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—
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 Sable 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, Alais.” That Berengaria had never met or known his sister and had had nothing remotely to do with Alais’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 Sable’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 Sable. 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 Sable 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 Sable 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
