The Awful Secret

Chapter Fourteen In which Crowner John goes to sea

With an almost full moon the previous night, the tide was high along the banks of the river and the knights and men-at-arms filed aboard the two knarrs on gangplanks that were almost level. The long wooden bridge across the river was immediately upstream to the stone quay that had been built to serve Bideford, and all vessels with fixed masts were obliged to moor on its seaward side.

The grey light of dawn was filtering through broken cloud and the wind was slight and south-easterly, ideal for getting out of the Torridge into its confluence with the Taw, which flowed from Barnstaple to the open sea beyond Appledore. The waterways were tortuous and ever-changing, the banks of sand and mud altering with every flood and storm, but with this spring tide the flat-bottomed boats had no fear of running aground within the next couple of hours.

The lord of Bideford was aboard the first knarr with his own men and half the Exeter soldiers, as well as the abbot. The remainder were with the sheriff, Templars and coroner on the second vessel. As soon as the men were aboard, the ship-masters cast off and the sails filled to press them seawards for three miles up the river.

De Wolfe stood with the other knights on the left side of the stern, leaving the opposite deck clear for the seaman grasping the steerboard, a large oar lashed to a post on the bulwark. In the centre was the ship-master, a scruffy individual in half-length breeches and a tattered short tunic. Bare-footed, like the other four of his crew, he kept looking up at the sky and muttering foul language under his breath. Every now and then, he would bark some almost unintelligible instruction to the steersman or the crew holding the sheets secured to each lower corner of the single square sail.

Within half an hour, the lively breeze had taken them to the main channel and as soon as they rounded the promontory of Appledore, they felt the swell coming in through the entrance to the open sea. Soon half of the land-lubber soldiers were ill and many hung over the rough fence of the bulwarks, retching their breakfast into the turbid sea.

‘Bloody fine fighting force we’re going to be!’ rumbled Gwyn contemptuously, standing like a rock, feet apart and hands behind his back. He was as much at home on water as on land and had little sympathy for those who were not.

De Wolfe himself, though not a bad sailor, disliked the rhythmic motion as they ran up to the bar between the final sand dunes. He was glad when the ships were in open sea, where the shorter, sharper pitching was less troublesome to his stomach. The sheriff was almost as green as his favourite tunic, but pride prevented him joining his men puking at the rail. Two of the Templars seemed immune, though Godfrey Capra became pale and noticeably silent.

Once outside the estuary, the two little ships ploughed on westwards, with a little northing to reach Lundy. Above them, the early-morning clouds were breaking up and patches of blue sky appeared and increased as the hours went by, a low pale sun gleaming intermittently in the east. Though de Wolfe considered the weather kind, the ship-master frequently looked to the west and scowled at the open ocean. He muttered now and then to the steersman and pointed to the far distance.

‘What’s bothering him?’ the coroner asked Gwyn.

The former fisherman had also been following the master’s concern. ‘There’s bad weather coming – but not yet. See that cloud on the horizon?’

John squinted to see a bank of solid grey far away, stretched low down in the western sky. To him it looked innocuous and he turned away when the ship-master again began gabbling in his thick local accent.

‘It’s Lundy already. See it ahead there?’ interpreted Gwyn. The air was clear and the dark line of the island rose like a distant whale on the horizon.

‘It’s three mile long, but less than one wide,’ explained the shipmaster. ‘We see it side on now from the east, but as we come to it from the south, it will foreshorten.’

The two knarrs hurried along with the brisk fair wind and the ebb tide, which was emptying the channel. In a couple of hours, Lundy was close enough to see the detail on the cliffs, which rose over four hundred feet at the southern end. Most of the men had now recovered from their mal de mer and were staring at this huge rock that rose out of the entrance to the Severn Sea. As they came even closer, the tip of the island was seen to hook out towards them in a broken promontory.

‘That’s Rat Island. The only good landing place is just around the corner from it – and Marisco’s castle is above it on the cliffs, at the highest point,’ explained the ship-master, pointing at the grey rocks. As the steersman leaned on his great oar and the crew adjusted the square sail, the knarr came round to weather the jagged promontory so that they could see the landing beach, a stretch of pebbles with a steep path winding up behind it. On the top of the cliffs, a low stone fortification was visible, but this sank out of sight as they got nearer.

