Big Turban’s eyes got bigger and bigger as my interpreter told him what I was saying. His mouth was hanging open with a look of disbelief and his hands were shaking by the time I finished.
He was clearly aghast at what he had been told. “I will convey your request to my master.”
“That was not a request,” I snarled. “It was a promise and your master best believe it and act quickly if he wants to avoid a very painful death.”
I said it emphatically and loudly and gave him a hard look whilst I waited for my interpreter to finish. The archers standing at the front of the men behind me heard what I said and nodded their agreement most grimly.
Later, Peter and Harold both told me that I looked quite fearsome what with my face all chopped and such. It seemed to work; Big Turban began shaking.
I continued after my interpreter finished.
“We’re English archers and we always keep our promises and are willing to fight to keep our passengers and cargos safe; that’s why the merchants in every port prefer to use our galleys and cogs. I’ve made your master a promise of taking his head and guts, and yours, and I’ve made it in front of my men. It’s best for your master that he believes what I’ve said to you. He’ll die most foul if he doesn’t, and so will you.”
After I gave him another hard look I told him what needed to be done to save the city.
“Now it’s time for your master to do what is needed to save Tunis and his castle from being burned to the ground—and he must do it immediately.
“First, he must send unarmed men out from his palace to announce throughout the city that all those prisoners and all the Christian and Jewish slaves in the city are to be immediately sent to the city gate in front of the harbour. Every single prisoner from the recent raid and every single Christian and Jew in the city must be there by sundown or we’ll sack the city and find them for ourselves.
“Second, before prayers can begin again in this church your King must deliver twenty thousand gold bezants or its equivalent in silver and gold to me for my men’s trouble. If he does not bring us the coins and free the prisoners, we will supply ourselves by sea and stay here until his castle falls—and we’ll tear down that big church over there and burn the city to the ground whilst we are waiting.
“But mark you this,” I said with a snarl as I again poked his chest with my finger.
“Even if the coins are paid and the slaves freed, if we ever find even one Christian or Jewish slave on a Tunisian galley or transport, or even one Tunisian galley east of Malta, we’ll return and I will personally take your King’s head and guts and those of all his courtiers and sack the city. That’s my promise to your master in front of my men.” My men nodded; they approved.
“I will tell my master what you said,” the man agreed.
He started to turn away to return to the palace. But then he turned back and asked, “Is your master the man they call Richard?”
“No,” I replied. “Richard is dead. God took him because he didn’t keep his promises when his enemies surrendered to him. Now the captain of the English with longbows and galleys in these waters is William and he always keeps his promises. Then I exaggerated. “William and his men are ten times more powerful than Richard.”
I exaggerated our strength and I lied about Richard. He wasn’t dead because he didn’t keep his word when prisoners surrendered; he was dead because he was foolish enough to get too close to the wall of a castle he had no need to attack and a boy got him with a crossbow. But Richard’s dead, so it really doesn’t matter if we use him to get what we want, does it?
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Tunis surrenders and I regret my decision
As the day wore on and rapidly got warmer and warmer, a well-guarded runner brought me a message from Edward who was now in command at the city gate. More than forty of our missing men and passengers had already arrived at the gate along with over a thousand newly freed slaves, many more than we had expected.
All of the released archers and their passengers were ecstatic at being freed, he said, and so were the Jews. Some were in terrible condition and ill-clothed, but many were not.
But there was an unexpected problem, Edward reported. Some of the newly freed slaves who showed up at the city gate wanted to stay in Tunis and remain as slaves. They said they were too old or too settled to start a new life in someplace new and begged to be allowed to remain in Tunis. Not even assurances from the former slaves in our ranks about the availability of work and a good life on Cyprus could change their minds.
“What should I do?” Edward asked.
An hour or so later, servants came out of the door in the castle gate with chests holding the coins needed to ransom the city. Actually, not all of the ransom payment was in coins; there was an extensive amount of women’s gold and silver rings and necklaces in the chests. It looked about right, however, and I accepted it.
I sent the servants who delivered the ransom back with a message to the city’s ruler. I told him that he could keep the Christian slaves who wanted to remain in Tunis without losing his head or guts, and then I sent a message to Edward saying he could send them home.
******
All of the Tunisian cogs and galleys were either anchored in the harbour with prize captains and crews on board or burned by the time the sun finished circling the earth and darkness fell. So were eight cargo transports from distant lands and three unlucky Tunisian transports which had sailed into the harbour after we arrived. We took them all.
The Tunisians never did make an effort to retake our prizes. They couldn’t have tried even if they wanted, according to a message I received from Harold, because we had taken or destroyed everything that floated.
“No one can get to our prizes anchored in the harbour unless they know how to swim” was how he put it.
It was an important message because it meant our galleys and prizes could safely stay in the harbour overnight as we had hoped and planned. I promptly sent a message to Randolph telling him to hold his position until my men and I fell back on him in the morning, and another to Edward and Harold telling them Randolph and I would lead our men in to the city gate tomorrow late the next morning.
