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

  He has the men carry back and drop it on the dock - and he sits on it under their watchful eyes while we wait for our scouting party to return.

  By the time Randolph and Farouk return, I’d appointed Henry to be Randolph’s chosen man for tonight’s excursion, what the French call a corporal, and he and I have told off a force of about fifty of our archers and men at arms “for guard duty tonight.”

  We assemble our “guard force” on one of the galleys and I have Harold move it away from the dock so no one can get off and leak the secret of where we are going and what we are going to do. According to Henry, six or seven of the men he selects speak at least passable French. They’ll be the guards for our guides and translate for them.

  Each of the men Henry and I select to be a guard is informed he is being temporarily seconded to a guard force charged with preventing our ships from being cut out by pirates. Each is told to bring a small ship’s shield and a sword and quietly report for duty an hour after dark. The archers are also to bring their bows and a quiver of arrows.

  Once the men are aboard the galley, it is towed away from the dock and each of the men is given one of the white cotton robes and a head scarf and told to put them on.

  There is a lot of quiet talk and more than a little excitement among the men. They don’t know what their “guard” assignment will be but it is clear to all of them that something is up and they’re going to be part of it.

  Yoram waits on the dock for Randolph and his scouts. When they finally return Yoram brings them out to us in the dinghy.

  It is three or four hours after sundown when they finally climb aboard the galley. It’s early - the city and dock are still quite active and will undoubtedly remain so well into the night.

  So far it looks like our raid on the Tunisians is good to go. One of the three men we have watching the compound and barracks of the men of the City Watch returns every so often to report. According to the latest messenger everything appears normal.

  The men are keeping an eye on the City Watch compound from a wine shop opposite its entrance. The only problem, the latest messenger reports before he heads back, is that he is losing money gambling on the dice while he and the others drink wine and watch the comings and goings of the city’s watchmen. We have a light moment and all of us laugh, including the messenger, when he asks to be reimbursed for his drinks and gambling losses since they are in “the line of duty.” Wine Shop? I thought Moslems didn’t drink.”

  “A wine shop, Aaron? I thought this is a Moslem city.”

  @@@@@

  The night is more than half gone and the activity in the city’s streets and along the dock is finally slowing down when the men chosen for the raid haul on the two long lines attaching the galley to the dock and quietly pull it back into place against the dock.

  I watch and listen as the men silently climb over the galley rail and assemble on the dock. There is no talking. I’d already explained to the men what we are going to do. They understand that our safety and success means they have to be quiet and not in any way talk or draw attention to themselves when they get off the galley and move through the city streets.

  At least I hope I made sure they keep quiet; I even put a finger to my lips and said “shh” as I pretended to climb over the railing and walk. Some of them don’t speak any language I’ve ever heard before.

  We do not head directly to the walled compound of the Tunisians. To the contrary, because Aaron believes we are probably being watched, we all casually amble down the dock in the opposite direction and then head into the city along a densely packed narrow street that would take us away from where we believe we will find the Tunisians.

  The men of the city watch are nowhere to be seen. They’re probably, I hope, off collecting protection money and carousing in the taverns as the merchants had explained when we first arrived.

  Farouk leads our men through the narrow city lanes and alleys in a great round-about route to the tenement area and the compound where the Tunisians live. It is late but there are still a number of people on the streets. And the flickering candles in the workshops along the way suggests that many of the city artisans prefer working in the relative cool of the dimly lit night to working in the spring time heat of the day when they can see better. Or more likely they work both day and night.

  There are far too many of us to be inconspicuous. In the moonlight we can see people openly looking at us with curious eyes as we walk along the narrow lanes. Our behavior is casual and our swords and weapons are hidden as best they can be under our white robes. But the men in the streets can see the small ships’ shields we’re all carrying and know we are together and heading somewhere with a purpose. But they don’t know where or why. At least I hope not.

  And sure enough, we are being followed.

  A couple of the Farouk’s elderly retainers are deliberately bringing up the rear some distance behind our main group along with two of the men Randolph has identified as possible sergeants. They soon spot the man trailing along behind us – and take him when he follows our main group down a long and quiet alley so narrow that in places one could touch the mud walls on either side. It is so narrow that it had no one sleeping and living in it since they would be stepped on by anyone using the alley.

  It also seems to be used as a public toilet so I’m glad to be wearing sandals.

  Our follower initially claims to be following us because he is curious; then he claims to be watching us for merchants whose names he cannot remember; then he admits to be working for the Tunisians; and then he suffers a knife across the throat and dies like a sheep without making a sound.

  At the end of the narrow alley we turn a hard left and continue despite everywhere drawing the intense observations of the people still in the streets and workshops and dozing in the doorways. We can hear people talking quietly but no one calls after us or seems alarmed.

  Ten minutes or so later we take another hard left and Farouk and Randolph step up their pace as we unsheathe our swords and begin trotting forward. That’s when people on the street begin to react. Out of the corner of my eye I can see them begin to whisper to each other and hurriedly pack up to leave. Those who can begin to close and bar their doors and gates. Everyone else leaves quickly. Within seconds the entire neighborhood looks and sounds deserted.

