The Archer: Historical Fiction: exciting novel about Marines and Naval Warfare of medieval England set in feudal times with knights,Templars, and crusaders during Richard the lionhearted's reign

by Martin Archer

All it had taken after I had moved closer to him to make way for Thomas is a snapped straightening of my bent left arm as the Bishop pulled his blade out of the box of coins and lunged at Thomas’ heart. My knife comes out of my sleeve and goes through the guard’s beard and into his throat in the blink of an eye. He is very surprised. I can tell because I can see the flash of astonishment and panic in his eyes as he watches my hand streak towards him and feels the knife as I push it in.

  I let loose of the handle and step back and watch impassively as the big man grabs at my knife with both hands and tries to pull it out. He succeeds and great spurts of blood begin when he gets it out and then half turns to look at the Bishop in imploring disbelief and then back to look at me as he drops my blade on the floor.

  He is still looking at me with disbelieving eyes when he slowly sinks to his knees and rocks back onto his heels with his hands clasping his throat in a desperate effort to stop the bleeding. That’s where he dies. It is actually sort of strange – he never falls over, he just stops gasping and the light just goes out of his eyes. He dies sitting back on his heels and that’s where he stays without falling over.

  “Aren’t you glad I made you practice that move over and over again when you were a boy?”

  That is my priestly brother’s comment as he jerks his blade out of the Bishop’s eye and reaches across the table for the chest. He doesn’t look at me as he says it and he isn’t distracted by the vibrating spasms in the Bishop’s legs as he finishes dying – he’s too busy grabbing one corner of the chest and swinging it around so he can look in.

  “Yes Thomas, I am.”

  We both ignore the rattling tap tap tap as the Bishop’s legs continue to tremble and kick one of the table legs.

  @@@@@

  The late bishop’s clerk stands quietly in the corner. He has, and rightly so, a definite look of concern on his ashen face and seems to be quite agitated but trying very hard to contain it. Well he certainly has nothing to fear from us.

  “Thank you, my friend,” I say rather gently with a gesture towards the bishop. “Your warning saved us and we are obliged to you. Will you be all right now?”

  “I hope so; I just don’t know. But what about you - what will you and your men do now? How will you escape this place?”

  “We’ll try to hire a boat or perhaps we’ll walk down the coast to Acre before summer comes and it gets too hot. There are eighteen of us so we’ll be hard to stop.”

  And after a moment of thinking I add “And why don’t you come with us? We can always use a clerk and scrivener, especially an honest one who is a friend.”

  Our new friend doesn’t hesitate.

  “Yes, I think I’d like to join you. I need to get out of here before the Saracens arrive and I was already planning to ask you if I could leave with you. My name is Yoram, by the way. I’m from Damascus.”

  “Welcome to you Yoram from Damascus. I’m William, the captain of what is left of our company of English archers, and that ugly priest over there gathering up our money is my older brother Thomas.”

  I call my brother ugly with a smile on my face and a great deal of affection. If it hadn’t been for Thomas coming home to get me and taking me when he left his parish to go on his crusade I wouldn’t have seen Jerusalem and he wouldn’t have been able to teach me to read and write Latin – I’d still be in Kent and working from dawn to dusk on the farm my father and mother tenanted for Lord Ansel until God took them when everyone but me died of the measles. And I would never have come to the Holy Land and tumbled the hostler’s daughter in Damascus who berthed my son before she died.

  Yoram promptly kneels in front of me and puts my foot on his head.

  “Thank you Master William, I accept you as my liege lord and will serve you well.” Good grief I have a vassal; I’ve never had one of those before.

  “Uh. Yes. That is good. I accept you. Now stand up and tell me what you think. How best should we get back to our men with our coins? Who will try to stop us?”

  “The two priests of the church are off collecting coins in the villages between here and Beirut for the prayers needed to guard us against the Saracens. But there are three more of the Bishop’s men outside napping in the walled garden behind the church. Only one of them is dangerous, My Lord. My lord? The other two might be useful to help us carry the money chests. The third is like Anil there; he’ll have to be killed or sent away on an errand.”

