Crowner's Crusade (3 page)

The trio went to the rail to join de Wolfe and William de L'Etang, who each gave a quick bow of deference, as Gwyn backed away to a respectful distance, though Richard acknowledged him with a wave and a grin. Aboard ship, with its tight little community cramped together for many weeks, the formalities of the court were greatly relaxed, even more so than during the eighteen-month campaign up and down the Holy Land. Though the Lionheart was a stickler for discipline and etiquette, with moods that swung from light-hearted banter to towering rages, the harshness of life on the battlefield or in the privations of long marches in near-desert conditions, had discouraged a strict adherence to the usual separation between king and subject.

‘Sirs, I'm off to visit de Lusignan!' he shouted robustly. ‘I'll risk my life in that cockleshell down there and trust to those worthy knights to save me if it sinks!'

The small boat pulled alongside and Robert de Turnham clambered down a ladder hanging over the side, closely followed by an agile king. Though he had been quite ill during the past weeks in Acre, a flux of his bowels bringing him very low, Richard now seemed quite recovered and his six foot two of muscular body, with his notably long arms and legs, swung easily over the rail. He shinned down without mishap, but all those clustered along the bulwarks were relieved to see the boat push off safely.

‘Thank God no one was wearing their hauberks,' muttered de Wolfe. A coat of chain mail would send any man straight to the bottom, as the last Holy Roman Emperor had found to his cost after falling from his horse in a Turkish river. No one aboard wore their armour, unless an attack by another hostile ship was anticipated. Even their military monks, the Templars, stuck to their light tunics, as the daytime sun was still hot, even in October. They watched as the boat reached the stone jetty that stuck out from the beach and saw the passengers safely climb ashore. Even at that distance, they could see a reception party, with more Templars forming a strong guard.

As they vanished into the town, John de Wolfe and the other knights settled down to more tedious hours of waiting. Even after only a few days of the voyage, boredom was already the main feature of the journey. Playing chess, cards or dice filled a few hours. Eating and sleeping occupied some of the remainder, together with singing, in which the Lionheart took part lustily, even singing solo, sometimes songs which he had composed himself. Twice a day, the chaplain Anselm held prayers on the main deck, with frequent celebrations of the Mass, where all on board prayed fervently each time for the preservation of their lives on that most dangerous of elements, the sea.

Thankfully, during the first part of the voyage, the calm weather allowed the crew to cook, a charcoal fire being lit in a large iron pan secured on a slab of stone set in the deck. At noon, they would have spit-roasted chicken from the scores of fowls kept in a cage in the forecastle and soon, the enterprising merchants of Limassol were rowing out to the ship to sell fresh meat and fish, as well as bread, wine and a variety of fruits. Another boat provided kegs of fresh water which would keep them and the horses supplied for the next leg of the voyage to Rhodes.

As the day wore on, there was no sign of the king returning and after their dinner of vegetable potage and chicken, de Wolfe, Baldwin, and de L'Etang sat in the shade of the aftercastle, drinking some of the better local wine that they had bought from a bumboat.

‘I wonder what we'll find when we get back?' mused Baldwin. ‘I live too damned near to the lands of Philip Augustus for comfort. He's got his eye on Artois, just as he has on the whole of Normandy.'

The King of France, though nominally overlord of a large area of the country, actually had control of only a relatively small area around Paris and was always seeking ways to enlarge his territory. Now that Richard Coeur de Lion was far away in the east, Philip Augustus was greedily eyeing Artois, which spread up to the coast at Boulogne and also the Vexin, the northern part of Normandy. Though the lands of absent Crusaders were supposed to be inviolate, Philip had tried to get Pope Celestine to lift the protection, but had so far been rebuffed.

‘The same is happening in England,' grunted de Wolfe. ‘His treacherous brother John has been hoping that Richard would never return from the Holy Land. I'll wager he prays every night for him to be struck down by a Saracen arrow or a rampant fever, so that he can take his crown.'

They went again through the catalogue of men who wished the Lionheart ill will, from Philip Augustus and Henry of Germany, through Leopold of Austria to Raymond of Toulouse and the princes of Genoa and Pisa – all the adversaries that were now blocking their pathway home.

