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-looking place, not even a city wall to protect that bastard Leopold’s court!’