Lionheart

  ISAAC’S MAN WAS BACK the next morning, this time requesting permission to come aboard their buss. He was conspicuously ill at ease, obviously fearing that he might be held hostage by these alien barbarians. Stephen would have considered it had he thought Isaac actually cared about the welfare of anyone but himself. But when Isaac had defied the Greek emperor Andronicus, the two kinsmen who’d stood surety for his good faith had been put to a gruesome death by impaling, and there was no evidence that their fate had weighed upon Isaac’s conscience. His messenger was bringing gifts from the emperor for Joanna and Berengaria: Cypriot wine and bread and ram’s meat.

  Joanna had to stifle a hysterical giggle. Beware of Greeks bearing gifts. When he again urged the women to come ashore, she told him that they dared not, for they could not leave the ship without the permission of her brother the king. No man had ever looked at her as he did now, with utter and implacable hatred. Even though she knew he dreaded returning to Isaac with another refusal, she found it unsettling, nonetheless. He did get the last word, though, telling them brusquely that his emperor had refused to give them permission to replenish their water supplies, saying there would be water in plenitude in the royal palace.

  After his departure, there was nothing to do but stare out to sea. But in late afternoon, a flurry of activity began on the beach. Men rowed out to the wrecked ships and began chopping at the broken masts. Others were bringing carts from the direction of Limassol, the nearest town, and whipping heavily laden small donkeys. As those on the ships watched, the doors of houses and shutters and planks were piled onto the sand, soon joined by barrels and fence rails and large shields, even benches. A barrier was being constructed out of whatever materials the Cypriots could lay their hands upon. Their barricade might be makeshift, but there was no mistaking the intent. These were preparations for war.

  THEIR FIFTH MORNING at Cyprus dawned in a sunrise of breathtaking beauty, pale gold along the horizon, and a rich, deep red above as clouds drifted into the sun’s flaming path; for a timeless moment, it looked as if the earth itself were afire. Then as if by magical sleight of hand, the vivid colors disappeared and the sky took on the same brilliant blue as the foam-crested waves below, the clouds now gliding along like fleecy white swans in a celestial sea. Enticing scents wafted out into the bay, the fragrances of flowers and oranges and sandalwood, the sweet balm of land, almost irresistible to people trapped in seagoing gaols, ships they’d come to hate for the fetid smells and lack of privacy and constant rolling and pitching, even at anchor. This Sunday gave promise of being a day of surpassing loveliness and Joanna hated it, caught up in a sense of foreboding so strong that she could almost taste it. Something terrible was going to happen today.

  She had not long to wait before her premonition took tangible shape and form: five large ebony galleys. At first some of the others had been excited by the lookout’s shout, but they soon realized that these galleys came from the wrong direction, from the east. They anchored close to shore and several armor-clad men embarked in small boats, on their way to confer with the man who commanded these deadly instruments of war.

  Within the hour, Isaac’s envoy was making his by-now familiar voyage out to their ship. This time, his little boat did not anchor, the men resting on their oars as he shouted across the water. Petros chewed on his lower lip, mumbling the message, as if that could somehow make it less than what it was—an ultimatum. “He says the emperor is done with waiting. He insists that you come ashore today. The lackey added the usual blather about hospitality, but he did not even try to make it sound convincing. What do I tell him, my lady?”

  Joanna plucked at Stephen’s sleeve and they drew away from the rail, joined after a moment by the ship’s master. “Tell me the truth,” she said. “It is obvious they mean to take us by force if we do not agree. Can they do that?”

  While her question was ostensibly directed at Stephen, it was really for the master to answer. Staring across the bay at those predatory beaked galleys, he said glumly, “Yes, I fear that they can. We do not have enough water to venture out into the open sea. And even if we did, the winds today are light and variable. We’d not be able to outrun them. I am not saying they’d have an easy time of it. A lot of men would die. But they’d likely be able to take the ship.”

