Standard of Honor

TWO

On the tenth day of April 1191, which happened to fall that year on the Thursday of Holy Week, Sir Henry St. Clair, enjoying the lift of a ship’s deck beneath his feet, was prepared to believe he might yet make a sailor out of himself. The sky was clear, cerulean blue, the sea beneath the hull was smooth and calm, and a gentle wind, just strong enough to fill the sails above and behind him, seemed to herd King Richard’s gigantic fleet in front of it like a flock of sheep. Perhaps half a mile away across open water from where he stood at the prow of King Richard’s personal warship, a line of sixty-four ships spread out to each side, seeming to fill the sea from horizon to horizon, and yet he knew that they were but a tiny portion of the King’s fleet. The vessel on which he himself stood, a long, sleek galley flying the royal standard of England and powered by both sail and oars, was one of a sub-fleet of ten identical warships that was King Richard’s maritime pride and joy. All ten had been built to exacting specifications designed jointly by Richard himself and Sir Robert de Sablé, Master of the Fleet.

Engineered from the outset as fighting ships, each of the ten galleys had been built to be self-sufficient. Each carried thirteen anchors, in anticipation of sudden, severe, and perhaps even frequent need to cut and run, and in addition each carried three spare rudders, a spare sail, and a crew of fifteen men, commanded by a captain or master. Each one also carried thirty oars and three complete sets of ropes and rigging, and provided accommodation for a hundred heavily armed men and their equipment. They were long, slender craft, each of them fronted with a pointed spur on the prow for ramming the enemy, and they were propelled by two rows of oars. They had been built to ride low in the water, yet to have enough strength and resilience to handle high seas without difficulty. Fast, versatile, and predatory, their primary purpose was the defense of the remainder of the huge fleet.

Caught in a vicious storm the previous month, on the first leg of their long voyage from Dartmouth to Lisbon, the ten vessels had been scattered and one of them had been lost. Now five of the remaining nine, including the King’s own ship, formed the eighth and rearmost rank of the fleet of two hundred and nineteen fully laden ships, transporting Richard’s entire army to Outremer. The other four were ranging freely, chivying the lines of ships ahead. The sixty-four vessels directly ahead of the rear line formed the seventh rank, and six more lines stretched out ahead of that, beyond Henry’s vision, each line narrower and containing fewer vessels until the first of them, the vanguard, held only three massive and impressive ships called dromons, slow and at times ungainly, but sturdy and always dependable—seaworthy was a word Sir Henry had heard applied to them with great respect by Robert de Sablé.

Henry had been told that could one have soared above it like a bird, their formation would have appeared as a gigantic triangle upon the surface of the Mediterranean. It was possibly the largest accumulation of warships ever assembled since the time of the Trojan Wars.

Behind him, Sir Henry could hear the King’s voice raised in raillery, and he found it easy to imagine the strained, uncertain smiles on the faces of Robert de Sablé and the other officers of the fleet clustered around the monarch on the rear deck. He counted himself fortunate not to be part of the gathering. Although things appeared to be going well this day, no one, every man in that group knew, could afford to place a wager on how long the relative calm would last. Richard had been like a raging bear for nigh on two weeks now, ever since the thirtieth of March, when Philip Augustus had thrown a tantrum, ostensibly outraged at the possibility of accidentally finding himself face to face with the woman Berengaria, “the bovine Navarrean slut,” as he called her, who had “compromised and dispossessed his little sister, Alaïs.” That Berengaria had never met or known his sister and had had nothing remotely to do with Alaïs’s years-long fall from grace was immaterial to Philip, who was simply indulging himself, giving free rein to his petulance and jealousy. But at the height of his dudgeon, his passions fueled by his own fulminations, he had confounded everyone by issuing orders to summon his Venetian fleet, which was waiting offshore, and then to marshal and embark the full complement of his French and allied forces. He had then set sail for the Holy Land without a word to anyone outside his own circle, and without consulting his English colleague and co-leader.

Richard, taken by surprise like everyone else, had had no other choice than to react as the situation demanded, abandoning whatever plans he had been working on and issuing orders of his own to marshal his troops and proceed with their embarkation as quickly as possible. The alternative, doing nothing and thus leaving Philip to do as he wished, entering Outremer as the savior of Jerusalem at his own pace and under his own conditions, was simply unthinkable. Now that the German King-Emperor Barbarossa was dead, there could be but one savior of Jerusalem: Richard Plantagenet.

And so the English King’s mobilization had proceeded from disorder to chaos, unexpectedly begun and poorly organized thereafter despite all Robert de Sablé’s experience and expertise in such things. For days nothing had appeared to go smoothly and no one appeared to function with laudable distinction: ships had been loaded and manned and then unloaded again because of uneven ballast or improper provisioning—a lack of properly laden and stowed water, or the omission of sufficient food and stores to keep crew, soldiers, and livestock fed for as long as was required. The harbor of Messina and all the tiny coves and inlets up and down the coast for miles in both directions had been reduced to conditions of utter chaos for days on end, with proliferating traffic difficulties that gave way to other, fresher problems as they themselves were resolved.

Eventually, however, order had been returned to the fleet, and on this Holy Thursday morning they had finally set sail, the entire panoply of the fleet afloat presenting a spectacle of splendor to the awestruck Sicilians who lined the cliff tops to watch them sail away. God and His saints had smiled on the English host throughout the day of departure, and now, having taken up their individual positions in relation to the whole fleet, the two hundred and nineteen ships of Richard’s force had been sailing south and east for the better part of an entire day, under the sailing orders compiled and distributed throughout the fleet by Sir Robert de Sablé. The following day would be Good Friday, and Sir Robert had estimated that they should drop anchor off Crete in time to celebrate the rejoicing Mass of Easter Sunday.

