Sea Warriors

by Martin Archer

  The archers and the survivors who’d climbed off the Hastings galley ahead of me stood for a moment with their mouths gaping open in surprise—then they began cheering and shouting insults and threats at the cog as the slowly moving current of the Thames caught the cog and it very slowly began drifting away from the quay.

  “These men need food and drink, and so do I,” I told a smiling Peter. “Let’s get them to the White Horse for all they want.”

  “Good idea. I’ve already sent a man running to the market to buy tunics for the men who need them—that would be just about every one of you from the look of things.”

  *******

  Some of the men who came out of the cog’s hold were in such bad shape that they needed help to walk even the short distance to the White Horse. Fortunately, Peter and Raymond had bought a strong force of Raymond’s Horse Archers to London. As a result, every one of our new freed men was instantly surrounded and assisted by concerned and solicitous helpers as we moved down the quay with everyone talking at once.

  I must have stumbled or staggered because I suddenly realised Peter was holding me up by one elbow and Raymond the other. I felt relieved and tired, terribly tired.

  “Help them sit; Help them sit,” Raymond shouted over the babble of voices as we made our way into the White Horse for the food and drink we so desperately craved.

  The White Horse quickly became so packed with our men that every survivor was assigned one man to help him and everybody else was sent outside with their weapons to “stand guard.” Even then, the stench from the men and the clothes of the survivors was extreme. There was little wonder in that—we had had no choice but to lie among the piss and shite in the pitch-black dungeon for almost a month. Then we’d been moved to the cargo hold of the cog from which we had just emerged.

  Things became quite emotional as the food and drink began to be delivered to us by the alewife and the tavern servants. At the same time, our fellow archers stripped us naked right there in the tavern and helped us to put on the new tunics that a hurriedly despatched detail of archers had rushed to us from a nearby market. Several of the still-dazed survivors were soon openly weeping at their deliverance. For some reason, I felt like weeping myself when I realised I’d been in here happily celebrating our great triumph over the French less than a month ago.

  My hands shook as I lifted a cold joint of chicken and bit into it; it felt like I’d last been in the White Horse long ago in the far distant past.

  ******

  Our stay in London lasted three days. Most of the ransomed survivors, all but me actually, were bedded down and cared for at our London post, which became heavily guarded to keep the archers busy. Robert Heath and his men temporarily moved to join Raymond’s archers in the stalls of the nearby stables to provide the survivors with space to sleep.

  I didn’t stay in our post with the rest of the survivors. Peter and Raymond were concerned about how King John would react to my killing of the Hastings portsman. As a result, I joined my two lieutenants in the little forward castle of the only galley we had in London at the time. They had it anchored off the quay so they could cut the anchor line and move away instantly if trouble arrived in the form of the King’s sheriff and his men.

  We still hadn’t heard anything from the King three days later. That’s when all the survivors were much stronger from lots of good food and drink and we left London together for a leisurely overland trip to Cornwall. Over a hundred of Raymond’s horse archers escorted us. The survivors and I had an easy time of it as we slept and ate whilst traveling in comfort in the horse carts Peter had hired from the stable.

  Most of us recovered rapidly and were soon joining the daily archery contests. Only one of the survivors, an archer named Miles, didn’t make it to Cornwall. He developed great chills and died in his sleep before we could find a barber to bleed him. One of the men carved a cross from a tree limb and I said some nice prayers in Latin over his body as we buried him in a cow pasture near Salisbury.

  “Is it safe to travel on the old Roman road to Cornwall?” I had asked before we left London. “What happened to Devon and the barons who were waiting in Exeter for Phillip?”

  “Not to worry,” had been Peter’s answer. “We got word from the spies we planted in Exeter. The barons scattered and many went north as soon as word came that you had taken Phillip’s armada. The Earl of Devon hasn’t been seen since. Rumour has it that he has fled to France.”