The sea was fairly calm around the point and they glided towards the beach until the ship-master yelled at his crew once more. The yard rattled down the mast and lay on the untidy folds of the sail, as the knarr lost way. Pointing, the ship-master made it clear why he was keeping well off the shore. A line of men, several dozen in number, was spaced out just above the tide level and more were coming down the steep path from the settlement above. Even at that distance, the knarr’s company could see the glint of the weak sunshine on spear-heads and swords.

‘It looks as if we have a welcoming party already!’ growled Ralph Morin, looking like one of his Norse ancestors with an old conical helmet and his jutting grey beard. De Wolfe, who had been studying the landing site, raised an arm to point high up on the cliff. ‘Don’t worry too much about them yet, Ralph. Look up there instead.’ On a rocky spur above the path, they could just make out a contraption of wooden beams, with a few dot-like figures moving around it. All the fighting men knew what it was and their faces showed that they viewed it seriously.

‘A trebuchet – that could indeed be a problem,’ observed Roland de Ver. He spoke to the shipmaster and soon the other vessel came alongside. Their rails were roped together so that Richard de Grenville could join in the council of war.

‘Are these men on the beach going to oppose us?’ asked Brian de Falaise truculently. ‘If so, we should land in force and give them a thrashing.’

‘Easier said than done,’ retorted de Grenville. ‘We cannot beach the knarrs on a falling tide in case we wish to make a rapid retreat. And using the curraghs to land mailed soldiers is fraught with hazard. If they are tipped out, they’ll sink like stones!’

‘So why the hell did we come?’ demanded de Falaise harshly. He was itching for a fight but his lack of concern for his own safety was not shared so enthusiastically by the others.

Further discussion was interrupted by a loud splash and a fountain of water erupted from the sea ahead of them. It was many yards short, but the message was clear. The ships had been drifting towards the shore in the breeze and now the masters were hurriedly casting off the lashings that held the two knarrs together and setting men to haul at long oars over the sides. Though hopelessly inefficient, this halted the drift towards the cliffs and imperceptibly inched the boats back out to sea.

‘What range does that thing have?’ the sheriff demanded of John.

The coroner shrugged. ‘Impossible to tell, other than finding out the hard way, Richard! It’s high up, so its range will be greater and the fall of missiles more powerful.’

The trebuchet was an engine for hurling projectiles a considerable distance at an enemy. A long beam was pivoted vertically in a massive frame and a heavy weight fixed to the lower end. A large bowl at the upper end carried either one large rock or a collection of smaller stones. Several men hauled on ropes fixed to the top of the beam until it was horizontal, when it was released, the weight fell violently and the beam jerked back to the vertical, hurling the missiles forward over the edge of the cliff to fall on targets far below. Both the range and direction could be adjusted to cover all the approaches to the beach.

Frustrated, the knights stood on the decks of the two vessels, while the crews dropped two large anchor stones to prevent further drifting into danger. ‘We must at least try to parley with these swine to see if they’ll at least let us talk to de Marisco,’ snarled de Falaise. ‘And I’ll go if you wish, de Ver.’

John mischievously suggested an alternative. ‘Lundy is part of the county of Devon, so falls directly under the jurisdiction of our sheriff here. He must have the prerogative, as well as the honour, of going ashore first.’

De Revelle gave his brother-in-law a look that should have dropped him dead him on the spot and limped away from the rail, rubbing his left thigh. ‘Of course I would, but this old wound I suffered in the Irish wars makes it difficult for me to get down into one of those small boats.’

De Falaise, well aware of the coroner’s stratagem, clapped de Revelle heartily on the shoulder. ‘Never fear, sheriff, I’m sure our ship-master here has some rope and tackle that will let us lower you over the side – and I’ll come with you.’

In the event, it was Roland de Ver who accompanied de Revelle, saying that, as leader of the Templars, it was his obligation to try to deal with William de Marisco over the rejected grant of land to his Order.

The crew and soldiers hauled one of the light skin-covered boats from the hold and dumped it over the side. The sheriff had been trapped into playing the hero and, albeit with ill-grace, got himself over the low gunwale into the curragh with no sign of a disabled leg. He held aloft a spare oar with a grubby white tunic, taken from the crew’s shelter, tied to the top as a flag of truce. While de Ver was climbing in after him, there was another shot from the trebuchet, but it fell far short.

