Lionheart (39 page)

THEIR FIFTH MORNING at Cyprus dawned in a sunrise of breathtaking beauty, pale gold along the horizon, and a rich, deep red above as clouds drifted into the sun’s flaming path; for a timeless moment, it looked as if the earth itself were afire. Then as if by magical sleight of hand, the vivid colors disappeared and the sky took on the same brilliant blue as the foam-crested waves below, the clouds now gliding along like fleecy white swans in a celestial sea. Enticing scents wafted out into the bay, the fragrances of flowers and oranges and sandalwood, the sweet balm of land, almost irresistible to people trapped in seagoing gaols, ships they’d come to hate for the fetid smells and lack of privacy and constant rolling and pitching, even at anchor. This Sunday gave promise of being a day of surpassing loveliness and Joanna hated it, caught up in a sense of foreboding so strong that she could almost taste it. Something terrible was going to happen today.

She had not long to wait before her premonition took tangible shape and form: five large ebony galleys. At first some of the others had been excited by the lookout’s shout, but they soon realized that these galleys came from the wrong direction, from the east. They anchored close to shore and several armor-clad men embarked in small boats, on their way to confer with the man who commanded these deadly instruments of war.

Within the hour, Isaac’s envoy was making his by-now familiar voyage out to their ship. This time, his little boat did not anchor, the men resting on their oars as he shouted across the water. Petros chewed on his lower lip, mumbling the message, as if that could somehow make it less than what it was—an ultimatum. “He says the emperor is done with waiting. He insists that you come ashore today. The lackey added the usual blather about hospitality, but he did not even try to make it sound convincing. What do I tell him, my lady?”

Joanna plucked at Stephen’s sleeve and they drew away from the rail, joined after a moment by the ship’s master. “Tell me the truth,” she said. “It is obvious they mean to take us by force if we do not agree. Can they do that?”

While her question was ostensibly directed at Stephen, it was really for the master to answer. Staring across the bay at those predatory beaked galleys, he said glumly, “Yes, I fear that they can. We do not have enough water to venture out into the open sea. And even if we did, the winds today are light and variable. We’d not be able to outrun them. I am not saying they’d have an easy time of it. A lot of men would die. But they’d likely be able to take the ship.”

Joanna looked from one man to the other. “So we yield or we fight and lose. I do not like either of those choices. Find me another one,” she said tautly, and they stared at her in wary surprise, suddenly remembering that this woman was the daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine, the sister of the Lionheart. Turning away, she returned to the rail. “Tell him, Petros, that we will be honored to accept the emperor’s kind offer of shelter. We will have need of a doctor, for the Lady Berengaria is ill. But I think she will be well enough on the morrow for us to leave the ship for the emperor’s palace in Limassol.”

The man in the boat frowned, insisting that the emperor wanted them to come ashore today, claiming that a storm was brewing and they’d be safer on land. But when Joanna repeated her promise to disembark the next morning, he was forced to settle for that. The ship’s passengers watched in silence as he was rowed back toward the beach. Joanna closed her eyes for a moment, blocking out the sinister sight of those galleys, their sails as red as blood. Looking over then at Stephen and the master, she said, “I’ve bought us some time. Now it is up to you to make the most of it.”

They eventually came up with a third option, although it, too, was fraught with peril. They would try to slip out of the bay under cover of darkness that night and head for the island’s northern coast. There were sheltered coves where they could take refuge, and with luck, it might take Isaac a while to track them down. The winds would have to be favorable, though. And even if they succeeded in slipping out of this trap, they risked another danger. What if the king’s fleet arrived and found them gone? Limassol was the designated port; he’d not think to look for them on the other side of the island. Since it was still a better choice than surrendering, it was agreed upon, and Stephen sent their boat over to Hugh’s buss to let them know what was planned. Meanwhile, men continued to work on the beach barricade, more armed guards appeared to keep watch on the two ships, and the five galleys rode easily at anchor, sea wolves awaiting the word to attack.

Never had a day passed so slowly. The men occupied themselves with their weapons, sharpening their swords on whetstones and replacing the strings of their crossbows. But for the women, there was nothing to do but gaze out hopelessly at that vast, empty sea. When Joanna found Alicia weeping soundlessly in a corner of the tent, she felt remorse stab her as sharply as any dagger’s blade. Gathering the girl to her, she dried Alicia’s tears with her sleeve. “I am so sorry, Alicia. I ought to have insisted that you remain in Sicily, I ought to . . .”

