Lionheart (36 page)

It was not until Wednesday in Holy Week that the royal fleet was ready to sail, and most of the city turned out for the event, thankful that this foreign army was finally departing but also delighting in this extraordinary spectacle. More than two hundred ships and seventeen thousand soldiers and sailors. Large transport vessels called busses. Naves that relied only upon sails. And the ships that drew all eyes and evoked admiring murmurs from the townspeople—the sleek, deadly war galleys, painted in bright colors, their gunwales hung with shields, the red and gold banners of the English king streaming from their mastheads. The crusade of Richard Coeur de Lion was at last under way.

AFTER SUCH a dramatic departure from Messina, what followed was anticlimactic. The wind died and the fleet found itself becalmed off the coast of Calabria. They were forced to drop anchor and wait. After the sun had set in a blood-red haze, many took comfort from the glow of the lantern placed aloft in Richard’s galley. He’d promised to light it each and every night, a guiding beacon for his ships, reassuring proof of his presence in the midst of the dark, ominous Greek Sea. The next day the winds picked up, but they remained weak and variable, and not much progress was made. Yet so far the voyage had been calm and for that, seventeen thousand souls were utterly thankful.

RICHARD HAD CHOSEN one of the largest busses for Joanna and Berengaria; it was a heavy, cumbersome vessel, but safer than the low-riding galleys. As Good Friday dawned, the fleet sailed on, the swift galleys holding back to keep pace with the slower craft. Determined to keep them all together, Richard kept a sharp eye out for any stragglers—like a sheepdog nipping at the heels of its flock, his men joked. But they welcomed the sound of trumpets echoing from one ship to another, and took heart from the sight of the royal galley cleaving the waves like a battle sword as it led the way toward the Holy Land.

By midmorning, the winds shifted, coming now from the south, and the sea grew choppy. As their buss wallowed in the heavy swells, most of the women were soon stricken with seasickness. To her dismay, Joanna discovered that she was still as susceptible to
mal de mer
as she’d been during her initial sea voyage at the age of eleven. As her suffering intensified, she was groggily grateful to her future sister-in-law; Berengaria never left her side, holding a basin when she had to vomit, wiping the perspiration from her face with a cool, wet cloth, fetching a vial of ginger syrup herself and gently persevering until Joanna had choked it down. The atmosphere in their tent was stifling, the stench enough to roil heaving stomachs, their coffers and trundle beds pitching every time the ship did. Joanna’s dogs were whimpering softly, and she could hear the sobbing of one of Berengaria’s ladies. When she realized that Alicia was huddled by her bed, she tried to put a comforting arm around the girl’s trembling shoulders. But it was then that the deck dropped so steeply that several of the women screamed and Joanna would have been thrown from the bed had Berengaria not grasped her arm and held tight. None of them breathed until the ship righted itself, sure for a terrifying moment that they were plummeting down to their deaths.

“Joanna!” A gust of salt air swept in as Mariam stumbled into the tent. Her face was blanched of all color, and she clutched her pater noster beads so tightly the string had frayed. “The ship’s master . . . he says a bad storm is nigh.”

THE SKY DARKENED long before the rain arrived. It was as if night had come, hours before its time. The crew of Richard’s galley was rushing to lower the sails, tugging on the pulleys that controlled the halyard. All the day’s light had been smothered by sinister storm clouds as black as pitch, and as Richard and his men watched in awe, lightning blazed overhead, casting an eerie green glow over their ship. The sea was tossing and bucking like an unbroken horse, and each time the galley plunged into a trough, it took an eternity until it struggled back up again. Most of Richard’s companions fled to the dubious shelter of their tent, but he had always faced his foes head-on and he remained on deck, clinging for support to the gunwale as the sailors struggled to pull in the oars.

The hours that followed were the most frightening of his life. The waves flung their ship about as if it were a child’s toy; never had he felt so helpless, so at the mercy of forces beyond his control. The helmsman remained at the tiller, jerking it with all of his strength, but it was obvious to Richard that the rudder was not responding. Rain was soon pelting down, stinging with needle-sharpness against his skin; within moments, he was utterly drenched. Water was splashing over the gunwale and the deck was awash. Each time a wave smashed into the hull, it sounded as if millstones were raining down upon them, and the wind was keening like the souls of the damned. Distant peals of thunder were much closer now, and when lightning stabbed through the clouds, he was horrified to see it strike the mast of a nearby galley, half blinding him with a searing flash of blue-white fire. Flames illuminated the doomed ship for a harrowing moment, and then it was gone, swept away into the black void of sea and sky, the drowning men’s screams muffled by the howling wind. Richard did not dare release his hold on the gunwale to make the sign of the cross; closing his eyes, he entreated the Almighty to spare his fleet and his men, offering up a despairing prayer that he not be punished for past sins ere he had the chance to redeem himself in the Holy Land.

