The Lute Player (31 page)

‘Sire, if you will wait a moment…’ I said. I jumped off the dais and ran to the fire which was almost out, ready for stamping, and drew out of it three or four sticks which had burnt and then fallen outwards and smouldered into blackness.

‘May I draw on the table?’ I asked, jumping up beside him again. He nodded, laughing at my enthusiasm. I drew rapidly, explaining as I did so. I felt him go rigid with concentration.

‘You see?’ I asked at last.

‘I see. By God’s eyeballs! Virtually a new weapon. And so simple. Why has nobody—No, boy; there must be a hitch somewhere. I’ve been using mangonels all my life and never thought—They’re as old as time, too. Could it be left for
you
to see what was wrong with every one? Let’s look at it again. Yes—yes.’ He leant over the rough drawing, wishing to be convinced but cautious, afraid of showing too much credulity. ‘It sounds all right and it looks all right,’ he said at last, ‘but we must make a model to scale and see if it does work. Sweet Christ, if only it does!’

I would have offered then and there to make the model but before I could speak Escel, with his long robe girded up into a belt of rope about his middle, revealing his thin shanks ending in enormous muddied boots, came into the tent, walking more briskly than is usual with his kind.

‘I half expected you,’ Richard said, advancing to the edge of the dais to meet him. ‘More dead?’

‘Two more,’ Escel said in a voice not far from tearful. ‘We wrapped them well and carried them very gently, sire, I assure you. But for all that, two who were living when we lifted them were dead when we set them down. And that makes seventeen in a week.’

There was a moment’s silence. Then Richard said in a resolutely cheerful voice:

‘But this may be the end. Don’t lose heart, Escel. It was a bad place. And you know, war does mean dead men, God rest their souls in peace. Come and see what I have here.’

I took up my lute and said, ‘By your leave, sire,’ but he did not hear me. I went through the tent where the hound and his master, the man who had been polishing mail and one or two others had settled down to sleep, and I had reached the door when Richard bellowed after me, ‘Wait! I don’t even know your name.’

I turned and told him my name.

‘Come back tomorrow, Blondel,’ he called. ‘Good night.’

II

That was the effect the crusade had on sober men throughout Christendom. It dragged me, the lute-playing, woolwinding peace lover, down to that camp every day, patching leaky tents, digging drains, blowing the smith’s bellows.

The day came when my lady wished to go to Richard’s tent in minstrel’s guise and I prevented her, not entirely for her sake, as would have been the case a few days earlier, but also for the sake of the crusade. Richard Plantagenet, whom I saw then only as a crusader, was busy and occupied with many things and I was willing to save him from distractions.

A few days later the camp at Messina, which had been mustering point for all crusaders, began to disperse. The old Queen Mother of England, called back on urgent business, was the first to go. Then Philip of France with his right-hand man, Hugh of Burgundy, and seven thousand men, sailed for Acre.

Richard was still cutting and shipping timber. He had heard that there was no tree standing within ten miles of Acre and he was determined to take all that he needed for mangonels, arbalests, trebuchets and storming towers. So he stayed behind till last but on the night before I was to leave with the women he said:

‘My new galley,
Trenc-la-Mer
, is very swift and I may overhaul you. I may be making music with you, Blondel, before you expect.’

I relayed this message to the ladies; and since the long-delayed, long-awaited wedding was now definitely arranged to take place in Cyprus, throughout the voyage their spirits ran high and they were able to ignore the cramped quarters and the manners of the master of our vessel who did everything in his power to make us feel out of place and ill at ease.

We sailed into the harbour at Limassol and were forbidden to land. Sir Stephen de Turnham who was in charge of our party, confident that some misunderstanding had arisen, had himself rowed ashore and sought audience with the Emperor of Cyprus himself. He returned very flushed and agitated. There had been no misunderstanding. When the Emperor had promised to welcome and cherish Richard of England’s bride he had not known that she was Berengaria of Navarre; he had been under the impression that Richard of England was betrothed to Princess Alys of France. He was sorry but on a certain occasion some emissaries of his had been very scurvily treated by the King of Navarre and even to oblige his friend and brother, Richard of England, he was not disposed to welcome Sancho’s daughter.

