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IN THE LAST week of June, the year of grace 1190, Richard gathered his army, his council, his bishops, and his mother and brothers, and at last set out on crusade.
Twin brothers, sitting astride matched Arabians of dappled gray, left behind what they knew best. After traversing the bridge over the River Vienne, the palfreys picked up speed and settled into an easy pace. Drake and Stephen rode in silence. Leading sumpters and matching white destriers, Devon followed several paces back.
Stephen broke the silence. “Matilda of Angoulême is very nubile. Or so I have heard.”
“Nubile or not, the nuptials wait until my return.” His arm healed and the splint dispatched, Drake had full use of both arms and both hands. After weeks of idleness, he had been exercising both arms with sword, axe, bow, and lance and exercising his hands in ways man often does when no suitable or willing woman can be found.
“At which time, she may be a harridan.”
“A chance I’ll have to take.”
The light breeze of a summer’s day wafted the brothers’ hair while the clip-clop of a thousand horses droned in their ears. Already dust was kicking up into their sweating faces.
“Richard takes it as a certainty you’re going on crusade.” During the heady days leading up to this seminal moment, Drake had been keeping a keen eye on his younger brother, trying with little success to translate his observations into intent. “Are you?”
“Don’t try to guess what I’m thinking, big brother.”
“While you read my every thought?”
“Aye. Like now. When you’re trying to understand how it is your reflection has warped the mirror.” Stephen sent Drake a vague smile and a half-hearted shrug. “I’ll let you know in Lyon.”
The pilgrimage had officially begun in Tours. Standing majestically beneath the barrel vaulting of the newly constructed cathedral, Richard had received from Archbishop Bartholomew, from whose selfsame hands he received the cross nearly three years before, the pilgrim’s staff and scrip. As king of England and duke of Aquitaine, he prostrated himself humbly before the shrine of St Martin, and afterwards, took down the banner hanging above the saint’s relics. Emblazoned with a golden cross, the pennon would accompany him to Jerusalem as an article of faith and a talisman against the enemies of Christ.
Richard left the Touraine. For six days, a snaking ribbon of humanity wound itself along the hills, meadows, woodlands, and river valleys. The army was some five-thousand strong. But the ancillary forces of mule tenders, carters, squires, and mercenaries; cooks, laundresses, fishermen, saddlers, wheelwrights, armorers, and blacksmiths; chapmans, whores, moneychangers, costardmongers, and woolmongers; along with wives, mothers, mistresses, and children who were going only so far, doubled the number.
Gathering along the byways, the young and old, fair and ugly, and portly and withered came out to speed the pilgrims on their way. Knights, archers, and foot soldiers—their gala shirts of mail shining in the blazing sun, weapons honed sharp at their sides, and shields and lances at the ready—marched in splendid array, and were delivered like a refulgent feast upon a frond to Vézelay.
Vézelay, the sleepy hill town built beneath the lofty Cluniac monastery where, in the year 1050, the Pope confirmed that the abbey church held the sacred remains of Mary Magdalen.
Vézelay, where thousands upon thousands of faithful Christians made the steep climb up twin dusty roads to the towering basilica, there to gaze upon the relics of the blessed saint.
Vézelay, the starting point for those lucky few who continued their pilgrim’s path to the shrine of Santiago Matamoros de Compostela.
Vézelay, where in 1146, Bernard of Clairvaux read the papal bull and preached the sermon that launched the Second Crusade.
Vézelay, where many years ago, a young Queen Eleanor knelt with her then-husband King Louis of France before the selfsame abbot who had often castigated the queen for her flamboyant ways, and dedicated herself to the cause.
Vézelay, where now, more than forty years later, Queen Eleanor knelt at the same altar, this time offering her best beloved son to the Third Crusade.
Inside the basilica, beneath the Romanesque vault, the striped stone, and the angel-winged capitals, Richard and Philippe met on common ground, attended by the principals of their mutual entourages.
