…’ I shushed her hurriedly and looked around the harbour, hoping that nobody had heard. Two yards behind me stood Little John who was organising the embarkation of our cavalry. He looked as if he had not heard a thing and I breathed a sigh of relief: too soon, of course. The moment Nur had left me to get into a skiff, he came a little closer: ‘Tell me Alan, what is the thing you like to do with the belts and the honey?’ he asked in a low, confidential tone.
I flushed a deep red. ‘It’s nothing, really,’ I mumbled, ‘in fact, I have no idea what she was talking about.’ My face was burning and I could not look him in the eye. ‘She’s a foreigner; she doesn’t understand what she is saying half the time.’ I tried a nonchalant shrug.
‘Really,’ said Little John. ‘Well, I’ll just ask her then.’ And before I could stop him, he cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed across the open water to the skiff that was carrying my beloved to her ship: ‘Nur, my darling,’ he yelled in a voice they could have heard across the strait in Italy. ‘Tell me: what does young Alan like to do in bed with the honey and the belts…?’ Half a dozen people turned around to stare at his booming voice, and I twisted fast as a greyhound and punched him as hard as I could in the belly.
In hindsight, I think the reason John folded up after my blow to his midriff had more to do with the fact that he was helpless with laughter than the strength of my punch. But, as I continued to hit him with my fists, getting in some quite decent blows to his face and body, he did manage to stop laughing long enough to grab me by the scruff of my neck and by my sword belts lift me furious and struggling off my feet and toss me into the dirty water of the harbour.
As the Santa Maria’s sail flapped and slowly filled, and the crew hauled on a cobweb of ropes to sharp whistles from the master of the vessel, I realised that I was very glad to be leaving Sicily. I had found love there, and happiness, it was true, but the air of surly menace from the defeated Griffons made me constantly uncomfortable — I never went anywhere unarmed — and the feeling of wasting time, while other Christians died for our cause in Outremer, was not a pleasant one. Also there was the problem of the assassin — I still had no idea who it might be, but I hoped that by leaving Sicily we were leaving him — or her — behind us. I felt hopeful and confident, now that we were now off again on the great adventure that I had long dreamed of. God would protect Robin, I was sure, now that we were engaged once again on this holy mission. We were heading for the Holy Land, at last, and with His help and guidance, we would soon bring the might of Richard’s immense army to bear on the Saracens. In a few months, perhaps, the holy city of Jerusalem would be free again and under good Christian rule…
On the third day out of Messina, near dusk, as the sun dipped low behind us and cast a sail-shaped shadow over the inky waves, a great storm came barrelling in from the south. The swell began to rise, causing the ship to twist and buck like a wild horse in its forward progress, the wind picked up, rattling the ropes and straining the old canvas sail almost to breaking point, and huge purple-black clouds came scudding across the grey sky — and with them came black rain, a torrent, lashing down like icy whips on to the surface of the water. Crouched under a piece of waxed canvas, at the prow of the Santa Maria, the world closed in around me. It was like being under a waterfall. The rain drummed madly on the canvas and the ship bucked and rolled beneath my cowering body; it seemed that God had unleashed his fury on the world, a cataclysm to rival Noah’s flood. Peering out from under the soaking cloth I could hardly see the next ship from me, a mere fifty yards away. The archers in the body of the Santa Maria were taking turns to bail water with their helmets but I could see that it was having little effect; for every capful of water the men threw overboard ten times as a much again and more crashed over the side as the waves pounded alarmingly against our frail craft. Soon we were alone in a roaring maelstrom of water and shrieking wind, with no other ships in sight, carried along by at unbelievable speed, dwarfed by mountainous seas, the soldier and sailors wailing, beseeching God to show us mercy but the sound coming through only in brief snatches between the smashing of the waves against the ship’s hull. I crossed myself and prepared as best I could for death, mumbling Ave Maria over and over through salt-wet lips, and I begged the Almighty in his infinite mercy to save the life of my beloved Nur, wherever she might be in this watery Hell, and if he had any spare mercy to save the lives of all the men, including mine, aboard this decrepit wooden shell that had been named in honour of the holy mother of His beloved son Jesus Christ.
All night long the storm raged, the ship tossed like a leaf in a hurricane, and I lost any sense of time passing: I crouched in wretchedness, holding tight to a wooden strut, soaking wet and freezing — my canvas shield long snatched away by a howling wrench of wind — and waiting at any moment for the ship to founder and a black wall of water to fall on me and drown my pain. But by God’s grace, she did not. And at dawn a weak watery sun rose in the east and I raised my head from its misery and saw that the tempest had miraculously eased. Our brave vessel was scudding along on a brisk westerly wind, still travelling at an alarming speed, but now was shouldering through big green waves with confidence, and causing no more than a fine spray to whip the ship’s sides with each impact. We had lost one man overboard, a sailor who had bravely tried to secure a flapping rope and who had been swept to his doom by a freakishly large burst of seawater but, apart from that poor soul, we were relatively unharmed. We all joined together in a prayer of heartfelt thanksgiving, and I realised that I had been deeply wrong to doubt in God’s grace, even for a moment. I should have known that he would save us: we were setting out to do his good work, to save the cradle of Christianity itself. We rinsed out our mouths with fresh water, stripped our soaking clothes from our bodies, and began to look about for the other ships of the fleet.
Astoundingly, as the clouds cleared overhead and the sea became even calmer, I could see that many of the other ships of the fleet were still afloat, though none were near us. They were scattered over the surface of the moving sea as far as the horizon on all sides, but still swimming bravely. It truly felt as if the hand of God had protected us from the full fury of the Devil. And, best of all, most wonderful of all, on our starboard bow no more than two dozen miles away, I could make out the low grey-green mass of the island of Crete.
We stayed for two days in the old harbour of Heracleon on Crete, recovering our spirits and waiting for the fleet to reassemble. Although we slept on the ships, there was time to visit dry land and bring on board fresh provisions and water — much of our stores had been damaged by water during the storm. I hired a local skiff and visited Robin, Little John and Reuben aboard their ship the Holy Ghost, and learnt that most of our fighting men were well and we had lost no more than a dozen to the storm, none of whom I knew well. One of our fellows, a seemingly steady Yorkshireman, had run mad during the storm and had tried to attack the master of his ship before throwing himself into the sea. But the majority of our force was intact and bobbing snugly in Heracleon harbour. Despite this news, I was heart-sick with worry: twenty-odd ships had disappeared in the storm, among them the richly appointed royal cog carrying Princess Berengaria, Queen Joanna — and my darling Nur.
On the morning of the third day, when it was quite clear that no more ships would join us in Crete, we headed on for Rhodes, which was a good place to gain news, situated as it was on a major sea route. I was racked with guilt: I had loved two women who were not of the Christian faith, a Jew and a Muslim, and I wondered if God, as a punishment for consorting with unbelievers, had decided to take both of them from me. I suspected that I was suffering from a touch of sea fever: I had hardly known Ruth, and to say that I truly loved her was a lie. My worry and guilt over Nur, though, was real enough. I remembered every time we had made love, and tortured myself with those exquisite memories. Why had I been so stupid as to send her into service with the Princess? I should have kept her by my side so that I could protect her, as I had promised to do. That was nonsense, of course, and I knew it — how could I protect her from the sea-borne wrath of God? — but that knowledge did not ease my pain.