In the meantime, the Princess Berengaria was safely installed in one of the three huge dromons of the first rank, accompanied by her chaperone and future sisterin-law Joanna, the former Queen of Sicily, and sharing the security of the great vessel with the major part of the bullion in Richard’s war chest, watched over by a strong contingent of the King’s personal guard. Richard, knowing his betrothed and his sister to be comfortably and securely lodged, consequently felt entitled to enjoy a degree of freedom again with his own friends and chosen companions, a good three miles behind and securely out of sight of the ladies. Small wonder, Sir Henry thought cynically, that the King was in a jocular mood.

“Sir Henry! How did you acquire the privilege of being able to spend your time alone up here, admiring the beauties of our fleet?”

Henry recognized the voice and twisted around to where he could smile at Sir Robert de Sablé without removing his elbows from the point of the ship’s rails. The Master of the Fleet had quit the King’s group, who were still talking loudly at the stern, and had made his way forward to the bow of the ship.

“Sir Robert, good day to you. I earned this privilege, as you call it, on the parade grounds of Messina, moving large numbers of heavily armored, sweaty, unwashed bodies around rapidly in mass drilling units, until they were fit for nothing but to fall into their cots and sleep like the dead, to the great relief of those officers responsible for their behavior and well-being. Now that we are at sea I can no longer do that, and so I am permitted to rest and recuperate, rebuilding my depleted strength in preparation for use again when we disembark.”

“And is that what you were thinking about when I came by?”

St. Clair smiled again and shook his head. “No, in truth I was thinking that I could almost be content as a sailor, were the life always like this.”

“Aye, no doubt, Sir Henry, no doubt of that. And were that the case we would have no trouble finding crewmen. But the sad truth—the one seamen and merchants try in vain to keep concealed—is that for every day we have like this, we may have twenty of the other ilk, when the entire world seems tilted up on end, awash in swirling brine and spewing vomit, and buffeted by chilling, roaring winds like those that scattered us like dead leaves on the way to Lisbon last Ascension Day.”

Sir Henry nodded and turned back to look at where the sun was beginning its descent towards the western horizon. “You must thank God, then, for days like this.”

“Aye, and I do, every time I see one. But I never allow myself to become complacent. I never trust the weather, Sir Henry. Never. Not even when I can see the blue and cloudless sky all around me. It can change within minutes, from smiles to screams, faster than a willful woman’s temper.”

St. Clair raised an eyebrow. “Surely you don’t feel that way today? Today is perfect.”

“Aye, it is, and that is why I distrust it. It is yet early in April, Sir Henry. We are barely clear of winter, and summer remains months away. Believe me, if this weather holds throughout the night, I shall be grateful. If it remains with us for two entire days, I will be even more grateful—and deeply astonished. And now, if you will forgive me, I have to see to my duties.”

Resuming the mantle of Master of the King’s Fleet, de Sablé nodded courteously and moved away, signaling with a crooked finger to Sir Geoffrey Besanceau, the Master of the King’s Ship, and then walking with him to where the helmsman stood at the stern, leaning forward against the pull of the tiller. Sir Henry watched them go, arguably the two most important men in the entire fleet, and saw no irony in feeling a stir of gratitude that as Master-at-Arms, his responsibilities were far less onerous than theirs. He swung back to look to his front again, where the wide line of vessels appeared unchanged. King Richard, he noted idly, had fallen silent, and now the only noticeable sound was the steady swishing of the oars that propelled the galley.

Someone on one of the vessels far ahead shouted, and the sound carried clearly across the water although the words were unintelligible. St. Clair wondered briefly if that was because he was too far away to hear clearly or because the words were in a language he did not know. He assumed that it would have been the latter, for that formed the backbone of one of his greatest plaints as Master-at-Arms. He was constantly harping, not merely to Richard but to all the allied kings and leaders and any intermediate commander who would listen, upon the increasing urgency governing the need for clear-cut, crisp, and concise communications.

The Arabs—Henry always thought of them first as Arabs and only afterwards as Saracens, the currently fashionable name for them—had two great advantages, he would point out at every opportunity. First, they were as numerous as the grains of desert sands, drawing their warriors from a vast area that stretched all the way from Arabia, Syria, and the immensity of Babylon and Persia down through Palestine and westward across the Delta of the Nile to embrace Egypt and its neighboring territories across the north of Africa. Reports of Saladin’s fielding a hundred thousand men and more were commonplace. And they were apparently inexhaustible, capable of generating new multitudes of warriors as soon as earlier hosts, having done their duty as they saw it, began to drift away homeward to visit their families and tend to their affairs before returning another day.

The second and greatest advantage that the Arabs enjoyed over the Franks, however, was that they all spoke the same language, and St. Clair found himself marveling constantly at that. No matter whence they came in the Islamic lands, they all spoke, and most of them read, Arabic. There were regional differences, of course, but only in the spoken tongue, and none of those variations prevented fluent communication. The written language, of course, was immutable throughout the Saracen empire. St. Clair despaired at times of ever bringing the importance of that single, staggering fact to the attention of the Frankish leadership. In their eyes, the Saracens were infidels and therefore savages, forever beneath their notice, other than for the need to fight and destroy them. But who cared that they all spoke a single language? How important could that be? They spoke gibberish to civilized, Christian ears.

Henry St. Clair had been moved to fury on many occasions by this arrogant and ignorant indifference. It seemed unimportant to these fools, he often thought in the privacy of his own mind, that their own men often could not speak to each other. And that inability was not merely a matter of gross differences, like Frenchmen being unable to speak with Germans, Englishmen, Danes, or Italians. It was far worse and far more serious than that: a Frenchman from Paris simply could not understand a sailor from Marseille, and few from Marseilles could speak Oc, the language of the Languedoc. It was the same in England and in every other country in Christendom—people from different regions of the same country could seldom understand one another.

