The Captain's Men

by Martin Archer

  There were no flies on Pope Innocent III. He knew an opportunity when he saw it—he promptly offered the total avoidance of purgatory and great papal recognitions and indulgences to any prince or king who would find or buy the missing religious relics, and donate them to Rome. The Patriarch responded by making similar offers.

  The Pope and the Patriarch were both wrong—the priests charged with saving the relics had fled in the wrong direction and been massacred by the crusaders when the fighting intensified around the Patriarch’s palace. It was William and his archers who had fought their way into the Patriarch’s palace and carried the priceless relics to safety.

  For some years the missing relics had been safely and secretly gathering dust in Cornwall’s Restormel Castle along with most of the gold and coins from the Byzantine treasury, the gold and coins that the son of one of the earlier Byzantine emperors had promised to give to the crusaders if they would restore his father to the throne.

  And it was all about to change—William and the archers had made an “arrangement” with young Pope Innocent through the Pope’s teacher and mentor, Cardinal Bertoli.

  If it worked, it would truly be a deal made in heaven for everyone involved: the archers would get a king’s ransom in gold and coins in exchange for the relics, the Pope would get the relics without having to pay for them, and a handful princes and kings would avoid purgatory and get the Pope’s blessing for their claims and ambitions—if they acquired the relics “from whomever finds them” and donated them to the church.

  The archers’ problem, of course, was that the princes and kings would also be able to donate the relics to the Pope and receive the many benefits on offer from the Holy Father if they seized the relics from the archers by force instead of paying for them.

  Chapter Two

  Once Again in England.

  I was standing on the roof of the forward castle of Phillip’s two-tiered war galley lost in thought as we entered the Fowey estuary and the archers pulling on the galleys oars began rowing us towards the mouth of the river. Henry and Peter stood next to me.

  My two lieutenants and I had spent the entire voyage since we left Tunis pondering as to how we might safely turn the religious relics we recently announced we had “found” on the Greek coast into coins, lots of coins, since everyone including the Pope said they were worth a king’s ransom.

  For better or worse, we had reached an agreement with the Pope and the first part of our plan to sell the relics was underway. So far, so good. But how were we going to keep the relics safe until we could sell them now that everyone knew we had them? It was a question that perplexed us.

  From the very beginning, our fear had been that King John or one of Europe’s other princes or kings would try to seize the relics from us by force instead of paying us for them. That was why we had kept their whereabouts a secret until we could make an arrangement with the Pope, and why we had brought so many of our company’s fighting men back to England to help defend them. And, of course, it was also why we pretended not to know where the relics were located and did not conduct a “search” of the Greek coast to find them until we had finalized our agreement with the Pope.

  It was a good agreement and well-designed to increase the number of coins the relics would fetch for us when we sold them—less, of course, ten percent to Cardinal Bertoli for getting the Pope to agree to our plan, and twenty percent for Pope Innocent III himself. The Holy Father, according to Cardinal Bertoli, desperately needed the money because his family was still trying to pay back the forty mule-loads of silver they borrowed to buy the Papacy for him.

  Basically, the plan which the Pope approved involved our selling the relics to a Christian king or prince who would then donate them to Rome in return for avoiding purgatory and obtaining the Pope’s recognition of their claims to various additional lands and titles.

  It was a winning plan for everyone—unless, of course, one of the princes or kings, someone like King John, for instance, tried to seize the relics without paying for them in order to donate them to the Church and obtain the benefits promised by the Pope. The possibility of our having to fight to keep the relics until we could turn them into coins had always worried me. It was why we kept their whereabouts a secret and they had been gathering dust in Cornwall where my men and I lived with our women and children when we were in England.

  In any event, and for better or worse, our plan to sell the relics was underway with the agreement of the Pope—who, being a Church official, would almost certainly accept them from anyone even if we were not paid. That was why worries about our being set upon and robbed of the relics, instead of being paid for them, had been almost constantly on my mind ever since we finished raiding Algiers and Tunis and set our course for England.

  But then, without my even realizing they were leaving, my worries about the safety of the relics drifted out from behind my eyes as we rowed passed Fowey Village and entered the mouth of the River Fowey that runs up to my home at Restormel Castle. They were replaced with a rapidly growing sense of warmth and excitement as I realized that in an hour or two I would once again be with my family—and a rapidly growing sense of anxiety and sadness because I would soon be trying to explain the senseless death of Anne in Lisbon six months earlier.

  As we rowed slowly up the clear and placid river, I could only hope and pray that Anne’s two sisters and our children were spared from being poxed whilst I was gone, and would be alive and well to hear my sad tale of her death. And, of course, I hoped the same for my oldest son, George, now grown to manhood and an archer who had been learnt to gobble and scribe in church-talk. And also for my brother, Thomas, and his students who were being learnt to be archer sergeants as well as the Latin gobbling and scribing necessary so they could also be priests and company clerks.

  Well, done is done as the Good Book somewhere says; I will know soon enough if they made it through another year.

  “It has been a while, has it not?” suggested Henry quietly with a wistful sound in his voice. “I surely have missed the missus and all the trees and green grass, and that is a fact.”