  Joanna looked from one man to the other. “So we yield or we fight and lose. I do not like either of those choices. Find me another one,” she said tautly, and they stared at her in wary surprise, suddenly remembering that this woman was the daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine, the sister of the Lionheart. Turning away, she returned to the rail. “Tell him, Petros, that we will be honored to accept the emperor’s kind offer of shelter. We will have need of a doctor, for the Lady Berengaria is ill. But I think she will be well enough on the morrow for us to leave the ship for the emperor’s palace in Limassol.”

  The man in the boat frowned, insisting that the emperor wanted them to come ashore today, claiming that a storm was brewing and they’d be safer on land. But when Joanna repeated her promise to disembark the next morning, he was forced to settle for that. The ship’s passengers watched in silence as he was rowed back toward the beach. Joanna closed her eyes for a moment, blocking out the sinister sight of those galleys, their sails as red as blood. Looking over then at Stephen and the master, she said, “I’ve bought us some time. Now it is up to you to make the most of it.”

  They eventually came up with a third option, although it, too, was fraught with peril. They would try to slip out of the bay under cover of darkness that night and head for the island’s northern coast. There were sheltered coves where they could take refuge, and with luck, it might take Isaac a while to track them down. The winds would have to be favorable, though. And even if they succeeded in slipping out of this trap, they risked another danger. What if the king’s fleet arrived and found them gone? Limassol was the designated port; he’d not think to look for them on the other side of the island. Since it was still a better choice than surrendering, it was agreed upon, and Stephen sent their boat over to Hugh’s buss to let them know what was planned. Meanwhile, men continued to work on the beach barricade, more armed guards appeared to keep watch on the two ships, and the five galleys rode easily at anchor, sea wolves awaiting the word to attack.

  Never had a day passed so slowly. The men occupied themselves with their weapons, sharpening their swords on whetstones and replacing the strings of their crossbows. But for the women, there was nothing to do but gaze out hopelessly at that vast, empty sea. When Joanna found Alicia weeping soundlessly in a corner of the tent, she felt remorse stab her as sharply as any dagger’s blade. Gathering the girl to her, she dried Alicia’s tears with her sleeve. “I am so sorry, Alicia. I ought to have insisted that you remain in Sicily, I ought to . . .”

  “No.” Alicia clung tightly, but her voice had steadied. “I want to be with you.” Joanna did the only thing she could and sat with the child, stroking her blond braids as she tried not to think what might befall Alicia and the other women if they ended up in Isaac Comnenus’s power. She thought she and Berengaria could reasonably expect to be safe from molestation; damaged goods were worthless in trade. But who would protect Mariam and Beatrix and Hélène and Alicia?

  The sun was slowly sliding into the sea when Berengaria found Joanna standing at the rail, watching as the waves took on delicate tints of rose and lavender. For a time they stood in silence. “When we were in Bagnara,” Joanna said at last, “my mother told me something my father had once said to her, that kings play chess with the lives of other men. So do queens, Berengaria, so do queens. . . .”

  “I have faith that all will be well for us, Joanna.” Berengaria was not sure if she still believed that, for this terrible sea voyage had not been what she’d expected when her father promised her to the English king. So much had gone wrong. It was almost as if the Almighty had turned His Face away from them. But true faith did not waver when tested. If she yielded to despair, she’d be failing her God,
herself, and the man she’d pledged to wed. “I am sure of that,” she said, with all the conviction at her command, and Joanna managed a shadowy smile, thankful that her brother had chosen a woman of courage for his wife.

  A sudden shout turned all eyes toward the rigging, where a sailor had been perched all day. Straddling the mizzenmast, he leaned over so far that he seemed in danger of losing his balance. “I see a sail to the west!”

  It seemed to take forever before those on deck could see it, too, a large ship skimming the waves, its sails billowing out like canvas clouds. When the lookout yelled that there were two ships, excitement swept the buss, for with these reinforcements, surely they could fend off Isaac’s galleys? Men were laughing and slapping one another on the back, sailors scrambling up into the rigging to get a better view, and Joanna’s dogs began to bark, hoarsely, as if they’d forgotten how. “You see,” Berengaria said, with a beatific smile. “God does hear our prayers.”

