The Capture and Ransom of Richard the Lionheart

Leaden clouds hang overhead.

The royal standard, torn to shreds.

A captured King aloft instead,

Three thousand souls below.

In lonely castle, King Richard waits

For English silver through the gates.

A King’s ransom between states

As preyed on as the doe.

By Leopold of Austria jailed

For wartime errors, friendships failed.

For this the King endures, assailed,

His life a song of woe.

And woe prolonged: No friend has come

For Richard in his royal slum.

The song of rescue now a hum,

No hope left to bestow.

He’d been nobility enshrined,

His royal right bestowed divine.

But now with quill, he will opine

From this prison cell chateau.

His Ja Nus Hons Pris describes the grief

Of gentle King, his disbelief

That friendship cannot bring relief —

His love they’d all forego.

(Down below, three thousand hear

The music paired with verses dear.

Forever silent on their ear

A dead adagio.)

Richard finds his opus well.

It makes his cœur de lion swell.

But well-penned poems cannot quell

The fears that overflow.

The memories of orders made,

Of banners waved, of brave Crusade,

Of battles won, of friends betrayed,

Of victors’ status quo.

He shudders when he thinks about

That August day, the turnabout,

Sovereignty shrouding muted doubt,

Black death the King’s to sow. 

After battle, hero Crusaders

Had taken prisoner Muslim raiders.

Three thousand treacherous invaders

In Richard’s dark shadow.

Sultan promised ransom for

The Turkish prisoners of war.

But at unpaid ransom, Richard swore

A vengeful quid pro quo.

Three thousand men with heads held straight.

Three thousand bodies: Sultan’s bait.

King Richard’s rage now calm, sedate,

As grass from blood would grow.

Tonight, in captured Richard’s dream

He hears the trumpets, brass agleam,

He hardly ever hears the scream

Of men at swordsman's blow.

But sometimes wafts of freezing breeze

Bring good King Richard to his knees,

Make him humble, ill at ease,

For debts his soul may owe.

With his own ransom now delayed,

The King’s neck feels the fortune’s trade.

Of prisoner for prisoner made

By sword, by blade, by bow.

But in these moods of discontent

His last-ditch words can reinvent

A blameless, sinless man’s lament

As Britain’s fondest beau.

And now King Richard, Lionheart,

Is not a man so torn apart.

Tomorrow morning, God’s fresh start

As Christian monarchs know.

He sleeps a sleep of humble peace.

His furrowed brow now smooth, uncreased.

He leaves behind the predeceased

In somnolent tableau.

But though the King is on his own

He’ll never find himself alone.

They gather still, as cold as stone,

As stealthy as the crow.

They curse his bones, they haunt his mind,

They drink his misery in kind.

They’ll never leave the king behind:

The three thousand souls below.

About the poet

Jennifer Gunner is a freelance writer who regularly publishes articles on grammar, writing, literature, and pretty much everything else. She is a fellow of the South Coast Writing Project and an active participant in writing contests of all shapes and sizes.