One of the crew took the short oars, set in thole pins on the boat’s flimsy frames, and began rowing. Even with the added weight of two passengers wearing chain-link hauberks, the curragh was so light on the water that it sped across the few hundred yards to the shore. Another rock plunged into the sea many yards away, though the ripples from it made the boat dance about on the low swell.

‘They’ve little chance of hitting a moving target so small,’ said Godfrey Capra.

‘Then let’s hope they stick to single missiles,’ grunted de Wolfe. ‘If they fire a bucketful of pebbles, it needs only one to punch a hole through the bottom of that cockleshell.’

‘If those men on the beach pissed in it, it would probably sink,’ added Gwyn.

They watched as the little craft neared the shore, when the line of men began to congregate at the point where it would land. They could faintly hear a series of yells and could see swords and spears being waved threateningly. In the curragh, the sheriff was sitting rigidly on his thwart, waving the white flag with increasing desperation.

‘Now they’re throwing stones from the beach!’ yelled Gwyn, who had the best eyesight amongst the anxious watchers.

Suddenly, they saw de Ver grab the flag of truce from de Revelle and bend forward, almost vanishing from view, with only his backside sticking up above the rim of the curragh.

‘Surely he’s not cowering down!’ roared de Falaise in disgust, fearing that his leader was breaking the Templar tradition of reckless bravery in battle. The seaman could now be seen pulling the cockleshell around and rowing back towards the ship as if the devil was after him. Small splashes around the boat showed where a final fusillade of pebbles was landing, but in a minute or two, the craft was out of range and speeding for the ship. Roland de Ver was still hiding below the gunwales and de Wolfe wondered whether he had been hit by a stone or even a spear.

Gwyn’s sharp eye was the first to detect the truth. ‘They’re sinking!’ he yelled, pointing at the curragh, which was now noticeably lower in the water.

The sailor pulled at his oars like a man demented and came alongside the knarr with the little boat half full of water. Willing hands were thrust over the bulwarks to pull aboard de Revelle and the seaman. De Ver, with his face almost under water, stayed bent double until they had clambered out, then hurriedly followed them, still clutching the balled tunic, which he had been jamming into a hole punched through the tarred-leather bottom by a sharp stone. The damaged curragh swirled away and sank, as the damp heroes gained the safety of the deck.

‘Bastards! We could have been killed!’ snarled the sheriff.

De Wolfe grinned at this stupid remark. ‘That’s the general idea of fighting, Richard – kill or be killed!’

They all stood looking in frustration at the distant beach, where some of the defenders were now capering about and waving their weapons derisively at the two ships. John noticed that two sailing vessels, about the same size as the knarrs, were beached on the pebbles. Beyond them lay two longer, slimmer boats with a row of thole pins along each side for oars. ‘Those are their pirate galleys, by the looks of it – so you can get ships safely on to that beach. If it wasn’t for that damned trebuchet, we could make a run for the shore and jump off into the shallow water.’

The shipmaster grunted. ‘As it is, we’d be sitting targets, giving them plenty of time to get the exact range. And we couldn’t get off until the tide came in again.’

De Wolfe looked thoughtfully across to the other knarr, a hundred paces away, where he could see Richard de Grenville talking to Abbot Cosimo. An idea germinated in his mind and he shared it with the sheriff, de Ver and Ralph Morin.

‘If we could only talk to de Marisco, maybe we could get some idea of his terms for letting us have perhaps even part occupancy of the island,’ said the senior Templar hopefully.

John shook his head. ‘I don’t think anyone wearing the broad red cross has any chance of getting ashore. But if we could use Cosimo as a godly shield, maybe they would let me ashore as well to talk about piracy, as long as I don’t accuse him outright.’

The two boats came together again and further discussion went on across the rails. Eventually, the Italian priest agreed to take part, confident that his papal immunity from every contingency would keep him safe, even from wild island buccaneers.

