Crowner's Crusade (11 page)

The king was quite sanguine about their prospects in captivity. ‘Almost all were Templars, returning from the Crusade,' he declared. ‘They belong to a powerful order and will come to no harm. I am the only one that is being sought by those bastards Philip, Henry and Leopold!'

‘What about William de L'Etang?' worried Baldwin. ‘He's no Templar.'

‘But he's another staunch soldier of Christ, under the protection of the Pope. And his rich family will have no trouble in raising a ransom, if needs be.'

They had lost the other part of their group to the searchers sent by Count Meinhard to scour the city inns for King Richard, as a fast messenger had just come from his cousin Englebert to say that the royal party had been in Gorizia and were probably headed for Udine. Only good fortune or the Grace of God had directed one of the searchers, Roger of Argentan, to the hostel outside the south gate. The Lionheart explained that as a youth, he had several times visited Argentan, a lordship in southern Normandy, with his parents, King Henry and Queen Eleanor. Though he could not remember him, this Roger must have been present at one of their Christmas festivities and had retained some lasting loyalty to the Angevin royal line. In fact, Roger had become quite emotional whilst on his knees before Richard, weeping and imploring him to ride away at once to avoid capture – even offering him his own superior horse.

He promised to return to his master Meinhard – whose niece Roger had married – and tell him that ‘Hugo' was genuinely a rich merchant, not the King of England. It was too late to save the other group, surprised by another search party of the Count, who even if they had tried to resist, could not have got past the city gates which had been closed against them.

Now, in the early morning three days later, Richard Coeur de Lion led his party of ten men and a boy out under the arch of the abbey gatehouse and down towards the bleak valley that cut through the Alps. It was December the thirteenth, twelve days before Christ Mass.

T
he next three days went well, apart from increasingly cold weather. The snow held off, though the interminably grey skies showed no break, with cloud often obscuring the mountains on either side. The horses, some of whom had been exchanged at the abbey for better ones, performed well, covering over twenty miles each day on the ancient road. The small group in their travel-worn pilgrims' attire and with the small lad clinging on to Gwyn's broad back, drew little attention and certainly offered no hint that this was a royal cavalcade.

They stopped outside villages and sent Joldan ahead to buy bread, cheese and sometimes meat pies from the stalls and to seek any news passing along the
Via Julia
proclaiming their presence in the area. At dusk, the lad would try to find an inn that could accommodate the travellers or, failing that, a farmer who, for a silver coin, would let them sleep on the hay in his barn.

Eventually, they came out from amongst the high mountains into a countryside of hills, valleys and lakes beyond Villach. The abbot had described the route they needed to take to pass northwards through Carinthia and Austria to reach the border with Moravia, also telling the lad Joldan the names of the towns they needed to pass through, finally skirting Vienna to cross the Danube.

The approaching winter kept most people off the road, but there was sufficient traffic for a band of pilgrims not to look out of place, even if they did have a rather military bearing as they rode along. After the small towns of Feldkirchen and St Veit, the next significant place ahead of them, according to Joldan's latest enquiry in a baker's shop, was Friesach. From what they told him about the place, the boy was looking forward to seeing a metropolis of many hundred inhabitants. It had a silver mine and a mint, producing the famous Friesacher
pfennig
and as the boy had never before been more than five miles away from lonely Moggio, he was excited at the prospect. Gwyn was sorry that he possessed no more than a dozen words of Latin, as he would like to have talked to the lad who had been clinging to him like a limpet these past few days.

In the event, Friesach turned out to be another – and worse – disaster. They neared the town in the early twilight, seeing in the distance yet another castle on a hill. The dense forest through which they had been passing gave way to farmed strip fields for the final two miles, but on the right-hand side of the track, a tongue of woodland survived, still joined to the mass of dark trees that rolled away to the horizon.