Henry grunted in disgust and pushed the thought from his mind. It was an old and pointless train of thought, promising nothing but frustration and ill will. But he allowed his thoughts to return to his long-lost friend Torquil, a Danish mercenary. Although neither of them had ever understood the other’s language, they had enjoyed many adventures together before Torquil eventually fell to a random crossbow bolt in a squalid little scuffle in the foothills of the Alps. Torquil had been a great eater and a renowned scavenger who could find food, it was said, in an empty coffin, and his greatest coup had been the “capture” of a “stray” shoat outside of the besieged city of Le Havre, in one of the several wars between King Henry of England and his rebellious sons. The shoat had still been suckling when Torquil took it, the sow’s milk still trickling from the corner of its mouth, and to this day the smell of roasting pig brought back visions of that night and the succulence of that meat, the first that Henry and his friends had eaten in more than a month. Thinking of that now, and remembering the occasion, he felt the first stirrings of hunger and went looking for his pack, where he had stowed his personal rations: a thick, heavily spiced sausage, several sticks of goat cheese, a jar of olives pickled in brine, and a loaf of still-fresh bread. He ate alone at the galley’s prow and watched the sun set, noting how the temperature dropped swiftly as soon as the light was gone. A short time later, in the gathering dark, he drank some water and lowered himself to the deck, where he rolled himself in a blanket against the vessel’s side, out of the chill of the April evening and out of the way of anyone else who might come up there.

He fell asleep to the gentle rocking of the waves, and when he awoke, still in darkness, he knew instantly that something was different, but it took him several moments to identify what the difference was. First came the silence, deeper and more profound than it had been when he fell asleep, and even as he absorbed that, it was broken by low voices and movement as other men began to stir and rouse themselves; and then the silence unfolded further, becoming the stillness of an absolute lack of motion. Someone had set a burning lantern into a metal bracket on the ship’s bow above his head since he had fallen asleep, and the flame within it burned perfectly, a golden leaf of purest fire surrounded by a lambent halo containing not even a flicker of variation. As he lay looking up at it, with a growing sense of wonder, he realized that the comforting motion of the deck beneath him, the rocking that had lulled him to sleep, had vanished, too. Somewhere behind him, on the rowing deck, there came a loud clatter, followed by a string of oaths and cursing and other, less recognizable sounds that increased in volume and variety as he listened. And finally, scrubbing at his eyes with the heel of his hand, he sat up and looked about him, his breast filled with nameless apprehension.

His first instinct was to check the sky for signs of bad weather, but there was nothing threatening to see up there. The entire firmament seemed cloudless, washed in pale rose and violet, and the few stars that remained visible were fading rapidly in the dawn light. He recognized that the light source was behind him, and pulled himself to his feet, facing the east just as the first blazing edge of the sun tipped the farthest rim of the horizon. It was a scene of flawless, staggering beauty, and he remembered that this was Good Friday, the day on which the Blessed Savior had been crucified for the salvation of mankind. All the auspices, it seemed to him at that moment, boded well for the human race that morning. He turned slightly to his left, towards the body of the ship, to see if anyone else had noticed the beauty of the dawn, and was mildly surprised to see that the rail was lined two-deep with men, all of them gazing silently outward. After a moment of smiling and having none of them return his smile, he realized that they were not looking at him or at the rising sun at all, but were gazing fixedly ahead of the ship, southward. Mystified, he followed their gaze and felt his mouth sag open in wonder that he could have looked this way before and failed to see what was now so glaringly obvious.

The surface of the sea was like glass, unbroken by the slightest ripple or hint of movement, and stamped upon its surface everywhere were perfect replicas of the ships that floated motionless above them. Nothing stirred anywhere; not even a passing seabird disturbed the utter perfection of the image. And then someone coughed somewhere at the stern of the ship and the sound marked the end of the reverent silence that had held them all. Men began to talk then, and to move about, and the first tentative stirrings quickly took on purpose and intent.

Sir Henry folded up his blanket and thrust it into his pack, then lodged the pack securely beneath the ship’s rail before making his way back to the stern, where Master Besanceau was conferring with several of his officers. As he neared the rear platform, the ship’s drummer drew himself up to attention and began to beat out a regular, high-pitched rhythm on his tightly stretched drumhead. It was clearly a summons of some kind, and St. Clair surmised that it would be answered by the commanders of the other four galleys of the rear line.

“Have you ever seen the like, Master-at-Arms?”

The speaker, who had come up behind him unnoticed, was a man called Montagnard, one of St. Clair’s own officers, in charge of the hundred men billeted on the galley. He was a strange and taciturn man, Sir Henry thought, who would go for days on end without saying an unnecessary word, and then would suddenly break his silence, speaking fluidly and betraying a varied and convoluted background. Clearly this was one such day.

“The weather, you mean? No, I never have. It is almost uncanny. What is happening, do you know?”

“We are becalmed.”

“Aye, I can see that. But is this a common thing? How long does it last?”

“It’s not uncommon. I’ve experienced it once before, in the Bay of Biscay, when we were trying to beat into La Rochelle and suddenly the wind died and did not blow again for two days. It is a frightening experience, almost a religious one, for there is no rhyme or reason to it. No one ever knows what causes it or how long it will last. It is strange, though, is it not?” He nodded towards where the two Masters were conferring deeply. “It even upsets them, and it takes much to do that. You know what they say about it, don’t you?”

“No, what do they say?”

“God is holding His breath.” Montagnard turned to face Sir Henry now. “And what happens when you hold your breath? You have to release it again, sooner rather than later. Even if you are God. And depending upon the length of time you have been holding it, the gust, when you release it, may be strong.”

“You mean it’s going to storm?”

“Not necessarily, but it might. In the meantime, we are among the few people in the fleet who can move at all. We have our oars. Most of the others must simply sit and wait for the wind to come back. That should please the priests, at any rate.”

“Why should they be happy?”

“Look about you, Master-at-Arms. It’s Good Friday and a beautiful day without a breath of wind … perfect conditions for reminding men how vulnerable and at risk they are in the face of God’s omnipotence. You watch, every vessel in this fleet will be a sounding vessel for the Blessed Jesus this day. You will hear hymns being sung from every direction before the sun sets, you mark my words.”

