Seeking Jerusalem

by H A CULLEY

  At Gorizia their luck was in. A horse fair was in progress and they managed to buy the horses they needed to mount everyone; the nags from the village being relegated to pack horses. With provisions for the road and several tents, they set off again. However, such apparently wealthy pilgrims had not escaped the notice of Engelbert, Lord of Gorizia. Furthermore there was no disguising Richard’s height. He stood head and shoulders above the rest and Engelbert soon put two and two together when he was told about the strange party of pilgrims. He thought that there was a fair chance that this could be the famed Richard the Lionheart returning to England incognito, so he sent a messenger to Graf Meinhart to let him know.

  Three days later the crusaders stopped at a tavern to eat and Simon soon came back to the king’s table somewhat alarmed. ‘Hugo, they know that you are in Gorz and there are patrols out looking for you. One passed through here yesterday. They also know that we are headed for the Hungarian border.’

  ‘Thank you, Simon.’ The king smiled at him. ‘You are becoming invaluable.’

  After the meal they changed their intended route and headed for Udine to the North West instead. From here they could join other travellers on the Via Julia Augusta, the main route to the Alps. This plan worked well until the king fell ill again. They had to leave the caravan they were travelling with and spent some time at the monastery at Moggio to allow him to recover. Had it not been for this delay they might well have escaped into Bohemia. As it was, the hunt for the Lionheart had reached Freisach on the road to Vienna before Richard got there.

  Once again it was Simon who warned the king. He had been sent ahead with Tristan to make sure that the town was safe to enter. Freisach was a silver mining town owned by the Bishop of Salzburg, but it was full of the troops of Freidrich of Pettau, one of Duke Leopold’s barons.

  After a hasty conference it was agreed that they needed to buy time for the king to reach Vienna, and then cross into Bohemia. The tallest man after the Lionheart was Baldwin de Bethune, so he volunteered to spend lavishly and draw attention to himself in order to get arrested as Richard. By the time they discovered the truth the real King Richard should be safely over the border.

  The king decided that the smaller the group was, the more likely they were to pass unnoticed. He chose Richard de Cuille and William de l’Etang to accompany him and he also took Simon as the only German speaker. As Leopold’s men were looking for a party of pilgrims, the two Richards and William discarded their pilgrim’s robes and donned Templar surcoats. As their squire, Simon wore a padded leather jerkin with a silver cross on a chain, given to him by the king, hanging round his neck.

  The four rode hard for Vienna, covering the distance of a hundred and fifty miles in just three days. By the time they got there they and their horses were exhausted and the king went down again with a fever. They took a room in Erdberg and, as the only one who spoke the language and therefore the least likely to draw attention to himself, Simon was sent out each day to buy food.

  It was unfortunate that on the third day, when Richard was nearly recovered, a thief tried to steal Simon’s silver cross and, in the struggle, Simon drew his dagger and wounded the thief. The city watch were called and, when Simon had trouble answering their questions about who he was satisfactorily, they arrested both the bleeding thief and Simon.

  When Simon didn’t return William went out to look for him but there was no sign of him in the market place. By this time the squire was being questioned by the captain of the town watch, but he could get nothing out of him. He was therefore taken to Duke Leopold’s constable, a sadistic man who immediately put the boy to the torture without trying to question him first. Simon was stripped to his braies and whipped until he sobbed with pain. The red hot irons were applied to his chest and his legs. When he still didn’t speak the hot iron was plunged into one eye. It was when they threatened to blind him by burning out the other eye that the brave young squire eventually broke down. He gabbled that King Richard was in Vienna and gave them the address.

  The constable stepped close to the mutilated boy and whispered ‘thank you, you have earned your release.’ He then drew his dagger across Simon’s throat and watched his life blood stream down his chest.

  ‘Throw this piece of carrion in the Danube.’ He spat on the dead boy before setting off with a dozen guards for the address he had been given.

  The three were now really worried by Simon’s failure to return and William went out again to look for him. Half an hour later the door to their room was thrown open and several men with drawn swords rushed in. Richard de Cuille had been sitting cleaning his own sword by the fireplace whilst the king rested on the bed when they burst in. Whilst the Austrians hesitated on the threshold, assessing the room, Lord Richard lunged and skewered one man through the belly. He dropped yelling in agony to the floor just as Richard recovered and jabbed his sword forward into the jugular of another guard.

  The king had seized his own sword when the door burst open and now thrust it passed Richard into the side of one of the two men that the older man was fighting. The two Normans killed another guard before a guttural voice commanded the soldiers to stand aside. When they did so the two Richards found themselves faced by two crossbowmen threatening them from the other side of the landing. The guttural voice of the constable barked out another order and one of the crossbowmen fired at Richard de Cuille. The quarrel hit his chest with such force that, at such close range, it punched through his clothing and smashing its way through his body so that shards of bone blew a large hole in his back.

  When William de l’Etang returned twenty minutes later the dead Austrians had been removed and a girl was scrubbing at the bloodstains. Richard de Cuille had been left when he had fallen just inside the room.

