Gulling The Kings

by Martin Archer

  I was pulled off the cart by numerous grasping hands. The only thing that saved me was my archer’s tunic, because they didn’t know what it meant, and the shouting, arm waving, and pointing of the horse cart driver who saw his coins for carrying me to our post on the Via Margutta disappearing before his very eyes.

  The cart driver must have desperately needed my custom for he most courageously, all the time shouting and gesturing at the men who were holding me, jumped down from his cart, grabbed my arm and tunic to pull me out of their grasp, and pushed me back up into his cart. Then he hit the arse of his horse with a great shake of his reins and off we went with our driver constantly shouting and gesturing his outrage as the crowd scattered in front of us.

  What had promptly disappeared before my very eyes were all my possessions including my longbow, quiver of arrows, and the rough sack containing my hooded rain skin and my extra pair of sandals. I was also somehow relieved of my pouch of coins and my knife. They missed my wrist knives but this certainly wasn’t the time to have used them; I might have gotten one or two of the mob but the rest of them would have torn me to pieces.

  We had gone scarcely six hundred paces and around a corner when the situation was repeated and we were once again surrounded by an angry and threatening mob. This lot, however, was pro-church and there were several priests in it. My Latin calls to the priests for help were much more warmly received than they had been a few minutes earlier, and we were soon on our way with my driver constantly looking back at me and talking so loudly and incomprehensibly with such wild waving about of his hands and arms that I was afraid his horse might bolt.

  ******

  My reception when I arrived at the closed gate to our shipping post was quite warm and certainly surprised the archers stationed there. An eye appeared at the peep hole in the gate to our shipping post’s little compound, I heard someone say “holy shite” when they saw the stripes and little black circles on my tunic, and the gate swung open.

  Little wonder in the guard’s surprise; most of our archers and sailors serve on galleys or at shipping posts where the highest ranking sergeant has only four stripes. I was a senior sergeant with five stripes and each of the numerous little black circles over my right breast signified that I had been at one of the company's battles or skirmishes. I had more black dots than most of our men because mine went all the way back to when the company was fighting the Saracens for Lord Edmund and my father and the surviving archers carried me over the wall when they escaped after Edmund fell.

  The post archers’ initial impression of me visibly declined when I told the hurriedly summoned post sergeant, a four-stripe archer from Surrey by the name of Howard, that I’d been waylaid by a mob at the city gate and needed some coins to pay the cart driver for his services and some extra for saving me. I could hardly wait for their reaction when they find out I lost my bow and other weapons in the process.

  “Has Lieutenant Barrow arrived yet?” was my question to Howard as I gave the now-smiling cart driver a handful of hastily assembled coins and watched him leave.

  ******

  A ragged young boy ran into the bailey of our post to report he had seen an English galley coming in to moor next to the city wall where our galleys usually tie up. He was all out of breath and expecting a small coin. Howard, as he always does as soon as there is report of an arrival of a galley or cog that might be one of ours, armed himself and took a couple of archers through the nearby gate in the city wall to see whose galley it might be. I went with them.

  It was the third galley of ours that had come in since I arrived. So far I had been disappointed since Peter had been on neither of the first two, but I was quite interested to see the process and I learned a few things.

  Each of the first two galleys had brought in passengers, parchment coin orders, and cargos. Then they had loaded eastbound cargos, parchments, and new passengers and departed for Cyprus via Messina and Crete—after giving their crewmen a couple of days to enjoy the women and drink that abounded in the taverns and hovels built up against the city wall all along the riverbank.

  Whilst I was still cooling my feet waiting for Peter and the coins to arrive, one of our cogs came in from Cyprus filled with Italian, British and French pilgrims returning from the Holy Land. Why someone would want to spend the time and endure the trials and dangers of being a pilgrim escaped me and still does, but they did and we were richer for it.

  Howard was taking no chances; we reached the cog safely by going down the nearby river in a large rowing boat instead of walking or riding through the unsafe and, apparently, increasingly dangerous city. We found our cog anchored further down the river in the same general area where the emperor’s ship and its guard galleys had anchored. I looked for them, but they had already sailed.

  I listened and learnt as Howard hailed our cog and spoke with its sergeant captain to get an idea of what it was carrying, to ask about his voyage, and warn him and his passengers about the troubles and unrest in the city. Then we took the cog’s white-haired and red-faced sergeant captain on board our little boat and rowed for the wooden warehouses lining the quay that ran along nearby shore—to arrange for barges and dinghies to carry the cargo and passengers ashore and for fresh supplies of food and water.

  The sergeant captain of the cog’s name was Guy Pilot. Guy and I knew of each other, of course, but it was the first time we’d ever really had an opportunity to talk. He had seemed taken aback and a bit worried when he first saw me, but that quickly passed and we were soon gobbling away as if we had known each other forever. Guy had had an uneventful trip except for some meaningless fights between pilgrims from different countries. They were, he said, over the usual minor matters such as who should be the first to get the day’s new bread and use the shite nest.

