As I looked back at the gruesome display, I shivered slightly, and not just from the cold of dawn. Their faces had been pecked by carrion crows over the past few weeks until they were barely recognizable as men at all. And yet they seemed to be silently cursing us, hating us, casting an evil spell over our departure from Kirkton.
Four days later, the city of London lay before us, a dirty smudge of smoke on the southern horizon. I fancied I could already smell the stink of twenty thousand busy folk all crammed into a few square miles. But, mercifully, we were not planning to enter its maze of twisting streets and cramped dirty houses amid the deafening babble of its thronging crowds. Instead, we turned off Watling Street, the great Roman artery that had taken us all the way from Coventry to the north-western edge of the capital city, and rode south through the sleepy hamlet of Charing, and past green fields and orchards along the side of the slow-rolling River Thames to a rich Benedictine abbey, inhabited by sixty learned monks, overshadowed by the high bulk of Westminster Hall, the huge palace of the kings of England.
We were a large company, more than fifty souls in all, well mounted and guarded by a score of Robin’s men-at-arms and a dozen mounted archers. Robin, myself, Hanno and Tuck were in the vanguard, while Marie-Anne, Goody, little Hugh and a couple of nursemaids trundled along in the centre of the column, shielded from the elements by a covered wagon. As well as a strong force of soldiers, Robin had also brought cooks and bakers, farriers, maids, serving men and all the staff he would need to support his dignity as an earl while he was a guest of Queen Eleanor.
It had taken us four days to ride from Kirkton to Westminster, staying overnight at the castles of friends and allies, our pace much slowed by the wagons, and I was glad to be at our destination. My horse, a well-schooled grey gelding that I called Ghost, who had been with me all the way to Outremer and back, had picked up a stone in his right forehoof outside St Alban’s, and though I had speedily removed it, he was still limping. Fearing that the frog of his hoof had been bruised, I longed for the shelter of a nice quiet stable where he could rest and I could take a proper look at the offending limb.
A little royal hospitality would have been most welcome too, and Queen Eleanor did not disappoint. When we had shed our damp, travel-stained clothes in the dormitory of the Abbey and changed into something more fitting for regal company, we were ushered across the road into the great high hall where we were received by the Queen herself. A feast had been prepared for us, and we gorged on baked swan, lamprey stew and roast boar, with sweet white bread, and refreshed ourselves with the delicious light red wine of Bordeaux, part of Eleanor’s ancestral fiefdom. When the meal was done and we had sluiced the grease from our hands, Robin, Tuck and I were ushered into a private chamber off the side of the hall overlooking the river, along with a couple of the other guests: Walter de Coutances and Hugh de Puiset, two of King Richard’s most loyal supporters in England.
‘Good of you to come so swiftly, Robert,’ said the Queen in French, allowing Robin to stoop and kiss her heavily ringed hand. She had a wonderful voice, deep, rich and a little husky, that sent a delicious ripple down the spine of any man who heard her speak. ‘I know you have your own troubles at present.’
‘He is my King, Your Highness, in chains or out of them,’ replied Robin gravely in the same language. ‘He made me what I am, and I do not forget his kindness.’
Eleanor smiled at me. ‘And if I remember rightly, you are Alan Dale, my scapegrace trouvere Bernard’s old pupil. We met at Winchester, I recall, in rather dramatic circumstances.’ And she favoured me with a nod and twinkle from her bright brown eyes. I was struck once more by how beautiful Eleanor was; she must have been nearly seventy but she remained slim and lithe and her skin was as unlined as a girl’s. Her memory was still excellent, too. She was referring to a time three years ago when I had been publicly unmasked as an outlaw under her roof, a cuckoo in the nest, you might say, and had been unceremoniously slung into the deepest dungeon.
I merely bowed and mumbled: ‘Your Highness, I’m honoured that you remember me…’ and then trailed off, unsure whether or not it would be the proper thing to comment further on my former humiliation in Winchester.
Robin saved me from having to say more: ‘My lady, would you be kind enough to share with us the latest information that you possess about King Richard,’ he said.
‘Yes, you are right, Robin — to business. Walter, what do we know so far?’ said the Queen, looking over at the short, rather dumpy middle-aged churchman standing to her left.
Walter de Coutances might not have seemed very impressive, and his speaking voice was the dull, inflectionless monotone of a dusty scholar, but he was said to be the cleverest man in England, and he was surely one of the most powerful. He had been a vice-chancellor under the old King Henry, and then had been made Archbishop of Rouen by him. When old Henry died, Walter had invested Richard as Duke of Normandy and had helped to crown him King of England three years ago. I knew him by sight, as he had accompanied Richard on the Great Pilgrimage, but he had been sent back to England from Sicily to act for the King at home in his absence, and we had never actually spoken to each other.
Walter cleared his throat. ‘The truth is that we do not know very much,’ he began. ‘We understand that Richard took ship from Outremer in October of last year and that, as most of Europe was closed to him, he attempted to travel in secret up to Saxony in eastern Germany, where he was sure of a friendly welcome from his brother-in-law Duke Henry. He landed, we think, somewhere to the east of Venice, near Aquileia on the Adriatic coast…’
As Walter continued in his dry voice, I reflected how unfortunate it was that Richard had made so many enemies among the powerful men of Europe while taking part in the Great Pilgrimage. As well as a falling out with King Philip of France and Duke Leopold of Austria, he had alienated Henry VI, the Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold’s overlord and ruler of most of Italy, by making a treaty with Tancred of Sicily, a rich island that the Emperor coveted. With France and Italy barred to him, Richard had little choice but to take the long eastern route home. And this apparently had been his downfall.
‘… he wanted to travel in secret,’ Walter droned on, ‘and so, unwisely as it turned out, the King dismissed all but a handful of his men, and travelled in disguise as a Templar knight, north from the Adriatic coast towards Saxony. He didn’t get very far. It seems he was betrayed, or discovered somehow in a, um, a brothel — I fear His Highness has little talent for acting the part of a lesser mortal — and taken by Duke Leopold’s men. At that point we lost track of him and as of now we have no idea where he is. Our spies have, however, intercepted a copy of a letter dated last month from the Emperor to King Philip of France boasting of Richard’s capture.’
Walter rummaged in a stack of documents on the table in front of him and pulled out a curled parchment. He then began to read:
‘Because our Imperial Majesty has no doubt that your Royal Highness will take pleasure in all those providences of God which exalt us and our Empire, we have thought it proper to inform you of what happened to Richard, King of England, the enemy of our Empire and the disturber of our Kingdom as he was crossing the seas on his way back to his dominions…’