Crowner's Crusade

SIX

At the first light of dawn, John de Wolfe stood with Gwyn on a stretch of coarse grass above a muddy shore. He had a momentary sensation of all this having happened before, but then realized that instead of a pebbled beach below a wooded hill in Ragusa Bay, they were stranded on the edge of an apparently limitless marsh, which stretched inland for miles. In the far distance, the jagged peaks of snow-covered mountains lined the northern horizon, whilst nearby, gullies and runnels of brown water meandered between reeds and bullrushes.

The survivors were clustered around the king in a ragged group, each clutching a bundle of their personal possessions carried from the Medusa, which now sat leaning over on the mud in a couple of feet of water. The wind had dropped markedly as it hit the land, but there was still a stiff breeze strong enough to whip their cloaks about their legs. Robert de Turnham had just squelched up the beach to join them, having been questioning the shipmaster, who had stayed aboard the cog with his crew.

‘The man says the vessel is undamaged and he can float it off in a couple of days when the moon brings a higher tide,’ he reported. ‘He is willing take us back to Pola or Zara if we want to wait.’

King Richard’s frustration turned his voice into an angry snarl. ‘To hell with that, I’m staying on dry land! Not that this poxy swamp is dry. . wherever it is!’

Baldwin, equally thankful to be off the heaving sea, also wanted to know where they had landed. ‘Does the shipman know where this place might be?’

‘He says he thinks it is east of Venice, in the marshes beyond the mouth of the Tagliamento. Further east is Istria, which is where Hungary begins.’

The learned clerk, Philip of Poitou, standing shivering in his wet cloak, had a better knowledge of geography that the others. ‘Then Aquileia must be hereabouts,’ he said. ‘At least, it was in Roman times, when it was one of the greatest cities in the world.’

‘Can we seek aid there?’ demanded the king, his bushy auburn beard jutting dangerously, as his temper shortened.

The clerk shook his head sadly. ‘The city was destroyed many centuries ago by Attila the Hun, sire. But the local counts who rule this region still hold the titles of Advocates of Aquileia, so there may still be some sort of settlement there.’

The Lionheart nodded brusquely, anxious for action. ‘Right, then let us seek out these Advocates and impress upon them that we are Crusaders returning from the Holy Land, deserving of their hospitality and assistance, as the Pope directs all men to provide on pain of excommunication.’

‘The Truce of God!’ intoned the chaplain reverently, crossing himself.

Baldwin of Bethune, who had been an ambassador to the Flemish Court and knew much about European politics, broke in with a caution. ‘We must be careful, sire. These counts now hold their lands in fealty to the Holy Roman Empire, so if Emperor Henry’s warnings to watch out for you have reached here, these local lords may present a real danger to us.’

William de L’Etang agreed. ‘Our long journey must have made half of Europe aware that you are travelling home with an escort of Templars. And the news of two visits to Corfu and then your generous endowment to Ragusa cathedral must have spread widely and places you firmly in the Adriatic. I doubt we can slip by them into Hungary without being recognized for who we are.’

‘So what do you suggest we do?’ asked the king. ‘By hook or by crook, we need to reach sanctuary with Henry the Lion in Saxony.’ Richard was the supreme tactician when it came to fighting battles, but this particular problem was unfamiliar to him.

‘My Lord, our Templar brothers here are the most obvious pointer to our identity,’ ventured John de Wolfe. ‘If they would discard their revealing surcoats, we could all pose as shipwrecked pilgrims returning from, say the Virgin Mary’s house in Ephesus. We all obtained anonymous clothing after the wrecking in Ragusa, so with our long hair and beards that would fit in well with the deceit.’

Richard looked dubious, as his natural desire to flaunt his kingship battled with necessity. ‘And who am I supposed to be in this mummer’s pageant you suggest?’

The diplomatic Baldwin jumped into the breach, sensing the king’s reluctance to hide his royal light under a bushel. ‘You could pose as a rich merchant, my lord, with a retinue of a few servants leading a band of pilgrims back to France.’

Richard’s mercurial temperament seized on the novelty of this plan, which as he always demanded, made him the leader. ‘Very well, I shall call myself Hugo of Tours. First, we shall need horses, if they have such things in this God-forsaken place.’

They looked despondently around at the miles of empty marshland, until one of the Templars spotted thin smoke rising from behind a small mound about a mile to the east.

‘We’ll try there first, if we can make the natives understand a single word,’ commanded the king. ‘Philip, have you any notion of what tongue they would speak here?’

The clerk considered this problem. ‘I would think that west of here, it would be some dialect of the north of Italy. But we must be in or certainly near Carinthia and the lands of the Archbishop of Salzburg, so the Germanic languages would prevail.’

‘And we speak none of them?’ replied Richard, sardonically. ‘But no doubt money speaks all tongues, given in sufficient quantity!’