“No.” Alicia clung tightly, but her voice had steadied. “I want to be with you.” Joanna did the only thing she could and sat with the child, stroking her blond braids as she tried not to think what might befall Alicia and the other women if they ended up in Isaac Comnenus’s power. She thought she and Berengaria could reasonably expect to be safe from molestation; damaged goods were worthless in trade. But who would protect Mariam and Beatrix and Hélène and Alicia?

The sun was slowly sliding into the sea when Berengaria found Joanna standing at the rail, watching as the waves took on delicate tints of rose and lavender. For a time they stood in silence. “When we were in Bagnara,” Joanna said at last, “my mother told me something my father had once said to her, that kings play chess with the lives of other men. So do queens, Berengaria, so do queens. . . .”

“I have faith that all will be well for us, Joanna.” Berengaria was not sure if she still believed that, for this terrible sea voyage had not been what she’d expected when her father promised her to the English king. So much had gone wrong. It was almost as if the Almighty had turned His Face away from them. But true faith did not waver when tested. If she yielded to despair, she’d be failing her God, herself, and the man she’d pledged to wed. “I am sure of that,” she said, with all the conviction at her command, and Joanna managed a shadowy smile, thankful that her brother had chosen a woman of courage for his wife.

A sudden shout turned all eyes toward the rigging, where a sailor had been perched all day. Straddling the mizzenmast, he leaned over so far that he seemed in danger of losing his balance. “I see a sail to the west!”

It seemed to take forever before those on deck could see it, too, a large ship skimming the waves, its sails billowing out like canvas clouds. When the lookout yelled that there were two ships, excitement swept the buss, for with these reinforcements, surely they could fend off Isaac’s galleys? Men were laughing and slapping one another on the back, sailors scrambling up into the rigging to get a better view, and Joanna’s dogs began to bark, hoarsely, as if they’d forgotten how. “You see,” Berengaria said, with a beatific smile. “God does hear our prayers.”

“Yes, He does,” Joanna agreed, for it would have been churlish to quibble with salvation. But she could not banish the question from her mind as she could from her lips.
Where was the fleet? Where was Richard?

It happened with such suddenness that men were not sure at first if they could trust their senses. There was nothing to the west but sea and sky and those two ships tacking against the wind. And then the horizon was filled with sails, stretching as far as the eye could see. A moment of stunned disbelief gave way almost at once to pandemonium, and for the rest of their lives, there would be men who vowed they’d never experienced an emotion as overwhelming as the joy of deliverance on a May Sunday off the coast of Cyprus.

The sharp-eyed sailors spotted it first. “The
Sea-Cleaver
! The king’s galley!” But Richard’s women needed to see it for themselves, scarcely breathing until it came into focus, looking like a Norse long-ship, its hull as red as the sunset, its sails catching the wind, and streaming from its masthead the banner emblazoned with the royal lion of England.

Berengaria found it hard to tear her gaze away from the sight of that blessed galley. “It is like a miracle, Joanna,” she said in awe, “that he should reach us in our hour of greatest need.”

Joanna gave a shaken laugh. “Richard has always had a talent for making a dramatic entrance, but he has outdone himself with this one!”

AS SOON AS RICHARD swung himself up onto the deck, Joanna took a backward step to make sure the first one he greeted was Berengaria. She needn’t have worried, though. For once, the younger woman’s Spanish reserve was forgotten and she flung herself into Richard’s arms. He embraced Joanna next, and then Berengaria again, this time bending her backward in a kiss that seared like a brand and left her flushed and breathless. But when he really looked at Joanna, his own breath hissed through his teeth and his hand clamped onto her arm hard enough to hurt. “Jesu, Joanna!”

“I do not feel as wretched as I look,” she assured him hastily. “Truly I am on the mend. But where were you, Richard? We were half out of our minds with worry!”

“We ended up having to spend ten days in Rhodes, waiting for the missing ships to straggle in. I sent out galleys to look for our lost sheep, and that took time,” he said with a quick smile. He’d also been stricken with a recurrence of the malarial fever that had plagued him for years, but he saw no reason to mention that since he preferred to deal with his illnesses by ignoring them if possible. “We finally sailed on last Wednesday and would have been here earlier had we not encountered a storm in the Gulf of Satalea. We were actually blown backward by the winds.”

