Sea Warriors

by Martin Archer

  One of the first things we did was give our post sergeant, John Heath, greetings from his brother Robert who was our post sergeant in London, and get a report from John. It was encouraging in many ways. He and his men had heard nothing about the priest who had disappeared when Thomas and George had been here and no one had inquired.

  The only thing of note, he told us, was that one of his men had run, his scribe.

  “Which was a great surprise as he was the last person I would have expected to run. Had it soft, didn’t he?”

  That very day, Harold and I and Anne visited our hospital to inquire into the health of our wounded and retired men to see if they needed anything. Whilst we were visiting, we casually asked if they or the women they’d attracted had heard anything of interest or concern about the archers or our trading post. They hadn’t.

  They didn’t know Thomas and George had disappeared the priest and his men, and we didn’t tell them.

  John Heath arranged for Anne and me to have our own sleeping room in one of the local tavernas. He said Thomas and George always enjoy staying there when they come through on their way back and forth from Rome. Harold and my apprentice sergeant would stay on the galley.

  “They didn’t have a chance to enjoy staying there on their last return voyage, of course, because they rushed home when they heard about you being held for ransom.”

  Our room was quiet and clean and with a chamber pot emptied every morning by one of the taverna’s slaves. After the slave emptied the pot she brought us bread and cheese to eat whilst Anne and I sat outside in the shade of a huge tree of a type I’d never seen before. A little while later a guard of archers would arrive and we would walk to the city’s great market.

  It was a fine room and quite safe. Its only door was into the tavern but there was a small window with a wooden shutter that could be barred from the inside to prevent thieves from entering in the night.

  ******

  Everything was fine until the afternoon of our sixth day in Lisbon. Harold and his apprentice sergeant came to visit me after Anne and me and our four guards and Andrew Priest, my apprentice sergeant, — returned from the market.

  We were all sitting outside in the taverna’s garden talking when we saw a group of men with clubs and swords walking down the lane towards the entrance to the taverna. Anne had gone inside to put away some sewing linen we’d just bought into a painted chest with pictures of angels and saints all over it. She had bought the chest on the very first day we arrived.

  Somehow the arrival of so many armed men at the taverna didn’t feel right.

  “Hurry,” I said as I stood up and started around to the other side of the taverna where our room was located. I was running with my sword drawn by the time I reached the tavern and started around it to reach the window into our room. The others caught my urgency and were pounding along behind me. The archers were stringing their longbows as they ran.

  Anne was squatting over the chamber pot as we arrived at the little window. She gave a little scream and looked surprised when she saw me looking in, then she looked quite perplexed and uncertain.

  “Hurry, come to the window. Now. You can water your arse later. Hurry.” … “Now, goddamnit Anne; now.”

  Anne finally understood and came to the window just as there was a knock on the door to the room—and an instant later, it opened and men poured into the room with a lot of shouting. I grabbed Anne’s arm and tried to pull her through the window. Someone in the room grabbed her and pulled her out of my hands. She screamed as they pulled her away from the window.

  “They’ve got her. Quick; around to the front,” I shouted as Harold swore great oaths and we all began running. He had been standing next to me and seen her pulled from my grasp. The rest of the men didn’t know what was up, but they’d heard the noise and had seen the looks of alarm on our faces and us pulling our swords. They grasped their weapons most firmly and followed us.

  ******

  I led the way as we raced around the stone-and-mud walls of the taverna to the narrow entrance door in its front. We got there just as the first man ducked his head to get clear of the low entrance and came out.

  “We’ve got them trapped,” I said grimly as I swung my short galley sword down in a great chop on the head of the first man who started through the door. There was a solid “chunking” sound similar to that when a woodcutter’s axe bites into a tree, and I literally pulled him clear of the doorway with my sword stuck deep in his skull. He never said a word as he threw has hands out wildly and went down with my sword stuck in his skull, but there was a great commotion and what were obviously shouts of surprise from inside the tavern.

  I was still trying to get my sword free when Harold took the man who came out right behind him with a great thrusting stab into his side. It went in almost to the hilt. Harold’s man was a swarthy bearded man and he screamed and jumped forward and tried to twist away in a desperate effort to get off Harold’s blade.

  The third man through the door got clear of us and started running. He got about twenty fast, running steps when there was the familiar thud of an arrow hitting home followed almost instantly by a second. Both arrows took him full in the back and drove him screaming to his knees with his hands out in front to hold his face off the ground. There was noise on the other side of the door but no one else came out.

  “How many do you think are in there?” Harold asked over the screams and shouting, even though we all more or less already knew because we’d seen them walking up to the tavern—eight or nine for sure. We were in good shape; there were eight of us and we had them trapped inside with Anne and the taverna’s owner and servants.

  “There’s a door out to the kitchen on the other side of the taverna,” I shouted at two of the archers who were standing behind me and anxiously trying to look over my shoulder to see inside the door.

