London - Edward Rutherfurd [169]
In every age the warrior has been a hero. In recent decades, however, a subtle change had begun to permeate the world of the knight. The crusades had given him a religious calling; the new Continental pastime of jousting had added pageantry; now, from the warm, southern, French-speaking courts of Provence and Aquitaine had come a fashion for ballads and tales of courtly love, together with sophisticated manners new to the northern world. The perfect knight of this new dispensation was warrior, pilgrim and lover. He prayed to the Blessed Virgin, yet the lady in her bower was his Holy Grail. He jousted, and sang too. It was a heady mixture: religious, gallant, erotic. It was the dawn of the age of chivalry, whose fullest expression would be the tales of the legendary King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, now being translated for the first time from Latin and French into English.
And Richard the Lionheart was the new age’s champion.
Brought up in his mother’s cultivated court in Aquitaine, he could compose a lyric as well as any minstrel. He loved to joust and was a formidable warrior, siege expert and castle-builder. Even those closest to him, who knew he could be vain and cruel, acknowledged that he had unrivalled style and charm, as well as the gift of command. Soon, in response to the pleas of the Templars and others valiantly holding out against the Saracens in the Holy Land, he would depart upon that most sacred of all knightly adventures, the new crusade.
The crusade. Even the old jealousy between the King of France and the Plantagenets was to be shelved. The King of France and Richard were to crusade together as brothers. There was an added, mystic quality about the English king’s expedition, for it was said he was to carry the ancient sword of King Arthur, the magical Excalibur itself, upon his journey.
It was a time to rejoice. The old king’s last years had been sad. The outcry over Becket had increased until finally poor Henry had gone in penance to be publicly whipped at Canterbury. Becket had even been made a saint. Then Henry’s beloved mistress, the Fair Rosamund, had died. His wife and children had turned against him; two of his sons, including the heir, had died. But these sad times were over, and now heroic Richard had come to England to be crowned.
All London shared in the excitement. Looking past the Temple precincts to the River Thames beyond, David could see a flotilla of seagoing vessels that were to take an adventurous party of Londoners – not noblemen, but the sons of merchant families like his own – on the king’s crusade. No wonder, then, that everyone was anxious to catch sight of the hero.
Now the church door was opening. A cheer went up as, accompanied by only six knights, a tall, well-built figure in a cloak of blue and gold stepped quickly into the sunlight, which gleamed upon his golden hair. With a firm, athletic step he strode to his horse and, scarcely troubling to rest his foot on the squire who bent to help him mount, swung himself easily into the saddle and rode towards the gate.
David Bull was aware only of a hard, Plantagenet face. Until a tiny piece of magic occurred. Passing through the gateway, Richard the Lionheart briefly rested his gaze upon the little crowd. Seeing the boy, almost without thinking he looked straight into his eyes and smiled. Then, knowing full well that by this simple ruse the youth was now his for life, he clapped his heels to his horse, and rode away towards Westminster.
It was a full minute later that David Bull, gazing after him, murmured to himself: “I’m going with him. I must go on crusade.” Then, thinking of his father’s awful fury: “Uncle Michael will help me. He’ll speak to Father.”
Half an hour later an observer standing on London Bridge might have noticed a curiously dismal sight. A long-nosed man on a piebald palfrey was leading an elegantly mounted lady and two packhorses over the quiet waters of the Thames and into the city of London. The man was Pentecost Silversleeves. The lady was