Sea Warriors

by Martin Archer

  I thought about the parchment I’d sent to the Bishop as I walked and became angry with myself for being much too lenient. Maybe I should forget the promise I made and just kill the bastard whilst I’m here and be done with it; I wish Thomas was here to help me decide, him being a bishop and all.

  The parchment I sent to the Bishop had been wrapped around the bloody knife I’d used to gut his man. It appointed Bishop Resende as the man personally responsible for the safety of all Englishmen in Lisbon, and told him exactly what would happen the next time an Englishman died or disappeared or anyone attempted to collect protection coins in the parishes where our hospital and post were located—the Bishop’s stomach would be sliced from one end to the other. Then, after a long and painful wait, we’d get tired of listening to him babble and he’d be tossed alive and screaming into the harbour with his guts falling out just as had been done with his men who killed my wife.

  In the back of my mind, I hoped the Bishop wouldn’t believe me, although I expected he would. It didn’t matter. My mind was made up. If he didn’t believe me I would kill him immediately; if he did, I wait a year or two until our post and hospital were firmly established in the minds of the local toughs and churchmen as untouchable. Then I would kill him.

  ******

  Harold raised his sail and we rowed out of Lisbon’s great harbour as soon as we returned to the galley. Our destination, if the weather held good, was Ibiza to replenish our water and supplies.

  The weather did hold good, as was usually the case during the sailing season, and we easily reached Ibiza with water and supplies to spare. I was still greatly undone when I stepped ashore but much improved after days of rowing and taking part in the archery tournaments and village dancing on the main deck.

  Yes, I had often taken a seat on the benches and rowed. For some reason, making myself tired by rowing seemed to help drive away my dark thoughts and helped me sleep at night. The men went out of their way to treat me most kindly. They washed my tunic and even emptied my chamber pot until I once again began using the shite nest in the stern.

  ******

  Ibiza was a port on a Moorish island whose heathen prince was so poor, the merchants said, that he tolerated Christian and Jewish merchants and land owners so he could tax them. The city itself even had a couple of churches from some long ago Christian invasion.

  The Prince’s main concern, according to Ibiza’s merchants, was an invasion by either the Prince’s more powerful Moorish cousin on the other side of the sea or Christians coming from Spain. He was worried about everyone and didn’t want to alienate anyone. The result was a peaceful city with Jewish and Christian merchants on a beautiful island. We knew Ibiza well because we had begun replenishing our galleys and cogs in Ibiza after our unfortunate experience on Palma when several of our men were killed and I myself was severely wounded.

  Our stay in Ibiza lasted longer than usual. I was the cause of the delay because I insisted on exploring the possibility of establishing a permanent post here. In the end, nothing came of it.

  “It’s one thing to stop here to take on water and supplies and drink some of the local wine,” Harold finally told me. “But there aren’t any refugees to carry enough cargo being shipped in and out to justify basing a transport galley or cog here. Moreover, the Moslem King probably would stop us from taking Islamic prizes if we based pirate-takers here.

  “Besides that, our men and property would be at great risk when the next Christian or Moorish invasion occurs, as the merchants think it surely will.”

  I reluctantly agreed, and we sailed for Malta where we already had a well-established post. Brindisi was the Christian prince holding Malta on behalf of the King of Sicily. He was somehow different from most princes, perhaps because he wasn’t born to it. In any event, we’d become friends. He liked the idea of taking Islamic prizes and, indeed, used to do it himself until he got himself nobled and Malta for helping Sicily’s King take Sicily’s throne when his predecessor died without an heir.

  Our post near the Grand Harbour of the Island of Malta was important because it functioned as a way station for our cogs and galleys coming and going between Europe and both Athens and Constantinople to the north and the Holy Land and Egypt to the east.

  Even more important, at least to me and our prize-oriented men, Malta was a splendid base from which to intercept Moorish pirates heading into the Christian waters of the Eastern Mediterranean and to send our prizes when we take them in the waters off Algiers and Tunis in the Western Mediterranean.

  Besides that, the Grand Harbour was a fine liberty port for our men even if the women did smell uncommonly foul. We routinely stationed some of our pirate-taking galleys and cogs there.

  ******

  We had barely entered the Grand Harbour and moored at the quay when Brindisi himself appeared on his huge grey horse, one of the King of Sicily’s many gifts, including control of Malta, for helping the King claim the Sicilian throne. The old pirate turned noble had recognised Harold’s galley from his fortress on the hill. It was easy for an experienced seaman like Brindisi to do because it was a bit longer and had four more oars on each side than most galleys.

  I was still standing on the roof of the galley’s rear castle watching as we approached the quay when Brindisi dismounted from his horse and waved. I waved back and was still walking across the deck to go ashore when Harold vaulted on to the quay even before we finished mooring and approached him with much arm waving.

  “Oh, my friend, I am so sorry,” Brindisi said a minute later as I walked up to him and he swept me into his arms and kissed me on both cheeks. “But, welcome to Malta and peace. Now, let’s go get some wine and you can tell me all about it if you can bear to do so. If not, we’ll talk of other things.”