  “Do we know if he took his knights and soldiers with him?” I had asked. “If he did, it might be time for us to take Exeter Castle and eliminate the Earl once and for all.”

  After I thought about the possibility for a few moments, I added, “Thomas and George should be back soon. We could use Thomas’s contacts at court to see if the King will allow us to get rid of the Earl and keep Exeter after we do.”

  “Aye,” Peter had agreed. “But we’ll have to be careful, won’t we? It would do us no good to rid ourselves of a lord the King hates only to have the King replace him with an equally dangerous lord the King favours.” Peter is very smart; he’s a good man.

  “Exactly so. Has there been any word of Thomas and George?”

  ******

  There were no rains so the old Roman road was fast and we made good time, even though we travelled leisurely and stopped for bowls of ale at almost every public house along the way. We sighted Okehampton nine days after we left London. By then, we survivors had all been rested and fattened up such that I had begun riding at times with the horse archers instead of staying in the wagons with the other survivors.

  We were altogether a happy band of men and we were going home.

  Our welcome when we reached Okehampton Castle near the border between Devon and Cornwall, our Horse Archers’ base of operations, was not at all what I expected. I had anticipated seeing Isabel and perhaps staying and enjoying a few days with her whilst I continued to recover my strength.

  I had heard Isabel still had not remarried and her husband, Lord Courtenay, who had “sold” Okehampton to me just before he married Isabel and went off crusading, was still missing and had not yet been reported as dead in the Holy Land. He apparently never met the son he sired before he sailed.

  It was not to be. I hadn’t even dismounted after clattering over Okehampton’s drawbridge when who should come rushing across the bailey to greet me but Helen. She had heard from one of Raymond’s gallopers that I’d been successfully ransomed and was on my way to Cornwall in bad condition. She had immediately started for London to care for me and had gotten as far as Okehampton.

  Peter and Raymond had already told me it was all they could do to keep her from coming to London with them; only their insistence that she would burden them if they had to fight to rescue me had kept her away.

  Isabel and Wanda, Raymond’s wife from the land beyond the sea, smiled as they watched our reunion whilst the castle servants rushed to bring bowls of ale to the sergeants among the arriving men and hold their horses’ reins. Isabel’s smile seemed to be both bemused and resigned as she and Wanda came forward to give me a searching look and a welcoming hug and a kiss on my cheek. But then Raymond and the local men began clattering into the bailey over the drawbridge and the two women forgot all about us as they went to greet them.

  Helen never let go of me. She ignored the bustle of everyone around us and immediately began searching me all over with her hands.

  “No wounds,” I told her as she did. “Just bad treatment.” After a pause, I added, “for which one man has already paid with his life and others soon will.”

  I didn’t tell Helen or anyone else what I had already decided to do—I was going to take the heads of the other four Hastings portsmen even if we were paid the two thousand silver coins that would save the village’s boats and hovels. On the other hand, I was uncertain as to what should happen to William Wrotham. It would depend on what the Hastings men we take tell me about his involvement. It’s possible he deserves my thanks. If he do
es, he’ll get it.

  Helen was most affectionate. She immediately led me into the great hall and sat me on the bench whilst she ran to the kitchen to fetch bread and cheese and another bowl of ale. Then she sat next to me and held my arm and put her head on my shoulder whilst I ate.

  “We were so worried. I prayed for you constantly and made many promises to God. So did Anne and Tori. All the children are well but Anne’s little Alicia. She has a cough that won’t go away.”

  After a while Raymond and Peter came in and joined us.

  Later that evening, Helen washed me all over with a rag dipped in warm water, picked out the lice she could find, and used a blade to cut back my hair and beard, and was even more affectionate.

  ******

  We reached Restormel three days later and there was much joy and merriment at our return. The next day gallopers carrying a parchment from our London post brought a message from David Levi, the King’s moneylender.

