I stood at the bow and counted my men as they came running back. When the last laggard jumped aboard, the four sailor men I had waiting in the water pushed us off and jumped back on board themselves. It was time to go to the harbour entrance and block it so none of the Frenchies could escape.
I’d heard Captain William say we’d stay in the harbour overnight if that’s what it took to take or burn all of the French transports. Even so, my men and I were anxious to get to the harbour entrance and begin doing our share to increase the prize money. Without my having to say a word, all the oars on both banks of seats were manned by the time we had spun around and began moving down the long stone jetty towards the entrance to the harbour. Our rowing drum beat faster and faster.
******
Blocking the harbour entrance and taking any Frenchmen who tried to escape was our next assignment, and we barely reached it in time. A big three-masted Frenchman was coming out of the harbour and heading towards deep water as we came around the jetty. A number of sailors were on its deck and rigging, scrambling to set its sails.
Most importantly, I could not see a single man on its deck who looked like one of ours, and there was certainly no one from one of our prize crews standing in its bow or stern rolling one of his arms in a great cranking motion to signal it was a prize. It was a French ship for sure, and it was trying to escape.
“It’s a Frenchy, Jimmy. Lay us along side her and be quick about it,” I yelled to my sailing sergeant.” Boarders and first prize crew to the deck and prepare to board; archers standby.” Then I repeated my order for good measure.
Within seconds, several dozen of my sailors and boarders were standing around me with their weapons and boarding ladders in hand. Archers were on the roofs of our castles preparing to support them by killing everyone they could see, and my sailors were readying their grappling hooks for throwing. It was something my crew and I had practiced many hundreds of times. This time it would be for real.
******
Jimmy brought us alongside the French transport, and our grappling hooks went over the Frenchman’s railing and were pulled tight by the sailors.
Up went our boarding ladders, and our prize crew and extra boarders promptly climbed them and took the French ship as a prize. There was no fighting. The French sailors were not fighting men and weren’t even armed. To the contrary, they were scared to death and willing to do whatever they were told.
Jimmy and I went up to the French transport’s deck to get things organized as soon as our boarders secured control of the ship and began coming back down the ladders. The archers brought the transport’s captain and his two mates down with them, as well as its bosun and two members of its crew who looked to be a bit tougher and more determined than the others.
Two of our sailors and six archers carrying swords and shields in addition to their bows took their places, along with one of our seasick landsmen who could jabber French. They’ll be the prize crew; the French sailors we left on board will work the ship—or else.
Jimmy and I spent only a few minutes looking through the French ship and ordering its prize crew to make for London because of the wind. Then we rushed back down to our galley and moved off to once again block the harbour entrance and, hopefully, find another prize.
I don’t know about Jimmy, but I was damn glad to get back to my galley. What we’d found was a fairly new and incredibly filthy ship quite capable of making London or Cornwall. I’d never been on a French ship before. I’d heard Jimmy and the sailors say they were always filthy, but I hadn’t really believed it until I saw it for myself.
Harold would have had a fit. There was no shite nest behind the stern. The men apparently just pissed and shite wherever they happened to be when they felt the urge. It smelled as bad below deck as a Moorish slaver or the Templars I’d met who never wiped their arses or washed their clothes in order to live as much as possible like Jesus who, being a God, never had to do such things.
******
All afternoon the number of French boats in the harbour slowly fell as more and more prizes were taken and passed through the harbour entrance on their way to London. As far as I could tell, not a one had escaped. My galley had already taken three more prizes, and it was getting late in the day. There were still a number of French transports remaining in the harbour. Many of them were abandoned, their panic-stricken crews having taken to their small boats and rowed ashore before our prize crews could board them.
“My God, Jimmy! Look at how many are still there. We’ll be out of prize crews and have to start burning them soon, won’t we?”
“Sergeant! Sergeant!” one of my sailors suddenly called with an anxious sound in his voice.” Harold’s galley started waving its ‘form on me’ flag, and then it came down.”
“How long did you see it waving before it stopped?”
“That’s just it sergeant. It started waving, but it didn’t just stop. It seemed to fall.”
******
Our effort to come to the aid of our prize crew and boarding party fighting the French troops on the transport’s deck started too slowly and almost ended disastrously. Some of our men were already down by the time we finally pushed off from the quay and were able to start rowing towards the desperate fighting we could see and hear.
We finally were able to push off from the quay, but we were pointed in the wrong direction and hemmed in by the densely packed shipping anchored in harbour. We didn’t have room to turn around where we were moored. Our only option was to row through the harbour in a great curve so we could come back towards the French transport where the fighting was occurring. It was made even more difficult because everywhere around us our galleys were boarding the anchored French transports, and numerous small dinghies were in the water as the French crews tried to escape from their doomed transports.
The collision with one of our own galleys was probably inevitable. Our men were rowing hard, and we were going fast as we came around a big French transport and didn’t see the galley coming from the other direction until it was too late.
We collided so hard everyone on our deck was knocked off his feet and many of our rowers came off their benches. There was serious damage. Our bow was crushed and our mast, with George and its three other archers in the lookouts’ nest, whipped forward and snapped some of the strands of the heavy rope stays holding it up.