Even as he was speaking, his gaze had shifted past the women to the barricaded beach and the stark evidence that ships had run aground. “Not all of my fleet is with me, but it looks as if I got here just in time. What is going on?”

He’d directed that last question toward Stephen de Turnham, but Stephen had taken Joanna’s measure by now and he deferred politely to her. “Three of our ships sank after being blown onto the rocks, and one of the men drowned was your vice chancellor,” Joanna said sadly, knowing that would grieve him. “That buss is Hugh de Neville’s. He and Stephen have been a godsend, Richard, doing all they could to keep us safe under very difficult circumstances.”

His eyes had narrowed. “Tell me about those ‘difficult circumstances.’”

They did, Joanna now the one to defer to Stephen when it came to describing the struggle to free their men. Richard listened in ominous silence, then summoned Roger de Harcourt to get a firsthand account of their imprisonment. He even called Petros over to question him about what he’d seen in Amathus. And then he moved over to the gunwale, stood for a time staring at the beach and those low-riding Greek galleys. When he turned back to the other men, there was a universal sense of relief that this lethal rage was not directed at any of them.

“It takes great courage to maltreat half-drowned shipwreck survivors and to threaten defenseless women. But now we will see how Isaac likes dealing with me.”

CHAPTER 16

MAY 1191

Akrotiri Bay, Cyprus

The women’s buss dared to venture closer to shore after the arrival of the royal fleet. Blessed with calmer waters and no longer fearful of the Cypriot emperor’s treacherous intentions, they enjoyed their first night’s peaceful sleep since the Good Friday storm. So they were still abed the next morning when Alicia darted into their tent, exclaiming that they must come out on deck straightaway. Making themselves presentable in record haste, they emerged into the white-gold sunlight, only to halt in shock, for the bay was afloat with small boats, all heading toward the barricaded beach.

Stephen de Turnham’s knights were lined up along the gunwale, watching and cheering as if they were spectators at a game of camp-ball. Stephen himself was in a far more somber mood. He turned at once, though, to greet Joanna and Berengaria with deference and, in response to their alarmed questions, he answered concisely and candidly.

“The king sent two of his knights and an armed escort ashore at dawn, along with a man fluent in Greek, for he’d prudently thought to ask Tancred for a translator. They carried a message to Isaac, seeking redress for the harm done to his shipwrecked men, who’d been robbed as well as imprisoned. They soon returned, reporting that they thought Isaac must be mad, for his response was an amazingly rash one to make to a justly aggrieved king with an army at his command. They said he blustered and ranted, insisting that a mere king had no right to make demands upon an emperor. When they asked if that was truly his reply, he spat out a one-word Greek oath. Tancred’s man was not sure how to translate it into French, but he said it was highly insulting. When this was told to our king, he showed that he could be just as terse as Isaac. His response: ‘To arms!’”

Joanna and Berengaria shared the same conflicted emotion, pride in Richard warring with concern for his safety. Joining Stephen at the gunwale, Joanna soon noticed his tension; he’d kept his eyes on the shore even while answering their questions, one hand clasping and unclasping the sword hilt at his hip, almost as if acting of its own volition. “It must be hard for you,” she said sympathetically, “having to stand guard over us instead of taking part in the invasion.”

He acknowledged her perception with a crooked smile. “I cannot deny, Madame, that if I’d had my choice, I’d be at my king’s side, especially here, especially now.”

“Is this so dangerous, then?” she asked in a low voice and when he nodded, she felt a chill that not even the sun’s sultry heat could vanquish. “Can you tell me why, Sir Stephen? And please, treat me as you would a man and answer me truthfully.”

“No one would ever mistake you for a man, my lady,” he said, with a surprise flash of gallantry. “But I will honor your courage with the honesty you seek. The king is attempting one of the most dangerous and difficult of military actions—landing upon an unfamiliar beach occupied by an enemy army on their own ground. Our men are not at their best, not after so much time at sea, and those skiffs and snekas offer little protection from the Cypriot crossbowmen.”

“Are you saying that they will be defeated?”

“Indeed not, my lady!” He sounded genuinely affronted. “We will prevail, for I trust in the Almighty and King Richard. But men will die this day and there will be sights not suitable for female eyes. It might be best if you and your ladies retire to the tent until the fighting is over.”

