Part Two
Chapter Eight
We are as busy as the bees now at Westbury: it is mid-June, sunny, and our broad blue Nottinghamshire skies are scarcely troubled by a single cloud – it is the time for my sheep flocks to be sheared, and the blacksmith’s forge has been busy fashioning new sets of wicked-looking shears and sharpening old ones. In the hot weather the animals become uneasy, burdened as they are with their winter coats, and the shearing is a mercy to them. It is a blessing to me, too, as the price of wool has risen greatly in recent years, and I look set to make a pretty penny from the thick grey fleeces. Also, in less than a week, if the weather holds fair, I shall be sending the teams out to mow the hay meadows, to dry, then gather and stack the long grass to make winter feed for my beasts.
Osric is fully occupied in this season; he will oversee the sheep shearing, and the sorting of the fleeces, and inspect the meadows after the hay has been cut. Indeed, we all have our allotted tasks to perform, myself included. But, although there is so much to do, I have set myself an extra task: I have decided to watch Osric from the shadows, quietly and constantly, using all the old, stealthy skills that Hanno taught me long ago. I aim to catch him at some misdeed and expose him as a villain to my daughter-in-law Marie. Then, only then, will I be free of him. I cannot sleep at night for worrying – indeed I have not slept so much as a wink for many nights now. I am still certain he is trying to murder me, but I have no proof, and proof will be needed to show Marie that she has married a monster.
It is surely a mercy that I have survived this long. Now it is time to act. So I will watch Osric, and watch well. I know that his malice is not a figment of my imagination. The other evening, about a week ago, I saw him adding a pinch of white powder to my bowl of soup as it stood on the sideboard – a slow poison, no doubt, of the type I had heard of on my travels in the East. Marie brings me supper in my chamber these days, as I work long after nightfall on these pages by beeswax candlelight – an extravagance, I know, but I feel a terrible urgency upon me. I have a premonition of my own death, and I wish to finish my tale before some evil befalls me.
I was fortunate to catch Osric in the act of poisoning my soup. I had been summoned by a groom to look at a sick horse in the stables and was returning through the hall to my chamber when I saw the mole-like fellow adding his infernal white powder to the bowl. I challenged him, of course, immediately, loudly, and the rascal had the nerve to claim that it was merely salt that he was adding to my evening meal to add savour to the broth. It was a lie, of course, I could see it in his blushing face – since when does a busy bailiff concern himself with flavouring of his master’s food? I poured the bowl away without tasting it, and gave orders to the servants that Osric must not be allowed near any dish that is destined for my table.
And yet, a part of me wishes that I had not challenged him so openly and accused him so angrily of wishing to poison me. I showed my hand to him, and it has put him on his guard. I have been watching him for a fortnight now, following him on horseback at a distance when he goes out to the fields or into the village of Westbury, watching him by day, all day, from a stool placed in a spot of shade outside the front of the hall. Sometimes I try to surprise him by appearing suddenly when he is out of plain sight, in an outbuilding, perhaps. And he often appears guiltily startled when I pop out from behind a door like a rabbit from its hole. But I have not caught him in any obvious crime yet. Indeed, most of the time he acts as innocently as a lamb, going about his business as if he did not have a care in the world. That is surely a mark of the man’s devilish cunning.
Each night, I pray to Almighty God that He may hold off Osric’s malice for a little longer, and that He grant me time to finish this manuscript, to complete my tale of Robert of Locksley, of Little John, of Marie-Anne, Goody, Tuck, Hanno, good King Richard and myself – for there is, I fear, only a little allotted time left for me on this Earth, and much, much more to tell.
The rain emptied from a bruise-black sky, dropping in waterfall sheets that hammered the face of the river and bounced off the dark wooden boards of our sailing barge in a continuous series of tiny explosions. We were damp and miserable, Hanno, myself and four young English Cistercian monks, crowded under a sodden canvas awning in the prow of the long boat, hooded or cowled and glumly watching the dank wooded hills of Germany slide past on the far slopes of the riverbanks hour after dismal hour.