Richard had with him his mother the dowager queen and his betrothed Alais; his loyal knights André de Chauvigny, Baldwin de Béthune, Guillaume de Fors, and Drake and Stephen fitzAlan; his brothers John and Geoffrey; the archbishop of Canterbury; and his marshal and recently knighted Sieur Randall of Clarendon.
Philippe came with his mother Adèle of Blois and Champagne; his uncle Thibaud of Blois; his nephew Louis of Blois, freshly arrived from his brief service with Richard; his other nephew Henry, the young comte of Champagne; his sisters Alys and Marie, the respective mothers of the king’s nephews; the king’s chaplain Andreas Capellanus of Champagne; and king’s knight Guillaume des Barres.
Reunions among mothers and daughters, brothers and sisters, uncles, cousins, and nephews, old enemies and new comrades had been accomplished the night before, accompanied by much tears and laughter, drink and food, song and conversation, and to a lesser extent, prayers for a successful sojourn and historic campaign. Comtesse Alys de Blois was more than pleased to make the acquaintance of her besieged cousin, Stephen fitzAlan, who kissed her on both cheeks and expressed his undying gratitude.
Presently, before the altar of Ste Marie-Madeleine, the monarchs received blessings for a successful crusade and agreed in rosy tones to forget their enmity and take up swords against a common enemy, the Saracen infidels who had defiled the Holy Land with their bloody scimitars. The agreement was forged of practicality, for even while seeking glory in the name of the Christian God, they were also going to war to regain lost lands and plunder riches. Gold, it was said, drenched Arabia like a flooded river. The decision was weighty but the formula for sharing the spoils of a religious war was straightforward: everything was to be divided equally.
On the fourth day of July, which so happened to be the third anniversary of the battle of Hattin—when the Christian west lost Jerusalem to the Muslim east—the armies of two kings moved south.
When Richard appeared, the cheering crowd was graced with the presence of a glorious god whose mantle was befittingly spangled with silver crescents, whose cap was fashioned of scarlet and gold, whose Spanish stallion was equipped with a silver-inlaid saddle, whose bridle set with sparkling gems, and whose sword was none other than the Excalibur of lore, or so it was proclaimed.
Riding beside the resplendent king of England, the duller and darker king of France was in a coarser mood than usual. Already pale of complexion when standing beside his distant cousin, he paled even further upon realizing he was not the focal point of adulation and adoration being flung in their general direction.
Folk crowded the roadside to speed the pilgrim soldiers on their journey and shower them with gifts, pennons, and huzzahs. Mothers lifted babes for knights to lay their hands upon. Wives and mothers caught last glimpses of their menfolk. And wailing broke out when those same women lost sight of husbands and sons, many of whom were destined never to return home, or if they did, would never again be the same.
At the foot of the hill, her spare figure clad in robes of royal purple and her head crowned with a plain white wimple, Eleanor saw her favored son off amidst glory and cheers. Her tears were the tears of all mothers everywhere who feared they would never again lay eyes on their beloved sons. Despite the occasion, or perhaps because of it, she stood stalwart and brave. She was going no farther than Vézelay, and escort waited to take her and her entourage back to Chinon.
John was also there, his body stiff and expression unreadable. He, too, would return to Chinon with his mother before sailing for Merrie England, there to act as the king’s right arm and cause mischief wherever he was able, though not without scrutiny of his mother or his mother’s wardens, who would keep the prince in check as best they could.
A steed shifting restively beneath him, the king’s brother Geoffrey was present as well, taking up his station in the background, unobtrusive and unheralded. As the bastard brother of the king, he expected no more. He also was returning to Chinon with the queen, and there he would stay, unless fate or obstinacy caused him, like his brother, to make mischief elsewhere.
At Eleanor’s side, and wearing the same royal purple as her future mother, Alais Capét held her proud chin aloft while waving at both the king her promised husband and the king her brother.
