Eleanor Of Aquitaine (43 page)

Envoys hastened to bring him back from Acre, whither fortunately he had set out too early to have been implicated in the assassination of the marquis. It proved not difficult to persuade the count to turn back to Tyre, for, says the
Itinerarium
, there is no trouble in persuading a willing man. 72 The chroniclers suggest that he was very fain, for the young widow was "altogether fair and lovely, whiter than any pearl." So they robed Isabelle in bridal dress instead of widow's weeds and, within a bare week from the murder of the marquis, she was united to Count Henry. In a fortnight Tyre had celebrated the election of two kings to the throne of Jerusalem and mourned the death of one. "Then," says the chronicler, describing the advent of Henry, "had ye seen a noble welcoming, processions ranged in order, all the streets bedecked with tapestries, in every window censers filled with incense."
⁷³
Clerks escorted the new king to the minster, exposed the relics, and offered for his adoration a fragment of the Holy Cross. And so with honors they brought him to the palace and there ordered a banquet to be served.

*

O Jerusalem, now art thou indeed helpless Who will protect thee when Richard is away
?

Ambrose

The Christian factions in the Holy Land were thus by fortuitous events reunited under one leadership. But the forces for crusade had been dissipated, and Islam gathered new levies to drive the Christians, both the lords of the fiefs of the Latin Kingdom and the new arrivals, with all their baggage and their works into the Mediterranean where other empires had been engulfed before. In these circumstances dalliance with Saladin became more popular.

Through the summer, as Richard's anxieties increased and his fever sapped his strength, Saladin successively whittled down the demands of the Christians for a truce: first, from a retrocession of all they once possessed to half of their former possessions together with the Holy Cross; then to mere holding of existing conquests and the privliege of visiting the Holy Sepulcher and exercising their religion there. At length they came to terms on the extreme of Saladin's demands. Neither enemy should lift sword against the other; the coast towns taken by the Christians should remain
in statu quo
, except Ascalon, which, after the Christians' winter labor to restore it, had to be razed. Henry of Champagne as "King of Jerusalem" should command the remnant of the Christian army, but without injury to Saladin. For the time being Henry and Saladin were proclaimed allies against the upsurge of any foe. Thereupon Saladin provided Henry with a royal aba and turban so that he might not seem a pariah among the Oriental satraps.

As for the cross, Saladin, although he pronounced it "an offense to God," kept it against the exigencies of diplomacy in the future; and subsequently, according to Bohaddin, when the fear of the crusaders had abated, remitted it to the Emperor of Byzantium for a prodigious sum in gold.

After the agreement, Saladin, hoping, as his chronicler explains, to hasten the departure of the Christians from the Orient, graciously permitted little bands of pilgrims, unarmed and under reliable guides, to visit Jerusalem. The Bishop of Salisbury took a party, which made a tour of the shrines. As humble pilgrims they refused the luxury of lodgment in Saladin's palace, but they accepted the privliege he offered them of adoring the rood. Richard's jongleur Ambrose went with a less distinguished group and relates that they visited the Sepulcher, Calvary, the Tomb of the Virgin, and other sacred places; that their tears ran as they saw how Christians had been employed as slaves to reinforce the Moslem defenses of Jerusalem, and how the shrines were polluted by the offenses and the neglect of the infidels. They visited the prison chamber where Christ awaited the crucifixion, but did not linger long because some fellow pilgrims who had pushed their explorations a bit too far had been slain in the gloom of neighboring crypts.

Richard was of course invited by Saladin to pay a visit to Jerusalem with the honors due a king, but the noble mind of Coeur-de Lion would not consent to receive from the courtesy of the infidel what he could not obtain by the gift of God. After all, he had borne witness to a truce, not a renunciation. "If the ram draws back," says the Poitevin proverb, "it is only to strike the harder." The king, though worn with fever and disturbed by a grand malaise, was still Plantagenet. He turned away from the domes of Jerusalem and set his face toward home. With the gesture of oblation he registered his vow "O Holy Land, I commend thee to God, and if His heavenly grace grants me so long to live, I hope, I pledge, to come one day to succor thee."

