Where the Light Falls(107)
All around them the fire from the fortress batteries was being answered by French artillery. In every direction, André saw parties of men lowering themselves down from the transport ships and rowing themselves ashore. The island’s natural harbor appeared shallow and calm, and it hugged the eastern seaside border of a narrow, hilly peninsula. As far as André could tell, none of the Frenchmen were meeting armed resistance on the sandy coast below the cliffs.
The beaches were sunlit and quiet; eerily quiet, devoid of all signs of life save for the cluster of Frenchmen who had already made landfall and the few seagulls that skittered along the edge of the shoreline.
“Come on, the rest of you.” He waved his men forward and they climbed off the landing boat, clutching their muskets. Around André, the other transports were slowly and cautiously making landfall as well. No one seemed sure of what to do next. Several of the soldiers, unaccustomed to the small crafts, vomited onto the sand.
Just then, a general’s aide appeared on the beach, half running, half stumbling down the seaside hill. “Officers! Officers?” The man’s slender features were pinched, his voice shrill as his eyes combed the beach. André watched as several officers stepped forward, answering the summons. He, too, lifted a hand; he hadn’t acted in the capacity of an officer for some time, but he had landed on this beach in command of Captain Dueys’s men.
The soldier eyed André’s tattered sailor’s clothes somewhat suspiciously but shrugged his shoulders. “Well, tell your men to stay here on the beach. They are not to leave the harbor until General Dumas comes for them. You there”—he looked straight at André, frowning at the sailor smock— “You’re an officer?”
André nodded. “Yes, Captain Valière.”
“Right, then, come with me.” He paused, once more eyeing André’s bizarre appearance, before adding a perfunctory, “Sir.”
A half dozen other officers were similarly summoned, and the aide guided them away from the beach and up a steep trail no wider than a single man. It seemed to be a goat’s path carved in a meandering fashion through the rock face that hugged the coast of the peninsula. Where they were heading, André did not know.
The day was hot and André was soon sweating through his uniform. His discomfort grew with each step they took away from the beach. Where was the Maltese resistance? The higher they climbed, the more distant the shimmering blue of the Mediterranean became beneath them. Pebbles dislodged by their boots slid down the rocks, falling hundreds of feet below. Who awaited them at the top of this steep climb?
All André knew of the local army, the Knights of Malta, was that they were an ancient order, blessed by Rome since the earliest days of Christianity, and that they had fended off the threat of foreign invasion since the Middle Ages. St. Paul had walked this land, bringing the first words of Christendom with him. He had blessed the Maltese with a special place in the church, and some believed that the Knights guarded the Holy Grail itself, here on this sunlit island named after honey.
Who was this Bonaparte to think that he was somehow the heir to all of this? André wondered.
Eventually the ground leveled, the sea so far beneath them that André could see only rock behind him. All around him, his fellow officers paused. He licked his parched lips, reaching for his canteen to take a sip of water.
“This way now—we cannot stop!” The aide urged them forward; no break for water. A few steps past the end of the goat trail, the path widened, and they followed it in silence. After a tiring march they came upon an open square of cobblestoned alleys and stunning, massive Baroque buildings. Now the men halted in their steps, amazed by the grand scale of the architecture, these structures seemingly dropped down onto the top of a giant rock jutting out of the remote Mediterranean seascape.
A large red flag, inscribed with a white cross, billowed from atop a high, glistening dome. But where were the Knights? The quiet in this city square did more to put André on edge than the sight of an armed horde would have. But as the men stood there, the others seemingly as befuddled as André, he saw not a single armed soldier in Malta’s hillside city. There weren’t even many civilians, from the looks of it; windows were shuttered, doors shut. Several housewives crossed the square, pulling their young ones closer to their sides as they fixed their eyes on this group of foreigners. Two priests filed past, whispering to each other and casting suspicious glances toward André and his companions. And yet, no sign of the renowned Knights of Malta.