A King's Ransom (20 page)

Richard had not realized Christmas had arrived until he was served a dish of roast goose, signifying Advent was past. When he asked to attend Christmas Mass in the castle chapel, Hadmar had reluctantly refused, obviously following Leopold’s orders, not his own inclinations, for on his next visit, he brought a set of Paternoster beads. Richard dutifully recited fifty Ave Marias each evening, but prayers could not drown out the insidious inner voice whispering that God had turned His face away, deaf to his pleas.

He passed most of his days thinking about his tomorrows. Surely Leopold must mean to ransom him? Leopold could not keep him confined indefinitely, no matter how great his grievance, and word of his plight would get out; too many people knew about the hunt for the English king. Nor did he believe the Austrian duke would dare to put him on trial for his alleged crimes in the Holy Land. Heinrich might, though—a chilling thought. And Philippe would not even bother with the farce of a trial. If he was turned over to the French king, he’d never see the sun again.

On the Monday after Christmas, Richard was struggling with a new enemy—boredom. He was accustomed to constant activity, physical and mental, and this enforced solitude was in itself a form of torture. He flipped at random through one of Hadmar’s books, unable to concentrate, and finally sprawled on the bed to play a plaintive melody on the lute. After a time, he began to try different chords, creating his own song, one that expressed all he could not put into words. He was so intent upon the music that he did not hear the steps approaching the door and was taken by surprise when it opened suddenly, for Hadmar rarely visited him in the evening.

The guards were startled, too, staring at the two youths poised in the doorway. Richard sat up, interested in this unexpected development. The boys looked so similar that he guessed they were brothers or cousins; he put their ages at about sixteen or seventeen. He assumed that the Austrians and Germans followed the same practices of England and France, sending highborn youngsters to apprentice as squires in noble households. But as he watched them argue with the flustered guards, he decided they might well be Hadmar’s own sons, for they had the easy assurance of those favored from birth. When the nervous guards continued to protest, one of the boys moved closer and Richard heard the clink of coins as pfennigs were exchanged. That did the trick; the guards stepped back, and the youths approached the bed.

They seemed wary and he thought again of that chained bear. But their eyes were shining with excitement. “I am Leo,” one said, in schoolboy but understandable Latin, “and this is my brother, Friedrich. We wish to talk with you.”

Friedrich seemed to think his brother had been too brash, for he added quickly, in better Latin, “Will you speak with us, lord king?”

In his present mood, Richard would have welcomed any diversion. “Why not?”

They needed no further encouragement, pulled a coffer closer to the bed and perched on it, putting Richard in mind of birds about to take flight. Setting the lute aside, he said, “What do you want to talk about?”

“About the war in the Holy Land,” Leo said promptly, and his brother nodded in agreement. “We would hear about Jaffa and the march to Acre. We’ve heard stories from soldiers coming home, but we know soldiers like to boast, to make small skirmishes sound like great battles, so we were not sure how much to believe.”

“How do you know I’ll not boast, too?”

Friedrich seemed perplexed by the question, but Leo flashed an impudent smile. “Men already call you Lionheart,” he said, “so why would you need to boast?”

Richard was amused by the lad’s cockiness. “What would you hear first?”

“About Jaffa,” they said in unison and listened raptly as he told them. After concluding that Jerusalem could not be taken, their army had withdrawn to Acre. He’d been planning an assault upon Beirut, the only port still in Saladin’s hands, when word had reached them of a Saracen surprise attack upon Jaffa. The French had refused to help, even though there were wounded French soldiers recuperating at Jaffa, so Richard sent his nephew, Henri of Champagne, south with their army whilst he sailed down the coast. But they’d been becalmed and could not reach Jaffa for three days. They’d anchored their galleys offshore, waiting for dawn to see if the town and castle still held out. And as the dark retreated, they saw the saffron banners of Saladin streaming in the wind.

That had been one of the worst moments of Richard’s life. Losing himself in the retelling, he could feel again his anguished rage. Jaffa held over four thousand men, women, and children, who were now dead or doomed for the slave markets in Damascus, all because the wind had dropped, keeping him from getting there in time. He’d lingered offshore, listening to the taunts of the jubilant Saracen soldiers, sick at heart. But then a priest had jumped from the castle wall and swum out to his galley.