Another curragh was dropped into the sea and this time Gwyn offered to be the oarsman. With the abbot in the bow and de Wolfe in the stern, they set off again for the beach. ‘None of us is wearing chain-mail, so at least we’ve got a chance of swimming for it,’ observed the coroner cheerfully, as his officer’s brawny arms sent them skimming across the water.

The trebuchet remained silent this time, and as they reached the half-way point, de Wolfe saw that the men on the beach were quietening, perhaps puzzled at this second futile attempt to storm the island with three men. Then Cosimo raised himself somewhat precariously on to his knees on the triangle of wood that braced the bows of the boat-frame and held up the large wooden crucifix that normally dangled from a thong about his neck.

As they got into the shallows and the boat bounced on the breaking waves, the men on the shore moved forward to meet them, some with raised weapons and a few with large pebbles ready to cast at the boat.

‘I am Abbot Cosimo, an emissary from Rome,’ screeched the priest, waving his cross as the sheriff had wagged his white flag.

Gwyn shipped his oars and hopped over the side, rocking the curragh dangerously and almost pitching Cosimo into the surf. He grabbed the bow and dragged it until the keel grated on the stones, then bodily lifted the abbot and set him on his feet on the beach.

A dozen men crowded around him suspiciously, but clearly the small black-robed priest was no threat to anyone. De Wolfe joined Gwyn alongside Cosimo and gazed at the men edging forward on the pebbles. Many were rough-looking peasants, carrying a spear or even a sickle, but about half appeared to be soldiers of a sort, with a varied mixture of mail or leather jerkins, some with helmets and most with a sword or mace.

‘We wish to speak to your lord William at once,’ he shouted, over the babble of voices. ‘Who amongst you is leader on this beach?’

‘Who’s asking?’ grated a tall, thin man with a wispy black beard around his chin. He wore a metal-plated leather tabard and a helmet with a nasal guard.

‘The king’s coroner for this county, Sir John de Wolfe, that’s who.’

‘Then you’re not welcome. We only let this priest land because it’s a mortal sin to drown abbots.’

There was a coarse cackle of amusement at their leader’s wit, but de Wolfe walked up to the man and jabbed a finger into his chest. ‘I said I’m the king’s coroner. Are you telling me that you don’t acknowledge Richard the Lionheart as your rightful sovereign? Maybe you’re one of those Prince John traitors, eh?’

There were a few sniggers from the men standing nearby but the man’s face coloured. ‘I’m no Prince’s man – I fought with Richard in Aquitaine in ’eighty-seven!’

The coroner whacked him on the shoulder. ‘I was there too – and my man Gwyn here. A good year for fighting, that was.’ Suddenly the mood lightened, as old warriors shared common cause.

‘You want to see Sir William? It’s a bloody long climb, begging your pardon, Abbot.’

Leaving most of the men on the beach to discourage any more landings, the black-bearded man, who said his name was Robert of Woolacombe, led them up the beach to the track, which was part earth, part rock and had stretches of crude steps at the steeper sections. It wound up interminably and Cosimo was panting and wheezing long before he reached the top. They passed the trebuchet, and de Wolfe noticed piles of large, rounded missiles and heaps of small stones, ready to devastate anything that came within range.

Four hundred feet above the sea, the path flattened out on top of a grassy plateau. At the southern tip of the island, Marisco’s castle was built on the edge of the cliff, and in the other direction, several farmhouses dotted the bleak fields, the narrow island cut across at intervals by dry-stone walls. The view was tremendous, and the two knarrs looked like toys far below.

The group was led by Robert and three other armed men towards the entrance to a thick stone wall running around the landward side of the castle, creating an outer ward, inside which they could see the upper part of a two-storeyed keep. The outer wall had heavy gates set in an arch, but they never saw the inside, as three men marched out at their approach. From his confident bearing, the one in the lead was William de Marisco, lord of Lundy. He was a burly, red-necked man of about forty, with pale, protuberant eyes and a full beard and moustache. His wispy brown hair looked as if all the winds of the island had blown through it for most of his life. His cloak and tunic were frayed and slightly soiled, as if personal comfort was of little consequence on this remote island.

De Marisco strode up to the newcomers with a scowl on his face. ‘Who the hell are you? Why did you let them land, Robert?’

‘This one’s a priest. I could hardly beat his brains out.’

