Sea Warriors

by Martin Archer

  “Now then, Young George. We must tidy things up here and disappear the priest and his friends in case the archbishop really is the priest’s father. Here’s what I want you to do.”

  ******

  That evening, after it got totally dark, a horse cart pulled by a dozen heavily armed archers from one of our galleys still in port pulled up to the door of the church and I unbarred it. The archers carried the bodies out of the church and threw them in the cart. It went quickly because we had already wrapped them in some rough linen bedding we found in the Priest’s hovel next door and the pools of blood had soaked into the church’s dirt floor. There had been people walking in the lane, but they disappeared as if by magic when our men arrived at the church pulling the horse cart.

  The women were thrown into the wagon on top of the bodies with their hands tied and their feet hobbled. They didn’t know it but they were about to be taken to the quay and loaded upon a galley that will immediately row out of the harbour bound for Malta and Cyprus. The dead priest and his rough men would go overboard to feed the fish when we were far enough away from Lisbon; the women would travel as passengers.

  A parchment describing the situation was hastily scribed for John Heath to send to Yoram who had already sailed for Ibiza and on to Cyprus. It will be up to Yoram to decide the disposition of the women.

  If the past is any guide, they’ll probably be spoken for or married by the time they reach Cyprus, unless, of course, they’re poxed, and even then they may find someone if they don’t smell too bad. However it ends, they’ll never return to Lisbon or be heard from again. Yoram will make sure of that.

  Chapter Eight

  William is held for Ransom.

  We were marched into the village of Hastings and up the hill to the castle. It hadn’t been completely destroyed. Only its battlements and roofs had been cast down; its dungeons were intact. It quickly became clear from the treatment and beatings we received in the days that followed that those of us who survived the stranding of Jeffrey’s galley had not been rescued, we’d been captured.

  The men who had taken us were the portsmen of the Cinque Ports, the men who were “King’s barons of the Cinque Ports”—as all free men in those ports were titled on the premise that military service at sea for the King was equivalent to the military service on land required of England’s landed barons.

  As such, the “portsmen” who owned ships were entitled to attend the King’s parliaments with the landed barons. Up until recently, the portsmen had been steady for the King in his dispute with the northern barons. Adding Cornwall’s ports to those where goods could be landed tax-free changed everything because it threatened their trade; now they were ready to change sides and support the dissident barons against the King.

  Our prison guards soon made clear even more reasons why the portsmen of Hastings were unhappy—because making Cornwall a limb of Dover threatened the Cinque Ports’ monopoly in the provision of boats and sailors for the King in time of war. It also suggested that Dover might replace Hastings as the chief port. The Hastings men were mostly unhappy, however, because the archers of Cornwall had received the King’s pleasure and the prize monies from taking the French armada and they had not even been asked to participate.

  In essence, the men of Hastings were thoroughly pissed because they thought the King had sent us against the French armada to get the French prizes instead of sending them and their fellow portsmen as they thought the King was obliged to do. Their best answer to the King’s snub, some claimed, was to join the rebellious barons and eliminate us so it wouldn’t happen again.

  The fact that the King hadn’t sent us and the portsmen of the Cinque Ports had neither the fighting men nor the galleys needed to take the French armada didn’t deter their anger. It soon became clear that the men of Hastings were particularly unhappy with the King because their future was uncertain due to the recent destruction of Hastings Castle.

  “Dover Castle didn’t get torn down, did it?”

  ******

  Conditions in the dungeon were terrible, and we were all hobbled with leg irons. The sailor with the broken arm was alive when they put a line around him and lowered him down into the dungeon. But he had died the next day and was already beginning to rot. Also dead was one of the archers who had been beaten to death by one of the portsmen because he had protested my being kicked.

  Our guards were all inexperienced fishing boat crewmen and unhappy in their duties and our treatment at the hands of the portsmen. They lowered buckets of water to us when the portsmen weren’t around. If they hadn’t lowered the water down to us, we would have surely died. As it was we were starving to death amidst our piss and shite.

  According to what we were able to gather from what our guards shouted down to us when the Hastings portsmen weren’t around, the portsmen who held us were undecided as to what to do with us. Some of them wanted to kill us; the others wanted to hold us for ransom. My offer on the beach of twenty silver coins for every man they rescued was mentioned by the guards more than once. We got the impression my offer of silver coins was known to all the Hastings men and held great appeal. I was asked almost every day by both the guards and portsmen if they could actually get a ransom of silver coins for each of my men and many more for me.

  “Of course, you can get them,” I had gasped to one of the portsmen who had climbed down a wooden ladder to see us and kicked me in the ribs for no reason before he asked me, “We took many prizes. They’ve already been sold and the coins are waiting for you to carry us to Cornwall and get them.”

  I’ll kill you the first chance I get, you poxy bastard.

  ******

  There was a great disturbance with much shouting and uproar in the guard room above us on the sixth or seventh day of our captivity. We could hear screams and shouts and the distinctive thuds of clubs hitting shields and the men who were holding them. Our spirits rose even though we did not know who was fighting or why.

  A few minutes later, a candle lantern lit the room above us and in its flickering light we could see men standing around the hole above and looking down at us.

