Standard of Honor (47 page)

“Have you ever seen the like, Master-at-Arms?”

The speaker, who had come up behind him unnoticed, was a man called Montagnard, one of St. Clair's own officers, in charge of the hundred men billeted on the galley. He was a strange and taciturn man, Sir Henry thought, who would go for days on end without saying an unnecessary word, and then would suddenly break his silence, speaking fluidly and betraying a varied and convoluted background. Clearly this was one such day.

“The weather, you mean? No, I never have. It is almost uncanny. What is happening, do you know?”

“We are becalmed.”

“Aye, I can see that. But is this a common thing? How long does it last?”

“It's not uncommon. I've experienced it once before, in the Bay of Biscay, when we were trying to beat into La Rochelle and suddenly the wind died and did not blow again for two days. It is a frightening experience, almost a religious one, for there is no rhyme or reason to it. No one ever knows what causes it or how long it will last. It is strange, though, is it not?” He nodded towards where the two Masters were conferring deeply. “It even upsets them, and it takes much to do that. You know what they say about it, don't you?”

“No, what do they say?”

“God is holding His breath.” Montagnard turned to face Sir Henry now. “And what happens when you hold your breath? You have to release it again, sooner rather than later. Even if you are God. And depending upon the length of time you have been holding it, the gust, when you release it, may be strong.”

“You mean it's going to storm?”

“Not necessarily, but it might. In the meantime, we are among the few people in the fleet who can move at all. We have our oars. Most of the others must simply sit and wait for the wind to come back. That should please the priests, at any rate.”

“Why should they be happy?”

“Look about you, Master-at-Arms. It's Good Friday and a beautiful day without a breath of wind … perfect conditions for reminding men how vulnerable and at risk they are in the face of God's omnipotence. You watch, every vessel in this fleet will be a sounding vessel for the Blessed Jesus this day. You will hear hymns being sung from every direction before the sun sets, you mark my words.”

Henry smiled and was about to reply when he noticed movement on the water, and he stepped to the rail to watch as rowboats approached from each of the other four galleys. Moments later the first of them drew alongside, and its passenger, a galley commander, clambered aboard and joined the group around Sir Robert, followed soon after by his three colleagues. They did not remain aboard for very long, and within the half hour, all four of the rearline galleys had begun moving forward, like sheepdogs, towards the becalmed vessels ahead of them, spreading advice and encouragement to their less fortunate companions as they rowed among them. Only Richard's own galley, which was also, and less than incidentally, the galley of the Fleet Master, remained behind, forming a rearguard of one vessel. When the word was passed to ship oars and be at ease, St. Clair quickly realized that de Sablé preferred to be there and alone, where he could anticipate anything the sea might throw at him, rather than in the midst of the fleet where he could be at a severe disadvantage in the event of a sudden reversal of fortune.

Montagnard had moved away and was nowhere in sight when Sir Henry looked around for him, and as the
Master-at-Arms turned back towards the stern, he was just in time to see de Sablé's broad back as the Fleet Master disappeared into his cabin, leaving the deck strangely quiet. Silent crewmen were lounging everywhere, some of them staring off into nowhere, others sitting or lying against the sides of the ship with their eyes closed. Sir Henry smiled faintly and nodded to himself. He could see it was a time to wait and be patient, for nothing any of them could do would affect the span of time for which God chose to hold His breath.

That Good Friday became the longest day Sir Henry had ever known, for in the tiny shipboard world of his confinement there was absolutely nothing that he could do to take his mind off his enforced idleness. He dozed a little, but quickly grew tired even of that, and such was his boredom that he actually welcomed the diversion when the three bishops aboard the ship emerged onto the stern deck with their acolytes about an hour after noon and began to conduct the services for Good Friday. It became evident immediately that not everyone on board could attend the ceremonies at the same time, but some of the officers quickly worked out a plan whereby men were able to come on deck, in groups of twenty at a time, and spend a quarter of an hour praying, taking Communion, and breathing God's fresh air before returning to the densely packed cribs that were their sole accommodation. Some time later, in verification of Montagnard's prediction, voices began to rise in prayer and song from all directions, some of them emanating from identifiable ships, while others
were mere vibrations in the air, ethereal and shimmering with distance. And then, at the third hour after noon, a silence fell, as deep as the silence that had surrounded them all day. Jesus was dead and the world would remain in spiritual darkness until the dawn of the third day, when his Resurrection would proclaim the universal salvation.