Richard was in the lead as usual, the ten tired horses now at walking pace, after trotting for much of the afternoon. His tall figure sat erect, his long fair hair curling from under his broad-brimmed hat, tied with a lace under his chin. Suddenly, he held up an imperious hand and reined in his black mare, the small cavalcade coming to an abrupt halt behind him. ‘Horsemen ahead!' he snapped. ‘Coming at a trot towards us.'

The anxious eyes of the group stared ahead at a cloud of dust half a mile away, thrown up from the dry road by a large number of hooves.

‘I fear this is not healthy for us!' called Robert de Turnham, from the third rank behind the king. ‘It looks as if we are going to have a fight on our hands.'

‘There are well over a score of them,' shouted de Wolfe. ‘We cannot prevail against so many, warriors though we are!'

As usual, Baldwin took the initiative. ‘The king must be saved, above all other considerations!' he cried. ‘Sire, ride off into the forest there, the rest of us will delay them until you have vanished into the trees.'

‘What? And leave you to be vanquished!' roared Richard, turning on his horse's back, red in the face with anger. ‘Never! The King of England does not run away like a scared rabbit!'

‘My Lord, you are all that matters in this venture,' Baldwin beseeched desperately. ‘If you are taken, God alone knows what will happen to Normandy and England without you. We are of no consequence, we can fight and if seized, we can be ransomed. Your adversaries have no interest in us, it is only you they seek! Save yourself, sire!'

His voice was vibrant with urgency and John de Wolfe added to it, ‘Whatever is to happen, it had better be very soon!' he yelled. ‘They'll be upon us in a few moments. If he goes now, they may never guess that the king was here at all.'

In Richard's mind, there flashed a vision of Philip of France tearing into all his possessions in France and of his treacherous brother John ruining the prosperity of England, as well as the ignominy of capture, imprisonment and possibly death at the hands of his jealous rivals. Wheeling his horse around, he made for the edge of the forest, a mere twenty yards way.

‘Then God be with you, brave friends! If you defeat these swine, I'll rejoin you somehow. I'll take the boy, otherwise I'll not know enough of this heathen language to beg a crust of bread!'

Baldwin, ever the organizer, shouted for Gwyn to follow the king, with Joldan clinging to his back. ‘And you go with them, de Wolfe!' he yelled. ‘May God help you to guard our lord king well!'

T
he king never did rejoin the others, as an hour later, Gwyn cautiously threaded his way back through a mile of trees to the road and found it deserted. Apart from a confused pattern of many hooves having milled about in the dusty track, there was no sign of a fight and thankfully, no dried bloodstains on the ground.

The Cornishman saw from crushed undergrowth and ripped branches, that there had been a search amongst the trees for a few hundred yards from the road, but with such a vast area of forest, it would have been a hopeless task in the failing light, even if the searchers had known that Richard had been present and had escaped that way.

Gwyn made his way back to where he had left the three remaining fugitives, using as a guide the small stream that they had followed, using it as a path to obscure their hoof prints.

‘I fear they have been taken, my lord,' he reported when he reached the small clearing where the king sat on a fallen tree in the deepening dusk. ‘But there is no sign of violence and I suspect that they were unharmed.'

Richard nodded sadly. ‘If I know Baldwin, he would have spent half an hour trying to convince them that
he
was Hugo the merchant, to give us as long as possible to get clear.'

‘What do we do now, Sire?' asked John de Wolfe, from the edge of the clearing. He was hobbling the three horses with their bridles, so that they could graze in the clearing and drink at the stream without wandering away.

‘Carry on as before, that's all we can do,' replied Richard, stretching his long legs. ‘It's almost dark, so we must sleep if we can and then take stock in the morning. Moravia is our target, but all I know is that it's north of here – though only God knows how far!'

Thankfully Gwyn, always fond of his stomach, had kept back half a loaf of coarse rye bread from their previous meal and also had a lump of hard cheese, the size and texture of half a brick.

They shared this and drank water from the stream, using cow-horns which the lad had bought at one of the towns on the road.

