Hadmar did not answer at once, finally saying, “I think so. He knows you did not betray your fellow Christians in the Holy Land. Whether he’ll admit it or not remains to be seen, though. He’s a proud man and a stubborn one and he may well conclude that he’s gone too far along this road to turn back now.”
“Even if it means riding over a cliff? Hadmar, there is still time to stop this madness. From what you’ve been telling me, Leopold is not happy with Heinrich’s plans for me. He fears—as well he ought—that his own honor will be stained. And he must fear, too, the wrath of the Church, for even if Celestine dares not excommunicate the Holy Roman Emperor, he’d have no such compunctions about a duke. Leopold will make the perfect scapegoat. Surely he realizes that?”
“I daresay he does,” Hadmar admitted. “But he sees no way out now and so he figures he might as well profit by claiming half of the ransom. My duke is a practical man,” he said with another sad smile. “He is half Greek, after all.”
“If it is the accursed ransom he wants, he can have it. He can have it all. Convince him to forget about Heinrich and strike a deal with me. I told him I was willing to pay his ransom. I still am. I know he believes himself to be a man of honor. This may be his last chance to preserve that honor . . . and his peace of mind.”
Hadmar reached for his wine cup and drank until it was empty. “Christ Jesus, Richard,” he said softly, “do you think I have not already tried that? Leopold never bargained for any of this. He thought himself justified to hold you to account for the way you shamed him—shamed Austria—at Acre. But what Heinrich intends to do with you . . . That will gnaw away at him, poisoning his peace. Yet he sees no way out of this trap. He may not respect Heinrich, but the emperor is still his liege lord. To defy Heinrich and reach a private accord with you is beyond him. He’d see that as an act of rebellion, and he knows that Heinrich would, too. As horrified as he was by the Bishop of Liege’s murder, he is not going to rebel against the man to whom he has sworn fealty and homage.”
Shoving his chair back, Hadmar got unsteadily to his feet. “I thought you deserved to know the truth. I am sorry I cannot do more. I very much fear that what you call ‘this madness’ is not going to end well for any of us.” Without waiting for Richard’s response, he turned away, brushing aside the guard who sought to steady him as he staggered toward the door.
Richard did not move from the table. An eerie stillness seemed to have enveloped the chamber and he thought he could hear the dull thudding of his heart, the constricted rasp of his breath, even the sound of his own thoughts as they ricocheted around in his head. He poured more wine, only to set it down again quickly, for the sweet Rhenish wine tasted as bitter as wormwood and gall.
He was thirty-five and for nigh on twenty years, he’d been a soldier. By now Death was an old and familiar foe. He could not begin to count all the times he’d put his life at risk. Storms at sea, malarial fevers, sword thrusts that he’d parried just in time, lances that shattered against his shield, crossbow bolts and arrows that seared through the air with a lethal humming sound he sometimes heard in his dreams. Men said he was blessed in battle, but his body bore the scars of old wounds like any other man’s. His nephew Henri had once told him, half admiringly and half in reproach, that he was easy to find on the battlefields of the Holy Land, for he was always in the thick of the fighting, usually surrounded by a sea of saffron, the colors of Saladin’s elite Mamluk guard. He’d not denied it, for he believed that a king must lead by example, and he’d been the first to force his way into Messina, first to land upon the beach at Cyprus, and again at Jaffa. He’d long known that he did not feel the crippling fear that other men did in combat, had accepted it without question as God’s gift, proof of divine favor.
But he no longer believed that he was Fortune’s favorite, for he could make no sense of what had happened to him and his men in the past two months. Was God punishing him for his failure to take Jerusalem as he’d vowed? Had he angered the Almighty by breaking the Fifth Commandment and making war upon his father? What had he done to deserve this? How could he atone if he did not know how he’d sinned? He had no answers. He knew only that he’d never felt as desperate, as vulnerable, and as utterly alone as he did on this frigid January night at Dürnstein Castle.
CHAPTER EIGHT
JANUARY 1193