‘I’ll sort it out later, on board, or we’ll never get home for Christmas,’ the Prince complained petulantly.’
This gave me my opportunity.
‘Very well, sire. I shall attend you later. But what you say about getting home … this is the fastest ship afloat, sire. So you’ll be all right for Christmas, I believe,’
It was a feeble pretext but it caught his attention. The Prince loved speed.
‘Fast, is she? Faster than the Pelican?’
‘I should say so. But you won’t catch her up.’
‘Who says so?’
‘I do. I’ll wager you can’t. She’s way ahead of us now.’
‘I’ll wager we can,’ he cried. ‘We’ll have some sport on this dull ocean. How much?’
‘Well, I didn’t really mean …’
‘How much?’
‘All right, then. Half of what you owe,’ I told him. ‘Five hundred silver pennies.’
I knew Haimo would never agree to such a thing.
‘You’re on, butcher.’ he said. ‘Call FitzStephen. Where is the fellow?’
‘Sire,’ said the shipwright, appearing at our side.
‘This fellow says we can’t catch the king. I say we can. There’s fifty silver pennies for you if we do.’
‘Thank you, sire.’
The Prince had sailed this route several times before and knew the options.
‘We’ll take the shortcut,’ he said.
FitzStephen blanched. The shortcut was not what he wanted to take at speed on an almost moonless night.
‘But, sire …’ he protested. ‘I don’t think your father would wish...’
‘No buts,’ cried the Prince. ‘The matter is settled.’
There was no way out for FitzStephen. He could hardly claim that he wasn’t fit to sail when he had been plied with drink by the Prince himself. The honour of his ship was at stake as well as his own reputation. Besides, he needed the money. The Prince strutted impatiently behind us.
‘I didn’t know you could take a shortcut,’ I said. ‘That’s unfair.’
‘Your bad luck,’ he giggled.
He was hooked now.
‘All aboard,’ shouted the Prince. ‘By the blood of Christ, we will catch him.’
He was using his father’s favourite oath. He’d be trying on his crown next; and he was cuckolding my father with his own half-sister. Now that is not very nice. Tell me, who was the real bastard there?
He turned away to continue his conversation with his sweetheart, and I thanked the man Gisulf, noting his ink-stained hand, and trying not think how the sea would wash it clean.
A mad scramble to board the White Ship was not what FitzStephen had in mind, but eventually a captain of the guard and the coxswain of the crew managed to fill the vessel in a half-orderly manner, putting the ladies under the protection of the fore and aft castles with the men ranged along the length of the vessel beside the oarsmen. ‘Wine!’ called the Prince. ‘Bring on the wine.’
Another hogshead was heaved on board. With hogsheads, military equipment and this great company on board, even the great White Ship was a little lower in the water than her captain would have liked, but he had boasted that she could take anything, and he could not demur.
No sooner had we got them on board, than a party of priests from the local abbey turned up to bless the voyage.
‘Silence,’ shouted the Bishop of Coutances, and everyone stopped to listen.
The monks did some solemn chanting and then their leader started praying in a loud rather nasal voice, making the sign of the Cross in the direction of the ship, and saying:
‘O pater omnipotens, oramus nunc pro nave candida et pro principe Guglielmo et illi qui cum principe navigant, tene omnes in tutamine, domine, salve et…’
By coincidence, one of the attendant crows that hopped about the harbour all day looking for scraps and vying with the gulls, was up late tonight, for they had learnt to salvage scraps from the crowd, and gave a loud ‘cawwww’ at that moment, or else it was a wit among the passengers. It came from the direction of the Prince himself. There was a great guffaw from Ralph the Red and someone, whom I could not see, shouted:
‘Go away, you sad old crows. We have wine and good company here. We don’t want all your mopping and mowing and pax vobiscuits. Be off with you! Cawww.’
The voice sounded very much like my half-brother’s.
There was a gasp from some – you didn’t go around insulting priests like that because you never knew who they would report you to, even God, and there were a few who abstained – but most of the party took up the cry:
‘Go away, you old black crows. Caw, caw, caw …’
‘This is a disgrace,’ remonstrated the Bishop, until someone knocked his mitre off into the crowd.
