Crowner's Crusade

by Bernard Knight

  From there, they retraced their route of the previous week, keeping within distant sight of the heel and toe of Italy until they reached the straits across which lay Corfu. The wind was fairly kind to them, giving the lie to the prohibitions of sailing in late autumn. Without the horses, conditions were much better down in the hold on the few days and nights where rough seas kept them below deck.

  John and Gwyn suffered the boredom and the endless rolling and pitching of the ship with resignation, having endured far worse conditions on dry land over many years. They ate the communal rations supplied by the crew and their own figs, dates and citrus fruit that they had bought in Licata. These lasted them almost a week, leaving only a few more days on dismal food until they reached Corfu. At dawn one morning the hilly western coast of that island came into view and the weary passengers lined the rail to welcome it as yet another stage on their erratic journey.

  ‘Are we keeping this vessel to go up the Adriatic?’ asked John, who was standing next to Robert de Turnham.

  ‘It would take a month in this old tub if the winds are against us,’ grunted the High Admiral. ‘They’re mainly from the north-east in the winter, the worst of them being the notorious bora.’

  ‘So what should we do?’ Gerald de Clare, the senior knight of the Templar contingent, sounded anxious. He was a tall, thin man, with a bushy grey beard. One eye was half closed by a livid scar running across his forehead on to his cheek, the legacy of a spear thrust at the battle of Arsuf the previous year, when Richard’s forces defeated a massive attack by Saladin. The Templars had played a crucial role in the victory, but paid a heavy price in dead and wounded.

  ‘We need a ship that will sail better than this one,’ replied de Turnham. ‘It can be much smaller, now that we no longer have the horses. There are coastal currents up the east coast that will help, as well as many islands that will offer shelter to a small vessel in this devilish time of year.’

  Once again, it seemed that God was listening to the admiral, though at first the intervention of the Almighty looked more like a disaster than a blessing. Their discussion was suddenly brought to an end by a shout from a lookout on the forecastle, who was pointing towards the distant hills, just visible above the horizon. As he spoke a patois peculiar to the eastern Adriatic, they had no idea what he was saying, but his frantic gesticulations alerted the shipmaster, who yelled back at him in the same language.

  ‘What’s going on?’ shouted John, as several of the other knights began climbing on to the poop for a better view.

  ‘A galley coming out from the island!’ yelled the Venetian. ‘Almost certainly another corsair or a pirate.’ The difference was slight, though a corsair was supposed to have the blessing of the local Christian ruler to prey on Moorish ships, whilst a pirate would attack anyone.

  There was a bang below as the king’s cabin door slammed open and Richard appeared to see what the fuss was about. Baldwin of Bethune rapidly told him that an attack was likely and immediately the Lionheart took charge, almost eager to get involved in some violence to ease the tedium of the voyage.

  ‘Shipmaster, how long before they can reach us?’ he bellowed.

  On learning that they had more than an hour, the king called everyone to arms. ‘Every man get your hauberks, shields and helmets from the hold and buckle on your swords!’

  There was a rapid, but orderly scramble as the experienced soldiers prepared for a fight and the crew also went to their stations, fetching crossbows and spears from the forecastle. The king disappeared into his cabin and with the help of the Templar sergeant, soon came out attired in his long coat of chain mail over which was a scarlet linen surcoat with two golden lions2 emblazoned across the chest. He wore a round iron helmet with a narrow gilt crown around the brim. From a broad belt and baldric, a massive sword hung almost to his feet.

  John joined his fellows in recovering his armour from the hold and after unwrapping the oily cloth, Gwyn helped him lower the hauberk over his shoulders and gave him the plain helmet with a nose guard.

  ‘I’ll leave that off until I know we are actually going to fight,’ growled John, tucking the helmet under his arm.

  There was no time to unpack the gambesons for the knights, the thick padded tunics that were normally worn under armour to soften the shock of heavy blows, but this was not to be a battlefield combat, with thundering horses and the impact of long lances.

