hunter friend could take care of himself. He had probably just wanted a little liberty to explore Ochsenfurt, drink some of the local ale, and talk his own language for a few hours.
We did not need Hanno for our discussions. Indeed, there seemed little to discuss; we found ourselves completely at a loss as to how to proceed. Robertsbridge was all for returning to the Duke and threatening him with excommunication if he did not reveal Richard’s whereabouts. Boxley, I believe, just wanted to go home. For myself, the prospect of returning to Queen Eleanor with the news that I had sung merrily with her son but had not been allowed to speak to him and had been turned away with an obvious lie was unthinkable. I argued that, since his two hired killers were in the vicinity of Ochsenfurt, it was fair to assume that Prince John was in touch with Duke Leopold over the matter of Richard’s ransom. This was bad news, as was the Duke’s refusal to acknowledge that Richard was in his custody. We could only assume that Leopold planned to hand over our King, either to Prince John or to King Philip of France. Helpless to prevent this from happening, our best hope was to remain in Ochsenfurt until the Duke tried to move Richard, at which point it might prove easier to establish contact with him.
The abbots and I were still sitting despondently in the parlour, sipping wine and racking our brains while the day quietly slipped away, when the door crashed open and Hanno came staggering into the room. He was very drunk.
‘I fin’ ’im,’ slurred my Bavarian bodyguard, a thick waft of strong ale billowing out with his breath.
‘You are inebriated, man,’ snapped Robertsbridge. ‘Go to bed and trouble us no more. We have important matters to attend to here.’
‘I find King Richard,’ Hanno said, making an effort to speak our language more clearly. ‘I find your lost lord. Come, I take you to him.’
We hurried out into the street where Hanno introduced us to Peter, a burly man-at-arms in the Ochsenfurt surcoat, who beamed at us with a face as red as the ox device on his chest. He was even drunker than Hanno. He was also, we soon discovered, King Richard’s gaoler.
As we walked towards the southern side of the town, I noticed that there seemed to be some event, a grand arrival of some sort, with trumpets sounding and bells ringing, monks chanting, taking place at the barbican gate, but we were too excited and preoccupied to investigate further. As we walked, Hanno related to us what he had been up to the past six hours, apart from imbibing vast quantities of the local ale. While we went off with the men-at-arms to inspect the third tower, he had slipped away, leaving the town and circling its outer walls until he came to the spot beneath the tower where I had played my vielle the night before. Had we but looked out of the small window in Richard’s cell we would have seen him below us. At this point Hanno interrupted his narrative to hand me my misericorde, and I gratefully sheathed it in my boot. He had found my dagger, along with the marks of the fight, on the ground. He had even found the remains of the vielle and the bow, both sadly beyond repair. Then he had tracked the footsteps of two men, one with long narrow feet, the other with huge round ones, into the wood and had discovered the site of their bivouac. Approaching with caution, Hanno had found the place deserted, but the warm ashes of the cooking fire told him that it had only recently been occupied. According to Hanno’s almost supernatural fieldcraft, the two men had left their camp about dawn and made their way north towards the River Main, possibly planning to escape by boat. As Hanno related his tale, he seemed to grow more sober with every passing moment.
Rather than attempting to track them further, my cunning friend had returned to Ochsenfurt and made for the nearest soldiers’ tavern. There he had set about ingratiating himself with a man-at-arms, buying him several pots of ale. Hanno’s new friend had then taken him to another tavern, and another, in search of the beaming brick-faced idiot who now stood before us: Richard’s gaoler. Hanno, as well as plying the fellow with drink, had promised him a purse of silver if he