  “The Hastings men have sent the ransom coins to the King and borrowed two thousand more to meet your demands. I have the two thousand waiting for you. Please don’t kill them until I am repaid.” He’d read my mind.

  Chapter Eleven

  George and Thomas sail for Rome.

  Uncle Thomas and I left two armed trading cogs in Lisbon and sailed for Ibiza the next morning on Harold’s galley. The cogs will seek cargos to carry to ports in the pirate-infested Mediterranean. Sergeant Heath and fifty-two archer volunteers and the cogs’ sailors stayed behind to operate the post and crew the armed cogs. The two women from the Lisbon church and the three dead men were already on a galley bound for Cyprus via Ibiza and Malta. It had cast off and rowed out of the harbour as soon they were carried on board.

  The weather was good and Harold’s rowers were strong and they were well fed and watered. Uncle Thomas and I participated in the daily archery required on all our galleys and played chess. We also helped row to keep our arms and shoulders strong, and speculated endlessly with each other and the men as to what the Moors were doing and how the archers in the galleys and pirate-takers who left Lisbon before us might have done in terms of taking Moorish prizes.

  We passed Gibraltar and reached Ibiza without seeing any Moors. Everyone agreed that it was not surprising that we didn’t see any Moors to take as prizes since many of our own galleys and prize-taking cogs and ships had passed this way just a few days earlier.

  In Ibiza, Uncle Thomas and I switched to the eighty-oar galley of James Tinker so Harold could take his galley on to Cyprus and resume command of all of our galleys and transports in the Mediterranean.

  Sergeant Tinker and his galley had been among the first to leave Lisbon and had arrived in Ibiza several days earlier. His galley was already provisioned and ready to sail as soon as we arrived. We supped well and drank too much wine that evening, and then didn’t get up in time to watch as Sergeant Tinker’s galley rowed out of the harbour the next morning. Then it was through the ocean strait between Corsica and Sardinia and on to Rome.

  ******

  The winds were good after we left Ibiza so Sergeant Tinker decided to try to sail all the way to Rome without making another port call. It was a popular decision and the men in Tinker’s crew who had been to Rome previously told many tales about the great city and its delights to those who had not. This was my first visit to the great city, and I listened closely even when it was obvious that much of what we were being told couldn’t possibly be true.

  All in all, it was an altogether pleasant voyage. Every day we had an archery contest on board that lasted for hours since every archer, including me and Uncle Thomas, was required to rapid-push fifty arrows every day at a linen target pinned on one of the hamstrung cattle or sheep we were carrying for food. That’s how we killed it if it hadn’t already died.

  Each day’s three winners got a copper coin from Sergeant Tinker’s galley pouch and anyone whose arrow missed and flew into the sea was mightily embarrassed—and required to spend the rest of the day helping the cook bake his never-ending stream of flatbreads and bailing water out of the bottom of the hull all that night. One day I almost won a coin.

  The archers spent their days alternating between rowing, fletching their arrows, and practicing all the things the men on our galleys must do every day. All the while they yarned about everything imaginable; the sailors tended to the ship and engaged in mock battles with each other and the archers using galley shields and practise swords. There was moors dancing on the main deck and test matches between the dancing teams every day, which the sailors inevitably won.

  Once there was a cry from the lookout on the mast that brought everyone on deck.

  “Hoy, the deck. There’s a big whale fish off our port side.”

  “There it is,” Uncle Thomas said as he pointed. “Look at the size of that thing.”

  It was the biggest fish I’d ever seen and it was swimming right next to us. It was almost as long as our galley and it was just swimming along near the surface. There was a much smaller big fish swimming right next to it. They must have been frolicking, for every so often they blew water into the air.

  We watched for quite some time but then they suddenly disappeared with a flap of their tails to wave us a farewell. Uncle Thomas said they are mentioned in the Bible as swallowing fishermen and sailors who misbehave.

