Thankfully, during the first part of the voyage, the calm weather allowed the crew to cook, a charcoal fire being lit in a large iron pan secured on a slab of stone set in the deck. At noon, they would have spit-roasted chicken from the scores of fowls kept in a cage in the forecastle and soon, the enterprising merchants of Limassol were rowing out to the ship to sell fresh meat and fish, as well as bread, wine and a variety of fruits. Another boat provided kegs of fresh water which would keep them and the horses supplied for the next leg of the voyage to Rhodes.
As the day wore on, there was no sign of the king returning and after their dinner of vegetable potage and chicken, de Wolfe, Baldwin, and de L’Etang sat in the shade of the aftercastle, drinking some of the better local wine that they had bought from a bumboat.
‘I wonder what we’ll find when we get back?’ mused Baldwin. ‘I live too damned near to the lands of Philip Augustus for comfort. He’s got his eye on Artois, just as he has on the whole of Normandy.’
The King of France, though nominally overlord of a large area of the country, actually had control of only a relatively small area around Paris and was always seeking ways to enlarge his territory. Now that Richard Coeur de Lion was far away in the east, Philip Augustus was greedily eyeing Artois, which spread up to the coast at Boulogne and also the Vexin, the northern part of Normandy. Though the lands of absent Crusaders were supposed to be inviolate, Philip had tried to get Pope Celestine to lift the protection, but had so far been rebuffed.
‘The same is happening in England,’ grunted de Wolfe. ‘His treacherous brother John has been hoping that Richard would never return from the Holy Land. I’ll wager he prays every night for him to be struck down by a Saracen arrow or a rampant fever, so that he can take his crown.’
They went again through the catalogue of men who wished the Lionheart ill will, from Philip Augustus and Henry of Germany, through Leopold of Austria to Raymond of Toulouse and the princes of Genoa and Pisa — all the adversaries that were now blocking their pathway home.
The time passed slowly, Gwyn returning to his old profession for a while, as he took to fishing with hook and line over the ship’s side. Whether by luck or remembered skill, he landed half a dozen sizeable fish to add to their supper, until in the late afternoon, there was a cry from the lookout up in the barrel lashed to the mast above the spar for the single furled sail.
‘They are coming back, sirs!’
Moving to the rail, they saw a procession coming down the main street to the quayside and soon two boats were being rowed towards the Franche Nef, the second carrying a small chest.
Once alongside, King Richard hauled himself aboard and when Robert de Turnham followed him, the admiral turned to the crew and threatened them with horrible tortures if they allowed the treasure box in the second skiff to fall into the sea. When it was safely on the deck, a Templar staggered with it into the king’s cabin, as Richard watched them with a satisfied smile.
‘The contents should see us across Europe, gentlemen. Though only God knows how we’re going to achieve it!’
TWO
The voyage onwards to Rhodes was notable only for its tedium. They left Limassol within an hour of the king’s return and a favourable wind took them along the south coast of the island. Next morning, they lost sight of land and headed up towards the coast of Asia Minor. When they arrived there, the shipmaster made sure that he could still glimpse the mountains of Anatolia, but kept well offshore, due to the hostility of Byzantium to the Crusaders who had wreaked such damage to their country on the way to Palestine.
They took almost a week to reach the harbour of Emborikos on Rhodes, as the wind had changed and the clumsy ship had to claw its way along by innumerable tacks. Richard refused to go ashore at night and the navigator had to do his best in the dark, when clouds obscured the moon and stars.
John de Wolfe was on duty as the king’s guard and companion on one such night, when Richard came up on to the aftercastle. To pass the time, the king seemed inclined to talk for a while. He told John about his abiding interest in ships and how he was convinced that England needed a navy to protect itself, rather than depend on commandeering a few ships when the need arose.
‘I have a mind to establish Portsmouth as a base for my navy when I return. It has an excellent harbour, large enough to assemble a fleet and an army to settle affairs with Philip Augustus!’
John could already see himself part of such an army, even though at almost thirty-nine, he was getting a little old for the rigours of the battlefield. He had fought for Richard’s father, old King Henry, in Ireland and various parts of France, before taking the Cross for this campaign in the Holy Land. But what else could he do but soldier on? He had no other profession and the country would be awash with unemployed knights after the end of the Crusade. He diffidently expressed these doubts about his future to the king, who seemed in one of his genial moods this evening.
Richard slapped him on the shoulder and gave him a hearty reassurance. ‘You are a good man, de Wolfe! A faithful subject and a tenacious fighter! I’ll always find a place for you somewhere — and for that mad bull of a Cornishman who watches your back so well.’
Swinging away, the king clattered down the ladder to his cabin, leaving a flattered, but rather pensive de Wolfe to lean on the bulwark and stare into the darkness, wondering whether his monarch really would remember him in a few years’ time.
They stayed but one day in the harbour of Rhodes, sending Baldwin of Bethune and William de L’Etang ashore to seek the latest news, while more food and fresh water was taken on board. The king stayed in his cabin for most of the time, not wanting to advertise his presence in a crowded port filled with spies from half a dozen countries, though in fact probably every urchin and lemon seller knew that Richard Coeur de Lion was on the ship.
He spent several hours with his clerk, Philip of Poitou, dictating letters that he hoped could be dispatched at their next port of call, Corfu. He was writing to his mother, the elderly but strong-willed Queen Eleanor, to his Chancellor William Longchamp and to Bishop Hubert Walter, as well as duty letters to his wife Berengaria and his sister Joanne.
As soon as they left Rhodes, the king called a meeting of his shipboard council to discuss what Baldwin and de L’Etang had learned ashore. The Sicilian messengers from Tancred had made themselves known to the newcomers and Baldwin relayed their scant information to the council.
‘It is now widely known in the eastern Mediterranean that you are at sea, my lord,’ he reported. ‘Philip Augustus has urged everyone who owes him fealty to look out for you and seize you if possible.’
William de L’Etang confirmed this and added that Henry of Germany had alerted those in the Italian peninsula, as he was still preparing to march an army south to Sicily to add the island to his Holy Roman Empire, claiming that Richard had illegally deprived his wife Constance of her right to the Sicilian throne by supporting Tancred.
‘So we have few friends anywhere!’ commented the Lionheart. ‘That’s not unexpected, but makes it more difficult for us to wriggle our way back to Normandy.’
‘Am I to tell the shipmaster to strike westwards from here to reach Sicily?’ asked Robert de Turnham, in his capacity as High Admiral.