Henry smiled and was about to reply when he noticed movement on the water, and he stepped to the rail to watch as rowboats approached from each of the other four galleys. Moments later the first of them drew alongside, and its passenger, a galley commander, clambered aboard and joined the group around Sir Robert, followed soon after by his three colleagues. They did not remain aboard for very long, and within the half hour, all four of the rearline galleys had begun moving forward, like sheepdogs, towards the becalmed vessels ahead of them, spreading advice and encouragement to their less fortunate companions as they rowed among them. Only Richard’s own galley, which was also, and less than incidentally, the galley of the Fleet Master, remained behind, forming a rearguard of one vessel. When the word was passed to ship oars and be at ease, St. Clair quickly realized that de Sablé preferred to be there and alone, where he could anticipate anything the sea might throw at him, rather than in the midst of the fleet where he could be at a severe disadvantage in the event of a sudden reversal of fortune.

Montagnard had moved away and was nowhere in sight when Sir Henry looked around for him, and as the Master-at-Arms turned back towards the stern, he was just in time to see de Sablé’s broad back as the Fleet Master disappeared into his cabin, leaving the deck strangely quiet. Silent crewmen were lounging everywhere, some of them staring off into nowhere, others sitting or lying against the sides of the ship with their eyes closed. Sir Henry smiled faintly and nodded to himself. He could see it was a time to wait and be patient, for nothing any of them could do would affect the span of time for which God chose to hold His breath.

That Good Friday became the longest day Sir Henry had ever known, for in the tiny shipboard world of his confinement there was absolutely nothing that he could do to take his mind off his enforced idleness. He dozed a little, but quickly grew tired even of that, and such was his boredom that he actually welcomed the diversion when the three bishops aboard the ship emerged onto the stern deck with their acolytes about an hour after noon and began to conduct the services for Good Friday. It became evident immediately that not everyone on board could attend the ceremonies at the same time, but some of the officers quickly worked out a plan whereby men were able to come on deck, in groups of twenty at a time, and spend a quarter of an hour praying, taking Communion, and breathing God’s fresh air before returning to the densely packed cribs that were their sole accommodation. Some time later, in verification of Montagnard’s prediction, voices began to rise in prayer and song from all directions, some of them emanating from identifiable ships, while others were mere vibrations in the air, ethereal and shimmering with distance. And then, at the third hour after noon, a silence fell, as deep as the silence that had surrounded them all day. Jesus was dead and the world would remain in spiritual darkness until the dawn of the third day, when his Resurrection would proclaim the universal salvation.

Sir Henry St. Clair noticed a small gust of wind tickling the hair at the nape of his neck. He had been dozing again, leaning against the rail in the foremost point of the deck, and the sensation, the first stirring of air he had felt in the entire day, snapped him awake instantly, so that he straightened to his full height, wondering what had happened. And then he heard voices being raised at his back and the hammering of running feet as someone rushed up to elbow him aside and take his place. The man leaned forward tensely, peering straight ahead at the horizon, and then he growled, “Oh, shit!” and spun away, running back towards the stern, shouting for the shipmaster, Besanceau. Henry watched him go, and noted the way in which everyone else was watching him, too, and then he turned back to see what it was that the fellow had seen to cause him to react as he had.

He could see nothing, other than what looked like a slight thickening above the line of the horizon, as though someone had smudged a stick of charcoal unevenly across the line separating sea and sky, blurring it in places. He narrowed his eyes and peered more carefully, and he had the impression, for a moment, that the smudged line was purple. He could no longer feel any stirring in the air, and the stillness was as profound as ever. But then, high atop the mast of one of the ships ahead, a flag snapped into motion and flapped several times before subsiding again to hang as limp as it had been before. Sir Henry felt his heart begin to beat more strongly and his gut stirred with formless apprehension. Something was in the offing, he knew, and the shouting that was now rising in volume at his back reinforced what he was feeling.

The purple line on the horizon thickened even as he watched and was soon discernible as an advancing line of clouds. Another gust of wind sprang up but died away quickly, only to be followed minutes later by another that blew harder and lasted longer. Henry watched in silence as three crewmen lowered the sail completely and folded it with great care before lashing it tightly to the spar that held it, then lashed the spar in turn, binding it solidly to the ship’s mast. Moments later, his gut tensed again as he saw the stroke drummer take up his position in the waist of the ship and the oarsmen set themselves, seven to a side, ready to start pulling on his signal. The signal came, and the men bent to their work, pulling steadily as they fought against the ship’s inertia and eased it into motion with agonizing slowness. Its speed increased rapidly, and the rowers seemed to have less difficulty in their task.

A movement on the stern deck caught Henry’s eye, and he glanced over there to see Richard himself, resplendent in full mail and scarlet surcoat, standing spread-legged beside and slightly behind Sir Robert de Sablé’s right shoulder, his massive arms crossed over his chest. On de Sablé’s left, his face twisted into a ferocious scowl, Sir Geoffrey Besanceau stood tossing a dagger into the air, end over end, catching it and flipping it again each time the hilt smacked back into his open palm. He never glanced at the dagger, every ounce of his attention dedicated to peering ahead into the gathering murk.

A door opened from the soldiers’ quarters and men began to emerge onto the narrow deck, evidently attracted by the sounds of activity after such a day of quiet. The tiny deck space rapidly became congested and the congestion threatened to interfere with the orderly running of the ship, and so the men were ordered back to their quarters. As the last of them left the deck, clearly disgruntled, Henry approached the King, who greeted him cordially enough but seemed disinclined to idle conversation. Henry knew his man well enough to be guided by that, and so he merely stood there, silent, until Robert de Sablé noticed him there.

“Henry,” he said, and quirked one side of his mouth in a humorless grin. “You remember what we spoke of yesterday, about not trusting the weather?”

“Aye, I do, very well. Is that line over there what I think it is?”

“Aye, it is, if you think it marks trouble brewing. It’s a storm front, coming rapidly.”

