April Queen (48 page)

Immediately Eleanor charged the abbots of Boxley in Kent and Robertsbridge in Sussex, to travel to Germany and find out where Richard was being held.
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On the same mission went Bishop Savaric of Bath, who was related to the emperor.
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Returning from a trip to Rome, Bishop Hubert Walter, a nephew of the late Ranulf de Glanville, changed course and also headed eastwards.
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The indefatigable William Longchamp, who claimed to have seen the original letter in Paris, scuttled after them to see what he could find out.

Eleanor was only restrained from taking horse and ship for Germany herself because she did not trust John and Philip once her back was turned. Instead she used diplomatic channels, reminding Celestine III that both Richard and his father had supported him when the Pope was but a cardinal and enlisting the help of princes and prelates in the cause of a crusader protected by the Peace of God. That she had been right not to absent herself in a search that could better be carried out by others was proven when John sneaked across the Channel and demanded fealty of the Norman barons with the backing of Philip, their common overlord, on the grounds that Richard was as good as dead already.
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The reply was a resounding vote of no confidence in him at Rouen, where poor Alais was still a prisoner, so he set up court in Alençon until lack of enthusiasm there too compelled him to flee to the safety of Paris. There Philip humoured his pretensions to be duke of Normandy in return for the undertaking to marry Alais after divorcing his wife
of three years, Isabelle of Gloucester, on the grounds of their widely known consanguinity.
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Seizing the moment, Philip invaded the Vexin, taking Gisors and demanding the surrender of Rouen and the release of his half-sister.
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Unimpressed by the numbers and equipment of the small Frankish force, the earl of Leicester retorted that he had no orders from King Richard to hand over his hostage, but if the king of the Franks wished to sample Norman hospitality, he only had to cross the drawbridge alone.

With no desire to be taken hostage and traded for Richard, Philip swore to return and exact revenge for the insult
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before providing funds for John to hire a small army of Flemish mercenaries, with whom to invade England at the end of Lent. Sir John Harington's epigram had yet to be penned: ‘Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.' But the dilemma on both sides of the Channel was an old one. If Richard died in captivity, who would be considered loyal, and who a traitor?

Eleanor reasoned that to imprison John might provoke open conflict with his many partisans and that a better course was to neutralise him by ensuring that crown officers in the channel ports – reinforced by a
fyrd
raised from local men who well remembered the excesses of King Stephen's Flemings in south-east England – arrested any mercenaries who dared set foot ashore and frightened the others away back to Flanders.
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Meanwhile, in Germany there was a political tug-of-war over who should have the most ransomable prisoner in the world, Duke Leopold claiming priority both because it was his banner that had been insulted at Acre and he who had taken Richard's sword. As his suzerain, the emperor reminded him that ‘duke of Austria' was a courtesy title;
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for a count to hold a king prisoner was contrary to feudal custom, and therefore Richard must be handed over to him.
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Leopold's injured dignity might have inclined him to forego a ransom for the pleasure of letting his unrepentant captive die mysteriously in some unidentified castle, never mind what blast of anathema came from Rome. However, at a meeting in Würzburg during February 1193, they came to terms: against the promise of 20,000 marks from the eventual ransom, Leopold's captive was brought from the castle of Dürnstein, west of Vienna, and transferred into imperial custody at Ratisbon and then Würzburg.

Less than three months after the emperor's letter had been received in Paris – on Palm Sunday, 21 March 1193 – Eleanor's two emissaries tracked Richard down at Ochsenfurt, on his way under escort to the emperor's Easter court at Speyer. Either Longchamp beat them to it, or he arrived
soon afterwards.
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They found him restored to health and in relatively high spirits, having charmed all his guards and their masters with his bluff good humour, his versifying and prowess at all things knightly.

Informed of John's latest treason, Richard again laughed off the idea of his weakling brother usurping the throne with or without Philip's help. He did, however, dispatch Hubert Walter back to England with a letter appointing him archbishop of Canterbury. It was from him that Eleanor learned on 20 April that her beloved son was alive and in good health. In the country there was twofold rejoicing, both that Richard was alive and that Longchamp was not the new primate.