  Gwyn pulled a battered helmet on to his unruly ginger hair, but had no armour. For years, he had depended on the half-inch thick boiled leather of his jerkin to absorb or deflect most of the sword clashes and arrow points that came his way.

  Back on deck, fifteen knights now assembled, together with the sergeant and many of the crew who had armed themselves with a variety of weapons. They lined the bulwarks on the side facing the approaching galley, Richard being up on the poop with Robert de Turnham and de L’Etang, the rest either on the main deck or up on the forecastle. On the king’s instructions, the Templars stood in the most prominent positions, so that the universally known red crosses on their white surcoats could clearly be seen.

  As the galley came nearer, they saw it was of medium size, with a single tier of rowers, about twenty oars each side.

  ‘At least its pennant shows it’s Christian, not Moorish!’ shouted the shipmaster.

  The sail was furled, as it was moving against the wind, but the rhythmical beat of the oarsmen was sending it along at a brisk pace. The high prow, which curved forward at the waterline to form a ram, carried a fighting platform. On this were a few dozen men waving spears and swords, while others had coils of rope and grapnels. The galley curved around behind them to move in the same direction.

  ‘They can’t come alongside to attack us,’ explained Gwyn, their maritime oracle. ‘The oars would be snapped off – and if all the boarders ran to one side, they’d capsize, as these narrow vessels are top-heavy!’

  He knew that the usual technique was to ram the victim ship with the armoured spike under the bow, then swarm aboard from the forecastle, the ships being held together by grappling irons thrown on first impact.

  Across the water, they could now hear the regular beat of the drum which gave the time to the rowers and soon added to this were yells and screams of defiance, designed to terrify the prospective victims. They had picked the wrong ship this time, as the Templars stood stoically at the rail, looking impassively at the approaching galley, which began to overtake, coming up on the buss’s port quarter.

  When it was just within crossbow range, the Lionheart gave a great bellow and hauled out his sword which he brandished in the air. As one man, the rest of the knights did the same, holding aloft a forest of blades which glittered in the sun. Then up on the aftercastle, the Templar sergeant took careful aim with his bow and pulled the trigger. A few seconds later, they saw one of the crowd on the nose of the galley stagger and clutch his arm. A scream was added to the tirade of threats, which rapidly faltered as the rhythm of the drum altered, then ceased. The galley lost way as the oarsmen stopped pulling and it glided parallel to the Franche Nef, but now just out of arrow shot. The buss was still moving at her usual speed, but by deft movements of their steering oar and yelled commands to the oarsmen, the sleek galley kept pace at a respectable distance. The watchers on the buss could see animated gestures going on between the figures on the fighting platform of the other vessel and very soon a man began shouting at them through cupped hands.

  ‘What’s he saying?’ the king demanded of the shipmaster.

  The Venetian put a hand to his ear, then translated. ‘He has seen the crosses and wants to know if we are returning Crusaders, sire. He cannot be a local man or he would have learned that already from Corfu.’

  The Lionheart leapt up on to the rail of the poop, grabbing a mizzen stay to support himself. Raising his arm to better display the golden lions on his surcoat, he brandished his large sword at the galley. ‘Tell him this ship carries King Richard of England back from the Holy Land
!’ he yelled at the master. ‘And if he dares interfere with us, I will kill him and his crew – and the Pope will send all their souls to hell!’

  It was impossible to tell if the Venetian gave a literal translation in the local language, but it was immediately obvious that the aggressive mood of the pirates rapidly subsided. Weapons were lowered and the boarding party on the forecastle began to disperse following some commands from their leader. A few moments later, there were more unintelligible shouts between the two ships. The buss’s master explained that the galley chief was allowing them to pass unhindered, as they were the soldiers of the Almighty.

  ‘Sensible man, for we would have cut them to pieces and then sunk their lousy ship!’ growled Gwyn, who stood protectively behind John de Wolfe.

  But Richard Coeur de Lion had not finished with the pirates. After a rapid discussion with his admiral and Baldwin of Bethune, he yelled again at the shipmaster to pass a surprising message to the galley.

