I was just in time to hear the herald say ‘… and then, Sire, when I had relayed your formal demands of restitution to him, he merely looked at me as if I had crawled out from under a rock and said, ‘Tproupt, sir!’ and dismissed me.’
“He said what?’ asked the King, his handsome face crunched with puzzlement. He had completely recovered from his illness and was clearly fizzing with high spirits.
‘“Tproupt,” I believe he said, “Tproupt, ir,”the herald looked slightly embarrassed. All around him knights were trying out this unfamilar word, it was like a chorus of doves: ‘Tproupt!’ ‘Tproupt!’ ‘Tproupt!’
‘And what is that supposed to mean?’ said the King. ‘Well, never mind. I suppose its some Griffon insult or other. Tproupt! How extraordinary. So, that’s that then: formalities over, now comes the fun part. Gentlemen…’ And the King began to issue a gushing stream of orders to his men for the assault on the stronghold of Cyprus.
There was scarcely room to breathe in the snake boat. The shallow craft was packed with Robin’s men-at-arms; seventeen big warriors in full armour in a vessel designed to take no more than ten. Robin, Little John and Sir James sat in the front, before the mast, and Will Scarlet and myself were crammed in the belly below the square grey sail with a dozen unhorsed cavalrymen. A grizzled sailor perched on the stem and guided us in with one hand on the steering oar.
We were forced to make the initial attack on the beach with only a fraction of our force: a mere three hundred men. But the King had judged that it would be enough, and each commander had been required to choose his best warriors, and leave the rest to watch from the ships. We seventeen in that tiny boat were the cream of Robin’s force, and that thought gave me a great deal of pride. King Richard’s problem was a lack of small boats. Every snack, skiff, rowing boat and coracle in the fleet had been assembled for the assault; as only boats with a shallow draft capable of landing on the beach could be used. And all were filled with fighting men; knights and men-at-arms in the first wave, followed by a hundred of Robin’s archers in the second wave, plus two boatloads of sea-sick crossbowmen from Aquitaine.
The low sides of the snake boat were dangerously near the water line, and if it had sunk we would all have drowned immediately due to the weight of armour we wore. But, strangely, I felt no fear. Once again, the presence of the King, two boats along from us, inspired unreasonable courage in my heart. He had that wonderful quality, my King; of course, he was noble and brave beyond measure, but more than this he made all of us feel that, under his command, anything was possible. We were three hundred men attacking a whole island — and one that was well defended.
The Emperor had been busy in the past few days. A huge barricade had been erected on Limassol beach to deny us a landing; it was constructed, it seemed, from anything that came to hand: huge rocks, sheep hurdles, the broken hulls of rowing boats, old planks and dead trees; enormous urns used for storing olive oil, too, were piled up along with every piece of wood in the town: tables, chairs, footstools, doors, even an altar from the church were stacked in a long line across beach barring our way in a surprisingly efficient and warlike fashion. And behind this formidable barrier stood nearly two thousand men: Greek knights in brightly polished round helmets, dark-faced Armenian mercenaries, Limassol townsmen armed with pikes and crossbows, Cypriot peasants conscripted from the fields wielding no more than make-shift spears and their grandfathers’ rusty swords. They had every advantage on their side: the barricade, the numbers, and their homeland to fight for. We were attacking from the sea with a handful of men, weary from travel, far from home and our clothes heavy, soaking wet from the spray. And yet, when I caught sight of King Richard’s eager face, as he crouched ready to spring ashore in the lead boat, I knew deep in my heart that we would be victorious.
A hundred yards out from the beach, Robin turned to the boats behind us, shouted an order, and the arrows began to fly. The Welsh archers bent their massive yew bows, aimed high and with a sound like a ripping cloth, loosed a cloud of shafts that rose high into the blue sky and fell like the wrath of the Almighty on to the barricades. The first wave of arrows dropped in grey sheets like killing haiclass="underline" the steel points of the yard-long arrows slamming through mail coats of the knights just as easily as through the homespun tunics of the peasants, punching deep into the defenders’ chests and shoulders and backs to inflict horrible wounds; the men behind the barrier cowered under the onslaught, those with shields holding them above their heads, those without suffering catastrophe as the missiles plunged into their defenceless bodies. The wounded staggered away from the barricade, gouting blood, sometimes from more than one wound. The dead were trampled under mail-shod feet as the thick line of men shifted and writhed under the first lash of our shafts. And then the second wave fell on them, arrows clattering on the wooden table legs of the wall, spearing into a rashly upturned face, even puncturing the cheaper kind of helmet, and dropping men all along the barricade by the score. The third wave slammed down upon them down, and a fourth. The pitiful cries of the wounded Greeks were heartbreakingly clear on the salty air but I could also hear Little John, clutching his great war axe and keening to himself, a high pitched drone that sent shivers down my spine, as we raced towards the shore.
The arrows continued to do their grim work of thinning the enemy line. Our Welshmen in the boats behind us were now loosing their shafts at will, no longer in waves but in a looser but never ceasing cloud of falling death; and the Aquitainian crossbowmen, finding themselves in range, now added their bolts to the slaughter. Bodies lay draped across the barrier, leaking blood from many holes, and at the ends of the line, I saw the first peasants slipping away, running up the beach back into the fields to escape this barrage of death, their captains shouting after them. But the centre — the hard core of well-protected Greek knights around the Emperor and his golden standard — was solid as an iron bar.
King Richard’s boat was the first to crunch up the slope of the beach, wedging itself into the sand. And with a shout of ‘God and Saint Mary!’ our sovereign launched himself out of the vessel, staggered slightly as he landed, and then stood tall. As he surveyed the enemy line, a mere thirty paces away, his bright helm, ringed with a golden crown, glittered in the bright light of noon; a crossbow bolt sliced past his face, and he shifted his shield, the two golden lions of his personal device proud on its red background; his huge sword was upright in his right fist and, without so much as a glance to see whether the rest of his men would follow, our King began to run straight up the beach directly towards the make-shift barricade and Emperor’s golden standard, towards the thickest part of the enemy line.
There was no time to watch our noblest knight attack his enemy, as our own boat was driving up the sand, and I had to watch my balance as our craft left the smooth water for unyielding dry land. Robin was out first, leaping on to the sand and immediately sprinting up the slope to support the King, and I was tumbling after him, with the crossbow bolts whistling around me, just behind Sir James de Brus and Little John. In five heartbeats we had reached the wall, to the right of King Richard and the squad of hand-picked household knights that now surrounded him, and who were by now trading savage blows with their Greek opponents across the ramshackle defence. Robin shouted something to Little John that I didn’t catch. The blond giant dropped his great war axe and, protected by the swords and shields of Sir James and Robin himself, began pulling at a giant table that was wedged into the centre of the wall. He took a firm grip of a stout round table leg, bent his knees and hauled. There was a great tearing noise, and the table shifted a few inches; the Greek knights who had been engaging Robin and Sir James pulled back in surprise as the whole barricade seemed to tremble; a crossbowman popped up like a vengeful demon in front of Little John. He put his bow to his shoulder, aimed it at John’s back — so close that he couldn’t miss — and stopped. His head snapped back, a yard of good English ash growing suddenly from his eye socket, and he fell away behind the barricade. Our archers had reached dry land. I cut at a bearded face behind the hedge of wood, and forced it to duck away, and then a man lunged at me across the divide with a spear and I, in turn, had to dodge rapidly.