Berengaria, having listened to his report, said with her delightful placidity:

‘What matter? We can wait in the open sea until Richard comes. Not that I think that Isaac Comnenus has cause for complaint. His emissaries were royally entertained’—she looked at Anna of Apieta and gave a little laugh—‘up to a point.’

‘But he promised,’ said Joanna of Sicily, something of her brother’s bright fury in her eyes. ‘He
promised
. Richard will be very angry when he hears of it. Did you make the Emperor understand that?’

‘I did my best, madam. I threatened and I pleaded and I exhorted,’ said Sir Stephen. ‘The Emperor was adamant. He said that if we attempted to land we should be sunk by missiles from those towers. And the whole beach is lined with people, very hostile.’

‘And by my reckoning,’ said Master Saunders gruffly, ‘we’re in for a storm, the like of which I’ve seen only once before and that in these waters fifteen years ago when I was in Famagusta taking on a cargo of spices. Same purple sky, wind in the same quarter. I mind it well. Within four hours she’ll be blowing the devil’s own hurricane. Would his great almighty tin-pot highness listen to me, sir, do you think, if I went in and asked as a common sailor man for shelter against the storm?’

‘I should doubt it; I should doubt it very much,’ said Sir Stephen. But he looked at the sky which had taken on a very strange colour. ‘You could try, of course. I did not mention the weather, having no knowledge—’

So Master Saunders set out but he was not even allowed to land; a shower of stones and other missiles, nastier if less harmful, greeted his approach and one enormous stone cast from the tower that guarded the harbour narrowly missed his boat.

Then this surly, unpleasant man showed his mettle and his skill. He hauled in his anchor, brought the ship about and made off, “running before the wind,” he said. The storm lasted for four days before it blew itself out and I began to think we should run at last into Alexandria. Then the wind dropped and the sea calmed and in a peace that was like the peace of heaven we turned again and sailed back until we could see within the harbour of Limassol. The
Trenc-la-Mer
was not anchored there. The two ships which had sailed with us and whose masters, if they had been wise, would have followed Saunders’s tactics, had been wrecked. The beach was strewn with wreckage and goods, which the Cypriots were busily salvaging, and with dead bodies of drowned crusaders which they pushed callously back into the sea again.

Yet Isaac of Cyprus had vowed to give help and succour to all who had taken the Cross, counted himself and was counted by others as within the ranks of the Holy War.

There was now the question of what to do. It was possible that Richard, in his fast ship, had reached Cyprus and, not finding us there, had proceeded to Acre. Master Saunders chose to think this most likely for he had gear and archers aboard and was plainly disposed to consider their safe delivery of greater importance than the keeping of a tryst, even though it were between his King and his future Queen.

Sir Stephen, whom the storm had shaken, was likewise anxious to reach port and land his precious charge safely. But my lady Berengaria said that Richard had promised to meet her in Cyprus and that unless he had gone down in the storm, which Mary and all merciful saints forbid, to Cyprus he would come. They argued about it until she said flatly that if they attempted to sail for Acre she would fling herself overboard. Then the master of a Venetian ship which had been allowed to go into the harbour and leave again steered near us as he departed and shouted that there was no evidence that the
Trenc-la-Mer
had passed that way.

So we waited, suffering no more than boredom, acute anxiety and a great shortage of water, until after ten days what looked like a forest of coloured sails rose out of the water. Richard had arrived and not alone. After almost everyone had left and when he himself had been on the point of embarking, two ships from Wexford in Ireland, the Ardriach’s contribution to the crusade, had come limping in. They had been badly battered by a storm. Richard had waited until they had rested and refitted and during that interval two long-boats manned by wild Norwegian barbarians and one laggard ship from London had arrived. These, with the ships which had arranged to sail in Richard’s company, made a very imposing fleet. And while Berengaria stood weeping tears of joy and relief because the
Trenc-la-Mer
had arrived safely, Joanna said jubilantly:

‘Now we shall see. Isaac is about to be very, very sorry for his behaviour.’

The minnesingers chant about the taking of Cyprus as though it were a jousting, a half-comic revenge taken by a knight upon one who had offered some insult to a lady. True enough; it was that.