  “Get over there and cover it. Stand back so they come out and then take them with your arrows. Give a shout if they try. Let the tavern servants and all the women go free.”

  After a few moments, I turned to Harold and said, “Go around to the side door with the lads. We need to take at least one of the bastards alive if we can. Hurry.”

  Who are these men and why are they here?

  Then I heard Anne scream. It was a piercing cry of agony over the shouting and loud talk coming from inside the tavern, and it ended abruptly.

  “Give me your shield,” I said as I looked over my shoulder at the nearest of the guards who had remained with me. He handed it to me without saying a word. I took a firm grasp on it with my left hand and moved towards the door with my short galley sword in my right. I don’t remember the guard’s name.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The tavern battle and its aftermath.

  I charged through the door and pushed my shield into the face of one of the men standing just inside it with a knife in his hand, whilst, at the same time, I stabbed, and missed, at another man who jumped back and turned to run. The archers who hadn’t gone to the kitchen door with Harold came charging in on my heels.

  The men on the other side of the entrance had seen what had happened to the three who had tried to run for it; they wanted no part of us. They were used to waving their weapons and intimidating people, not standing up to heavily armed men who were coming after them and spoiling for a fight. There were three of them and they ran.

  They tried to escape through the benches and tables in the public room. One of them darted down the corridor towards the sleeping rooms where I’d last seen Anne, the other two towards the opening in the other corner leading to the outside kitchen. Three frightened men and a woman were huddled in a corner of the public room, the taverna master and his servants. I followed the man who ran into the sleeping room corridor—and instantly saw Anne on the corridor floor. She was lying in a great pool of blood; her eyes were open and unseeing.

  There is no other way to describe what happened next, except to say, I went mad. The man I was chasing
ran down the corridor and through the open door to our sleeping room. I went in after him. He didn’t have a chance. I fell upon him as a hungry cat would fall upon a fat mouse. I was still weeping and screaming and slashing away at what was left of him when Harold came in and pulled me away.

  ******

  I struggled briefly to get away, but Harold got both of his arms around me and held me up against the wall until I finished sobbing and hiccupping and gasping for breath.

  “We’ve taken two live ones who can talk, and I sent Archie running to the galley for reinforcements,” Harold said as he partially released me. “We put Anne in one of the rooms. We’ll take care of her.” All I could do was nod. I was too exhausted to say a word.

  Harold held me by the arm and led me through the public room with its overturned tables and benches and out into the bright sunlight. I was literally drenched in the blood of the man I’d cut to pieces.

  Some of our men were in the public room. They stood silently among the wreckage and stared with sympathy as Harold put his arm around my shoulders and led me out. A few of them nodded as I passed. Somewhere along the line, I must have given Harold my sword for I saw him hand it to one of the men as we passed among them. I don’t know what happened to the shield I’d borrowed.

  The tavern courtyard was filled with our men. They were all heavily armed and more were arriving at a run. The talking and murmuring stopped as Harold led me out and I held my hand up to protect against the bright light. The bodies of the men Harold and I had killed lay where they’d fallen. It was warm and flies were already starting to buzz about them.

  “Where are the prisoners?” I asked Harold.

  ******

  Four of Anne’s murderers had been taken alive. One of them had an arrow through his gut and was clearly not going to survive. He was lying on his side in the dirt near the tavern wall and holding on to the feathers on the end of the arrow shaft. He was groaning and crying out in agony. Another was sitting against the tavern wall with a painful arrow in his shoulder. He would probably live if it was pulled out and his shoulder didn’t turn black and begin to smell. Two had minor slices and were sitting with their hands clasped on top of their heads.

  “Take them all to the galley and bring the captain’s wife,” Harold ordered over his shoulder as he began walking me back to the quay. “No mercies until we question them.”

  Harold was surprisingly gentle and held me by the elbow all the way to the quay. Most of the people in the lane took one look at me and the faces of the heavily armed men surrounding me and quickly disappeared. Others just stood silently as we passed. I was weeping and didn’t realise it until we reached the galley and I started to lift my leg to swing it over the deck railing to climb on board.

  “We’ll find out who did it, Captain, don’t you worry about that,” Harold said as he sat me down on a sea trunk in the forward castle and someone handed me a bowl of wine.

  Harold walked into the forward castle an hour or so later to report. By then, someone had wiped the blood off my face and arms with a wet rag and an elderly sergeant with white hair had helped me into a new tunic one of his men had brought from the galley’s clothes chest.

  “One of the prisoners has died from his wounds and we’ve sent for John Heath’s interpreter so we can question the other three. The men we caught only speak the local dialect of Spanish.”

  “Anne. Where is Anne?” I asked.

  “We wrapped her in some bedding and brought her on board,” Harold replied sorrowfully as he reached out to put a hand on my shoulder.

  “She was an innocent,” I said. “We have to bury her nice and proper with all the words.”