“The castle had not yet fallen,” he told the boys, “so we still had a chance.” When his red galley, the
Sea-Cleaver
, headed for the beach, the Saracens watched in astonishment, unable to believe their greatly outnumbered foes would dare to land. Richard had been the first one ashore, a sword in one hand, his crossbow in the other, his knights loyally splashing after him even though they all expected to die there in the shallows. “But our crossbowmen cleared the beach, and I knew a back way into the town. There we finally encountered serious resistance and there was fierce fighting in the streets—until the castle garrison raced out to join us. Caught between my men and the garrison, the Saracens either died or surrendered.”

The expression on their faces was a familiar one. He’d often seen youngsters look like that, enthralled and eager to experience the glory and gore of battle, although they thought more of the former than the latter. “So you do not think I am boasting,” he said with a hinted smile, “I must tell you that Saladin had lost control of his men, that many of them were more interested in looting than fighting, which is why we were able to prevail despite being so outnumbered. Soldiers expect to gain booty in war, whether they be Muslim or Christian, and Saladin’s men had grown war-weary after years of conflict.” But they were not interested in the unromantic realities of war, only the bloody splendor of it, and they urged him now to tell them of the second battle of Jaffa four days later.

He did and, for a brief time, his words intoxicated all three of them. The cold December night gave way to the searing heat of Outremer. The boys could feel the blazing white sun on their skin, see the harsh grandeur of the land under a copper sky, and they hung on Richard’s every word. “Jaffa stank like a charnel house, for towns taken by storm are shown no mercy. We’d pitched our tents outside the crumbling walls, and when Saladin learned that our army had been halted at Caesarea, he decided to strike, sure that if I was killed or captured, his war would be won. And if not for a Genoese crossbowman who’d risen early to take a piss, we’d have been caught sleeping. But he saw the sun reflecting off their shields. I had only fifty-four knights, four hundred crossbowmen, two thousand men-at-arms, and just eleven horses, whilst we later learned that Saladin’s army numbered over seven thousand. There was no time to retreat into Jaffa, and even if we had, it was too damaged to hold off an assault. So I had our men anchor their spears in the ground and kneel, with our crossbowmen standing behind them, sheltered by their shields. As soon as one arbalester shot, he’d be handed another spanned crossbow, so the firing would be continuous. I assured our men that the Saracens’ horses would not charge into a barricade of spears, and I was right. Again and again, they veered off at the last moment. We held fast for more than six hours, and when their repeated, failed charges had them bone-weary and frustrated, my knights and I charged and swept them from the field.”

“How did you think of such a tactic? That was truly inspired!”

“It was not original, Friedrich. I borrowed the tactic from the Saracens, for I’ve never been too proud to learn from an enemy.”

Leo leaned forward, resting his hands on his knees. “Tell us about the march from Acre,” he said, and Richard did. They’d moved the coffer closer to the bed as he’d talked, wanting to know if it was true men died from the scorching heat of the sun—it was—and if the Holy Land had poisonous stinging vermin called scorpions—it did—and if he’d been wounded by a crossbow bolt in the days leading up to the battle at Arsuf—he had.

They’d all lost track of time, the boys enthralled by these stories of combat with infidels on the sacred ground where the Lord Christ once walked, Richard grateful for the chance to escape the stone walls of Dürnstein, if only in his imagination. When one of the guards cleared his throat meaningfully, that broke the spell, reminding them that it was growing late. “We must go ere we are missed,” Friedrich said reluctantly. “Just one more question. We were told that at Jaffa you rode up and down alone in front of the Saracen army and not one of them dared to accept your challenge to combat. Surely that cannot be true? It would be quite mad!”

Richard grinned. “I daresay it was, Friedrich. But it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

They stared at him and then burst out laughing. Their laughter stopped abruptly, though, as if they’d realized they’d let their guard down too far, been bedazzled into forgetting that this man was the enemy. Leo jumped to his feet, glaring at Richard with sudden hostility. “I do not understand you,” he said, his voice rising. “You are a great warrior, as brave as Roland, and you were willing to die for Our Saviour. So how could you treat our father so shamefully?”

Richard blinked in surprise. “I had no quarrel with Had—” He broke off then, belatedly realizing the truth. “Are you the sons of Duke Leopold?”

Friedrich was on his feet now, saying proudly, “We have that honor. I am Friedrich von Babenberg, my lord father’s firstborn, heir to the duchies of Austria and Styria, and this is my brother, Leopold.”