  Eventually he found a priest to bury him. The priest confirmed what William already suspected: Richard the Lionheart, King of England, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, Count of Anjou and Maine was a prisoner of Duke Leopold of Austria.

  Chapter Fourteen – England – 1193

  William hurried down to the river to book his passage up the Danube towards Bohemia. His priority was to get back to England and let Queen Eleanor and William Marshal know the dire news about the king as soon as possible.

  Just as he crossed one of the bridges over the river to reach the docks he glance down and, at first, he paid little attention to the dead youth floating face down in the water; then the body rolled over and he recognised the mutilated face of Simon de Chalons. He had liked both Richard de Cuille and Simon and their deaths enraged him; especially that of Simon. When he reached the body he saw the marks of the torture the boy had been subjected to. He didn’t blame him for betraying the king’s hiding place, he was just amazed at how much torture the lad had obviously withstood before he had given in.

  He retraced his steps and paid the priest an additional sum to give Simon a Christian burial alongside Richard de Cuille. He questioned the priest further and found out that it was the constable himself who had come with the guards to arrest the mysterious man at the tavern. For a further donation the priest gave William a description of the constable and the interesting information that he had a mistress in the town.

  That night William waited patiently in the shadows from where he could see the postern gate in the walls around the castle. He had walked around the walls in daylight and reasoned that the constable would want to be discreet about his relationship and so would probably use the postern to leave, rather than the main gate.

  Just before midnight the postern opened and a boy stepped out holding a lantern. By its light William could clearly see that the well-dressed man who followed matched the description of the constable. Preceded by the page with the lantern the man made his way down into the lower town; William followed at a distance. He was bothered by the presence of the page. He didn’t want to kill, or even hurt, a boy of nine or ten but he couldn’t risk him raising the alarm either. In the end he made his mind up and walked quickly to cat
ch them up.

  As he passed the two he muttered ‘guten abend’ in what he hoped was a passable German accent then swiftly turned and swing his fist into the jaw of the boy. He dropped unconscious like a stone and the lantern rolled away, the candle spluttering and going out. Before the astounded constable could react William had his dagger out and plunged it into the neck of the constable to stop him crying out. As the man lay there dying William threw off the cheap cloak he had bought to keep blood off his clothes and sprinted down towards the docks. He had already loaded his gear onto the barge that he had booked passage on and, once away from the scene of the killing, he strolled along nonchalantly, knowing that he had several hours before dawn when his boat was due to sail.

  From the docks they heard the hue and cry but no-one thought to stop boats sailing before William’s barge cast off.

  Three weeks later William de l’Etang disembarked from another ship at Dover and the following day he was shown into the council chamber in the palace of Westminster where Queen Eleanor and William Marshal were waiting to hear his tale.

  ~#~

  Tristan Cuille rode over the last rise before Harbottle and gazed down at the village and the castle. It was a peaceful scene with snow blanketing the land and only a few people hurrying from here to there in the cold of a January day. He kicked his horse back into a walk.

  ‘Hopefully this is the end of my adventures, at long last,’ Tristan muttered to himself as he rode downhill.

  Once Simon had left with the king and Lord Richard, Alan had become Miles’s squire by default. They had been arrested in Freisach along with Baldwin de Bethune and the rest of their group but, once their captors had discovered that Baldwin wasn’t the Lionheart, they were released after ten days and payment of a fine. They then started to make their way back to England north through the Holy Roman Empire. This consisted of numerous independent states and they were delayed on several occasions by the need to keep obtaining new safe conducts.

  They had abandoned their disguise and travelled openly as crusaders returning from the Holy Land but that didn’t stop them being set upon by brigands just after they had struggled across the Alps south of Munich. They were outnumbered but they managed to beat them off with the loss of three of their number, including Alan. They had buried him and the other two in the churchyard of the next village they had come to. After that they travelled with others as much as possible.

  They used the last of their silver to buy passage on a ship to take them across the channel from Amsterdam and up the Thames to London. Tristan was now penniless but his uncle had handed him a document for safekeeping, together with a secret code, before he left with the king. Tristan made his way to the New Temple and presented a suspicious clerk with the document and the code.

  ‘How much do you wish to withdraw, Lord Richard.’

  Tristan thought it simpler not to confuse the man by explaining that he was the baron’s nephew so he just asked for all of it. He was amazed when two brawny serjeants staggered in with a chest full of white sacks of silver with a red cross on each sack. He knew that the Templars also acted as bankers, but he hadn’t realised just how much money his uncle had managed to accumulate whilst on crusade. Then he thought back to all those Saracen caravans they had ambushed and he began to understand. He selected two bags to provide him with enough money to buy a destrier, a packhorse and armour as well as fresh clothes and asked for a new document to enable him to transfer the balance to his uncle’s banker in Edinburgh.

  He had gone to see William Marshal before he left London, having heard the rumours about the king’s incarceration. He assumed that his uncle was also imprisoned with him so he wasn’t prepared for the news about Lord Richard’s death. That night Tristan wept for a long time in his room. He had loved and respected his uncle and he had rejoiced that Richard had seemed to put Jocelyn’s death and the black moods it engendered behind him in the Holy Land. After all the narrow escapes out there, how ironic was it that he died at the hands of a fellow Christian?