‘Tonight you shall sleep in Isaac’s palace, my lady, and he shall walk before you in chains.’ Those were Richard’s words. He said them while he was still on his knees in the act of greeting the woman who had loved him with a lonely, singleminded devotion for years, who had travelled many weary miles and waited, waited in Brindisi, in Messina and outside Limassol. Those narrow white hands of hers had only just fallen out of his; the touch of his lips was still moist on them. She was saying, ‘It does not matter, my lord. Nothing matters now.’ But his mind was already away, waging a battle, exacting a vengeance.

Oh well, I suppose we can only give what is within us, what is ours to give.

He gave her Isaac’s palace to sleep in; he gave her Isaac’s daughter to be her waiting woman and musician; he marched Isaac himself, laden with silver chains, before her. And after their wedding he set the crown of Cyprus on her head.

Serious historians debate the ethics of Richard’s behaviour towards Isaac. The German monk, Ulrich of Salzburg, who cannot be entirely unsuspected of prejudice, speaks of it as an act of unprovoked, unwarranted aggression, just one more proof of Richard Plantagenet’s greed and bloody-mindedness; Sebastian of Cordova, a secular writer who often, almost flippantly, hits on the truth, asserts that, having made sundry new mangonels in Sicily, the King of England could not refrain from testing them in a minor engagement. It remains for the Saracen historian, Benamed, to say that the conquest of Cyprus was the action of a clever strategist. Nobody but a fool, he says, leaves an active enemy in his rear. Isaac had proved himself a false ally and was justly and sensibly dealt with. It is just possible that they are all right. These reasons and motives are not mutually exclusive. The battle which we watched from our ship, the battle which lasted for three days, may have been fought from a mixture of chivalry, bloodthirstiness, curiosity and strategy. We didn’t think about Richard’s motives; we were too busy watching his actions.

Twice I thought him reckless fool. The first time was when he landed alone on the beach. His Londoners and some of the barbarian Northmen were tumbling from boats and following hard on his heels but he did land alone and for—well, possibly no longer than five minutes, though it seemed an endless time—was alone on that beach, wielding his battle-axe amidst a shower of arrows, stones, logs and knives. By sheer weight of numbers the Cypriots, if they had so chosen, could have overwhelmed him and trampled him to death before help arrived. But it is a fact—I saw it happen—they flung at him what was in their hands and then fled like sheep. Those who were lucky and quick got into the city before the gates were slammed to and bolted; those less lucky remained outside and were butchered—like sheep.

Next day he landed a battering-ram, a great tree trunk shod at one end with iron and mounted on a platform which ran on twelve wooden wheels. Iron handles were fixed at intervals along its sides and men seized these and at a given signal propelled the whole thing forward so that it smote its objective with great force; then they dragged it back and thrust it forward again. The target of the ram was the sea-facing gate of Limassol, a sturdy copper-plated structure reinforced by iron bars. It was flanked by tall round towers from which it should have been easily defensible.

Two mangonels were also landed and assembled and while the ram thudded backwards and forwards the mangonels hurled over stones to disconcert and disable the defenders within.

When I saw the pulleys drawn and released, the great stones soar over, pitched short and high, I could not but be pleased with my innovation. By the simple process of reversing the pull and the thrust I had made the machine twice as easy to work and twice as deadly in action. But I wished that I had seen it used for the first time against the infidel. The people of Cyprus had certainly driven us out into the teeth of a storm and latterly we had suffered from lack of water. But somehow…

However, this is no place to tell of my heart-searchings. Let me record that the defence of the city was feeble and puerile. At long intervals a shower of arrows would spatter down from the two flanking towers but they seemed never to fall when the men who handled the ram were within range; whereas the English archers, only ten of them, picked off with deliberate accuracy any Cypriot who exposed a fraction of his person for so much as a tenth of a second. Everything that is said about English archery is true. The compulsory attendance at the butts every Sunday afternoon for every male between the ages of twelve and fifty, the constant, reckless poaching in the King’s forests have left their mark. They say that all the best archers have had an eye put out for shooting deer and I later verified for my own satisfaction that the ten marksmen who helped to take Limassol had only sixteen eyes among them! Is it squeamish to spare a thought for all the superb archers who have had the misfortune to be caught twice?

By mid-afternoon on the second day the ram, when it struck the gate, changed its note. There was just that difference which there is between a good coin and a counterfeit one thrown down. And an hour before sunset the copper gate gave way opening, under a final thrust from the ram, far enough to admit two men, two slim men, abreast.