Sir Henry St. Clair noticed a small gust of wind tickling the hair at the nape of his neck. He had been dozing again, leaning against the rail in the foremost point of the deck, and the sensation, the first stirring of air he had felt in the entire day, snapped him awake instantly, so that he straightened to his full height, wondering what had happened. And then he heard voices being raised at his back and the hammering of running feet as someone rushed up to elbow him aside and take his place. The man leaned forward tensely, peering straight ahead at the horizon, and then he growled, “Oh, shit!” and spun away, running back towards the stern, shouting for the shipmaster, Besanceau. Henry watched him go, and noted the way in which everyone else was watching him, too, and then he turned back to see what it was that the fellow had seen to cause him to react as he had.

He could see nothing, other than what looked like a slight thickening above the line of the horizon, as though someone had smudged a stick of charcoal unevenly across the line separating sea and sky, blurring it in places. He narrowed his eyes and peered more carefully, and he had the impression, for a moment, that the smudged line was purple. He could no longer feel any
stirring in the air, and the stillness was as profound as ever. But then, high atop the mast of one of the ships ahead, a flag snapped into motion and flapped several times before subsiding again to hang as limp as it had been before. Sir Henry felt his heart begin to beat more strongly and his gut stirred with formless apprehension. Something was in the offing, he knew, and the shouting that was now rising in volume at his back reinforced what he was feeling.

The purple line on the horizon thickened even as he watched and was soon discernible as an advancing line of clouds. Another gust of wind sprang up but died away quickly, only to be followed minutes later by another that blew harder and lasted longer. Henry watched in silence as three crewmen lowered the sail completely and folded it with great care before lashing it tightly to the spar that held it, then lashed the spar in turn, binding it solidly to the ship's mast. Moments later, his gut tensed again as he saw the stroke drummer take up his position in the waist of the ship and the oarsmen set themselves, seven to a side, ready to start pulling on his signal. The signal came, and the men bent to their work, pulling steadily as they fought against the ship's inertia and eased it into motion with agonizing slowness. Its speed increased rapidly, and the rowers seemed to have less difficulty in their task.

A movement on the stern deck caught Henry's eye, and he glanced over there to see Richard himself, resplendent in full mail and scarlet surcoat, standing spread-legged beside and slightly behind Sir Robert de
Sablé's right shoulder, his massive arms crossed over his chest. On de Sablé's left, his face twisted into a ferocious scowl, Sir Geoffrey Besanceau stood tossing a dagger into the air, end over end, catching it and flipping it again each time the hilt smacked back into his open palm. He never glanced at the dagger, every ounce of his attention dedicated to peering ahead into the gathering murk.

A door opened from the soldiers' quarters and men began to emerge onto the narrow deck, evidently attracted by the sounds of activity after such a day of quiet. The tiny deck space rapidly became congested and the congestion threatened to interfere with the orderly running of the ship, and so the men were ordered back to their quarters. As the last of them left the deck, clearly disgruntled, Henry approached the King, who greeted him cordially enough but seemed disinclined to idle conversation. Henry knew his man well enough to be guided by that, and so he merely stood there, silent, until Robert de Sablé noticed him there.

“Henry,” he said, and quirked one side of his mouth in a humorless grin. “You remember what we spoke of yesterday, about not trusting the weather?”

“Aye, I do, very well. Is that line over there what I think it is?”

“Aye, it is, if you think it marks trouble brewing. It's a storm front, coming rapidly.”

“How rapidly?”

Again the quirk at one side of the other's mouth.

“A half hour at the most … at worst, half that.”

“What can we do?”

“Nothing, my friend. We have already done all we can do. We sent out word throughout the fleet this afternoon to be prepared for anything: a gale, a tempest, a simple storm. When this thing approaching us arrives, each shipmaster will be responsible for his own craft and crew, and if he has done as bidden, each will be as well prepared as the next. It may be a simple squall, or a line of squalls, but it looks too large for that, and anyway, from here, there is no way of telling. All we can do is wait and take what comes. No man owns expertise when the wind blows hard and the sea starts churning itself to froth and spume. We can but try to hold our bows towards the cresting swells, and then we pray. You should start praying now, my friend, and since you are a landman, you should find a safe spot by the scuppers in the prow and tie yourself firmly into place. Ship oars!” The last two words were loud and urgent, a shouted order, and the oarsmen quickly raised their oars to the vertical, raining water down upon themselves as the ship's motion changed suddenly.

