My battered old cog does not tie up at the dock when I reach Limassol and my newly recruited crew, much to their dismay, is not allowed to go ashore to visit the local taverns and prostitutes. Instead, we take on water and supplies and chests full of rocks while my men and I wait quietly at anchor in the middle of the Limassol harbor.
We wait until our galleys board their crews and depart for Alexandria. At least Alexandria is where the galley crews have been told they are going - and they, of course, have bemoaned their fate every evening in the alehouses of Limassol for almost a week.
It isn’t until a few hours after my new crew and I watch the galleys finally leave for Alexandria that William comes out in a dinghy and brings me up to date on the plan and gives me my final instructions. Then my poorly crewed old cog quietly leaves the harbor bound for Acre with its imaginary cargo of gold and silver coins bound for the Hospitallers.
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The galleys that leave before my old cog are dangerously overloaded with sailors and fighting men when they row out of the harbor. But they aren’t overloaded for long. The men stop rowing and wait for my old cog just off Limassol.
When I reach the galleys they come along side and off load supplies and a huge crew of sailors and heavily armed archers and men at arms into my old cog - almost two hundred and fifty men and enough food and water for several weeks of sailing.
When they are all aboard I order the sails of my now greatly over-crewed cog hoisted and set out in the direction of Acre. The galleys and their now-skeleton crews do not come with us. They split up and each heads for a different port on the coast of the Holy Land to pick up passengers and parchments.
The galleys should do well. Their captains and sergeants have all been on at least two of our three previous passenger carrying voyages. They know what to do and have been closely instructed by Lord William and Bishop Thomas to make sure.
Aaron is in charge of the galley bound for Latika; Yoram the one heading for Acre to pick up more of the Hospitaller’s metal. Each of the others is under one of the archer sergeants; Henry’s is bound for Tartus, Phillip’s for Tripoli. And Lord William and Bishop Thomas? Why they stay in Limassol with George and the rest of the archers and hold their breaths along with everybody else who knows where the galleys are going and what the cog is doing.
Surely some of them will get through to the Holy Land and be able to return.
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The first pirate galley appears in the distance only a few hours after the galleys moved off towards the Holy Land with their skeleton crews. It is waiting for us and knows where to find us; it obviously has gotten word from its spies in Larnaca that we will be coming out of Limassol loaded with coins and gold for the Hospitaller Knights at Acre.
I quickly order the cog to turn to the south and run with the wind at its back in an effort to get away.
There is to be no escape. The pirate comes alongside and its grapples thump on to the cog’s deck as my crew dives through the deck hatch in a desperate effort to escape by hiding in the cargo hold. At least that’s what it looks like to the pirates’ lookout perched high on the galley’s mast.
The thuds of the pirate grapples hitting the cog’s deck results in me giving a loudly shouted command from where I’m hiding in the rear crews’ castle. I’m in there along with all the archers and sword and shield carrying men at arms that can be jammed in with me. Then everything happens at once.
The sailors on the galley side of the cog come out from under the old sails where they’ve been hiding and throw their own grapples. They throw many more than the pirates threw.
Each of our sailors quickly secures his grappling line and then scampers to the other side of the cog’s deck to get out of the way. At the same time archers and men at arms screaming their battle cries come out from under the sails where they’ve been hiding with the grapple throwers, pour out of the castles at each end of the cog, and dash up the slippery wooden steps from the old cog’s cargo hold.
We fall on the totally surprised and heavily outnumbered pirates before they even have time to cut their own grappling lines, let alone begin to cut any of ours. Most of them are downed by our archers before they can even begin to try to climb aboard the cog or cut the many grappling lines tying the two ships together.
Within seconds our men are climbing over the cog’s railing and dropping into the pirates’ galley to finish them off. Indeed that’s where our only fatality occurs. One of our men enthusiastically jumps over the cog’s railing and lands in the water – and sinks like a stone.
It’s all over very quickly. A few of the pirates try to escape by jumping down among the slaves chained to the benches on their galley’s lower rowing deck. They tried to hide among the slaves but quickly drop their swords and surrender when our archers draw down on them. The slaves don’t even have time to kill them.
A big brass key is quickly recovered from the body of one of the slave overseers and the slaves unchained. As they were being released I bellow out in English and French “are any of you from Britain or France?”
A highly excited Frenchman begins waving his arms and screaming in Occitan, a French dialect widely spoken in Normandy and England. He is the only slave that responds. The others look to be Moors and black Africans.
Within minutes the decks of the captured galley and the old cog are absolutely packed as the released slaves and the surviving pirates are brought on deck. The slaves are excited and shouting; the pirates morose and worried. There were splashes and screams and hysterically pleading men as the dead and wounded pirates are tossed into the sea.
“Prize crew into the galley and load food and water for two days,” I thunder over my shoulder as I peer into the lower deck and motion for the French speaking slave to come up and join me.
“Where are they from?” I ask the French slave with a gesture towards the last of surviving pirates as they are being pushed at sword point over the railing and into the sea.