  Twice pirates had chased after him, but they had quickly backed off and rowed away when they got closer and his archers had suddenly shown themselves and rained their arrows down upon them.

  “They thought we were one of our pirate takers and couldn’t wait to get away,” Guy said with a smile.

  The merchants in the warehouses serving that stretch of the Tiber had seen the cog come in and knew it for one of ours. Some of them had already rowed out to speak with Guy in hopes of providing whatever supplies, repairs, and lighterage services he might require. They and many other merchants and agents gathered around us as we stepped ashore.

  Guy had come a long ways and water was just about the only thing he did not need; he would replenish his water skins and barrels from the river even though it was more than a little foul as a result of the city being upriver. Also greeting us as we came ashore were the public women and the tavern touts who were hopeful of custom from our passengers and crew.

  There were also a number of sailors seeking berths and a couple of men who wanted to sign on as archers. They were, of course, wasting their time for we had long ago begun only letting men who could speak English make their marks on our company contract.

  I found the whole process quite interesting and the merchants most obliging and respectful. The company had obviously provided some of them with custom for years and they knew what the five stripes on my tunic meant. To my amazement, some of them even knew how to speak English and promptly came to chat me up—and inquire most delicate-like as to who I might be and why I was in Rome.

  ******

  I was starting to get anxious by the time Peter finally arrived eleven days later. His galley moored on the Tiber outside the city’s walls with the year’s refugee coins and nine chests of relics’ coins for the Pope and Cardinal Bertoli—six for the Pope and three for Bertoli, their shares of the coins Frederick paid for the relics he’d brought to the Holy Father to buy the Pope’s recognition of his election to the emperorship by some of his fellow princes.

  We arrived very quickly because our post was just inside the city wall and nearby to where our galleys moored when they called in at Rome. Even so, Peter was already sitting with two appren
tice sergeants in the shade of the city wall next to the river enjoying a bowl of wine by the time Howard and I reached the river and saw his galley where it was moored along the river bank.

  Peter’s galley certainly couldn’t be missed for all the activity it was causing—there was the usual mob of merchants and pedlars clustered along the riverbank in front of the new arrival, and I could see a number of street women and their protectors walking towards it from both directions.

  “Hoy George, you beat me here I see,” he said as he stood up and we embraced and pounded on each other’s back. “Is all well with you?”

  ****** George

  Howard listened attentively and added a few details about the city as I told Peter all about my voyage and playing chess every day with Fredrick, and my unexpected brush with death at the city gate when I arrived. Peter, in turn, told me how he and my father had sailed to Lisbon and Ibiza together and then separated in Ibiza and gone their own ways—Peter to come here to Rome with the coins for the Pope and Cardinal Bertoli; my father to go on to Cyprus to spend the winter watching over the company’s operations in the Holy Land.

  To my surprise, my father had sent his apprentice sergeant, Freddy, with Peter and his apprentice sergeant, Oliver. Freddy is to be my apprentice sergeant for a while so that he has a chance to see Rome and how the company deals with the Pope. I was very pleased; Freddy was my first apprentice sergeant.

  “Howard, do you know if John has all the supplies he needs to take us back to Lisbon and England?” I asked.

  Our post sergeant immediately understood that I wanted to talk privately with Peter. He announced that he thought John had all the supplies he needed, but that he would go check to make sure.

  “What happened to the bishop what killed Anne?” I asked as we sipped our wine and watched Howard walk to the galley. Freddy and Oliver listened silently and attentively as we talked.

  “Ah,” Peter exclaimed. “You know about that greedy bastard, do you? So he took a big sip of wine from his bowl and began telling me all about it. It took some time. We both smiled when he ended his story with “and so the murderous bastard went swimming.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Danger in Rome.

  Peter and I had started on our third bowl of wine and were talking about our children and wives, when who but Cardinal Bertoli should clatter up in a horse cart surrounded by at least a dozen mounted guards wearing some sort of church livery. I recognized him immediately because I’d met him on previous visits to pay the Pope his share of the coins collected from our passengers for his prayers.

  The men on John’s nearby galley, however, didn’t know him from Adam; they sounded the “repel boarders” alarm in response to the sudden arrival of so many armed men—to the cardinal’s great and strongly stated approval. He must have had spies who ran to fetch him when Peter’ galley arrived.

  “Excellent. Oh, that’s excellent,” the cardinal said as he beamed at the archers and pike carrying sailors swarming into their positions on the deck of Peter’s nearby galley while somehow gesturing at the very same time for one of the tavern’s servants to bring him a bowl of wine.

  “I hurried here to warn you to stay alert because of the danger and brought some of the Pope’s guards to help protect you and your galley’s cargo. I should have known they wouldn’t be necessary.”

  “What danger?” Peter and I asked at the same time. It was almost as if we were speaking with one voice. Freddy and Oliver were wide-eyed with excitement.

