by Jack Whyte
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 t
heir 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 s
kill, 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.”