Archers and Crusaders: Historical fiction: Novel of Medieval Warfare by Marines, Navy sailors, and Templar knights in the Middle Ages during England's ... (The English Archers Saga Book 6) (4 page)

       Where we differ from the Templars and Hospitallers is that we make a real effort to conceal the extent to which we are accumulating coins and power whereas they’re like the Pope and king – they flaunt their wealth and power to keep the people cowed.  We’re not like that and deliberately so; we who are ‘poor landless sailors’ don’t make any effort to acquire land or solicit donations except from travelers for the Pope’s prayers; they do both and rather aggressively. 

       Indeed, last year we signed Hathersage over to the Templars when old Leslie died and his son was deaded in France fighting for King Richard.  Our only price was thirty brood mares and our only condition was that Hathersage keep sending us three young brood mares each year and a handful of acceptable young recruits – which is all we ever wanted from Derbyshire in the first place.  Having isolated fiefs scattered around England is not part of our plan for George’s future and the future of our people.

     
Our desire to stay out of sight and mind in England does not mean we don’t need or hold property.  To the contrary, the main reason we’re in London is because we need to station someone here to represent us - which means we need some kind of a depot where he can safely live and meet people to do our business and protect our coins.  Our problem about establishing such a depot, as always, is that an appropriate place near the docks is always easier to find than a dependable man to live in it who knows how to read and do sums.  We inevitably end sending a dependable illiterate and hiring a scribe. 
Which, if we employ a local scribe or a drinker, means the local thieves are likely to know when we take in coins and where in the depot we hide them.

       “Well your Eminence, what do you think?  It’s fine isn’t it?”

      What Freddy’s friend Tommy is asking me about is a rather rundown shop space with a rickety ladder going up through a trap door to a room that can be used as a living quarters above the shop.  It’s located about two blocks from Freddy’s stables and three blocks from the Long Dock where our galleys are moored.

      “I don’t know, Tommy, it’s in bad shape isn’t it?” 

      
Actually it’s perfect for our depot both because it makes us look poor and it will look like a palace to one of our older men who has spent most of his life sleeping on the ground or on a rowing bench.  William will be pleased when he sees it even though we’ll have to do a lot of work to strengthen all of its doors both inside and out.  Later we’ll find a second place nearby that we can use as an escape house and dig a tunnel to it.

@@@@@

       It’s once again raining in London on the next day when we walk from our galleys for another look at the empty storefront.  According to Tommy it was a linen merchant’s shop until its owner and his children died of the sweating sickness last summer. 

        We all crowd into the little room and the more we look at it the more we like it.  Ninety four silver coins and it’s ours forever.  William digs into the purse he is carrying and we pay it on the spot.  He hands it to an anxious and obviously relieved older man who swears he is the current owner as the father and only heir of the dead merchant.  The seller makes his mark on a parchment and accepts the coins as a beaming Tommy stands by.

      
It is understood by everyone that if the old man isn’t the true owner Tommy himself will return our coins and whatever more we require for our trouble - or lose his head most painfully.

       Peter and a handful of his men will remain in London to buy horses and start the construction we’ll require if our new property is to be a permanent depot.  We’ll put a new wall across the back of the room after we get the tunnel started.  Then someone who is upstairs and hears robbers or enemies will be able to climb down into either the main shop or into the new little room in the back where the escape tunnel will begin. 
I wonder if we have any carpenters and miners among our men who’d like to spend a few months in London?

       “William, do you and Peter have anyone in mind for our agent in London?”

@@@@@

       Peter and his Marines will stay here to supervise the work on our new depot and guard the place until a galley from Cornwall returns with whatever men are needed to take their places and complete the work.  When the replacements arrive Peter will lead his men to Hathersage and then on through Devon to Cornwall with our new brood mares, fillies, and wagons. 

      
We’ve now got an entire company of what William and the men are starting to call our “Horse Marines.”  Many and perhaps all of Peter’s men and his two sergeants are from that company.  Several dozen of them and a smith came with us; they are the Marines Peter will lead overland to Cornwall. 

       Having companies of highly trained Marines capable of moving quickly from place to place on horseback and in wagons is part of our long term plan for George’s future - and the reason we’ve been buying brood mares and fillies. Most men on horseback these days are either lightly armored cavalry who ride their horses into battle waving swords or heavily armored knights who ride into battle on the great huge warhorses called destriers, the horses the knights ride in their tournaments.  Neither is much of a match for our Marines carrying long bows, pikes, and daggers, and certainly not when our Marines fight and walk in step together as heavy infantry.

       The problem, of course, is getting heavy infantry and their weapons to where they are needed most for the fighting – and that’s why we are acquiring horses and beginning to train some of our Marines to ride and care for them as well as to fight on both land and sea. We’re not old fashioned and stuck in the past like the King and his knights and lords - our horses are for transportation, not for riding into battle.

       Keep a couple of steps ahead of the bastards by being better armed and better prepared when we fight is what William always says - and that’s what George and the boys are being learned in addition to their sums and scribing.

