Gulling The Kings

by Martin Archer

  In the end, we had many questions and no answers.

  “But we’ll get them from the German priests,” I promised grimly as my lieutenants growled their agreement. George and Thomas nodded solemnly. We decided to keep the relics at Restormel because it was so strong and well supplied.

  Chapter Four

  The priests decide to be helpful.

  I sent George to fetch the German priests immediately after I met with my lieutenants. We now had even more questions for them to answer—as they surely will. George brought the three Germans into Restormel from our training camp late on a grey and rainy afternoon. The priests, George had told us earlier, had jumped at the opportunity “to visit our castle and inspect the relics.”

  We didn’t have horses available for the priests to ride, at least that’s what George told them. And the German-gobbling wain wright had ridden in the cart with them so the priests couldn’t speak German when they wanted to talk privately among themselves. As a result, George was able to travel with them to our training camp in a horse cart and pretend to be napping while he listened as they spoke among themselves in Latin.

  The priests had seen our men marching together on the same foot and practicing archery while they were camped at the mouth of the Fowey. Similarly, riding in the cart along the cart path that often ran next to the river enabled them to see some of our galleys as they floated down the Fowey towards the mouth of the river.

  They had also spent time in our virtually empty training camp and had walked up to the castle and through both the outer and middle baileys before they reached the inner bailey and its imposing keep. By the time the German priests had arrived at Restormel, they had learned quite a bit about us and had talked a lot about what they’d seen.

  ******

  I came out of the keep where I’d been having a piece of cheese and a bowl of ale with my lieutenants and greeted the German priests when George walked them into the inner bailey. Their leader was a man George named to me as Dieter Conradus, the Bishop of Doppelfeld which is somewhere in Germandy.

  Bishop Conradus promptly thrust out his ring to be kissed when George introduced me in English as the captain of the Company of Archers. I promptly shook the bishop’s outstretched hand and motioned for him and his priestly assistants and George to follow me as I walked backed into the great hall. The wain wright came with us to listen and translate if the priests gobbled in German; Henry’s apprentice was with him and would do the translating between English and Latin.

  The Germans were wary as they ducked their heads and entered the keep’s great hall. My shaking of the bishop’s hand instead of kissing his ring had surprised them. It was a mistake, of course, not kissing his ring, because it alerted them to my hostility; but I was seriously pissed at what my lieutenants and I thought was happening and didn’t even think about it until it was too late.

  Henry and Peter were sitting at the long table waiting for us and so was my whey-faced older brother who had gotten up from his sick bed to attend after hearing about Sir Percy’s report and the contents of the crates.

  My brother was wearing his archer’s tunic over a chain mail shirt and carrying both his sheathed dagger and the two wrist knives he, like George and I, always wears under his archer’s tunic; his robe and mitre as the Bishop of Cornwall were nowhere in sight. He looked every bit the grizzled old soldier that he’d become after he left the monastery to rescue me and take me crusading with Richard’s archers.

  Thomas and my other lieutenants and I had come up with many questions about the size of the German army and its intentions, and we were looking forward to having the priests answer them. But first I wanted to know if George had learned anything more while he and the Germans walked up to the castle from our training camp. So I ordered bread and ale “for our important guests,” waved my hand at my lieutenants and told them to introduce themselves using Henry’s apprentice sergeant as their interpreter, and motioned for George to follow me back outside so we could talk privately in the bailey.

  ******

  George had learned nothing new whilst he walked with the priests from our camp to the castle. The Germans, he said, had avoided speaking in German because of the wain wright and talked incessantly to each other in Latin about the castle’s size and strength, and particularly about the walls that surround it and about how many days of siege supplies might be in it—strange things for priests to be discussing when they had come so far to buy important religious relics.

  So be it. Their gobbling in church-talk when they thought no one could understand them had sealed their fate. George and I opened the wooden door to the keep, ducked our heads to clear its low entrance, and went back into the great hall to ask the Germans a few questions.

  “Welcome again, Holy Fathers.” I had Henry’s apprentice sergeant say in Latin to the priests after George and I seated ourselves. “We’re more happy to have you here than you can possibly imagine. I can see that you’ve already introduced yourselves to my lieutenants. That’s good because we’ve many questions for you.”

  “First, what can you tell us about your King Otto?” I asked the bishop.

  “Oh,” he said, “our king is a great man who was elected by his fellow princes to be the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Captain, and we’d be happy to tell you all about him; but we’re much more interested in knowing about the relics our king wants to acquire and give as a gift to His Holiness, the Pope.

  “Do you really have them, the relics from Constantinople? If so, we’d like to inspect them.” He said it rather arrogantly as might be expected of a great churchman describing his king to poor and meaningless commoners.

  “All in good time, my dear Bishop. All in good time. But first you must answer a few questions for me. And my first question is, what are the names of the English nobles Baron Von Hildesheim expects to meet and how was the meeting arranged?”