“How rapidly?”

Again the quirk at one side of the other’s mouth.

“A half hour at the most … at worst, half that.”

“What can we do?”

“Nothing, my friend. We have already done all we can do. We sent out word throughout the fleet this afternoon to be prepared for anything: a gale, a tempest, a simple storm. When this thing approaching us arrives, each shipmaster will be responsible for his own craft and crew, and if he has done as bidden, each will be as well prepared as the next. It may be a simple squall, or a line of squalls, but it looks too large for that, and anyway, from here, there is no way of telling. All we can do is wait and take what comes. No man owns expertise when the wind blows hard and the sea starts churning itself to froth and spume. We can but try to hold our bows towards the cresting swells, and then we pray. You should start praying now, my friend, and since you are a landman, you should find a safe spot by the scuppers in the prow and tie yourself firmly into place. Ship oars!” The last two words were loud and urgent, a shouted order, and the oarsmen quickly raised their oars to the vertical, raining water down upon themselves as the ship’s motion changed suddenly.

“Aha,” said de Sablé, almost to himself, “and so we begin.” The deck had tilted steeply without warning, sending the prow high into the air, and de Sablé reached for a hand hold and waved with his free hand to the ship’s master at the same time as the vessel dipped again. The oars went back into the water, and de Sablé spoke again to St. Clair, this time without looking at him. “Go you, now, Henry, quickly, and do what I told you—tie yourself strongly down and hold on tight. My lord King, you should do the same.”

“What, tie myself down? No, I’ll tie a rope about my middle and anchor it to a rail, but I shall stay here with you.” Richard looked at Sir Henry. “But you, Henry, you must do as Robert bids you. You no longer have the strength you had in youth and I need you in Outremer. Get you to safety. I have no wish to see you washed away. Go.”

Sir Henry made his way back to where he had stowed his pack and bound himself into place beside it, securing it to himself with a short length of rope and then binding himself firmly to the ship’s rail, close to one of the holes in the vessel’s side that allowed the trapped water of inboard waves to stream back into the sea. He barely had time to finish the last knot before the storm broke over them, and from that moment on he lived in a screaming, wind-and-water-filled hell, unaware of time, or day or night or anything else that made human life sane or desirable. He was aware of changing colors in the cloud rack from time to time, and on one occasion he found himself being painfully battered by pebble-sized hailstones that piled up in sheltered places on the deck like shoals of splintered ice. Then it was rain that stung his face, whipped horizontally by the howling wind, and some time after that he became aware that the temperature had plummeted, his soaked clothing chilled to the consistency of rough board. He thought he may have passed out about that time, and had no notion of how much time might have passed, but eventually he came awake again to find himself being thrown from side to side, his head banging painfully against the side of the ship at every roll. His clothing was still icy cold, but now there was sufficient light for him to see that the folds of his surcoat were thick with fresh snow. Then came a looming lurch of fear as he sensed something swinging at him, and he lost awareness of everything again.

He awoke some time later and the storm was still howling about him, and after that he drifted in and out of consciousness, mildly aware, somewhere in his mind, that the storm seemed to be dying down. He woke up again when he felt someone grasp him by the face and pinch his cheeks together, shaking his head gently. He opened his eyes and saw one of the crew members kneeling above him, peering at him closely.

“Ah, he’s alive,” the fellow muttered. “That cut on his head, all bleached and open like that, I wasn’t sure there … Right, come on, then, old man, let’s cut those ropes and see if we can get you back up on your feet.”

IT WAS EASTER SUNDAY, late in the afternoon, and if there were any priests celebrating Mass or offering thanks for their deliverance from the storm, they were doing it privately and in silence, in whatever quarters they had been able to appropriate for themselves in the aftermath of the destruction. Sir Henry St. Clair knew he was still alive, but he knew little else of any import, and he had not yet decided whether to be grateful for his survival or to regret the lost opportunity to die in the tempest and be rid of the aches, pains, and griefs that beset him now.

He sat braced on a coil of rope, staring at the junction where the sides of the ship came together at the bows. He had at least two cracked or broken ribs, the pain of which made it impossible for him to stand and lean forward against the rails, and so he was forced to sit there, unable to see over the wooden sides in front of him. His back was propped against two other, smaller rope coils balanced on the first, and he forced himself to ignore both the pain of his ribs and the inconvenience of not being able to see anything, and to concentrate instead upon the small amount of information he had managed to glean to this point. The man who had found him half dead in the scuppers had known who he was, and had summoned another man to help carry him back to the rear of the ship, where someone else had tended to his injuries—Henry had no idea who that had been, but they had strapped up his ribs and bound a cloth tightly over the gash in his right temple before sending him back, supported between two crewmen, to sit where he had spent much of the previous few days, in the foremost point of the ship’s bows and out of the way of most of the vessel’s crew.

Twenty-one men had been lost. That much Henry knew beyond doubt, having overheard a report on casualties being delivered to someone he assumed to be Besanceau on the stern deck while his injuries were being treated. He had assumed that the missing men were his own, landsmen like him and unused to being afloat, whereas the ship’s crew might reasonably be expected to survive a storm at sea. And besides, he recalled now that the galley held a complement of fifteen crew members only. But if that were true and all the missing men were his, then that meant they had lost one-fifth of their shipboard complement without their ever having had an opportunity to strike a single blow against the enemy. That thought depressed him, and he turned himself, very slightly and with great difficulty, to look back over his shoulder to where another man leaned against the side of the prow, gazing outward.

“Hey,” Henry grunted, drawing the man’s attention. “What can you see out there?”

The fellow scanned him from head to foot, then looked back over the side. “Nothing,” he growled. “An empty ocean. Not a ship in sight anywhere, except one wreck, close enough to see, turned upside down and dragging its mast. Must have air trapped inside, keeping it afloat …” He turned back, his head bent, and looked at Henry from beneath heavy black brows. “How do you feel? Better than you look, I hope. You’re trussed like a stuffed swan. Who are you, anyway?”