At the time of Archbishop Hubert's departure, the royal prisoner had not been accorded an interview with the emperor, although imperial court gossip was that a sum of 100,000 marks would be asked for his ransom. While Eleanor and the justiciars waited for confirmation of this, they used the news that Richard was alive to defuse the unrest John been stirring up during the period of uncertainty. In this, her constitutionally ambiguous position made her the ideal intermediary; while John might not have consented to surrender his castles to the justiciars, he did agree to hand over to her Windsor Castle, Wallingford and the Peak – on the understanding that they were to be returned to him if Richard were not, for whatever reason, released.

At Speyer the Emperor was more resistant to Poitevin eloquence than Richard's previous captors.
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Arraigning his hostage before the Easter court, he charged him with a long list of crimes, including the murder of Conrad of Montferrat – a close relative of Duke Leopold. Vastly outnumbered, Richard's entourage included Bishop Savaric of Bath, the abbots of Boxley and Robertsbridge, plus his chaplain and Longchamp. His superior competence in Latin had enabled him on more than one occasion to mock Hubert Walter, who was famous for the grammatical errors he made constantly, sometimes with hilarious results.
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Confident in his own eloquence, Richard represented himself in Latin as the epitome of knighthood on the greatest of all chivalric enterprises, convincing many of Henry's vassals that he was indeed the incarnation of the knightly ideal.
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At the end of his speech, Richard knelt in submission before the Emperor – and burst into tears! It was a gift he had. Bowing to the mood of the assembled nobles, Henry Hohenstaufen lifted his vanquished prisoner to his feet and led him to share the dais. As to the ransom, however, the sum of 100,000 silver marks or £66,000 was confirmed as the price of Richard's freedom. He was to be released when 70,000 marks had been paid, with 200 noble hostages demanded
as surety for the balance. This covered retribution for the failure of his brother-in-law Henry the Lion of Saxony to support the imperial design, plus a compensation for the insult suffered by Leopold that would provide a handsome dower on the marriage of his son. The son's bride was a part of the price: she was to be Eleanor's granddaughter Eleanor of Brittany, whom Richard had already offered to Al-Adil in compensation for Joanna's stubborn refusal to marry him.
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In addition, the emperor's relative Isaac Comnenus, who was still imprisoned in Cyprus, was to be released. His daughter, held hostage by Joanna and Berengaria in Rome, was to be restored to him. And lastly, 50 galleys and 200 knights were to be furnished for use in the war with Tancred in compensation for the Treaty of Messina having prejudiced the Empress Constance's rights to Sicily.

On Maundy Thursday,
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the eve of Good Friday, Richard's chaplain left for England with the ransom demand and a letter from him to Eleanor informing her that Longchamp had been the one who stage-managed the all-important interview with the emperor. The amount was there for all to see in ink on parchment: she was required to oversee its collection and to note carefully how much every baron contributed, so that the king would know how much gratitude he owed each one … or not. The justiciars were, of course, to give a good example by their own generosity.

Eleanor got to work immediately,
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appointing five assessors to oversee the ransom collection: Hubert Walter, Bishop Richard of London, the earl of Arundel, the earl of Surrey and Henry fitz Ailwin, the first mayor of London, whose citizens learned they were to contribute at roughly the same rate as barons paying a quarter of their annual rents and revenues and the knighthood, each fee being assessed at twenty shillings.