The abbots of Boxley and Robertsbridge, as befitted their superior rank, were ensconced in the square wooden cabin in the stern of the boat. It was drier in there, protected from the rain and river spray, but it smelled very strongly of rotting fish. As I was the leader of this company, I could perhaps have insisted on joining the abbots in their fishy box, but I found their Latin conversations schoolmasterly and tedious, and to be honest, I preferred to be at the front of the craft with Hanno. At least there I could see whatever was coming round the next bend. I had not forgotten the disastrous attack by river pirates in London; here, many hundreds of miles from home, halfway up the River Main in northern Bavaria, I felt that anything could happen.
The sailing barge – a flat-bottomed craft, eighty foot long, twenty foot wide, with one mast and a huge square rusty-red sail – was owned by a man named Adam. A stout, fair-haired Londoner with the clear blue eyes of a Norseman, Adam had been trading on these rivers for ten years or more – he also happened to be Perkin’s uncle. My red-haired waterman friend had recovered from the pirate attack on the Thames and, far from blaming me for the knocks he had taken during the kidnapping of little Hugh, he seemed to feel a sense of guilt that my party had been attacked while we were in his charge, on board his skiff. Complimenting him on his fighting skill, I had made him a gift of an old short sword; now, in these dangerous, foreigner-filled lands, he had taken to wearing it all the time.
Perkin was out of sight to me at the moment, in the stern behind the abbots’ cabin, manning the rudder and steering the barge on a tack that would take us to a bend in the river. There, with the minimum of fuss, Adam and he would put the rudder across, then the boom would swing and the red sail would flap and crack briefly, and we would find ourselves on a course that would sweep us diagonally across to the other side of the river. Thus, in an endless series of elongated zigzags, we had made our way up the great rivers of Germany. When the wind was dead against us, Perkin and Adam, occasionally aided by the young monks, would pole the craft along in the shallower water by the banks. And when necessary Hanno and myself would join the monks at the six long pinewood sweeps that we carried on board, using our muscles to row us slowly upstream, deeper into the heart of the Holy Roman Empire, deeper into the lair of our King’s enemies.
Perkin had arranged for me to hire Adam for the journey, although the silver I paid him was not mine but from the private treasure chest of Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. The Queen had also given me a goodly quantity of coin to pay the tolls on the rivers, and to cover sundry expenses on the long journey. She had been understandably cool with me when I met her at Westminster Palace not two hours after the end of Robin’s inquisition. The Queen was very fond of Robin, and news of my betrayal had evidently reached her. But she did not mention the inquisition at all, and I was in no state to speak rationally of it, so we confined our discussion to the hazards of the journey and the difficulties I might face in finding her son. The meeting had been brief; when we were done, she handed me a fat purse and advised me to collect my two abbots and their entourage of monks and leave as swiftly as possible for Germany. That suited me, for I had no desire to linger in England: the word ‘Judas!’ was still ringing in my ears and I was haunted by the image of the two rotting bird-quarried heads atop the gatehouse in Kirkton, which I felt had cursed our departure only a few weeks ago. I tried not to think about Robin, or of his fiery fate at the hands of the Templars. Thus, in the grey light before dawn, the very next day after the inquisition, my company and I glided slowly down the Thames in Adam’s big sailing barge, The Crow, heading out to the sea to begin our quest to find King Richard.
Adam was a sturdy man, honest and not given to much emotion or boasting, but he knew the rivers of Europe, he said, as well as any living Englishman. We were in good hands, Perkin assured me; his uncle was a master sailor, a waterman of the first rank, and the ship was as robust as the man. The Crow was not, however, a handsome craft, and neither was it a comfortable berth. Our travelling conditions had worsened two days ago in Frankfurt when the hull was filled to deck-level and higher with logs of cut hardwood timber, leaving even less room for a passel of damp, irritable passengers. It was the third cargo we had carried so far: Adam had insisted that if he was to take us and his beloved vessel up the German rivers, he must be allowed to trade as well; his was, after all, a working boat. I was not unhappy about this, for trade gave us an ostensible reason to be travelling so far from home; and I did not want to broadcast our true intent. There were many powerful folk in the lands we were to travel through who might wish our mission to fail.
Adam looked set to make a healthy sum on this journey: he had loaded hundreds of sacks of tightly packed, untreated wool at a wharf below the Tower of London and carried them, in a rough and very unpleasant two-day crossing of the North Sea, to the Low Countries. At Utrecht, while the two abbots and I paid a courtesy visit to Bishop Baldwin van Holland at his grand palace in the city, Adam remained at the docks and arranged for the barge to be unloaded and loaded once more to the gunnels, this time with fat bales of good Flemish finished cloth.