The time passed slowly, Gwyn returning to his old profession for a while, as he took to fishing with hook and line over the ship's side. Whether by luck or remembered skill, he landed half a dozen sizeable fish to add to their supper, until in the late afternoon, there was a cry from the lookout up in the barrel lashed to the mast above the spar for the single furled sail.

‘They are coming back, sirs!'

Moving to the rail, they saw a procession coming down the main street to the quayside and soon two boats were being rowed towards the
Franche Nef
, the second carrying a small chest.

Once alongside, King Richard hauled himself aboard and when Robert de Turnham followed him, the admiral turned to the crew and threatened them with horrible tortures if they allowed the treasure box in the second skiff to fall into the sea. When it was safely on the deck, a Templar staggered with it into the king's cabin, as Richard watched them with a satisfied smile.

‘The contents should see us across Europe, gentlemen. Though only God knows how we're going to achieve it!'

T
he voyage onwards to Rhodes was notable only for its tedium. They left Limassol within an hour of the king's return and a favourable wind took them along the south coast of the island. Next morning, they lost sight of land and headed up towards the coast of Asia Minor. When they arrived there, the shipmaster made sure that he could still glimpse the mountains of Anatolia, but kept well offshore, due to the hostility of Byzantium to the Crusaders who had wreaked such damage to their country on the way to Palestine.

They took almost a week to reach the harbour of Emborikos on Rhodes, as the wind had changed and the clumsy ship had to claw its way along by innumerable tacks. Richard refused to go ashore at night and the navigator had to do his best in the dark, when clouds obscured the moon and stars.

John de Wolfe was on duty as the king's guard and companion on one such night, when Richard came up on to the aftercastle. To pass the time, the king seemed inclined to talk for a while. He told John about his abiding interest in ships and how he was convinced that England needed a navy to protect itself, rather than depend on commandeering a few ships when the need arose.

‘I have a mind to establish Portsmouth as a base for my navy when I return. It has an excellent harbour, large enough to assemble a fleet and an army to settle affairs with Philip Augustus!'

John could already see himself part of such an army, even though at almost thirty-nine, he was getting a little old for the rigours of the battlefield. He had fought for Richard's father, old King Henry, in Ireland and various parts of France, before taking the Cross for this campaign in the Holy Land. But what else could he do but soldier on? He had no other profession and the country would be awash with unemployed knights after the end of the Crusade. He diffidently expressed these doubts about his future to the king, who seemed in one of his genial moods this evening.

Richard slapped him on the shoulder and gave him a hearty reassurance. ‘You are a good man, de Wolfe! A faithful subject and a tenacious fighter! I'll always find a place for you somewhere – and for that mad bull of a Cornishman who watches your back so well.'

Swinging away, the king clattered down the ladder to his cabin, leaving a flattered, but rather pensive de Wolfe to lean on the bulwark and stare into the darkness, wondering whether his monarch really would remember him in a few years' time.

They stayed but one day in the harbour of Rhodes, sending Baldwin of Bethune and William de L'Etang ashore to seek the latest news, while more food and fresh water was taken on board. The king stayed in his cabin for most of the time, not wanting to advertise his presence in a crowded port filled with spies from half a dozen countries, though in fact probably every urchin and lemon seller knew that Richard Coeur de Lion was on the ship.

He spent several hours with his clerk, Philip of Poitou, dictating letters that he hoped could be dispatched at their next port of call, Corfu. He was writing to his mother, the elderly but strong-willed Queen Eleanor, to his Chancellor William Longchamp and to Bishop Hubert Walter, as well as duty letters to his wife Berengaria and his sister Joanne.

As soon as they left Rhodes, the king called a meeting of his shipboard council to discuss what Baldwin and de L'Etang had learned ashore. The Sicilian messengers from Tancred had made themselves known to the newcomers and Baldwin relayed their scant information to the council.

‘It is now widely known in the eastern Mediterranean that you are at sea, my lord,' he reported. ‘Philip Augustus has urged everyone who owes him fealty to look out for you and seize you if possible.'

