The Troubadour's Song

by David Boyle

  Her husband married again later — the Cypriot princess, finally released on Richard's death, whom he had met in Marseilles on her way home and for whom Richard had conceived such a passion in Palestine. But even that marriage did not last. Raymond abandoned her in favour of the sister of the king of Aragon and she returned home to Cyprus, tried and failed to overthrow the Lusignans, and went into exile in Armenia. Historians never recorded her name, but something of her compelling character and brilliance still lingers somehow behind the basic outlines of her life. On the flimsy grounds that he was her third cousin, Leopold VI, Leopold of Austria's successor, made another failed claim to Cyprus during the Fifth Crusade in 1217.

  Richard's older half-sister Marie of Champagne, the patron oftroubadours and trouvères, had died the previous year of a broken heart when she had heard the news of her son Henry's death on the flagstones of his palace in Acre. Her second son, Thibaut, married Berengaria's sister Blanca in Chartres in 1199, and gave birth to one of the most important troubadours of medieval Europe: Thibaut of Champagne. He grew up to be one of the fathers of French literature and was, incidentally, an ancestor of the current Spanish royal family.

  Eleanor came out of retirement for one final journey, across the Pyrenees at the age of seventy-eight to collect her granddaughter Blanche of Castile — Richard's niece — who was to seal the truce with Philip Augustus by marrying the Dauphin Louis.* Blanche would prove to be the formidable mother of St Louis IX. Her escort was Mercadier, who was killed in a brawl on the way home. On 6 March 1204 Richard's precious Chateau Gaillard fell after Philip's soldiers had managed to climb in through the lavatory in a new extension built by John. Three weeks later, Eleanor died in Fontevrault, where she was buried next to her second husband and her favourite son. Normandy fell to the French shortly afterwards.

  Berengaria lived out her long widowhood in Le Mans — con­stantly urging John to pay her the pension money he had promised — and became known for her work with the poor.† Until the end of her life she styled herself as 'most humble former Queen of the English'. When she died in 1230, her effigy was of a woman with long flowing hair, dressed as a virgin bride, with her feet resting on a lion, and a small dog underneath it — a symbol of faithfulness. Her remains were rediscovered in i960 hidden under the floor of the former chapterhouse of the abbey at L'Epau that she founded. Richard's remains, along with those of his parents and his sister Joanna, were dug up during the French Revolution in 1789 andscattered in the fields — a fate that befell the bones in most of the royal tombs in France. The abbey where they were buried was converted into a prison and remained one until 1963, when the tombs were restored. His heart, which was said to be unusually large when it was removed from his body, was exhumed in 1842 and can now be seen in the Rouen Museum.

  Richard's death sent shock waves across Europe, particularly among the troubadour culture that he had so encouraged — but even they recognized his faults. 'Ah! Lord God! You who are merciful, true God, true man and true life, have mercy,' went the lament written by the troubadour Gaucelm Faidit. 'Pardon him, for he has great need of your compassion. Do not consider his sins, but remember how he was going to serve you.'

  There is no doubting Richard's vanity, his occasional cruelty and his undoubted brutality. But there are aspects of him that remain heroic — his tolerance, his generosity, his imagination and his sheer determination. It is easy to see how contemporaries were staggered and horrified by the news of his death in his prime of life. This is how the chronicler Roger of Howden paid tribute to him:

  His valour could no throng of mighty labours quell, whose way and onward progress no obstacles did retard, no roaring, no rage of the sea, no abyss of the deep, no mountains, no roughness of the path by rocks made rugged, no windings of the road, no devious unknown track, no fury of the winds, no clouds with showers drunk, no thunders, no dreadful visitations, no murky air . . . at the same moment that the will is born, the result is born as well.

  The city walls of Vienna, built with the proceeds of Richard's ransom, had a long and eventful history. They were strengthened and extended constantly, holding off the Ottoman Turks until 1683, even used by the revolutionaries of 1848 to defend the city against the forces sent to suppress them. Because of this, the 1848 revolution hastened their demise and the new Austrian emperor, Franz Joseph I, finally had them demolished in 1857.

