Any road, by the end of three days we put to sea with thirty-one galleys. The Venetians were the core of the alliance, but provided slightly fewer than half the ships.
At the south end of the strait between Negroponte and the mainland, we found, not the Turks — though we spent the better part of a day creeping over the ocean to reach them as stealthily as possible — but a pair of galleys belonging to my own order. They were part of the Christian League squadron that covered Smyrna, and they had shadowed the Turkish squadron for twenty days, doing what damage they could.
The commander of the galleys was an Italian, Fra Daniele Caretto. I sent my respects to him by a note when the admiral sent Messire Zeno aboard his ship, but he didn’t send a response. He knew, of course, that the crusade was at sea. He said the Turks were equally aware, and that their campaign on Negroponte was probably an attempt to pre-empt our attack and force us on the defensive.
Contarini laughed. ‘They imagine we are all allies,’ the old man said bitterly.
‘As we imagine of them,’ Pisani added.
With thirty-three warships, Contarini was, if not eager to engage, at least far more willing to seek out the enemy. We cruised up the channel between the great island and the mainland of green Boeotia practicing all of his fleet manoeuvres, most of which consisted of making various half-circle formations of ships and the vital art of backing water. Because the rowing was endless, all of us took part, day after day.
I confess that I hated it. It was as hot as my image of hell, with burning winds blowing along the Greek coast and the smell of thyme in the air with animal manure and sea salt. I had a touch of something, from Athens, bad food or bad air, and I was as weak as Fiore had been. But rowing every day in the sun made me better, and stronger, and eventually I began to feel something of the strength I had had before the beating.
We took our ease the third night on the beaches of northern Negroponte. And there our Greeks — and especially Giorgos Angelus — entertained us with stories of the days of greatness in Greece. They told us of a great sea battle fought for four straight days between the fleets of all the Greek cities and the Persians, right there, at the bend in the strait. After dinner we took our cups of wine and climbed the headlands to see the columns and collapsing roof of the temple to the Greek goddess Diana.
‘In our tongue, Artemis,’ Syr Giorgos said. ‘And this headland, Artemesium.’
His companion nodded. ‘It was one of the greatest battles of the ancient world,’ Syr Giannis said.
‘Who won?’ Miles asked.
Syr Giannis shook his head, the wide head shake of the Greek. ‘No one,’ he said. He pointed to the south and west. ‘The King of Sparta died over there, at Thermopylae. When he died, the Greek fleet retreated.’ He smiled. ‘It is a famous place, to Greeks. I wish to go to Thermopylae someday.’
I had heard of the death of the Spartan king — there was a romance about the Persian Wars making the rounds in Venice. The current fashion for aping the ancient world was just in its infancy then; men like Petrarch and Boccaccio were reading the ancients and even translating them. So I was enthusiastic.
‘Perhaps we could arrange a passage of arms!’ I said enthusiastically.
The idea caught everyone’s imagination, and we drank a toast to the notion.
But first we had to fight the Turks.
Dawn brought us a fair wind and the labour of getting our ships off the beach. But as soon as we were underway — and we were moving before the red disk of the sun was free of the eastern horizon — we could see the Turks moving toward us under bare poles. I’m going to guess that the admiral had received scouting reports the night before — why share them with me? — because he seemed unsurprised.
We stayed with the wind under our quarters while we armed. Most of us had squires by then, but what I remember about that morning, my first sea fight, is Nerio, the proud, buckling the armour for Marc-Antonio, perhaps the humblest squire. We all served each other.
I had commanded men before, and yet that morning, when we formed in two dense and iron-clad ranks, knights in the front, squires in the back, it made my heart soar with joy.
I had never seen a sea fight before. I had some idea, from all the order’s drills and the Venetian drills, too, but I hadn’t experienced how different it was from a land fight. Perhaps the most difficult difference — hard to explain, and hard to endure — is the waiting and the interludes. The ships determine the pace of combat, not the knights. A battle is usually a single long grind of action and terror and amidst the terror, most men fight using nothing but their training and their fear. The grind of battle makes men tired; their armour makes them tired, their fear makes them tired, and their fatigue makes them afraid, until they conquer or die.
At sea, it is different. At sea, battle is episodic. You face an enemy, ship to ship, and when you conquer one, you have time to breathe, to rest — and to be afraid all over again; too much time to think before the next foe. Sea battles can go on for hours, where a land battle would have been resolved at the first encounter.
Perhaps I can sum it up like this. At sea, you have nowhere to run. And neither, under the pitiless Mediterranean sun, does your foe. There you are, locked together in a close embrace of timber and hemp, and you fight until one side is massacred.
At any rate, the Turks came at us. I thought there were too many of them, but I was officer enough by then to mind my tongue.
I clanked my way back to the command deck. On a galia grossa, the command deck was in the stern, raised three steps above the catwalk over the rowers, and covered by a screen of leather against archery. Even as I mounted the steps, the admiral was ordering the screen cleared away.
He glanced at me. ‘I’d rather be able to see,’ he said. ‘You know why old men are sent to command fleets?’
That’s one of those questions you shouldn’t answer.
Marc-Antonio was arming him. He wore full harness, despite his years, but he winced as the chain haubergeon went over his head.
‘Because our bodies hurt so much we don’t care whether we live or die — curse you, boy! I only have six hairs left — no need to pull them out.’ He cuffed Marc-Antonio, but the Chioggian boy seemed to take it in good part.
His own slave, a Circassian, handed him a spear so beautiful that I still remember it, with the Virgin rendered in carved steel on the head, and a verse of the Bible inlaid in gold. He glanced at me with an eye undimmed and full of humour.
‘See that I don’t have to use this, Sir William! I’m not quite the deadly hand I once was.’ He looked grimly under the leather screen and called to the helmsman, ‘Get this fucking thing sheeted away or I’ll have your hide, timoneer!’
‘We’ll fight, then?’ I asked.
The admiral didn’t savage me for my temerity. Instead, he looked under his hand at the Turks, still a league downwind.
‘I have every advantage but numbers. Their ships are full of loot and they’ve been at sea too long and I have the wind.’ He raised an eyebrow. His left eye trembled — sheer age — but his right eye was merciless. ‘With the wind, I can swoop on them like a hawk, and they lie there-rowing into the wind’s eye, wasting their men.’ He looked aft, looked at the sun, and looked at the Turks. ‘They have almost twice our numbers, ship for ship. We’ll need to be very careful.’