Crowner's Crusade

by Bernard Knight

  William, Geoffrey de Clare and six of his Templars strode away while the king and his remaining escort waited uneasily in the outer tavern. They sprawled in exhaustion on benches in the taproom, where Baldwin used Latin mixed with miming signs to order ale and food from a surly potman.

  ‘There seems no sign of pursuit, sire,’ observed John de Wolfe, as they used their knives to attack thick bread trenchers covered with gristly boiled pork and fried onions. ‘I feared that we would have been seized before we could leave Gorizia last night.’

  The Lionheart extended his right hand to look at the ruby ring, which Baldwin had brought back from his abortive visit to Count Englebert the previous evening. The courtier again wished that the king would not flash such a striking jewel around in public.

  ‘He sounded an honourable man, given the circumstances,’ declared Richard. ‘I’ve got my ring back and we still have our freedom.’

  Their precipitate departure from Gorizia the previous evening had been in response to Baldwin’s urgent concerns. He had been granted an audience with the count and offered him the ring as a goodwill gift from the rich merchant ‘Hugo of Tours’ as an overture to requesting a guide for the journey north through the mountains. However, Englebert had handed it back and sardonically told Baldwin that he was well aware that ‘Hugo’ was Richard, King of England, for whom half of Europe was searching. Fully expecting to be seized on the spot, Baldwin was astounded when Engelbert told him that both his party and the Lionheart himself were free to depart. The count declared that although he had the duty to arrest him on behalf of his Emperor, the honour King Richard had done him by offering such a valuable gift, made it unchivalrous for him to lay hands upon him in his own city.

  When Baldwin brought this news back to the inn, there was no demur when the Lionheart ordered an immediate evacuation, in case Engelbert changed his mind. Paying their bill and forfeiting a night’s lodging, they took to their horses and hurriedly rode off in the moonlight, feeling their way along the high road to the north. At least every man now had his own horse, and when Gorizia was five miles behind them, they turned aside into a lonely wooded glen. Here they rolled themselves into their cloaks and lay on the damp turf. Though exhausted, they slept fitfully until dawn, with ears cocked for sounds of pursuit. Unfed, they set off again at first light and still on a good Roman road, reached Udine soon after midday.

  They now rested in the tavern outside the town, where to Gwyn’s relief, he found that being now in a Germanic region, the inn provided ale as well as wine, even if it tasted quite different to the English variety. Though hardened soldiers, used to extremes of discomfort and privation, the two months at sea and little sleep for several nights had taken their toll on John de Wolfe and his squire. They slumped on hard benches in the tavern, waiting to hear from William about him having obtained accommodation within the city. They drank a few pints of the local brew and promised themselves an early retreat to the mattresses laid out in the loft above, as the early winter dusk was already setting in under an overcast sky.

  ‘God alone knows what’s ahead of us on this journey,’ growled de Wolfe. ‘So we’d best get as much rest as we can now.’

  Both he and Gwyn had always subscribed to the campaigner’s principle that you should eat, sleep and fornicate whenever the opportunity arose, as you never knew when the next chance might come along – especially as perhaps it would never come, given the uncertainties of warfare.

  There was also a single room for hire at this inn and Richard had installed himself in it, feeling that even a token display of his true status was long overdue for a king. He had taken himself to it to have a meal brought and then get some sleep, leaving the others of his diminished group in the taproom. Baldwin of Bethune and Philip of Poitou sat on the bench next to John and worried about their royal master’s inability to keep a low profile.

  ‘He grossly overpaid the landlord for the room and food,’ fretted Baldwin. ‘And when he handed over the coin, I saw the man’s eyes glint when he saw the profusion of gold and jewels on his fingers.’

  ‘It makes it hard to sustain this pretence that we are travelling pilgrims when our lord persists in such ostentation,’ agreed the royal clerk. ‘I wish he would keep those damned rings in his pouch.’

  Their grumbling was suddenly interrupted by Gwyn, the one with the keenest ears. ‘What’s going on outside?’ he growled. ‘I hear the clinking of harness and the rattle of steel?’

  ‘Probably a messenger from William telling us he’s found somewhere better to stay the night,’ grunted de Wolfe.

  Before he could get up to investigate, a figure appeared in the street doorway. A tall man, dressed in a mailed hauberk and a Norman-style helmet with a nose guard, stared intently around the room. As the ‘pilgrims’ scrambled to their feet, the new arrival held up a hand to placate them, as his eyes roved across their faces.

  ‘Which one of you is Hugo the merchant?’ he demanded. To their surprise, he spoke in French, with an accent that was undoubtedly from Normandy.

  Baldwin, eyeing the swords that they had stacked in a corner of the room, took a step towards the newcomer. ‘Our master is resting in another room,’ he replied, indicating a door in the back wall. ‘But who are you, sir, who speaks the language of my homeland so well?’

