CHAPTER XXXVIII

 

The Year 1120- the 25th of November

Barfleur, Normandy

 

Amid a trumpet fanfare, the creaking of windlasses and raising anchors, and the cries from twenty ships to unfurl the sails, King Henry the First’s fleet set sail for England on the south wind. It was about half past eight in the evening, nearly two hours before the high water mark. The thin crescent of the moon had just set below the horizon; the night was frosty, the skies clear with a shower of shooting stars pouring into the darkness of the sea like bright fireballs.

The White Ship lay at anchor while William and his friends stayed behind, dancing, singing, and getting drunker. The nobles and beautiful ladies were wrapped in mantles of various bright colors, all in heavy silks, satins, and velvets.

At last, shortly before midnight, William ordered the captain to raise the anchor and sail. The stumbling crew tightened the shrouds, the magnificent scarlet and yellow striped sail was unfurled, and the ship slowly moved away from the dock out into the blackness of the harbor.

All along the granite quayside, all the way to the last point of land, the crowd lined the crescent-shaped bay, standing precariously on the sea wall, waving and calling “Bon voyage!” as the ship sailed by like a white specter in the dark water.

Prince William staggered up to the helm, where Thomas Fitz Stephen steered the ship on a forty-degree course through the dangerous tidal range.

“Is not England due north?” William shouted to be heard over the music and singing and the cheering crowds on the wharf.

Thomas nodded. “It is, Your Royal Highness.”

“Are you heading due north?”

Thomas shook his head. “No, Milord. The tide is beginning to ebb, causing the depth of the water over the rocks to diminish. I shall take her a mile out before turning on a safe course toward England.”

“No, Captain Fitz Stephen. I want you to cut due north now. I am in a race to beat my father’s ship across the British Sea. I order you to turn this vessel and take her to maximum speed. There is a purse of gold in it for you, and a commission as shipwright to the royal house.”

Thomas shook his head. Like everyone on board, he had drunk too much wine, and he struggled now to clear his head. “Nay, Your Highnes. I cannot do that. It would be too dangerous.”

“Nonsense,” the prince insisted. “This ship cannot sink. You said so yourself.”

Thomas glared at the heir to the English crown, seeing two Williams, wavering over one another in a most disconcerting manner. He regretted the nearly empty jug that sat on the deck at his feet.

“Your Highness,” he said, “the quiet of the night and the calm water make it much more difficult to see where the underwater rocks are situated, but I assure you they are out there in the darkness. I need to steer around those rocks on the course that will be safest. Once we reach deep water we can make up the time lost. I am in command of this ship, sir.”

“As Duke of Normandy and Crown Prince of England my military authority supersedes yours, Captain Fitz Stephen. Is it possible to cut the corner and make faster time or not?”

“Yes, it is possible, but highly inadvisable, Your Highness.”

William belched loudly. “Very well then, I am going to order you one more time, Captain, to turn this ship due north and cut that corner, or by my eyes I swear, not only will I relieve you of your duty as captain of this ship, but I promise you your head will roll.”

Thomas looked down at the churning water. He heard his name whispered from the depths. His heart felt cold. This ship was his dream, but to what purpose without the woman he loved? What mattered anymore? The White Ship was all he had left. Why not prove her magnificence by beating the Mora across the British Sea? In besting his father’s greatest achievement would he not make Airard’s spirit proud? If the arrogant Prince William Atheling wanted to see what she could do, why not accommodate him, and in so doing make history?

Thomas looked up at the stars, taking his bearing, following the course of a fireball that the water swallowed. He drank another draught of wine. The captain bowed to the prince. “As you wish, Your Highness,” he said.

“Good man.” William smiled, slapping Thomas on the back approvingly.

Fitz Stephen set a new course, ten degrees to the west of due north. The White Ship swung about with the wind abeam filling her sail. The king’s banner flew proudly from the masthead. The lion at the prow pointed its mighty paw toward England.

Thomas remembered his father’s words, “There are two things on earth that nothing else can rival for beauty, a woman and a double ended ship.” The man now understood what the boy had not. Thomas had loved his wife, the fair Alice. He had loved the free spirit of Wandrille. But more than anything, Thomas loved the White Ship.

“Aye, Thomas,” Airard said on that long-ago summer day. “With the wind abeam and her sail unfurled, a double ended ship will fly through the water like a bird in the air. There is nothing like it, if you build her right.”

“I have built her right, Father,” Thomas said. “All oars!” he shouted, and the fifty mighty oarsmen pulled away. He turned his face to the wind, letting the cold salty air mix with the tears running freely down his cheeks. This was the moment he had waited all his life to experience. This was the fulfillment of his dream. The White Ship cut through the water swift and fast until she flew as the spirit flies from the dead, white as a lily, glimmering like a fair ghost upon the sea.

The gay company onboard sang,

 

“Nay never ask this week fair lord,

Where they are gone nor yet this year,

Save with this much for an overword,

But where are the snows of yesteryear?”

 

As the people on the wharf wearily turned toward home, they heard the eerie song calling across the sea through the rising mists.

“Where are the snows of yesteryear?”