  Not a word is spoken by the people in the street. The only sounds are a few whispers as sleepers are shaken awake, the clunking as gates and doors are closed and barred, and the slapping of bare and sandaled feet moving away on the narrow cobblestoned streets that run along the front and sides of the Tunisians’ compound.

  Once we reach the door that seems to be the entrance to the compound we wait for about a minute to give our men time to move down the streets around the compound to surround it.

  When it seems as though everyone has had enough time to get in place, I wave my hand and nod to Henry and the men carrying the log. They can see my signal in the moonlight and need only one big swing of the log to quickly batter down the wooden door leading into the courtyard. Then they rush to the door of the building inside the compound and knock it open as well.

  The two men and their families are awakened by the noise of the gate being battered in but have barely enough time to pull on their gowns and tunics before the door to their room is hit and they are overwhelmed by the mass of heavily armed men who pour into their living quarters.

  Everything works out rather well. The Tunisians hardly resist at all although one of their wives stabs one of the men we recruited in Acre during the brief melee. It happens while we are tying the men up and carrying them out. We’re going to take the Tunisians back to the galleys and question them when we get to sea. The other assassin is nowhere to be found.

  There is nothing we could do for the man who is stabbed. He bleeds out quickly so we wrap him in rug and a couple of his friends take turns carrying him back to the ship. We’ll bury him at sea along with the two Tunisians when we finish questioning them. The
woman who stabbed him has everyone’s grudging respect and is left unharmed.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “RETURN TO CYPRUS”

  Deciding who should stay in Alexandria with Randolph turns out not to be such an easy thing to do when we actually turn our thoughts to it after the raid. But we get it done even though it takes most of the next morning.

  We spend the entire morning after the raid, our last day in Alexandria, selecting men to stay with Randolph and then others to fill the gaps they leave. Then, starting in the early afternoon, we begin boarding our recruits and passengers so we can row out of the harbor with the evening winds at our back.

  Word has obviously gotten around the city that we will be leaving tonight. Men have been coming every day seeking employment and a particularly large number show up today. So do some additional people who want to buy passage to Cyprus.

  Among the latter are a couple of English widows with young children who somehow escaped to Alexandria after their Crusader husbands are killed. We can only take them and a few more recruits and passengers because we are leaving one of the galleys and sixty men with Randolph.

  They seem like saucy lasses so I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they have new husbands lined up by the time we reach Cyprus.

  @@@@@

  We row out of the Alexandria harbor as the sun is going down and use lanterns on the galley masts to stay together at night as we row straight through to Cyprus. We are overfull of passengers and carrying several bags of good coins so we did not go via Acre or Latika as I had once thought might be possible.

  It is an uneventful trip except for the cogs and fishing vessels that we begin to come upon as we near Cyprus. They inevitably flee as we approach. We encounter no pirate galleys even though we are prepared for the worst with each of our four galleys carrying some of our money and passengers. We spread it out, of course, in case one or more are lost. We are also carrying coins and some parchments with money orders and commercial orders from the Alexandria merchants.

  Our Tunisian prisoners are questioned during the trip and then tipped over the side to feed the fish before we enter Limassol harbor. They provided us with some interesting information.

  It seems that for some years the Moslem Caliph ruling North Africa and Southern Spain has controlled most of the pirate galleys operating in the waters between the Holy Land and Gibraltar where the Mediterranean narrows before it enters the Atlantic. The Caliph’s galleys are rowed by slaves and their crews are mostly untrained Berber cutthroats carrying swords and knives.

  What I hear that is so interesting is that the Caliph uses his pirate revenues to pay for his wars against the Christians in Spain just as Richard uses his revenues from England to pay for his Crusades against the Moslems.

  According to the Tunisians, many of the local ship owners pay the Moors tribute in exchange for being left alone. Those that don’t, and sometimes even those that do, are taken as prizes and their crews sold into slavery. It’s been going on since before the Crusades started, even before the Moors began fighting the Christians in Spain.

  The weather is good the entire way so I have time to sit on the deck and think once we finish questioning the Tunisians. What I think about is George and Thomas and the future of my little family and the company of archers. I think about them a lot and reach some conclusions. I’ve got a lot to talk to Thomas about.

  One thing is certain - it certainly is amazing how much money can be made with fighting ships and how much power and recognition one can acquire by using them wisely. On the other hand, it’s hard to see how Thomas and I can make our little empire much larger due to the lack of dependable men who can scribe and sum enough to function as ship captains and port captains.

  Randolph in Alexandria is a good example - it’s not easy doing business with the local merchants and their overlords when you can neither read nor do sums and have to rely on the honesty of a clerk provided by your customers. And to think that only a month or two ago Thomas and I were worried about starving if the bishop didn’t pay us.