Before they set off to walk in search of a habitation, the six Templar knights who still had their surcoats with the distinctive red crosses, reluctantly discarded them. Of the eighteen men, a dozen still had their swords, the rest having lost them in the confusion of two shipwrecks. John still had his under his long grey mantle and Gwyn had kept his battered weapon slung in its scabbard across his broad back.

The king’s remark about money opening mouths, led to another ceremony before they moved off the head of the beach. The small treasure chest was opened and Richard directed William to distribute much of the remaining coinage amongst the company.

‘We cannot lug this heavy box across Europe,’ he announced. ‘And it is very likely that we shall be split up at some stage, so I am giving each man sufficient for his sustenance, keeping the remainder for horses and whatever situations may arise.’

Each of the knights received a handful of silver lira which they stuffed into the scrips on their belts, Gwyn and the Templar sergeant being given the same. The rest was distributed for safe keeping between the king’s inner circle of clerk, chaplain, admiral, Baldwin, William and de Wolfe. As well as the silver coins from Lucca, there were some heavy gold bezants, the more valuable coins from Constantinople. Richard kept many of these for himself, but included a few in the dole to his closest retainers. He secreted his slim coronial circlet and his Great Seal into a wide pocket inside his cloak, then the empty chest was thrown into the nearest gully, stuffed with the discarded Templar garments.

The small band of fugitives then set off across the marshes — it was December the tenth, two months and a day since they had slipped away from Acre.

The smoke came from a miserable hamlet built slightly above the flood level of the plain. Too small to be called a village, the dozen huts thatched with reeds contained a frightened handful of peasants, none of whom could speak or understand anything the travellers said. Terrified by the arrival of almost a score of large foreigners, all that could be gained from the headman was the word ‘Aquileia’, accompanied by vigorous pointing north-eastwards.

At least there was a track leading away from the hamlet, better than the endless stumbling through reeds and jumping across ditches that they had endured coming from the beach. Within a couple more hours, they had covered about six miles and arrived at a dilapidated town built amongst the crumbling ruins of what had been a vast settlement. There were still columns and walls that marked it as the ancient Roman metropolis, though an odd feature for such a modest town was a large and much more recent basilica with a tall bell tower. What was of more interest to the king’s party was the sight of a small priory adjacent to the basilica, built of old red bricks salvaged from the Roman ruins.

Brother Anselm went inside and found someone with whom he could speak Latin and soon, with the stimulus of some of the royal silver, they were being fed in the refectory that catered for the dozen monks. The rich merchant ‘Hugo’ and his ‘steward’ Baldwin, offered the prior a fictitious account of their pilgrimage to Ephesus and the more honest account of their latest shipwreck. They learned that the basilica was the seat of the Patriarch of Aquileia, who was currently in Venice, having been chased out again by the Counts of Gorz, vassals of the Holy Roman Emperor.

The prior informed them that the nearest large town was Gorizia, where Count Englebert III was one of the Advocates, his brother-in-law Meinhart II being the other, residing in the more northerly town of Udine, up towards the edge of the Alps.

The next problem was horses and John de Wolfe and Gwyn volunteered to go with one of the monks to scour the little town for steeds. Though John was unable to either read or write any language, over years of campaigning he had picked up a rudimentary knowledge of dog-Latin, so was able to stumble through some basic words to do with horses. To find enough of them for sale in a place this size was asking a great deal, but they were fortunate in that it was a market day and amongst the goats, sheep and skinny cattle being sold, they found ten horses and four ponies. The monk arranged for the animals to be brought to the priory, where the king grandly dispensed his silver to pay for the overpriced steeds, in spite of the muted protests of his clerk at yet another example of the royal extravagance. It was now about noon, according to the position of the watery sun seen between the scudding clouds.

‘How far is this place called Gorizia? Can we ride there before darkness falls?’ demanded the Lionheart, who spoke excellent Latin, though he had never bothered to learn a word of the native language of his English kingdom.

He was assured that if they set off at once, they should cover the nineteen miles by time the winter dusk set in, as the remains of the old Roman road was straight and still in fair condition.

The next problem was conveying eighteen bodies on only fourteen horses. The senior Templar, Sir Gerald de Clare, wryly observed that four of his fellow knights could demonstrate the original full title of their Order — The Poor Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon — and ride two to a horse to emphasize their poverty. The Great Seal of the Templars actually depicted two knights squeezed on to the back of a single beast.

They set off, with four of the larger horses carrying a pair of the thinnest knights. None of the mounts had saddles, only a blanket and a simple bridle, but all the riders were very experienced and they had little trouble in keeping up a steady pace on the flat, straight track, where much of the old Roman paving was still in place.

‘Thank God for a horse under my legs, instead of a heaving ship,’ de Wolfe exclaimed, as he rode alongside Gwyn. Their steeds were skinny, but seemed healthy, as were the mountain ponies ridden by the clerk, chaplain and a couple of the Templars. The king naturally had the best of the beasts and rode proudly at their head, as if he was riding to battle at the head of his army.