  Brindisi was a man who would have risen in any land; unfortunately, he had been born here on this very small island and was, accordingly, an outsider and doomed by the place of his birth not to rise anywhere else.

  ******

  Somehow it helped to talk about Anne and what happened and so I did after we reached his favourite tavern and the wine began to flow. Brindisi listened sympathetically and didn’t interrupt.

  “So that’s why it happened,” Brindisi finally said with a sigh and a shake of his head. “I had somewhat the same problem here with the church until I explained to the local bishop that I would be the only one collecting money from the merchants and landowners in the future.

  “I didn’t go so far as to say I would gut him and throw in the harbour, mind you; I was much more gentle and appealed to his reason. I merely told him that the next coin he collected outside one of his churches would be his last before he died. Fortunately for him, he believed me and we’ve gotten along famously ever since.

  “Now, tell me, what’s the news from Europe? Will it be Otto or Frederick who will be the next Holy Roman emperor and are either of them claiming Italy? I hope not, for there will be fighting for sure if the new emperor claims the Italian crown and it might include Sicily. The Pope wants all of Italy for himself, don’t you know. Sicily will surely be next if he gets it.

  “If it happens, a war, I mean,” he said with his great roaring laugh, “and I get called to serve by my dear lord to whom I owe so much, the King of Sicily, I’ll probably become deathly ill or the sweating pox will break out on the island so that my men and I are not welcome in his army. Perhaps both if it looks like it might be a long war.”

  I said I didn’t know which of the two German princes would get the Pope’s blessing—and I certainly didn’t say or even hint that it would be whichever prince paid the most for the silver-coated head of Saint Paul. All I told the old pirate was that I intended to look for some of the priceless holy relics missing from Constantinople because we had heard in Rome that the Pope was offering big rewards from them.

  Then I lowered my voice and confided that we had a leg up on the other searchers because we knew where the priests who took the relics went ashore with them—
because the priests who took them had fled Constantinople in our galleys.

  “So searching for the relics is what I intend to do whilst I’m out here this year.”

  That, of course, is the story we wanted to get around; what we didn’t want is for anyone to know we got away with the relics when Constantinople was falling and already have them in Cornwall.

  We stayed three days and I tried to forget about Lisbon by drinking too much and living on the galley instead of ashore in a tavern room. Brindisi and Harold accompanied me every night to make sure I got safely back to the galley. It didn’t work. I couldn’t get Anne out of my mind. I kept thinking of all the things I could have done to protect her.

  ******

  The rowing drum began its beat on the morning of our fourth day in Malta and we headed east into the open sea bound for Crete. Two days later, we got lucky; we came across a big Moorish three-masted ship escorted by a couple of war galleys.

  We could tell the ship was a Moor from the cut of her sails. Three-sided they were, very queer-looking, indeed. She was beating towards us into the wind and sat so low in the water that we knew she was heavily loaded.

  “She’s heavily loaded and heavily guarded,” said Harold enthusiastically after he climbed down from the mast after taking a good look. “Either her cargo or passengers, or both, are valuable or else she would not be so heavily guarded.”

  Our men cheered lustily as the order was given to break out the weapons and reset our sails. They ran to their rowing and sailing stations with a will. Talk of prize money and how it might be spent was on every man’s tongue.

  Harold and I had talked constantly during our voyage about what Thomas and George had told us about how the deck of the big Moor they took had been swept by a single archer high on a galley mast. We’d spent much of the trip trying out different ways to make such a nest and lengthening our boarding ladders. It was no surprise when one of the first things Harold had the sailing sergeant do when we saw the big Moor was send the makings of an archer’s nest up to the very top of the mast above the lookouts.

  “Bigger Moorish cogs and ships with more masts and higher decks seem to be the coming thing,” Harold had said several times after we heard George and Thomas tell the story of their prize. “We’ve got to have a way to take them. Some kind of archer’s nest at the very top of the mast may be the way to go. Perhaps even taller masts.”

  We had already agreed that when we got to Cyprus we’re going to see if we could extend the masts of all our galleys so each galley would be able to put its best archer, or even two or three of its very best archers, way up into the sky above the archers in its lookout’s nest.

  Harold had thought it possible, but he was cautious.

  “We’ve got to be careful, don’t we? If we put the weight of too much wood and too many men way up there it might overbalance even the biggest galley and tip it on its side in a heavy sea.”

  In any event, the seas today were not extremely heavy, and we would be going after the big Moor with Harold’s best archer at the very top of the mast. The nest our sailors quickly built wasn’t much to look at, just a couple of short boards lashed to the mast on which the archer could place his feet and a line he could tie to the leather belt he would wear around his waist so he could lean out, away from the swaying and bouncing mast, with both hands free to pluck arrows out of his quiver and push them down into men below them on the deck of the intended prize.

  Pushing out arrows from up there at the very top of a swaying and jerking mast was not the easiest thing to do, but it was possible and several of the galley’s best archers practised doing it every day whilst the village dancing and archery practice was happening on the deck.

  The competition among the archers on each galley to be chosen for the position at the top of the mast had been intense. One of the reasons every archer wanted to be selected was probably because, at Harold’s suggestion, I had decreed that the archer serving at the top of the mast when a high-decked cog or ship was taken was to get a double portion of the prize money to which his rank entitled him.

