“Well keep feeding them and tell them they can help us row to Cyprus if they want. We’ll sort them out on the way. Maybe we can use some of them if they want to make their marks to join us as sailors or apprentice archers. The rest can take off when we get to Cyprus or work for us for their food.”
We can use them all somewhere. Thomas and I have already decided - when the outer wall is finished and defensible we’re going to start a third wall even further out - and put a shipyard in it so the men can work building galleys when they’re not at sea.
“Look there. That’s what I mean,” Randolph explains as he points to the men gathering on the dock near our ships.
They’ve obviously seen me and Randolph and are drifting towards us. Must forty or fifty of them. Got some women with them too.
“Well go pound on the cabin wall and wake up Yoram and you two deal with them and the barber. He’s probably as hung over as I am from last night. And we’re going to need ships’ pilots and captains; so get Harold to help you talk to the sailors, particularly anyone who might be useful as a pilot and sergeant. Check with slaves too; that’s how we found Harold.”
“Hell, you know the drill and the terms as well as anyone. Board any native English speakers you run across even if they can’t pay and certainly sign up the experienced archers with their own bows if you think they might be useful and are willing to make their marks and join us; also experienced soldiers who are willing to make their marks as apprentice archers.” Oh my head hurts. I may never drink wine again.
“Also, and even though we aren’t going to leave for at least another day, and maybe even longer, tell Yoram to start selling passages to Cyprus. Tell him he can board up to fifty passengers for each galley, but only if they are willing to pay at least ten gold coins or the equivalent. Tell the sailors and everyone else who wants to join us that they’ll have to wait; but encourage them to stick around, particularly any experienced ships captains and pilots.
We’re going to have room for at least three hundred passengers and recruits because of the two new galleys, maybe even more if some of the sailor men on the cogs decide to make their marks with the new owners.” Damn. I should have talked to the merchants about that.
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I watch as Randolph walks down the deck and begins pounding on the wall of the crew’s cabin at the other end. After a minute, Yoram pokes his head out and says something, and then tries to shut the door.
Randolph is having none of it. He holds it open with his shoulder and I can see him waving his hands about as he tells Yoram what I want them to do. It’s early and the sun is just coming up. I’m hungry.
“Tonio, bring me a bread and some cheese.”
About twenty minutes later, wearing a sword and munching on a piece of flatbread with some melted cheese on it, I step over the cog’s railing and jump down to the dock. It is already bustling with long lines of dockworkers and horses pulling carts full of bales and jars to and from the ships moored along the dock. There are squawking seagulls everywhere and not much in the way of wind. It’s an altogether nice sunny morning even if I do have an aching head from all of last night’s wine.
I can see Yoram and Randolph a couple of hundred feet away to my right separating people into two or three groups on the other side of the line of carts. There is none of the anxiety and jostling I’d seen at Latika and Acre.
Suddenly a warning shout rings out behind me from the deck of the cog. I look up to see several men walking rapidly through the line of dockworkers and carts and coming towards me from different directions. One of them has a knife in his hand and the other has his hand under his tunic.
I stiffen and I’m suddenly very glad I’m still wearing my shirt of chain mail from last night. Too bad I didn’t think to carry my sword unsheathed or carry one of the ship’s shields or strap on my sleeve knife.
I desperately start backing up and trying to pull my sword from its scabbard as soon as I see the men. They are coming fast. But before I can even finish drawing it the two men stop just short of me and begin backing up - as Harold vaults over the cog’s deck railing and jumps down next to me with a boarding pike he’d grabbed out of the rack on the deck.
Attacking a sleepy man with a hangover who doesn’t have a sword in his hand and isn’t paying attention is one thing; going after someone who is alert and has a boarding pike in his hands is something else again.
Almost instantly both men spin away and start to run. The man on my left turns around and runs back between the lines of carts moving on the dock and quickly disappears; the one on the right, however, makes a mistake. He starts running towards the men talking to Randolph - and they’d all looked my direction when they heard Harold’s warning shout from the cog’s deck. They’d seen the whole thing.
As the runner is going past the men around Randolph a quick thinking young man with a beard and long hair comes out of the group and hits the runner with his lowered shoulder to knock him off his feet. Several others are right behind him and so is Randolph. They immediately pounce on the runner and I see blades flash as I get my sword out and Harold and I race over to join the fight. It’s over in a matter of seconds after a brief scuffle.
By the time we push our way through the gathering crowd Randolph and a couple of other men are kneeling next to the runner with their daggers at his throat and the young man who had knocked him down is holding a badly slashed arm with blood dripping through his fingers. Initially some of the crowd scatter but it all happens so fast that mostly they just stand there and gawk.
“What the hell was that all about?” asks Randolph as he looks up at us.
“I don’t know but I sure intend to find out. Put him on that galley over there so we can question him,” I order as I point to one of our galleys; “and be sure to sign up the men who got him. Take them with you to the galley.”
“Are you hurt, William?” an anxious Yoram asks as he pushes his way through the crowd and a virtual army of hastily armed sailors and fighting men begins pouring off our ships all along the dock. Coming to help shut the barn door after the oxen get out.