  William Marshal had given him a letter confirming, as regent, that he was now the Baron of the Cheviot and sent two serjeants to escort him safely as far as Newcastle. On his way north he had diverted to Lowestoft to visit the heiress that the king had promised him. He was curious to see her but wondered whether she knew anything about her impending betrothal. He should have asked William Marshal; presumably he would have known.

  He needn’t have worried. Not only did the girl and her mother know all about Tristan but she was as anxious to meet him as he was her. Alice was a very pretty girl and, at nearly fourteen, she was showing definite signs of the woman she would become. Tristan was very taken with her at first sight but worried about what she would make of him. Alice tried to keep her feelings hidden but the way she kept looking at him rather gave the game away. He had stayed for two days, much to the annoyance of his escort and left promising to make arrangements for the betrothal just as soon as he could get the necessary written permission from the co-regent.

  But now he was home. The gates of the castle were open and he waved at the curious sentry as he rode through them. He had purchased a new black surcoat in London but didn’t have time to get it embroidered with the family coat of arms. A young man dressed in a surcoat with the de Cuille badge on his chest came out of the keep. He didn’t recognise him at first, then he realised it must be Edwin. Tristan was about to ask after Edwin’s father when Miles and Roland joined him.

  ‘Tristan, my boy, thank God you are safe,’ Miles called out to him and he strode to meet him. Tristan dismounted and hands the reins to a stable boy before embracing Miles.

  ‘But where is Lord Richard? Is he not with you? And why are you on your own? Where’s Simon?’

  ‘It’s a long story, Miles, and a sad one.’ He thought again about his uncle and the way he had died. ‘Come inside and I will tell you all about it.’

  There was a glum silence after Tristan had finished. ‘What a horrible way to die.’ Roland was visibly shocked to hear of Simon’s death after being tortured. They had only known each other for a short while, but each had instinctively liked the other.

  ‘I must learn to call you ‘my lord’ now it seems.’ Miles smiled, trying to lighten the atmosphere.

  ‘Which reminds me, I must lodge the Earl of Pembroke’s letter with the prior on Holy Island, and get him to release Roland to me,’ Tristan muttered, half to himself.

  ‘To you?’ Roland queried. He hadn’t thought about his own future now that the father he had known so briefly was dead.

  ‘Yes, as your cousin and your lord I am to be your guardian until you are knighted. The letter also confirms you as lord of the manor of Akeld once you reach your majority. It was your father’s wish so I have therefore enacted it.’

  ‘Thank you … my lord.’

  ‘He learns fast,’ Tristan commented and the others smiled at the weak jest.

  ‘Tristan you’re back!’ A voice boomed across the hall and Elliot Elwood, now in his late forties, came across to greet him dressed, as usual, in nothing but a tunic and belt and carrying several fat trout in his hand.

  When they had first met a few days ago, Roland had looked askance at the ugly, hairy Scot and still wondered at the affection with which he was held by the others.

  ‘And where is Richard? Has he not come back with you?’ He looked expectantly at Tristan.

  ‘I’m sorry, Elliot. He was killed in Vienna when the king was captured.’

  ‘Oh, no! Not dead? Not Richard?’ Elliot sat down dumbstruck. Elliot and Richard had hunted together ever since they were boys and Elliot lived only to serve him. He had hated it when Richard was away as a squire, and then again when he left on crusade. He just couldn’t believe that he would never return.

  That evening Miles, Elliot, Tristan and Edwin sat in the great hall and drank more than was wise in an effort to forget. As the evening wore on the talk got around to those they had known and who were now dead. Miles felt they we
re getting maudlin and said so. There was a companionable silence for a while, then Miles wondered aloud what had happened to Waldo Cuille.

  ‘There was a whisper that he was forced to work as an agent of Prince John after he was let off rather leniently for killing Sir John Beauilly, or so Lord Edward said,’ Edwin murmured.

  ‘What use could John Softsword have with a one-handed knight?’ Miles wondered.

  ~#~

  Waldo knew that he was being followed. It was an elementary precaution for the prince to take, of course. What he didn’t know was how many men were shadowing him. His instructions were to make for Grimsby and take ship from there to the continent, ideally landing in Normandy, and to travel from there to Dol in Brittany, where Duchess Constance would be expecting him. Obviously she had no idea that Waldo was being sent to kill her son. John was Arthur’s uncle and could be expected to take an interest in his military education, even if five was somewhat younger than normal for a boy to make a start.

  However, Waldo had no intention of becoming an assassin, especially of innocent young boys. He had killed twice in cold blood and on both occasions it was to avenge the murder of a member of his immediate family. However, if he was to escape the task, then he would have to kill again, possibly several times, to get John’s bloodhounds off his scent. Then perhaps he could make a new life for himself where John and his agents would never find him.

  He hadn’t bothered to contact the innkeeper at the Trip to Jerusalem. It was too dangerous and, as he had no intention of murdering little Prince Arthur, he didn’t see the point in taking the risk. William Marshal wouldn’t be pleased but then, if John couldn’t find him, then neither could the Earl of Pembroke.