  ******

  We talked with the cardinal for almost an hour and were learnt many things about the city and the church. Many of them were as intertwined as the guts of an ox before they were unravelled so they could be stuffed with oats and cooked. One thing we were told was that Frederick had successfully delivered the relics and had gotten with the Pope’s blessing for his emperorship. He had sailed immediately for Sicily where he was already the king and spends most of his time.

  It was an interesting and confusing story and we tried to understand it as Cardinal Bertoli told it with much arm waving.

  “Years ago some German princes elected Otto as the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and he had provided sufficient donations to the Church such that he had been recognized and crowned as such by the Pope. But Otto had soon thereafter betrayed the Pope by claiming to also be the hereditary King of Italy—even though he promised the Pope he would not do so if the Pope recognized him as the rightful emperor.

  “The Holy Father, as you might imagine, was furious at being betrayed. He promptly excommunicated Otto and withdrew his recognition of Otto as the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. He also withdrew his recognition from all of Otto’s other titles for good measure. Some other German princes then promptly elected Frederick as the emperor and petitioned the Pope to recognize him as Otto’s replacement.

  “Of course the Holy Father excommunicated Otto and stripped him of his titles; he was unhappy about Otto claiming to also be the king of Italy,” Bertoli explained to us we ate olives and drank wine. This is very good wine; I wonder if I can buy an amphorae or two to take home with me.

  “What the Holy Father wanted at the time, and what he still wants to this very day, is what every Pope will always want—for Italy to have many small states so the Holy Father can control each of them and none of them will be large enough to threaten him. Uniting the Italian states under someone else, and particularly a German barbarian pretending to be a Christian, is totally unacceptable to the church and always will be.”

  In any event, Cardinal Bertoli told us, the emperorship of the Holy Roman Empire has finally been settled.

  “Thanks to the relics you found and sold to Frederick. As I’m sure you know, just a few days ago the Pope accepted the relics as a gift and crowned Frederick as the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

  “The title doesn’t really mean much since no additional lands or cities come with it,” Bertoli added with a dismissive shrug and wave of his wine bowl, “but the Germans are barbarians and their princes and Frederick think the title of emperor is important. Not to the Church, it isn’t. It is Italy and the relics that are important to the church.”

  Bertoli told us much more. What we learned was that Rome was more complex and divided than we had previously understood. Not only were there riots and fighting between the supporters of the Church and the supporters of the city’s leading families, there was also fighting between factions within the Church and between the leading families.

  According to Bertoli, the Pope intended to end the fighting and have the church take over the city by using the coins we were bringing him to hire Swiss and Genoese mercenaries.

  “As a result, you and your coins are in great danger because both the high-ranking cardinals who oppose the Holy Father and want him dead so they can replace him, as well as the heads of the city’s leading families, know you are bringing him the coins he needs to do this—and they don’t want the Holy Father to get them so he can use them to hire mercenaries.

  In essence, according to the cardinal, “the relics Emperor Frederick brought to Rome are acceptable to everyone because all of Rome will profit from them in one way or another; the mercenaries that the Pope intends to hire with the coins you are bringing him, on the other hand, are not fine with anyone except the Pope and those who support him.”

  “But how did everyone find out about the coins?” I asked. “It was supposed to be a secret. We certainly did not tell anyone about the Pope getting a share of the coins from selling the relics, not a single person; nor about you getting some of them, for that matter,” I hastily added.

  “What should we do?” Peter asked anxiously. He was getting alarmed and so was I.

  “I don’t know about you two,” the bishop told us with a wry grin as he popped another olive into his mouth, “but I intend to take my share of the coins and retire to my village for a period of prayer and reflection—until the crisis is over and there is a winner, or perhaps there is a new Pop
e or no Pope at all. Then I’ll decide what to do next.”

  “But we heard you were close to the Pope?” I said with a question in my voice.

  “Once I was very close to him because he was my student, but no longer. I have been very much pushed aside and the cardinals and bishops from the great families now have his ear.”

  Less than an hour later, we watched as the now immensely wealthy Cardinal Bertoli clattered away on his horse cart with his three chests of coins sitting next to him and his mounted guards surrounding him. He didn’t say where he was taking them, and we didn’t ask.

  Peter and I never did tell the cardinal or anyone else about the fate of the Lisbon bishop; what we did do was immediately tell John that we might be attacked at any moment either on the river or, more likely we decided, when we tried to take the coins into the city to deliver them to the Pope.

  Right after we warned John was when Peter and I recalled, and became quite concerned about, the implications of Cardinal Bertoli coming so quickly for his coins and the significance of his advice as to how we might get the Pope’s coins safely to the Holy Father in the face of the danger—he didn’t offer any.

  ****** George

  Peter was the highest ranking archer on the field, so the ultimate decision as to what we should do was his to make. We talked for hours and he finally decided we should march to the Pope’s residence in the morning with only the prayer coins and a heavy guard of archers from John’s crew. When we got there, we’d ask the head of the Pope’s protectors, the priest who supervises the searching of the Holy Father’s visitors for weapons, for help and advice. He was the man most likely to be someone the Pope trusted to have his best interests in his heart.