LXXI

Another of the Duke’s hogsheads of wine had been broached. FitzStephen – taut and nervous, his dreams near to fulfilment – made himself known to the Prince, and the young man thrust a cup of wine into his hands. More soon followed it. I do not think the shipwright was used to strong wine, or he would have stopped his sailors drinking.

I walked about, trying to recognise some of the passengers. Someone pointed out Rabel de Tancarville, son of the King’s chamberlain. He was a steady-looking young man, who seemed a little on edge, as he talked to a serious William Bigod. I noticed another bigwig, Richard, Earl of Chester, with his wife, who looked nervous. Apart from the Bishop of Coutances who kept lifting his eyes to heaven – perhaps because he was breaking wind or seasick already or both – these were about the only sober people in view, and I included in that category two monks from the Abbey of Tiron and the Archdeacon of Hereford, who were laughing at something that could well have been a dirty joke. The devil was afoot that night and putting his shite in good men’s mouths. Gilbert of Exmes and Ralph the Red may have been excellent generals, but they were well away now. Even Richard, the Prince’s half-brother, was flushed and garrulous, pressing himself upon one of the young ladies in a manner more befitting a melee.

There was one man who caught my eye who was not drinking. I asked FitzStephen who he was and he told me his name was William of Pirou, a sometime royal steward – not a race of men I usually liked for they were full of guile at the expense of their betters and cruel or exacting to those beneath them. He was a pale-faced man, of middle height, lean but sinewy, ideal for disappearing in a crowd. He seemed to have some intent of purpose on his face, but what it was I could not discern. He was a man to watch: always smiling a little as though at some incipient jest; never laughing – as though he had a knife about his cloak. There were one or two rough-looking knights, more like scullions, I thought, who did not seem to fit in with the fine company, but then neither did I. It did cross my mind to wonder what they might be doing on board, but I had other things to think about.

The crowd had now surged out onto the jetty. The lading of the ship was finished, and it was almost time to be away. FitzStephen lurched up and murmured something in my ear.

‘I beg your pardon?’ I said.

It had sounded like a cryptic word, a password. Why would he say a password to me? Was there some kind of plot – another one? In that hour of urgency and suspense, it seemed to me that anything was possible. I cocked an ear more closely.

‘Ofnanour,’ he slurred.

‘Ofnanour?’ I questioned.

‘’S nearly high water,’ he explained.

I was only temporarily relieved. I sincerely hoped FitzStephen was going to cock the whole thing up by being too drunk to step on board.

‘Shall I go and tell the Prince?’ I asked him.

‘Yes, get ’em on board. I’ll tell the M-m-mate.’

The mate was a square-shaped, bearded, elderly seaman with a rolling gait, called Roger, whom FitzStephen trusted, but who didn’t know how to treat princes and courtiers. The last time I had seen him he’d been sticking his beak into a pint pot. I set off to locate the Prince who alone could give the order to embark. I found myself charged now with a strange energy and confidence. I knew what had to be done. All directions were leading towards it. I found the Prince with his arm round the waist of his half-sister, the Lady Matilda. They were laughing immoderately at some sally by Gisulf the Scribe who evidently fancied himself as a wit. All around him the party hummed and buzzed, I recognised William of Rhuddlan, drinking with the two sons of Ivo Grandmesnil, and William Bigod – pointed out to me earlier as important nobs by FitzStephen. The girls with them were screeching and cackling. It was all very regrettable, not my idea of princessly behaviour, and I felt we were embarking on a ship of fools, such as may not return. Out in the harbour, masts wagged like the tongues of gossips. I had the feeling, I’m sure you know it, that all this had happened before.

‘The Captain begs your pardon and says he thinks it is time to get the party on board, sire,’ I told the Prince.

‘The Captain does not give the orders, fellow. I give the orders.’

‘Yes, sire. But if I may say so, the tide gives the orders. I don’t know if you have heard of King Canute and his problem.’

‘Who are you, fellow?’

‘Wait a minute,’ said the Comtesse, ‘don’t I know you from somewhere?’

She was breathtakingly beautiful in that Saxon way, thick blonde hair, delicate features like an angel, her cheeks slightly pinker than usual from the wine. I had grown a beard since she last saw me.

‘I don’t think so, my lady,’ I mumbled, turning my head away from her, towards the Prince. ‘The Captain has enlisted my services, sire, to help get everyone on board.’

‘Who are you, fellow?’ he asked again.

‘Well, sire, in fact I am the butcher of Rouen’s counting-man, and I have come to collect money owing to him by your court for six months past.’