  There then followed a battle between the city of Vienna and the imperial Austrian government, both of which claimed the strip of land where the wall and the defensive space in front of it had been for so many centuries. The imperial government won this dispute and sold the land, building the Ringstrasse — the great inner ring road that dominates the heart of Vienna to this day — along the outside of where the wall used to stand. The proceeds from the sale were used to build some of the great nineteenth-century buildings that are the pride of Vienna still. They include some of the most stately architecture in Europe: the opera house and the great museums and galleries, and the new wing of the Hofburg Palace, including a museum to house the imperial crown jewels and the state robes looted from Sicily by Henry VI. Seven decades later, the city of Vienna and the government were still fighting over the money, and claiming compensation for it. They continued to do so until the Anschluss and the Nazi takeover.

  Perhaps it would have pleased Richard that so much of the money paid to release him from prison was used for institutions that still house some of the greatest paintings in the world -Brueghel, Dlirer and Rubens — and still echo to the music of Gustav Mahler and to the waltzes of the Strauss family.

  *It was the intention of Richard and his successors to fight their decisive naval action against the new French navy in these waters, and the plan worked. The first English naval victories at Damme in 1213 and Sluys in 1340 were fought there.

  * London Bridge took thirty-three years to complete. It was built on massive isles erected with enormous difficulty across the river. The first structure on it, in the middle, was a chapel dedicated to Thomas Becket, which eventually housed Peter Colechurch's tomb. It is not absolutely clear how far across the river the bridge would have reached by early 1194, but the evidence is that the northern half was built first. When a northern arch was discovered by archaeolo­gists in 1920, it had the date 1192 carved on it, which implies that the bridge stretched only halfway across the river at that time.

  *The pigs from St Anthony's Hospital had bells around their neck and were allowed to wander and dig for food where they liked.

  *We actually know the names of the two envoys: Foucher de Grendon and Henry Russel.

  † The first tournaments in England did not bode well for the future. When eighty wealthy young knights gathered near Bury St Edmunds for a tournament and came to the town looking for lodgings in the evening, they were put up and fed rather reluctantly by Abbot Sansom. But afterwards they so disturbed the town by oafish drinking, dancing and singing, finally breaking down the town gates to escape in the middle of the night, that — on the advice of Hubert Walter — the abbot had every one of them excommunicated.

  * What he actually said was, 'It is not we who have done this, but God and my right.' The phrase 'God and my right' continues to this day as the motto of the British royal family, 'Dieu et Mon Droit'.

  * There is rather an odd twist to the Grail story, at least as far as this book is concerned. The anonymous author of The High Book of the Grail, early in the thirteenth century, wrote that it had been written for 'the lord of Neele' -Jehan II de Nesle, one of the candidates for being Blondel — who was among the small group of Grail enthusiasts who joined the Fourth Crusade but bypassed Constantinople, and went on almost alone to Syria in 1204.

  *When the French general Henri Gourand arrived in Damascus in 1920, in command of the allied army of occupation, he went straight to Saladin's tomb and announced, 'Saladin, we have returned! My presence here consecrates the victory of the cross over the crescent.' History remains on the side of Saladin for his humane ins
piration to future generations.

  *This did not affect absolutely everybody. Philip Augustus lived until 1223, dying at the age of fifty-seven. Meinhard of Gorz lived until the grand old age of seventy-three, reigning until 1231.

  * Hubert Walter died exhausted in 1205, one of the most successful administra­tors in English history. He was buried in Canterbury Cathedral and the head of Saladin was carved on his tomb.

  *In fact the agreement was to marry Blanche's sister Urraca, but when Eleanor arrived in Castile she said the French would never accept a queen with a name like that and chose Blanche instead.

  † When these clouds that have overcast our serenity shall disperse, and our kingdom shall be full of joyful tranquillity,' wrote John to her in 1214, 'then the pecuniary debt owed to our dear sister shall be paid joyfully and thankfully.'

