Lionheart A Novel - By Sharon Kay Penman Page 0,2

make faster time with the wind at their back. Voyages from the Holy Land took much longer, he said, since ships were sailing into the wind. When he added casually that it mattered naught to them since they’d not be returning to France, Alicia felt a pang of dismay, for she did not know if she wanted to live out her life in the alien, war-torn kingdom known as Outremer—the Land beyond the Sea. She’d overheard Arnaud talking about her to one of his Templar companions, saying that he knew the abbess of Our Lady of Tyre and she might be willing to take his sister in as a boarder and later as a novice. Alicia realized she could not stay with Arnaud in Tyre, for women were banned from their temples and commanderies, even orphaned little sisters. But she was not sure she wanted to be a nun. Shouldn’t that be a free choice, not a last resort? Wouldn’t it please the Lord Christ more if His brides came to Him willingly, not because they had nowhere else to go?

The weather had remained clear for the first week, but as they approached the isle of Sicily, they could see smoke rising up into the sky. Alicia’s brother told her this was Sicily’s famous Mountain of Fire, which many claimed to be one of the portals of Hell, for it belched smoke and noxious fumes and even liquid flames that spilled over the slope and burned a path of destruction down to the sea. Arnaud and his companions had already alarmed her by relating the ancient legend of Scylla, a six-headed sea monster who lurked in a cave facing the Straits of Messina. Directly opposite her was Charybdis, a whirlpool waiting to suck ships into its maw. If ships trying to avoid Charybdis ventured too close to Scylla’s cave, she seized these unlucky vessels and feasted upon the captured sailors. Realizing belatedly that this was no story for his young sister’s ears, Arnaud had hastened to reassure her that the tale was merely folklore. She wanted to believe him, but a land that harbored fiery mountains might easily shelter sea monsters, too, and each time she eyed the distant Sicilian coastline, she surreptitiously made the sign of the cross.

The other passengers were increasingly uneasy as they drew closer to the Faro, the straits separating Sicily from the mainland. Even the sailors seemed on edge, for at its narrowest point, it was only two miles wide and the currents were notoriously turbulent, seething like a “boiling cauldron” one merchant said grimly. Like Charybdis, Alicia thought, wondering which was worse, to be drowned or devoured, and wondering, too, what other trials lay ahead.

She was not long in finding out. A darkening sky warned of a coming storm, and the ship’s master ordered that the sails be lowered as the wind rose and black, ominous clouds clustered overhead. The rain held off, but the sea soon pitched and rolled wildly, their ship sinking into troughs so deep that they were walled in by water. As the galley floundered, they were drenched by the waves breaking over the gunwales, bruised and battered against the heaving deck, tossed about like so many rag dolls. Sure that death was imminent, passengers and sailors alike offered up desperate prayers, but by now the wind was so loud they could not even hear their own words. Alicia was so petrified that her throat had closed up, and she could neither pray nor weep, waiting mutely for Scylla or Charybdis to claim the San Niccolò and end their suffering.

When the ship suddenly shuddered and stopped dead in the water, she was sure that they had been seized by Scylla’s bloody talons. But the sailors were yelling and scrambling across the deck, and after a time, she could comprehend what Arnaud was shouting into her ear. “We’ve run aground!”

Grappling for boat hooks and oars, the crew sought to push off from the shoal. But as the galley fought for its life, one of its two masts snapped in half and plunged into the sea. The ship’s master lurched toward Arnaud and the other Templars. Knowing he could not compete with the howling wind, he relied upon gestures, pointing toward the longboat tethered in the stern and then toward the knights’ scabbards. Arnaud was quick to understand. They were going to launch the longboat and try to reach the shore, less than half a mile away, and the master wanted them