‘We’ve already got a priest, drunken sot though he may be. And who is this other one?’

De Wolfe returned his scowl, head thrust out. ‘Sir John de Wolfe, the king’s coroner for this county. I’m here to investigate a wreck and a murder.’

De Marisco stared at the coroner, hands on hips displaying a heavy sword hanging from his belt. ‘I’ve heard of you. You were with the king in Outremer,’ he declared, his truculence fading slightly. ‘But what do you want with me? And what are those bloody Templars doing down there?’ He turned to Cosimo. ‘What are you doing here, Father? We already have all the religion we need on this island.’

The Abbot of Modena gave one of his strange smiles. ‘Look on me only as a sightseer, my son. I was required to help these men get ashore, to prevent your servants slaying them.’

De Wolfe felt obliged to distance himself from the Templars, if he was to gain anything from this visit. ‘I have nothing to do with the claim of their Order to Lundy. If you wish to discuss that with them, they are out there.’ He waved a hand towards the sea.

‘To Hell with them! I’ll not waste my breath. But did they seriously think that a handful of men-at-arms could drive me from my rightful honour, granted to my kinsmen back in ’fifty four?’

‘The soldiers are not there to aid the Templar’s claim, de Marisco,’ replied John. ‘The sheriff is down there also and we are seeking pirates who have taken ships along this coast and murdered the crew of one recently. Your name has been mentioned more than once in such activities.’

The lord of Lundy burst out laughing. ‘Pirates! The damned sea is swarming with them. Every third vessel in these waters pillages and kills when they think the pickings are good enough.’ He swept an arm expansively around the horizon. ‘From here I have seen two different pirates competing for the same victim, they are so thick in the water – Turks, Moors, Irish, Welsh and Bretons, to say nothing of our local villains!’

‘Which includes you, I take it?’ suggested de Wolfe, with reluctant admiration for Marisco’s openness.

The island chief leered at him. ‘I’ll say nothing that one day might be used against me, Crowner. But tell me of this particular crime you are investigating. Why come to me as a suspect?’

De Wolfe related the tale of the capture and wrecking of the Saint Isan, and the inquest on the corpse found on board. ‘The survivor says a galley with six oars a side was responsible, similar to those two drawn up on your beach down there.’

‘God’s teeth, de Wolfe, there are hundreds of boats like that, especially amongst folk with a fondness for piracy. They can be rowed against the wind to catch a sluggish merchantman. But we’ve not used those in many weeks – in fact, one is holed, having run against Mouse Rock, which stove in a few planks.’

‘You may say that, but how do I know it’s true?’ snapped de Wolfe. ‘You have two galleys on your beach, the whole of Devon alleges Lundy is a nest of pirates and you have not denied it.’

De Marisco coloured with rising anger. ‘I don’t give a damn what you think, Crowner! Are you going to cart me off to Bideford in chains to await trial, eh? Have a care! You are here only on sufferance because of this priest.’

De Wolfe stepped forward a pace and the two men each side of de Marisco put their hands on their sword hilts in a warning gesture. ‘If we are bandying questions, are you threatening the life of King Richard’s coroner in this county? I have already pointed out to your man Robert that Lundy is no sovereign state. It is part of England and you hold your bleak island from the Crown. Deny that or threaten the king’s representatives and you make yourself a traitor, de Marisco.’

The two big men eyed each other aggressively but de Marisco was not one to back down. ‘Hold my island, you say! Yes, until old King Henry granted my estate to those self-righteous men who carry the red cross on their breasts. What have they to do with an English island? Let them stay in Palestine where they belong. They’ll not throw me from my birthright, just to add to their possessions – I’ll die first!’ he added.

De Wolfe, who secretly had sympathy with his views, shrugged. ‘That’s none of my business, but the time will come when London or Winchester will send an army against you that can’t be repulsed by one trebuchet and a handful of ragged soldiers. In the meantime, are you denying that one of your galleys took the Saint Isan and slew most of its crew?’

De Marisco looked at his thin henchman, Robert, who shook his head emphatically. ‘We made no such attack then, I swear to it.’

De Wolfe noted the word ‘then’, but the man sounded sincere about not having taken that particular ship.

