filled ditch, but still holding them in sight. It was not just the barbican that had conscientious sentries: each of the four town walls was patrolled by alert soldiers, too. But there were not so many men concentrated near the south-western corner of Ochsenfurt when I arrived there a few moments later and found a spot under a bush from which to observe the second tower. The shouts of the guards at the barbican had drawn a single man, running from the western section of the town wall; I had seen him trotting in the opposite direction to me as I approached the second tower.
Oddly, I also believed that I could hear a strange noise behind me; a heavy crunching tread, like a huge beast moving ponderously through the undergrowth. When I stopped to listen, the noise also stopped. A quiver of ancestral fear ran through me, the notion that something was out there, behind me in the blackness, something that meant to do me harm. I shrugged off my nerves, telling myself to get a grip on my courage. It was most likely a boar or a stag, raiding the rich farmland for something good to eat; or perhaps a sleepy cow blundering around in the darkness.
The second tower, on the south-western corner of the town, looked deserted. Not a chink of light to be seen; nothing stirring at all. I waited perhaps a quarter of an hour, huddling in my bush, and then, straightening up, I bowed the first chord and sang the first verse of ‘My Joy’. Nothing. No response from the tower, no angry cries of alarm from the guards. I tried the second verse: My heart commands me To love my sweet mistress, And my joy in doing so Is a generous reward in itself.
Again: nothing. That second verse had been written by King Richard himself — it was a witty reply to my own first verse, using many of the same words to give a different meaning to the verses. Richard had been justifiably proud of his composition. I doubt very much he would have forgotten it. But: nothing. So I packed up the bow and the vielle into the back-sack, and began to move off eastwards towards the third tower.
The approach to my third performance spot was easier than the last two as there was a small wood to the south of Ochsenfurt which made it possible to come undetected to a place close to the walls. The third tower looked as unpromising as the second; there were no guards in evidence and not a chink of light showing. I wondered whether I had made a mistake, that Richard was not imprisoned in one of these tall round fortifications; maybe he was not in Ochsenfurt at all. Perhaps he had been moved once again to another location altogether. Was I just wasting my night, when I could be tucked up in the warm hay of the stable listening to Hanno’s snores?
I unpacked the vielle, feeling a little discouraged, and with very little ceremony I launched once more into the first verse of ‘My Joy’. Again, there was no response, not a sound from either a guard or royal prisoner. Dispirited, I began a listless rendition of the second, the royal verse. And then it happened.
A light showed at a tiny window at the top of the tower; a little spark of good cheer. I stopped playing, dumbfounded. It couldn’t be, it couldn’t be…
And then I heard a voice: not strong, nor particularly tuneful, the voice of someone only just awakened — but familiar, very familiar, and it made the skin all over my body pimple like a plucked goose’s flesh. The voice sang: A lord has one obligation Greater than love itself Which is to reward most generously The knight who serves him well.
It was Richard. I had found my King. And he had remembered, and sung back to me, the verse I had written so long ago, to remind him of his debts to Robin.
I had tears stinging my eyes as I struck the strings of the vielle for the final verse: and I sang it in unison with my lord, my captain, my King, his voice growing in strength with every note.
A knight who sings so sweetly Of obligation to his noble lord Should consider the great virtue Of courtly manners, not discord.
When we had finished, there was a long silence. My throat was too choked to speak. And finally, I saw a pale face at the window high up on the tower, and a royal voice called out: ‘Blondel, Blondel, is that truly you? Or are you some night phantom sent to taunt me in my misery?’
‘It is me, sire. It is Alan Dale. It is truly me, and we — myself and my lord abbots Boxley and Robertsbridge — have come to accomplish your freedom. Take heart, sire, your friends are close at hand.’