To amass the ransom from a country impoverished firstly by Henry's Saladin tithe and all the other crusading taxes, required the sanctions of the Church. Formally installed as archbishop of Canterbury on 30 May 1193, Hubert Walter informed the bishops of the realm that they were responsible for collecting the tax from their clergy, those priests who lived on tithes being required to contribute a tenth of their income. Charged with a fourth part of their wealth, the canons of Geoffrey the Bastard's cathedral at York refused to pay, despite every abbey and cathedral having to plunder its treasury for jewels and gold – in return for which promissory notes were given, payable after the king's return. Even the moneyless abbeys of the Gilbertians and St Bernard's Cistercians, who owned no gems or
precious metal, were obliged to give a whole year's clip of wool from their flocks.
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Having no idea of the real value of money, Richard naturally assumed that whatever sum was demanded for his release would rapidly be paid in the same way that knights defeated in tournaments were ransomed according to their wealth and rank. Since he was the noblest and wealthiest monarch in Christendom, he could hardly expect to be assessed more modestly. It was therefore the duty and privilege of his subjects to pay up.

To prevent his golden tongue gaining even more supporters, the Emperor placed him in close confinement at the grim fortress of Trifels
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until Longchamp succeeded in obtaining his removal to more relaxed surroundings at Hagenau. He then departed with his master's blessing for England, to assemble the hostages to be held as surety. With spring giving way to summer, Richard was soon again being treated more as guest than prisoner in Hagenau, where the imperial court spent Pentecost. Sharing something of his musical skills, the Emperor even indulged him in some of the rhyming contests at which Richard had excelled in his youth at Eleanor's court in Poitiers.

The constant stream of prelates passing between the Angevin possessions on both sides of the Channel and Richard's various places of detention in Germany, had given him in the eyes of the German nobility more ‘the prestige of an imperial statesman … than the forlorn dignity of a suppliant'.
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The emperor's plan to meet Philip in June 1193 was therefore postponed. Incensed by the emperor's failure to consult him since the original letter, Philip wanted a share of the ransom to compensate for the insults he had suffered at Richard's hands. In return, he offered the archbishop of Reims as mediator in the dispute between Henry Hohenstaufen and his disaffected bishops, on condition that Richard stayed right where he was. Meeting Philip at midsummer in Lorraine, the emperor pondered how much an alliance with his neighbour the king of the Franks was worth against the money represented by the ransom.
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Confident that he would soon be released, Richard was allowed to write to all and sundry, his captors having no objection if it would speed up the collection of the money. Nor did they prevent the armour Richard had worn in the Holy Land from being taken by Admiral Stephen of Turnham to London for exhibition as an eloquent reproach to his subjects who had not emptied their purses.
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Berengaria was a singular omission from her husband's address book, but Eleanor was greeted by the distant prisoner as his ‘dear
mother' and also formally as ‘by the Grace of God, Queen of the English'. He even wrote to the Old Man of the Mountains in faraway Syria, requesting him as chief of the sect of Assassins to confirm that it was his men who had killed Conrad of Montferrat.
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Predictably, a mysterious reply was received, which Richard waved before the emperor, claiming complete exoneration.

In England, the ransom trickled in; it did not flow. This was partly due to the corruption of the unsupervised collectors working outside the normal Exchequer system, many of whom were afterwards accused of diverting much into their own pockets. As and when each bullion train arrived in London, the gold and silver and precious objects were locked away in St Paul's Cathedral under heavy guard, in sacks sealed with Eleanor's own seal and that of Archbishop Hubert Walter. The first levies having proven largely insufficient, she ordered a second, and then a third, lambasting the tardy and the niggardly. Nor was it any easier to milk the impoverished continental possessions.

An even more unpopular task was the naming of the hostages who would serve as surety until the entire ransom had been paid. Longchamp, more tactful than in the past,
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had returned from Hagenau not as chancellor and justiciar, but as bishop of Ely – a loyal servant of the Crown, whose duty was to concert with Eleanor the selection of the noble hostages. This was a matter she pushed forward energetically in the hope that it would cause the families of those selected to find some wealth they had omitted to declare, for the greater the amount raised, the fewer the number of hostages to be delivered. Yet she refused to entrust to Longchamp her own grandson William of Winchester, son of Henry the Lion of Saxony. Many other families also refused their sons on the grounds that the bishop of Ely was not a fit person to have the care of boys; they sent their daughters instead.