‘I do; it would be prudent to listen to me, as you listen to your Abbot…’
Holding his audience with his wild eyes, he paused and looked around the hall.
‘First, you must repent your sins, for where you are going is no place for sinners.’
‘But we are going to the Holy Land; is that not the best place for sinners to repent?’
The mystic raised his voice and filled the hall with a roar.
‘The Holy Land is not holy any more; it is in the hands of the infidel!’
He looked to the heavens and closed his eyes.
‘I have been searching to know the future for all of us. I have found the hidden truth in the Book of Revelation. We are approaching the Third Age of the Spirit, a time of love and joy. But before that we must destroy the sixth of the Seven Great Persecutors of the Holy Faith. Herod and Muhammad and the others have passed; the Sultan Saladin is the sixth.’
He then pointed his staff directly at the King.
‘You, the one called “Lionheart”, must annihilate him!’
He paused again and moved the staff closer to the King.
‘Cast him into the fires of Hell!’
I could see that King Richard was transfixed by what was being said. But not so Abbot Alun, who had a look of disdain on his face. The Lionheart leaned forward in his chair.
‘But if I kill Saladin, what of the Seventh Persecutor?’
‘He will come; he will be the Anti-Christ. He is born already and is now fifteen years old and lives in Rome. One day he will be elected Pope, before he reveals himself as Satan! Beelzebub! Lord of the Flies!’
The old man fell to his knees, as if in prayer.
‘But he will rule only for three years until we rise up to challenge him. For now, Saladin is Satan’s emissary. He defiles the Holy Places, but God has chosen you to cast him out.’
He then stood and raised his staff over the Lionheart’s head; his voice growled even more.
‘Your arrival in the Holy Land is vital. Go there quickly; God is calling you. He will give you victory over His enemies and will exalt your name beyond all the princes of the earth!’
There was a stunned silence in the room. Moved by what he had heard, King Richard was ashen-faced. Berengere looked dumbstruck, in awe of what lay ahead for her betrothed. Tancred offered the mystic food and drink but he refused, and turned and left.
After a few minutes, the volume in the hall rose slowly and the guests continued with their feast. The Lionheart turned to Abbot Alun.
‘What do you make of him?’
‘A fine performance, sire.’
‘Of course, man… but what about the things he said?’
‘A fine speech, my Lord, but the Book of Revelation can be read a hundred ways. When you meet the Sultan Saladin, I would rely much more on your sword and your siege engines, rather than on divine intervention.’
‘You sound more like Marshal and Mercadier than one of God’s abbots!’
‘Sire, I would listen to them much more closely than to Joachim of Fiore when it comes to the tactics of the battlefield.’
Although the Lionheart listened carefully to what Alun said, I could sense that the old preacher’s words had had a profound effect on him.
They had also given Berengere much food for thought. Later, as we sat and reflected on the evening, she spoke to me in the very stilted Occitan that Queen Eleanor had taught her on their journey from Navarre.
‘Ranulf, how dangerous is our mission against Saladin?’
‘Very challenging, ma’am; as you know from your Muslim neighbours to the south, in Iberia, they are very resourceful and very proud. Now that they have retaken Jerusalem, they will not give it up easily.’
‘Richard tells me that you were chosen to be his guardian by his grandmother.’
‘Not exactly his guardian, ma’am, more his adviser.’
‘He says that you are a great knight.’
‘Ma’am, I am not the kind of knight that you may know – a nobleman who fights in tournaments – I am a professional soldier, who fights for a living. I was granted my pennon for my services to King Richard’s father.’
‘What do you think of what the old man said?’
‘I don’t know; I try not to become too involved with the Church and its teachings. But there are lots of seers and mystics who think they know the future. Some say we’ll be damned, some say we’ll be saved. They can’t all be right. I tend to agree with Abbot Alun; the battle with Saladin will be decided by mortal men, not by God.’
She then paid me a compliment – flattery that came with a burden which only added to the one I already carried.
‘You must be very brave to have been chosen to be at the right hand of the Lionheart. For the sake of us all, please protect him in the Holy Land.’
We sailed through the Straits of Messina and headed east on 10 April 1191. In addition to the 50 or so ships which had already sailed with King Philip, I counted 219 ships in total. The Lionheart had taken command of all the other crusaders who had arrived in Sicily in the summer, and now led a force which I calculated at over 20,000, including almost 3,000 knights.
Commanded by Mercadier, Robert Thornham, Blondel and Baldwin of Bethune, he put Berengere, his treasury and half his personal conroi in four heavily armed dromons in the vanguard. Berengere was accompanied by Joan, Dowager Queen of Sicily, who was not only the Lionheart’s younger sister, but also the widow of William II, Tancred’s predecessor as King of Sicily. The rest of the fleet was arranged in a massive pyramid-shaped flotilla behind the leading dromons. We took the port point, while William Marshal led the starboard flank. As we sailed past Cape Spartivento and into the open sea, the Lionheart stood at the prow of our ship. Wearing his gleaming helmet and flowing red cape, he could easily have been the Doge of Venice aboard his Bucentaur progressing along the Canalosso of Venice.
From our position, our flotilla looked like an enormous flight of geese heading south for the winter, its maroon lateen sails billowing in the wind like the puffed-up breasts of preening seabirds. It was a stirring sight.
Our vanguard’s captain used his lodestone every hour to check our course; we kept a formation that was so tight, it was possible to shout from one ship to another. At night, each vessel’s captain lit a wax candle to identify its position. Our fleet resembled a sea of stars as the candlelight flickered against the black depths of the Mediterranean. I found the sounds of the sea enthralling as it tossed us backwards and forwards, straining our sails and stretching our ropes. Our timbers creaked as if they were crying out in pain; huge beams of oak twisted and were squeezed like young saplings.
We made good progress, but on the eve of Easter Day we were caught by a fierce storm that had us clamouring for anything to which we could lash ourselves. When the maelstrom abated, our formation was no more; the fleet had been flung far and wide. Several days passed before the majority of the scattered flock found one another. But the four ‘mother hens’ were missing, along with their precious passengers and cargo.
We anchored off Crete for minor repairs then set sail again, making landfall at Rhodes, but there was still no sign of the four dromons of our vanguard. The Lionheart was beside himself with anxiety about Berengere. He decided to send out scouts in fast coastal trading galleys to try to locate the missing dromons.
Eventually, the scouts returned with good news and bad. Blondel’s dromon, which carried the Lionheart’s treasury, had been shipwrecked on Cyprus, where he had fought valiantly against the Cypriot garrison before being overwhelmed. Many had been killed, the gold and silver in the treasury plundered, Blondel imprisoned and a large ransom placed on his head. Fortunately, the three remaining ships had managed to stand off the coast, but they were stranded in uncomfortable conditions.
The scouts then proceeded to brief the Lionheart about Cyprus and its lord. The island, a vital Mediterranean staging post between Europe, the Levant and North Africa, had always been rich in food and wine and was one of the most desirable realms in the Mediterranean. Several years earlier, Isaac, a junior member of the family of the Comneni Emperors of Byzantium and a nephew of Manuel Comnenus, had arrived on the island with fake credentials from Constantinople purporting to be the new governor. Slowly but surely, he had managed,