  “Harold, I understand the appeal of double prize money but I wonder if they realise that whoever is up there is going to be a big target if there are archers on the enemy ship?”

  “I wonder if we should buy them chain mail shirts?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  We take a prize and are surprised.

  The big Moorish three-master and her escorts didn’t wait to see if we were hostile. They immediately turned to run before the wind. We weren’t nearly close enough, so the archer assigned to the mast top and the two for the lookout’s nest were still sitting on the deck to rest their arms for the fight to come. We just didn’t know how big a fight it would become.

  “Harold,” I said, “the big Moorish three-master Thomas and George took as a prize was also convoyed by two galleys, wasn’t it? Do you think it’s a coincidence that this one also has two escorts?”

  “Yes, that’s strange. But what is even stranger is that these three all turned and ran from just one galley? I would have thought they would at least have come for a look.”

  “Perhaps they heard of our reputation,” I suggested.

  “But how would they know it is us?” was Harold’s reply. “They couldn’t be sure at this distance. All they would know is that we’re a war galley and they outnumber us.”

  “Maybe they think there are more of us out here?”

  ******

  We passed through a little rain squall and when we came out of it, to our surprise, there they were straight ahead of us, all three of them. What was even more surprising was that they had turned around and were coming back towards us with their sails down and rowing hard. Little wonder. The sea beyond them was dotted with war galleys, dozens of them, and they were all rowing straight at our three would-be prizes and us.

  “The three-master and her escorts must have known that armada of galleys was out here somewhere and thought they had come upon it when they saw us. That’s probably why they turned back so quickly and tried to run.”

  Harold said it to me with a little chuckle after he swung our galley around, ordered the sail brought down, and sent every man to the oars. Then he added an observation.

  “We should be safe, but they’ll take the sailing ship we’ve been chasing for sure and maybe the two galleys convoying her as well, unless they’ve got enough strong rowers aboard to out-row the best of that lot.”

  “Let’s stay well ahead of them and do a ‘wounded bird,’ I suggested to Harold. “Maybe we can pick off a thruster or two.”

  “Aye, Captain, that’s what I be thinking myself. Maybe we take one of the galleys from that armada and find out who the hell they are and what they’re about. It’s strange to see so many heathen galleys all together in one place. They must have been on a raid.”

  “Or going on one,” I suggested ominously. “Perhaps to hit Cyprus or the Christian ports along coast of the Holy Land. I wish to God we knew which way they were headed, and why, before we chased the big ship and its two escorts right into their hands.”

  My God, I hope our post on Cyprus wasn’t surprised and overrun.

  ******

  I went up on the mast with Harold for a look of my own. It always worried me to climb a galley mast what with all swaying back and forth, but I did it. What I saw was not a heartening sight. It was as if a huge pack of wolves was rushing down upon a missing sheep and the two dogs guarding it.

  The three-masted ship with the triangle sails didn’t have a chance. The first galleys of the armada caught up to her and had her surrounded almost immediately. We didn’t stick around to see what happened next. Harold ordered the sail lowered and every man to the oars. We spun around and went back the way we’d come as fast as you could say “Bob’s your uncle.”

  The captured ship’s two guard-dog galleys were not caught so easily by the armada we chanced upon, if they were caught at all. At least one of them had not been taken by the
time the sun finished passing overhead on its endless trip around the world. The two galleys had immediately separated and the last thing we could see from the lookout’s nest before the sun finished passing overhead was a chase. The men of the guard-dog galley we could still see from the mast were rowing for their very lives with a number of thrusters from the armada of galleys in hot pursuit. It was hard to tell if they were closing the gap.

  We knew the rowers of the fleeing galley were pulling for their lives because we had to exert ourselves a bit with two strong archers at every oar to stay well ahead of the runner and its pursuers. Without a doubt, the men of the fleeing galley had joined the slaves on her rowing benches. We had not a clue as to the fate of the three-master’s other escort.

  “We’ve no choice but to keep rowing hard on our current course until either the sun comes up or the clouds clear enough and we can see the horizon in the moonlight,” said Harold disgustedly after he gasped in a deep breath.

  We were sitting together and rowing an oar on one of the upper rowing benches so that two of our archers could take a break. They were both already stretched out and sound asleep on the deck. It seemed like we’d just sat down and I was already winded and gasping without even trying to talk.

  After a few more strokes, Harold took a particularly deep breath and spoke rather loudly—

  “If we slow down and they keep coming, we could wake up in the morning and find ourselves in the middle of that whole goddamn armada. Two or three would be fine and we could take them, but not scores of the bastards all at the same time. They’d wear us down, wouldn’t they?”

  I smiled to myself. Of course, Harold wants the men to know what we are doing and why.

  “Aye, you’re right,” I agreed with a gasp and a grunt as I leaned forward after what seemed like a particularly heavy pull.

  After my next pull I managed to gasp, “If we keep this up, we’ll be well ahead of them in the morning.” And then after my next pull, I somehow added, “Then we can rest and start looking for stragglers.”