Richard hastily sat up. For a moment, he thought it was Leopold, but he dismissed that at once, for Hadmar would not have announced him like that. He was getting to his feet as the Austrian lord stepped aside. Richard stared incredulously at the man standing behind Hadmar, and then a slow grin spread over his face. “I suppose you just happened to be passing by?”
Hubert Walter grinned, too. “Something like that,” he said, and started forward. Richard was already moving toward him. Hubert would have knelt, but instead found himself embraced like a brother. By the time they stepped back, they both had tears in their eyes. It was only then that Richard saw the bishop was not alone. A second man had followed him, beaming and blinking back tears of his own. William de St Mère-Eglise was well known to Richard; he’d been Henry’s trusted clerk of the chamber and soon after his coronation, Richard had named him Dean of St Martin’s le Grand in London. His appearance seemed even more amazing to Richard than Hubert Walter’s, and as soon as William knelt, he was raised up and embraced, too. By now they were all laughing and talking at once, not even noticing that Hadmar had discreetly disappeared.
“I’d gotten as far as Rome when I learned what had happened,” Hubert was saying, “and, of course, I left for Germany straightaway. William happened to be in Rome, too, and he caught up with me on the road.”
Richard felt a pang, for he was desperate for news from England and had hoped the bishop was coming from his island kingdom. His disappointment was forgotten, though, as soon as Hubert produced the letters. Snatching them up, he moved toward a wall torch and began to break the seals. There were four: one from his wife, one from his sister, one from Anna, the Damsel of Cyprus, and one from Stephen de Turnham, to whom he’d entrusted his women’s safety. He read rapidly, then went back and reread them, smiling at Joanna’s message and laughing outright at Anna’s. “The lass says she has put some vile Cypriot curse upon all my enemies, promising that they’ll be rotting away like lepers ere the year is out.” But when he glanced again at his queen’s letter, he shook his head, saying, “Berenguela’s faith in that old man on the papal throne is truly remarkable.” He’d once told his wife that her innocence was downright endearing; not so much now, though.
Putting the letters aside, he laughed again. He’d never thought he had a sentimental bone in his body and he was startled by how emotional he felt at the sight of their familiar faces. They had begun to tell him what they knew of the political ramifications of his capture, which was not much—that the Holy Father had been outraged by the news and he had an ally in the Archbishop of Cologne, who’d not only sent a warning to the Pope but had joined the rebels. Heinrich, they reported happily, was facing a serious rebellion.
Taking their cue from Hadmar, the guards were giving them some space, and when Richard asked for wine, impressing the clerics by doing it in German, it was soon fetched. Sitting at the table, they began to pepper him with questions. He answered readily at first, telling them about his encounters with the pirates and explaining his reasoning for choosing to take only twenty men with him on the pirate galleys. He had no trouble describing the first shipwreck at Ragusa and the second in that Godforsaken marsh, or their narrow escapes in G?rz and Udine. But after that, the words did not come so easily. His memories of Friesach were like festering sores. And as he started to tell them about Ertpurch, he was dismayed to find it all coming back—their utter desperation, their exhaustion and hunger and cold, that damnable fever, and then the fear and shame of his capture. Relating it was like reliving it; he could even feel his body reacting as if he were back in the alewife’s house, trapped and despairing, for his pulse had begun to race, his breath quickening, his throat constricting.
William was puzzled when Richard suddenly fell silent, but Hubert was quick to comprehend. He’d arrived at the siege of Acre nine months before Richard, and he’d often spoken to men who’d been held prisoner by the Saracens, some of them for years. What had struck him most forcefully was their uniform reluctance to speak of their ordeal and their obvious discomfort when they did. There was a great difference, he’d discovered, between the Saracen and Christian view of captivity. The first crusaders had made no effort to ransom their men, seeing a captive knight as a failure, his survival an embarrassment. Their attitude gradually changed, in part due to exposure to a culture in which it was seen as a duty to rescue one’s own. But the stigma still lingered and so did the shame. If knights and men-at-arms felt it so keenly, Hubert imagined it would be even worse for a king, especially a king like this one.
“We’ll have time to hear of your captivity later, sire,” he said briskly. “For now, I think it best if we speak of Heinrich and what he hopes to gain by this outrageous crime.” William seemed surprised, but Richard’s fleeting look of relief confirmed Hubert’s suspicion that this was still too raw a wound to be probed.