The call that Boxley, Robertsbridge and I paid on Bishop Baldwin was the first of many visits to grand princes of the Church in the Germanic realms, and while I did not have any particular liking for these two venerable abbots in my charge, I could see the wisdom of dispatching such respected churchmen to seek out King Richard’s whereabouts. As the sailing barge worked its slow way up the River Rhine, we stopped at Cologne, Koblenz and Mainz, and many smaller towns, each time finding shelter with the local abbot, or bishop or archbishop, and each time, as well as receiving the lavish hospitality due to high-ranking English clergymen, we gained a little news of the local region – and sometimes of King Richard.
The four monks who had been brought along as servants and secretaries to the abbots, as well as providing much-needed muscle power, fully proved their worth in the gathering of intelligence about our sovereign. For while the more important prelates sometimes proved reluctant to discuss rumours concerning the whereabouts of our captive King, the monks were untroubled by such discretion as they mingled in the refectory, the wash-house and the dormitory, swapping gossip with the other low-ranking clergy. In this manner they were able to pick up invaluable scraps of information.
It was as we made our way upriver from Cologne, a strong northerly wind directly at our back propelling the clumsy barge with an unusual and welcome celerity, that one of the monks, a keen young man named Damian, had reported excitedly that he had learned the King’s whereabouts. Two clerks in the cathedral’s cloister had told him that Richard was being held at Duke Leopold’s castle of Dürnstein in Austria. While it was encouraging to have news of Richard, any news at all, my spirits nevertheless sank a little at this. Hanno said that Dürnstein was a very long way south, on the mighty Danube River near Vienna. To get there would mean leaving Adam and Perkin and The Crow in northern Bavaria, crossing a vast wooded and mountainous wilderness on horseback until we reached the Danube, then hiring a ship to carry us downriver to the castle. It was a daunting thought; even the rough discomfort of the English sailing barge seemed preferable to launching ourselves into the vast unknown.
I had another reason to feel uneasy: while I had been exploring the streets of Cologne, loitering by the busy wharves to watch the traders unload their exotic merchandise by the wide shimmering expanse of the Rhine, I had the strange notion that I was being followed. When I stopped briefly to pray at the old cathedral, at the shrine for the relics of the Three Kings who first adored the baby Jesus, I was certain that I could feel unfriendly eyes watching me from among the throng of pilgrims. At one point, walking alone down a darkened alleyway near the marketplace, I felt the presence of enemies at my back so strongly that I whirled around and drew my sword: but, of course, there was no one there and I felt a fool. I scanned the faces in the streets of Cologne for someone familiar, and often found features that resembled folk that I knew in England, or had met on my travels out East. But always, when I looked again more closely I realized that these were not people I had ever known before. Once I saw a pair of men, half-hidden in a crowd – one very tall, one shorter but immensely strong – and something stirred in my memory. When I looked again, they were gone.
My own enquiries among the local knights for news of King Richard had met with no success. I did, however, gather some cheering tidings from home. A German knight whom I encountered in the palace of the Archbishop of Cologne, and who spoke the most barbarous French, told me that all England was buzzing like a beehive over the news that a famous nobleman, a notorious heretic and worshipper of the Devil, had escaped from the custody of the Knights of the Temple in London. This knight, a pious dullard with a scarred pork-pink slab of a face and a sombre black surcoat, told me that six days ago one Lord Robert Otto had used his demonic powers to slip his iron fetters at the stroke of midnight, fleeing in the company of a ferocious blond giant who wielded an enormous axe. He had then disappeared into thin air, some said flying on a dragon’s back, evading his just punishment for heresy at the hands of the Templars.
My mood was lifted by this news, even if it came to me in such a garbled form. But my pleasure at Robin’s escape was soon dampened. The fugitive nobleman, this Lord Otto, I was told, had since been excommunicated by the Holy Church and, at the prompting of Prince John, the shire courts had declared the escaped lord an outlaw in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire. The Prince’s vassal – one Rolf Meurtach, according to the German knight – had immediately marched north with an army of more than a thousand men loyal to the Prince. Finding Lord Otto’s castle abandoned, Rolf had burnt it to the ground. The Lord Otto was now on the run, in fear of his life, hiding in the haunted forest of Sherwood – a place of witches and demons and wild men – where the fearless Lord Rolf would no doubt run him to earth and bring him to a place of execution forthwith.
