The Alchemist's Revenge

by Martin Archer

  Adam had been at the tavern with some of his mates when the alewife had whispered to him that someone wanted to talk with him outside “on a matter of great importance.” Adam put down his bowl, gave a great belch to clear his head, and had walked out the door. When he got outside, a nondescript man motioned him to go around the corner.

  “Over here,” a voice said from the dark alley next to the tavern. “Be you Adam from Gravesend, the lieutenant of the guards?”

  “Oh aye, that I am.”

  According to Adam, the man waiting for him was a priest whose face he could not see in the dark. At least Adam thought he was a priest. One thing was certain, however, according to Adam—he could gobble crusader French as if he had been born to it.

  The Greek king, the priest told Adam, was very interested in making him a very rich man if he would help them open the gates in the wall so they could get in and stop the unnecessary fighting.

  “He wanted to know if I was still interested in becoming very rich, and if I could really nobble the gates and drawbridges on the Farmers Road so they could get in without a fight.”

  “I answered as you told me I should.”

  “Oh I can open them anytime I want,” I told him. “That is for sure. It is, after all, my company what guards the gates and me what sets the guards.

  “And I know which of the lads would be willing to help me for enough coins. And for enough coins to pay his debts, the captain will give all the others leave to go into the city and get drunk to celebrate someone’s birthday.

  “But there is no chance in the world that I will arrange it unless there are enough coins in it for me and my mates.”

  I was elated at the news, although I found it most interesting that they had apparently sent a priest to negotiate with Adam, someone who could gobble crusader French—and also that the priest had immediately agreed to the large number of gold and silver coins Adam said he had to have in order to get him and his mates to open the wall gates early next Saturday morning before the sun arrived.

  “Tell me about the priest,” I said when he finished telling his tale.

  “Oh, I am not sure he really was a priest, but I certainly got that impression. He said he had been sent to talk to me because he had been learnt to gobble crusader French.”

  “What kind of an accent did he have?”

  “Well Commander, I am not sure. But it was not Greek. I know that because my wife is Greek and we are with her family and at church frequently. It was more like the accents of the Latin priests and merchants here in Constantinople.”

  “That is very interesting, Adam, very interesting indeed. And you are sure he was not Greek?”

  “Oh aye, Commander, he was not a Greek for sure. And he did not even try to bargain with me, did he? That is why I think he was a priest. A merchant would have tried me to get to do it for less.”

  “I told him exactly what you said I should say—that it would be best to first break the moat bridge’s windlass so the bridge could not be raised until it was replaced, and then a couple of days later open the outer gate half an hour or so before the first light of day.

  “Nobbling the bridge first would let us spread a rumour that the Greeks would be attacking as soon as they found out. Then some of the states’ forces would surely be afraid and leave, and then there would be few of them to stop you from getting to the inner gate.

  “That way, if I was ever caught, I could claim the inner gate broke such that my mates and I were not able to shut it in time when the Greek army pushed its way in behind those who were fleeing.

  “The priest said he thought it was a good plan and offered to pay me one hundred pounds of silver coins to do it. I did what you said and told him that I needed much more, at least double, because some of my mates would also have to be paid to help or look the other way.

  “He immediately agreed to two hundred without even trying to bargain. I am to get the first half of the coins tomorrow night when I come back to the tavern for another visit. I told him I would collect the chests with a horse cart and bring some of my mates to help guard them.”

  Did you tell him the gate would be guarded?”

  “Oh yes. I said exactly what you told me to say. I warned him that he would need to have a very strong of force Greek soldiers assembled in front of the inner gate and ready to pour into the city and fight because there would be some guards the inner gate.

  “My mates and I will open the gates and put the bridges down by nobbling the windlasses that hoist them,” I told him. “But that is all we will do. It is up to you and your friends to do the fighting once you are through the gate. We will want to be long gone and in hiding before the fighting starts.

  “And then I told him what you suggested—that for another hundred pounds of silver coins, for a total of three hundred, my mates and I would start a rumour that night that the archers had been paid to open the outer gate and leave the city; and that they needed to get themselves inside the inner wall that very night to save themselves.

  “Some will panic and leave for sure. Then your men would be able to go straight to the inner gate without having to fight so hard to get through the camp.”

  The priest agreed that an early nobbling of the drawbridge and spreading a rumour that the archers were leaving was a good idea and worth another hundred.

  “I also told him I had to have the coins there in time for us to carry away before I would nobble the gates so the Greeks could push them open, and that I needed at least three days to arrange everything and find a place to hide myself and my share of the coins until the new emperor was in place and it was safe for me to come out and spend them.”

  “Did he ask you where you intend to hide yourself and the coins?”

  “Aye, he did. As you suggested, I told him my wife’s sister had a widow friend who lived here and I would hide with her until the streets were safe.”

  “You did well, Adam, you did well,” I said jovially as I clapped him on the back and shook the hand of the man whose temporary promotion to sergeant had just become permanent.