  ‘Tell him I wish to hire his vessel to take us to Zara – there’s good Italian silver waiting for him if he agrees!’

  FOUR

  Later that day, the two ships anchored together in the bay off Kerkyra on the side of Corfu facing the mainland, while the bargaining and then transfer of supplies took place. The home port of the Franche Nef was Limassol, but the shipmaster was not going to risk taking her back there in mid-November and decided to winter in Corfu. The king’s clerk paid him the remainder of the passage money from Acre and next morning all the belongings of the passengers and most of their provisions were moved across to the galley.

  ‘We’re going to be sleeping with our feet in the next man’s mouth!’ grumbled de Wolfe to Gwyn, as they clambered aboard the narrow vessel and surveyed the limited space for their eighteen men. The oarsmen were on a lower deck, not far above water level and above this was a flat main deck with a single mast carrying a triangular sail on a long sloping yard. Towards the stern, there was a wooden canopy arching over the deck to form a rudimentary shelter.

  ‘I suppose this is where we must live for a week or so,’ said Richard cheerfully, revelling in the discomfort and the glum expressions on the faces of his retainers. He marched ahead of them and bent his big body to peer into the low deckhouse. ‘Come on, sirs, think of the adventures you will be able to relate to your grandchildren!’ he chided them, ignoring the fact that the Templars were celibate monks.

  They managed to squeeze a dozen mattresses into the shelter and the remaining Templars elected to go to the lower deck and find somewhere to lodge right at the stern, near where the two steersmen manoeuvred the long steering oar.

  The haggling with the corsair’s master for their hire of the galley was carried out partly through the buss’s captain, who spoke a little of the Dalmatian language and also through the galley’s mate, a villainous-looking Sicilian. He could speak fair Norman-French, so the king, Philip his clerk and Baldwin hammered out an agreement that for two hundred lira, the galley would deliver them to the Hungarian port of Zara, halfway up the Adriatic. These silver coins from Richard’s treasure chest were minted in the Italian city state of Lucca and were used all over the Mediterranean lands, especially by Crusaders who used them as a common currency.

  After Anselm had said prayers that evening, the new passengers had a remarkably good meal as the vessel sat in the calm anchorage. On the deck below, there was a gap halfway down the rowing benches where on one side the ship’s skiff was stored. On the other was a large cooking brazier, where several of the pirate crew grilled scores of skewers carrying hunks of meat, onions and garlic. A couple of these, eaten with olives and flatbread made a satisfying meal, washed down with water and a local wine brought from ashore with the rest of the food.

  As darkness fell, they crawled into the deck house to lie on the straw palliasses, squeezed in side by side. Even the king had the same meagre space, as there was no cabin for him on this vessel. With Baldwin on one side and de L’Etang on the other, all royal protocol was banished in the circumstances which had been thrust upon them. However, Richard seemed quite happy to be treated like one of his fellow soldiers and, as he had often done on campaign in Palestine, he shared their discomforts without complaint. Indeed, he seemed to revel in them, as if this was a welcome respite from the cares which had plagued him in the Holy Land and the travails that would face him at home.

  John de Wolfe and Gwyn of Polruan were right at the open mouth of the shelter, but driving rain seemed unlikely that night and covered by their cloaks, they were soon sound asleep. When they awoke at dawn, the motion of the ship told them that they were already under way and the unfamiliar rhythmic swish of the oars and the thump of the drum seemed strange after being under sail for so long on the Franche Nef. The galley moved rapidly northwards, hugging the barren coast for many miles. Once out of the lee of Corfu island, the motion of the sea increased, but it was nothing like as rough as they had experienced on the trip to Sicily and back. The corsair captain, a sly-looking man with greasy black hair and a dark complexion which defied any guess as to his origins, wanted to follow the usual habit and pull into a bay to spend each night ashore, but the king dipped into his travel fund once more and bribed the man with a few more lira to keep going. They had lost over a week in the futile diversion beyond Sicily and the Lionheart had recurring visions of Philip of France advancing into Normandy in his absence. They were now in the first days of December and he had originally hoped to be home sometime in January, a hope that was now utterly unrealistic.

