The sea was fairly calm around the point and they glided towards the beach until the ship-master yelled at his crew once more. The yard rattled down the mast and lay on the untidy folds of the sail, as the knarr lost way. Pointing, the ship-master made it clear why he was keeping well off the shore. A line of men, several dozen in number, was spaced out just above the tide level and more were coming down the steep path from the settlement above. Even at that distance, the knarr’s company could see the glint of the weak sunshine on spear-heads and swords.
‘It looks as if we have a welcoming party already!’ growled Ralph Morin, looking like one of his Norse ancestors with an old conical helmet and his jutting grey beard. De Wolfe, who had been studying the landing site, raised an arm to point high up on the cliff. ‘Don’t worry too much about them yet, Ralph. Look up there instead.’ On a rocky spur above the path, they could just make out a contraption of wooden beams, with a few dot-like figures moving around it. All the fighting men knew what it was and their faces showed that they viewed it seriously.
‘A trebuchet – that could indeed be a problem,’ observed Roland de Ver. He spoke to the shipmaster and soon the other vessel came alongside. Their rails were roped together so that Richard de Grenville could join in the council of war.
‘Are these men on the beach going to oppose us?’ asked Brian de Falaise truculently. ‘If so, we should land in force and give them a thrashing.’
‘Easier said than done,’ retorted de Grenville. ‘We cannot beach the knarrs on a falling tide in case we wish to make a rapid retreat. And using the curraghs to land mailed soldiers is fraught with hazard. If they are tipped out, they’ll sink like stones!’
‘So why the hell did we come?’ demanded de Falaise harshly. He was itching for a fight but his lack of concern for his own safety was not shared so enthusiastically by the others.
Further discussion was interrupted by a loud splash and a fountain of water erupted from the sea ahead of them. It was many yards short, but the message was clear. The ships had been drifting towards the shore in the breeze and now the masters were hurriedly casting off the lashings that held the two knarrs together and setting men to haul at long oars over the sides. Though hopelessly inefficient, this halted the drift towards the cliffs and imperceptibly inched the boats back out to sea.
‘What range does that thing have?’ the sheriff demanded of John.
The coroner shrugged. ‘Impossible to tell, other than finding out the hard way, Richard! It’s high up, so its range will be greater and the fall of missiles more powerful.’
The trebuchet was an engine for hurling projectiles a considerable distance at an enemy. A long beam was pivoted vertically in a massive frame and a heavy weight fixed to the lower end. A large bowl at the upper end carried either one large rock or a collection of smaller stones. Several men hauled on ropes fixed to the top of the beam until it was horizontal, when it was released, the weight fell violently and the beam jerked back to the vertical, hurling the missiles forward over the edge of the cliff to fall on targets far below. Both the range and direction could be adjusted to cover all the approaches to the beach.
Frustrated, the knights stood on the decks of the two vessels, while the crews dropped two large anchor stones to prevent further drifting into danger. ‘We must at least try to parley with these swine to see if they’ll at least let us talk to de Marisco,’ snarled de Falaise. ‘And I’ll go if you wish, de Ver.’
John mischievously suggested an alternative. ‘Lundy is part of the county of Devon, so falls directly under the jurisdiction of our sheriff here. He must have the prerogative, as well as the honour, of going ashore first.’
De Revelle gave his brother-in-law a look that should have dropped him dead him on the spot and limped away from the rail, rubbing his left thigh. ‘Of course I would, but this old wound I suffered in the Irish wars makes it difficult for me to get down into one of those small boats.’
De Falaise, well aware of the coroner’s stratagem, clapped de Revelle heartily on the shoulder. ‘Never fear, sheriff, I’m sure our ship-master here has some rope and tackle that will let us lower you over the side – and I’ll come with you.’
In the event, it was Roland de Ver who accompanied de Revelle, saying that, as leader of the Templars, it was his obligation to try to deal with William de Marisco over the rejected grant of land to his Order.
The crew and soldiers hauled one of the light skin-covered boats from the hold and dumped it over the side. The sheriff had been trapped into playing the hero and, albeit with ill-grace, got himself over the low gunwale into the curragh with no sign of a disabled leg. He held aloft a spare oar with a grubby white tunic, taken from the crew’s shelter, tied to the top as a flag of truce. While de Ver was climbing in after him, there was another shot from the trebuchet, but it fell far short.
One of the crew took the short oars, set in thole pins on the boat’s flimsy frames, and began rowing. Even with the added weight of two passengers wearing chain-link hauberks, the curragh was so light on the water that it sped across the few hundred yards to the shore. Another rock plunged into the sea many yards away, though the ripples from it made the boat dance about on the low swell.
‘They’ve little chance of hitting a moving target so small,’ said Godfrey Capra.
‘Then let’s hope they stick to single missiles,’ grunted de Wolfe. ‘If they fire a bucketful of pebbles, it needs only one to punch a hole through the bottom of that cockleshell.’
‘If those men on the beach pissed in it, it would probably sink,’ added Gwyn.
They watched as the little craft neared the shore, when the line of men began to congregate at the point where it would land. They could faintly hear a series of yells and could see swords and spears being waved threateningly. In the curragh, the sheriff was sitting rigidly on his thwart, waving the white flag with increasing desperation.
‘Now they’re throwing stones from the beach!’ yelled Gwyn, who had the best eyesight amongst the anxious watchers.
Suddenly, they saw de Ver grab the flag of truce from de Revelle and bend forward, almost vanishing from view, with only his backside sticking up above the rim of the curragh.
‘Surely he’s not cowering down!’ roared de Falaise in disgust, fearing that his leader was breaking the Templar tradition of reckless bravery in battle. The seaman could now be seen pulling the cockleshell around and rowing back towards the ship as if the devil was after him. Small splashes around the boat showed where a final fusillade of pebbles was landing, but in a minute or two, the craft was out of range and speeding for the ship. Roland de Ver was still hiding below the gunwales and de Wolfe wondered whether he had been hit by a stone or even a spear.
Gwyn’s sharp eye was the first to detect the truth. ‘They’re sinking!’ he yelled, pointing at the curragh, which was now noticeably lower in the water.
The sailor pulled at his oars like a man demented and came alongside the knarr with the little boat half full of water. Willing hands were thrust over the bulwarks to pull aboard de Revelle and the seaman. De Ver, with his face almost under water, stayed bent double until they had clambered out, then hurriedly followed them, still clutching the balled tunic, which he had been jamming into a hole punched through the tarred-leather bottom by a sharp stone. The damaged curragh swirled away and sank, as the damp heroes gained the safety of the deck.
‘Bastards! We could have been killed!’ snarled the sheriff.