Castling The King

by Martin Archer

  As soon as I stepped out onto the deck and smelled the morning bread being cooked, I knew we would be sailing that day. It was still dark, but the sky was clear and the stars were out, and I could feel the favourable wind.

  Ten minutes later our rowers had finished eating, and I was standing in line with some of the archers waiting for bread and a cut of cheese. That’s when Harold ordered the “follow me” flag waved by the men in the lookout’s nest up near the masthead and motioned for me to run and make sure it was done. He waited almost ten minutes to give the other galleys time to get ready and everyone to finish getting their morning bread and cheese and to their places.

  I was standing with Harold when the rowing drums began to boom and we led our galleys out of Fowey harbour. The sun was just starting to come up and the wind was from the west.

  ***** Sergeant William Wood

  I made my mark on the company list as William Wood because I chopped firewood Lord Anthony as one of his serfs before I went for an archer. I’ve been a four-stripe sergeant ever since Captain William made me a prize captain and I took a galley off the Moors in Tunis and got it back to Cyprus. I was fit to burst with excitement and anticipation as I rowed my dinghy back from the meeting with Captain William on Harold’s galley, I surely was.

  “Sorry, lads,” I shouted to my men as they gathered around to get the news.” I know where we’re heading, but I can’t tell you until we’re clear of the harbour and well into the channel. Orders from the captain because he doesn’t want our enemies to know we’re coming. And he’s right, yes he is. No sense taking chances on the word getting out, is there?”

  My crew were veterans. They grumbled at the news but they were satisfied, as I knew they would be. They stayed calm as we waited the rest of that day and all the next for the captain and Harold to decide the winds and weather were favourable. It finally looked like it might be good enough on the second morning, and it was.

  A few minutes after the sun came up there was a great hail from Alfred, my lookout up in the nest on the mast.

  “Hoay the deck; Lieutenant Harold’s galley has begun waving its “follow me” flag and is beginning to hoist its sail.”

  It was the signal we’d been waiting for and something I had been expecting—because the wind and weather felt good when I got up to piss in the middle of the night.

  I followed Captain William’s orders and waited until an hour after we entered the channel to tell the men where we are heading and what we are going to do. The men cheered loud enough to wake the dead when they heard. The landsmen on the lower rowing benches were already seasick, almost to a man, and even some of them smiled and whooped. I must admit I laid it on rather thick about the prize money and being back in England to spend it.

  When I finished and things had calmed down a bit, I did as Captain William told us to do. I called the sergeants of my archers and sailors to me to help organize additional prize crews so we’ll be ready if we are able to take more than three prizes.

  More prize crews means I’ll have to use some of the French and Norman French speakers in our crew and among our landsmen rowers as interpreters to tell the French crews what we want them to do. Then I’ll put archers on each additional prize to make damn sure they do it. We’re also supposed to include at least one experienced sailor in each of our additional prize crews to make sure the French sailors actually set their sails properly and do whatever it is the prize crew wants them to do.

  Chapter Eighteen

  George

  Being with my father and Uncle Harold in the command galley was quite pleasing. We spent all the next day moving down the channel towards Harfleur with our company’s fleet of war galleys following close behind. Fortunately, the sea was moderate. Even so, a good number of the men, myself included, were seasick.

  As the sun rolled on past in its great circle around the earth and darkness began to fall, Harold gave the order and we hoisted the coloured candle lights so the other galleys could mark us. Behind us we could see the flickering lights of our fleet.

  All night the weather held and our galleys sailed and rowed together with our galley in the lead. I tried to sleep but I could not. Neither could my friend and fellow student Michael, my father’s apprentice, with whom I shared a bed. The next morning we were both wide awake and on deck before the sun came up.

  “Excellent position, Harold. absolutely excellent. Good on you and your pilots.”

  That was my father’s enthusiastic, cheerful comment to Harold when our position in the channel became clear as the sun came up. They had climbed the mast together and were in the lookout’s nest. I heard what he said because Michael and I were desperately clinging to the rope ladder below them as the ladder swung around and about and up and down in response to the wind and the waves.

  I’m pleased they’re pleased, because I don’t have a clue as to where we are and I’m so seasick I hardly care. All I can see is a long, grey blur to the south.

  ******

  After my father and Harold decided they’d seen enough, they climbed down from the mast. Then, whilst my father walked around inspecting everyone’s weapons and looking once again at the arrows in the bales, I followed Harold as he prowled every corner of the ship and made sure everyone had eaten all the bread and cheese they wanted and received two full bowls of breakfast ale. Archers and sailors briefly took the place of the landsmen on the lower rowing deck so they too could break their fast. There was obviously some trading going on, as I saw several men who had obviously had too much morning ale to drink.

  To my surprise, most of the Archers, and especially the older men, curled up on whatever vacant space they could find and went right back to sleep after they finished pissing and breaking their nightly fast. When I mentioned this to Harold he told me it is quite common for veteran rowers and fighting men to sleep whenever they have time to do so. He told me it was a good thing to see. It meant the men knew what they were doing and were resigned to carrying out their assignments and accepting their fate.

