Crowner's Crusade

by Bernard Knight

The 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.

  By morning, the Lionheart had recovered somewhat, when pale and silent, he climbed on his horse and led them off once again. Some time back, they had bought saddles at a horse fair in one of the villages they had passed through, so the riding was easier. The boy still clung on behind Gwyn, but now he had a folded blanket to sit on behind the cantle.

  Richard still had to stop at intervals and strain himself behind a bush at the side of the road. That afternoon, he was spectacularly sick, vomiting the bread and cheese bought for their dinner.

  ‘We must get a decent bed for him tonight, not burrow into a heap of straw like rats,’ growled John to his henchman. ‘Whatever the risk we must seek a hostelry somewhere.’

  Scraping together his pitifully few words of Latin, aided by gestures, he managed to convey this to Joldan while the king was again crouched in the undergrowth. The sharp young fellow nodded his understanding and an hour later left them in a copse of alder while he ran off to a village seen a mile ahead of them.

  They could see the smoke of a city ahead of them, with a large river to their right meandering past it in a number of channels.

  The king, pale and shivering, but determined to put on an air of normality, gestured to the distant collection of wooden buildings, with a vaguely seen palace in the centre. ‘That has to be Vienna, standing on such a river,’ he muttered. ‘A miserable-lo
oking place, not even a city wall to protect that bastard Leopold’s court!’

  Had he but known it then, a city wall would soon be built, paid for with Leopold’s share of Richard’s ransom money.

  As far as John could make out from the German boy, the village was called Erdberg, one of the several hamlets dotted around Vienna. This southern one, near the western bank of one of the river channels, seemed to consist mainly of a large market, a cattle pound and a wooden church, surrounded by a few dozen mean dwellings. Judging by the tattered condition of the thatched roofs and the squalid middens between the cottages, Erdberg had very little civic pride.

  There were several inns and taverns, consistent with the village’s function as a place of agricultural business, much of which was transacted in alehouses. Under cover of twilight, Joldan led them to an inn in a side lane off the main street. It was a poor place, one big room with a central firepit inside a ring of whitewashed stones. A few rough-looking men were standing around the fire, drinking from pottery mugs and they made way for the newcomers when they entered. Joldan had already told the landlord, a remarkably thin man of consumptive appearance, that the guests were three French pilgrims returning home – and that the leader was ill with a flux of his bowels. Richard certainly looked ill, even worse than the ailing landlord. Two of the patrons at the fire dragged a bench forward and gestured for Richard to sit near the warmth, recognizing that he was seriously sick. They attempted to talk to him, but their thick German only caused him to smile wanly at them and shrug his non-comprehension. Joldan stepped into the breach and even John could gather that he was telling them that their master was ill, after the long journey from visiting holy shrines in the East.

  At this, a fat woman waddled from a back door leading to the yard behind. She caught the lad’s explanation and in a motherly fashion, pointed to the door, obviously telling him where the privy was situated, whenever he was in dire need of it. Through Joldan’s request, the woman brought them some food, though all the king could eat was some hot potage and some bread. The others sat at a trestle and wolfed down a large meal of boiled beans, mutton and onions, followed by bread and cheese.

  After they had eaten, their young translator had a long conversation with the fat woman, who turned out to be the emaciated landlord’s mother. Given the poor state of Richard, she told the lad that his master could sleep alone in the hay above the stables, where their own three horses were now confined, rather than in the communal loft over the taproom.

  John saw him safely up the wide steps and got him bedded down in the soft hay, though the landlady, who had become maternal over the plight of the handsome foreigner, brought him a hessian sack to stuff with hay and a coarse blanket. When their sovereign was as comfortable as possible, they left him, but Gwyn announced his intention of spending the night in the stall with the horse below, to make sure that nothing unwelcome occurred during the night. John offered to share the vigil with him, but Gwyn was adamant.

  ‘I’ll be quite happy alongside my old gelding here,’ he said with an amiable grin. ‘I’ve got quite fond of the old nag after all these miles – and when our master needs the privy, he may need a helping hand down those stairs, the state he’s in.’

  In fact, the night passed uneventfully, though Gwyn reported that he had to make a few journeys with the King of England to the stinking shanty that housed the privy pit. By morning, Richard was still weak, but able to eat some gruel. He went back to the stable loft and lay quietly for the rest of the day, Gwyn taking him some more food about noon. Later, he sat drinking the passable ale with de Wolfe in the barroom, though the bar was nothing more than a plank laid across two empty casks.

  ‘The last thing we needed was for our lord to fall ill like this,’ growled Gwyn, using the back of his hand to wipe the ale that dripped from his drooping moustaches. Though he normally had no beard, the privations of the past weeks had allowed a profuse ginger growth to sprout from his lower jaw.

  John glumly nodded his agreement. ‘With Christ knows how many hundreds of miles between us and home, it was bad enough with a fit man. How we are going to manage it now, I just do not know!’

  ‘He seems better today after resting,’ observed Gwyn, hopefully. ‘Thank Saint Christopher that we have the boy with us – without him, we would never have got this far, let alone contemplated getting all the way to England.’