‘You have your answer, Crowner. That’s all I have to say to you, so look elsewhere for your culprits. Any port from Tunis to Dublin may harbour them, so I wish you joy of it!’

With that de Marisco turned and marched back to his rocky stronghold on the cliff. There was nothing else to be gained, so John, Gwyn and the silent Cosimo, who seemed slightly amused by the whole episode, followed their guards back down to the beach. The ragged army of de Marisco watched them with curiosity as they refloated the curragh and Gwyn rowed them back to the knarr, still anchored outside the range of the trebuchet.

On board, de Wolfe reported the futile visit to the sheriff and the other knights. De Grenville laughed cynically when the coroner described de Marisco’s attitude. ‘Typical of the arrogant bastard! He sits on this great rock and defies the world to do anything about him.’

When the three Templars heard de Wolfe describe the lord of Lundy’s contemptuous dismissal of their claim to the island, their determination to do something about it was strengthened, especially in de Falaise, who seemed almost apoplectic with fury at the defiance to their great Order by an insignificant tenant on a remote island.

Roland de Ver turned in exasperation to the shipmaster. ‘Is there no other landing place further along the coast where we can avoid this damned trebuchet?’ he demanded.

‘There are several poor beaches along this east side of the island, but they are more difficult and dangerous – and I don’t like the look of the weather.’

However, after much discussion and persuasion, the two ship-masters hauled up their anchor stones and moved further out to sea, watched intently by the crowd on the shore who again began yelling and waving in triumph at the apparent retreat of authority. When the two knarrs turned north and began to sail up the coast, the defenders tracked them along the shore, but because of the cliffs they had to climb almost to the top to find a path. A mile further on, the ships again came in closer and another stretch of pebbles, just past a small waterfall, was visible under the cliffs. Already a few of de Marisco’s men had arrived, but most were still scrambling along the steep paths towards them.

‘Get in as close as you can, master,’ commanded the leader of the Templars and, reluctantly, the two knarrs came within a hundred paces of the beach before dropping anchor.

The ship-master kept looking up, and though the cliffs obscured the western horizon, the long band of cloud that had been so distant earlier on was now visible across the sky, and the wind had dropped to an ominous calm. It was early afternoon: the tide had turned from its six-hour ebb and was rising again.

‘You could get the bows right against the beach now,’ suggested Gwyn. ‘A pair of sweeps would keep them nose-on to the shore whilst the troops jumped into the shallows.’

Again, the masters of the two vessels protested, mainly because they feared damaging the hulls on the stones, but also because of a sudden change in the weather.

Roland de Ver assuaged their fears with promises of more money, and the first knarr moved towards the shore, its bows crowded with men, the Templar knights crouching against the stem-post, shields up and swords in hand. In the other boat, Richard de Grenville led his own men, together with Ralph Morin and the rest of the Exeter soldiers. On the beach itself, a score of defenders were spread out thinly, looking rather hesitant as these formidable raiders in their impressive armour came towards them.

As the keel of the first ship crunched on to the pebbles, the Templars slid over the bulwarks into thigh-deep water and stumbled up the beach, followed by their sergeants and a dozen men-at-arms. A few spears were thrown at them, but they were deflected harmlessly by the shields of the experienced warriors. De Wolfe and Gwyn were behind the press of men in the bow, waiting to get ashore. Alongside them was the sheriff, looking decidedly unhappy as he spoke to his brother-in-law. ‘Are we going to get ourselves killed for a few acres of barren Templar land?’ he asked.

De Wolfe gave him a twisted grin. ‘Yes, why not? A pity not to use that nice new armour of yours, Richard. Come on!’

He put his legs over the side and dropped into the cold water, a low wave gliding past to soak him up to the waist. Gwyn splashed beside him and, with a roar, waded happily through the surf, waving his sword in the air. Reluctantly, the sheriff followed them and they stumbled up the bank of stones.

Immediately, the line of Lundy men congealed into several groups, as hand-to-hand fighting began. The defenders had the advantage, as they were higher up the bank and the wet attackers were not too steady on their feet until they got out of the water, the pebbles rolling and sliding under their feet.

