A King's Ransom (30 page)

He was in the stairwell when he heard the raised voices coming from Richard’s chamber. Alarmed, he quickened his pace, taking the steps two at a time. Thrusting the door open, he came to a halt at the sight meeting his eyes. Richard and Eberhard, a tow-haired, good-natured youth half a head taller than his fellow guards, were seated at the table, hands gripped as each man sought to force the other man’s arm down, while the rest were clustered around, laughing and cheering. They fell silent as soon as they saw Hadmar in the doorway and backed away from the table. Richard looked amused, but Eberhard went beet red and got to his feet so hastily that his chair toppled to the floor.

On several occasions, Hadmar had interrupted what appeared to be language lessons, with Richard pointing to various objects and his guards giving him the names in German. He hadn’t commented on that, but arm wrestling was a bit too convivial for his liking and he thought it might be best to assign Eberhard to other duties—until he remembered that he’d soon be relieved of the responsibility for the English king’s security.

Richard rose, clapping Eberhard playfully on the shoulder. The guard grinned sheepishly, but then addressed his lord, saying anxiously that he hoped he had not offended. Hadmar brushed aside the apology, regarding his prisoner with an ironic half smile. “I’ll thank you not to suborn my men.”

“We have to find some way to pass the time. They are as bored as I am by now.” Richard gestured toward his vacated chair in a mocking parody of a host welcoming a guest. “Have a seat. You may as well be comfortable whilst you give me your bad news.”

“What makes you think I bear bad news?”

“When have you ever brought me
good
news?”

Hadmar abruptly abandoned the bantering. “Nor is today any different. I have heard from my duke. He writes that he and Emperor Heinrich have agreed upon the terms for your surrender and he commands me to escort you to the imperial court at Speyer.”

After two months of treading water, Richard just wanted to reach the shore, for he knew it was the waiting before a battle that eroded a soldier’s confidence. It was never a good thing for men to have time to consider all that could go wrong. “Did Leopold tell you what they intend to demand of me?”

“No, he did not.” Hadmar had not realized he was going to lie until he heard the words coming out of his mouth. It was not that he didn’t believe the English king had a right to know, for he did. It was that he did not want to be the one to tell Richard what awaited him at Speyer.

R
ICHARD HAD EXPECTED
to be taken directly to Speyer; instead, they headed for Ochsenfurt, a small town on the left bank of the River Main, where they were to await a summons from Duke Leopold. Heinrich apparently wanted to delay his appearance until his bishops and lords arrived for his Easter Court. Richard remembered reading how the Roman generals would bring their defeated foes back to Rome, and when they made their triumphant entry into the city, the captives would be dragged behind them in chains for the crowds to mock and jeer. He wondered bitterly if Heinrich knew about this ancient Roman custom; he was said to be well read.

Richard was being held in the guest hall of the Premonstratensian monastery dedicated to St Lambert, John the Baptist, and St George. He’d yet to meet the abbot, only occasionally caught a glimpse of one of the white-clad canons as they went about their duties. He did not see much of Hadmar, either, and time hung heavy on his hands. He tried to read and worked on a song he’d been composing about his captivity. Nothing he wrote satisfied him and he had to keep scraping the parchment clean and starting afresh, doubting that he’d be permitted to keep Hadmar’s books and writing materials once they reached Speyer. He’d been surprised to discover that these minor indignities mattered so much, but they did—small, stinging reminders that he had less power than the least of his subjects, as defenseless as the Christian prisoners he’d freed at Darum. They’d been on their way to the slave markets in Cairo and they’d wept with joy at their deliverance. While he’d been glad that he was able to rescue them, he had not given it much thought after it was done. Now that memory was so vivid it occasionally intruded into his dreams.

He was lying on his bed, hoping to nap, when Hadmar came around the screen that had been set up to partition the hall. He was smiling. “You have guests.”

Richard hastily sat up. For a moment, he thought it was Leopold, but he dismissed that at once, for Hadmar would not have announced him like that. He was getting to his feet as the Austrian lord stepped aside. Richard stared incredulously at the man standing behind Hadmar, and then a slow grin spread over his face. “I suppose you just happened to be passing by?”

Hubert Walter grinned, too. “Something like that,” he said, and started forward. Richard was already moving toward him. Hubert would have knelt, but instead found himself embraced like a brother. By the time they stepped back, they both had tears in their eyes. It was only then that Richard saw the bishop was not alone. A second man had followed him, beaming and blinking back tears of his own. William de St Mère-Eglise was well known to Richard; he’d been Henry’s trusted clerk of the chamber and soon after his coronation, Richard had named him Dean of St Martin’s le Grand in London. His appearance seemed even more amazing to Richard than Hubert Walter’s, and as soon as William knelt, he was raised up and embraced, too. By now they were all laughing and talking at once, not even noticing that Hadmar had discreetly disappeared.

“I’d gotten as far as Rome when I learned what had happened,” Hubert was saying, “and, of course, I left for Germany straightaway. William happened to be in Rome, too, and he caught up with me on the road.”