  The Norman turned and slammed the door shut, but not before the men inside saw two armed soldiers standing in the street. ‘I am Roger of Argentan, a servant of Count Meinhard, the ruler of this region. He has sent me to investigate reports of travellers coming to his city. I need to speak with your leader.’

  The inner door opened and the Lionheart appeared, disturbed by the raised voices. ‘Who wants me? And who are you?’ he demanded of the man in armour.

  If they had been surprised by the man’s accent, they were even more astonished when he dropped to his knee before Richard and bent his head in obeisance. ‘My Lord King, it is many years since I saw you that Christmas at Argentan, but I know full well that you are no pilgrim merchant, but Richard Coeur de Lion!’

  Two nights later, the depleted band of exhausted fugitives had their first undisturbed sleep since the storm in the Adriatic.

  With only ten of them left, they had walked their tired horses up the long track to reach the monastery of Moggio, high above the long valley that cleft the Julian Alps from west to east. Carrying the old Via Julia Augusta alongside a wide, stony river bed, the Val Canale joined Italy to Austria, with only the relatively easy Pontebba Pass as a barrier at its western end.

  After once again fleeing from Udine, the king and his small party had spent the hours of darkness hiding deep in the forest off the high road. They rode all the next day, afraid to visit inns for food, their horses having to survive on cropping the sparse winter grass in woodland clearings. All they had to eat was some coarse bread that their inconspicuous chaplain and clerk were sent to buy in one of the villages through which they had passed. There was the daunting prospect of yet another night spent in the open, this time well into the cold mountains. Thankfully it had not yet snowed, though plenty lay high up on the peaks on either side of the valley. They survived that night, burrowing under drifts of dry leaves beneath the trees and next day, riding from dawn till dusk, they covered many more miles. As the light faded, the sight of a monastery high on its rock on the valley side was too tempting to be ignored.

  ‘For the Blessed Christ’s sake, we are returning Crusaders, under the Pope’s protection!’ shouted Richard from his horse. ‘If we can’t trust holy men to honour the Truce of God, then I’ll stop saying my prayers!’

  As they turned off the main road and began to climb the last mile up the mountain track, the cautious Baldwin suggested that they first try their ‘Hugo the pilgrim’ ruse, in case the monks had a strong political loyalty and the chaplain agreed with him.

  ‘The bishops of Bamberg and Salzburg are masters of huge areas of Carinthia and Austria,’ advised Anselm. ‘They are almost certainly sympathetic to both Duke
Leopold and the Emperor.’

  When they reached the monastery, the abbot and his dozen monks seemed to accept their cover story without question and they were given food and a place to sleep in the guest house of the grim edifice. In return, Richard made a generous donation to the abbey coffers, the size of which again made Baldwin and the others concerned that he was drawing unnecessary attention to himself. After the meal, they sat with the abbot and some of the monks in the warming room, the only chamber to have a fire between November and April. The abbot was keen to hear details of their pilgrimage and again it was fortunate that Anselm had actually been to Ephesus and visited the alleged House of the Virgin, so that he was able to spin a convincing tale. They went on to describe their intention of returning to France by way of Moravia and the difficulties of travelling in this region when none of their number spoke German. It was either this friendly conversation or the size of Hugo’s gift that must have prompted the abbot to offer them the services of an orphan youth who had been in Moggio since being left there as a baby.

  ‘He has no interest in serving God as a monk and if he stays here, he will always remain a lay-brother,’ explained the abbot. ‘This boy, Joldan, is a clever lad, having picked up Latin from us, as well as having his native German. It seems a waste for him to spend the rest of his life herding goats and hoeing turnips.’

  The abbot paused to top up Richard’s cup from a jug of hot, spiced wine, before continuing. ‘Joldan has become impressed by travellers’ tales of life in the cities and would like nothing better than the chance to seek his fortune in one. He is a wily lad, and would survive and prosper wherever he settled. You could drop him with a few coins at somewhere like Villach or even Judenberg. He can always find his way back here if he so wishes.’

  Joldan was brought before them – a wiry boy of about twelve, with a thin, foxy face in which quick, intelligent eyes roved around warily. The old abbot put the proposition to him and the lad eagerly accepted the chance to escape this mountain prison for his imagined paradise of urban life. Richard agreed to take the boy with them when they left in the morning.

  ‘He can ride up behind you, Gwyn,’ he added jovially, the royal spirits restored after a good meal and the prospect of a bed for the night. ‘Your horse will never notice his featherweight, compared to your bulk!’

  The Cornishman grinned amiably, as with two boys of his own back in Exeter, he was quite happy to play godfather for a few days. After prayers in the abbey church, to which Anselm willingly contributed, the travellers retired to the guest dormitory and before collapsing on to their pallets, the chaplain led them in private prayers for the safety of their compatriots left behind in Udine.

  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.

  EIGHT

  The 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!’

  NINE