We stayed overnight because I had a great fear of leaving men behind in the confusion if we tried to leave in the dark with our newly freed men and the slaves. We had long ago decided that it would be better to leave the next day when we were better organised and each sergeant could count his men.
******
That night our forces remained concentrated in the open area between the market and the mosque, at the city gate, and around the King’s palace. We made no attempt to patrol the city. The market and mosque remained closed and empty; the city’s narrow lanes remained deserted. The people of Tunis were fearful and rightly so.
There had been a few scattered incidents during the day, so we expected the worst and remained alert and ready in battle formation all that night. We weren’t disappointed. Scattered groups of Tunisians came at us in the dark. The darkness made them braver and it was hard to see them until they were almost on top of us. All in all, we lost two men killed during the night and a number of our men were injured, many from stones that were thrown in the darkness. Most of the injuries were not serious.
******
On the morning after our raid, we burned the city’s two shipyards to the ground and carried off all of the shipwrights’ tools we could find. The newly freed slaves, many of whom had spent a nervous and chilly night in the darkness waiting outside the harbour-side gate, were loaded the next morning on some of the newly taken cogs for carrying to Malta. Smoke from the burning shipyard drifted over the harbour as the slaves filed aboard our galleys.
“We’ll sort them out when we get back to Malta,” Harold told everyone who inquired about our plans for the slaves. Yes, we were going back to Malta instead of westward towards Lisbon and London; there were still too many Moorish pirates afloat and we didn’t know where they might be. We d
idn’t want to risk losing our lightly crewed prizes to chance encounters.
Harold had come ashore at dawn to help supervise the loading of our men and the newly freed slaves from the city and from the galleys we’d taken. Under his direction, some of our archers were returned to their galleys but many, perhaps even most, were assigned to our prizes as guards. For the safety of their prize crews, the galley slaves, except for a few who were British and French, were well fed and watered but remained in chains. They’d be freed as soon as they reached Malta.
The British and French who’d been released, including nine of our men who had been taken at Beirut, were immediately armed and sent to the galleys and cogs carrying the released slaves who wanted to leave Tunis.
It was late in the afternoon when I nodded to Harold and he had one of his sailors climb the mast and wave the “follow me” flag. A few moments later the sound of rowing drums began to reach us from across the water. It was time to go; we needed to clear the harbour whilst it was still light enough to see.
Tunisians crowded the shoreline, the rooftops, and the quay to watch us go.
I had second thoughts as I passed through the harbour entrance into the sea beyond and I’ve held them ever since. I still regret how we behaved in Tunis. We should have sacked the city while we had the opportunity, driven the Arabs into the desert, and torn it down as the Romans did to Carthage.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The archers are surprised at what happens next
“That was a bad mistake, William, one you’ll come to regret even though you took so many prizes and broke their backs for years to come.” Enrico Brindisi, the former pirate and long-time ruler of Malta on behalf of the King of Sicily, looked at me sadly as he said it.
“You’re right, my dear friend Enrico, you’re right,” I admitted somewhat drunkenly. “There is no question about it; we should have stayed and destroyed Tunis before we came back to Malta.”
After a pause and a disgusted shake of my head, I tried to explain.
“What’s worse, I knew it as soon as we started rowing out of the harbour and I looked back at the city. I guess I was too anxious to get to England with the relics.”
That was my excuse because I didn’t want the old pirate to know what I was going to do when we leave Malta. But it wasn’t a very good excuse since the relics were already in England. I wondered if he had figured out what we were going to do next?
“Ah well. Who am I to speak, eh? I probably could have taken Tunis when I got back from my horrible year as a prisoner in Germany. But I dithered and let my galleys decline and my captains leave and go elsewhere until it was too late. Now all I can do is sit in the sun and drink wine.”
“Tell me about Germany, Enrico. What are the German princes like? Can I trust them if they say they’ll buy the relics? The only ones I ever met were crusaders”
******
It was an exciting time to be in Malta with my men. Our return from Tunis with so many prizes had initially resulted in a great celebration with drunken men and women crowding the quay and the city streets and frequent fights over women and wine skins.
Order was finally restored when I ordered the men confined to their galleys and cogs, and for them to be anchored in the middle of the harbour so none of our men could get ashore. A sergeant carrying a sword and shield and two similarly armed chosen men from each galley had been sent ashore to help keep order; that had helped reduce the turmoil even more.
I also dried up the sale of wine on credit by announcing that the prize coins due each man would not be paid until the prizes were sold, and that no coins could be withdrawn from those on deposit until the men withdrawing them were away from Malta.
As you might expect, the restrictions caused the men to grumble as good fighting men always do; but they weren’t angry because the orders were so obviously necessary and reasonable. Thereafter, our archers and sailors were only allowed to go ashore in groups of three and only for a short time to have a bowl of wine and a quick dip of their dingles in the local tavern girls—with each man standing surety for the other two. Then they had to return to their galleys and cogs so another group of three could take their places.
