I posted two men-at-arms outside his tent every night from then onwards. And kept an eye on them to make sure that they didn’t sleep. I also told them that Little John would have then flayed alive if another assassin got past them, which was quite unnecessary as the whole camp was outraged by the cowardly attempt on Robin’s life, and a murderer, once unmasked, would have been hacked to death in moments by a mob.
Little John had taken command, and we didn’t let Robin’s unconscious state affect the march. He was merely strapped to his pallet each morning with stout leather belts and carried by four strong archers in the centre of our column. For the first day, when he merely lay there, whey-faced, wounded arm bandaged, I had the powerful illusion that he was dead, and we were carrying his bier in a ceremonial procession. I felt an unexpectedly powerful stab of grief, a physical ache in my chest, before I told myself sternly to pull myself together. Gradually Robin improved, and after two days the swelling in his arm began to subside.
When we reached the outskirts of Lyon, Robin had regained his senses but was still as weak as a kitten. He insisted on mounting a horse, though, and looking like a three-day-old corpse he rode up and down the length of the column to show the men that he was fit and well. They cheered him, God bless them, and Robin just managed to lift his sword with his bandaged arm to return the salute.
As we marched down the Saone Valley towards the city of Lyon, just inside the borders of the Holy Roman Empire, it became clear that we were not the first large force to have passed that way in recent weeks. King Richard and King Philip had joined their vast forces at Vezelay, a hundred and twenty miles to the north in Burgundy, a few weeks ago and had marched the grand army down to Lyon, in a magnificent parade of their joint strength. The road was dusty and worn down; the grass verges had been stamped flat and were littered with the detritus of a passing multitude: broken clay cups, bones and scraps of food, abandoned boots, hoods, old rags, even a few good blankets had been tossed aside as the mighty host had flowed past.
And then, one day, we came over a rise and I looked down at the largest assembly of souls I had ever seen. I stood breathless; stunned that there could be so many people in the whole world, and all crammed into such a small area of land. Between the arms of the rivers Saone and the mighty Rhone was massed the chivalry of Western Europe; more than twenty thousand souls, the population of a large city, was encamped there in a gigantic heaving sprawl of gaudy tents, glinting steel, mud and humming humanity that stretched almost as far as the eye could see. Horse lines, fluttering pennants, burnished shields, rough buildings of turf and wood, bright striped pavilions for the knights, blacksmiths in canvas tents beating out helmets, barbers pulling teeth, squires bustling about their duties, heralds in particoloured tunics announcing their lords with a brave squeal of brass. At the edge of the field a horse race was in progress, watched by ladies and gentlemen in their finest clothes. Knights in full armour practiced combat with each other, men-at-arms sat drinking outside makeshift taverns in the summer sunshine, whores paraded about in their finery seeking trade, priests preached to gatherings of the faithful, mendicant friars in brown robes begged alms for the poor, dogs barked, beggars whined, children played tig around wigwams of stacked lances…
We were in the presence of the greatest, most powerful army the world had ever seen. Surely, with this vast assembled might, Saladin and his Saracen army of infidels was doomed and Jerusalem, the blessed site of Christ’s Passion, would soon once again be safe in Christian hands.
Chapter Eight
The Messina strait was a sheet of pure dark blue water, only wrinkled by a few petulant white-capped waves. I had been told by the sailors that in ancient times, it was home of two monsters called Scylla and Charybdis, but they were full of such ridiculous tales, as I had discovered over the past few weeks, and it seemed altogether too harmless a stretch of water for such an evil reputation. The late September sun smiled down with a friendly warmth, the sky was untroubled by a single cloud, and a fair wind pushed our massive fleet of ships swiftly across the channel between the scuffed toe of Italy and the golden island of Sicily — the rich land of oranges, lemons and grain and sugar cane, of Norman kings and Greek merchants, of Saracen traders and Jewish money-lenders, of Latin priests and Orthodox monks living side by side in a colourful mix of creeds and races. Sicily was where the fabulous East began, and it had been chosen by our sovereign lords as the launching off point of our great and noble expedition.
King Richard’s mighty force — more than ten thousand soldiers and seamen, with more men expected to join him in the coming weeks — was packed into an armada of more than a hundred and thirty great sea-going ships. There were scores of big, lumbering busses — great fat-bellied craft used for transporting bulky stores, some fitted with special berths for the war horses; dozens of smaller cogs that carried men-at-arms and their mountains of equipment; swift galleys packed with knights, with ranks of chained Muslim slaves at the oars; there were flat-bottomed boats that could be used for landing men and horses directly on to beaches, and snacks, or snake boats as they were sometimes called, the slim, elegant descendants of the Viking longships; and a host of smaller fry, fast with low, triangular sails, which zipped between the large craft and communicated the King’s commands to the fleet. The whole sea-bome pack of us, perhaps the greatest force ever assembled, was advancing in one great colourful, cacophonous swarm towards the ancient harbour of Messina. Pennants were flying from every masthead, trumpets and clarions blared, and drums beat out the time for the slaves at the galley’s oars. It must have been a daunting sight for the thousands of local people who lined the Sicilian shore to watch our approach.
The city of Messina was laid out on the coast roughly on a north-south axis and we approached it from the sea to the east. The famous harbour, the source of Messina’s wealth, lay snug inside a curled peninsula at the southern end of the city, where it gave precious protection to the shipping from the winter storms. As we turned south to begin our approach towards the harbour’s narrow mouth, I looked west and saw the great stone palace of Messina, one of the residences of Tancred, the Norman King of Sicily, where Philip of France and a handful of his knights, at Tancred’s gracious request, had set up their headquarters a week before. My heart gave a little skip of excitement as I saw the royal lilies of France on the banners fluttering over its battlements. The palace lay on the edge of the city, slightly to the north of the great Latin cathedral of Messina, blessed by the Virgin herself in a famous letter, with its tall square stone tower and long, high nave.
Beyond the palace and the cathedral, higher up the slope and slightly to the south, was the Greek monastery of San Salvatore, low but stoutly walled and with a fine reputation for producing illuminated copies of great and rare books. The old town of Messina, the kernel from which the city had grown, lay to the south of the palace, the cathedral and the monastery. Curved around the harbour but set slightly back from the water’s edge, it was surrounded by strong stone ramparts, pierced by several gates and defended by many towers — but it looked prosperous rather than formidable. It contained many large houses, some two or even three storeys high, and at least half a dozen well-maintained churches in both the Greek and Latin styles. Its merchants had a reputation for being rich but frugal and its women were said to be both beautiful and lecherous — but woe betide any man who dishonoured them, for their fathers and husbands were as vengeful as scorpions. Three stout wooden gates opened out from the town wall on to jetties that ran out into the harbour, so that rich, exotic goods could be unloaded and easily transported into the safety of the warehouses in the old town itself. Beyond the sprawl of the city of Messina, high in the west soared the grey mountains of Sicily, brooding like a gathering of huge, disapproving churchmen over our triumphant arrival.