“Tunis, that’s where the bastards come from, Your Excellency, Tunis.”
“And can you jabber the language of those slave fellas, the black’uns?”
“Aye, some of it.”
“Well then, jabber at those black buggers and let them know they’re free. They can stay with the galley as passengers and help our prize crew row it to Cyprus. Tell them that when they get there they can work for us on Cyprus for their food or they can go off on their own. You too – except you might want to sign on with us because we’ll be going home to England before the summer ends.”
I am pleased with how our plan worked out. And there is a bit more room on my cog now that about twenty of the crew are off for Cyprus with my prize. Even so, we’re still overloaded with men. But by God I’ve got a happy crew, and that includes me – the men will divide up two hundred silver coins for every galley we take; every sergeant and prize master gets a gold one; and I get three, by God.
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My lookouts up at the top of our main mast see several cogs in the distance during the next day, but they don’t see any more galleys until the following morning. Then a hail from one of the sailor men I’d sent up the mast reports three galleys passing from left to right in front of us. Almost immediately there is another shout from the lookout.
“They’ve seen us. They’re coming about. Looks to be three of them.”
“Battle Stations,” I roar. “Everyone get to your places. Battle Stations. Hurry Goddamn it. Hurry. Rudder men get the wind fair behind us.”
I watch from the forecastle as we come about to once again run before the wind and my grinning and cheerful men once again disappear under the sails along the railing and into their hidey holes in the cargo hold and in the deck castles. Within seconds the deck is empty and the lookout who’d seen them, a Portsmouth man who we’d signed on in Latika, has scrambled down to join the sailor men on the deck who’ve been told to act as if they are scared and didn’t know what to do.
I shout the lookout’s report to the men.
> “There are only three of the bastards, lads; regular size with two banks of oars; maybe forty oars a side and half of them pulled by slaves.” I don’t know that for sure, of course, but their oars are usually pulled by slaves, aren’t they?
Then I add a bit of explanation even though the men already know it.
“What that means, lads, is that we’ll outnumber the bastards at least two or three to one and surprise them as well. And remember, we want at least two of them to grapple us before we show ourselves. We’ll get more prize money that way. That’s why I’m going to wait as long as possible to give the word – so don’t nobody move until you hear me shout. Not even if some of the buggers are on the deck.”
And besides they’ll undoubtedly try to board us from both sides the way they did off Acre - so I might as well make the men think it’s my idea and part of my plan.
The men respond with a great cheer.
“Quiet now, lads, quiet,” I roar. “We want to surprise the buggers don’t we?”
“Climb back up, Charlie,” I order the Portsmouth man. “Give us a shout if you can see any more.”
Then I began to worry. What if they know how we used the merchants’ cog to take the two galleys off Alexandria? Then what will they do – lie off from us and shoot arrows? Maybe ram us? Send just send in one galley to see what happens? Should I let the first galley begin to board in order to give the second time to come alongside? My head is spinning.
A thought and a decision came to me out of the heavens thank you, Jesus just as the galleys got close enough for me to see that one of them, the one on our port side, looks to be a little closer than the other two.
The pirate galleys are still a good four or five miles off our port side when I call out the names of certain of the men on the deck and tell them to stop hiding under the sails and come out to join the sailors on deck as part of a little group of defenders. In a trice there’s about a dozen armed men along the deck railing on the port side. I even run out on the deck and push them into place where I want them.
As the designated men hurriedly run to their new places I loudly remind everyone, at least three times, that the first job of the swordsmen is to protect the grapple throwers and archers from boarders and the first job of the archers on the deck is to put an arrow into the lookouts on the pirates’ masts.
Hopefully seeing us in a defense line will cause one or both of the other galleys to come in at the same time in order to divide my little force and overwhelm it. At least that’s my new plan and by God it may be working.
It’s working by God! The lookout on the mast of the closest galley sees the line of men taking defensive positions along the deck railing and it slows as he begins waving some kind of signal to the other galleys - apparently a message telling them we intend to fight. And hopefully that they should come along side and join the battle.
I’ll never know what messages and warnings the pirate lookout sends before he drops to the galley’s deck with an arrow in his chest from an archer pretending to be one of our small band of deck defenders. But what happens next is that all three galleys try to come alongside the cog at the same time. They seem to know what they are doing; at the last moment their rowers ship their oars so that they do not shear off as our hulls collide.
I wait as long possible before I finally can’t control myself any longer and give the shout that springs the ambush. But it only works partially even though there are already pirates on the deck from the portside galley.
My sailors grapple the first galley quite solidly but almost miss the second because it isn’t quite close enough. Only one of our irons is thrown far enough to reach the second galley and connect.
But one grapple is enough. The grapple throwers who miss rush to help haul the second galley close enough so those who haven’t yet thrown are able to put more grapples on it before its oars begin to try to row again.
It all happens in a flash and this time there are a couple of snaps and crackles as some of the pirate oars break off as we haul it closer and closer until it bangs against the side of the cog.
