{“My Lords, Have you legitimately considered what we did?”}
Without a care for the others’ confirmation, he looked straight out in front of him, conscious of the endless tension in the church.
“The forty-third Grand Master of this Holy Saint John of Jerusalem’s Hospitallers—and Knights’ Order has been chosen.”
He enjoyed the endless silence for a second before he continued:
“. . . brother Phillippe Villiers de l’Isle Adam, Priore di Francia.” The rest was drowned out by the roaring assent that went through the church, the spontaneous standing ovation by the French and shows of loyal support from the election’s losers also.
D’Amaral despised playing theater. He turned around and walked out, without looking to the right or the left, straight way through the crowd in the loggia and down the Grand Rue to his own house.
The faithful Blas Diez waited by the door. He immediately saw how it had gone. Without a word, he took the black cloak with the white eight pointed cross, folded it carefully, and took it to the closet under the arches. He was disappointed too. Even a valet in one of the city’s finest houses can dream about moving up as a camarilla in the castle.
The Chancellor went upstairs to his little office on the right, the only one with a fireplace. It was very quiet.
Within the hour the door clapper knocked almost eerily in the dark stair hall, where the twilight already stood thick under the arches, and the first star looked down through the roof opening.
Blas Diez knocked two times before the Chancellor answered.
“What is it?”
“A visitor, Lord.”
“Tell him I won’t be receiving anyone today.”
“Lord, it is Señor Commander Luis.”
It was quiet for a moment. Then he came out, tall and straight, but ominously pale as his seamen feared to see him, il Terribile.
The Commander went up the stairs a little hesitantly.
“What do you want, Luis?”
“Only to bow and say that I revere my prior, my admirable chief from so many caravans, my Chancellor and my friend.”
There was a warmth in his voice that coaxed d’Amaral into asking what he wanted to know most of all and yet wanted least of all to ask about.
“How did the votes fall?”
The Commander looked troubled.
“Nine to seven, if what they say is true.”
The Chancellor took a breath between the discolored lips.
“Madre de Dios, it all hung on two votes. If two fools had a glimpse of reason, Rhodes could have been saved.”
The other looked up curious.
“Yes, just saved,” the Chancellor broke out. “From going under. Today they have elected their last Grand Master. They have chosen their own destruction.”
“Señor Canciller, you can’t say that.”
“Yes, on my honor, I meant it. This will be the fall of Rhodes. It has come to be at last. And they do not deserve better. They are unthankful, dimwitted, clouded by great memories of the past, and helpless as soon as someone rubs them the right way promising that everything will be like the old days.”
The Commander crossed himself. He looked pale in the lifeless winter twilight.
“Señor Canciller, may God preserve you from such thoughts. I will only say that we are many, who are not so unthankful. May I wish my Chancellor a good night under God’s mercy? I ought to go to Compline now.”
He bowed and vanished in the dark.
Compline? No, not tonight. The Chancellor shut himself in again. The fire that Blas Diez lit in the great open fireplace kept falling over into a red heap. He sat down in front of it and warmed his hands.
Yes, he meant it. He had understood this for a long time. Should this little island kingdom be able to remain in the midst of the great Turkish Empire then one had to be finished with peace. One had to take up that which the order of St. John promised to do. To always, everywhere, and by all means fight the unbelievers. And why not? Who believed any longer in the only way to heaven? Did not the Sultan have more faith than those in Rome?
Seven to nine. Besides their own six votes, the Frenchmen had also managed to gather three. He could only wonder which.
When Blas came in about an hour later with more sticks of wood, he asked as gently as he could:
“Blas, have you heard anything about how they voted?”
“Yes, Lord, there were nine for Señor Villiers and seven for Lord Turcopoler.”
“What did you say?”
“Yes, for Lord Thomas Docwra, but as to who voted for whom, that is anyone’s guess.”
The Chancellor got up, walked over to his chamber servant and grabbed him by his coat with his strong hands on both sides of the neck lining where the shirt’s lace flowed out.
“Docrwra! What do you mean—who said that?”
“They all say it. Tomaso with Pomerolx, Pierre and Andre’ in the French house, and our own boy up there . . .”
It was the entire well-informed servant staff. Good to have them all together. He would not need to speak of the matter with some equal.
“Thank you, Blas. You can go.”
Really, they had acted so shamelessly! Let him piece together some miserable compromise that ended in such a fiasco! And for such an order he had risked his life a thousand times, froze on the sea, slept in a coffin, ate moldy bread with rancid oil, vomited with disgust and fatigue, was wounded six times and had splinters in his legs on a heaving galley for three horrible days.
What had he done wrong? He was born during the sign of the lion, and he had let the day’s best astrologers discern his fate. When God withdrew such luster, the planets still manifested it in heaven. And they said that he would do as well as he wanted if he only did the right thing at the right time.
Had he not acted boldly enough? Maybe it was a lesson for next time. The play would go on. Now he could act freely, unburdened from all sentimental consideration.
The Hospital
There was a little Greek from Simi looking up at the ceiling in one of the small rooms in the hospital, the Religion’s great infirmary, “Our lords, the palace of the sick.” He was barely twenty years old and newly enlisted in the fleet. No sooner had he checked into the grand barracks than he caught fever, and seemed to have nothing but water, mucus, and blood pouring out of him. Doctor Apella had just diagnosed him as non-contagious. He laid him down next to an unfortunate comrade within four stone walls with a little window to the street and an open fireplace on the inner wall. There were some pieces of wood burning in the fireplace, and it felt good against the cool atmosphere.
He lay there hoping that brother Frans—who was always called Shooter-Frans— would look in. He spoke Greek, and there weren’t many who did here. Yes, Doctor Apella understood Greek, but not any of the priests, who normally came in during the morning rounds after the last mass in the grand hall. The little Greek longed to see a priest come, a true priest in a black coat and a high round coal black hat and a gold cross on his chest. A priest like Father Eusevio back home in Simi. He felt forlorn, depressed, and very, very worn out.
But Brother Frans never came. Today he was responsible for the cleaning in the grand hall. He stood there by a pillar at the far end of the long row that supported the high ceiling and gave a helpless look down the endless floor. The thirty-two beds with their canopies and drapes looked like a tent caravan camp along a street.