“Not a bit. Harold saved my arse when he shouted and jumped down with a boarding pike. And that man over there helped us and got wounded for his trouble,” I inform him as I point to the bearded young man who has been slashed by my would-be assassin’s knife.
“He’s bleeding and needs tending to. Get him on board the cog and send someone to get the barber to sew him up. Distract him from the pain while he’s waiting for the barber by helping him make his mark on our contract, if that’s what he wants. And sign up the others who moved quickly to help. Randolph will point them out to you.”
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Aaron and several of my merchant drinking companions and their retainers from last night come running up about five minutes later. There isn’t much for them to see; the crowd is already dispersing and the would-be assassin has already been hauled off rather roughly to one of our galleys for questioning. None of the local authorities, if there are any, has shown up.
“We just heard. What happened? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. A couple of men tried to knife me but I got rescued just in time by one of my fast thinking men. One of the men escaped but we got lucky and captured the other one when he ran the wrong way – right into the hands of some of my men.”
“Could it be those men who handle the pirates’ business here, do you think?”
“Maybe. We’ll know more when the would-be assassin finishes telling us who hired him. If it’s them, they won’t be selling the pirates’ cargos and slaves much longer.”
That’s for damn sure; I’ll put a hefty price on their throats if I can’t cut them myself.
“I’m just sorry we didn’t get here earlier so we could help. We were on our way here to give you some more information before we get together later today. It seems there is a warehouse available right here on the dock. That one right over there,” he said pointing at a low shed-like
structure with mud walls.
“It used to be used for storing cotton bales and olive oil. Your men could live in it and anchor their ship right here in the harbor.” Hmm. I need to think about this.
“Well I’m not ready to say yes. I haven’t even had a chance to think about it and talk to my men. But I’m interested. Yes I am.”
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After everything settles down and the assassin is being “readied” for questioning, I ask Randolph and Yoram to join me for something to eat in the castle of the cog’s crew at the rear of the deck. They arrive thinking I want to talk about the assassin. I’ve got something else in mind.
“Something’s come up. The local merchants want us to leave one of our galleys here for a year to carry their messages, passengers, and light cargos. We would provide and feed the captain and forty sailors and fighting men; they would provide the pilot, the rowers, and a place the men to live when they are ashore - one of the warehouses right here on the dock. What do you think?”
“Blimey; that’s a surprise” is Randolph’s response. It was the first time Randolph has heard about it; Yoram, of course, knew something like that was in the wind from the discussion at dinner last night.
“The merchants haven’t said it out loud,” I explain, “but I think what they really want is to have a way to escape with their families if there is serious disorder and fighting in Alexandria. It seems there is talk of the Moslems giving the local Christians and Jews the choice of either converting to worship Mohammed or being killed.” And if that happens maybe we can bring our ships here and make a pretty penny carrying refugees.
“If that happens,” I suggest, “we might be able to bring more our ships here and make good money carrying refugees to safety.”
“You’re certainly right about that,” Yoram agreed.
“But what if it happens during the storm season when the galley is out of the water?” Randolph inquires. And then he answers his own question after he takes a slurp of the hot tea in his bowl. The tea here is uncommonly good.
“We’d have to have it ready to launch quickly, that’s for sure.”
“And it would have to be loaded with water and food at all times and heavily guarded,” William added.
Oh my God, he’s going to do it. I don’t want to stay here; I want to go back to Cyprus to care for Lena and Aria.
“Aye, that it would,” grunted Randolph, “that it would.”
“But could it be done? Could you do it, Randolph?” Oh thank you Jesus; he’s asking Randolph.
“Oh Aye. I s’pose I could.”
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Yoram’s concern that he’ll be left in Alexandria with Randolph is so obvious that it gives us a fine opportunity to have a bit of jolly teasing him.
“I could leave Yoram here with you to help,” I suggest to Randolph with a wink and a twinkle in my eye, “but somehow I think he’s as anxious to get back to Cyprus as I am.”
Randolph roars. And then Yoram and I start laughing too. We are still laughing and smiling as we go out on deck. A couple of the sailors see our good spirits and smile too.
“Well lads,” I finally say, “we’ll know whether or not it will happen after we meet with the merchants this afternoon and see if they’ll pay the necessary. Now let’s go see if the bastard who tried to stick me this morning is ready to talk.”
He is. And before I release him from his agony with a knife in his ear, he tells us he came from some place called Alamut in the mountains east of the Holy Land. He claims to have been sent with a friend to Alexandria several years ago to work for the Tunisians. And, most importantly, he tells us where we can find them before he goes off to feed the harbor fishes and join the virgins he kept babbling about.
Chapter Sixteen
“RETRIBUTION”
The meeting later that afternoon with Aaron and his merchant friends is all business after we finished the customary tea and snacks excellent sweet figs and small talk. The merchants seem quite relieved when I say we will provide a galley with an experienced fighting man as its captain if the price is right. The negotiations that follow go well even though they last for hours.