IT WAS NIGHTFALL ON OCTOBER 9, 1192, that Coeur-de-Lion gave orders to his mariners to spread the canvas of his one galley in the port of Acre. The queens with their household and their Cyprian captive had been dispatched ahead on the day of Saint Michael, more than a week earlier, in a slow but stout and commodious dromon. They followed the open sea route and were duly reported in Sicily, and subsequently in Rome.

There was no concealing the departure of the King of England from Syria. The city that had hailed his arrival with unmeasured joy was plunged in gloom as his galley was seen in the harbor preparing to take off. Then, says Ambrose, the people went about weeping softly and praying for him, and retelling all his deeds of prowess, of valor, and largess. But Coeur-de-Lion kept the day and hour of his departure, the course of his voyage, and the make-up of his following obscure, for he had been warned that powers and principalities lay in wait to make sure that he should never reach his own lands. There were few allies that he could trust, many enemies that he must fear. For safe-conduct he appealed to the Templars, those guardians of pilgrims and their travel routes.

"Master," he said, "I know very well that few love me; and if I go to sea, and my enemies know that I have done so, I can find no port where I shall not be killed or taken. Therefore, I pray you, lend me some of your knights and men-at-arms, who will go with me, and when we are far from here, they will conduct me as a brother Templar to my own country."

It was with a band of Templars and men disguised as Templars that the king left the port of Acre, commending himself to the Truce of God. The ship was well armed and provisioned; but one chronicler at least declares that, in spite of precautions, a knave slipped aboard whose business-it was to betray the king to his enemies.

All that first autumnal night the king and his company scudded Over the dark waters under a heaven bright with stars and took their bearings from the sky.
⁸
The ship, avoiding the open sea, took its secret course among the islands where, although the passage was more dangerous, it was easier to elude pursuit and to take refuge in secluded ports. The waters they chose were the profitable hunting grounds of those Greek and Barbary pirates that throve on the lonely ships of pilgrims and merchants as they made their way through the confined and ill-charted passages.

The galley first made port in Cyprus, and then within about a month from its sailing from Acre, it came to Corfu,
⁸
where Philip Augustus had also landed on his return from Syria the year before. In the meantime the king's ship had passed through that mariners' limbo in which Queen Eleanor and Louis Capet had been adrift in the custody of corsairs at the end of the second crusade, a region whose perils and alarms had certainly figured in the nursery mythology of Coeur-de-Lion's earliest years.

In Corfu and the nearby islands were outposts of the Sicilian admiral Marguerite that offered harborage and supplies for the vessels bent on those infested waters, together with agents to provide for exchange and safe-conducts. Here the pilgrims touched a zone of safety and a means of reaching the only attainable sanctuaries, the protection of Tancred and the Pope, or the more distant security of ports on the shores of Provence.

Subsequently a traveler who made port safely in another vessel identified the king's galley "en route from Corfu to Brindisi."
¹⁰
From this point there is confusion in the accounts of the king's journey. For Richard never reached Brindisi. The most credible account of his course is related in the chronicle of Coggeshall and purports to be the story of Anselm the Chaplain, who shared the perils and hardships of the king on his eventful progress.
¹¹
This account states that from Corfu Richard set out not for Brindisi, but for Marseille, and that his galley, after six weeks' travail on the wintry sea, had come within three days' sailing of the destined port. Putting in for reconnoiter, perhaps at Pisa, where he was on good terms with the shippers,
¹²
he learned that Raymond of Toulouse and his allies, eager to avenge the ruthless justice Richard had imposed upon them in 1190, had ambushed every useful port of the seaboard on which he wished to land. According to one report, the king now considered a passage by open sea through the Pillars of Hercules, but was dissuaded by the violence of the weather as winter drew on. In spite of the unfavorable condition of the waters and the bitterness of turning back when he had almost attained his goal, he resolved to reverse his sails and set his prow again for Corfu. Since no safe course was open to him, he probably trusted to surprise, disguise, and Plantagenet luck to strike boldly but secretly through the territories of his Teutonic enemies. Perhaps he had a hope that, with good fortune, he could cross some land bridge touching the Adriatic into the territories of his brother-in-law, the Duke of Saxony. He may even have had from the duke some assurance of succor.

