Free Sign of the Cross by Thomas Mogford Page B

someone about to –’
    Spike cleared his throat. ‘I think we’re sitting down.’
    As soon as the Baron began to move, Rufus clambered to his feet. ‘Michael’s offered to help with the wake.’
    ‘That’s very kind,’ Spike said to the Baron as he passed.
    ‘The least I can do.’
    ‘Gentlemen?’ came the Baroness’s soprano voice.
    The dining room gave onto another side of the courtyard. Four places had been laid at the end of a long, cherrywood table. Between them sat a decanter of red wine and a tureen heated by tea lights.
    ‘Rufus?’ the Baroness said, drawing out a chair at the head.
    Above, flickering in the candlelight, hung a more recent portrait of the Baron. He stood somewhat awkwardly, arms concealed by black robes. Stitched to the front of his garment was a white, eight-pointed Maltese cross.
    The Baroness followed Rufus’s gaze. ‘Somewhat vulgar, but we do have a duty to support our local artists.’
    Rufus sat down. ‘When did you join the order?’ he said, looking at the Baron.
    ‘Last year.’
    ‘And about time too,’ the Baroness added, reaching over to the tureen, ‘given how much charitable work Michael does. Not to mention the business he has brought to these islands, at no personal benefit to himself.’
    As if in confirmation of this, she raised the lid to reveal a humble dish of baked pasta. ‘Clara’s speciality,’ she said, spooning some steaming penne onto Rufus’s plate. ‘She’s more an Italian Maltese than a British.’
    Silence weighed on the table.
    ‘So you’re a knight, then?’ Spike said.
    The Baron smiled modestly. ‘Only in the modern sense.’
    ‘Which is?’
    The Baron did not need to be asked twice. ‘To understand the modern,’ he said in the tones of the practised after-dinner speaker, ‘first we must return to the past.’ He launched into an indulgent history of the Order of St John, ‘the oldest chivalric order in the world’ – its origin as a pilgrims’ hospital in Jerusalem in 1099, its militarisation during the Crusades, its eviction from the Holy Land after the fall of Jerusalem, a stint on Rhodes before finally being awarded Malta in 1530. This had been a gift from the Spanish Emperor, Charles V, after the knights’ earlier struggles against the infidel, granted at a rent of two Maltese hunting falcons a year, one for the Viceroy of Sicily, one for the Emperor himself. ‘A prescient move,’ the Baron said proudly, ‘as of course the knights went on to win the Great Siege of 1565, so repelling the Ottomans and saving the whole of Christendom from Islamic domination.’
    Rufus gave a snort. ‘Saviours of Christendom in 1565. Of Europe in World War II –’
    ‘So what exactly is a knight?’ Spike said, cutting him off.
    The Baron looked sharply at Rufus, then resumed. ‘The Knights of St John were chosen from the great Catholic families of Europe. There were three hundred or so living on Malta at any one time, and they clustered together according to their nationalities, or “langues” – French, German, English, Spanish, Italian, et cetera. Each nationality had its own “auberge”, or inn, from where they administered the islands – the Italians took care of shipping, the French the hospital, and so on. A bit like an early European Commission, I always say.’
    I’ll bet you do, Spike thought.
    ‘By the time Napoleon captured Malta in 1798,’ the Baron went on, ‘the knights had grown decadent. The gunpowder they’d stored against future Turkish attacks had become rotten. The strength of Europe had increased, so their role as protectors of the Catholic Church was no longer relevant. They put up minimal resistance, and were expelled, after which the British were forced to free Malta from French tyranny, so giving us our 150 happy years as part of the British Empire, before independence arrived in 1964.’
    ‘So the knights vanished?’ Spike said.
    ‘Not exactly. They no longer had a home, so they splintered. The