  11. The Very Last Day of Chivalry

  'At his death, the entire world fell into chaos.'

  the German chronicler Otto of St Blaise on the death of the Emperor Henry VI

  'Who can doubt that such goodness, friendship and charity came from God? Men whose parents, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, had died in agony at our hands, whose lands we took, whom we drove naked from their homes, revived us with their own food when we were dying of hunger, and showered us with kindness even while we were in their power.'

  Oliverus Scholasticus on Sultan al-Malik-al-Kamil, al-Adil's son, who supplied the defeated Christian army with food during the Fifth Crusade

  It is March 1226, more than a quarter of a century later. Although it is daylight outside in the English county of Wiltshire, it is cold and dark inside the unfinished shell of Salisbury Cathedral, the full flowering of the English version of Gothic. The wind and rain are lashing the brand-new walls of golden stone, driving through the unglazed arched windows that normally fill the building with light, and guttering the candles in the chandeliers that hang down the nave. There are flashes of lightning.

  The cathedral is packed with some of the most powerful princes and bishops in the land, up near the high altar in fine red cloaks, which they pull more warmly around them in the cold and damp. Their ladies are behind them in the transepts, with wimples on their heads, and long gowns in bright blues and greens scrapingthe floor. There are some bare-headed girls, and behind them in the nave are the men-at-arms, holding banners that flutter in the wind, and swords that flash in the nervous candlelight.

  Behind them too are the shopkeepers and townspeople of the most famous new town in England — which has been taking shape within sight of the new cathedral — the guildsmen and masons who have been lovingly shaping the carvings, the freemen and merchants who are making Salisbury their own. In the lightning flashes, you can see the unfinished paintings along the walls, the saints, monsters and Bible stories picked out in ochre, red and gold, with texts that describe them in English painted on the back of the stalls.

  It is the funeral of Richard's last surviving brother, William Longspee, Earl of Salisbury, sometime official in charge of Eng­land's tournaments and one of the five dignitaries who laid the foundation stones of this revolutionary new building a mere six years before. He has died in mysterious circumstances at the age of fifty-seven after a successful military campaign in Gascony, the only part of Richard's continental inheritance that remains. He leaves behind four sons, four daughters and a youthful countess, the young heiress who had been discovered in hiding by a knight disguised as a minstrel — a contemporary echo of Blondel's song.

  The eighteen-year-old king, John's son Henry III, is unwell and in Marlborough. The chief justiciar, Hubert de Burgh, is mysteriously absent as well. But there in the nave are William de Mandeville, the Bishop of Winchester, the Earl Marshal — the son and heir of William the Marshal, former Regent of England — and the Bishop of Salisbury, Richard le Poore. It was le Poore's dream of the Virgin Mary that led to the risky decision to build the new cathedral here in marshy Mary's Field, and six years later — plus 40,000 tons of stone on makeshift scaffolding, 15,000 tons of oak and 400 tons of lead for the roof— it has become a reality.

  But also in the congregation are the last of the old generation, those men who fought alongside Longspee on the Third Crusade, veterans who may not have been able to read or write, but who have seen the Saracens on the march, witnessed the magic of a Sufiwanderer on the dusty roads of Europe, braved the storm-tossed Mediterranean by the stars, seen the towers of Rome and Salerno, and the tomb of the Magi in Cologne. These are men who have witnessed with their own eyes the giants of the recent past -Saladin, William the Marshal, Thomas Becket, Eleanor of Aqui­taine and, above all, Richard the Lionheart, for one brief decade the king of England and the pride of Christendom.

  The crowds part a little for them as they go by, because everyone knows who they are, these last few survivors of a golden age. They are listened to with respect because of what they have done and seen, and because of the stories they can tell of the great days before the interdict — the terrible spiritual punishment levelled on the country under King John, now lying unmourned in his tomb in the nave of Worcester Cathedral, before the military disasters that broke the umbilical cord with Normandy and shattered the Angevin empire. And they are discussing these things as they watch the masses said for Longspee before he is lowered into his crusader tomb. Because this is the end of an era, at least as they see it: the very last day of chivalry.