  My question surprised and shocked the priests. I could see it in their eyes. They forgot about the wain wright for a moment and gobbled away in German, obviously to warn each other to be careful about answering my questions. They even assured each other, at least I think they did, that we were Christians and wouldn’t harm them because they were priests. I made a mistake. I should have brought the wain wright here to listen so they’d only speak Latin.

  “Why Captain,” Bishop Conradus finally replied in Latin through Henry's young apprentice sergeant who was doing the interpreting, “whatever are you talking about? We’re priests. We don’t concern ourselves about such earthly matters. Our only interest is in the relics.”

  The German priests were astounded and knew the game was up when I asked Henry’s apprentice sergeant to leave and for George to repeat the question in Latin. When the bishop didn’t immediately answer, I leaned forward and repeated it in Latin with a very hard threat of menace in my voice. The Germans desperately looked at each other for guidance and briefly retreated into silence.

  “Who are you?” the bishop finally asked. There was a quaver in his voice.

  ******

  We talked around in circles for a bit in Latin with the Germans telling us nothing of significance in response to our ever more pointed questions.

  “We don’t have any more time to waste,” I finally told the priests. “So let me tell you what is now going to happen. We have captured some of the Germans who landed at St. Ives a few days ago. I was lying, of course, but they didn’t know that. They have told us many things about you and the Teutonic Knights leading your king’s army.

  “Now we are going to separate you three and ask you questions in the Saracen way—every time you tell us a lie or tell us nothing when we ask about something we know you know about, we will cut off a piece of you and throw it on the floor for the castle cats to eat.”

  The youngest looking of the three portly Germans drew himself up and his response to my threat was quite arrogant. He was absolutely certain in his belief that as a priest he could not be touched. He waved his hand disdainfu
lly at me in his certainty.

  “You can’t do that. We are priests of the true Church and cannot be touched. It’s God’s will.”

  “It’s God’s will, is it? I’ve heard that said by many a man and it certainly rings a church bell for me, yes it does,” I said as leaned forward and grabbed a finger on the priest’s gesturing hand with my left hand—and pulled his hand across the table towards me as the wrist knife hidden in the sleeve of my tunic slid out into my right hand.

  He didn’t even have time to scream before I sliced his finger off at its middle joint and threw it over my shoulder on to the floor for the castle cats to find. He stared at the blood spurting out of the little stump of his finger for a second. Then he began to scream and sob. I’m told it’s quite as painful as getting stabbed through the leg or cut in face. I hope so because I know that hurts; we need answers and we don’t have time to waste.

  “Did you really think I was gulling you?” I asked him with note of disbelief in my voice. My lieutenants had looks of approval on their faces. They understood that time was of the essence.

  ******

  The German priests began talking like chirping birds as soon as I cut off the first priest’s finger off and we separated them. They had much to tell us and we learned something Thomas thinks is significant: King John and Otto, the King of Swabia were lifelong friends and in constant contact. Otto’s mother was some sort of English princess who the old king, John’s father, had married off to Swabia—and then for some reason she had returned to England. Otto had been born at Windsor and grown up in England.

  Otto had offered to join forces with John when John told him he would be sending some of his dissident barons to take the relics without paying for them. According to Bishop Conradus, the plan of the two kings was for their combined force of barons and knights to seize the relics and share the benefits of turning them over to the Pope—Otto would get his election to the Holy Roman emperorship recognized once again by the Pope and John would get his claim to Normandy recognized and also get rid of his dissident barons.

  “Yes, that’s right,” the sobbing bishop gasped as he tried to staunch the blood coming from the stump of the finger he’d lost when he pretended not to know something the other two Germans had just told us he knew—that our own dear King John, the conniving swine, had agreed to allow the Germans to land an army in Cornwall because Otto agreed to have his Germans turn on the dissident English barons and destroy them after the relics were safely in hand for them to share.

  Both Otto and John had thought that the English barons and their knights would either quickly drive us into Restormel where they could besiege us until we surrendered the relics, or cause us to flee with the relics in our galleys. Their big fear was that we would sail away with the relics instead of retreating into Restormel castle to protect them.

  The plan of the two kings was to prevent us from send away the relics. Accordingly, the German knights would first lead their army across Cornwall to the mouth of the Fowey to cut us off and prevent us from escaping with the relics; then they would ride north to meet the English barons and join them in besieging Restormel.

  It all made good sense. Sending his dissident barons for the relics was a win-win for John. He’d either get the relics from the barons and use them to get the Pope's blessing on his claim to the Normandy lands—or, and more likely, the barons would be weakened due to their losses fighting us during the days leading up to the siege and the Germans would finish them off. Either way, the two kings would end up with the relics and the Papal recognitions that they wanted. Getting rid of the barons was an extra bird for John’s pie.

  Otto and John may have grown up together and been friends, but Otto, according to the now weeping and sobbing bishop, knew John quite well and didn’t trust him to honour their agreement to share the relics. Moreover, Otto had heard rumours about Restormel’s strength and he didn’t want to wait for the end of what might be a very long siege to get the relics and the benefits of being able to donate them to the Pope.