Joldan seemed to be enjoying the adventure, especially as it was only now he had gathered that Hugo was no merchant, but the King of England. He was enthralled to be in such grand company, even if he had never previously heard of England. Richard was the only one able to converse with the boy, as neither John nor Gwyn had sufficient Latin and he now explained to the boy the predicament they were in. Joldan seemed to hold no allegiance to his own Germanic rulers and entered into the spirit of their escape plans.

‘This is the smallest court that has ever attended upon me,' declared the Lionheart in a jocular tone, looking at his three courtiers in the gloom. ‘At dawn, we must find some way of getting around this poxy town and continuing on our way.'

As he lay under the stars, his mind roved over a dozen problems, none of which would be solved until he could get home. Richard also wondered where his wife Berengaria was now. He knew he had neglected her shamefully and mildly chided himself for it, but he was a busy man and it was hardly a love match on his side, though she seemed to adore him. The queen had tended him solicitously when he had the recurrent fever that laid him low in Acre. He determined to shower her with gifts when they next met, though he could not promise that he would spend much time with her. She had never been to England, the country of which she was now queen – and if he had but known it, she never would.

Then his restless thoughts moved to wondering how they had been surprised by such a large, organized band today. They had been lucky in Udine to get away with half their contingent, but now it seemed impossible, without a miracle, for just three men and a boy to cross the rest of these hostile lands to safety in either Hungary or Moravia. He crossed himself in the darkness and began to pray for such a miracle as the cold night air began to bite into his bones.

The following days became a blur in John's mind, an endless journey through forested valleys, around towns and through small villages huddled down ready for the winter. After circuitously making their way through the forest back to the road well beyond Friesach, they had learned to avoid any large settlements, where other law officers and state officials might be waiting, now aware that somewhere, Richard Coeur de Lion was on the loose.

It would be some time before the king learned that the ambush in Friesach had been carried out by one of Duke Leopold's barons, Friedrich of Pettau. One of the many swift messengers sent out by the Counts of Gorz had reached Salzburg, where the wily Friedrich guessed that the fugitive king must be somewhere on the main road north and hastened across country to intercept the returning Crusaders at Freisach. Now the sadly diminished royal party persisted in their routine of sending the lad ahead to buy food in villages and seeking a safe place to spend the night, now more often in farm barns than the more risky inns. Since the king's retinue had shrunk to two men and a boy, all pretence at royal protocol had vanished, though Gwyn and de Wolfe still addressed the king as respectfully as ever.

The nights were bitingly cold, though most days were mild enough in the weak sunshine. The only snow they had seen so far was a few flurries swirling in the east wind, but the mornings now showed ice on the puddles in the track.

‘By my reckoning, sire, it will be the day of Christ's Mass very soon,' observed John, as they rode along some days later. ‘But there'll be no holly branches above the door for us this year!'

Richard, huddled in his cloak and large hat against the chill breeze, translated this into Latin at the top of his voice for the benefit of Joldan.

The lad replied in the same language and Richard laughed. ‘That comes of being brought up in a monastery! The boy knows every date in the Christian calendar . . . He says the Feast of Our Lord's birth is now only seven nights away.'

According to Joldan's enquiries at a village pie stall, the last town they had skirted was Neunkirchen, with Vienna only a day's ride away, but that night, the king was seized with a recurrence of the dysentery which had plagued him intermittently for months, prostrating him for several weeks before they left Acre. Now he spent half the night squatting behind the barn of a solitary farm, where they had bought accommodation in the hayloft. Even in the icy conditions, his brow was bathed in sweat and he groaned at the colic in his guts. Between these bouts, John de Wolfe and Gwyn hovered over him solicitously, though there was nothing useful which they could do to aid him.

‘Damn these bowels of mine,' snarled Richard. ‘A year of that Arabic food has done this, unless Saladin has somehow managed to poison me!'

John thought this unlikely as the Saracen leader had even sent presents of fruit to Richard when he was ill, in a curious gesture of mutual respect between deadly enemies.