  “Chests? Are there more chests?”

  “Yes, of course, Lord. Four more big ones in addition to the chest on the table. The Bishop has been collecting coins and jewels for more than two years to buy prayers to save the Christians from the Saracens. He told everyone that he was sending them to Rome to buy the prayers needed to save us. But he wasn’t sending them - he was going to take them to the Pope himself and use them to buy himself an appointment in Rome. I know - I wrote the letters because his hand was so poor.”

  “Where are they?” I ask. “The other chests, I mean?”

  “Over there in the corner under the rug with the shovels and hoe. He was afraid to let them out of his sight. That’s why we’re still here. I arranged for a ship but while the Bishop was waiting for more coins and jewels to come in the captain got very ill with some kind of pox. He’s in the big cog with the leather sails that is anchored near the dock. We were waiting for him to recover. But I’m not sure we’d have gone even if the captain recovered.”

  After a pause Yoram tries to explain.

  “The Bishop meant well at first but he got overtaken by his greed when we were forced to leave Damascus and then Beaufort – he not only wanted even more money but he worried about his guards killing him and stealing it. He also thought that the captain and the ship’s crew would take it from him if his guards didn’t.”

  Thomas and Yoram watch as I walk over and pull the rugs off the chests. Four more. And they’re heavy. I try and can barely lift one off the ground. My God we’ll be rich if we get away with these.

  “We’ll need a wagon or cart,” I announce to no one in particular. “And preferably with a horse or donkey to pull it. We can say we need it to carry our two wounded men.”

  Thomas approves.

  “Ah, now that’s smart, that is. George can ride on it too.”

  I think about it for a minute.

  Well we need something to carry them with and we might as well find out now if Yoram’s oath is good.

  “Yoram, here is what I want you to do.”

  @@@@@

  My new vassal takes the two gold bezants Thomas hands him from the pile on the Bishop’s table, puts them into a little leather purse, and slips out the door. Thomas restores the door’s big wooden bar as soon as it closes behind him. Then I piss in the corner of the room while Thomas searches the Bishop and his guard for weapons. Nothing special but now, at least, we both have swords and I still have my long bow and eleven iron tipped shafts. And, of course, we now have a couple of additional daggers. The Bishop’s is quite fine with little designs scratched into the handle.

  The first stop Yoram is going to make is to visit the Bishop’s remaining three guards and send the one he thinks is dangerous up the coast to Beirut to find another ship for the bishop to use to sail to Rome. The guard Yoram says is dangerous is to be given two gold bezants to offer to the captain of the first cog or galley he can find that will come here to Latika - with the promise of forty more for one voyage to carry the bishop and five retainers to Rome.

  Yoram thinks the guard will disappear with the gold coins and never be heard from again; maybe. I think he will be swayed by the bishop’s coin chests and the relative safety of Rome and return with a ship. But who cares - it doesn’t matter so long as he isn’t here and the church’s priests stay away until we’re long gone. If he doesn’t go we’ll kill him and keep the money for ourselves.

  It is all arranged. As soon as the guard leaves with the two gold bezants, Yoram is to go to the market of the livestock traders in the field next to the ca
ravanserai and buy the best horse and wagon he can get for one bezant or less. For that much he should be able to find something pretty good and get some coppers and silvers back. He can tell the horse traders the truth – that the English archers need them to carry their two wounded men and their commander’s young son.

  From the horse market Yoram is to go to our camp next to the caravanserai with the horse and wagon and tell the men that they and all our possessions, including George and the horse and the wounded men on the camel litter, are to casually assemble outside the city gate in case they need to rush in to help us fight our way out or if we come out fast and need to run for it.

