‘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
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.