our cannon would be of little use until they reached the farther side of the ditch. If the Turks come, I hear it is decided to level all the buildings and walls, and to chop down every tree.”

“If they were to plant their cannon on the hills they would do us much harm,” Gervaise remarked.

“The Turks are clumsy gunners they say,” Deauville replied, “and they would but waste their powder and ball at that distance, without making a breach in our walls.”

“Even if they did, they could surely scarce pass that deep fosse,” Gervaise said, looking down into the tremendous cutting in the solid rock that ran round the whole circuit of the walls; it was from forty to sixty feet deep, and from ninety to a hundred and forty feet wide. It was from this great cutting that the stones for the construction of the walls, towers, and buildings of the town had been taken, the work having been going on ever since the knights established themselves at Rhodes, and being performed by a host of captives taken in war, together with labour hired from neighboring islands. Upon this immense work the Order had expended no small proportion of their revenue since their capture of the island in 1310, and the result was a fortress that, under the conditions of warfare of that age, seemed almost impregnable; and this without any natural advantage of position.

In addition to the five great towers or bastions, the wall was strengthened by square towers at short intervals. On looking down from the wall upon which the three pages were standing, on to the lower town, the view was a singular one. The houses were all built of stone, with flat roofs, after the manner of most Eastern cities. The streets were very narrow, and were crossed at frequent intervals by broad stone arches. These had the effect, not only of giving shelter from an enemy’s fire, but of affording means by which troops could march rapidly across the town upon the roofs of the houses to reinforce the defenders of the wall, wherever pressed by the enemy. Thus the town from above presented the appearance of a great pavement, broken only by dark and frequently interrupted lines.

“How different to the towns at home!” Gervaise exclaimed, as, after gazing long upon the beautiful country outside the walls, he turned and looked inward. “One would hardly know that it was a town at all.”

“Yes, it is rather different to the view from the top of the tower of Notre Dame, which I ascended while I was staying in Paris. But this sort of building is best here; the thickness of the stone roofs keeps out the heat of the sun, and it is only when it is almost overhead that it shines down into the narrow streets. As you can see by the number of the people on the roofs, they use them as a resort in the evening. Then carpets are spread, and they receive visitors, and can talk to their neighbours over the low walls that separate the roofs. You can trace the divisions. Some of the house roofs are larger than others, but all are upon the same level; this being the regulation, in order that there might be free passage everywhere for the troops.”

By the time they had made the circuit of the walls darkness had fallen, and concealed the martial features of the scene. Lights twinkled everywhere upon the stone terraces; the sound of lutes and other musical instruments came up softly on the still air, with the hum of talk and laughter. The sea lay as smooth as a mirror, and reflected the light of the stars, and the black hulls of the galleys and ships in the harbour lay still and motionless.

Greatly pleased with his first experience of the city that was to be his future home, Gervaise returned, with his companions, to the auberge of Auvergne.

The next morning the bailiff D’Aubusson bade Gervaise accompany him to the palace of the grand master. Here he introduced him to Orsini, an old and feeble man, who, after a few kind words, handed him over to the chamberlain, who, in turn, led him to the official who was in charge of the pages. That officer took him down to the courtyard, where four young knights were engaged in superintending the military exercises of the pages. The scene was exactly the same as that to which Gervaise had been accustomed at the House in London. Some of the lads were fighting with blunted swords, others were swinging heavy bars of iron, climbing ropes, or vaulting on to the back of a wooden horse. All paused as the official entered with his charge.

“This is your new comrade, boys,” he said—“Master Gervaise Tresham, a member of the English langue. Be good comrades to him. By the reports I hear I am sure that you will find him a worthy companion.”