  “Me too, Henry, me too. It is good to be home.”

  ******

  A number of the galleys from our raid on Tunis were already tied up along the riverbank as Phillip’s oarsmen slowly rowed us around the final bend in the river and we moved towards the floating wharf tied to the riverbank in front of the archers’ camp where we put the learning on our new recruits. The trees and fields along the river were thick and green and there was a sense of a coming rain in the air from the clouds forming to the south. In the distance, once we got around the bend in the river, I could see Restormel Castle.

  It was very impressive and, without even knowing I did, I gave a big sigh of relief when I saw it.

  “Hoy Captain, and welcome home,” shouted the grizzled whitebeard who caught the mooring line one of Phillip’s sailors threw to him as our galley approached the wharf. He had the two stripes of a chosen man sewn on to the front and back of his hooded tunic.

  I knew the man. What is his name? He was one of Harold’s sailor men recruited during those hectic early days when we first acquired galleys and went to sea to earn our coins. From out of nowhere his name popped into my mouth from behind my eyes.

  “Hoy yourself, Josh,” I said as I jumped down on the dock and extended my right hand and clapped him on the shoulder with my left most happily. “It is good to see you again and in such good health. And how is your dear wife?”

  “Tolerable well, Captain, tolerable well, thankee. Jane will be pleased that you asked.”

  Men and women were streaming towards us and a crowd began to gather even before we finished mooring and I jumped down on to the floating wharf and felt it move under my feet. Many of the men were wearing long, light brown Egyptian tunics like mine and Josh’s. The only difference being that my tunic had more stripes running across its front and back because I was the company’s captain.

  The men and
women in the rapidly growing crowd were a cheerful lot, no doubt because of all the prizes we had recently taken off the Moors and the prize monies that would soon be paid as a result. They did not know I had made a great mistake in not ordering Algiers to be sacked when we surprised the heathen and I had the chance. They also did not know that my plan to destroy Tunis had failed and cost me one of my dearest and oldest friends.

  It was a happy arrival and my lieutenants and I immediately plunged into the crowd and began shaking hands, patting backs, and exchanging congratulations with our men who had managed to stay alive until we made it safely back to England. All the while we watched intently as Phillip’s men began to unload the empty wooden crates that everyone thinks contain the missing relics.

  ******

  Things were just beginning to settle down when the crowd parted and my oldest son, George, my priestly older brother, Thomas, and one of my women, Helen, arrived all out of breath and red-faced from hurrying down the path from the castle. Where is Tori? Tori was not with them.

  Thomas saw the worried look on my face as he led my family through the crowd with a big welcoming smile on his face.

  “Do not worry yourself,” Thomas said as we happily grabbed each other’s arms and danced around. “Tori is fine and most pleased that you returned. She is up at the castle with your new daughter. The dear little thing is still recovering from the same sweating pox that carried off poor Anne’s daughter last year at about this time.”

  A few seconds later, a laughing and crying Helen, the older sister of Tori and Anne, was in my arms hugging me and I had my arm around my son, George, all at the same time. My God, George is a grown man and even bigger than me. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Peter beaming as his wife showed him a little infant who had obviously been recently birthed, and the empty crates that supposedly contained the relics coming off Phillip’s galley and. Well, the crates were not totally empty—we had packed them with rocks so they would seem to be full if anyone tried to pick them up.

  We all walked together up the path to Restormel and I spent an enjoyable afternoon catching up on the domestic matters of my family and being told about what had happened and not happened whilst I was away. The big family news was that I had gotten Tori pregnant again and George’s young wife, Beth, recently birthed an adorable daughter so that I am now a grandfather. She was handed to me to admire and promptly pissed on me as soon as I picked her up.

  The big company-related news, according to Thomas and George who proudly and excitedly told me all about it as soon as we could talk privately, was that while we were gone both of the German princes vying for the Pope’s approval to be the Holy Roman Emperor had sent clerical emissaries all the way to us here in Cornwall to reaffirm their interest in buying the relics for the Church “if they are found.”

  Both parties of emissaries arrived, just as the Pope had suggested they should, to tell us that they were truly interested in acquiring the relics and donating them to the Church. They even brought some useless gifts to prove their seriousness and good intentions.

  More importantly, the princes’ emissaries also brought substantial pouches of coins to help pay the costs associated with finding the missing relics. And, according to Thomas, each of them looked around to gauge his prince’s ability to take them by force if we found the relics and then refused to sell them to their prince.

  Similar messages and pouches of coins had come in by way of parchments delivered by couriers from the king of the Swedes who wanted the Pope’s blessing to add the lands of the Finns to his realm, and from Phillip of France who wanted the Pope to bless his claim to Normandy and once and forever end England’s claim to own Normandy’s lands and titles.

  On the other hand, no word of any kind had been received from King John of our own dear England. That was not too much of a surprise since he was so well known to be poor that the Pope had not even bothered to send him a parchment suggesting that he help pay for the search and gather up the necessary coins to buy the relics for the Church “if the archers find them.”

