THE FRENCH FOOT SOLDIERS MAY BELIEVE THE POPE has lifted his sentence of excommunication, but they’re still discontent: They’re complaining half the food supplied by the Venetians has gone rotten, and they object to hanging around here for another ten weeks.
But worse, some of them have actually deserted. Simona bundled into the tower-house this morning and told us that in the middle of the night a number of men from Poitiers—enough to subdue the crew—crept aboard a Venetian galley and untied her moorings.
There was nothing the crew could do because they were outnumbered and unarmed, and although some Venetians onshore were woken by the shouting, there was nothing they could do either. They stood on the quay and watched the dark shape drifting down the channel, and listened to the Frenchmen yelling, “Row! Row, damn you! Row or drown!”
Three Venetian sailors did end up in the water, and they couldn’t swim. No one knows whether they were pushed, or tripped in the dark, or jumped and hoped someone would rescue them.
Simona says there may have been as many as one hundred Poitevins. But where will they go? Will they ever get there? In any case, they’ve got away. And one of our ships is gone.
The news about the deserters has troubled us all. Lord Stephen keeps blinking and clucking and Turold is leathery and Rhys is restless and Serle’s in a temper.
“Poitevins!” Sir William proclaimed. “Cowards from the cradle! This crusade’s got a curse on it.”
I keep thinking our tower is about to topple. Before long, there’s going to be a storm.