THE ARCHERS SERIES
BOOK ONE: THE ARCHER
A medieval novel
The trip from Cornwall to the new monastery in the village on the other side of the Thames takes almost ten days. That is much longer than I expected and it occurs because the ox carts move so slowly with their loads of parchment records and letters. But it is useful, all thanks to God, because it gives me time to organize my thoughts as to how to employ the monks as scribes. By the time the oxen ford the Thames and reach the monastery I know how I am going to proceed.
My assignment is to piece together the parchments into one great history of the kingdom similar to that Livy wrote for Rome so many years ago with its emphasis on what actually happened and what everyone was thinking at the time.
One of the problems I’ll have to overcome, of course, is that the exciting tales the parchments tell contain so many surprises and often have missing parts where the mice have eaten them.
Another problem is that the parchments are written in various languages. Some are written in Latin and Greek while others are in various versions of what is now called Middle English and Old French – which means I’ll have to piece them together and rewrite them into today’s English.
What follows initially is mostly from the tales of William, the captain of the English archers as they were faithfully recorded by his friend and scribe, Yoram of Damascus. The Church says the changes and excitement the archers caused were God’s Will. I’m not so sure. Sharp blades and ambitious men seem a much more likely explanation.
Chapter One
“THE ARCHER AND THE BISHOP”
The weary men straggle out of the desert and into the port late in the morning. There are eighteen of them, all English archers, and most of them have walked every night for the past three days. The only exceptions are two wounded men on a makeshift litter being dragged behind a dusty camel and a brown robed priest riding on an exhausted horse and holding a sleeping young boy. The boy is wrapped in a dirty priest’s robe to protect him against the chill of the spring day.
The dirty and begrimed young man walking at the front of the column stops and waits until the priest reaches him.
“How’s George?”
He gestures with a tired wave of his arm towards the sleeping child as he asks.
“Your son is fine,” answers the priest as the horse stops.
The boy wakes up and twists around to get more comfortable in the Priest’s arms when the horse stops. Then he sits up straight and looks around.
“Put me down Uncle Thomas, I want to walk with my father and the men for a while. My arse is sore and I’m thirsty.”
And with that he wriggles out of the priest’s arms and slides off the horse. He is barefoot and wearing a rough brown shirt that hangs to his knees. Edward the tailor made it for him before he’d been killed by the unlucky stone that had been catapulted over the wall by the Saracens and hit him in the head.
“Look Papa, what is that?”
The boy asks the question as he massages his rear with one hand and with the other points to the flat gray expanse of the Mediterranean that spreads out beyond stone houses and the ships in the harbor.
“That’s the big water I told you about that is so salty you can’t drink it. And those things out there on top of the water are the big ships. They’re called cogs and they carry people across the big water just like the boats on a river can carry people across the river. The only difference is that those out there are much bigger.”
The boy is not convinced as he stands there studying the scene in front of us.
“They look little.”
“They’ll look bigger when we get closer.”
“Really?”
The boy looks back intensely at the scene in front of him. Then he shakes his head and looks back at his father questioningly.
“Your Uncle Thomas is right, George. All of us can fit on one of those cogs with room to spare. The big ones can carry as many as a hundred men or even more. That’s how your uncle and I and all the archers got here from England. Almost a hundred of us came on each boat. And that’s how we’ll go back – all together.”
Except we’ve got to get our pay so we can hire a boat and there will only be eighteen of us instead of the one hundred and ninety two that came out from England with King Richard seven years ago - and that’s if we can get the arrow out of Brian’s leg without it rotting and Athol the ox drover stops getting dizzy and falling down when he tries to walk.
What I don’t tell George is that we’ll have no way to hire a boat unless the bishop pays us the bezant coins Lord Edmund contracted to pay us to defend his fief and villages two years ago. Well we’ll know soon enough.
The walk down the hill to the port takes about an hour. We follow the dirt trail down the hill to the low walled caravanserai where the traders and their horses and livestock stay outside the city walls.
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The city is so packed with Christians and Jews fleeing the oncoming Saracens that the city gates are closed and the master of the caravanserai adjacent to the city is only allowing his traditional merchant customers and rich refugees to enter. Everyone else is camping and starving outside - thousands of them. Even at a distance we can smell the people and their livestock and see the clouds of dust they are raising.
Shouts and a great wail goes up as we come into sight of the city walls and the people around them see us walking in. They know what our arrival means. It means Lord Edmund’s castle and lands have been lost and the Saracens will be coming. At best, these people will have to convert to Islam; and most likely they’ll all be put to the sword or taken as slaves. And so will we if the Bishop of Damascus doesn’t pay us so we can get away or ransom ourselves to freedom.