  If he can get them through the gate on our new horse cart, Yoram is to bring two or three of our sword carrying archers back with him to help us load the chests and guard them. If he can’t get them past the guards he is to leave them at the gate and bring the horse and wagon by himself. I give him one of my arrows so that the men will know he came from me and tell him not to mention the coin chests to the archers or anyone else, just that they need to be standing by for a rescue or to run for it. And Thomas has an idea as to what else we might take with us when we go.

  @@@@@

  Time passes slowly and Thomas and I get more and more anxious for Yoram to return. We both draw our swords and instinctively push back the sleeves on our robes to hide our daggers when we finally hear footsteps approach.

  A few seconds later there is a quiet knock on the door and Yoram softly announces himself. Through a crack in the door we can see him in the corridor with several of our archers standing beside him.

  Thomas opens the door quickly and lets everyone in. They sense the urgency and enter fast. Then he restores the bar to prevent anyone else from getting in. Yoram has Bob the Farmer and Long Bob from Chester with him and, he quickly announces, there is another archer at the side door holding the horse and wagon.

  “It’s Andrew the brewer we’ve left guarding the wagon,” Long Bob says as he stares at the bodies of the Bishop and his kneeling guard.

  “I brought three of your men, the ones I saw with swords,” explains Yoram.

  “We didn’t have any trouble at all getting through the city gate. I just drove up and waved to the men at the gate as we rode in on the cart. They know me as the Bishop’s man and didn’t think anything of it. We left the rest of your men and the boy warming themselves in the sun just outside the city gate.”

  /At this point the parchment reaches a ragged end, probably mice, so I periodically have to use a sentence or two from Yoram’s description of what happened to put together this part of Williams tale./

  William thought for a moment and then begins issuing orders. He thanks me for doing a good job and then asks Thomas and me and the two Bobs to carry one of the rugs, the bishop’s chair, and one of the chests out to wagon.

  Putting the Bishop’s chair on the wagon is not what anyone looking for trouble would expect to see.

  “Thomas, you best stay out there with Andrew brewer to drive away the beggars and act priestly in case someone gets nosey. Yoram, bring the two Bobs back as soon as possible to get the other coin chests and the big stack of blank parchment sheets on the table. And don’t anyone act excited and move fast; act bored as if you’re just doing a meaningless chore and nothing important is happening. I’ll wait here with my sword ready and the door barred in case anyone shows up.”

  I don’t know why but Thomas insists we take the big stack of parchment and the Bishop’s writing materials and seal as well as his ring and the robes hanging on the peg by the door.

  William suddenly remembers something.

  “Wait.” William holds up a hand. Damn, I forgot something.

  “Yoram, I forgot about the other guards. Before you do anything else, go out back and check to make sure the one you think is a trouble maker is gone. Then give the other two guards a choice. Either they carry out the Bishop’s new orders and immediately go off to some distant village to meet one of the church’s priests and help guard the money he is bringing to the Bishop; or they can leave the Bishop’s service and escape the Saracens by taking up service with us.”

  “Tell them that is what you are going to do because you think the Bishop is coming down with smallpox. Explain that his guard, the dead one over there, Anil I think you said his name was, just ran off to flee from his sickness. Don’t let them in here to see the bodies. Take them around the church and in the side door if they want to pledge their liege and join us.”

  Yoram and Thomas smile; the two Bobs look confused.

  @@@@@

  The loading goes rapidly and we soon have all five of the coin chests and the other things on the wagon and covered with some of the dirty rags and the two rugs. Walking down the street and leaving through the city gate turns out to be as easy as roasting a duck. Yoram and Thomas ride on the wagon and the rest of us walk along side of it, including the Bishop’s two guards who kneeled before me and pledged their liege in the front room by the door where we first met Yoram.

  Getting out of the city turns out to be no problem at all. It is the middle of a somewhat chilly spring day and the guards are all out in the sun sitting against the side of the city wall to stay warm. They don’t even look up as our horse and wagon slowly clatter past and go out the gate. No one except the beggars pays the slightest attention to us and even the beggars don’t notice that our bows are strung.