The pirates on first galley are stunned and quickly overwhelmed when I finally give my great shout and my men pour out on to the cog’s deck to engage them. They are almost all down, mostly to our archers, by the time our grapple men have the second galley pulled up to us and lashed tightly against our hull.
But the battle with the men of the second pirate galley turns out to be an entirely different pot of eels from the relatively easy time we have with those of the first. The second galley seems to have more men and, much worse, they have enough time to get organized and meet our boarders as we jump down onto their deck.
It turns into a vicious hand to hand fight with lots of casualties on both sides. And I’m in it because I do something really daft for a sailorman - I vault over the cog’s rail with my boarders and jump down onto the galley’s deck – and immediately take a nasty sword slice in my leg because I don’t get my shield down fast enough as I land on the galley’s deck. So I end up just sitting there with my back against the galley’s deck railing and watching as the rest of my boarders pour past me and over me.
Every so often I raise my sword and lift my shield when the close quarters fighting comes near, but mainly I just sit there against the railing of the second gallery and try to hold the slash in my leg closed to stop the bleeding. “It was really stupid of me to go in with our boarders - I’m a fucking sailorman not a swordsman.”
It is a loud and crazy close quarters melee that seems to last forever with everyone screaming and shouting and people fighting everywhere with swords and pikes. The pirates don’t give any quarter and neither do we. And to make matters worse, much worse, the third galley dashes in and lashes itself to the second. Its crew came across to join the fight.
In the end it is our numbers, and particularly our archers, that make the difference. We lose some of our men killed and wounded; the pirates lose all of theirs. William was certainly right about the value of archers fighting on ships. I must remember to tell him how useful they are.
The only prisoners we take are a handful of pirates on the first galley. They tried to hide among the slaves on the lower bank of oars after we surprised them. It doesn’t do them any good - they get tossed over the side along with the pirates’ dead and wounded.
Perhaps killing all the pirates wasn’t God’s will – for that’s when the wind and waves suddenly change for the worst and we first see the black storm clouds rushing towards us.
I’m hoisted back onto the cog while I’m still holding my wound closed and loudly assigning men and sergeant captains for the three prize crews. The men I tell off rush to the prizes and are mostly able to board them despite the increasingly choppy waters.
It is little wonder they don’t take time to load water and supplies - the men see the approaching storm and even the least experienced landsman among them understands that they need to get their prizes moving if they are to keep the wind behind them and ride out the storm.
And that’s when I was forced to make a decision about a situation William and Thomas had never discussed with me – what to do if there’s a storm coming and I’m wounded. So is it or is it not time to follow my prizes and head for home? It isn’t an easy decision even though I’ve lost so many men to the pirates and prize crews.
If I keep going, what’s left of the cog’s depleted crew might well be defeated and lose the ship the next time we meet pirates. But I worried even so - will Lord William and Bishop Thomas be angry and demote me if I don’t continue and try to take more prizes?
Chapter Nineteen
“HAROLD’S RETURN”
There is a great shout when someone spots the two galleys coming briskly into the harbor on the favorable winds left over from yesterday’s big storm. The one in front looks more than a little worse for wear with part of its deck railing broken off.
Its damage is probably from yesterday’s big storm. I wonder whose galley it is?
Thomas and I gather up George and his two little friends and go down to the harbor to find out. The boys are delighted to take a break from learning their letters to go with us to the harbor. They dance along with us shouting, pointing, and throwing stones.
“I think it’s one of ours, another prize by God,” Thomas shouts as we reach the beach and begin hurrying along the track towards the dock.
“I recognize Little Matthew. See, he’s the tall one standing in the bow with the mooring line in his hands. He’s one of the men who went out in the cog with Harold Lewes. They must be prizes. Counting the one that came in yesterday before the storm that’s three for Harold already, by God.”
“Well I’ll be poxed. I think you’re right Thomas. Come on, boys, let’s go get the news.”
A few minutes later we hear the first of what promises to be many stories about the fierce battle between the Harold’s men in the cog and the three pirate galleys and the storm that hit them right after it.
“I wonder who the Saracen chief was that caused the third galley to come to his aid even though they knew they were heading into an ambush?”
That’s the question Thomas asks and Matthew little and the men of his prize crew can’t answer.
And where’s Harold and his fourth prize?
“Did any of you sight the cog or the third galley taken in the big battle? Are they coming in behind you?”
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We wait all that day and most of the next for Harold’s fourth prize to appear. It never does. What does limp into the harbor with a jury-rigged sail on what’s left of its broken mast is Harold’s storm battered old cog.
One look at the cog as it comes through the harbor entrance and everyone hurrying to the harbor to meet it instantly knows it is in serious trouble and its crew in desperate need of help.
There is no way to describe the cog except to say that it is a right proper mess. Its mast is broken off about ten feet above the deck and the captain’s castle in the bow has been crushed by a falling spar that still lies on top of 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 15