Our men weren’t sure which galley had been successful or where it had been based, but they had discussed the various possibilities and the amount of prize money its crew would be sharing every evening in the local wine shops and taverns while we waited for the return of the final galley.
“Won’t they be chuffed,” they told each other gleefully about the crew of the galley that was still out there searching, “when they find out they was a searchin’ an’ diggin’ and them crates of old bones is already been found.”
All anyone actually knew, of course, was that a galley had come in with a parchment that had caused Harold and I to begin whooping and jumping around like young boys. That evening numerous men moped over their bowls of wine in the local taverns and swore to each other and the tavern girls that they knew someone on Harold’s galley who had heard me very distinctly say, “They found them, by God, they found them.” Which is more or less exactly what I said.
“Well, at least now we can go home to where the wine is better and the girls don’t smell so bad,” said one of the archers as he sipped at his bowl of wine. It seemed to be the prevailing sentiment among our men.
Whilst we waited for the last of the searching galleys to return and the men consoled themselves over their lost prize coins, Harold and I continued to work on our plans for the great raid we intended to lead in the spring. Our intentions were simple—we were going to fall upon the Moors and we were going to do it when we were on our way back to Cornwall to begin meeting with the princes to sell them the relics.
“One thing’s for sure,” Harold assured me as we once again discussed what had gone right and what had gone wrong in our previous raids, “this time we’ll be hitting them with more galleys and men, and this time we’ll be bringing more prize crews and a better way to put fire to the Moorish cogs and galleys we can’t carry away.”
Our basic plan was simple and very ambitious. We intended to hit all the major Moorish ports between Cyprus and England. This time, however, we were going to try to stay long enough to greatly reduce their pirate fleets and their ability to carry cargos.
“And that means taking or destroying everything that floats, including their fishing boats. And that’s not all; if possible, we’re going to burn their shipyards; and, if we can get through the gates and take them by surprise without having to lay a siege, sack their cities and take prisoners we can hold for ransom or exchange.”
“Why would we go to the trouble of doing all that?” Harold and Yoram had asked when I first outlined the kind of raid I wanted to lead. Harold had just asked me again.
“Why, for the coins from the prizes we take, of course; but also because we want the coins to keep coming in the years ahead when George and his sons and grandsons command the company.
“The Moorish pirates in these waters are getting so strong they are starting to discourage the Christian pilgrims and reinforcements necessary to continue the fighting between the Saracens and Christians for control of Jerusalem and the rest of the Holy Land.
“We need to reduce the Christians’ fear of the pirates so the crusaders and pilgrims keep coming. That way we can continue to carry them and the refugees without the Moslems ever winning and ending our trade. We’ll be back in Cornwall with no way to earn our bread if one side ever gets strong enough to win.”
Yoram, of course, had understood immediately when we first talked about a raid to reduce the Moorish pirates.
“It’s just like King John isn’t it? We don’t want him to totally defeat the barons and the French King or else John and his supporters wouldn’t need us any longer. On the other hand, we also don’t want the French King and the barons to defeat John because then he and his nobles also wouldn’t need us any longer. It’s better for us if they stay at each other’s throats, isn’t it?”
“Exactly so,” I had said as the others looked on with various degrees of understanding. “Archers are men of war. We need wars and conflict to continue without a winner if we are to continue to enrich ourselves and our families. It’s how we earn our bread.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
The great raid.
Fifty-seven galleys and over three thousand archers and three thousand sailors. It was by far the biggest force we’d ever assembled. Who would have thought it possible? But that’s what I was leading to England—with a few important stops along the way.
We assembled our fleet very quietly; we merely ordered the four-stripe sergeant captain of each galley to sail for Cornwall on a certain date, “at the request of the Pope,” to help guard important religious relics as they passed through the pirate waters between Malta and London. Each was told he would be expected to arrive in Malta with a specified number of additional sailors and pilots to replace those in our Lisbon and London fleets who had been lost last year to the pox. Sailors and pilots were easy to recruit. They all wanted to be on our galleys for the prize money.
It was Harold’s idea to have the orders mention our need to replace the men who fallen to the pox instead of admitting that we were recruiting prize crews. We did so because our galleys would be calling in at Cyprus, Crete, and Malta for water and supplies, and probably other ports as well. Mentioning prize crews, or even saying nothing while recruiting additional sailors, might have alerted the Moors.
We took no chances about the Moors discovering our plans. We waited to tell our men about the raids and form them up into a fighting fleet until after they reached Malta.
The sergeant captains of the galleys didn’t know it, but the ‘secret’ sailing dates we gave each of them would put them all into Malta on the same date if the weather cooperates—which, of course, it probably wouldn’t. Three of our cargo cogs from Cyprus will be waiting in Malta with the longer boarding ladders and fire pots the galleys will need.