Joanna took him at his word and bade Hélène take Alicia back into the tent, much to the girl’s distress. But she did not follow, for she could not believe that an All-Merciful God would allow her brother to die before her eyes. While there was a corner of her mind that recognized the lack of logic in such a conviction, she did not let herself acknowledge it. If she stayed out on deck, she’d be assuring his safety.

Her throat closed up, though, when she saw the Cypriot galleys raise anchor, for how could the small landing craft fend off those sinister sea wolves? Stephen seemed to read her mind, for he pointed out that the first rows of their boats were filled with crossbowmen and archers. She saw that he was right, and as soon as the enemy galleys went on the attack, Richard’s arbalesters unleashed a withering fire. Joanna had often heard men claim that they’d seen the sky darken as arrows took flight, but she’d always dismissed it as hyperbole—until now. The men on the galleys were shooting back, and she watched in horror as bodies fell into the bay, the bright blue water taking on a red tinge where they splashed and sank. But the crossbowmen in the skiffs were coordinating their attacks; as men loosed their bolts, they ducked down to reload while the second row rose to take aim. The result was that arrows and bolts were smashing into the galleys in waves, one right after another, giving the men no chance to reload their own weapons. The knights on Joanna’s ship were cheering wildly now. She was slower to understand. It was not until several men jumped into the sea to evade the lethal bolts raining down upon them that she realized the galleys had been effectively taken out of the action.

For a moment she forgot that men were dying, feeling only a fierce surge of pride. “Stephen, they are winning!” Getting a more measured response from him, a “Not yet. But we will.”

There was such confusion and dismay on the beach that it was obvious its defenders had been expecting the galleys to wreak havoc with the small boats of the invading force. But when Richard’s crossbowmen and archers now turned their fire upon them, they hastily retreated to their wooden barricade and began to shoot back. Once again the sun seemed to dim behind clouds of shafted death. Even to Joanna’s untutored eye, it appeared as if the men in boats were making no progress toward shore, the skiffs wallowing in the surf. Turning toward Stephen, she saw her own apprehension mirrored on his face. Gripping the gunwale until his knuckles whitened, he leaned forward, his body rigid, and she realized that victory hung in the balance.

“Stephen, what if . . . what if they cannot land?”

“He’ll not let that happen,” he insisted, just as the knights began to shout and pump their fists in the air. Joanna squinted to see, half blinded by the glare of sun on water. One of the snekas had shot through a gap between boats, its crew straining at the oars as it headed straight for the beach. Joanna gasped, her eyes locking upon the armed and helmeted figure standing in the prow, unable to choke back a muffled protest as he jumped from the boat into the water and began to wade through the shallows toward shore. All around her, men were yelling, cursing, laughing. Her courage finally failing her, she spun around and buried her face in Stephen’s shoulder, not even aware of what she did, knowing only that she could not bear to watch her brother die.

“You need not fear, my lady. They are following him. Look for yourself!”

Stephen had expected to see tears streaking her face. When she raised her head, though, her eyes were dry. But they were still filled with fear as she turned back toward the beach. “Blessed Mother Mary,” she breathed, for Stephen was right; dozens of knights had leapt from their skiffs, heedless of their armor, and were splashing after their king. Richard had already reached the shore. If he was aware of his vulnerability in that moment, he gave no indication of it, raising his shield to deflect arrows and then swinging around to confront the armed rider bearing down upon him. Joanna’s mouth was too dry for speech. She heard a woman’s scream behind her, and for an anguished moment, her eyes and Berengaria’s caught and held. When she dared to look again, a riderless horse was rearing up, a body lay crumpled at Richard’s feet, and the sand was rapidly turning red. By now his knights were scrambling onto the beach, and when Richard charged toward the barricades, they raced to catch up with him, flashes of light reflecting off raised swords and shields, shouting like madmen.

Stephen glanced at Berengaria, who was clinging to the rail as if her knees could no longer support her, and he blamed himself for not insisting that she retreat to the tent, for he thought she would have been more biddable than Joanna, more likely to have heeded him. Women were not meant to see bloodshed. As little as he liked to criticize his king, they ought not to be here at all. “The worst is over now,” he said calmly. “The king won his victory as soon as he set foot upon the beach.”

“How can you be so sure? They have much larger numbers. Even I can see that.”