“Aha,” said de Sablé, almost to himself, “and so we begin.” The deck had tilted steeply without warning, sending the prow high into the air, and de Sablé reached for a hand hold and waved with his free hand to the ship's master at the same time as the vessel dipped again. The oars went back into the water, and de Sablé spoke again to St. Clair, this time without looking at him. “Go you, now, Henry, quickly, and do what
I told you—tie yourself strongly down and hold on tight. My lord King, you should do the same.”

“What, tie myself down? No, I'll tie a rope about my middle and anchor it to a rail, but I shall stay here with you.” Richard looked at Sir Henry. “But you, Henry, you must do as Robert bids you. You no longer have the strength you had in youth and I need you in Outremer. Get you to safety. I have no wish to see you washed away. Go.”

Sir Henry made his way back to where he had stowed his pack and bound himself into place beside it, securing it to himself with a short length of rope and then binding himself firmly to the ship's rail, close to one of the holes in the vessel's side that allowed the trapped water of inboard waves to stream back into the sea. He barely had time to finish the last knot before the storm broke over them, and from that moment on he lived in a screaming, wind-and-water-filled hell, unaware of time, or day or night or anything else that made human life sane or desirable. He was aware of changing colors in the cloud rack from time to time, and on one occasion he found himself being painfully battered by pebble-sized hailstones that piled up in sheltered places on the deck like shoals of splintered ice. Then it was rain that stung his face, whipped horizontally by the howling wind, and some time after that he became aware that the temperature had plummeted, his soaked clothing chilled to the consistency of rough board. He thought he may have passed out about that time, and had no notion of how much time might have passed,
but eventually he came awake again to find himself being thrown from side to side, his head banging painfully against the side of the ship at every roll. His clothing was still icy cold, but now there was sufficient light for him to see that the folds of his surcoat were thick with fresh snow. Then came a looming lurch of fear as he sensed something swinging at him, and he lost awareness of everything again.

He awoke some time later and the storm was still howling about him, and after that he drifted in and out of consciousness, mildly aware, somewhere in his mind, that the storm seemed to be dying down. He woke up again when he felt someone grasp him by the face and pinch his cheeks together, shaking his head gently. He opened his eyes and saw one of the crew members kneeling above him, peering at him closely.

“Ah, he's alive,” the fellow muttered. “That cut on his head, all bleached and open like that, I wasn't sure there … Right, come on, then, old man, let's cut those ropes and see if we can get you back up on your feet.”

IT WAS EASTER SUNDAY
, late in the afternoon, and if there were any priests celebrating Mass or offering thanks for their deliverance from the storm, they were doing it privately and in silence, in whatever quarters they had been able to appropriate for themselves in the aftermath of the destruction. Sir Henry St. Clair knew he was still alive, but he knew little else of any import, and he had not yet decided whether to be grateful for his survival or to regret the lost opportunity to die in
the tempest and be rid of the aches, pains, and griefs that beset him now.

He sat braced on a coil of rope, staring at the junction where the sides of the ship came together at the bows. He had at least two cracked or broken ribs, the pain of which made it impossible for him to stand and lean forward against the rails, and so he was forced to sit there, unable to see over the wooden sides in front of him. His back was propped against two other, smaller rope coils balanced on the first, and he forced himself to ignore both the pain of his ribs and the inconvenience of not being able to see anything, and to concentrate instead upon the small amount of information he had managed to glean to this point. The man who had found him half dead in the scuppers had known who he was, and had summoned another man to help carry him back to the rear of the ship, where someone else had tended to his injuries—Henry had no idea who that had been, but they had strapped up his ribs and bound a cloth tightly over the gash in his right temple before sending him back, supported between two crewmen, to sit where he had spent much of the previous few days, in the foremost point of the ship's bows and out of the way of most of the vessel's crew.