  ******

  The sun had almost finished passing overhead on its endless circling of the earth when we finally reached the mouth of the Tiber River eleven days after leaving Ibiza. Our pilot said he and Sergeant Tinker would need to see clearly in order for us to safely thread our way through all the shipping in the mouth of the Tiber and in the river. So we laid offshore until the sun began coming up over the horizon on its daily trip around the earth.

  Candle lanterns flickered all around us all that night; we weren’t the only ones waiting for the next arrival of the sun to head up the river.

  At first light, we joined a great mass of shipping attempting to move up and down the placid brown river. The Tiber was bustling with everything from fishermen in small dinghies to barges and cogs and great three-masted ships under tow.

  Our pilot’s problem, of course, was compounded because many other vessels of all sizes and kinds were anchored in the river or moored along the shore or to one of the river’s many wharves. The only saving grace that I could see was that generally all the traffic coming down river to the sea moved on one side of the river; the traffic going up the river to the city on the other side. There were a lot of exceptions and many near collisions.

  Sergeant Tinker took no chances. He manned the rowing benches, posted lookouts in the bow and on the mast, and had sailors with poles and pikes ready to push us away from anything with which his galley might otherwise collide. Until it got too hot, Uncle Thomas and I spent most of the morning standing with the sergeant and his pilot on the roof of the forward castle where the three of us slept at night and played chess when it was too cold or wet on deck. I was fascinated. Even the Thames hadn’t been this crowded and busy.

  One thing that immediately struck me was that the people here seemed quite excitable, probably, according to Uncle Thomas, because Italy was closer to the sun and the heat had thinned their blood. There were countless shouts and gestures and shaken fists as we worked our way up the river until we reached Rome’s great walls. The walls around the city were even taller and more impressive than those I’d seen in Lisbon and so were the great castles and houses along the river.

  Uncle Thomas came out from the shade where he’d been hiding from the sun and began naming what I was seeing when we came around a bend in the river and the city walls and buildings came into view. It was a big city for sure, certainly the biggest I’d ever seen. No wonder the Pope lives here.

  ******* Thomas

  Our galley moored at the narrow, wooden wharf running along the bank of the river where we always try to tie up when we are in Rome. It was a good place to berth in the summer because it was so close to
the city wall that the wall itself shaded us later in the day. There also was a riverside tavern and shade trees between the wharf and the wall. I’d been here before and always enjoyed it.

  We’d arrived on a hot summer day and numerous pedlars and petty merchants came out from the shade of the trees along the river and descended on us as soon as we began mooring. Many of them were selling wooden crosses and prayer beads; others were selling bowls of wine from the skins they were carrying and offering the services of all types of women. My nephew and the crew were wide-eyed with excitement at seeing the city and all the people and activity. It had been a good trip from Ibiza, but a long one. We were all happy to be here.

  George and I immediately climbed off the galley and walked to the nearest riverfront tavern for a glass of cooling wine and a plate of nuts and olives. I’d been here before and knew where to go, didn’t I? We sat on benches in the shade provided by the trees in front of tavern stall and watched the constantly growing activity around the galley.

  It wasn’t until we began our second bowl that I realised that in the excitement of arriving we’d gotten off the galley without putting on our mail shirts. I sent George running back to the galley to get them. “And bring a couple of galley swords and shields as well,” I shouted after him. He raised his hand in acknowledgement as he trotted over to the galley. He’s a good lad, isn’t he?

  It was pleasant sitting there under the trees with my nephew and a bowl of wine. No one seemed to notice or care when we stripped off our lightweight Egyptian tunics, put on our mail shirts, and then donned our thin tunics again. It was much too hot to wear my much heavier bishop’s robe.

  We watched benevolently when, after a while, Sergeant Tinker passed out the traditional arrival coins to the crew. Many of them promptly came over to the tavern and, of course, the pedlars and pimps followed them. Several of their women lingered in the shade of the wall fanning themselves and making gestures to attract the men. Our men and the women were soon sitting all around us chatting enthusiastically.