  As a result, Otto was prepared to immediately buy the relics without besieging Restormel castle or destroying the barons’ army or sharing the benefits with John. His king was in a hurry, Bishop Conradus explained, because another prince was also asking the Pope to recognize him as the emperor of the Germans. Accordingly, Otto had told his chancellor to buy the relics if necessary and had given him enough coins to pay our full price even though it was truly a king’s ransom.

  The problem, according to the gasping and sobbing Conradus, was Otto’s chancellor, the bishop he’d sent to buy them if he couldn’t immediately take them; he wanted us beaten down and under siege before he negotiated to buy the relics—so he could buy them for fewer coins and keep the rest for himself.

  The possibility that the barons would be defeated by the archers and there would be no siege had never entered the minds of the kings and their barons and bishops. It was, after all, well-known that commoners without armour cannot defeat knights in armour.

  Chapter Five

  Is it war or is it peace?

  Cornwall’s skies were clear and it was sunny as Raymond and his horse archers kneeled in the bailey to be blessed and prayed at in church-talk by Thomas. Immediately afterwards they would ride towards St. Ives and the Germans who were thought to be there. Two of Thomas’s students had been quickly ordained and were going with them to fetch and scribe for Raymond and his senior sergeants. To everyone’s surprise, Raymond had asked for two of Thomas’s students to be rated as apprentice sergeants and assigned to him and his deputy.

  “I’ve had good luck with Thomas’s lads, haven’t I?” had been his genial explanation last night when my lieutenants and senior sergeants met for a few bowls of ale.

  Thomas had been so pleased when he heard the news about Raymond asking for two of his boys that he promptly got up from his sick bed to mumble the prayers needed to ordain them as priests and make sure they had proper tunic gowns and weapons. At the moment, he was getting the horse archers properly prayed at in church-talk so I could send them on their way to find the Germans.

  My brother was still a bit unsteady on his feet because of his pox. He had to be helped by a couple of his students as he walked along the horse archers’ kneeling ranks to put his prayers on them. He gobbled and mumbled in church-talk as he walked, and he waved his cross and held it out towards each of Raymond’s men as he came to him. Another of his students walked behind Thomas and gave each man a clove of garlic to carry in his pouch to help ward off the pox.

  As soon as Thomas finished his good works, I nodded at Raymond and gave the order sending him and his men off to find out what the Germans were doing. If it was to be a war with men bearing coins, as we all hoped and thought it would be after listening to the German priests, Raymond’s horse archers were to do whatever they could do to harass and contain the Germans until our main force of archers could get behind them and cut them off from escaping with their coins. Similarly, some of our galleys would row around to St. Ives to make sure the coins didn’t escape by sea.

  More specifically, it would once again be the horse archers’ task to delay and weaken the enemy whilst we get the foot archers ready and in place to meet and defeat them. And, once again, the horse archers would go out for an extended stay in the field with only their company supply horses carrying their tents and extra arrows and food. The personal supply horses of each horse archer and the pikes and shields they would need to fight alongside our foot archers as heavy infantry would be left behind.

  If it sounded familiar, it is because it was exactly what we did to prepare to meet the barons’ army. What my lieutenants and I hope, of course, is that, despite what the bishop and his priests told us, the Germans are only coming to buy the relics, and not as an invading army intending to try to take them by force. If so, Raymond and his men will let them pass and we'll accept their coins in exchange for some of the relics. We’ll know soon enough.

  Well, at least Raymond
and his men will know soon enough whether the report from Trematon was correct and the Germans are behaving as invaders to be fought, or whether the report was wrong and they are merely coming to buy the relics. The rest of us won’t know until Raymond sends couriers to tell us how the Germans are behaving.

  My remaining lieutenants and I stood together in Restormel’s outer bailey while the horse archers were being prayed at by my brother and given the garlic cloves that would help keep them from being poxed. When Thomas finished, we watched as Raymond and his men mounted their horses and clattered out over the outer drawbridge. There were not nearly so many as had ridden out of Okehampton to confront the barons. Not a word was spoken, but then and there my lieutenants and I knew we needed to greatly expand the ranks of Raymond’s riders and the size of our horse herd to provide the additional mounts.

  Strangely enough, almost all of our unwounded and lightly wounded horse archers were able to ride off to observe the Germans and fight them if they needed fighting; only two of them had come down with the pox that had fallen upon me and so many of our foot archers.

  Henry observed that he hadn’t seen many poxed sailors either and suggested that “maybe it is too much walking that causes the coughing and shivers and shitting that can weaken a man so much that he dies.” All the more reason, we told each other as we walked back to the great hall to look at our parchment maps, “to use only horse archers here in England and keep all the rest of our archers in the east and on our galleys.”

  Which archers should be kept in England was something for us to decide later—today the Germans were coming and we needed to get our foot archers ready and in position if it turns out that we needed to fight them.

  But then I had another idea and gathered my lieutenants around me to hear it. They liked my idea as I thought they would. I should have thought of it earlier before the horse archers left without their personal supply horses.