The squall was as swift-moving as it was savage, and by evening the wind’s force began to ease and the sea gradually quieted. The sailors recovered first, for they were accustomed to gambling with Death and winning. For those experiencing their first storm at sea, it was not as easy. Richard’s men, their bodies bruised and battered, their stomachs still churning, were too shaken to sleep, and slumped, glassy-eyed and mute, on their soaked bedding, not yet believing their reprieve.

Richard could not sleep, either. He did his best to appear composed, for a battle commander must not show fear before his soldiers. But he did not think his appetite would ever come back, and he found he had no more control over his brain than he’d had over the tempest. He could not forget the faces of the men on that burning galley. Two hundred and nineteen ships. How many of them had survived the storm? How many men had he lost? What of his sister? Berenguela? Surely their buss was sturdy enough to have ridden out the gale? How could it be God’s Will that they perish at sea, alone and afraid?

ALMOST AS IF NATURE were making amends for the Good Friday storm, the winds were favorable the next morning and on the four days that followed. By Wednesday, April 17, a dawn flight of birds and seaweed in the water alerted the sailors that they were approaching land. When the ship’s master informed Richard that the island of Crete lay ahead, Richard gave the order to put ashore there.

The southwest coast of Crete was exposed to southerly winds and sudden squalls sweeping down from the mountains, so the fleet had to seek shelter on the island’s northwest coast, finally dropping anchor in the Gulf of Chandax. Richard then dispatched Guilhem de Préaux in a small galley called a “sagitta,” with orders to count their ships as they straggled in, to see if any were missing and if any were in need of storm repairs. After that, he settled down to do what he found most difficult—wait.

The sun was flaming out in spectacular fashion when Jaufre of Perche was rowed over to the king’s galley. He found Richard studying maps of Rhodes and Cyprus, which had been designated as rendezvous ports in case the fleet was scattered at sea. Refusing an offer of cheese and bread, Jaufre confessed that the mere sight of food would be enough to make him sprint for the gunwale and begin feeding the fish. He did accept a cup of wine, though, saying, only half in jest, that he’d heard Crete was a fine place, and if his men began to desert, he’d be sorely tempted to join them.

“I was told that the mountain we saw as we approached the coast is midway between Messina and Acre,” Richard said. “But if I thought the second half of the journey would be as accursed as the first half, I might consider starting life anew in Crete myself. You may have been better off sailing with Philippe, Jaufre. At the least, you’d be approaching the Holy Land by now, with the worst of the voyage behind you.”

“I’ve no regrets about that,” Jaufre said noncommittally. He’d never discussed with Richard the reasons for his defection, but the English king had not been surprised by his decision, for he’d seen the look of shock on Jaufre’s face during that chapel confrontation with Philippe. It had taken courage, though, to defy his king, and Richard intended to bestow enough favors upon Jaufre and Richenza to compensate for Philippe’s hostility.

“Besides,” Jaufre added with a smile, “if I’d sailed with Philippe, I’d not have been in Messina for your lady mother’s arrival and I’d not have gotten her news—that my wife gave birth to a healthy son last September. My father will be overjoyed when he hears, for this is his first grandchild.”

Jaufre’s father had been at the siege of Acre for the past year. Seeing the genuine pleasure on the young man’s face, Richard was surprised to find himself envying the bond that obviously existed between the count and his son. He did not often think of his turbulent relationship with his own father, for he’d never been one to dwell upon past regrets. Mayhap it was because he’d come so close to death during that Good Friday storm, he decided. He’d certainly had his share of narrow escapes on the battlefield, but a man fighting for his life did not have time for fear. “My father liked to boast that he’d never gotten seasick in all those Channel crossings, but I wonder how he’d have fared—” He broke off, then, for he’d heard the shouting that heralded Guilhem de Préaux’s return.

Plunging from the tent, with Jaufre right at his heels, Richard was waiting on deck as a ladder was lowered into Guilhem’s smaller vessel. Scrambling aboard, he gave the king a look of such misery that Richard’s mouth went suddenly dry.

“My news is not good, my lord. Twenty-five of our ships are missing.”

There were gasps from the men gathered around to hear Guilhem’s report. Richard spat out a savage oath, profane enough to impress even the tough-talking sailors. But when Guilhem looked away, no longer meeting his eyes, Richard knew worse was to come. “What else?” he said hoarsely. “Hold nothing back.”