The caravanserai master himself, a great bearded man, comes to the gate with several armed retainers as we approach and the shouting and weeping crowd grows around us with their shouted questions and reaching arms. He looks over my little column and then at me with a baleful eye as I stop in front of him with George holding my hand.
“So it is true? Lord Edmund and the castle have finally fallen?”
“Aye, they have; the road to Damascus is open.”
The caravanserai master crosses himself.
“Well, everyone needs a caravanserai so I guess I’ll be a Moslem again until the Christians or Jews come back. But these people,” he says as he shakes his head in resignation and gestures both towards the people gathering around us and the distant crowds, “I just don’t know.”
Well I know. Anyone who stays here will either be slaughtered or become a slave. That’s why we left four days ago when Lord Edmund fell.
“Do you know the whereabouts of the Bishop of Damascus? We heard he’s fled here. We have a message for him.”
“He’s in the city at the Church of Saint Mary.” Then he gestures at the crowd again and shakes his head disgust and resignation, and adds “but you better hurry if you want to see him. I’ve heard he’s about to run off and leave.”
Then the caravanserai master adds ominously, “We’re full here. I have no room left inside. If you bring me a copper coin each day you can send a peasant in to draw water from my well - but you and men and their weapons must stay outside.”
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I decide to leave George
with Henry to guard him while my brother Thomas and I go to see the Bishop and get our money – four bezant gold coins for each man. Quite a bit for two years of service but we’d paid dearly for it by so many of us losing our lives.
At least, we try to see the Bishop. The guards at the city gate will not let us in even though Thomas is a priest. One of the guards looks a little bit smarter and greedier than the other two. Thomas motions him aside and blesses him. I watch as they huddle together for a moment talking in low voices.
Then Thomas waves me over.
“William, this good man can’t leave his post to get permission from his lord to tell the Bishop we are here. And that’s a pity for we only need to see His Eminence for a few minutes to deliver a message. It’s a problem we need to solve because it wouldn’t be a very Christian thing to make someone as important as the good Bishop upset with the guards. He’s sure to be unhappy if he has to walk all this way just to have a word with us.”
“Ah. I understand. He wants a bribe to let us in.”
“Let us in and you and the others can come with us when we sail away from here.”
“Forget it English. I’ve got a wife and family here. I’m not going anywhere.”
Time to take another tack. So I reach into my almost empty purse and pull out two copper coins – enough for a night of drinking if the wine is bad enough. I press them into his grimy hand.
“We only need a few minutes to deliver a message. We’ll be out and gone before anyone knows.”
The guard looks at the coins and then again at us, sizing us up – and doesn’t like what he sees. We look poor and bedraggled. Which, of course, is what we are.
“One more copper. There are three of us here and no one is supposed to enter. But we’ll take a chance since it’s for the Bishop and our lord is not here.”
I agree with a sigh and dig out another copper.
“We won’t be long and the Bishop will appreciate it.” No he won’t.
Thomas waves the wooden cross he wears around his neck to bless the guard as he is putting our coppers in his purse, and then waves it at the other two for good measure.
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We sometimes have to shoulder our way through the crowded streets and push people away as we walk to the Church. Beggars and desperate women and children begin pulling on our clothes and crying out to us constantly. In the distance black smoke is rising, probably from looters torching a house.
The doors to the front of the church are barred. Through the cracks in the wooden doors we can see the big wooden bar holding them shut.
“Come on. There must be a side door for the priests. There always is.”
We walk around to the side of the church and there it is. I begin banging on the door. After a while, a voice on the other side tells us to go away. The church is not open.
“We’ve come from Lord Edmund to see the Bishop of Damascus. Let us in.”
We can hear something being moved and then an eye appears at the peep hole in the door. A few seconds later the door swings open and we hurry in.
The light inside the room is dim because the windows are shuttered. Our greeter is a slender fellow with very alert eyes who can’t be much more than a few inches over five feet tall. He studies us intently as he bows us in and quickly shuts and bars the door behind us. He seems quite anxious.
“We’ve come from the Bekka Valley to see the Bishop,” I say in the bastardized French dialect some are now calling English. And then Thomas repeats my message in Latin. Which is what I should have done in the first place.
“I shall tell him you are here and ask if he will receive you. I am Yoram, the Bishop’s scrivener; may I tell him who you are and why you are here?”
“I am William, the captain of the English archers and this is Father Thomas, our priest. We are here to collect our pay for helping to defend Lord Edmund’s fief these past two years.”
“I shall inform His Eminence of your arrival. Please wait here.” What a strange accent. I wonder where the Bishop’s man is from.
Some time passes before the anxious little man returns. While he is gone we look around the room. It is quite luxurious with stone floors instead of the mud floors one usually finds in churches. The windows are covered with heavy wooden shutters and sealed shut with heavy wooden bars; the light in the room, such as it is, comes from cracks in the shutters and small windows high on the walls above the shuttered windows. There is a somewhat tattered tribal carpet on the floor.
