merely nodded, not even glancing at each other. There was no point in attempting to demur or disagree once Richard Plantagenet had made up his mind on something like that.
The hunt went well, and the entire party—ten men, excluding servants—had acquitted itself well when Richard called a halt late in mid-morning and led them back towards Messina. They were less than halfway back, however, when they encountered signs of impending trouble. A messenger came galloping, his horse blowing and badly winded, to tell Richard that Philip of France had returned to Messina and was calling for an immediate parlay. That left the English King nonplussed, for Philip Augustus had sailed off for Outremer two days before in a fit of pique, angry at, and probably jealous of, the way in which the Sicilian crowds had flocked to welcome Richard’s flamboyant arrival two days after his own advent had gone unremarked. But Philip, who was notoriously prone to seasickness, had sailed into a violent storm mere hours after his departure, and it had taken his damaged ship almost two days to limp back into Messina, where he was now tapping his foot impatiently and awaiting Richard’s return.
Richard cursed under his breath, then turned to Sir Henry, who was riding at his knee. “Damn the man! Am I never to be free of his tantrums? I thought he was safely gone and out of my concerns for a while, and now he’s back, puling and whining that no one shows him the respect he demands. The damned fool simply does not know that you cannot demand respect, that you have to earn it. Blast him to Hades.”
Henry sat silent, well aware that Richard was merely giving vent to his frustration and needed no input from him, and the irascible King continued, warming to his theme and unaware, beneath everything, that Henry was even there. “God’s holy arse! As if I didn’t have enough on my platter, dealing with Tancred, the upstart idiot King of Sicily. Now there’s an ample cause to make a monarch curse his lot. Tancred the King! Tancred the Tosspot, Tancred the Pisspot, Tancred the Thief! God damn his thieving soul, I’ll have his guts dried and strung to my new arbalest.”
He looked again at Sir Henry. “I cannot rest until I deal with the upstart fool and show him what he deserves. He stole the kingdom from my sister, threw her royal arse into one of his jails, and now refuses to return her dowry, to which he has no slightest right. I swear to God, I have been thinking upon ways to gut him, and now I can’t, until I have consoled my wayward cousin Capet. Philip Augustus indeed … I’ve seen crows that are more august than this foppish Frenchman.”
Sir Henry wisely refused to meet his son’s eye when he became aware of Andre staring at him. Tancred had seized the throne two years earlier, upon the death of King William the Good, husband to Richard’s younger sister, Joanna Plantagenet. On mounting his new throne, and never imagining for a moment that Richard would come to Sicily under any circumstances, Tancred had imprisoned Joanna and impounded her substantial dowry. He had hastily released her several days before, immediately upon her brother’s unexpected arrival, but he had ostentatiously failed to release her dowry, and Richard had been preparing for days now to redress that situation. Within hours of disembarking, he had dispatched squadrons of elite forces, some of them English, others Aquitainians, to secure several prime locations, defensive and aggressive, surrounding Messina itself. Simultaneously, in a lightning-fast and unexpected move the previous day, he had seized and garrisoned a strong monastery at La Bagnara, on the far side of the Straits of Messina, installing his sister Joanna safely there under guard. He already had nine-tenths of a
As the walls of Messina began looming in the distance, the hunting party encountered a contingent of Richard’s English yeomen who were arguing loudly and obviously highly upset. Tensions within the city, it appeared, had broken out that morning into open hostilities between the English soldiery and the local Sicilian merchants. The Sicilians traditionally disliked foreigners of any description and made no secret of their distaste. They had taken to disparaging the English soldiers as “long-tails,” implying, with no subtlety at all, that they each concealed the Devil’s tail beneath their clothing. But early that morning one English man-at-arms had argued with a baker over the price and weight of a loaf of bread, and the surrounding crowd had risen up against him, stomping the fellow to death in a demonstration of hatred that quickly escalated into a street riot in which more than a score of English soldiers had been slaughtered, their bodies thrown into public privies as an additional insult.
Richard waved Sir Henry to his side and spurred his horse towards the city, but long before they reached Messina they began to encounter increasing numbers of their own Angevin troops. The English, they said— those who had not been killed in the morning’s rioting—had been driven from the city, and the great gates had been locked to keep them out. The Griffones, the English soldiery’s own insulting name for the local Sicilians, were now lining the tops of the city walls, jeering and howling abuse at the English yeomen, whom Richard and his party could now see milling in the space before the walls.
It was plain to Andre, as they approached the scene, that the hundred or so English yeomen in this particular group were spoiling for revenge and waiting only for a leader to rally them to the attack, and naturally enough, they flocked around Richard when he rode over to them, expecting him to be that leader. But Richard had other concerns that ran more deeply than the emotional currents affecting his men. He stood up in his stirrups and called them to attention, then waited until they all fell silent. When he was sure he had their undivided attention, he drew his sword and sat back into his saddle, holding the magnificent weapon high.
“You all know this sword,” he told them, keeping his voice low enough that they had to strain to hear him. “Think you I would sully it by accepting insults from these louts and leaving its blade to grow dull from lack of use? We will teach these Griffones to mind their manners, lads, rest assured of that, but we must do it my way … the way I am constrained to do it. Easy enough for you brave bulls to cry out and go rushing in to fight bare handed, but I have to think and act like a king, and see it from the viewpoint of a king. So here’s what we must do.”
He swept his eyes around the crowd that stared up at him, meeting the eyes of every man there, however briefly. No one moved or made a sound, and he stood up in his stirrups again and raised his voice more strongly this time.
“There are dead Englishmen in the streets of Messina this day. Is that true?”
A massive roar from a hundred throats verified that it was, and he chopped it into silence with a downsweep of his blade. “Then, by God’s almighty beard, they shall be avenged, every man of them. Their deaths will not go by unpunished. Messina and its rabid citizens will pay dearly on behalf of every Englishman done to death in its streets this day, or I am not Richard of England! I will have justice.
For long moments there was a chaos of noisy approval, and not once did Richard glance at any member of his hunting party as he waited patiently for the tumult to die down. Instead, he concentrated on judging the precise moment when the noise began to fade, and raised his arm high, commanding attention as the silence fell again.
“In the meantime, I ask for your trust, and your understanding. I stand here as King of England, but you men
“But I swear to you now, by the bowels of Christ, tomorrow is a different matter. Tonight will be for talking, but if they will not see sense and make apology for what they have done, then come morning, we will be here again, but this time properly prepared, and Messina and its people will weep for today’s folly. Then we will drink Griffonish blood.”
Again he waited for the shouting to die down before continuing. “But you must know, in truth,” he told them, “I have no wish to shed another drop of English blood here in Sicily if it can be avoided.”
The last grumbling voice died away as that sank home, and Richard spoke into a profound silence. “Every single man left lying dead on the island of Sicily,” he pointed out to his quiet listeners, “is one man lost uselessly to our great and holy endeavor. So here is what I want you to do now. I want you all, every man of you, to go back to your camp and wait to hear from me. I will send word to you at dawn of what is happening. And as you go, tell everyone you meet what I have said, and turn them back with you. Above all else, trust me and believe in what I