  They are also discussing Longspee himself — his luck in his marriage, his luck at the Battle of Damme, where he destroyed the French invasion fleet in 1213, his judgement about where to place his loyalty in the last few turbulent decades, how he stuck with his half-brother King John at Runnymede for the sealing of the Magna Carta, and way beyond the point where normal loyalty might have left him in the cold. And even when John's rage and cruelty became too overwhelming, when he took the side of the Dauphin Louis — rampaging across the English countryside in 1216 — Longspee had managed to escape the consequences just by announcing he would go on crusade.

  Then there was his luck on the recent journey home from Gascony, struck by a tremendous storm — like this one, lashing the cathedral walls — which tossed them for days in the English Chan­nel. The stars were invisible, and the crew gave up all hope of steering the ship. In desperation, the earl ordered all their goods and weapons thrown overboard to make the ship lighter. It waspitch dark, and just as hope was finally disappearing over the side with them, a strange thing happened. The whole crew could suddenly see a bright light at the top of the mainmast, which transformed itself into a beautiful woman standing there calmly in the storm. Longspee took this as a sign from the Virgin that they would survive. Sure enough, they were driven ashore on an island called Re, and took another boat to Cornwall. But just like his older brother Richard, he was soon to discover how dangerous it was to be too long abroad. Like Odysseus' wife, Penelope, his own wife, Ela, had been surrounded by the most forceful and persuasive suitors. Ela held them at bay, but the king's justiciar, the ambitious Hubert de Burgh, was particularly forceful in pressing the suit of his nephew.

  Enraged by this, Longspee eventually decided to complain to the teenage king. Henry soothed the two barons and forced them to eat dinner together, but it was Longspee's last meal. He became ill on the journey home and, by the time he had reached Salisbury, he knew that he was dying. He summoned the bishop, who gave him the final sacraments, and he died on 7 March. Those who have turned out for his funeral — Hubert de Burgh conspicuous by his absence — are debating whether or not he was poisoned.*

  They are also remembering the story of Longspee's marriage, and perhaps now even comparing it to the famous story of Blondel's song and his search for the missing king. It is impossible to know whether they were aware of the Blondel story by then, or whether they knew the truth behind Richard's discovery — the Christmas espionage by a troubadour — but the chances are that there were those among them who knew both tales. Probably also the death of Richard's last brother was per
suasion enough to share them again. They must have pointed out that it was almost exactly twenty-seven years since Richard's unexpected and disastrousdeath. Had he lived, he would have been sixty-eight — perhaps drawing to the end of a successful reign consolidating the empire, though since his father died at fifty-six and his brother John at forty-eight, perhaps even Richard would have succumbed to old age by now.

  Various questions must also have occurred to them. How would Europe have been different if Richard had lived? Would the Fourth Crusade have been diverted so successfully to attack Constanti­nople if Richard had been involved? Would he have allowed the unholy cooperation between the Pope and some of Philip's hungriest young aristocrats to launch the Albigensian Crusade against the unique culture of southern France? Would he have used his undoubted strategic genius to see, before anyone else, where these trends were leading?

  They would not have been able to provide answers, any more than we can. But they were aware that they were living in a world that had changed out of all recognition since their youth, since those heady days of hope when England had reached into the very bottom of its purse to bring their king home. Something had happened to the world of tolerance, troubadours and tournaments — those underpinnings of the world of chivalry and courtly love — in which they had grown up. Since Richard's release and untimely death, Europe had plunged into an era of brutality — one that subsequent generations would associate most closely with the word 'medieval' — of intolerance, torture and suppression. Some of those present would have approved of the 'pious' spirit of the age, but others of those older relics of the past would look back to the debates, the love songs, the European culture of jiri amor, and regret its passing. There may even have been those present who traced its demise to the arrest of the hero of Christendom in 1192.