Henry eased himself back around to face forward again, hoping to find some comfort. “Name’s St. Clair,” he gasped, catching his breath and almost wheezing with the effort of moving. “They tell me I’ve broken some ribs, and I … aah! … I believe them. Come up here where I can see you, will you?”

The other man crossed to where he could lean an elbow on the rail and look down at Henry, nodding in sympathy. “Broken ribs are not likable. Broke two of my own last year, in Cyprus. Slipped on a greasy plank, carrying a sack, and fell against a pole on the ground. Took me months to get better. I’m called Bluethumb. I’m one of the rowers.” He held up an almost purple thumb, and Henry could not tell if the discoloration was a birthmark or the result of an old injury, but before he could ask, Bluethumb said, “St. Clair, eh? The Master-at-Arms? That St. Clair?”

“Aye, that one. Can you help me up to where I can see, just for a moment? I can’t move on my own—too tightly trussed, as you said.”

“Let’s see, then.” The man called Bluethumb bent his knees and squatted, taking Henry beneath the shoulders, then lifted him smoothly with a strong thrust of his thighs. Henry sucked in his breath sharply, but felt surprisingly little pain, and then lost all awareness of anything else as he stared at the emptiness of the waters all around them. The only thing to be seen in any direction was the wreck Bluethumb had described.

“My thanks,” he said eventually. “You may sit me down again.”

When he was back in his makeshift seat, propped up by the ropes, he allowed himself, for a brief moment, to wonder what might have happened to his son, but there was little to be gained in doing that, and so he sucked in a deep breath, then expelled it forcibly before speaking again to Bluethumb. “What about the King, is he well?”

One eyebrow rose as though the man were surprised to hear the question asked. “Of course he’s well. Why would he not be? He could walk on water, that one. Tied himself to the stern rail and fought the tiller with the helmsman throughout the storm. No wonder his people look at him the way they do. The man’s like a god.”

“Aye,” Henry said with a nod. “He can be magnificent at times, far more so than ordinary men … So what will we do now, do you know?”

Bluethumb grinned and held the discolored digit up again. “I told you, I’m a rower. They don’t ask me for advice. They tell me where to go, and when, and how fast. And I’d better get back.”

He straightened up to leave but Henry stopped him with a wave of his hand. “If you would, should you see Sir Robert de Sablé back there, please give him my respects and tell him where I am and that I should like to speak with him when he can find a moment.”

The rower cocked his head. “Me? Walk up and talk to de Sablé, just like that? He’d have me thrown overboard.”

“No, he would not. Mention my name as you approach—Sir Henry St. Clair—and tell him I asked you, sent you to him. Here, let me—” He began to fumble for his scrip, but the oarsman snapped a hand at him.

“I don’t want your money, Master-at-Arms. I’ll tell him what you said, and fare ye well.” He left without another word.

Sir Henry flexed his back muscles cautiously and tried to find some comfort against the piles of hard rope. He had not yet permitted himself to think about the significance of the emptiness out there beyond the ship’s walls, but now he began attempting to visualize the cataclysmic power of the storm they had survived, and to wonder how many ships might have sunk completely, simply vanishing beneath the waves and taking their crews and passengers with them. He discovered very quickly that he had no stomach for such wonderings, and no means whereby he could control his imagination’s sickening leaps and lurches, and so he was happy when de Sablé’s voice distracted him.

“Well, Master St. Clair. Are you badly injured? I saw you being attended to on the stern deck but had no time right then even to cross the deck and find out what was wrong with you.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me, Sir Robert. Nothing serious, I mean. A bang on the head and a few cracked ribs … I am pleased to see you looking so well. And I heard the King served as helmsman in the storm.”

“Throughout it.” Sir Robert brought his hands together, squeezing them in the way Richard himself frequently did. He was grinning broadly now and shaking his head in admiration. “He rode out the tempest with the aplomb of a veteran seafarer who has seen everything that Neptune has to throw at him. It truly was remarkable. I would not have believed it had I not been there to witness it in person. The King tied himself to a thwart and manned the tiller with the helmsman for hours on end. Certainly, had he not done so, we might have been in even sorer straits than we were. I thought we were all dead men when the soldiers’ quarters started to break up beneath the pounding of the waves— Did you know about that?”

“Yes, I heard it being reported. Twenty-one men lost.”

“Aye, they were washed overboard when the superstructure holding them began to give way and tilted outboard. We yawed, torn off center by the sagging weight of the falling structure, and came as close as ever we could to turning broadside to the waves. It was only Richard’s ferocious strength, combined with the helmsman’s skill, that saved us. I had been thrown into the scuppers by a wave and I lay there and watched him fight to bring the bows back into line.” He looked about him to be sure that no one else was listening, and when he was sure they were not being overheard, he added, “You and I, Henry, should both fall to our knees this day and give thanks for our King, and forgiveness for all the flaws we so often find in him.”

“Amen,” Sir Henry said, nodding.

De Sablé had moved to the bow rail, where Henry could look up at him without having to twist his body. He glanced away, towards the horizon, then uttered a snort, part grunt, part bitter laugh.

“That weather … My friend, that was something undreamed of, something from our nightmares. I have never encountered anything like that. That was a storm to keep the most adventurous and intrepid mariners safe at home, on land, forever.”

Henry could hear commands being shouted at his back, followed by the clatter of running feet and the creaking of stiff ropes above and behind his head, the rhythmic grunts of men pulling in unison on both sides of the deck and the squeal of ropes running through blocks.

“We’re preparing to increase speed,” de Sablé explained, “hoisting the sail so we can go in search of others.”

“What others?” Henry asked, recalling the empty seas around them. “How many men and ships did we lose, do you know?”

“We lost them all, Henry.” De Sablé waved expansively towards the horizon. “They are all gone, scattered on the wind like ashes. It’s going to take days to gather them all together again.”