The anxious little man returns and gives a courteous nod and bow.
“His Grace will see you now. Please follow me.”
The Bishop’s clerk leads us into a narrow dimly lit passage with stone walls and a low ceiling. He goes first and then Tom and then me. We’ve taken but a few steps when he turns toward us and in a very low voice issues a cryptic warning.
“Protect yourselves. The bishop doesn’t want to pay you.”
He nods in silent agreement when I hold up my hand so Thomas and I can take a moment to prepare ourselves. He watches closely and then, when I give a nod that we are ready, he gives us a tight smile and another nod and begins walking again with a determined look on his face. A few seconds later we turn another corner and come to an open door. It opens into a large room with beamed ceilings more than six feet high. I know because I can stand upright after I bend my head and come through the entrance door.
A portly middle-aged man in a bishop’s robes is sitting behind a table and there is a bearded and rather formidable looking guard with a sword in a wooden scabbard standing in front of the table on our side of it. There is a closed chest on the table and a jumble of tools and chests in the corner covered by another old tribal rug and a broken chair.
The Bishop smiles to show us his bad teeth and beckons us in. We can see him clearly despite the dim light that comes in from the small windows near the ceiling of the room. After a moment he stands and extends his hand over table so we can kiss his ring. First Tom and then I approach and half kneel as we kissed it. After I kiss it, I step back and towards the guard as if to make room for Thomas so he can re-approach the table and stand next to me as the Bishop reseats himself.
“What is it you want to see me about?” He asks in Latin.
He says it with a smile and leans forward expectantly.
“I am William, Captain of the late Lord Edmund’s English archers and this is Father Thomas our priest and confessor.” And my older brother though I don’t think I will mention that at the moment.
“How can that be? Another man was commanding the archers when I visited Lord Edmund earlier this year and we made our arrangements.”
“He is dead. He took an arrow in the arm and it turned purple and rotted until he died. Another took his place and now he’s dead also. Now I’m in command”
The Bishop crosses himself and mumbles a brief prayer under his breath. Then he looks at me and listens intently.
“We’ve come to get the money Lord Edmund entrusted to you to pay us. We looked for you before we left the valley but Beaufort Castle was about to fall and you’d already gone. So we’ve come here to collect our pay.”
“Of course. Of course. I have it right here in the chest. Aran,” he says nodding to the burley soldier standing next to me, “tells me that there are eighteen of you. Is that correct?” And how would he know that?
“Yes Eminence that is correct.”
“Well then, four gold Constantinople coins for each man is seventy two; and you shall have them here and now.”
“No eminence, that is not correct.”
I reach inside my jerkin and pull out the company’s copy of the contract with Lord Edmund and lay it on the desk in front of him. As I place it on the table I tap it with my finger and casually step further to the side, and even closer to his swordsman - so that Thomas can once again step into my place in front of the Bishop and nod his agreement that it is indeed our contract.
“The contract calls for four gold bezant coins from
Constantinople for each of one hundred and ninety two men and two more coins to the company for each man who is killed or loses both eyes or his balls. That is one thousand and twenty six bezants in all - and I know you have our money because I was present when Lord Edmund gave you much more than that to hold for him and you agreed to pay us. So here we are. We want our bezants.”
“Oh yes. So you are. So you are. Of course. Well you shall certainly get what is due you. God wills it.”
I sense the swordsman stiffen as the Bishop says the words and opens the lid of the chest. The Bishop reaches in with both hands and takes a big handful of bezants in his left hand and places them on the table. He spreads them out and motions Thomas forward to help him count as he reaches back in for another handful. I step further to the left and even closer to the guard so that Thomas will have plenty of room to step forward to help him count.
Everything happens at once when Thomas leans forward to start counting the coins. The Bishop reaches again into his money chest as if to get another handful. This time he comes out with the dagger he’d been holding in his right hand and lunges across the table to drive it into Thomas’ chest with a grunt of satisfaction. The swordsman next to me simultaneously begins pulling his sword from its wooden scabbard. It has all been prearranged.
A look of surprise and amazement appears on the Bishop’s face when his dagger is turned aside by the chain mail Thomas wears under his priest’s cassock. It disappears an instant later when Thomas pushes the knife he’s been holding in his hand under his robe straight into the Bishop’s left eye. It slides in almost to the hilt.
The big guard goes down before his sword clears his scabbard. I use the knife I’d moved from my belt to my left sleeve in the corridor when the Bishop’s clerk warned us that trouble is coming.
The Bishop’s guard made two mistakes. He thought we would be intimidated by his fierce appearance and he had been gulled by watching my right hand as it rested carelessly on the handle of my sheathed sword. He also thought he was ready to strike and I was not.
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