‘Go away, little man,’ he said, and I wanted to strike him.

‘Your father said you would pay, sire,’ I told him. ‘I have the bill with me here.’

I offered it to him, but he half turned away.

Gisulf the Scribe intervened. ‘Better do what he suggests, sire,’ he said. ‘There’ll only be trouble when you come back next year. You know how the Duke likes to play fair.’

‘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?

‘No,’ I shouted furiously, crazedly at Pirou. ‘Go right … starboard … away from the rock.’

Of course there was no chance that he would do so.

Seizing the metal bar again, and keeping one hand on the tiller, he lashed out at me, and missed. People were looking at us now. I grasped the bar with both hands and prised it from his grasp to give him some of his own medicine. I swung, the vessel lurched, and I caught him on the shoulder – a glancing blow, but it still hurt him. He launched himself at me and we wrestled on the floor of the castle. He had chosen the wrong man to wrestle with, though. I put him in a lock and threw him down the stairs. A sack of carrots would have landed better, and the stuffing was knocked out of him. He was at least out of the way for the moment.

I grasped the tiller. Everyone could see the tip of the rock now, flecked with foam, about thirty yards ahead on the left. People were shouting at me:

‘Hard a-starboard or you’ll have us all drowned!’

I knew what to do now.

Pirou, had resurfaced sooner than I expected and now, sporting a bloody head, even he seemed to have caught the general frenzy. He fought like a madman with me to put his hand once again upon the tiller, and I fought as madly to restrain him.

‘Hard a-port,’ he shouted.

‘Hard a-starboard!’ shouted the mate, starting to clamber up the stairs, gasping for breath.

I was overcome with a stupid confusion, forgetting everything FitzStephen had tried to teach me. Did I push the tiller right to go right? Was that what hard a-starboard meant? Why was I, a landlubber, in this stupid position, in charge of three hundred people?

I had time for only one move and I made the wrong one. I pushed the tiller hard over to the right and Pirou, hurt though he was, clapped his hands.

And then the White Ship struck. It was as if the very earth had cracked.

We hit the rock with a great, coarse, rending wooden cry of pain. I had fulfilled my promise to Juliana perfectly, and Alice and I were free.

For a moment, there was silence from all the people on board, disbelief, and then commotion and fear spreading like an instant disease. For a start, there was a great deal of very cold water. The mate and I struggled through the panicking crowd to try and see what the damage was – it might be possible to staunch the hole and limp back to shore – but the ship was holed below the waterline, planks were shattered and there was no warp on earth could repair that wound.

I started sloshing about the boat, apologizing.

‘I’m sorry,’ I kept saying. ‘Hard a-starboard.’

‘Are we sinking?’

‘What can we do?’

‘Will they send someone from the shore?’

‘We’re all going to die!’

‘Christ have mercy!’

And so on. I was so overwhelmed by guilt, shame, and confusion I did not think of my own danger.

While the general confusion reigned, I noticed the Prince’s personal guard, appointed by the King himself, men of fierce loyalty and military presence of mind, scouring the ship for anything that might float. They quickly located Perrine and brought her round to the side. I knew what had happened to the other little boat; Pirou must have scrambled into it and was sculling home even now. He would not get far against that tide, not with that wounded paw.

I was still in a state of shock. I could not believe that I had been responsible for this disaster, and yet here they all were, spluttering around like goldfish in the remnants of a broken bowl.

The ship was sinking lower in the water and beginning to list. Stability wasn’t helped by too many people trying to climb up onto the castles to get away from the danger. The bow was now under water, lodged precariously on ledges of the rock, and slipping. There were already people in the sea, some swimming, others floundering; no one could last long in that cold. The little boat with the Prince and four men aboard, including the Prince’s half-brother, Richard, was already some twenty yards away.

It was just at that point that a piteous voice cried out:

‘William … don’t leave me…’

It was my little stepmother, the lovely Comtesse de Perche, calling more in love than fear.

The Prince, on hearing her voice, immediately ordered his oarsmen to row back and collect her. The guard demurred. I could see them arguing against it. It was obvious what would happen if they obeyed, but the Prince was insistent, I will say that for him. He loved that girl to the end. So they rowed back. When they reached the side of the ship she stepped on board, but as they turned the boat to row away again, a myriad hands like the tentacles of a great octopus, reached up out of the water and clung to the side of the little skiff … And of course my brave little Perrine turned on her side. Then they were all in the water: Prince, Comtesse, and the bravest of the brave.