William de L'Etang confirmed this and added that Henry of Germany had alerted those in the Italian peninsula, as he was still preparing to march an army south to Sicily to add the island to his Holy Roman Empire, claiming that Richard had illegally deprived his wife Constance of her right to the Sicilian throne by supporting Tancred.

‘So we have few friends anywhere!' commented the Lionheart. ‘That's not unexpected, but makes it more difficult for us to wriggle our way back to Normandy.'

‘Am I to tell the shipmaster to strike westwards from here to reach Sicily?' asked Robert de Turnham, in his capacity as High Admiral.

The king shook his large head decisively. Normally clean-shaven like most Normans, he had joined the others in letting his hair and beard grow since leaving Acre and now had eleven day's worth of golden fuzz on his face.

‘No, we'll keep to the original plan of stopping at Corfu, where there will be the most up-to-date intelligence from Italy, just across the straits from there. We can decide then what is the best course to take. It might be up into the Adriatic.'

The journey continued and the weather began to worsen, as the season was now far advanced. Suspicious of the reaction of other Byzantine ports in the region, the king and his officers directed the shipmaster to keep to the south of the chain of islands in the Aegean, passing on the horizon Karpathos, Kasos and then the seemingly endless coastline of Crete. The buss wallowed along in worsening weather and any thought of hot food was banished, as no fire could be lit on the rolling deck. As well as Baldwin, the chaplain was seasick for days on end and Philip of Poitou had to lead the prayers, most of which were heartfelt pleas for deliverance from this slow torment. Thankfully, John de Wolfe was a good sailor and of course, Gwyn relished the motion, having spent much of his youth in cockleshells off the Cornish coast.

‘How long d'you think this bad weather will last, Gwyn?' demanded de Wolfe of his squire, as they huddled for shelter under the windward bulwark.

‘What bad weather, Sir John?' asked the ginger giant, with a roguishly innocent expression.

‘There's a bit of a swell, admittedly, but at least the sea is staying where it's supposed to be – outside the ship!'

His reassurance did not last long, as when the
Franche Nef
eventually passed the western end of Crete, the ship began to pitch as well as roll and spray began to fly back from the bow. Within another day, occasional green waves were crashing over the low main deck and streaming out through the scuppers.

‘No sleeping on deck tonight,' said Baldwin mournfully. ‘We share the hold with the horses from now on.'

Below deck, under the large hatch sealed with planks and canvas, twenty horses shared the misery with them. The animals were penned in stalls at each side, the whites of their eyes rolling with terror as the ship plunged along. For a further week, the men tried to sleep as best they could. Some climbed into the diminishing piles of hay that were stacked under the forecastle, others tried to wedge their straw pallets between the crates and casks of the food stores that were lashed down in the centre of the hold.

In the daytime, they staggered up on deck, preferring a wetting from the spray to the stink of horse manure and urine that seeped down to the bilges. Their own sanitary arrangements were little better – a bucket was the usual receptacle, as only the nonchalant crew dared use the ring-shaped wooden seat that was clamped to the bulwarks, hanging over the waves below. For obvious reasons, it was always fixed downwind on the ‘looward' side, from which it got its nickname, ‘the loo seat'.

William de L'Etang stood one day with John and Baldwin at the lee rail, gripping it with dogged determination. ‘I trust someone knows where we are,' he shouted, over the moan of the wind and the soughing of the water as it churned ten feet below them. ‘One bit of the God-blasted sea looks the same as the next!'

Geography was not the strong point of many on board, though the voyage out had given them some notion of the main way-stations. Maps and charts were speculative, outside local coastal waters.

De Wolfe looked out at the empty sea, now that the islands were far behind. ‘I think Greece must be up there somewhere,' he hazarded, waving a hand vaguely northwards.

‘That's cheered me greatly!' muttered William, as seawater swirled about his ankles as the deck tilted rhythmically. It was becoming cooler under a grey sky and they began to miss the comfort of hot food. The previous day, one of the crew attempted to boil them some stew over a brazier of charcoal in a sheltered corner of the deck, but the whole thing was overturned, scalding the man's leg. Thankfully, the large wave that had upset it also flooded over the coals and prevented any conflagration.