He was surprised by the steadiness of Berengaria’s voice, but pleased, too, for he knew she’d have need in Outremer for all the strength she could muster. “It matters for naught if we’re outnumbered, my lady. We know more of war than they do.”

Stephen proved to be an accurate seer. The hand-to-hand combat on the beach was fierce but brief, and the emperor’s men were soon in flight, with Richard’s knights in close pursuit. The rest of his boats were landing now, some of the soldiers pausing to loot the bodies of the slain before climbing over the broken barricade and disappearing from sight. Several ships had already corralled the drifting Cypriot galleys, sailors nimbly leaping onto the bloodied decks and flinging anchors over the side. Joanna averted her gaze as they began to dump bodies overboard, and Berengaria shuddered.

“Will it be like this in the Holy Land?” she asked, and Joanna had no answer for her.

IN MIDAFTERNOON, Richard sent word to Stephen that he was to bring the women ashore. They discovered, though, that it was much more difficult to leave the ship than it had been to board it, for they’d been able to cross a gangplank from the dock to the deck in Messina and now they had to be lowered into a sagitta, which rode so low in the water that they were soon drenched with spray and Joanna had to fight off a recurrence of nausea in the pitching, rolling waves. They were not rowed toward the beach at Amathus, Stephen explaining that Limassol lay a few miles to the east, and it was there that they’d find shelter. Even though it meant a longer trip in that accursed small galley, the women were glad to be spared the sight of Amathus, where the fighting had occurred. They’d already seen more bodies in one day than they’d expected to see in their entire lifetimes.

Limassol was a small town of undistinguished appearance—houses of sundried brick, dusty, deserted streets, no signs of life. It looked forlorn, abandoned, and above all, vulnerable, for it lacked walls, although it did have a paltry, neglected citadel at the mouth of the River Garyllis. But Limassol also looked peaceful, and for that they were thankful. Isaac’s self-proclaimed palace could not begin to compare with the royal palaces in Palermo and Messina. After almost four weeks at sea, it still seemed like paradise to the women, and they set about exploring it with zest, laughing at the antics of the dogs, for they had yet to regain their landlegs, and exclaiming in delight when they discovered fruit trees in the courtyard. They also found two servants cowering behind a wall hanging. Fortunately, Joanna had thought to bring Petros along. He’d been sulking, unhappy that Richard had chosen to rely upon Tancred’s interpreter. Being asked to communicate with these terrified girls cheered him up considerably, and he was successful in reassuring them that these “barbarian women” would treat them well. They scurried away and returned with flagons of wine, bread, figs, olives, dates, goat cheese, and oranges. Joanna’s appetite had yet to return, but the others fell upon the food with gusto, marveling that their prospects could have improved so dramatically in just one day.

A twilight sky had shaded from violet to plum when Jaufre and Morgan arrived, sent by Richard to make sure the women were safely settled in. They were in high spirits, eager to share stories of the day’s events. By now Joanna understood that men were often euphoric in the aftermath of battle, but it was a learning experience for Berengaria, who was bewildered that they could shrug off death and bloodshed with such apparent ease.

Isaac’s men had scattered like chickens when a hawk flies overhead, they reported gleefully, and Richard had turned Amathus over to his soldiers as their reward. Not that there was much worth taking; Amathus had once been an important city back when the Persians and the Romans ruled Cyprus, yet it was a pitiful place today, a ghost of its former greatness. Some of the knights had hoped to find better pickings in Limassol, they admitted. But there were large communities here of foreign merchants from the Italian city-states of Genoa and Venice, and they’d greeted the king like a liberator. So Richard had ordered that it not be sacked.

Neither man could remember when he’d last eaten, so they finished the food as they told the women how they’d pursued the fleeing Griffons through Amathus and into the hills beyond. At one point the king had even encountered Isaac himself and challenged him to combat. But the tyrant had run for his life, they chortled, whilst Richard fumed that he had no horse to give chase. Then he spotted a pack horse and vaulted onto its back. It did not even have proper stirrups, just hemp cords, and he had no chance of catching Isaac, who was mounted upon a handsome dun stallion, said to be faster than a lightning bolt. When they continued to dwell upon the attributes of this wonderful horse, Joanna finally had to interrupt, asking the one question that mattered. Where was Richard and could they expect to see him that evening?