In the end the little party of monks scuttled back to re-group in the church with many a dark backward look, calling down retribution. It did not augur well. I took advantage of the general outburst of mirth, and the aftermath of mirth, and more mirth after that to tie my little Perrine (who I had already positioned nearby) to the stern rail of the White Ship, tucking her away so that she bobbed quietly in the shadow, unobserved.
Just at that moment, I felt a hand plucking at my sleeve. It was Eliphas.
‘What are you up to?’ he asked me.
I had to tell someone the truth.
‘I am going to wreck the White Ship,’ I told him. ‘The lady Juliana has taken my wife Alice, who is with child, and she threatens her with death if I do not do what she demands. She will have revenge on her father for what happened to her daughters.’
He looked grave, but not surprised.
‘How will you do it?’ he asked.
‘I will try to see the ship is driven onto the Quilleboeuf Rock.’
‘I heard as much,’ he said.
‘No one is supposed to know. From whom did you hear it?’
‘The Lady Juliana,’ he said.
‘And you are here to try and stop me?’
‘I am here to try and help you. I think a lesser man would be breaking up at this stage. You must embark now and let destiny take its course. The wreck may happen, or it may not happen. It may both happen and not happen at the same time. You have to be there, and the decision will be made. Be easy on yourself. What can I do to help?’
‘I have to find the rock,’ I said. ‘If I cannot find the rock, I cannot make the wreck.’
It sounded like gibberish to me. What was I saying? The whole thing was unreal.
‘What have you done so far?’
‘I have left a buoy near the rock to mark it, but it is dark.’
‘I think you will find there is more light than you imagine,’ he told me, putting his hand on my head. ‘Good luck. I am sure we shall meet again.’
It was extraordinary the effect he had on me; I was altogether relieved by our short conversation and indeed his presence, and I felt the pressure leave my head where he had touched it. He turned and lifted up his arms over the ship as if to bless it, in a gesture that seemed to me ancient, futile and at the same time important. It was almost time to go.
Just at that moment, a disturbance broke out, and I looked over to see several people leaving the ship. One of them was the Duke’s nephew, Stephen, Comte of Mortain, who clutched his stomach, white-faced. Another was an ambitious little shit called William of Roumare who was notoriously plotting for his mother’s lands, the honour of Bolingbroke. He too was smiling about something with his obsequious steward, Robert de Sauqueville, two bad apples if you ask me.
‘The party’s got too big for ’em, too much booze, too much parlez-vous,’ said the old mate, appearing beside us, waiting to step aboard before they cast off. ‘Either that or they got wind of something. That prince, he shouldn’t ha’ laughed at them holy brothers. They can call the wind, you know, curl the currents and draw the rocks. As for twins, sailors don’t like a twin on board. It’s unwholesome, so they chuck ’em out. They’d
chuck out the ladies if they could because they’re bad luck and all on a ship.’
As Comte Stephen passed by on the jetty, he groaned and clutched his stomach again, almost as if he were acting, glancing at us sidelong. Roumare was next to leave, still laughing at some secret joke. One or two others followed. I felt something of the mate’s superstitious alarm and also something that was more of men’s making. I glanced up at the ship and saw the steward, Pirou, make a gesture that was directed at Roumare who had glanced slyly back at him. I recalled that the man who had been horribly executed for plotting the Duke’s death had also been a royal steward. The air seemed all at once full of menace and dark contrivance. It puzzled me, of course, because I was meant to be the figure of ill omen, providing frissons for anyone with a sense of impending doom who cared to be watching. Something was going on that Juliana for all her planning had not foreseen.
The marine guards, drunk too, were singing now, a dirty version of ‘Il était une bergère’ which I had always thought was a nursery rhyme.
‘Stephen of Mortain pretends he has the squitters, but he’s a canny devil,’ Eliphas said. ‘I wouldn’t stay on a boat sailed by a bunch of drunkards. Maybe he thinks if the Prince goes down, he’ll be the next king.’
‘The King has a daughter,’ I said. ‘Matilda would be next in line.’
‘Yes, but…’
‘Hey, you, jongleur,’ called a voice from the ship, ‘come on board. You can entertain us as we go and join our Christmas revels in Winchester. You have not seen a revel until you have seen an English revel. What do you say?’