Fortunately, none of the archers were thrown out of the nest, though some of their supply of arrows came raining down on our deck. Harold quickly gave the necessary orders. The deck crew began bailing out the water as it came in through our crushed bow, and another bale of arrows was quickly carried up to the nest as we once again rowed hard in a desperate effort to get back to our embattled prize crew.
******
We arrived too late to save most of the prize crew. George and the other archers in the nest began launching their arrows as soon as they could find targets, and those of us on the roofs of the castles soon joined them. It wasn’t hard to find targets; everyone on the French transport’s packed deck was French except for the half dozen or so of our men still standing. They were fighting in a little defensive cluster in a corner near the front of the ship. From all the bodies in front of them, it appeared they had been giving a good account of themselves despite being hopelessly outnumbered.
Things only began to change when our arrows began raining down and taking the French soldiers on the deck. One after another the Frenchmen either went down to one of our arrows or ran below to escape. When we got alongside, Harold and I raised the boarding ladders ourselves and led what was left of our sailors and archers up them whilst our archers in the lookouts’ nest and on the castle roofs kept watch. We were too late. Only four of our men were still standing, and every man of them was wounded. We also found three of our men seriously wounded among the men who were down on the deck.
It took us quite a while to get our wounded men down the boarding ladders and onto our deck. It was something we had not practiced
and we did it poorly. In the end, we put a mooring line under the arms of several of our strongest men, and they carried our wounded down the ladders as those of us above them let out the line and men below guided their feet and pushed on their arses so they wouldn’t come tumbling down. It was quite painful for some of our wounded. Several of them shrieked and screamed all the way down.
There was no way we could ever sail away with the French transport. With our prize crews already away on other prizes, we didn’t have enough sailors left to handle its sails. Moreover, there was the not insignificant problem of it having hundreds of French soldiers on board who were likely to come on deck and retake it as soon as our archers were not nearby to kill them. So we did the next best thing—we set it on fire, rowing away only after the fire was raging and our last volunteer had scurried down the one remaining boarding ladder.
Desperate French soldiers began pouring out of the hold and jumping onto the quay as we left. We didn’t shoot at them.
*****
We spent the rest of the afternoon watching our galleys take prizes in the harbour, bailing the water coming in through our staved-in bow, and trying to make repairs so we could row away to safety. We might have succeeded if we could have beached the galley, but beaching it in France is the one thing we couldn’t do. The French would have caught us and chopped our necks for sure.
In the end, Harold and I just looked at each other, and I ordered the men in the lookouts’ nest to wave the “form on me” flag at our nearest galleys. The sun was finishing its daily pass overhead, and the harbour was almost empty of cogs and ships except for our galleys and the Frenchies being burned because we had no prize crews left to sail them away. It was time for Harold and I to transfer our men to another galley before the damn thing sunk out from under us.
One of our galleys came alongside in response to our signal and Harold’s vigorous arm waving and bumped us a bit hard as it did. As it did, I heard the loud snap as the stay broke and watched in horror as our mast slowly tipped over and fell into the sea with my son and all my dreams.
Epilogue
Our prizes arrived in London for days. It was a great victory and the king and William Marshal came to see them for themselves and thank us. The French fleet had been well and truly destroyed, and there will certainly be no invasion this year even though the barons are still gathering and may well fight without them. Thomas was there too. He’d ridden to London as soon as we sailed, and I was more than a little emotional when I saw him.
“The best thing you ever did was teach George and the boys how to swim.”
-End of the Book-
I sincerely hope you enjoyed reading Castling the King as much as I enjoyed writing it. If so, I would respectfully request a brief review on Amazon and elsewhere with five stars so as to encourage others to read it as well. I can be reached at [email protected] and would enjoy, and greatly value, hearing your opinion of the book. /S/ Martin Archer
Please read more. The rest of the action-packed books in this great saga of medieval England are all available on Kindle as eBooks and some are available in print. You can find them by going to your Amazon website and searching for Martin Archer fiction. A collection of the first six books is available on Kindle as The Archers’ Story. Similarly, a collection of the next four novels in the saga is available as The Archers’ Story: Part II, and there are additional books in the saga.
Amazon eBooks in the exciting and action-packed The Company of Archers saga:
The Archers
The Archers’ Castle
The Archer’s War
The Archer’s Return
Rescuing the Hostages
Kings and Crusaders
The Archers’ Gold
The Missing Treasure
Castling the King
The Sea Warriors
The Captain’s Men
Gulling the Kings
The Archers’ Magna Carta
Amazon eBooks in Martin Archer’s exciting and action-packed Soldier and Marines saga:
Soldier and Marines
Peace and Conflict
War Breaks Out
War in the East
Israel’s Next War
Collections
The Archer’s Story - books I, II, III, IV, V, VI
The Archer’s Story II - books VII, VIII, IX, X,
Soldiers and Marines Trilogy
Other eBooks you might enjoy:
Cage’s Crew by Martin Archer writing as Raymond Casey
America’s Next War by Michael Cameron with Martin Archer
Castling The King Page 15