As they rode, John could not help comparing this journey with riding through the leafy lanes of his native Devon. Though there was a large area of tide-marsh along the estuary of the River Exe, its green turf was nothing like this vast expanse of greyish-brown reeds and dead grass. There were certainly no snow-covered peaks standing on the horizon like jagged teeth — at home, he would have seen the rolling heaths of distant Dartmoor, with their curious granite tors heaped up on the skyline. Having been away for so much of his adult life, he was never homesick as such — with Matilda as a wife, home was a place to be avoided. But as he grew older, he found that the places of his childhood and youth crept more often into his consciousness. As he rode across this dreary marshland, he saw in his mind the manor of Stoke-in-Teignhead where he was born, in its little dell a short distance from the River Teign. The sea cliffs were a mile away, as was the sandy harbour of Teignmouth. He could see again his parents and his brother and sister — and unbidden, the face of the beautiful Hilda came to him, the daughter of the reeve at their other manor at Holcombe, just up the coast.

‘Don’t fall asleep, Sir John! Without a saddle, you’ll fall off that bloody horse!’ Gwyn’s rough voice jerked him out of his reverie. The big Cornishman looked after him better than any wife, whether it be saving him from an Irish pike or a Saracen’s sword — or just preventing him from falling from his horse. As he pulled his attention back to his present surroundings, he wondered if Gwyn’s brand of Cornish-Welsh had ever been heard here since time began.

The prior in Aquileia had been somewhat optimistic about reaching Gorizia before dark, but the city with its prominent castle on a hill was still visible in the distance just before the last of the day faded. Starlight and a gibbous moon low on the horizon got them to the gate in the city wall, which as usual was firmly closed at nightfall. However, there was an inn outside, which was used to catering for latecomers. At the sight of Hugo’s silver, the taverner, who spoke a halting Italian variety of Latin, was happy to accommodate them. He showed them a large loft which occupied the whole upper storey and said that he could supply straw-bags for sleeping. Their horses were fed and tethered in a paddock at the back and the enterprising landlord sold them another four animals to make up the numbers.

Inside the wooden building, they were given a meal of indifferent potage followed by boiled mutton and beans, washed down with a raw local wine.

After eating, the king called them to a conference around the firepit. ‘So far, we have made good progress, but where do we go from here? The choice is still either to ride east into Hungary — or try to cross the mountains and reach Moravia and then Bohemia, where Prince Ottakar is at odds with Emperor Henry and should look sympathetically on us. From there we can easily move into Saxony.’

John de Wolfe’s knowledge of Central Europe was not enough to follow this and certainly Gwyn had never heard of either of those countries, but Baldwin spoke up. ‘Given that we are unsure of the reception we might get from King Bela — and the very long journey from here to Estergom, I suggest that we consider riding north, even though it is likely to be more hostile country.’

William de L’Etang agreed with Baldwin, though Robert de Turnham was very dubious about crossing into Austria, given the bad blood that had arisen in Palestine between Richard and Duke Leopold. The Lionheart had thrown down Leopold’s banner from the walls of Acre and had refused him a share of the loot, on the grounds that the Austrian had contributed little to the successful siege. De Wolfe had nothing to contribute to the discussion, but could sense that the Lionheart was already set on trying to get directly to Saxony.

‘Sire, are we to make ourselves known to the ruler of this city, or is that too dangerous?’ asked William de L’Etang. ‘Some local knowledge of the route and perhaps the help of a guide would be of great help to us.’

They discussed this for a while, Robert de Turnham and a few others feeling that it would be too dangerous to approach a vassal of the Empire, in case orders had already reached them that the royal party was to be seized on sight. However, the idea attracted Richard, who seemed to find it hard to imagine that his kingly status would not overawe a mere count.

‘Baldwin, dear friend, you are the most diplomatic among us. Take this ruby ring I purchased in Ragusa and go up to the castle to present it with my compliments as a gift to this local chieftain. Your silver tongue will no doubt persuade him to offer us safe conduct and guidance tomorrow.’ Richard pulled off the wide gold band carrying the precious stone and passed it to his courtier.

With misgivings on the part of some of the others, the man from Bethune sought out the innkeeper and, with a few more coins, persuaded him to take him to the town gate, where yet more silver got them entry through a wicket.

The group waited uneasily in the gloom of the tavern for his return. They were all dog-tired after being shipwrecked and then walking and riding across miles of unfamiliar countryside.

John de Wolfe, though a phlegmatic and somewhat unimaginative man, pondered on their being adrift in potentially hostile territory. They had only the clothes they wore, a few weapons and a pouchful of money, with many hundreds of miles between them and home. Though he had spent many months, indeed years, in foreign lands, he had always been part of an army, not isolated like this, with the great responsibility of protecting his king.

After two hours, John began to wonder if Baldwin had been seized at the castle, but finally he appeared at the door, looking anxious and agitated as he hurried to bend his knee to the king.

‘My Lord, dark though it is, I think we should leave at once. I do not trust the man I met to keep his word!’