galleys; and the sound of trumpets from afar, with the sharper and shriller blasts of clarions, resounded in their ears; and they beheld the galleys rowing in order nearer to the land, adorned and furnished with all manner of arms, countless pennons floating in the wind, ensigns at the ends of lances, the beaks of the galleys distinguished by various paintings, and glittering shields suspended to the prows. The sea appeared to boil with the multitude of the rowers; the clangor of their trumpets was deafening; the greatest joy was testified at the arrival of the various multitudes; when thus our magnificent king, attended by crowds of those who navigated the galleys, as if to see what was unknown to him, stood on a prow more ornamented and higher than the others and, landing, displayed himself, elegantly adorned, to all who pressed to the shore to meet him."
Richard found his fleet in the harbour of Messina. It had remained eight days at Marseilles to refit, and had reached port on September 14th. He also found Philip, who had arrived a few days before him. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Salisbury, and Ranulf de Glanvill,[1] Chief Justice of England, who had accompanied Richard as far as Marseilles, had gone thence direct to the Holy Land.
In those days, even in the Mediterranean, the winter was considered to he no season for ships to be anywhere save in port, and as the autumn was nearly over, Richard and Philip wintered at Messina.
Richard spent the winter in quarrelling both with his ally Philip and with Tancred, King of Sicily. He repudiated a contract of marriage which he had made with the Princess Alice, Philip's sister, and contracted himself instead to Berengaria, daughter of Sancho VI of Navarre; and having a grievance against Tancred, who had imprisoned the Queen Dowager of Sicily, Princess Joan of England, he forcibly demanded reparation from him, going even to the length of occupying Messina. But the difficulty with Philip, though it afterwards broke out afresh, did not then assume a dangerous complexion, and the difficulty with Tancred was at length composed by the latter agreeing to pay Joan's dowry, and to contribute to the expedition four great ships called "vissers," and fifteen galleys.[2]