We capped off our efforts to gull the Moors by sending six heavy wooden chests to Malta. We sent two of them in each of three galleys packed with additional sergeants and archers “in case of pirates.” Their sergeant captains were ordered to deposit the chests in our Malta post and use all of their archers to guard the post even if it meant leaving their galleys unguarded in the harbour so that they were lost.
“The chests are everything,” Harold told them most solemnly as I nodded my head in agreement. “Put them in your stern castles under heavy guard and don’t let them get wet or be lost to pirates. Parade your men and stress the importance of the chest you are carrying. Take no chances. It’s better to lose your galley than the chests.”
I reinforced what Harold said about the importance of the chests.
“Your galleys are nothing compared to the importance of guarding those chests. Lose your galleys if you must but guard those chests. Make sure your men understand that in case you fall in battle. We’ll be sending additional galleys as reinforcements to help you convey the chests safely from Malta to London.”
We didn’t tell the galley captains and their men that the chests contained the missing Orthodox relics for which we had been searching. That, as they all knew, was a secret.
******
It was a brisk spring day in the middle of April when Randolph and I sailed from Cyprus on Harold’s galley. Yoram waved us as we rowed out of the harbour, and then went back to close the gates into our fortress with its greatly reduced guard force and three crenelated defensive walls with battlements and a fourth under construction. Until we returned, Yoram would have to defend it primarily with a thousand or so able-bodied workmen and women. We did, however, leave him with thirty good archers and several very good sergeants—every man of them with a wife inside its walls.
Yoram and our men’s families would be safe in a highly fortified citadel with its own water well and a huge amount of siege supplies. By our reckoning, taking our post would require a large army willing to conduct a long siege and take thousands of casualties.
As you might imagine, a serious attack was not expected although one can never be sure with Moors and crusaders. The city of Limasso
l, on the other hand, would be easier to take and provide more plunder.
Sailing out of the harbour with us were a number of galleys carrying almost all the archers we could mobilize including a number of newly promoted apprentices and the veteran archers taken from our pirate-taking cogs. Other archers would be sailing or had already sailed from other ports as needed to reach Malta on or about April 28th. Nine more were coming all the way to Malta from England and Lisbon “to help guard an important shipment.”
Our pirate-taking cogs and several others had already sailed for Malta with enough supplies on board to make it all the way without stopping as we would usually do at Crete for supplies. They were loaded with the additional food supplies, ladders, fire pots, and arrows our raiders would need.
The sailors and archers in the crews of the supply cogs did not know it yet, but they wouldn’t be allowed to go ashore when they reached Malta or made any unscheduled stops. Why? Because we did not want anyone to find about the cargos they were carrying; word might reach the Moors and alert them to the possibility of a raid.
******
Our main fleet of galleys left Cyprus ten days later and reached Malta despite a rather severe storm that scattered us all about. The harbour was soon crowded as more and more of our galleys and cogs arrived. We were more than ready to stop for a rest. It had been a difficult trip because of the storm, with a stop at Crete for water and supplies.
“So you found them, eh?” the old pirate and long-time friend, Brindisi, said as he lifted his bowl in his favourite tavern and looked at me intently. “Or did you?”
“My men aren’t allowed to say anything so I can’t tell you either,” was my reply with a big beaming smile on my face as I took a sip of wine. “This is very good wine, by the way.”
I was trying to change the subject, but it didn’t work. Brindisi wouldn’t let it go.
“I’m aware that you have three almost-empty galleys in the harbour whose men are all ashore guarding your trading post, and that you have heavily loaded cogs anchored in the harbour whose men aren’t allowed ashore. And now you are here with all those galleys and men. Everyone is talking?”
He said it as a question and looked at me carefully to see my response.
I lowered my voice and responded.
“It isn’t the pirates I fear,” I admitted. Then I leaned forward and confided the truth to Brindisi, at least some of it.
“It’s King John and all the princes. They all want the relics because the Pope has promised great things to any prince who donates them to the Church, even the crown of the Holy Roman Empire and no time in purgatory. They’re worth a fortune.
“The problem is that everyone wants them, but not everyone is able to pay the high price needed to buy them. I fear there will be an attempt to steal the relics from us in England or Germany unless they are well-guarded. So I’ve called in all my archers to guard them until I can sell them.”
My answer delighted the old pirate.
“I knew you were smart, William, but you have outdone us all with this one. Where will you sell the prizes you take?”
I took my elbows off the wooden table, rocked back on my stool, and looked at him in astonishment.
“Don’t worry, my friend. I’m too old and out of touch to try to take your place and do what you are doing. I thought about doing it years ago but never had enough men. Besides, it will be good for Malta and Sicily if you succeed in reducing the number of pirates. I won’t say a word.”