The sun is just starting to go down when we all spit on our palms and shake hands.
It’s settled. For three hundred and eighty Damascus gold bezants we will provide one galley and forty sailors and men at arms for its crew; the merchants will provide the empty warehouse on the dock as a place for the men to live when they are not on guard duty or at sea and a space on the beach where we can haul the galley out of the water during the storm season – and logs that can be used as rollers if we need to launch it in a hurry.
The merchants will also each month provide its captain with six hundred silver coins that can be advanced to the men for spending on food and women and provide someone to work full time at the warehouse as the captain’s clerk and scrivener. They will also provide a pilot who knows the waters where they might want the galley to sail.
Also, at Yoram’s excellent suggestion, we are going to prepay a number of different merchants to deliver food and supplies to Randolph’s men and let it be well known that we are doing so and why. Why? It’s rather simple - so there will be no coins left with Randolph to entice robbers and pirates.
That is not exactly the truth; we are also leaving Thomas’s money belt for Randolph to wear with some gold bezants in it for emergencies and also depositing some bezants with one of the merchants that Randolph and his second, but not his clerk and scrivener, can access in an emergency.
Our big unanswered question is which of our men we should leave with Randolph and who should be his sergeants. Randolph knows something about what needs to be done because he’d come with me to the meeting with the merchants as the head of the guards who escorted me. And now he is so pleased with his new command and the increase in pay that goes with it that I think he would agree to take anyone.
But first things first - tonight we are going after the Tunisians who sent the assassins. Other than Yoram and Randolph, only Aaron and one of his merchant friends know what we are going to do. At Aaron’s suggestion, I do not mention it to the other merchants. Loose lips gets soldiers’ heads chopped off. But I do discuss the situation with Aaron and Randolph - and only they and Aaron’s friend know we intend to try to eliminate the Tunisians before we sail for Cyprus.
I’ve got to admit my retaliation is a bit impetuous. But I don’t want to get the reputation for being soft and ignoring legitimate grievances.
After a meeting with the merchants where nothing is discussed except the galley contract, one of the merchants, a bearded man in Arab robes, accompanies Aaron and me as we walk back to the dock. I’d met the man before but couldn’t remember his name.
“His name is Farouk Omar,” Aaron prompts me in English when we are out of earshot. “He knows where the Tunisians live and he speaks French and Latin.” A Moslem?
I looked at Aaron quite intently and he saw the question in my eyes.
“He’s an Egyptian Christian, one of the Coptics that have been in Egypt since the time of Jesus. He’s a merchant and the pirates have taken several of his ships, including one captained by his second son. They killed him.”
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It’s already hot during the day as summer nears so Alexandria tends not to really come alive until the sun goes down - and then it stays vibrant and alive until the wee hours of the morning. Many Alexandrians sleep on the roof of their houses and buildings to get the ocean breezes and the city is packed with migrants and homeless people who sleep and work and do everything else on the city’s narrow winding streets and passage ways and in its doorways.
The fact that the city is jammed with people working and sleeping and living outside raises a major problem: How are we going to take a force of heavily armed foreign sailors and men at arms through the city’s crowded streets and alleys to the Algerians’ home without them being alerted to the fact that we are coming?
Farouk is the answer. Aaron ar
ranges for Farouk and a couple of Aaron’s elderly retainers to guide us through the city.
The first thing I have the three men do is come aboard the galley I’m in, the one to which I brought my weapons and personal things when we turned the cogs over to the merchants. Once aboard Randolph and I question them at length about the location of the Algerians and the size and nature of the compound in which they reside and conduct their business.
When we finish, Randolph and a couple of our steadiest men put on Egyptian robes and go with Farouk to spy out the Algerians’ home. It’s inside the city walls in the eastern part of the big city.
Another three of our men are sent by Randolph to keep an eye on the barracks of the City Watch for the entire night. He doesn’t tell them why; just that we want to be quickly informed any time a group of more than ten of the city watchmen suddenly forms up and leaves the barracks.
While our men are off doing that I begin organizing our assault force. Yoram, who had already gone to the market once to buy Egyptian clothes for Randolph, goes back to the market to buy sixty more of the lightweight white cotton robes and head scarfs worn by most Egyptian men.
I also decide that it is better to take too many men on the raid than too few; and I also thought it also might be helpful if some of them can speak French so they can ask Farouk questions and as many as possible look like Egyptians, at least at a distance.
So who do we have who speaks French? Harold recalls that one of his fellow galley slaves, an experience archer and sergeant from one of the French villages near Calais, speaks French for certain. His name is Henry and is as likely as anyone to know others among our men who speak French; so off goes a runner to find Henry.
One thing we are almost certain to need is some kind of battering ram to knock down the Algerians’ gates and doors. So after he comes back with the Egyptian robes Yoram, once again with four or five men to guard him and the coins he is carrying, goes to the lumber yard district a few blocks past the end of the dock. He uses some copper coins to buy a tree trunk with the stubs of its branches still on it.
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 Page 13