Yelling and clashing of steel began in earnest, and although the Templars and Gabriel were taking the brunt of the conflict, de Wolfe and Gwyn were soon parrying and thrusting at a couple of de Marisco’s men. The coroner received a heavy blow on his shoulder, which dented one of the steel plates on his cuirass, but he returned it with such violent force to the side of his assailant’s head that the man’s helmet flew off and he dropped, as if poleaxed, on to the beach.

In the second’s respite that this allowed him, de Wolfe saw that many more men were clambering down the cliff paths and that before long the invaders would be well outnumbered. To his left, he saw Gwyn and the sheriff fighting side by side and, grudgingly, he had time to admit that de Revelle’s reluctance to expose himself to danger seemed to have worn off.

Though the islanders were losing ground as the newcomers fought their way out of the surf, the situation suddenly took a turn for the worse. A wave bigger than usual caught the second knarr and washed it broadside to the beach, momentarily heeling it over. The soldiers who were clambering over the bow at that moment were pitched into the surf and several sank under the weight of their chain-mail. Their comrades rescued them and none was drowned, but the errant wave turned out to be the first of many and almost immediately the two ship-masters yelled and pointed up at the darkening sky. A sudden squall whistled across the sea and, even under bare masts, the ships began rocking with the gusts of wind. The previously placid sea was already chopping up, and further out, the waves were crested with white horses.

Gwyn was the first to acknowledge the danger. ‘We must get off at once! Those vessels cannot stay there – they’ll be wrecked!’ he roared at his master. De Wolfe took a swing at a ruffian who was waving a mace at him and cut the fellow’s arm to the bone. Then he turned and knew instantly that they must retreat or be marooned.

He ran to Roland de Ver, then to the sheriff, and with shouts and gesticulations made them realise the situation. The Templars bellowed orders at the men-at-arms and formed a rearguard while everyone retreated to the knarrs, clustering around the bows. Some clambered aboard, while others pushed them off the pebbles, as the succession of waves and the rising tide got them afloat. As de Wolfe backed down the slope behind the fighting Templars, he stumbled over the groaning body of the man he had felled earlier. On a sudden impulse, he motioned to Gwyn and they tipped the inert islander unceremoniously over the ships’ side, before clambering in themselves.

The Templars, in a tight semi-circle around the bow, made a last slashing attack on their adversaries, felling two and driving the rest far enough back to allow them to get aboard. They were helped in by willing hands, as the knarr slid into deeper water, pulled by four men on the long sweep oars. De Wolfe glanced across at the other boat and saw the last of their men being hauled aboard.

As the vessels were backed off the beach, the defenders hurled insults and a few stones, but within minutes the knarrs were well out, their sails hoisted. The wind was now gusting hard and the sky was dark grey, with spots of rain beginning to fall. As they looked back, they saw several bodies lying on the beach and a few men being carried or helped to their feet by comrades.

‘What a pitiful fiasco! We should all be ashamed of ourselves,’ snarled de Falaise, rubbing angrily a deep cut on his cheek where he had been hit with a ball-mace.

‘God obviously did not wish you to conquer this time,’ said Abbot Cosimo, who with his two had remained on board and watched the jousting with apparent amusement.

‘But for this sudden storm we could have won the day,’ snapped Roland de Ver, looking ruefully at a slash across his white surcoat that almost cut the red cross in half.

‘We were fortunate that we left when we did,’ said the sheriff. ‘There was a legion of men coming down that path, who would have eventually outnumbered us two to one.’

‘Templars are supposed to fight on even at three to one,’ snapped Godfrey Capra. ‘It is a disgrace to leave the field at less than those odds.’

De Wolfe looked back at the shore as the knarrs began to roll and pitch as they left the shelter of the cliffs. ‘Have we lost any men, Ralph?’ he asked the castle constable.

‘Two dead and left behind, and three with wounds but none serious. We must have felled a few of theirs, but I didn’t have time to count them.’

Gwyn walked back from the bow, rock-steady on the swaying deck. ‘What about this fellow we threw aboard? I can’t get any sense out of him yet. He’s got a bruise on his head the size of an onion where you hit him.’

The coroner had forgotten him. ‘We’ll throw him into de Grenville’s cells when we get back to Bideford. Maybe he can tell us something useful, if he survives.’

He held on tightly to the rough wooden rail, his stomach telling him that the sooner this trip was over the better.