Henry’s eyes widened. “To gather them—? You mean we’ll find them again? They are not all destroyed?”

Now it was de Sablé’s face that registered surprise. “Destroyed? Great God, no, they are not destroyed. We may have lost a few of them, to collisions and calamities, but that is only to be expected when you have so many ships at such close quarters in stormy conditions. There’s one drifting close by that you can see, dismasted and capsized, but the others have merely been scattered and blown before the wind and tides. They are ships, Henry, built by men who know and love and hate the sea in equal measures. They are designed to weather storms and outlast them, even storms as large and violent as that one was. They’ll find the closest land to wherever they may be, and then they will begin to reassemble.”

Henry was mildly flummoxed, trying to visualize the scene that, if de Sablé was correct, had to be unfolding beyond the horizon. “Where is the nearest land?”

“From where we are right now?” Sir Robert shrugged. “At this point, your guess would be as valid as mine. But I will be able to answer you easily as soon as we have discovered where we are right now. We have been blown off course. That much is certain. But how far, and in what direction, is what we must now attempt to discover.”

He held up an open palm to forestall Henry’s next question. “We are in the Ionian Sea, and we were sailing east by south from Sicily towards Crete when the storm struck. That was two days ago. We know that the coast of Africa lies on our starboard side at this moment, because we are headed eastward, directly towards the rising sun, but we do not know how far away it is. But by the same reckoning, we know that the coast of Greece and its islands lies ahead of us, so we will continue south and east on our present course until we sight land. With good fortune, that will be Crete, but then again, it might be any of a chain of islands, all of which will serve us equally well, since from any one of them we can be in Crete within days.” He hesitated, and then gave a tentative half smile. “Of course, we might have been blown backward altogether and the next land we sight could be Sicily again. Only time will tell. In the meantime, we have our sharpest-eyed crewman up on the cross spar, squinting in all directions. He’ll sight land soon, and the moment that he does, our fortunes will improve.”

Sir Henry nodded. “Thank you for that. I often think there can be nothing worse than lacking information on which to base a decision. And speaking of information, may I ask if you know which ship my son was on? I have been thinking he must be dead, and to hear you say otherwise is an enormous relief.”

“I can tell you it was one of the four Templar vessels, and all four of them were placed in the second line, directly behind the King’s three dromons. Where they may be now is anyone’s guess. And now I must return to my post. Are you comfortable? Is there anything I can provide for you?”

Sir Henry shook his head and thanked the Fleet Master graciously, then eased himself gently back against the ropes and closed his eyes, feeling the coolness of a gentle breeze ruffling his hair and lulling him to sleep, while around him the sounds of shipboard activity regained their normal levels. The last clear thought that crossed his mind before he dozed off was the notion that the King would not be pleased if anything untoward had happened to any of his three great dromons, for among them they carried his greatest treasures: his war chest, his sister, and his future Queen.

THE MASTHEAD LOOKOUT spotted the first stray within hours of their setting out, hull down on the horizon to the south of them, and de Sablé issued orders immediately to intercept it. It was a heavy-bellied cargo carrier and it wallowed about like an old sow, but ungainly as it might have been, it had survived the storm in good order and it changed its own heading as soon as it became aware of the galley bearing down on it. Within an hour of that, they found another ship, and then another, until they had gathered more than a score of followers by the end of the day. Some of the vessels had fared much better than others, and there were a few that were in dangerous condition, but de Sablé kept them together throughout the night and there were no further alarums.

The following day, because their presence and bulk had become substantial, they attracted many more survivors, and their numbers swelled to three score and more. Three days after that, they sighted land directly ahead on their easterly course, and they arrived in Crete that afternoon. They numbered more than a hundred vessels by that time, including seven of the eight remaining galleys, and as they approached their anchorage at the foot of Mount Ida, the masthead lookouts were reporting more ships approaching from all around with every minute that passed. But no one, anywhere, could provide any information on the whereabouts of the three dromons.

Richard expressed grave concern, and Sir Henry had no doubt that it was genuine, but he found himself wondering cynically whether the monarch might be more concerned about the loss of his treasure chests than he was about his wife and sister, and he was still wondering about that when Richard dispatched all eight of his recovered galleys that same evening, four to search the Greek coastal islands to the northwest and the north, while the other four swept on east, towards Cyprus.

Sir Henry was relieved to be able to leave the ship and go ashore in Crete, for the simple reason that he could then lie down and stretch himself out in a wellstrung cot, to the great benefit of his aching chest muscles. He lay abed for three days after that, giving his body time to recuperate, once again at the insistence of Richard’s physician, until word came to him from Richard that they would be leaving the next morning for the island of Rhodes, where a large number of their missing vessels had made landfall. Knowing his time abed had done him good, he felt sufficiently recovered to rise and move about, and he walked as far as the harbor, a distance of close to half a mile, before he felt the first twinge of pain.

They sailed to Rhodes without incident the following day, and found the remainder of their former fleet already there, waiting for them. The reunion was occasion for modest celebration, once they had ascertained that no more than seven vessels of the original two hundred and nineteen—disregarding of course the missing dromons— had been irretrievably lost. Henry St. Clair stood once again at the prow of the King’s galley as they approached the ancient harbor on the northernmost tip of the island, famed throughout the world for its great lighthouse, and as the ship entered the shelter of the bay, his eyes moved restlessly among the hundred or so vessels awaiting them there, seeking the four recently built warships that belonged to the Order of the Temple, but in the absence of distinguishing insignia, he was unable to tell them apart from the remainder of the tatterdemalion collection. André would be somewhere among the forest of masts, he knew, but he had no idea how he might arrange to meet with him. He felt confident that they would remain in Rhodes for at least a week and perhaps two, for the entire fleet had to be provisioned yet again and many of the vessels had suffered serious damage that would have to be repaired before they could go anywhere. And so he concentrated upon his own responsibilities for the time being, focusing upon establishing a daily regimen of drill programs that would address the chronic problem of keeping very large numbers of men from idleness and temptation by keeping them gainfully engaged.