I stupidly thought: what an opportunity for Eliphas! And then, recalling what I had to do, I decided it was not. I did not want to drown the player, even though he would doubtless go down with a jest on his lips, and I would have liked to have known what it would be.
‘Alas, sire,’ he called up, ‘my father is ill and you know what fathers are at Christmas. They want you near them.’
‘Too bad,’ the voice called down, ‘we have better plays in England anyway.’ It was, I think, the most graceless remark I have ever heard, from prince or commoner. The man who said it, whom I had been trying not to recognise, was my half-brother, my father’s son. I smiled at Eliphas and raised my eyebrows. He laughed.
‘I am sure you will think of that,’ he said, ‘when the time comes.’
I did not dare ask him what he meant. He was the kind of man you would trust with your life, but he could be damnably enigmatic. I was starting to shiver with suppressed tension and the imminence of action.
The old mate was signalling to me now to get on board. Eliphas grasped my hand and told me he hoped to see me soon. They were already pushing off as I sprang onto the deck. Just for an instant, I glimpsed not one but a pair of dinghies bobbing at the stern. What the hell was the extra one doing there – and who was it for?
Eliphas waved from the jetty and I returned the wave, wishing I could have had him with me, but it was not part of Juliana’s design which had so far been precise in its planning and accurate in its forecast. The breeze filled the sail with a cracking, bellying sound, background to the hoarse injunctions of the coxswain to his crew. It was even colder now, still clear of clouds, the moon no more than an apostrophe, the stars pinpricks through which shone the glory of Heaven. The Pole Star showed the way, straight ahead, to the Quilleboeuf Rock.
‘Row, you devils, row. In … out … in … out …’ called the Prince. ‘We have to catch the King, helmsman. I have a wager to win. Take the shorter route.’
His cry was taken up by the younger members of his party, my stepmother among them.
‘Row, row, row,’ they cried. ‘In … out … in … out…’
‘There’s a purse of silver for you, coxswain, if we catch them,’ cried the Prince.
And the coxswain, nothing loath, urged the crew on, bellowing imprecations, exhortations and commands.
I saw FitzStephen give the helm to one of his underlings, and step forward, down off the helmsman’s castle, to speak to William. I edged closer to hear what he was saying.
‘I am not sure the shortcut is a good idea, sire.’
‘If I say it is a good idea, it is a good idea. Are you not confident in your vessel, helmsman, or in your powers of navigation?’
I could see FitzStephen nerving himself to say that he had taken more ships out of this harbour than he, the Prince, had had hot dinners, but tipsy though he was, he controlled himself. He did know these shores, this sea, and there was none to equal him.
‘Of course I am, sire. If that is what you want, we will do it. But I should point out that there are rocks out there, and risks, sire.’
‘I say pish to your rocks and risks. What do I care for such things? We have beaten the French King. He is the rock we have fought and broken. What else is there to fear?’
The Prince, flushed with excitement as well as the King’s good Burgundy, strode up and down the line of oarsmen.
‘Put your backs into it, you rogues. Three silver pennies for each of you if we reach Southampton before the King.’
The men were warming to him. Maybe he wasn’t such a bad lad after all, but I was not going to feel sorry for him. We were caught up, all of us, by the spinning spider of destiny.
‘Row row, row,’ sang the courtiers and the captains. ‘In … out …’ The oarsmen bent to it with a will, too much so to my way of thinking for they would be exhausted mid-Channel, before they reached England. But of course they were not going to reach England.
Somewhere in Normandy, Alice was alone, afraid, and carrying my child. How I longed to be with her now. I had to do what had to be done; all I could do was try and save her. The Quilleboeuf Rock was only a mile out. We would be there in less than ten minutes.
‘Why are you on this ship, peasant?’ asked a truculent young blade asked me, looking askance at my coat.
I recognised him as Geoffrey de l’Aigle as he stumbled into me, splashing wine on my sheepskin.
‘To take some money off you, peasant,’ I told him.
No one in a sheepskin coat had spoken to him like that before. His jaw dropped.
‘Wha’ wha’ wha’ …’ he gibbered. ‘Who d’you think you’re talking to?’