  @@@@@

  Our arrival in Limassol is very pleasing. Thomas and George see us row into the harbor and hurry down to the dock to greet us. So do a goodly number of our men who stayed behind on guard duty and many of Limassol’s merchants and townspeople. It is almost like a happy feast day in my old village when the crops came in – and ours certainly did: We’d left with three galleys and the two cogs we’d sold to the merchants; we’d returned with four galleys and more sailors, archers, and fighting men. And not a one of them can read or write and do sums.

  “Hello young man. You’re getting bigger and smarter every time I see you.” That’s what I tell my son as I pick him up and hold him tight. He smiles and hugs me back and I love it.

  “I can count numbers, Papa. Uncle Thomas showed us; and Isaac and I caught some frogs for Thomas Cook. Their legs jumped when he cooked them for us.”

  “Did they taste good?” Yuck. Slimy frogs.

  “Yes. Just like chicken.”

  “Who’s Isaac?” I ask my brother.

  “He’s a boy from the city. His father is one of the wood joiners,” said Thomas. “I’m teaching him and a couple of other boys with George. Good lads they are.”

  Then Thomas gets serious.

  “I see you’ve got two new galleys. What happened to the one we bought off the old captain and where’s Randolph?”

  So I lift George up on my shoulders to be his “horsey” and give Thomas a sanitized version of the trip while we walk along the beach track towards our camp. Tonight I’ll tell him more.

  Thomas catches on immediately that I am leaving out some of the details because of George. He beams and silently nods his approval and then proceeds to tell me what has happened in Limassol during my absence – absolutely nothing of significance except that the repairs of the curtain wall are almost finished and the new outer wall is coming along nicely and will progress at lot faster once some additional timbers he’s bought finally arrive. A third outer wall is just a dream at this point.

  Thomas says he’s begun sending hired wagons to mine stones from an old ruined abbey about half a day to the north. He also reported that there’d been not a word from the governor although he did ride by one day to see the work and ask if anyone knew when his men would be back.

  @@@@@

  Thomas and I count the Alexandria coins into our chests and talk and talk until late in the night. The repairs to our compound and the expansion of the inner wall are almost complete except that now that we have more men we’ll almost certainly need to build even more barracks to shelter them.

  Much of what we talk about has to do with when we would leave for England – or should we go at all? And if we do go, where should we go and, most important of all, what should we do when we get there?

  By the time we break our night fast by eating with George the next morning Thomas and I have settled on a course of action – we’ll take all the available galleys and a good portion of the men and money and go on to England in time to get to Cornwall before the summer ends. We want to get George safe and settled before winter. If we wait any longer the seas will be too dangerous.

  Hopefully that will give us enough time to find a proper place for our ships and men. In the meantime we’ll spend most of the summer in Cyprus and continue to send our galleys back to the Holy Land to try and earn even more coins.

  We’re going to need more men and coins, a whole lot more of both, to carry out our plan.

  Our biggest all-new decision, however, is that we’re going to try to set up a shipyard in Cyprus. That means we’ll need to recruit expert shipwrights and joiners from wherever we can find them, probably both here on Cyprus and in the Holy Land ports we visit.

  Recruiting such experts is important; it means the sailors and men we leave in Cyprus can help build new galleys when they aren’t busy training and working on improving our living quarters and defenses. We’ll also try to commission new galleys from the
shipyards in the ports our galleys touch and try to capture more galleys from the Moslem pirates as prizes of war. In for a pence, in for a pound.

  And that gives me an idea.

  “Thomas, do you know of any cogs that might be for sale that we might use to attract pirates?”

  “Attract pirates?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “HAROLD’S TALE”

  A strange flotilla sets sail from Limassol ten days later. It includes all four of the galleys we have in Limassol and a leaky old cog under my command – I’m Harold Lewes, the English sailorman what was rescued from the pirates by the grace of God after my many prayers to Jesus.

  It all started when Yoram and I rode horse to Larnaca and bought the old cog last week off a Syrian Christian. The old fellow wanted to retire on Cyprus and considered himself fortunate to have found buyers dumb enough to pay good money for his leaky old ship.

  Yoram rode back to Limassol to prepare the galleys - I stayed in Larnaca to recruit a crew and plant ideas in the minds of the pirates’ local agents.

  @@@@@

  “I don’t know why the sailors are afraid of pirates. God will protect us since we’ll be carrying so many silver and gold coins from Limassol to Acre for the Hospitallers.”

  That’s what I keep lamenting to skeptical listeners in Larnaca’s waterfront alehouses after Yoram leaves and I remain behind to recruit sailors willing to brave the pirates for a trip to Acre. The ship is old, I admit, but that will not be a problem since it would be “protected by God” because of the many good Christian works the Hospitallers will do with all the coins and gold we’d be carrying.

  After two or three days of talking and buying drinks I am finally able to find a half a dozen witless men to be my new crew. So I set sail for Limassol in the old cog to pick up our cargo of coins and gold for the Hospitallers.