The charges were all patently false, ridiculous even. The Emperor was merely seeking a legal pretext that would allow him to keep our sovereign in custody.
‘I must beg you to reconsider,’ said Robertsbridge. ‘The imprisonment of King Richard is in direct contravention of His Holiness the Pope’s decree on the sanctity of those returning from the Great Pilgrimage.’
Henry attempted to look genuinely troubled by the difficulty of balancing the trumped-up accusations laid against Richard and the Pope’s decree: he wrinkled his brow and scratched his head. He frowned, cupped his chin and pretended to be thinking deeply. Then he brightened. Had he been a mummer rather than lord of half of Europe, he would have certainly starved to death.
‘I would dearly like to release the noble King Richard into your custody, I dearly would, but alas, I fear I cannot. These grave charges against him must be answered. Until such time as we can arrange an investigation into his alleged misdeeds, the King of England shall remain with me — not as a prisoner but as an honoured guest, housed in suitable comfort and security.’ Beaming like a village idiot, the Emperor continued: ‘And I very much look forward to spending time with him in the coming weeks. I gather that he and I share a love of poetry and music. Well then, we shall make music together while he is my guest.’ At this point I felt his sharp eyes search me out. ‘We shall make our music by day, of course,’ he said, speaking it seemed directly to me, ‘in a civilized hall. Rather than outside the walls like common thieves in the dark of night.’
However, Robertsbridge had not become a very high and mighty churchman by accident; he had bones of iron. ‘Then, my lord, as his trusted friends and counsellors, we shall stay with our King and see to his comfort and safety until this matter has been properly resolved — unless you have some objection…?’
‘Indeed not, my lord abbot. You and your men are most welcome at my court. Most welcome. Now let us eat!’
There was nothing else to do but join the feast.
We spent a sleepless night. After the feast was over, back at our guest house, the abbots sat up till dawn writing many letters to the great men — and women — of England and Normandy, while Hanno and I packed our possessions, cleaned our swords and armour and prepared to carry these precious missives on the long journey home.
We were to leave the abbots and their monks with King Richard and retrace our steps to The Crow, which would carry us down the Main and the Rhine, all the way back to the North Sea and across it to England. The letters we would carry were of vital importance; in effect we were being entrusted with King Richard’s lifeline, for these letters were his only link to his supporters in England. Undoubtedly Prince John’s assassins would stop at nothing in their efforts to prevent the letters from reaching their destination. Still, I was confident that, with Hanno at my side and a yard of steel in my hand, we would be more than a match for them. There would be no shameful running away this time, I told myself.
Bidding a fond farewell to the abbots by the barbican gate at the north-western corner of Ochsenfurt, Hanno and I shouldered our back-sacks and were soon trudging down the road beside the Main towards the Tuckelhausen wharf where we had left The Crow two days earlier. I have to admit that I was exhausted after two sleepless nights and the dramatic events that had occurred since we moored at the rickety monastery wharf. But I was buoyed by our success. What a tale I would have to tell Perkin! We had completed our mission; we had found the King and made his life a little safer and his person a little more comfortable — for the moment. Soon all Europe would know of his whereabouts; he had been brought out into the light, and the risk of murky, dishonourable, hole-and-corner dealings between his enemies was diminished. Despite my tiredness I was happy; warmed by the glow of our victory and looking forward to telling Perkin all about my adventures, singing with the King and fighting the two assassins — no doubt he would be suitably impressed — and then I would curl up in the stern cabin under a blanket and sleep the sleep of the just while Adam and he crewed the big black sailing barge downstream towards home.
It was Hanno’s sharp eye that noticed it first: a wisp of grey smoke against a grey cloudy sky, just a tendril. When he drew my attention to it, I muttered something about a local peasant’s campfire, my mind split between happy thoughts of returning home and the need, given my exhausted state, to concentrate on putting one foot ahead of the other. But as we approached, the wisp of smoke thickened, fattened and grew darker until we both knew we were looking at a disaster. Hanno and I broke into a run at the same time, sprinting up the road towards the wharf as fast as we could under the weight of the heavy back-sacks. The column of smoke turned black and evil, twisting up into the sky like a fat snake, dark as sin and speckled with bright flecks of orange sparks that danced upward in the roiling stream.
We rounded a bend and blundered straight into the scene of a catastrophe: The Crow was blazing from stern to bow, its cargo of hardwood timber the perfect fodder for a holocaust. The heat from the flames was ferocious, and we could not approach closer than a dozen yards to the burning craft. But I could make out the body of a man through the smoke and flames, pierced many times, lying in a pool of sizzling blood at the prow of the barge, his blond hair frizzling, curling and blackening in the heat, and I could smell the pork-like stench of his roasting flesh. It was Adam. His face was turned towards me and his blue seafarer’s eyes stared into nothingness. I crossed myself and began to mutter the Ave Maria over and over to myself under my breath — for Adam’s dead body was not the worst sight that polluted our gaze on that cursed morning: on the wooden jetty, before the roaring boat, was a far worse sight.
Through the eddies of choking smoke, I could see the arms, legs and torso of a young man, and a yard or so away was his head: a snub-nosed, red-haired head. It had not been severed by a blade; from the neck protruded strands of tissue, ligament, veins, and a sharp dagger spike of white broken bone, while the skin of the neck was stretched and floppy. Perkin’s head had been ripped off by immensely powerful hands, much as one might decapitate a chicken. I felt the gorge rise in my throat, but fought back the urge to vomit. Rage consumed me: I was in no doubt as to who had done this.
Hanno, who had been questing around the beaten ground beyond the gusting veil of smoke, soon confirmed my opinion. ‘It is them,’ he said simply. And he indicated two sets of footprints: one set long and thin, the other huge and round, like the paw print of an enormous beast.
I pictured the two assassins as I had first set eyes on them by the light of Ralph Murdac’s fire, and found I was almost crying with fury at what they had done to my friends. My sword was in my hand and I felt an almost overpowering urge to kill, to hack and maim — to bring my blade against these two monsters in the name of justice.
‘They are not long gone,’ said Hanno. He was looking at me with searching, furious eyes. ‘We must catch them. Come, Alan, I can track them. They are not so far ahead of us. Come, let us go after them now.’
And I wanted nothing more than to do just that. God above knows how much it would have pleased me to strip off my back-sack, toss it down, and run these foul, misshapen creatures to earth so that I could hack them into gobbets. What I did next was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do in my life.
‘No, Hanno,’ I said. And I found I was breathing hard, almost panting. ‘No,’ I said again through gritted teeth. ‘We must see that these letters are delivered. If we were to catch them — as I earnestly pray to God and all the saints that I may do some day — one of us might be injured and that would lessen our chances of successfully carrying these precious messages back to England.’