  “Are any of you Cornishmen from the stranded galley?” a voice shouted down as we gathered below the opening and looked up.

  “Yes. Yes,” we all shouted at once.

  “Is the captain of the archers there?”

  “I’m here. I’m here,” I shouted as the excited men around me chimed in to voice their agreement.

  A minute or so later a wooden ladder was lowered into the dungeon and we were told to climb out. Some of the younger and stronger men immediately went up the ladder towards the light. Others were too weak to make the climb. I waited for fear that once I came up to the light the ladder would be withdrawn and my men trapped. Also, truth be told, I was afraid I wouldn’t make it.

  “You’ll have to help us up or drop a line and haul us up,” I shouted. “The rest of us are too weak to climb by ourselves.”

  There was a lot of talk and movement up above me and, all of sudden, to my horror, the light disappeared. All around me in the darkness the remaining men moaned and cried out in despair. Then, miraculously it seemed, the light returned and someone leaned over the edge of the hole and held it so as to light the dungeon.

  The man who came down the ladder was obviously an able-bodied sailor. I could tell by the way he moved and acted. In the flickering light of the candle lantern, we watched as he quickly tied the line around under a man’s arms to so those above could pull him as he attempted to climb the ladder. When he finished, the sailor went up close behind him to hold him against the ladder and help him place his feet on the cross boards.

  With the sailor’s help and the men pulling from above, the process was repeated and the remaining survivors slowly climbed the ladder one at a time. After all but three of my men had climbed the ladder, a second flickering light appeared and a second very large man carried another candle lantern down the ladder into the foul hole that had been our home for al
most a week.

  Our new rescuer set the lantern on the floor. Then he stood back amidst the flickering light whilst he tied one line under his arms to steady himself and then tied another as a safety line under the shoulders of the man he intended to carry up the ladder. I could tell he was an experienced sailor man by speed at which he rigged the lines and tied the knots.

  Three times he slung one of my last three men over his shoulder and climbed the ladder with him. I went last with him climbing beneath me to steady me and help my feet find the cross boards.

  We left behind the flickering candle lantern, a great pile of shite, and two dead men. One of the dead men was Rufus, an archer from York who had gone through our apprentice program in Cornwall and been beaten to death in a Hastings dungeon for trying to save me. The other was the sailor with a broken arm whose name I never knew.

  ******

  The light of the sun blinded my eyes when someone took my arm and guided me out of the guard room over the dungeon and into the roofless room next to it. I had to cover them with my hands for several moments. When I could see again, I found myself in a dimly lit, large room filled with several dozen armed men and sailors staring at me with great curiosity.

  My own bedraggled and foul-smelling men were off to one side wolfing down pieces of bread and queueing to suckle water from a couple of water skins. They gave a little cheer and smiling nods when they saw me. I was desperate for food and water and moved towards them as fast as I could stagger. A burly, three-stripe archer sergeant named Harold pulled a water skin out of the mouth of the archer sucking on it and pushed it towards me.

  A well-dressed man in the robes of a cleric came up to me as I wolfed down some bread and cheese and then took another drink of water.

  “Hello,” he said as he held out his hand. “I’m William of Wrotham. I rode here with my men to help arrange your ransom as soon as I heard.”

  He said it as if I would know who he was. I must have looked at him blankly for he hastened to explain.

  “You know me even though we never met—I used to be the King’s sheriff in Cornwall and Devon. That was before you and your archers arrived. Then I was one of the wardens of the Cinque Ports. Now I’m in charge of all of the ships in the kingdom. I led some of them to Poitou a few years back to fight the French, didn’t I?”

  Then I knew who he is. He was the priest who loaded some of the King’s men on to the Cinque Port cogs and sent them off to fight the French in Poitou’s harbour. Well, he was going to have fewer cogs and galleys to command in the near future after I finished destroying Hastings’s.

  “So we are to be ransomed, are we? And for how much and where?” And how much is your cut and that of the King?

  “The Hastings captains want thirty-five silver coins for each of your men and one thousand for you. A rather modest amount, wouldn’t you say, in view of all the prizes you just took? Particularly as you’ll be well-fed and watered until the coins arrive.”

  Chapter Nine

  More than one ransom is demanded

  Our treatment immediately improved although we continued to be closely guarded and held in the dark. We were marched to the Hastings quay and loaded into the hold of a small cog with inadequate and infrequently delivered amounts of food and water.

  That very afternoon, I was brought on deck and given a pen and parchment to scribe a message to Peter describing our fate. In my message I directed him to borrow the required coins from David Levi, the London money lender, and exchange them for us on the London dock where our galleys were usually berthed. William Wrotham approved of what I’d written and so did the Hastings portsmen. I was immediately returned to the hold.

  The possibility of being ransomed raised our spirits whilst we waited for several weeks in the galley’s cold and damp hold. Whilst we waited in the darkness, we talked about how we might take the cog and sail it to Cornwall.

  Our plans were well underway when I was again brought up on deck. William Wrotham was there with several of the Hastings portsmen including the man who had kicked me in the ribs and then beaten to death the archer who had protested.