I smiled at that, and the German knight looked at me strangely. Even if Robin had been hounded out of Kirkton by Ralph Murdac, he would be far from destitute in Sherwood. There were plenty of men there who would hide him, feed him, and fight to the death for him, if necessary. Sherwood was, as it had been for many years, the home of his heart, his spiritual sanctuary, his woodland fortress. He would be quite safe there.
So Robin was an outlaw once again, I mused to myself, with no constraints of law, or even common morality upon him. That could be very bad news for his enemies; it could be doubly dangerous to anyone who he felt had betrayed him.
But my master was far away in Sherwood and I needed to apply myself to the task at hand. So I thanked the knight, bade him farewell and concentrated on the most pressing question: Where was our King? Where in the vast wooded expanse of Europe was King Richard?
We had expected Richard to be moved from prison to prison quite regularly by his captor, Leopold of Austria. For one thing the Duke had to support an enormous household and it is the custom for great men to move about their domains spreading the load of supporting their followers evenly about their lands; and where the Duke went, Richard would go. But it also made sense for Richard to be moved from time to time. He was worth a great deal of ransom money to anyone who held him, and so long as the King’s friends – or for that matter, his enemies – did not know where he was, they could not easily mount an attempt to snatch him. Not that we had rescue in mind – we would have needed a mighty army for that, not six clerics and two men-at-arms – we merely wanted to find him and begin the negotiations that would bring him safely home.
If we could establish contact with Richard, then we could be sure that Queen Eleanor, and England itself, were part of the negotiations for his ransom. The danger was that his captors – Duke Leopold, or his master Henry VI, the Holy Roman Emperor – would sell Richard to King Philip of France. With Richard languishing in a French prison, perhaps being beaten and starved, Philip could demand that our King hand over a substantial part of his French dominions, perhaps the whole of Normandy, Anjou, Maine, maybe even Aquitaine itself. He would be at the mercy of his mortal enemy. And that was not the worst of it. King Philip might well come to an arrangement with Prince John. I could easily imagine Prince John agreeing to hand over Normandy and some of the other French territories in exchange for Richard’s discreet death and Philip’s support when the upstart John claimed the throne of England.
If we could only make contact with Richard, then these dangers would recede, although not disappear entirely. We could make a compact with the Germans, and possibly save Richard’s life, by outbidding Philip and John for his living body.
There was one factor in our favour: Henry VI proudly called himself the Holy Roman Emperor, heir to the Caesars. He liked to think of himself as the greatest nobleman in Christendom, the premier knight, a wise and beneficent ruler of millions of Christian souls. And yet, by capturing and holding a returning pilgrim from the Holy Land, he was breaking one of the fundamental laws that he had sworn to uphold. Although there was far too much cold hard cash at stake for him to simply let Richard go, he could be embarrassed into doing the right, honourable and Christian thing and releasing the King back to his own people, in return for a substantial reward – rather than delivering this hero of the holy war into the hands of his enemies. But everything depended on Richard’s whereabouts being generally known. If all the world knew where the famous King Richard was being held, and if senior English diplomats were in contact with him and engaged in public negotiations with the Germans to secure his freedom, it would be that much more difficult for Henry to make a discrete, lucrative, and from our point of view disastrous, deal with Philip of France or Prince John.
Sixty miles upriver from Cologne, at the strongly fortified town of Koblenz, the enthusiastic Damian returned from a trip to the bath-house with more news of the King. A monk there had told him that in mid-February Richard had been moved to the citadel of Augsburg, in south-western Bavaria. As it was, by this time, early March, we felt we were closing in on our royal quarry. It was also heartening to know that, as we sailed southwards, Richard was being moved north by his captors, towards us.
I could finally see the sense in Queen Eleanor’s plan to send us questing up the Rhine. That wide, slow river was the main artery of Europe, and it was not just the mighty torrents of water that flowed down from its source high in the Swiss mountains to the North Sea: it also carried goods, people and, most importantly to us, information.