  All our archers are standing or squatting on their heels near the city gate on the sunny side of the wall waiting for us. Everyone is near the gate and looks to be casually lounging about. Brian and Athol are on the camel litter.

  Everything looks quite relaxed and normal. Randolph from London is the coolest of all – he’s got his sword unsheathed and is intently studying it as he industriously rubs it with sand as if to clean off some rust and grime. Only someone who looks closely would notice that each of the archers is wearing a couple of quivers and is holding a bow that is already strung and that his hands are free so that he can start shooting in an instant.

  Ralph the ox herder from the village where the Thames can be forded, our best rider, really the only archer who really knows how to ride a horse, is standing nearest to the gate holding our new horse with George already on the wagon. He is the first to see us as we approach the city gate to leave and says something to the others when he does. They all stand up and stretch and pick up their blanket rolls and goods as we approach.

  I lift a hand to give them a casual greeting as we go by and they casually fall in around us. Then we slowly leg it back to the caravanserai as if we don’t have a care in the world - and have to find a new place further from the caravanserai gate because our old one has already been taken by a couple of tents belonging to a merchant escaping from the interior with his family and servants. And that’s just as well. We don’t want anyone close enough to see what we have.

  William walks along side of wagon and speaks with Yoram as we search for a new place to camp.

  “This sea captain the Bishop was going to use to escape. What’s wrong with him?”

  “He’s got fevers and weakness from the French Pox and doesn’t want to leave until he’s cured. Some quack barber is bleeding him and has him drinking some kind of herbal tea every two hours and eating some kind of paste made from flowers that makes him dream all the time.”

  “Let’s go see him. Maybe I can convince him to change his mind.

  Chapter Two

  “SEAFARING MEN”

  My new Lords, William and Father Thomas, settle the archers in a new camp down from the caravanserai and then we walk around the edge of the city wall and down to the harbor to find the ship captain. William rides little George on his shoulders and brings four of the archers with us for protection including Ralph, the two Bobs, and Randolph. He brings those particular archers, as he explains to me later, because they also carry swords and know how to use them.

  Our escort of archers waits on shore while a ferryman rows the four of us ou
t to a relatively large single-masted trading cog anchored just off the stone jetty. Its sail is furled and it looks deserted. I’ve come along, to interpret if necessary. The Bishop’s two guards have been left behind with the archers at our new camp and told to tend to Brian and Athol.

  Young George holds tightly to his father’s hand as the little dinghy sways each time the ferryman’s oars dig into the water. Then the ferryman hellos the cog and we climb up and over the rail to stand on its deck - with Thomas going first so William can hand George up to him.

  As we come aboard I hear William tell George that with its two little cabins at its front and rear this ship is very much like the two single-masted cogs that had carried him and his Uncle Thomas and the other archers to the Holy Land from England when King Richard brought them out to join the crusade. Ah. That’s who they are.

  @@@@@

  A ferret faced little seaman with long scraggly hair meets us at the railing as we climb aboard. He recognizes Yoram and without saying a word points to a little ship’s castle at the front of the ship.

  As we walk down the deck we can see into the narrow entrance of the unlit cabin enough to see a sailor with a bushy beard and his hair in a pigtail spooning something into a man’s mouth from a wooden bowl. A couple of other pigtailed sailors are lounging in the sun next to the cabin door to get warm. Other than that, the ship seems damp and deserted. None of the crew appears to be armed.

  “This is my Lord William,” I announce in the local dialect as we approach the door and the two sailors sitting against the wall stand up and move towards us to listen. “He and the priest are here to see the captain.”

  The captain’s little castle at the front of the cog is absolutely foul and barely large enough for two or three people to be in it at the same time. Father Thomas stays on the deck by the door with George while William and I duck our heads and enter. It smells horrible.

  The poor wretch we’ve come to see looks to be in terrible shape even though he is able to talk, and smells worse what with all the shite he’s lying in. I’d never seen anyone looking so dreamy eyed and lost and devastated all at the same time. They say it’s the night air and the bad wine the brothel girls drink that causes it.