At that moment, something flashed in the corner of my eye. Purely out of instinct, I moved back half a step as a shining steel sword blade slashed past my face, missing my nose by a quarter-inch. If the blow had landed, it would have hacked straight through my skull, killing me for sure. But, God be praised, I was young then, and very fast. I dropped the bow and turned to face my attacker with only a frail wooden vielle in my hands. He was a tall, very thin man, taller than me by half a foot, and he was not slow either. And suddenly I knew him. He was the man I had seen beside the fire with Prince John, at the siege of Kirkton six months ago. I had no time to reach down for my misericorde, but my beloved musical instrument was enough to deflect the next strike; a lightning lunge at my heart. By God, he was quick! Holding the instrument by the neck, with the sound box towards my enemy, I caught and deflected his sword as it flickered towards me — and what a sword: a long, slim blade, chased with gold, a crosspiece decorated with ropes of silver, and a large blue gem, a sapphire, I assumed, set in a ring in the centre of the silver pommel. I saw all this in an instant, and at the same time, my vielle swept up and to the right and pushed the magnificent blade safely past my body. I riposted instinctively; hours and hours of training in the strike. And if the vielle had been a sword, my counterblow would have killed him. As it was, the blunt end of the vielle’s round body smashed into his face with enough force to crush his nose and send him staggering back. I fumbled at my boot top for the dagger; I needed steel for this work, not frail wood. He looked angry and surprised as we circled each other. I watched his sword arm, waiting for his next move and trying not to think of how much I wanted to own that lovely blade, but my hind brain was shrieking another warning: one that I could not at that moment decipher.
I had the misericorde in my left hand and the vielle in my right when he attacked again; a scything diagonal back-hand cut with the long sword aimed at my head and coming fast from my right-hand side. I swept up the vielle and the sword crunched into it, leaving me unharmed but with a tangle of splinters and kindling, held together with five cat-gut strings in my hand. I dodged the next blow, and hopped over a slash at my ankles, trying to get in close to use the misericorde — all the while, my brain yelling its inchoate warning — and as he was turning after his low sweep, I jumped forward, jabbed at him with the misericorde — a feint — and swung the wrecked vielle at his head. He avoided the blade with a neat half-turn but the rump of the smashed instrument pivoted around the back of his head, wrapping the cat-gut strings around his throat. Then I pulled. He dropped that wonderful sword and turned away, both his thin white hands flying to his neck to loosen the strangling cat-gut. I dropped the misericorde in turn, and leapt on his back, using my weight to drive him to the ground, my hands scrabbling for the cat-gut, wrenching it tight, the vielle strings cutting deeply into his long throat. I hauled for my life, with one hand on the neck of the instrument and one on the wreckage of the bridge. He gurgled wetly, his eyes bulged, his tongue protruded like some evil purple sausage as his body kicked and writhed under mine. I knew he was dying; all I had to do was hold on and pull the vielle strings tighter and tighter…
And then something exploded in the side of my chest, I heard the crack of bone as my body flew off the supine swordsman and flipped over. As I lay on my back, the cat-gut still in my grasp, still around the thin man’s neck, I saw a giant form, round as a glacial boulder, barely human, looming above me. I knew that I had been kicked in the ribs as I had never been kicked before; it felt like a hoof-blow from a fear-maddened stallion. I also knew what my brain had been screaming at me as I fought the swordsman: Where is his friend? Where is his giant, muscle-bound companion from the fireside? I knew now.
The ogre — for there was no way on God’s green earth that this monstrous fellow could have been wholly human — raised a gigantic foot, ready to stamp on my two wrists which were still half-hauling on the cat-gut and strangling the life out of the tall man. Hurriedly releasing the vielle strings, I pulled in my arms just as his foot came stamping down on the place where they had been moments before — and I swear I felt the earth shudder with the impact of his boot. I rolled away from the pair of them: the thin one, now kneeling and coughing and groping for his sword, and then rising, impossibly quickly, shining blade in hand; and the ogre, striding towards me with an insane gleam in his piggy little eyes. He appeared to be unarmed but, seeing his massive ham-like hands clenching and unclenching in front of him as he advanced on me, I knew that if I allowed myself to be caught by them, I was a dead man. My misericorde was gone, lost in the struggle, and I am ashamed to say that I did not hesitate for an instant. I turned and ran, as swiftly as I could with my damaged ribs. I ran like a craven hare into the trees behind me.
With a sword in my hand I fear no man; but unarmed against a first-class swordsman and a monstrous creature from some feverish nightmare… Anyway, enough of my poor excuses, I fled. I ran for my life. The ogre lumbered after me for twenty yards or so, panting and growling behind me like a bear, but my pain and fear drove me onwards and I soon lost him in the thick cover of the wood. As I ran, I could hear the shouts in German from a