an hour later. I called softly for Hanno, but received no response. Doubtless my friend was sleeping soundly in the soft hay. I was reduced to tossing stones through the hole in the roof, hoping that the noise of their rattling on the tiles or landing inside the stable would wake my friend. Fortunately it worked and I soon saw his round, shaven head poking out of the hole in the tiled roof.
Hanno managed to haul me up without too much difficulty, and not half an hour later I found myself gulping from a flask of wine, and wiping the greasy soot from my face as I told my friend the news and he strapped up my battered side tightly with long strips of linen.
He was overjoyed to hear that we had successfully located King Richard, but alarmed by the attack on me by the two mismatched assassins.
‘Who are they, Alan, and why do they want to kill you?’ he asked with a puzzled frown. ‘If they are in the service of Duke Leopold or the Emperor Henry, they must surely arrest you and you are then hanged in the square as a spy. What does this mean?’
‘They are Prince John’s men,’ I told him, and explained that I had seen them before, outside Kirkton, bringing a message from Prince John to Sir Ralph Murdac.
‘Ach so, but why do they want to kill you?’ asked my friend. He was a master of stealthy movement, was Hanno, in daylight and darkness; he could hunt and track animals and men better than any other fellow I ever knew. But he was not swift of thought when it came to the dark motives of princes.
‘Prince John does not wish Richard’s whereabouts to be known to the world,’ I said, trying to explain it as simply as possible for Hanno’s benefit. ‘The Prince must have spies in Westminster. When they told him that we were setting off on this mission to find Richard, he gave this unlovely pair of killers the task of making sure we did not find him. If we were to quietly disappear on this journey – both of us and perhaps the monks and abbots, too – who would know about it? It might be weeks, even months, before another diplomatic party was dispatched to try to find our King. And that delay would give Prince John more than ample time to make an arrangement with Leopold.’
‘Do they attack us again?’ asked Hanno.
‘I don’t think so,’ I said, although I was very far from sure. ‘But we must be on our guard, and the sooner we get the abbots to Ochsenfurt, into the presence of the King and registered as an official English embassy, the better.’
So, the next morning, an hour or so before noon, I stood once more before the gate of the barbican, at the north-western corner of the town of Ochsenfurt, while Hanno bawled up at the guards a translation of our names and rank and the purpose of our visit. It felt very different from the last time I had been before this portal only hours previously. The abbots and I were dressed in our finest clothes; clean white woollen robes for the clergymen and tall staffs topped with golden crosses, and a scarlet tunic embroidered with silver thread for me, topped by a fine new grey woollen hat. I did my best to look lordly as Hanno bellowed that we had come to pay our respects to Duke Leopold of Austria and to pay a visit to his illustrious prisoner King Richard the Lionheart of England.
The wooden iron-studded gate swung slowly open and we were ushered into Ochsenfurt by a squad of ten mail-clad menat-arms, each armed with spear and sword and proudly bearing the symbol of a red ox, the town’s badge, on the chests of their snow-white surcoats. We were escorted through the narrow streets into the centre of town to the antechamber of a great hall, where we were offered refreshments – politely declined – before being shown into the great hall itself and the presence of Duke Leopold, loyal vassal of the Emperor Henry, ruler of much of the southern German lands, former pilgrim – and the mortal enemy of our good King Richard.
Leopold was a tall, dark, hawk-faced man, with eyes that seemed to glitter like black gems. He listened attentively to our speech, delivered in elegant Latin by Abbot Boxley, the Duke nodding and smiling occasionally, and then we