Richard felt a pang, for he was desperate for news from England and had hoped the bishop was coming from his island kingdom. His disappointment was forgotten, though, as soon as Hubert produced the letters. Snatching them up, he moved toward a wall torch and began to break the seals. There were four: one from his wife, one from his sister, one from Anna, the Damsel of Cyprus, and one from Stephen de Turnham, to whom he’d entrusted his women’s safety. He read rapidly, then went back and reread them, smiling at Joanna’s message and laughing outright at Anna’s. “The lass says she has put some vile Cypriot curse upon all my enemies, promising that they’ll be rotting away like lepers ere the year is out.” But when he glanced again at his queen’s letter, he shook his head, saying, “Berenguela’s faith in that old man on the papal throne is truly remarkable.” He’d once told his wife that her innocence was downright endearing; not so much now, though.

Putting the letters aside, he laughed again. He’d never thought he had a sentimental bone in his body and he was startled by how emotional he felt at the sight of their familiar faces. They had begun to tell him what they knew of the political ramifications of his capture, which was not much—that the Holy Father had been outraged by the news and he had an ally in the Archbishop of Cologne, who’d not only sent a warning to the Pope but had joined the rebels. Heinrich, they reported happily, was facing a serious rebellion.

Taking their cue from Hadmar, the guards were giving them some space, and when Richard asked for wine, impressing the clerics by doing it in German, it was soon fetched. Sitting at the table, they began to pepper him with questions. He answered readily at first, telling them about his encounters with the pirates and explaining his reasoning for choosing to take only twenty men with him on the pirate galleys. He had no trouble describing the first shipwreck at Ragusa and the second in that Godforsaken marsh, or their narrow escapes in Görz and Udine. But after that, the words did not come so easily. His memories of Friesach were like festering sores. And as he started to tell them about Ertpurch, he was dismayed to find it all coming back—their utter desperation, their exhaustion and hunger and cold, that damnable fever, and then the fear and shame of his capture. Relating it was like reliving it; he could even feel his body reacting as if he were back in the alewife’s house, trapped and despairing, for his pulse had begun to race, his breath quickening, his throat constricting.

William was puzzled when Richard suddenly fell silent, but Hubert was quick to comprehend. He’d arrived at the siege of Acre nine months before Richard, and he’d often spoken to men who’d been held prisoner by the Saracens, some of them for years. What had struck him most forcefully was their uniform reluctance to speak of their ordeal and their obvious discomfort when they did. There was a great difference, he’d discovered, between the Saracen and Christian view of captivity. The first crusaders had made no effort to ransom their men, seeing a captive knight as a failure, his survival an embarrassment. Their attitude gradually changed, in part due to exposure to a culture in which it was seen as a duty to rescue one’s own. But the stigma still lingered and so did the shame. If knights and men-at-arms felt it so keenly, Hubert imagined it would be even worse for a king, especially a king like this one.

“We’ll have time to hear of your captivity later, sire,” he said briskly. “For now, I think it best if we speak of Heinrich and what he hopes to gain by this outrageous crime.” William seemed surprised, but Richard’s fleeting look of relief confirmed Hubert’s suspicion that this was still too raw a wound to be probed.

T
HIS
T
HURSDAY BEFORE
H
OLY
W
EEK
would prove to be a day of surprises for Richard. Only a few hours after the arrival of Hubert Walter and William de St Mère-Eglise, Hadmar ushered in two more visitors, men clad in the distinctive white cloaks of the Cistercians. They were exhausted, jubilant to have finally found their king, and mildly disappointed to see that they had not been the first to reach him. As fond as Richard was of the Bishop of Salisbury, he was even more elated by the arrival of these abbots from England, for their presence was proof that his plight was now known to his justiciars and his mother.

They brought more than news—a stack of letters so thick he thought every lord in his realm must have sent one. He read his mother’s letter first, then those of his justiciars, and when he was done, he no longer felt so alone. Their outrage all but scorched the parchment, the pen strokes as slashing as sword blades as they railed at the blatant disregard of Church law and the laws of war. This was what he needed to hear, not his queen’s pious certainty that Pope Celestine would prevail upon Emperor Heinrich to set him free.

“My lady mother says that you will tell me of my brother’s conniving with the French king,” he said, and they did, sharing all they knew of John’s treason. Richard listened without interruption and then began to stalk back and forth as his anger caught fire. After Henry’s death, men like Will Marshal had feared they’d suffer for their loyalty to the old king. But with fine inconsistency, Richard had rewarded those who’d stayed with Henry until the end and mistrusted those who’d been so eager to court his favor. Only John had not been chastised. Their mother had some misgivings about the generous provisions he made for John, and he still remembered his response, telling her that “Johnny deserves a chance to show he can be trusted if I play fair with him,” adding with careless confidence that he did not see Johnny as any great threat.

Of course, he’d never expected that three years later, he’d be a prisoner of the Emperor Heinrich, unable to protect his own body, much less his distant domains. For the first time, he fully understood how his father must have felt upon being told that his best-loved son had betrayed him, and not for the first time, he wondered if the Almighty was punishing him for the part he’d played in Henry’s downfall. But thoughts like that were reserved for those sleepless hours when he struggled to understand and accept God’s Will. It was Johnny’s treachery he must deal with now. Fortunately, he knew how to do that, knew what weapon would draw the most blood, would gash Johnny’s pride to the bone. Mockery was the one thing Johnny could not abide.

Turning to face the other men, he smiled derisively. “My brother John is not the man to conquer a kingdom if there is anyone to offer the least resistance.”