The king shook his large head decisively. Normally clean-shaven like most Normans, he had joined the others in letting his hair and beard grow since leaving Acre and now had eleven day’s worth of golden fuzz on his face.
‘No, we’ll keep to the original plan of stopping at Corfu, where there will be the most up-to-date intelligence from Italy, just across the straits from there. We can decide then what is the best course to take. It might be up into the Adriatic.’
The journey continued and the weather began to worsen, as the season was now far advanced. Suspicious of the reaction of other Byzantine ports in the region, the king and his officers directed the shipmaster to keep to the south of the chain of islands in the Aegean, passing on the horizon Karpathos, Kasos and then the seemingly endless coastline of Crete. The buss wallowed along in worsening weather and any thought of hot food was banished, as no fire could be lit on the rolling deck. As well as Baldwin, the chaplain was seasick for days on end and Philip of Poitou had to lead the prayers, most of which were heartfelt pleas for deliverance from this slow torment. Thankfully, John de Wolfe was a good sailor and of course, Gwyn relished the motion, having spent much of his youth in cockleshells off the Cornish coast.
‘How long d’you think this bad weather will last, Gwyn?’ demanded de Wolfe of his squire, as they huddled for shelter under the windward bulwark.
‘What bad weather, Sir John?’ asked the ginger giant, with a roguishly innocent expression.
‘There’s a bit of a swell, admittedly, but at least the sea is staying where it’s supposed to be — outside the ship!’
His reassurance did not last long, as when the Franche Nef eventually passed the western end of Crete, the ship began to pitch as well as roll and spray began to fly back from the bow. Within another day, occasional green waves were crashing over the low main deck and streaming out through the scuppers.
‘No sleeping on deck tonight,’ said Baldwin mournfully. ‘We share the hold with the horses from now on.’
Below deck, under the large hatch sealed with planks and canvas, twenty horses shared the misery with them. The animals were penned in stalls at each side, the whites of their eyes rolling with terror as the ship plunged along. For a further week, the men tried to sleep as best they could. Some climbed into the diminishing piles of hay that were stacked under the forecastle, others tried to wedge their straw pallets between the crates and casks of the food stores that were lashed down in the centre of the hold.
In the daytime, they staggered up on deck, preferring a wetting from the spray to the stink of horse manure and urine that seeped down to the bilges. Their own sanitary arrangements were little better — a bucket was the usual receptacle, as only the nonchalant crew dared use the ring-shaped wooden seat that was clamped to the bulwarks, hanging over the waves below. For obvious reasons, it was always fixed downwind on the ‘looward’ side, from which it got its nickname, ‘the loo seat’.
William de L’Etang stood one day with John and Baldwin at the lee rail, gripping it with dogged determination. ‘I trust someone knows where we are,’ he shouted, over the moan of the wind and the soughing of the water as it churned ten feet below them. ‘One bit of the God-blasted sea looks the same as the next!’
Geography was not the strong point of many on board, though the voyage out had given them some notion of the main way-stations. Maps and charts were speculative, outside local coastal waters.
De Wolfe looked out at the empty sea, now that the islands were far behind. ‘I think Greece must be up there somewhere,’ he hazarded, waving a hand vaguely northwards.
‘That’s cheered me greatly!’ muttered William, as seawater swirled about his ankles as the deck tilted rhythmically. It was becoming cooler under a grey sky and they began to miss the comfort of hot food. The previous day, one of the crew attempted to boil them some stew over a brazier of charcoal in a sheltered corner of the deck, but the whole thing was overturned, scalding the man’s leg. Thankfully, the large wave that had upset it also flooded over the coals and prevented any conflagration.
When a few more days had passed, it was nearing the end of October and the horizon was still empty, but as the ship laboured further northwards, they saw land again far away on their starboard bow, the wild mountains of the Greek Peloponnesus. A day or two later, as land closed in on both sides, the strong winds abated somewhat. They entered a wide strait between an island and the mainland, almost a score of miles across. John de Wolfe and Gwyn watched from the aftercastle as they passed between the rugged land on either side.
‘Where are we now, master?’ demanded John of the Venetian who navigated the vessel. The man spoke enough French for them to converse and told him that the island was Zakynthos and that ahead of them was an inland sea.
‘We come through these islands to gain shelter, even though they have dangerous currents and jagged reefs,’ replied the man, turning away to yell something in a strange language at some of his seamen struggling with ropes attached to the single large sail that was driving them along.
‘Much as I love the sea, I’ve had my fill of it for now!’ complained Gwyn, hunched over the rail in his scuffed jerkin, made of stiff boiled leather that was almost as good as armour. Other than in the hottest weather, he seemed to live in it, thought John. It had a pointed hood hanging down the back, which when worn, made him look like a huge Cornish pixie, especially as he also had coarse worsted breeches tucked into wrinkled ankle-length boots. Whereas all the others had given in and allowed their beards to grow unchecked, Gwyn periodically scraped off most of his stubble with a sharp knife, leaving his bushy red moustaches to droop down to his collar.
‘You’ll not recognize your two boys when we get home, Gwyn,’ observed his master. ‘They’ll be a couple of years older by then.’
The Cornishman grinned. ‘As long as there are not more than two there when I get home, I’ll be happy!’ he said mischievously. ‘And what about your own lady, Sir John? You’ve not seen her for the same length of time.’
De Wolfe scowled at him, his long, saturnine face glowering under the nascent black beard. ‘You know damned well that the less I see of her, the better I’m pleased! I came on this Crusade more to get away from her, than from any great desire to slaughter Saracens!’ Everyone in Exeter knew that the relationship between John and Matilda de Revelle was anything but a love match. Pushed into a marriage of convenience by their respective parents some fourteen years earlier, they lived in a state of smouldering antagonism. During that time, de Wolfe had spent less than a year living with her, managing to find a war somewhere in Ireland or across the Channel to give him a legitimate reason for his absence. It had also gained him a sizeable store of silver, which he added to his winnings and ransom money from his success at tournaments, all wisely invested in a joint wool-exporting enterprise with a prominent merchant friend in Exeter.
‘Where is she living while you are away?’ asked Gwyn, in an innocent tone, though he well knew the answer.
‘With her bloody brother, who she considers is only slightly less sanctified than Almighty God himself!’ growled de Wolfe, cynically. ‘She’s either at his house in North Street or up at his estate in Tiverton.’
His brother-in-law was Sir Richard de Revelle, a wealthy knight with aspirations as a politician. He had estates in several counties in the West Country and had been sheriff of Somerset for a short time. John detested him even more than he disliked his own wife. De Revelle had carefully avoided joining the king in either his French wars or in taking the Cross for service in the Holy Land. De Wolfe strongly suspected him of being a covert supporter of Prince John’s intrigues to unseat the Lionheart from the throne, as he had been cultivating a close association with some of the canons of the cathedral, who were in favour of the prince as the new king.