  ******

  Adam and I spent some time talking things over, and then agreed that he would come to the Commandery tomorrow night after dark to make a plan for getting the first half of the coins safely away. We wanted, of course, to get them without the Greeks knowing that both they and the second batch were destined for the Company’s chests at Restormel Castle.

  There was much to do to get ready for Adam’s betrayal of the city and the Company, but I decided tomorrow morning would be soon enough. It had been a long day and I was ready for another bowl of ale and some of Elizabeth’s comforts. Besides, I needed to think about who needed to be let in on the secret, and what lies I should tell to everyone else.

  Chapter Forty-two

  Preparing for the betrayal.

  Only Richard and Henry knew about my plan. And their eyes opened wide when the three of us met the next morning and they first heard about what I had decided we needed to do. The alchemist and James Howard almost certainly also knew most of what I had in mind without me ever having to tell them. It was, after all, something they had suggested to me. Everyone else, however, would only know the bits and pieces of what they needed to know in order to carry out their part of the plan.

  Earlier, before meeting with Richard and Henry, I had gathered half of my company of guards, eight horse archers in all, around me and ordered them assist Aron and James and guard them. Their company’s lieutenant, Lieutenant Sharp, would be their commander.

  Lieutenant Sharp and his men had been sombre and quiet as they heard me tell them that they were being detached effective immediately to assist and guard Aron and James—and that what they would be doing was important, very important, and could be dangerous.

  “You are to immediately do whatever the Aron the Alchemist or Sergeant Howard tells you to do and never ask them any questions or anything you see or hear with anyone. No exceptions. Consider anything they ask of you to be
a direct order from me that is to be obeyed instantly no matter how small or insignificant you think it might be.

  “Also, and without ever telling Aron or mentioning it to anyone else, I want you to guard Aron closely as his life may in danger in the days ahead from a murderer or poisoner. So keep your weapons and wits about you at all time and never let him out of your sight. Even when he is sleeping, several of you must be awake and watching over him with your weapons ready at all times.

  “There are several other things you need to know and should keep behind your eyes at all times and, once again, do it without talking to anyone about them. One is that Aron has made his mark on the Company’s roll and holds the rank of lieutenant.

  “Another is that keeping him alive is important to the Company and that Aron has no fighting ability or weapons training whatsoever. In other words, he is unlikely to be able to defend himself if he is attacked. Please keep that in mind when you are guarding him or if you see someone trying to get close to him. And that includes women and priests, especially Orthodox priests.

  “The third is that the girl he was to marry in a few weeks was killed by the rioters in the city a few days ago. As a result, Aron may have become temporarily overbalanced and try to kill himself, or hurt some of the Orthodox people in the city. You must not let him do it.”

  The men all saw how seriousness I was about their new assignment. They did not know why they were to help Aron and guard him, but they would do so or die trying. I could see it in their eyes.

  ******

  A hot day followed the day of the fighting in the rain and the Greek camp was quiet. After speaking with Aron’s new guards, and taking them to meet him, I rode to the Commandery to meet with Richard and Henry to tell them about the plan. Afterwards, I met with all my lieutenants to go over Company’s butcher’s bill from the previous day’s fighting. That was what we were doing when a runner arrived with a message for Harold from Eric.

  According to Eric, the captain of a Syrian transport had watched a fleet of Venetian galleys take one of our galleys on the Aegean Sea side of the Dardanelles. There had been no fighting; our galley had surrendered immediately.

  Harold thought the galley was Number Twenty-two, Captain Cartwright’s. It was one of our older galleys with a deeper draft and Cartwright had come up through the ranks as a sailor, which is why that particular galley was one of those chosen to keep sailing instead of being pulled ashore.

  Twenty-two had sailed from Constantinople bound for Cyprus several weeks earlier with a crew of nine Company sailors and its refugee passengers doing the rowing. Apparently it had been taken on its return voyage with no archers on board.

  Harold was not sure who was on board other than Captain Cartwright and his sailors, but he suspected the rowing was being done by volunteers who had been paid to help bring it back to Constantinople so that it could pick up more refugees. Paid or not, they were all the Company’s responsibility and under our protection, both the passengers and the crew.

  If it was Cartwright’s, the captured galley was one of those which we had been sending out without archers so that its regular crew of archers could be employed to help defend the walls.

  And the news got worse. According to the merchants, we had also lost another transport and its crew. One of the Company’s transports, a big two-masted cog, had been taken by the Venetians yesterday afternoon as it came through the Dardanelles with no archers on board. It too had surrendered without a fight.

  There were also rumours, almost certain to be true, that we had lost a toll-collecting galley returning with coins from the entrance to the Bosporus. It was overdue to return and almost certainly had been taken by the fleet of twenty-three Venetian galleys that had earlier landed their men in a failed effort to take or destroy the Company galleys which had been pulled ashore. It also had no archers on board.