Hanno was the next to uncover details of Richard’s whereabouts. One night while I was performing some of my music for the Archbishop of Mainz, bowing my vielle exquisitely at a lavish feast given in honour of the two English abbots, Hanno had set about pursuing his love of ale in a back-street tavern in the stews of that city. One of his drinking companions turned out to have a cousin in the service of Duke Leopold, and he told Hanno that the King would shortly be moved to Ochsenfurt. At first the abbots were sceptical; Ochsenfurt was, after all, just a small, relatively unimportant town, a rustic backwater. Besides, what would rough, drunken soldiers know of the whereabouts of a king? But I believed him, and pressed my authority as leader of the expedition, insisting that Hanno would not lie. And so, having overridden the protests of the clerics, we turned the sailing barge east off the Rhine at Mainz and began to make our way slowly up the brown River Main towards Frankfurt.
At Frankfurt – a bustling place filled with hundreds of merchants from all over the Holy Roman Empire intent on making themselves rich, their shops and storehouses and myriad taverns, cook houses, brothels and churches that served their needs, huddled around the skirts of an imposing cathedral – Abbot Boxley (or possibly Robertsbridge) was able to confirm what Hanno had asserted so confidently several days before. King Richard, the Bishop of Frankfurt’s slack-witted cellarer had let slip, was indeed at Ochsenfurt, only two days upriver. The cellarer had been asked to send several barrels of the finest wine to the town, which was currently accommodating a very special guest. How Robertsbridge (or Boxley) had succeeded in worming this information out of the cellarer, I never discovered, but our spirits soared at the discovery we were on the right path, and closing in fast on King Richard.
After several hours spent haggling with the Frankfurt merchants, Adam finally swapped his cargo of Flemish cloth for a load of cut timber, a rare hardwood that was prized for its density, and we set off fully laden the next morning, heading eastwards in the driving rain to bring succour to our captive King.
Two days later, the wet conditions had left us all tired, dripping and irritable. With the exception of Hanno, who was delighted to be back in his homeland, a wide grin splitting his round shaven head and showing off the wreckage of his teeth. It was late afternoon by the time we came round a bend in the river and moored at a wide wooden wharf on the southern bank that belonged to the Premonstratensian monastery – or more properly canonry – of Tuckelhausen. Ochsenfurt was less than a mile away upstream, but we hoped that, in making Tuckelhausen our avowed destination, we might go some way towards averting suspicions as to our true purpose.
Our story, which I had discussed at length with Boxley and Robertsbridge, was that they were paying a visit to Tuckelhausen because they wished to see its famous scriptorium and peruse a rare copy of the Holy Gospel that was housed there. In truth, the Gospel in question was not of any outstanding merit, but few people would question the movements of two such august abbots who had travelled so far to see it. They would tell their hosts how they had taken passage with Adam and Perkin, a couple of fellow countrymen who were transporting a cargo of building timber upriver to Sweinfurt, where the local margrave was strengthening the fortifications of his town. We agreed that I should be presented at Tuckelhausen not as an exalted member of the company but an ordinary man-at-arms, brought along as protection for the churchmen. This was not so far from the truth, and suited me well: I had plans that would be better served if I were not shown any of the few courtesies due to my rank as lord of a small manor.
After announcing the abbots’ names and the purpose of our visit to the surly, white-robed canon who had charge of the wharf, he begrudgingly lent us a decrepit mule to carry our baggage, weapons and possessions. And while Adam and Perkin pretended to be attending to repairs on the sailing barge, Boxley, Robertsbridge, the four monks, Hanno and myself began the two-mile trudge in the fading light up a narrow track cut through the forest to the monastery of Tuckelhausen. The mule was particularly stubborn: it had no wish to leave its dry, comfortable stable by the river and venture out in a downpour when it was clearly time for its nightly feed. Only by hauling on its bridle and beating its hindquarters savagely with a hazel switch did we get the beast moving at all.