  “Yes, He does,” Joanna agreed, for it would have been churlish to quibble with salvation. But she could not banish the question from her mind as she could from her lips. Where was the fleet? Where was Richard?

  It happened with such suddenness that men were not sure at first if they could trust their senses. There was nothing to the west but sea and sky and those two ships tacking against the wind. And then the horizon was filled with sails, stretching as far as the eye could see. A moment of stunned disbelief gave way almost at once to pandemonium, and for the rest of their lives, there would be men who vowed they’d never experienced an emotion as overwhelming as the joy of deliverance on a May Sunday off the coast of Cyprus.

  The sharp-eyed sailors spotted it first. “The Sea-Cleaver! The king’s galley!” But Richard’s women needed to see it for themselves, scarcely breathing until it came into focus, looking like a Norse long-ship, its hull as red as the sunset, its sails catching the wind, and streaming from its masthead the banner emblazoned with the royal lion of England.

  Berengaria found it hard to tear her gaze away from the sight of that blessed galley. “It is like a miracle, Joanna,” she said in awe, “that he should reach us in our hour of greatest need.”

  Joanna gave a shaken laugh. “Richard has always had a talent for making a dramatic entrance, but he has outdone himself with this one!”

  AS SOON AS RICHARD swung himself up onto the deck, Joanna took a backward step to make sure the first one he greeted was Berengaria. She needn’t have worried, though. For once, the younger woman’s Spanish reserve was forgotten and she flung herself into Richard’s arms. He embraced Joanna next, and then Berengaria again, this time bending her backward in a kiss that seared like a brand and left her flushed and breathless. But when he really looked at Joanna, his own breath hissed through his teeth and his hand clamped onto her arm hard enough to hurt. “Jesu, Joanna!”

  “I do not feel as wretched as I look,” she assured him hastily. “Truly I am on the mend. But where were you, Richard? We were half out of our minds with worry!”

  “We ended up having to spend ten days in Rhodes, waiting for the missing ships to straggle in. I sent out galleys to look for our lost sheep, and that took time,” he said with a quick smile. He’d also been stricken with a recurrence of the malarial fever that had plagued him for years, but he saw no reason to mention that since he preferred to deal with his illnesses by ignoring them if possible. “We finally sailed on last Wednesday and would have been here earlier had we not encountered a storm in the Gulf of Satalea. We were actually blown backward by the winds.”

  Even as he was speaking, his gaze had shifted past the women to the barricaded beach and the stark evidence that ships had run aground. “Not all of my fleet is with me, but it looks as if I got here just in time. What is going on?”

  He’d directed that last question toward Stephen de Turnham, but Stephen had taken Joanna’s measure by now and he deferred politely to her. “Three of our ships sank after being blown onto the rocks, and one of the men drowned was your vice chancellor,” Joanna said sadly, knowing that would grieve him. “That buss is Hugh de Neville’s. He and Stephen have been a godsend, Richard, doing all they could to keep us safe under very difficult circumstances.”

  His eyes had narrowed. “Tell me about those ‘difficult circumstances.’”

  They did, Joanna now the one to defer to Stephen when it came to describing the struggle to free their men. Richard listened in ominous silence, then summoned Roger de Harcourt to get a firsthand account of their imprisonment. He even called Petros over to question him about what he’d seen in Amathus. And then he moved over to the gunwale, stood for a time staring at the beach and those low-riding Greek galleys. When he turned back to the other men, there was a universal sense of relief that this lethal rage was not directed at any of them.

  “It takes great courage to maltreat half-drowned shipwreck survivors and to threaten defenseless women. But now we will see how Isaac likes dealing with me.”

  CHAPTER 16

  MAY 1191

  Akrotiri Bay, Cyprus

  The women’s buss dared to venture closer to shore after the arrival of the royal fleet. Blessed with calmer waters and no longer fearful of the Cypriot emperor’s treacherous intentions, they enjoyed their first night’s peaceful sleep since the Good Friday storm. So they were still abed the next morning when Alicia darted into their tent, exclaiming that they must come out on deck straightaway. Making themselves presentable in record haste, they emerged into the white-gold sunlight, only to halt in shock, for the bay was afloat with small boats, all heading toward the barricaded beach.