  “Of course, we will. I’ll have John Heath arrange it.” … “Um. There’s been a development. Three men of the city guard are here on the quay. They’re asking about the fighting at the taverna and about the rumour in the city that we have taken some prisoners. John Heath and his interpreter are with them on the quay.

  “All we’ve told them so far is that we have no idea what happened or why. I’ve come see if you want to talk to them.”

  There were three sword-carrying men wearing similar clothes standing on the quay with John Heath and an older man who was obviously his interpreter, obviously the city guards. A large number of heavily armed archers were on the quay around them. Everyone turned and stared with great curiosity as I approached. Little wonder in that; my hair was still totally covered in dried blood.

  Our conversation was what one would expect under the circumstances. They bowed and were most respectful and gentle. They wanted to know what had happened at the taverna and why.

  Through John’s interpreter, I told them some of what I knew and asked them why someone would want to murder my wife. Then I acknowledged we had caught some of the murderers and rather grimly told the city’s guardsmen I intended to keep them and question them. I promised them we would share our prisoners’ answers with them when we got them.

  The guardsmen murmured their agreement, bowed most respectfully, and walked away. They were clearly intimidated by seeing so many armed and angry men and happy to leave. Then we visited the prisoners and questioned them separately.

  It soon became clear that the wounded man and the younger of two unwounded men knew virtually nothing. The older unwounded man and one of the dead men had recruited them to come along and help rough up some English sailors. They both swore it was one of the dead men who had killed Anne.

  The older man’s name was Julio and, unfortunately for him, both Harold and I recognized him as one of the men who had pulled Anne out of my arms as I tried to pull her through the window to safety. Julio initially refused to tell us who had sent him and why. He quickly changed his mind when Harold went for his eye and slashed him across his face a couple of times with his knife as he turned away. He began chirping like a bird. It burns most terrible to have your face slashed; I ought to know.

  Once Julio began talking he wouldn’t stop. He told us he worked for one of the local bishops. Blood dripped through Julio’s fingers as he held his slashed face and told us he and the other men had been ordered to kill an Englishman, preferably an archer or sailor, by a bishop whose name was Pedro Resende.

  Killing an Englishman, Bishop Resende had told Julio, was to be a lesson to the English about the folly of interfering with the clergy of the church in Lisbon. He and his men weren’t really fighting men, Julio told us, just members of a church-sponsored neighbourhood “protection society.”

  According to Julio, others of the Bishop’s men had seized and tortured John Heath’s missing scriver and found out that it was two Englishmen—Thomas and George for sure—who had interfered with their collections from merchants in the parish where our post was located. They also found out that the missing men had been carried away in an English galley.

  Anne’s death, it soon became clear, had nothing at all to do with the priest Thomas had killed and everything to do with the archers interfering with the ability of the parish priests to get additional coins for their parishes by extorting them from the local merchants and artisans.

  They had come after me, Julio explained with a sob, because they had heard there was an Englishman and his wife staying at the tavern. They thought I would be the most vulnerable Englishman they could find since I would be alone with my wife. Killing Anne was an afterthought when they didn’t find me.

  Julio gave us a detailed description of the Bishop and where to find him before I could stand the sight of him no longer. I plunged my knife is his belly and ripped it upward and he started howling and screaming. Then, for some reason, I felt badly about killing him and decided to let our other two captured men live with what many would consider an even worse revenge—we’d take them with us and sell them to the Moors to be galley slaves. Who knows, maybe we’ll run into them again and they’ll be freed with all the other slaves as we always do when we take a prize galley off the Moors.

  “Robert,” I said to our port sergeant as Juli
o was tipped still screaming over the deck railing into the harbour whilst still trying to hold his guts in, “Please take your interpreter and find a cemetery where we can bury Anne and hire a priest to say the words. Then go to the tavern owner. He’s another innocent victim in all this. Please go to him with some coins and make things right.”

  I immediately set about finding a parchment on which I could scribe a message to Bishop Resende.

  Chapter Twenty

  We sail to Cyprus and the Holy Land.

  Harold and many of his archers and sailors assembled with me the next morning at a cemetery next to a church somewhere in Lisbon. A Portuguese priest chanted some prayers, said a few words, and then waved a pot with smoke coming out of it over my dear Anne as a couple of church slaves covered her up. It was most unsatisfying.

  Our heavily armed archers were clearly angry as they marched from the cemetery back to the galley to the beat of a rowing drum. They had threatening looks on their faces and were glaring at the people on the streets as we marched past them. It was almost as if they hoped someone would say or do something to start a fight. I was too depressed to think about it at the time, but a chance to strike out at someone, anyone, probably would have helped my sour mood.

  Harold and I walked behind the marching archers with John Heath and our sergeant apprentices. Our sailors had been ordered to stay on the galley to defend it in case of trouble and prepare it to row out of the harbour as soon as we returned. No one said a word as we passed through the streets with people scattering out of the way in front of us. Several times people didn’t move out of the way fast enough and had swords swung at them by the two burly archers walking ahead of our marching column.