  There also had not yet been any messages come in from the crusader lords who want the Pope to recognize and bless them as the rightful princes and kings over the cities and lands they took off the Byzantines when they captured Constantinople.

  What had come in before I arrived, however, was a tough-looking courier from David Levi, the king’s moneylender in London who had become my friend. Probably because we were both common-birthed outsiders fighting to get ourselves and our families and men ahead in a world whose lords did not want us to rise.

  David’s courier was a big burly fellow carrying a battle axe. He and his two heavily armed personal guards had come in on a trading cog from London last week and had been patiently waiting for my return. They were waiting because I had scribed and couriered an inquiry to David when we had reached Lisbon. They had brought a parchment with his response. I read the parchment carefully and then read it again even more carefully. David obviously understood what I wanted and what he proposed was quite acceptable. I told the courier as much.

  “I agree with Master Levi’s proposal and the price,” I told David’s courier as Thomas nodded his approval. Then I used a sharpened goose feather to stir some water into a bowl of ground charcoal from the hearth and signed it.

  “Please tell him I said his terms are acceptable and that it would be most greatly appreciated if he would proceed as soon as possible.”

  ******

  We had a hastily organized homecoming supper of sorts that evening and all of the company’s lieutenants and four-stripe and five-stripe sergeants came to sup with me and my family. We were joined, as was always the case, by the inevitable band of castle cats which prowled under the table for scraps to supplement their usual meals of the castle’s mice and rats.

  There were a surprising number of them, sergeants that is. The benches along the long wooden table that ran almost the entire length of Restormel’s great hall were packed even though Raymond was in Okehampton with our horse archers and Harold and many of our company’s sergeants were in Cyprus assisting Yoram in his efforts to put some of our recent Moorish prizes into service carrying passengers and cargos.

  As you might imagine, everyone cheered and banged their drinking bowls on the table when I stood up on my bench before supper started and confirmed that the valuable relics we had been seeking were now safely upstairs in the sleeping room above the great hall where we were sitting—and got even louder when I added that every man in the company would be getting prize money as soon as they were sold. As you might imagine, I did not mention that they had been up there for some years.

  I also told my men what they already knew—that I had brought thirteen full galley companies of veteran archers with me, well over a thousand men, to help guard the relics. Then we settled down to drink and eat and tell each other stories and lies as old soldiers always do when they eat and drink together.

  What everyone knew so thoroughly that my sergeants and I did not even discuss, was that the archers I had brought with me would be joining the more than one hundred and seventy horse-riding archers and outriders under Raymond’s command at Okehampton, and the fifty or so archers in our Trematon, Bossiney, and Launceston garrisons.

  We also had the hundred or more veterans who were in the camp to school our newly recruited apprentice archers who were being learnt to push arrows out of a longbow, use the bladed pikes our smiths have been making on Cyprus, and march together putting down the same foot to the beat of a rowing drum.

  Furthermore, many of the four hundred or so apprentice archers now in camp had completed their training and were ready to put an archer’s stripe on their tunic gowns and join the company. In addition, we had hundreds of construction and farm workers from among the local lads who were available to carry water and arrow bales.

  There was no doubt about it, we assured each other; we had a powerful army of well-equipped fighting men available to guard the relics.
r />   ******

  Supper was a festive occasion and Tori and Helen and all my children, even the youngest infants at their mothers’ breasts, sat with me at the head of the table as we supped on boiled chicken and unlimited amounts of bread, cheese, and new ale. The talk was merry, and, truth be told, a lot of the men, including me, got more than a little tipsy. Anne was never mentioned.

  Only one thing came up during our meal that raised my eyebrows—the Earl of Devon. The retired archer who spied for us whilst he poured bowls of ale in his Exeter alehouse had reported that the Earl had returned from exile in France four weeks ago. Unfortunately, he did not know why, only that a surprising number of mounted and seaborne couriers have been coming and going with messages ever since the earl returned.

  Hmm. Something is up. On the other hand, Devon is almost certainly still on King John’s list of enemies just as he is on ours. So maybe we can kill him now that he is back and take over Exeter Castle. Having it would help guard the approaches to Cornwall and push our frontier further out.

  “Um, Thomas,” I said as I leaned over the table and spoke quietly to my priestly brother, “is there any way you can find out how the king would react if we should happen to kill Devon and take Exeter Castle?”

  “He might be pleased since Devon is one of his enemies,” was Thomas’s reply. “I will ask Albert if I can get a message to him.” Albert, of course, being ‘Father Alberto,’ one of Thomas’s students whom we had bribed into the household of the papal nuncio to be our spy at Windsor.

  George was sitting next to Helen and overheard us. He leaned over and listened intently. So did Helen and Tori, even though, of course, I only talked to them in private about such matters.

  Later Helen came to my bed in the corner of the sleeping room and washed me all over with a wet rag in the eastern way. She also trimmed my hair and beard with the two attached knives she brought back from Lisbon a couple of years ago, and brought me a new Egyptian tunic gown on to which she Tori had already sewed my stripes.