So the galley turned back over the tempestuous seas to Corfu. In the neighborhood of this island, according to Anselm's account, the king's galley was approached by two high-beaked Rumanian pirate ships. Perhaps by this time Richard's galley had suffered sea damage. At any rate, Hoveden declares that the king hired the pirate vessels for two hundred marks of silver.
¹³
Richard embarked on one of these, keeping with him a score of his closest associates, among them Baldwin of Béthune, Philip, his clerk, Anselm the Chaplain, and certain Templars.

Skirting the east coast of the Adriatic, the ships, now numbering two or three, put in on the Rumanian coast near Ragusa, but some circumstance, probably the inhospitality of the hinterland, forced them again to sea. According to the account in Hoveden, the ships were driven by gales of unusual fury on the coast of Istria at the head of the Adriatic, and there they were broken or foundered near the shore.
¹⁴
The passengers of the king's ship, and possibly some other survivors, were cast up on the land in territories held by vassals of Count Leopold of Austria.

At once the king sent a messenger to the castle of the local Count Mainerd
¹⁵
requesting safe-conduct under the Truce of God for a company of shipwrecked travelers. The king, says Anselm, on his return journey had bought three very precious rubies from a certain Pisan for nine hundred bezants (about $2700). While on board ship he wore one of these set in a golden ring. This ring he now sent by the agency of his messenger as a gift to the lord of the castle. When the messenger was closely questioned by the count as to who those were that sought safe-conduct, he replied that they were pilgrims returning from the Holy Land.
¹⁶
The count then asked their names.

"One of them," replied the messenger, "is Baldwin of Béthune and another is one Hugo, a merchant, and it is he who sends you this ring."

The count examined the token closely for some time as if turning over various things in his mind. At length he spoke.

"His name is not Hugo but King Richard. I had sworn that I would arrest all pilgrims coming from those parts and that I would accept no 'gifts' from them. However, because of the preciousness of this token and the high condition of him who thus honors me, I return the gift and give your lord freedom to proceed."

When the messenger reported this interview to the "pilgrims," they were mightily disturbed. They contrived somehow to obtain horses, left the village in the middle of the night, and were for a little time at large in the territories of Count Mainerd. The count's magnanimity, as the fugitives suspected, was less than it seemed, for he at once sent spies to his brother, Frederick of Betestowe, through whose land the travelers would have to pass, advising him that the king would soon be ripe for capture, and giving him the time which he had not had himself to prepare the necessary forces.

As soon as Frederick was apprised that the fugitives had entered his confines or were about to do so, he summoned one of his most trusted men, a certain Roger, a native of the Norman city of Argentan, who had been in his service for twenty years. He directed Roger to search all the hospices in the vicinity where pilgrims were wont to lodge, to see if he might trace the king either by his foreign speech or some other indications, and promised him, if he succeeded, half of the city where they were as his reward. Roger, after a diligent search, at last found where the king was staying. For some time Richard denied his identity, but at last he confessed who he was and put himself at Roger's mercy, invoking the Truce of God. To the king's astonishment, Roger, instead of taking him captive, burst into tears over his plight, pressed a superb horse upon him, and besought him to flee for his life. Anselm imputes Roger's sudden change of front to the Norman blood in his veins, but possibly the heroic character of the king, his chivalric bearing, some of the Plantagenet eloquence, and the sacred Truce of God had to do with the matter. Returning to Frederick, Roger reported that the rumors that the king was at hand were false and that the suspected characters were Baldwin of Bethune and some of his companions.