“Lisbon and London, I should think,” I finally said with a shrug and a resigned and disbelieving shake of my head. “At least, at first; just as we did with the French fleet.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Our men are surprised.
It took almost a week for the last of our storm-blown stragglers to come in. The final arrivals were the galleys of a couple of sheepish sergeant captains who had been traveling together. They had gone past the island in the night and continued on for three days until they realized they needed to turn around. The harbour was already packed with anchored galleys and cogs, and our galleys moored to the quay three and four deep by the time they arrived.
******
We began our final preparations “to leave for London via Ibiza and Lisbon” as soon as our last two arrivals finished taking on water and supplies and the weather and wind improved.
Everyone, including the locals who thronged the street to cheer and cross themselves, were quite impressed when we ceremoniously carried the six crates from our post and loaded them on Harold’s galley. It was a solemn procession led by a gaggle of chanting priests. Of course, the priests were leading the way; we had asked them to accompany the crates to the quay with prayers, and suggested that a donation would be forthcoming if they did.
The sea was calm with favourable light winds when Harold assembled our galleys and cogs out to the middle of the big harbour for a meeting to talk about “how we’re going to convoy an important cargo to Lisbon and London.” It was a chilly spring day on the Mediterranean coast and spirits were high.
Harold had moved away from the quay, dropped his anchor in the middle of the harbour, and ordered one of his sailors to wave the “all captains” flag. We were soon bobbing in the waves surrounded by galleys and cogs. Everywhere there were dinghies rowing towards us and every one of them had a somewhat excited sergeant captain on board.
The “captains call” had been expected. One does not, after all, sail all the way to England without someone telling him what to do and where to go.
I greeted each man by name as he climbed aboard until they were finally all assembled. Harold had to help me with some of the names. There were so many of them that they packed the deck. I climbed on to the roof of the forward castle to talk to them. Harold and Randolph joined me.
“Now I can finally share some things with you,” I told them. “And they are secret things you must not share with your sergeants and men until you’ve cleared the harbour and can no longer see Malta.
“You all believe, I think, that we are here to escort some important religious relics to England. Well, it is true, we’re on our way to England with some important crates. But it’s not true that we are out here only to guard some religious relics.
“That’s all ox shite we put out to gull the Moors. What we are really doing out here is getting ready to raid Tunis for prisoners we can exchange for the archers and sailors the Moors recently captured, and to take Moorish galleys and cogs as prizes.” And after that we’re going to raid other Moorish ports as well, but I’ll tell you about those later.
There was a moment of stunned silence at my announcement. Then the sergeant captains began cheering and laughing and throwing their caps in the air. Then the chanting started and got louder and louder as it rolled out over the water to the galleys and cogs surrounding us and they punched their fists into the air with each word— “Archers. .. Archers. .. Archers. .. Archers.”
After a while I held both my hands up for silence so I could continue. The men on the galleys and cogs must be beside themselves wondering what the hell is going on. Well, they’ll know soon enough, won’t they?
“This raid will be different from all our previous raids. There are important relics and we have them. That means we’re sailing under God’s special protection. So, whilst we are protected by God, we’re going to raid Tunis for prizes and prisoners, we’re also going to try to get into the city and completely destroy its boat works and shipping, even its fishing boats.
“When it’s all over, we’ll send our prizes to Lisbon and London to sell, and use our cogs as prison ships to carry our captives to the abandoned governor’s castle at Limassol. That’s where we’ll hold them until we can exchange them for our captured men and their passengers.”
The cheering and chanting started again.
******
My lieutenants and I spent the entire rest of the day talking to small groups of the galley sergeants about the role each would have in the raid
. We were highly organised with specific written orders for each and every galley and cog—where to go in the harbour to take prizes; where to land its archers and who they were to follow; when to withdraw; what to do with prisoners; where to send their prizes; where to rally afterwards if we were forced to leave the harbour.
There was a long list of instructions for each and every galley and cog. Little wonder in that; we’d spent months working on the list for each of them.
The sergeant captains couldn’t read, of course, so each had his orders loudly read to him and his questions answered whilst his fellow sergeant captains stood by and listened intently. Every one of them had already been on at least two or three major raids in one capacity or another, and so already had a good idea of what he and his men were expected to do. Even so, there were a number of good questions and some foolish ones that suggested a couple of our galleys might have the wrong man in command.
Too late to change captains now, I thought to myself; it’s always that way, isn’t it?
******
Messengers rowed dinghies out to the galleys whilst we were talking to the captains. They ordered them, in Harold’s name, to bring their galleys to the cogs to begin taking on special supplies such as the longer boarding ladders and the fire-starting bundles of twigs and the fire pots.
We stayed together in the harbour all that night, and, as you might well imagine at a port that was likely to be full of Moorish spies, no one was allowed to go ashore for fear he might reveal our intentions.
Sea Warriors Page 16