  Stephen de Turnham’s knights were lined up along the gunwale, watching and cheering as if they were spectators at a game of camp-ball. Stephen himself was in a far more somber mood. He turned at once, though, to greet Joanna and Berengaria with deference and, in response to their alarmed questions, he answered concisely and candidly.

  “The king sent two of his knights and an armed escort ashore at dawn, along with a man fluent in Greek, for he’d prudently thought to ask Tancred for a translator. They carried a message to Isaac, seeking redress for the harm done to his shipwrecked men, who’d been robbed as well as imprisoned. They soon returned, reporting that they thought Isaac must be mad, for his response was an amazingly rash one to make to a justly aggrieved king with an army at his command. They said he blustered and ranted, insisting that a mere king had no right to make demands upon an emperor. When they asked if that was truly his reply, he spat out a one-word Greek oath. Tancred’s man was not sure how to translate it into French, but he said it was highly insulting. When this was told to our king, he showed that he could be just as terse as Isaac. His response: ‘To arms!’”

  Joanna and Berengaria shared the same conflicted emotion, pride in Richard warring with concern for his safety. Joining Stephen at the gunwale, Joanna soon noticed his tension; he’d kept his eyes on the shore even while answering their questions, one hand clasping and unclasping the sword hilt at his hip, almost as if acting of its own volition. “It must be hard for you,” she said sympathetically, “having to stand guard over us instead of taking part in the invasion.”

  He acknowledged her perception with a crooked smile. “I cannot deny, Madame, that if I’d had my choice, I’d be at my king’s side, especially here, especially now.”

  “Is this so dangerous, then?” she asked in a low voice and when he nodded, she felt a chill that not even the sun’s sultry heat could vanquish. “Can you tell me why, Sir Stephen? And please, treat me as you would a man and answer me truthfully.”

  “No one would ever mistake you for a man, my lady,” he said, with a surprise flash of gallantry. “But I will honor your courage with the honesty you seek. The king is attempting one of the most dangerous and difficult of military actions—landing upon an unfamiliar beach occupied by an enemy army on their own ground. Our men are not at their best, not after so much time at sea, and those skiffs and snekas offer little protection from the Cypriot cr
ossbowmen.”

  “Are you saying that they will be defeated?”

  “Indeed not, my lady!” He sounded genuinely affronted. “We will prevail, for I trust in the Almighty and King Richard. But men will die this day and there will be sights not suitable for female eyes. It might be best if you and your ladies retire to the tent until the fighting is over.”

  Joanna took him at his word and bade Hélène take Alicia back into the tent, much to the girl’s distress. But she did not follow, for she could not believe that an All-Merciful God would allow her brother to die before her eyes. While there was a corner of her mind that recognized the lack of logic in such a conviction, she did not let herself acknowledge it. If she stayed out on deck, she’d be assuring his safety.

  Her throat closed up, though, when she saw the Cypriot galleys raise anchor, for how could the small landing craft fend off those sinister sea wolves? Stephen seemed to read her mind, for he pointed out that the first rows of their boats were filled with crossbowmen and archers. She saw that he was right, and as soon as the enemy galleys went on the attack, Richard’s arbalesters unleashed a withering fire. Joanna had often heard men claim that they’d seen the sky darken as arrows took flight, but she’d always dismissed it as hyperbole—until now. The men on the galleys were shooting back, and she watched in horror as bodies fell into the bay, the bright blue water taking on a red tinge where they splashed and sank. But the crossbowmen in the skiffs were coordinating their attacks; as men loosed their bolts, they ducked down to reload while the second row rose to take aim. The result was that arrows and bolts were smashing into the galleys in waves, one right after another, giving the men no chance to reload their own weapons. The knights on Joanna’s ship were cheering wildly now. She was slower to understand. It was not until several men jumped into the sea to evade the lethal bolts raining down upon them that she realized the galleys had been effectively taken out of the action.