I saw William clutch the little Comtesse to him and they sank together, beyond the reach of his tutor Othuer, who had leapt from the ship to succour him. I made the sign of the Cross and prayed that God would not punish them for I knew more about the impossibility of love than I had when I first saw them.

It was all at once borne upon me that I now had no escape plan for myself. Perrine was gone. The ship quivered, slid down a little more, the mast cracked and toppled over the side in a welter of sail and sheets. It was time to leave. I saw a spar floating nearby. I huddled my coat about me and jumped into the water. I tried to call out for someone to join me on my spar, but the cold took my voice away.

At this point, the weight of the people in the ship’s castles – proud innovation of FitzStephen – made the ship capsize. The whole party was flung into the sea. The air was full of the despairing cries of drowning men and women, sounding like seabirds. I looked around desperately for the little girl who had smiled at me, because I wanted to save her for being so nice, but I could see her nowhere.

‘Hélène! Hélène!’

I tried to paddle round the ship as I called her, but it began to slide off the rock and with shocking speed disappeared into the ocean, almost carrying me with it. The whole thing was so completely unreal that I could not believe it had happened. People were drowning all around me. A bedraggled wretch swam up and asked if he could share my spar.

‘Yes, peasant,’ I said, smiling to show I welcomed the company.

It was the same proud young baron who had insulted my sheepskin coat.

‘This is a terrible thing,’ he said. ‘The King will never recover.’

‘I’m not sure any of us will.’

I was finding, to my surprise, that my coat which now gathered itself up around me on the surface like a skirt, actually helped me to float. Perhaps, I thought, with its fatty skin, it would even help to keep me warm. It did not help to keep me dry though, and the cold – fatty skin or not – soon penetrated to the very marrow. Our spar was drifting on the ebb, away from the rock. There had been a moment when I wondered whether to repeat my late survival stratagem of sitting on the Quilleboeuf, but I saw there was someone there already, looking very disinclined to be removed. And when I looked again there was a fight. And when I looked once more there was no one on it at all. It was, anyway, too far from me now.

I stayed where I was with my companion beside me, hanging onto the spar. We exchanged names and some little information. Bodies floated past us, some alive and feebly struggling, others white and still, here a beautiful woman, there one of the King’s Guard, there the jester rolled up like a woodlouse on a half-full hogshead. Among these motionless bodies, I perceived the Prince again, yielded up by the water and torn from the arms of his love, in the embrace now of his bastard half-brother, the great general Richard who must have found him, momentarily buoyed up by the bubbles in his clothes. I wondered for a moment whether to try to collect the Prince and anchor him to the spar, and I questioned my companion as to whether it should be done.

‘Let him be,’ said Geoffrey. ‘The King will not thank you for bringing his son back dead. In fact he will secretly hate you for it. Better to let the waters take him and yield him up on the shore if fate wills it.’

The Prince and his brother sank under the water as I watched. It entered my mind now, slowly, because the cold made everything slow, that Juliana had hedged her bets. She had not completely trusted me. The other party had been there on her command…

‘What fools we were,’ exclaimed Geoffrey, ‘and how the wheel of fortune turns. I fear I will not last the night, Bertold. I feel the cold entering my heart. Will you tell my father that I loved and honoured him to the end, if you survive?’

‘I will. But I am certain you will endure. I will make you endure.’

My companion shook his head.

‘I will try, I promise. I am not anxious to die out here. But it is cold. It is so cold. This night has been like the end of the world.’

The effort of speaking had exhausted him and he sank back against the spar. There was a slight commotion not far off, as though someone were swimming inexpertly towards us. Then, poor FitzStephen appeared out of the gloom, splashing like a dog, a sad woebegone figure whose dream had been broken and who still could not get the words out fast enough …

‘I have l … l … lost the Prince. Is he a … l … l … live?’

‘He is dead,’ I told him. ‘We saw him go.’

‘I have lost everything, I cannot live now,’ he said, and put his head down, under the water, where he stayed.

Slowly, as the chill tightened its grip on us, the last desperate sounds abated and the bodies floating past became infrequent. Hours must have passed; we were numb with cold and half dead with shock and exhaustion. I tried to stay awake because I knew if I did not, I would never wake up again. I kept shaking Geoffrey to try to keep him with me, but I could see he was not in good shape. And so we drifted until there was no vestige left of the White Ship and the three hundred people on board, only Geoffrey de L’Aigle and I, the bastard FitzRotrou, heir now to the county of Perche and feeling no better for it.