Leo had assumed a defiant stance, chin jutting out, hands clenching into fists, and Richard wondered how he’d not seen the resemblance sooner, for the boy was the veritable image of Leopold in high dudgeon. “You shamed our father,” he said accusingly. “At Acre, your men tore down his banner and you let it happen!”

Richard did not want to criticize the duke to his own sons, but neither was he willing to lie to them. “They were acting on my orders. When I was told he’d hoisted his banner, I told them to take it down, and I make no apologies for it. The French king and I had agreed that each of us would have half of Acre, and by flying his banner, your father was staking a claim to the city and its spoils. He was in the wrong, not I.”

This argument carried no weight with Leo. “He fought with his men to take Acre, so why should he not have a right to share in the spoils? He was your ally and you treated him as if he were some lesser lord, of no account. But he is the Duke of Austria, and now you’ll learn to your cost just what that means!” He turned on his heel and stalked out then, slamming the heavy oaken door resoundingly behind him.

Friedrich did not follow. “I do not understand, either,” he said, but without his brother’s belligerence. “My lord father is a proud man and you shamed him needlessly. When your men snatched his banner and flung it down into a ditch, they were trampling upon his pride, his honor, Austria’s honor.”

Richard was not happy with the unexpected turn the conversation had taken, discovering that Friedrich’s reproaches were harder to deflect than Leo’s accusations. “I did not know the banner had been thrown into a ditch.”

“If you had known, would you have punished your men for it?”

Richard paused for a moment to consider. “No,” he said honestly, “most likely I would not have. As I said, they were following orders.”

“You claim my father was in the wrong for flying his banner. Even if that is so, what you did was far worse, for you forced him to leave the army and return home.”

Richard scowled. “I most certainly did not. It was his choice to abandon the war, and a shameful one it was, for he’d sworn the same holy vow that I had, that we all had, to stay in Outremer until we’d recaptured Jerusalem from the infidels.”

“But you made it impossible for him to stay. You truly do not see that? All of his men knew what happened, knew you’d treated the banner of Austria as if it were a worthless rag. How could he stay after being shamed and humiliated like that? His only way to save face was to depart, even though it grieved him greatly to do so. This was the second time he’d taken the cross. On his first visit to the Holy Land, he’d even been given a splinter of the True Cross by the King of Jerusalem and, as precious as it was to him, he presented it to the abbey at Heiligenkreuz, saying it belonged in a House of God. He cared for the fate of the Holy Land as much as you did, my lord. Had you only shown some concern for his honor—which he had every right to expect—he’d never have left, and you might not be here at Dürnstein this December eve.” Friedrich turned then, apparently confident he’d gotten the last word, and walked with dignity to the door.

After they’d gone, servants brought up Richard’s supper, but he ignored it. He’d initially dismissed Leopold’s complaint as an annoyance, but when the duke sailed with the French king, he’d felt for the Austrian the same searing contempt he harbored for Philippe, unable to understand how they could so easily dishonor a vow made to Almighty God. Until tonight, he’d never tried to see Leopold’s side. As reluctant as he was to admit it, there was some truth in what Friedrich had said. It would have been hard for such a proud man to remain after being humbled by the English king.

Lying back on the bed, he called up memories of that fateful confrontation. With all he had on his mind, Leopold’s grievance had seemed of minor importance, and he’d had no sympathy for the duke’s indignant protests. Losing patience, he’d started to turn away when Leopold had dared to grab his arm, and that fired his own temper. He remembered the other man’s face, so deeply flushed he looked sunburned, his mouth ringed in white, a muscle twitching in his cheek. He remembered, too, telling his wife, sister, and nephew about it afterward. Henri had offered to intercede with Leopold, “to smooth his ruffled feathers,” but he’d said not to bother, that Leopold “could stew in his own juices.” Henri had considerable charm when he chose to exert it; could he have placated the irate duke? If he’d not been so indifferent to Leopold’s wounded pride, might their meeting in Ertpurch have gone differently? Yes, Leopold was Heinrich’s vassal, but he was no man’s puppet, and if his son was right, he’d been very serious about taking the cross, unlike Philippe. Might he have been loath to seize a man under the protection of the Church, like Count Englebert in Görz? Would he have chosen to honor his vow to God above his fealty to the Holy Roman Emperor?