  Our losses at sea were significant. At the very least, the Venetians now had twenty or thirty of our sailors as hostages along with cargos, money orders, and as many as two or three hundred of our passengers and volunteers. To say that we would be doing whatever we could to get them back and then exacting a terrible vengeance would be comparable to saying birds fly and the Pope is a Christian.

  We were not, however, surprised by our losses. To the contrary, they were to be expected—the Venetian galleys which had hurried out of the harbour leaving their dead and wounded behind now controlled the Marmara Sea, the inland sea between the Bosporus straits and the Dardanelle straits.

  The Venetians’ presence in the waters off Constantinople was an unfortunate fact of life. It meant the Company would continue to lose transports and galleys until we re-floated our galleys, boarded our archers, and either destroyed the Venetians or drove them off. Until we did, we would almost certainly lose more of our galleys and transports—because all of our captains sailing toward Constantinople had no way of knowing that we had lost control of the straits and the waters in front of the city.

  Our conundrum was that if we boarded our archers to fight the Venetians at sea, we might very well lose the undefended city to a land attack whilst we were gone. But then again, the Empress could safely hole up in the Citadel until we returned. Hmm.

  ****** George Courtenay

  Henry was furious with me and there was no mistaking it. He was shouting and so angry I was afraid he would fall down and go to sleep and have a sagging face and weak arm when he woke up. I did not blame him and told him as much, and also warned him of the risk. It did not seem to help.

  What got Henry so riled up was that I decided to pose as one of the archers Adam had recruited and accompany him to the tavern when he went to get the coins for opening the wall gates to the Orthodox army. I wanted to listen to what was gobbled and see if I could learn anything about the Greek plans.

  I think I decided to do it, go with Adam that is, when Adam mentioned me that the priest who met him and offered to pay him handsomely to open the gates had gobbled at him in crusader French. I found that very strange since the Greeks knew that Adam gobbled Greek, had a Greek wife, lived with her family, and attended Orthodox Church prayer services with her.

  The more I thought about it, the more it set me to wondering if someone else might have been in the dungeon with the captured Orthodox priests and bishops, and what they had heard and who they had told. Was it possible there was more than one active plot underway against the Empress? There were, after all, many others in addition to the Greeks who might want to encourage her to flee.

  Chapter Forty-three

  Who are they and what do they really want?

  It was dark when I went with Adam to the tavern the next night to collect the first half of the coins. Two of the best swordsmen in the Company were sworn to secrecy and came along with us, a sergeant and a lieutenant. All three of us wore old and battered tunics with the two stripes of a chosen man. We looked like what we really were—three of the Company’s tough old sweats.

  Elizabeth had helped me prepare myself for the meeting in my room in the citadel by gathering my hair and tying it in a knot behind my head with a piece of leather string in the manner used by many of our sailors. She was more excited than I was even though I refused to say why I was disguising myself or what I intended to do.

  After she finished, she watched as I put on a shabby old tunic with the two stripes of a chosen man over my chain shirt, made sure my two wrist knives were ready, and warned her once again to say not a word to anyone. When she finished I gave her a brief kiss, murmured thank you, and promised to return in a few hours with the hope of finding her in my bed. Then I hurried out of the room, walked briskly through the citadel and out the gate into the dark with the hood of my tunic pulled up.

  No one recognized me in the dim candlelight of the Citadel or in the moonlight when I stepped out into the bailey, at least not so far as I could tell. Neither did the Varangians at the Citadel gate. They barely looked at me since I was outbound and thus no threat.

  Nicholas, Ada
m, and the two swordsmen were waiting for me in the darkness beyond the Citadel’s gate. They had a two-wheeled handcart with them and each was carrying a sheathed short sword and had a galley shield hung over his back instead of quivers.

  Adam was wearing his lieutenant’s tunic; the others had all already changed into the old tunics Nicholas had found in the slop chest of one of the galleys. Nicholas was also wearing a chosen man’s tunic even though he was not supposed to be going with us. They had changed into their temporary new clothes in the dark a few minutes earlier, Adam assured me, so that no one would see them doing it. Their original tunics with their proper ranks were in the cart.

  I could tell from the way the two swordsmen moved and their alertness that they were excited. They did not know why they had been quietly been ordered to arm themselves and report to Adam that afternoon, but the presence of my apprentice sergeant, the air of great secrecy, and my arrival wearing a chosen man’s tunic and my hair fixed like a sailor’s, had convinced them that they were involved in something important even though they had no idea what it might be.

  When Nicholas handed me the galley shield and sword I would carry, I could see in the dim moonlight that he had also put on an old tunic and was similarly armed and disguised himself. No doubt he was hoping that I would change my mind and he would be allowed to come with us. I did.

  ******

  We pulled the handcart through the streets to the tavern in the quiet darkness. It was in the Latin Quarter so it was safe for us to do so, particularly since there were five of us and we were heavily armed. I spoke to the men in a low voice as we walked.