As we set out on the muddy track, to my left I caught a glimpse of Ochsenfurt itself, a mile away through the still skeletal limbs of the trees. It was a fortress, a compact town with high walls on four sides, built in the shape of a square with each walled side no more than half a mile long, and with four powerful round towers standing guard at each corner. Somewhere inside that stronghold, I mused, most likely in one of the four big towers, my King was being held captive. My sovereign lord, a man I respected as much as any I had met, a warrior I had followed loyally and fought beside in Outremer and with whom I had enjoyed merry-making and fine music, a man who had honoured me with his company and dare I say, friendship, was imprisoned there against his will. His enemies had seized him, a returning pilgrim from the Holy Land, against the laws of God and Man, and were seeking to make themselves rich from the sale of his person, as if he were a slave.
For the first time since I had heard the news of Richard’s capture, I felt a hot surge of genuine anger in my gut. If it were ever within my power, I vowed, I would punish those responsible. And the flame of my quiet fury warmed me as we splashed along the rutted track, hauling the reluctant mule by main force, towards the drab walls of Tuckelhausen.
Abbot Joachim was rather bewildered to find himself host to a bedraggled party of foreigners when we were ushered into his cosy, brazier-warmed chamber. But he greeted his fellow abbots with a kiss of peace and ordered his servants to bring us wine and to prepare food and beds for us. We had presented ourselves at the gates of Tuckelhausen just as night was falling and the church bells were ringing out for Vespers. The monastery doors were shut, but Hanno, who spoke the local Bavarian dialect, had explained to the porters that we were a distinguished party of noble English clergymen and that we must be given entrance even at this late hour.
‘But why, my noble lords, did you not write to advertise that you were paying our humble monastery a visit?’ Abbot Joachim kept on asking. ‘We could have prepared suitably for your visit. I fear we are in a state of some disarray here, readying ourselves for the feast of St George in a month’s time. He is a very popular saint in these parts – this house is dedicated to him, as I’m sure you know – and we have many pilgrims under our roof at this moment. Indeed, the dormitory is quite full, and everything is in the greatest turmoil.’
Joachim was a worried little man, small and plump and sad-looking, with only wisps of white hair around the wrinkled bald patch of his tonsure. And while he spoke to us in Latin, his accent was so strange that it was difficult to understand what he was trying to say. On more than one occasion, we had to ask Hanno to get the Abbot to repeat himself in German so that my bodyguard could translate for us.
‘If only you had given us some notice,’ Joachim went on. ‘Just a few days’ notice …’
‘Only the Lord God Almighty can say what happened to the messenger who carried the letter that we sent you,’ intoned Robertsbridge gravely, and I realized that, for a good Christian, he was rather an accomplished liar. ‘Have you much trouble with bandits in these parts?’ he added.
‘Oh yes, oh most decidedly, yes,’ said Joachim. He seemed relieved to have found a plausible solution to the problem of our unexpected arrival. In fact, the notion that our messenger might have been slaughtered by footpads while attempting to deliver the news of our coming seemed to cheer Abbot Joachim no end. He poured the abbots some more wine, now positively beaming.
‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘scores of bandits, scoundrels by the dozen. I don’t know why Duke Leopold does not scour them from the land, the way they trouble God-fearing folk, devout pilgrims such as yourselves. We are famous hereabouts for our wine, our sausages, our women – and our bandits. Ha ha!’
Robertsbridge and Boxley, who were standing side by side, both smiled encouragingly at him and each took a small sip of wine at the same time.
‘Forgive me for asking’ – the German abbot peered closely at his two fellow prelates – ‘are you brothers, by any chance? Perhaps twins?’
‘We are all brothers in the sight of our Lord Jesus Christ,’ said Boxley with a pious smile. ‘But, no, we are not from the same earthly family.’
‘Ah, yes, I see, brothers in Christ – of course we are, of course we are.’
It seemed that we had confused the good man again.
While Boxley and Robertsbridge were given a fine chamber to share for the night, Hanno and I were told rather brusquely that we should make our beds in the stable. And that suited my plans very well.
The monastery was laid out in the shape of a hollow square around a big grassy court, with the big church at its eastern end. The stable stood at the western end of the square against the outer wall of the monastery, a long, warm building with a red-tiled roof and bays for a dozen animals. It was filled with the familiar homely smells of horse sweat and hay and oiled leather and, had I intended to sleep there, it would have made a very comfortable place to rest my head.