  John took a large swallow of ale and looked out of the street door, which had just opened to let in a farmer who smelt strongly of pigs. Beyond him he could see that it was beginning to snow. ‘That’s another problem – Joldan! What’s going to happen to him? We said we would drop him off at a town way back nearer Moggio. We’ve already brought him to this damned Vienna place – are we going to drag the poor lad all across Europe with us? Perhaps your good wife would like to adopt him when we get to Exeter!’

  Gwyn shrugged. ‘He seems quite content to tag along with us. Where is he, by the way? I haven’t seen him since we ate at first light?’

  John squinted through the slatted shutter at the big white snowflakes whispering to the ground. ‘I trust he will be safe in this weather. He said he was going to get some provender for our journey, hoping that we can set off again tomorrow. He said the market should have some dried meat, as well as cheese and oatmeal.’

  ‘Has he got money? I’ve not yet touched any of that which the king divided between us.’

  John nodded. ‘Richard gave him coins from his own pouch. Too lavishly, as usual. He seems to have no idea of how much things cost.’

  Hours later, Joldan had not returned and Gwyn fretted over him so much that John sent him out to look for the lad. He returned an hour later, saying that there was no sign of him, even though he had walked every lane and alley in Erdberg. ‘There seems nowhere for him to have vanished into. Apart from miserable dwellings and a few alehouses, the only other places are the market hall and a long building, which seems full of hunting dogs, by the noise coming from it.’

  They went out to the stable to report the loss of their guide to the king. Richard was concerned, as the boy was their only means of communication with the locals. ‘We must wait another day, to see if he returns,’ he decided. ‘I am feeling much improved, thank God. We must move from here first thing the day after tomorrow, whether he returns or not.’

  By means of gestures and miming, they managed to tell the buxom landlady that Joldan had gone away, and that they would stay two more nights. In the morning there was still no sign of him and reluctantly, they gave up any hope of seeing him again.

  ‘No doubt the attractions of the dismal city have seduced him,’ grunted John. ‘I suppose we must be grateful to him for getting us as far as this.’

  When they went to tell the Lionheart about the loss of their young navigator, Richard decided he was well enough to get up and sit near the fire in the taproom. ‘I’ll have to be up and about by tomorrow,’ he declared. ‘We must be on our way, it’s but four days to Christ Mass now. At this rate, it will be Easter before we reach home.’

  When they reminded him that Joldan had gone out to buy food for the journey, Richard advised them to do the same, ready for their departure next day. Again he gave them a dozen silver coins from his scrip, disregarding their protests that they could buy half the village with that number.

  Rather reluctantly, they left him near the fire, where the motherly landlady thrust a wire fork into his hand and some slices of mutton, to grill against the embers. Though Gwyn secretly grinned at the sight, de Wolfe looked rather shocked at the sight of the monarch of the richest lands in Europe being turned into a kitchen boy.

  They checked on their horses in the stable and found that John’s grey mare had a loose shoe. After some pantomime with the ten-year-old who mucked out and fed the beasts, he led them through a powdering of snow on the ground to a farrier in a nearby lane where they left the horse to have the shoe renailed, while they went to the market. This was a large ramshackle shed in the main street, filled
with a chaotic jostling of workmen, wives and urchins, all bargaining and buying a variety of produce. Some was being sold from stalls and booths, but mostly from peasants and old women sitting on the ground, with their wares all about them. Live geese, ducks and hens were alongside cheeses, river fish, meat, rye bread, bags of rough-milled flour and some winter vegetables.

  With much pointing and gesturing, together with the display of quartered coins, Gwyn bought bread, cheese, and smoked beef and pork that would keep for many days in this cold weather. Together with a small skin of local wine, which like the food, was probably double the cost to them as foreigners, they made their way back to the farrier and picked up their mare, now with a restored hoof.

  As they walked the animal back along the back lane towards the inn, Gwyn suddenly stopped. ‘I hear harness jingling and men shouting!’ he said, his big head tilted to catch the sounds. Since Udine, such noises had a sinister significance. ‘I’ll go ahead and see what’s going on!’

  De Wolfe put out a hand to stop him. Giving him the bridle of his mare, he pulled up the hood of his grey cloak to shield his face. ‘No, that red hair and bush of a beard stands out a mile! I’ll go, you stay in the shelter of this hut and wait.’

  With an ominous presentiment of disaster in his mind, John crossed the lane to another muddy alley opposite and made his way back towards the tavern from another direction. Standing unobtrusively on the corner, he looked down towards the inn and his worst fears were confirmed. A dozen mounted men and a similar number on foot were clustered outside the front door. They all had some sort of uniform, short green jerkins and brown breeches, with round iron helmets on their heads. The ones on horses carried swords or maces and the foot soldiers had guisarmes, like a billhook on a pole. To the rear of the armed men, two more elaborately dressed courtiers sat on horses, one each side of an august, portly man on a white mare. He was dressed in a fur-trimmed cloak and had a gold chain around his neck.

  John’s horror was increased when he saw that one of the soldiers was holding Joldan, gripping him by the hair and forcing him to look towards the entrance to the inn. The lad had a black eye and bruises on his face and it was all John could do to restrain himself from a hopeless attempt to rescue the boy.