Once we regained control of our men and newly released slaves, my lieutenants and I spent the next couple of days inspecting our prizes and trying to decide which of them to send to Lisbon and London to sell, and which to send to Cyprus to have Yoram enter into our service. Those going east to Cyprus to enter our service would carry released slaves who wanted to head in that direction and skeleton crews of volunteers, primarily sailors. We sent them with only a few fighting men on board because, as everyone knew, we’d need our archers elsewhere to help guard the relics.
It was somewhat of a risky decision to send our prizes and freed slaves east with only sailors and a handful of archers to maintain order. However, after much discussion, we had decided it was a risk worth taking, both because we’d knocked out the most easterly part of the huge Moorish fleet, the Tunisians, and because any pirates who met our galleys and cogs would be fearful of approaching them because they might be loaded with hidden archers and boarding parties as was our custom.
Besides all that, and most important of all, we wanted to take as many fighting men as possible to England to help guard the relics.
In any event, not all the released slaves and prisoners would be sailing to Crete and on to Cyprus and the Holy Land ports. Some of them signed on to join the company as apprentice archers and sailors and would go wherever we ordered them to go; others wanted to travel west with us to the Spanish coast and even all the way on to England and France.
If those who chose to sail west with us had known what we are going to do on our way to England, many of them probably would have opted for Cyprus. The only thing certain was that they had to go in one direction or the other. Brindisi did not want any of the freed prisoners and slaves staying in Malta “because their idle hands would undoubtedly cause unrest and thievery to rise.”
******
The prizes we decided to take into our service were long gone on their way to Cyprus and it was a windy and lightly raining day when we once again began sailing west from Malta. It began in the morning when Harold had the “all captains” flag waved from his mast. The quay was empty except for Brindisi’s city guards; all of our galleys and cogs were anchored in the harbour
The sergeant captains of our remaining cogs and galleys had been told to expect the “all captains” signal. They promptly got in their dinghies and had themselves rowed to where Harold’s galley was anchored in the middle of the harbour.
It took a while for all of them to assemble; the addition of some of the prizes we took in Tunis made our westbound fleet much larger than it had been before our raid. It was the first “all captains” for the newly appointed sergeant captains of the prizes we were taking to Lisbon and London to sell.
We talked and bantered as we waited for the late arrivals, and Harold and I made it a point to greet the newly promoted prize captains and get to know them better.
All in all, it was quite a happy and optimistic band of men who climbed over the railing and on to Harold’s deck. As well it should have been—we had won big in Tunis, our losses had been minimal, and every man on Harold’s deck was looking forward to a goodly amount of prize money. On top of that, the prize captains had been told that they would keep their new ranks and their commands if they got their prizes to London.
Some of the men on Harold’s deck had never been to London before and were asking those who had already been there about the tides, making one’s way up the crowded Thames, and such-like—the kind of questions that inevitably come up whenever the sergeant captains of our cogs and galleys get together to discuss ports and operations.
They all looked up expectantly as Harold and Randolph and I climbed on to the roof of the forward castle to tell them how their cogs and galleys were going to fit into the convoy guarding our precious cargo during its voyage to London
via Ibiza and Lisbon. They all knew about the chests of relics scattered through the fleet, the ones we were secretly taking to London; it was a secret that had somehow gotten out and once out, couldn’t be contained.
I began by addressing what had been a major topic in the taverns and around the water barrels during the past few days—who would be in the crews of each of the galleys and cogs going to Ibiza and when would some of the archers and sailors still crowded into the galleys start moving to their new berths in the under-crewed prize cogs?
“I am sure you are all wondering why each of our galleys has taken on so much more in the way of supplies than would normally be shipped for a full crew going to Ibiza and Lisbon and on to London. You’re probably also wondering why some our galleys are still stuffed with archers and prize crews whilst our cogs and the prize cogs we are taking to Lisbon and London to sell have taken on similarly large amounts of supplies and don’t have archers on board to protect them.
“The answer could be,” I said with a big smile as I threw my arms wide, “that Lieutenant Randolph and I enjoy buying supplies in the market and that in all the excitement Lieutenant Harold has forgotten how to assign archers and sailors to crews.”
That got a big round of happy laughter and friendly shouts and calls.
“And you’re right, we should redistribute our archers and sailors more evenly so that every one of our galleys and cogs is better able to protect itself and our valuable cargos as it sails from here to Ibiza and then on to Lisbon and London.”
Then I dropped a rock on them when I added, “Except not everyone is going directly to Ibiza—some of you will be going on your galleys with Senior Sergeant Edward Shepherd to look for Moorish prizes in all the little ports along the coast west between Tunis and Algiers including Bizerte.” I emphasised the word “some.”
Sea Warriors Page 18