Instead, after we had eaten in the refectory with the canons and the other pilgrims and attended the service of Compline in the big abbey church, Hanno and I crossed the grassy court and, bidding a courteous goodnight to several white-robed canons that we passed, we retired to the stable. We pulled shut the wooden door and, checking that we were alone apart from half a dozen horses and the awkward old mule, began to examine the inside of the building by the light of a single candle stub. Hanno soon found the patch of damp straw on the ground at the far end of the stable that we were looking for, and staring up into the dim rafters above his head he noted that one or two tiles were missing from the roof, which had allowed rain water to leak in and wet the straw. He muttered ‘Perfect!’ and began to look for a way to climb the rear wall. Soon Hanno was balanced precariously on a manger, which was affixed to the stable wall at about shoulder height, while he worked to widen the hole in the roof, shoving the loose tiles aside and cursing at the loud scraping noise that they made in the quiet night.
I, meanwhile, was making my own arrangements for the mission ahead. I dressed myself in dark clothes – two tunics for the night was chilly – warm hose, stout boots and a dark cloak and hood, and smeared a mixture of candle soot and goose fat over my face and hands. It reminded me of my preparations for the attack on Kirkton: could that have been only six months ago? It seemed like a lifetime. Though I hoped that I would not have to murder anyone tonight, I made sure that the misericorde was snug in my boot – and murmured a quick prayer to St Michael, too.
Hanno had wanted to come with me on my nocturnal jaunt, but I had said no. He might have been useful, for he was a master of silent movement at night, but I felt that what I wanted to accomplish would be better done by me alone. I did not want to worry about him, or for him to worry about me, if we became separated in the darkness. And, more importantly, I needed someone to remain behind to make some excuse for my absence if one of the monks should come into the stable or if Abbot Joachim should for some strange reason summon us. In truth, I also wanted to be alone for a while. After being cooped up on board the sailing barge for a couple of weeks, the prospect of being alone in the cool purity of the night, dependent on no one, responsible for no one but myself, held a great if unusual appeal for me.
And, I confess, I was also feeling that familiar pleasurable buzzing sensation of impending action: a tightness in my stomach and a heightened glow behind my eyes. I clasped Hanno’s hand warmly before he boosted me up, then, putting one foot on the manger, I cautiously popped my head through the gap in the roof that my Bavarian friend had opened. The rising peaked roof made it impossible to see anything inside the monastery, but I listened intently until I was satisfied that the whole community was asleep. Finally I levered myself up and out until I was lying face down on the sloping tiles beside the hole and, peering into the dark interior, I whispered ‘Hanno!’ into the space below. The shaven-headed huntsman was only just visible as a darker mass in the gloom, but I could make out enough of him by the moonlight to grasp the bulky bundle that he handed up to me. It was a large sack, with two long loops of padded cloth spaced shoulder width apart that enabled it to be slung from the back. Hanno told me that in southern Bavaria the mountain men used to wear these things when they had to carry heavy loads up and down the steep hillsides of the Alps there. Reaching into this ‘back-sack’, as they are known by the Bavarians, I pulled out a coil of rope in which Hanno had carefully tied fat knots every foot and, loosening one end, tied it securely to one of the beams inside the stable roof. The rest of the coil I tossed over the outer wall of the canonry. To the sound of a barely whispered ‘Go with God!’ from my friend below, I began, very carefully and quietly, to climb down the rope, the back-sack looped over my shoulders, my muscles creaking under the strain of my weight, walking carefully down the ten-foot wall to the ground below.
All was quiet as I found myself standing in a muddy patch of tilled earth, some sort of vegetable garden from the look of it. Leaving the knotted rope hanging against the outer wall, I set out to the south, following the wall until I came to the corner of the monastery, and then sprinting fifty yards or so into the cover of a copse that ran east–west to the south of Tuckelhausen. As my panting breath subsided, I took stock of my situation: the rain had stopped but the sky was still filled with scudding clouds and a three-quarter moon, which provided ample light to navigate by. Too much light, if the truth be told; I had hoped for a little more cloud cover, as I did not want to be too easy to spot as I went about my business.
It was perhaps an hour or so before midnight, I judged, as I adjusted the straps on my back-sack to allow it to sit more comfortably. Checking once again that the misericorde was still in my boot, I pulled the hood on my cloak far forward and began to march eastward, towards Ochsenfurt; towards the heavily fortified town in which my King was being held prisoner.