I walked on towards the stern, weaving my way between groups of drunken soldiers and courtiers, to where FitzStephen stood, swaying to the movement of the good ship alcohol. I noticed that his coxswain, a man to trust, was now on the stern castle, holding the tiller. For a moment, I saw the fellow Pirou in front of me, sidling through the crowd, stopping now and then to exchange a word but always moving on.
‘Hey, fellow,’ said a young lady, ‘you have a bu … bu … colic look. And a …’ she approached nearer, ‘fwaaahh smell. If we stood you by the sail, you could drive the ship forward on smell alone. Hey, William. Smell power could win battles for you. Just send in the men with smellskin coats.’
‘Bonne idée, Comtesse. You can campaign with us anytime. In fact, we could have a little campaign of our own tonight.’
‘And you a married man!’
‘My wife is only twelve years old so it doesn’t count.’
Drunkards surged up and down the middle of the ship, sometimes falling over the oarsmen who swore at them. I turned and tried to look forwards over the bow, cursing FitzStephen’s innovation of a little castle at each end for I could not see ahead from where I was standing, flat in the belly of the ship. The water gleamed sleekly, dappled with icy flecks of foam. I leant over, felt it and shuddered. We were moving like a boulder down a mountain with tremendous, headlong, irresistible speed.
Row, row, row.
A girl smiled at me, she must only have been seventeen or so.
‘They laugh at a sheepskin coat,’ she said, ‘but you’ll be the one laughing before this cold night is out.’
I didn’t really have the time to stay, but what she was saying was important.
‘Would you like it?’ I asked her. ‘It smells a bit, but
it’s better than goosebumps.’
‘I am fine,’ she said. ‘I have a fur trimming to my cloak. You just look rather sweet in it.’
‘What is your name?’ I asked her.
‘Hélène,’ she said. ‘I am the daughter of Ralph the Red.’
‘I think you have saved my life,’ I told her.
‘I don’t understand …’she started to say.
I held up my hand in a gesture as if to say I should like to talk more, but I simply can’t just now. But it wasn’t my life she had saved. It was her own life and the life of everyone on board. I could not go through with it now, even for Alice and her baby; she would not want me to. This Hélène was like the righteous man in the story of Sodom. Someone good and kind and unassuming whom I could not kill; possibly one of those angels whom we entertain unawares.
I started to move as fast as I could back to the castle in the stern where the coxswain stood holding the tiller, legs braced, his eyes straining into the night. It was hard finding a way through that milling crowd as it swayed to the movement of the vessel. The White Ship was saved, though. I didn’t need to hurry. I turned to look forward again, to see if I could discern the Quilleboeuf ahead. Yes, and there it was, slightly, but safely, over to port, a little spray from wavelets fretting around its top, the water around it almost luminous. No sign of my buoy, though – now why would that be? That was a minor issue, however; the main thing was, the White Ship was safe. I felt an immense surge of relief.
Just at that moment, as I struggled to reach the coxswain, and as everyone turned towards a blast of music from the horns and a burst of cheering that erupted from somewhere up front, I saw the dull flash of something metallic moving fast against a patch of starlit sky – a bar or rod of some kind. It was wielded by the man Pirou and landed on the burly coxswain’s skull with a crack I could almost feel. Even as the man collapsed, he was gathered in Pirou’s arms and swiftly heaved over the stern into the water. Pirou himself grasped the tiller and, as I scrambled up the steps to the castle, I saw the unmistakable shape of the Quilleboeuf Rock, much closer ahead of us now, and only very slightly to port. The moon must have had more strength than I had reckoned for there was definitely a ring of light around the rock. For some reason, I thought of Eliphas. It was quite evident to me that Pirou was steering for the rock deliberately. He was doing my dirty work for me, work that I myself had now decided to reject. That must be his little boat bobbing along beside Perrine, in which he planned to make his getaway. So that was why someone had removed my buoy, doubtless thinking it was there to warn rather than lure! There had been more than one plot in the offing that night. That was why Stephen of Mortain had left the ship before she sailed! Diarrhoea my left foot! Or was it that Roumare fellow, hand in grudge with Pirou?
The White Ship Page 40