The sole remaining difficulty, and it was always a large one, involved finding and securing a training ground, or perhaps multiple training grounds, large enough to accommodate their numbers and close enough to both the army’s central campgrounds and the harbor to make regular movement to and from both locations relatively simple. He sent out word for his training officers to assemble and then, after reviewing the priorities facing all of them, sent them off in pairs to scour the surrounding countryside for suitable sites.

When at last three expanses had been identified for drilling grounds, the sounds of marching feet were audible everywhere as the thousands of foot soldiers from the fleet made their way there in ordered units. The horsemen were allocated different sites and times to report, as many of the horses were still being unloaded from the newly arrived ships. And thus, transition was achieved, continuity was asserted, and novelty quickly became routine.

Ten days later, while Richard and some of his English barons were inspecting cavalry at one of the three horse camps Henry had set up, a messenger came galloping with word for the King that two of the galleys he had sent to find the Princess Berengaria had been sighted returning from the east, under sail and oars, and were expected to enter the harbor within the hour. Richard abandoned the inspection immediately, and he insisted that Henry accompany him, to be present should an instantaneous decision be required.

It was closer to two hours than one by the time the two galleys approached the harbor piers, but the commander leapt down from the bows as soon as his ship came close enough, and made his way directly to where the King and his entourage stood waiting. The Princess Berengaria and Queen Joanna were safe, he reported, but their ships, perhaps because they were the largest in the fleet, had taken the brunt of the storm winds and been blown far and away to the south of everyone else, ending up, by the time the storm finally blew itself out, off the island of Cyprus. All three of the dromons had remained together until the end, but as they neared the port of Limassol on the south coast of Cyprus, one of them had run aground on the reefs known as the rocks of Aphrodite and had foundered, with much loss of life.

Two of the great ships remained intact, their precious cargo safe, but the galley commander’s urgency was all reserved for the fate of the third. The ruler of Cyprus, he reported, was a man called Isaac Comnenus, a Byzantine who titled himself Emperor but had behaved more like a bandit chief in this instance. Richard cut him off with a wave of his arm.

“Hold, there. What mean you by that—a bandit chief? Speak plainly to me now, for this is important. Forget all the fine words and flourishes and tell me as a man what happened and what this Comnenus fellow did.”

The commander cleared his throat, and it required two false starts before he found his tongue and sufficient confidence to speak out plainly. “He has behaved shabbily, my lord King. His people looted and despoiled the dead men who were washed up on their shores after the shipwreck, and once the waves died down and it was discovered that the wreck could be reached from the shore, the survivors were taken ashore and penned up as prisoners, given little in the way of aid or care. And then they discovered that there were chests of gold aboard, and the people there went wild. Before they could bring much of it ashore, however, the Emperor Comnenus and his men arrived and confiscated everything …” His voice faded away and he stood frowning.

“What, man? There’s more, is there not? What of my ladies aboard the other ships?”

“They are well, my lord, but—”

“He has not harmed them?”

“No, my lord. But at first he would not let them go ashore. Threatened them with prison should they land on his shores. He changed his mind later, once he thought there might be gold aboard those ships, too, but by then the two ladies had decided they were safer aboard their ships than they would be elsewhere. Emperor though this fellow calls himself, he has no army worthy of the name, and no ships at all. But, sire, there is more …”

“More?” Richard’s face darkened by the moment. “What you have told me is enough already. I shall have things to say to this Comnenus when we meet, for he sounds like no Christian monarch to me, let alone an emperor. What more could there be?”

“Your vice-chancellor, my lord.”

“Nevington. What about him? Is he dead?”

“Aye, my lord. He drowned in the wreck of the ship and was one of the people washed ashore.”

Richard was frowning slightly, but then his brow smoothed out. “The seal! Is it safe?” Lord Nevington, as vice-chancellor of England, always wore the Great Seal on a ribbon about his neck, for it was his responsibility to keep it with him at all times, so that in the event the King needed to sign and seal an official document of any kind, the seal would be close by and ready for his use.

“Those who found it stripped it from him, not knowing what it was, but Comnenus seized it and now wears it around his neck.”

“God’s balls, man, tell me you jest with me!” Richard’s voice had risen to a roar of fury. “Are you saying this … this filth-crusted, hunchbacked imbecile now holds the Great Seal of England, in addition to the gold I brought to pay my men?”

The mariner merely nodded, wide eyed.

“Then by the living Christ I will have the whoreson’s scrotum cured and made into a bag to hold my seal from this time on!” He swung around to St. Clair. “Henry, set things in motion now, today. Send out orders to break camp at once and put one of your officers to find Robert de Sablé and send him to me in my quarters. I want the fleet loaded by tomorrow night, every man and horse and every item of stowage ready for the tide the following day. We are going to Cyprus to teach this crotch-sniffing, flea-infested Emperor that when he chose to thieve from us, he picked the wrong victim in Richard Plantagenet. And you—” The King pointed and the galley commander straightened his shoulders, bracing himself. “You have done well, to come back here so quickly and so well informed. Now I have further need of you. Do not permit your men to come ashore tonight, for I need you to leave again tomorrow, before the rest of us. Return to Cyprus immediately, you and your companion there, leading the four Temple ships that I will have assigned to your care. The Templars will protect my sister and my betrothed until such time as we arrive. And you may promise your crew, from me in person, that they will be given time ashore, and money to spend there, in recompense for the extra duties I am putting upon them.” He looked over to the small group of nobles who had accompanied him and beckoned to a splendid, goldenhaired young knight who might easily have been described as beautiful. “D’Yquiem, if you will, present my respects to the Marshal of the Temple and ask him if he would be kind enough to seek me in my quarters within the hour.”

The young knight saluted smartly and spun away to his task, and Richard nodded abruptly, dismissing everyone else with a backhanded wave before striding off in the direction of the building he had taken as his personal quarters.