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The Knights of St. John are fortifying Malta in preparation for the Turkish assault, and they've heard of Matthias. Knowing his experience, they resolve to recruit him despite the fact that he no longer adheres to the faith of his fathers or his one-time captors.
Two women, Countess Carla La Penautier and her attendant Amparo, have been trying to reach Malta in order to search for the son taken from the Countess at birth. The Knights, who had denied their previous requests for passage, decide to use the women to convince Tannhauser to come. And so the plot really begins. Tannhauser and his English friend Bors arrive on Malta with the two women, just ahead of the enormous Turkish fleet.
The siege of Malta began in the third week of May with the arrival of one of the largest armadas assembled in that age. It wouldn't end until the ninth of September. The Knights of St. John were commanded by Jean La Vallette, a military mind tactically well ahead of his time. More than seventy years old and white-bearded, both feared and respected, he was said to match the most rabid Muslims in fanaticism. The knights called themselves "The Religion" (one of those resonant details that get under a novelist's skin, becoming the germ of a book). They originated as hospitallers in Jerusalem and had so distinguished themselves in the First Crusade that they received their own military charter from the Church. Eventually driven out of Jerusalem, they took possession of Rhodes. There they became sea-faring knights, pirates to every Muslim, who called them "the Hounds of Hell." Provoked, Suleiman sacked Rhodes in 1522. La Vallette was present and learned much from the defeat.
The Knights struggled to find a new home. They were sovereign unto themselves, wealthy nobles accountable to no government. This made them of questionable value in the early modern world. Why would anyone endow them with land without certain allegiance in return? But eventually they acquired Malta and immediately began fortification. It wasn't long before their galleys were once again strangling Turkish trade, and La Vallette knew what they were provoking.
The size of the sultan's force varies from account to account. But in every version, it is enormous: hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of trained fighting men. The Knights held multiple fortifications with a total of nine thousand men, primarily Maltese commoners.
Willocks truly and meticulously captures the progression and feel of such a horrific siege. Before taking up The Religion, I decided to read a small—and excellent—military history (The Great Siege: Malta 1565, by Ernle Bradford), from which it's clear that Willocks has managed to seamlessly weave his plot through the timeline of actual events, vividly enfleshing what such action must have looked and felt like to a defender in this strange conflict: a war with castles, galleys, armor, long-rifle snipers, trenches, cavalry, heavy artillery, and early flame-throwers. He also effectively humanizes both sides of the conflict, sending Tannhauser out into the Turkish ranks, putting faces and fears on the attackers as well as the attacked.
While The Religion is extremely effective historical fiction, Willocks needlessly overspices his tension. The siege of Malta is tangled and riveting all on its own: a climactic battle between two great religions, a finale to the Crusades, action that functionally prevented the Med from becoming a "Turkish lake." Add to this a protagonist who was Christian as a boy, Muslim as a man, and is now lost somewhere in the middle. Tannhauser has loyalties and loves both inside and outside the walls, and Willocks plays on such tensions effortlessly as we watch the character attempt simple egoism in order to stay both sane and alive. Thus far the trials are focused and gripping. Add the motive for his presence on the island—the search for the Countess' son—and a political struggle with the boy's father, and an existential struggle (Tannhauser finds himself praying easily to Allah and/or the Christian God and moved to spiritual love by music), and still Willocks manages to keep his action and narrative focused.
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