  ******

  “Hoay the deck! Sail in sight dead ahead.” It was a hail from the lookouts, and we heard it repeated more often as we moved towards Harfleur. Usually it meant one or more fishing boats, but on four occasions it was an inbound transport with its sails set to catch the prevailing wind. We never did see any outbound shipping other than many small fishing boats which we ignored.

  Harold and I would climb the mast each time a large transport was reported by our lookouts. If it was big enough, Harold would order a flag waved by one of the lookouts, and one or more of the galleys behind us would peel off from our armada to take it as a prize.

  After a while, I noticed the responding galley was never one of the galleys immediately behind ours.

  Harold explained why when I asked.

  “The galleys right behind us can’t go traipsing off to fetch prizes, no they can’t. They’ve got to stay up with us, because they’ll be coming with us all the way to the quay to help take the shipping moored along it.”

  ******

  About four hours after sunrise came the hail, “Hoay the deck! Many masts in sight dead ahead.”

  Harold and my father ran to the mast and climbed up to the lookouts’ nest to see for themselves. Michael and I followed right behind them, as was our duty. Suddenly there they were in front of our eyes, a virtual forest of masts. It was the fleet of French transports at anchor in Harfleur harbour. A few moments later, a command came from Harold to slightly change the direction our galley was sailing and slightly increase our speed.

  Almost instantly our rowing drum began to beat a somewhat faster tune. Soon thereafter sergeants began shouting, and the archers and boarding parties began looking to their weapons and forming up in their assigned positions. It was quite familiar after all of the practices I’d watched, but this time, somehow, it was quite thrilling. I suddenly very much needed to piss and shite. How strange.

  ******

  Michael and I quickly cli
mbed down the rope ladder and moved out of the way when both my father and Uncle Harold motioned for us to do so and started down themselves.

  “Fetch your bows and quivers, lads, and the captain’s, too” was the first thing Harold said as his feet touched the deck.” And fetch me my sword and a shield.” We scampered to obey.

  It seemed as if no time at all had passed before we entered the crowded harbour and headed for the long stone quay which seemed to run all along the front of the city wall. The harbour was packed with cargo transports and large fishing boats at anchor. Harold had our rowing drum reduce its beat to a crawl and added another rudder man as we slowly weaved through the densely packed harbour towards the quay.

  Men on the French transports looked down at us as we rowed our way past them. A few of them even waved and nodded. They had no idea as to who we were or the horror we were about to lay upon them. It was exhilarating.

  ******

  Michael and I stood next to Harold and my father on the roof of the forecastle, ready to carry out any order or run any errand they might require of us. Both of us clutched our bows and an arrow with one hand and used the other to steady ourselves against the wooden railing circling the roof, as did the half dozen archers crowded on the deck with us. I suddenly realised I was holding my bow so tightly my fingers were getting numb.

  From our vantage point we could look down upon our galley’s deck about six feet below us. It was crowded with the men of our boarding parties. They too were anxiously holding their weapons and constantly peering at the French transports we were passing. I could see more than a dozen archers in the stern. Every bow was strung. Our men and galleys reminded me of a great arrow being readied for Harold and my father to launch against the unsuspecting French.

  It gave me a great start and a strange pleasure when I suddenly realised I had been thinking in terms of arrows. At that moment I knew for sure I had become an archer like my father.

  What surprised me was the silent intensity of the men around me and on the deck just below me. I didn’t remember an order being issued for everyone to be silent, but it must have been given. Perhaps no one wanted to attract attention from the enemy transports we were passing. It was a mystery.

  Everyone clutched their weapons and watched silently as we moved toward the quay. Our galley’s oars slowly splashed and swooshed as we turned and twisted this way and that to get through the extremely crowded and totally disorganized harbour.

  The rowing drum had long since ceased to beat. The landsmen on the lower rowing deck and the rudder men were pulling their oars in response to the periodic orders being shouted down from the sailing sergeant on our galley’s stubby mast. Other than the sailing sergeant’s voice and the voices of the rowing sergeant repeating them, the only sounds on our galley were the creak of its wooden hull and the swoosh of our oars. It was a difficult passage. More than once we came so close to a French ship our oars had to be hurriedly yanked in to avoid being sheared off.

  After tense minutes and more than a few near collisions, we finally approached the long quay and the line of French transports moored along it. We turned to the right and began to row along the moored transports towards the far end of the quay. An open berth at the far end was obviously where Harold intended to unload our prize crews.

  When I looked backwards past our stern castle and shite nest I could see some of our galleys following behind us. They will put their prize crews ashore in other open mooring berths even if it means they have to create a berth for themselves by forcing their bows in between two French transports and unloading their prize crews over their bows.

  Our men had every right to be tense. The transports we’d passed in the harbour may have been almost empty of men, but the quay on which our prize crews would land was packed with French soldiers and mercenaries getting ready to board the transports moored along it.