  During the third day, a fresh wind blew from the south-east and the rowers shipped their oars, as the great sail was unfurled and they made just as good progress as from the efforts of the men on the benches below. After two nights spent at sea, the captain flatly refused to again forego their usual practice of going ashore, claiming that the crew would mutiny if made to spend another night on the benches. At dusk, the galley pulled into the shelter of a small bay. The captain was obviously quite familiar with this inlet and at dusk the galley was rowed up on to a soft sandy beach behind the headland. The crew disembarked and at the top of the beach they began building a fire to cook a meal. There were a few fishermen’s huts nearby with some small boats drawn up into the bushes. The Sicilian vanished into one of the huts and soon came out to invite the passengers to use some outhouses as shelter for the night. These sheds stank of fish, but at least were stationary, not bobbing up and down and rolling as on the previous two nights when few of the travellers could get much sleep.

  On the instructions of the Sicilian, the king’s clerk distributed a few Lucca coins to the fishermen for their accommodation and for an ample supply of fresh fish. This was grilled on the fire and with some coarse bread, olives and dried figs, made a welcome meal before settling down to sleep. Next morning the galley was slid back into the sea and they set off northwards once again. Though the sea had become more choppy the previous day, a strong easterly wind now churned it even more and to avoid being blown out to sea, the sail was lowered and they resorted to the oars.

  By noon, the weather worsened as the wind shifted more to the north-east and brought a chill with it that warned them that warm Mediterranean days were now well behind them. The Sicilian and the galley master were becoming more animated as they argued and gesticulated towards the land, now about seven miles away on their starboard side. Eventually, the mate came across to speak in his tortured French to Richard and his admiral.

  ‘It is the bora, sirs, and it is getting worse. We cannot carry on, or we will founder. We must seek shelter until it dies down.’

  ‘And how long might that be?’ demanded the king, anxious to get to their landfall in Hungarian territory.

  The Sicilian shrugged. ‘Maybe a day – maybe a week. But we must make for Ragusa3 and hope that God preserves us that far.’

  ‘How distant is that?’ bellowed the Lionheart, his now luxuriant golden beard bristling in his frustration.

  ‘A few leagues further, sire. A safe harbo
ur, if we can get into it in this weather.’

  ‘And if not?’ demanded Richard.

  For answer, the Sicilian crossed himself.

  The bora worsened during the afternoon and the galley laboured against it, the oarsmen weakening with the sustained effort. The master steered much further towards the coast to try to gain some shelter, but de Wolfe failed to notice much advantage. He was beginning to fear for his life as the rolling and pitching increased and the cries of the rowers below became more strident as they struggled with oars that were deep below water one moment and pointing at the sky the next, water pouring over the low bulwarks as the hull corkscrewed along.

  ‘A hell of way to die after all we’ve been through, Gwyn!’ John muttered to his squire and friend, as he clung to the rail and stared anxiously at the grey cliffs that were now only a mile away.

  The former fisherman, who had spent years off the Atlantic cliffs of Cornwall, was philosophical about it, as were so many sailors, few of whom ever learned to swim. ‘Never say die until you draw that last breath, Sir John!’ he advised. ‘This master, bloody pirate though he be, seems a good seaman.’

  As the early dusk of winter began to close in, the galley captain and his mate seemed to get more agitated, pointing ahead where a faint light shone from a headland a mile or two away. As they laboured nearer, they could see a flickering flame from a fire burning in a large brazier high on the cliff.

  ‘Just beyond that beacon is the bay of Ragusa,’ yelled the Sicilian, pointing at it. ‘But the wind will be worse when we pass the shelter of the cliffs.’

  He staggered back along the deck and went down the ladder to survey the shambles below where stores and provisions were rolling about. The oarsmen were desperately trying to keep stroke with the drum, even though the inboard ends of the sweeps were fighting them at every heave.