Martin and Wandrille stood as far out on the point as they dared, straining to see the barely visible vanishing shadow of the mighty vessel. The sea dashed against the rocks below them, soaking their faces with salt spray, making it even harder to see.

“I can hear them,” Martin said. “I see only a vague shape moving out there. Look, is that scarlet part of the sail? Is that the White Ship?”

“Farewell, dear Thomas,” Wandrille called.

Thomas Fitz Stephen looked back toward land. In that split second, the captain’s attention was drawn away from his ship, from the sea. And in that fateful moment the White Ship’s keel felt the sunken rock. It was the rock named Quilleboeuf, and it was covered just at a depth to foul the planing on the side of the ship. They were only half a mile offshore. The White Ship shivered from end to end and then stood still.

Fitz Stephen went pale. He stood helpless at the helm, aghast with the incomprehensible realization of what was happening. The next moment, with a sickening crunching sound the ship gave a terrible shudder and began to sink. The song of the passengers became one appalling scream so terrible it rent the fabric of time. The shrieks of three hundred people about to die cleft the sky, leaping over the deep.

 

* * *

 

King Henry felt a sudden chill. He ran to the stern of his ship, peering into the night.

“What is it, Father?” his son Robert asked.

“Did you hear that?” the king cried.

Robert of Gloucester put his hand on his father’s shoulder. “Hear what? I heard nothing.”

“It sounded like a scream.”

“It was merely the cry of a seagull, Father, just the call of a sea bird in the night, nothing more.”

“Methought it was some soul in distress.”

“I heard nothing, my liege,” Robert said, bowing to the king as he made his way to the other side of the boat.

King Henry shivered. He stayed at the stern gazing anxiously into the darkness.

Regardless of how many times King Henry the First was told that it would not have been possible for him to have heard the terrible scream in the night, until his dying day he would swear that he had.

 

* * *

 

When the White Ship listed, the passengers careened into one another. Casks and treasure chests slammed into the struggling oarsmen. The port side timbers cracked wide open revealing a gaping hole. The bows on the port side were stove in. The rock held the wreck for a time while the people on board were washed away, dragged down by their silks and velvets into the freezing water.

The vessel slipped off the rock to lie in much deeper water after the initial impact, heeling over then settling more or less upright. The churn of the choking ship stripped the splitting bulwarks. In the panic, the crew tried unsuccessfully to hook the vessel off the rocks, but they were all swept into the frigid maelstrom, and she foundered.

Quick thinking Othuel, William’s beloved tutor, pushed the prince into the single small rowboat at the stern, cut the boat loose, and began rowing for safety.

In the confusion, William cried, “What? None to be saved but you and I?”

Othuel shouted frantically. “All here must die.”

“Turn back,” the Prince commanded. “Turn back! We cannot let them all die!”

Othuel merely pulled harder away from the sinking ship.

They heard her anguished cry. “William!”

The prince strained to see through the darkness. “That’s Mathilde! My sister!”

“William!” she screamed. “Do not leave me to perish!”

He saw her struggling in the water in her flimsy pink satin cloak, reaching her hands out to him, sinking under the waves, rising again, sputtering and screaming. Behind her he saw his brother Richard go down for the last time. She was trying to swim to him, being dragged down like Richard by her fine clothes. In all his life William had loved only two people truly, his tutor Othuel, and his sister, Mathilde.

“Put back!” the prince screamed.

“I cannot!” Othuel shouted. “It would mean our deaths!”

“Put back I say! She must not die! Row back at any risk. I cannot bear to leave her!”

William grabbed the oars from Othuel and rowed madly back toward the ship. The tutor put his head in his hands and began to sob. As the small boat drew near, the White Ship began to go under. The prince grabbed hold of his sister’s hand. It was wet and slippery, and so cold. He lost her, grabbed her again, frantically trying to pull her into his boat to save her.

“Hang on, Mathilde!” he cried.

More people were in the water, swimming toward the only lifeboat, fighting desperately to get to his dingy. Helplessly, William saw their faces, the proud son of the German Emperor, his sweet cousin Lucia, and her husband, the Earl of Chester. The panicked victims grabbed the boat from all sides, causing him to lose his grip on his sister’s hand. Mathilde slipped away from him as the frigid sea swallowed her.

“Stop!” William screamed. “Stop! You shall kill us all! Othuel!” He looked behind him, but Othuel was gone. “No!” William cried. “Othuel!”

The turmoil and weight were too much. The prince’s boat capsized and sank without a trace, carrying him with it.

 

* * *

 

Martin held Wandrille tightly in his arms as the horror-struck people on shore heard the ghastly screams of the dying. It did not take long for the three hundred to die, for their flimsy silks, and satins, and their lovely velvets trimmed in fur were no protection from that frigid cold water. Few of those onboard the White Ship could swim, so they were quickly dragged down, all the princes, princesses, lords, ladies, knights, crewmen, and servants, all the helpless souls swallowed by the deep like shooting stars.

Soon the screaming stopped and a horrible silence settled over the bay. A cold mist drifted into shore like ghostly fingers reaching out for one last touch of land.