  We could hear the shouts and talking of the French troops on the quay whenever we rowed past an opening between the anchored transports. They paid no attention to us except as a curiosity; war galleys such as ours are not common in these waters.

  Everything changed as we began moving past a large two-masted transport moored close to the empty berth we were heading for at the far end of the quay. Unlike the other transports in the harbour, this one’s deck was already crowded with French soldiers and they were staring across at us from no more than thirty paces away.

  The French transport’s deck was six or seven feet higher than our galley’s deck. As a result, the archers and boarding parties standing on our deck could only see the soldiers and sailors on the French transport who were standing along its deck railing and looking down at them. We on the roofs of our galley’s castles, on the other hand, were high enough to be able to see the French ship’s entire deck

  We could clearly see the looks on the faces of the French soldiers as their expressions turned from curiosity to stunned surprise. There immediately began to be shouting and confusion on the transport’s deck. Some of the French soldiers gaped at us as we slowly moved past them and a few dove for cover. There were obviously veterans among them who knew what it meant when they saw archers with bows strung and arrows in their hands. What they didn’t know was whether we were friend or foe and what our intentions might be.

  The distance between where I was standing on the roof of the forecastle and the hull of the troop-laden French transport was barely enough to get our oars in the water, perhaps twenty paces. There was a young Frenchman with a drooping moustache at its railing, staring at us as we glided past. Our eyes locked, and for some reason I raised my hand in acknowledgement and nodded. He nodded back. Neither of us smiled.

  ******

  I stood behind my father and Harold and watched as we slowly moved into the open berth at the end of the quay. This end of the quay was absolutely packed with French soldiers and mercenaries boarding or preparing to board the French transports moored in the nearby berths—and many of them were staring at us as we approached the quay.

  We attracted the attention of the French soldiers because of our men’s behaviour. Harold had responded to the cries of alarm from the soldiers on the deck of one of the transports by ordering our men to put their weapons down at their feet and pretend to smile and look friendly. Some of them obviously overdid it by smiling and waving too much. It drew more attention and curiosity from the soldiers crowded together on this end of the quay than if the order had not been given at all.

  In any event, it was a gentle mooring as the linen-filled bumper sacks hanging over the side of our galley prevented us from banging up against the quay and doing our galley an injury.

  Everything changed the moment our galley touched the quay, because the gentle bump was the signal for the archers on our deck and castle roofs to pick up their bows and begin pushing out their arrows and for the non-archers in our boarding parties to grab up their swords and galley shields and begin climbing onto the quay.

  One moment there was the relative peace and quiet and bustling about one might expect from a mass of soldiers standing with their supplies and personal possessions as they waited to board their transports; the next moment there were screams and chaos and utter confusion as a rapidly increasing hail of well-aimed arrows began to fall upon them. For a moment, many of the Frenchmen on the quay just stood there in a daze. They didn’t even know where the deadly storm of arrows was coming from.

  I stood next to my father on the forecastle roof as we and the archers around us pushed arrow after arrow into the screaming and totally confused French soldiers. They didn’t know where to run and they weren’t wearing armour. We slaughtered them.

  Chapter Nineteen

  William

  I stood next to my son and fought as an archer once the fighting started. It seemed as if our surprise attack on the French soldiers went on forever, but it was actually over in less than a minute. Our archers were within spitting distance of the screaming and totally disorganized French soldiers and trained to
shoot accurately. We shot them down in droves as our sword and shield-carrying sailors and the other non-archers in our landing parties quickly placed their boarding ladders and began scrambling up them to reach the quay.

  I remember one of the French soldiers on the quay quite clearly. He was looking at us and paused to pick up a bundle of his possessions when the shouting and commotion started around him and we began shooting. My arrow caught him square in the middle of his chest and caused him to take a step backward. In the brief moment whilst I was nocking my next arrow, I saw him look down at the protruding shaft in surprise and watched as his expression changed to one of horror and disbelief.

  Our storm of arrows quickly cleared our section of the quay of standing Frenchmen. Most were either down with arrows in them or cowering on the ground and trying to hide by the time the archers in our boarding parties began following the sword and pike-carrying non-archers up the boarding ladders and into the chaos and confusion and noise on the quay.

  The French soldiers who cowered should have run. The men in our boarding parties knew full well they couldn’t afford to leave able bodied fighting men in their rear—and they didn’t despite the cowering men’s desperate pleas and attempts to surrender.

  Less than a minute after we bumped against the quay, our boarding parties had begun to board the French transports moored nearby, and our galley’s main deck was clear of everyone except the sailors holding us against the quay with the hooks on their bladed pikes.

  Those of us on the castle roof remained engaged despite our boarding parties’ initial successes. Not all of the running and screaming and hiding Frenchmen on the quay had been killed as the men in our boarding parties ran past them. Many of them were still running about and moving and drawing our attention and arrows as they did.