  They were all smiles and goodwill—the required coins were ready to be paid and the Hastings men were ready to collect them. The cog would be sailing to London as soon as the wind turned favourable. We’d be freed one at a time on the agreed London quay as the ransom coins were received. I smiled with relief and nodded my agreement. What else could I do?

  ******

  To my surprise, I was briefly given the freedom of the deck as the Hastings cog finished clawing its way up the Thames. I think it was because two of the five Hastings portsmen had never seen me and they were all curious to find out more about me. All five of the Hastings portsmen were on board to share the ransom and they were all in a good mood. They were willing to talk and quite forthcoming about their cogs and galleys and the advantages Cornwall would enjoy as a limb of Dover.

  They smiled with satisfaction when I lamented about having to borrow the ransom to pay them. I, in turn, listened intently as they humoured me by responding to my questions about their cogs and other transports and where they sailed. One of the bastards even told me about the house he intended to build with his share of the ransom.

  All but one of my men remained confined in the hold whilst the Hastings cog clawed its way up the Thames with the tide. The exception was one of my experienced sailors. He was allowed to come up from the cog’s hold to help pilot the cog to the particular quay where the ransom coins waited, the one we usually used in London as I had specified in my parchment. He and I looked at each other and never said a word or made a gesture as we passed one of our galleys and it fell in behind us.

  ******

  Peter and Raymond and a large group of heavily armed archers were waiting on the quay when the Hastings cog approached the quay. Their bows were strung but not notched. We lifted our arms in silent greeting to each other but no words were spoken.

  If William Wrotham had not been standing next to me in his priest’s robes I think I might have fallen to the deck of the cog so Peter’s archers could sweep its deck and take it. I didn’t act because Wrotham would probably have been killed and I didn’t know his relationship with the King, or how the King would respond if he didn’t get whatever share of the ransom the Hastings men may have promised him. Also, truth be told, I didn’t act because I was afraid I’d be hit when the arrows started flying, and me and my men killed, if our effort failed.

  Peter and the archers waiting on the quay were clearly angry at the foul and pitiful state of the ransomed survivors they saw coming off the Hastings cog. Curses and cries of rage and horror greeted each of my men as he came out of the cog’s hold in his foul rags and tried to walk across the deck to the quay.

  Even so, the exchange of the ransom coins for the survivors went quite smoothly. The men being ransomed came out of the hold one at a time, inevitably holding their hands over their eyes to protect them from the sudden light and needing help from the Hastings men to walk. They staggered over the deck to the quay each time a handful of coins was handed to one of the portsmen. Several had to be carried.

  Getting the survivors on to the quay was easily done as the tide was such that the deck of the cog was almost level with the quay and welcoming hands reached out to help them. Each was quickly surrounded and assisted by some of the waiting and increasingly angry archers.

  Finally, it was my turn. The portsmen’s eyes widened in appreciation and they crowded forward as the counting of the coins began for my ransom. No one stopped me when I stepped on to the quay as the count went past nine hundred.

  “It’s God’s will,” I muttered under my breath as I stepped over the railing and briefly into Peter’s embrace—and at the same time lifted Peter’s knife from his belt and slid it into mine.

  “Bishop William,” I said to Wrotham as I turned and stepped towards him and the portsmen on the cog’s deck who were watching with keen eyes as the final coins were being counted
in the sack one of them held. “How do you think God will receive a man who beat an archer to death for no reason but his own pleasure?”

  Wrotham didn’t have time to answer before I pulled Peter’s knife out of my belt and leaned over the deck railing to grab the tunic of the portsman who’d kicked my ribs and beaten poor Rufus to death with his club.

  He didn’t even have time to take his eyes off the ransom coins or scream before I pulled him towards me and stuck the knife into his belly up to its hilt and ripped it upward. As I did and the portsman began screaming, I shouted an order to Peter’s stunned men who were beginning to reach towards their quivers for arrows.

  “Don’t loose; let them leave in peace.”

  Then to the stunned Hastings men I shouted my terms over the screams and panicked cries of the dying portsman.

  “Now here is my ransom demand for you lot from Hastings. You have thirty days to deliver every single one of those silver ransom coins to the King as a gift from his loyal Company of Archers, and two thousand more to the archers’ post here in London for our trouble.

  “If the King and the archers don’t get them within thirty days, we’ll come to Hastings and hang you all, burn your hovels to the ground, and take all of Hastings’s cogs and galleys as prizes and turn them over to loyal Englishmen who support the king.”

  Then I spit in the face of the still-screaming man and let go of his tunic so he could fall to the cog’s deck amidst his stunned fellows. My only regret was that I couldn’t piss on him as well.

  “Cast off its mooring lines,” I ordered with a nod of my head towards the Hastings cog and the open-mouthed men on its deck—and then watched with satisfaction as the archers on the quay hurried to obey.

  Chapter Ten

  William returns to Cornwall.

  Peter and Raymond recovered quickly as the lines were thrown off and the Hastings cog began to very slowly drift away from the quay. They immediately understood what had just happened and where this was going to lead. Raymond even sneered and gave the cog a disdainful push with his foot to help move it out into the river.