In their extremity the fugitives employed a ruse they must have previously rehearsed and so saved the king from capture. Baldwin drew attention to himself as a person of consequence, and the men of Frederick, who had not relied altogether upon the Norman Roger for their espionage, seized him with several of his following, probably supposing they held the king.
¹⁸
At Freisach, a little farther inland, six more men were taken. Baldwin's impersonation of Coeur-de-Lion enabled the latter to get away with a small escort of serviceable young men, among them William de l'Etang and a boy who understood German. The king kept his disguise as a merchant traveling with his colporteurs and in these roles, by extraordinary luck, they reached a village, Ganina, on the Danube in the neighborhood of Vienna and found lodgings in a squalid tavern. The Angevins knew how to press horses to the utmost and to keep the saddle day and night, but this dash must have exceeded all previous exploits. The distance from the coast to Vienna is nearly two hundred miles as the crow flies, and the king and his men covered three quarters of those leagues in three days of posting without stopping for food or rest.

Coeur-de Lion was not yet fully recovered from the tertian fever that had stricken him in Syria, and the exertions and privations of his flight brought even his matchless endurance to an end. He fell at once upon his tavern bed and plunged into a fathomless sleep. In the meantime his interpreter went out to forage for provisions. Needing coin of the country, he sought out an exchange, and making the most of opportunity to get a supply for future needs, he poured out a fine, telltale stream of the golden bezants current in Syria. The abundant gold and the imperiousness of the young man, who doubtless betrayed the utmost haste to be off, excited remark, and he was detained by citizens and sharply questioned. Asked who he was, the youth replied that he was the courier of a certain very rich merchant who would be coming to the town in a few days. When he had thrown his inquisitors off the scent, he flew back to the tavern, roused the king from his stupor, and besought him to take to the road again with all haste. But Coeur-de-Lion was unequal to the effort and could not be persuaded. In spite of the filth and squalor of the place and the danger to his person, he kept to his bed for several days, and the youth in the meantime was obliged more than once to go to the public markets for their necessities.

On the 21st of December, which was a feast day, he appeared in the market with the king's gloves bearing royal insignia thrust carelessly into his belt. His haste and lavishness in buying luxuries for his sick and weary king drew attention. The youth was reported to public officials, who arrested him, tortured him, and threatened to cut out his tongue unless he yielded to questioning and told the truth.

Advent was at hand and Leopold of Austria had convened his Christmas court in Vienna. The youth's story was made known to the duke, who lost no time in ordering the king's hospice surrounded. Richard, roused by the hubbub outside his quarters,
²⁰
discovered that all escape was cut off. He once more, and on the spur of the moment, improvised a new disguise, such as the house afforded. He fled to the kitchen and drew on a scullion's smock. Taking his place by the hearth and slumping in the attitude of a stupid fellow, he busied himself with the spit on which some spatchcocks were roasting for his dinner.
²¹
In Templar's disguise, with beard and staff, the Count of Poitou might pass unsuspected, for Templars were usually men of condition; he might even act the part of the wealthy merchant; but the old smock and the scullion's role betrayed him. There were men in Vienna who had seen him in Acre and knew his every lineament.

Anselm relates that when Richard heard the guttural German tumult outside the tavern, he felt a strong repugnance to yielding himself to that barbaric rabble. He demanded that Duke Leopold himself be summoned and declared that he would give himself up to no other. One of the chroniclers relates that Leopold, avid for his quarry and eager to witness the humiliation of the proud Plantagenet, hastened to the tavern. The surrender was made with due chivalric rites as befitted the dignity of the king, and Coeur-de-Lion was led away with the duke's escort to the castle. At first received honorably in custody, he was presently put under guard of men-at-arms who stood about him day and night with drawn swords.