                                     Chapter Four

       It’s time to leave.  Peter and those of his men who are going on to Cornwall with the horses stand on the dock and wave as the fog begins to lift and Harold’s galley with William and the boys on board slowly rows off - to thread its way through the mass of anchored ships in the harbor and begin its long run down the channel to Cornwall. 

       We’re not taking any chances in case the weather turns and it takes them longer than expected to reach Cornwall and we to reach Lisbon – both holds are filled with water skins and flour barrels and both decks are covered with livestock and firewood.  The decks are so covered with supplies that until some are eaten away the men will have to climb over a struggling and noisy mass of chickens and living and dead sheep to get to the shite nests hanging over the very rear of each galley. 

      
Every inch of available deck is covered because we have to spread the supplies out; if we stack them too high the galley will be top heavy and might go over in a storm.  The heaviest supplies, such as the barrels filled with water and flour, of course, go in the deepest part of our not very deep cargo hold to help hold the ship down in the water so it doesn’t roll over.

       Jeffrey orders our galley to cast off its lines and begin moving at the same time as Harold’s galley.  We’ll follow William and Harold and the boys part of the way down the channel but then veer off for my annual long spring voyage to Rome to pay the Pope via Lisbon, Palma, and Corsica.     

       I’m now in Jeffrey’s galley because Harold is always the captain whenever George is traveling.  That’s why I traveled here on Harold’s galley with George and the boys and why, as soon as we arrived in London, I traded places with William and switched my bedding and chamber pot to Jeffrey’s galley - and William had his moved to be with the boys in the rear castle of Harold’s castle. 

       I’m in no particular hurry to get to the coins to the Pope and we’ve got two full seventy man companies of Marines on board Jeffrey’s galley as rowers - so the coins and I should be quite safe unless the weather catches us out.  And, of course, at each port where we stop for water and supplies I’ll be asking around for archers to recruit as potential Marines and for boys who might be capable of learning to scribe and sum.  If I find any I’ll either load them on board or arrange to collect them on my way back to Cornwall next month.

@@@@@

       Lisbon’s port is a beehive of activity.  The city the port serves is a huge sprawling place many times larger than London, and the size of its busy port certainly reflects it.  If anything, Lisbon’s port seems even busier this year than it was when I was here last year on my annual trip to Rome to give the Pope his share of the pilgrims’ and refugees’ prayer coins.  William stopped here for water and supplies on his way home to Cornwall earlier this year and said the same thing about it. 

      
I wonder why the city is booming? Perhaps the fighting in the interior between the Moslems and Christians is driving people into the city.  That they would come here is a bit surprising since it’s only been a dozen or so years since a big force of Arab pirates raided Lisbon and took off more than three thousand Christian and Jewish women and children to sell as slaves and use as wives.

       A few minutes after we tie up Jeffrey and I are in the harbormaster’s office paying our fee for the right to tie up to the dock for the next seven days.  I’m wearing my white tunic with six stripes over my long chain mail shirt; Jeffrey’s a Marine and his tunic has four stripes as the galley’s sergeant captain.  He’s not wearing chain mail even though he has some in our little ship’s castle.  I always wear mine and I always wear my wrist knives under my robe. 
I’ve had to use them too many times, haven’t I?

       The harbormaster twice asks us what we are bringing into the city; he seems quite disappointed that we are neither loading nor unloading cargo.  His disappointment is understandable as I pay our modest fee for merely docking to pick up water and supplies - he undoubtedly gets a cut of the taxes and fees he collects.

       Then Jeffrey and I are truly surprised when the door bangs open and Martin Archer bustles into the harbormaster’s office with a big smile on his face and his hands outstretched to shake ours and pound our backs.  He’s wearing a rather fancy shirt and skirt instead of a simple Marine tunic with the five stripes of a senior sergeant that is usually worn by all the original archers.

      
Martin relocated last year from Launceston to be our agent in Lisbon with a learned scribe from Cambridge to read and write his parchments and tell his lies as required.  It seems that one of the boys who always seem to be hanging around on the docks we visit had seen us tie up and run to get him.
 

       Martin shows up so quickly that we don’t even have to hire someone to show us the way to our company depot north of the dock, the depot William bought several years ago with some of the coins we got for the cargo ships he took out of Tunis on our second raid. 

      
It is quite encouraging that Martin shows up so quickly.  It suggests he’s got watchers on the dock to report arriving ships and steer potential travelers and cargos to us.  Could it be that we misjudged him?  William will be pleased when he hears.

       Martin’s been here for about a year.  He came from Launceston and, although he doesn’t know it, he’s here because we decided Launceston needed to be in more dependable hands - because it is our first and most important barrier against any hostile forces and clergy coming against Cornwall by land. 

       Martin is honest and loyal but he’s slow; truth be told, we were concerned that Martin would dither and sit on his hands instead of holding the Tamar River ford or he’d fall for some ruse and be gulled into letting an enemy into Launceston Castle.
 

       William and I know the castle is vulnerable and the ford important because we gulled our way into Launceston ourselves and our archers fought and killed Cornell at the ford when he came against us.  The ford’s also where the Bishop of Cornwall and Devon crossed into Cornwall to help Henry FitzCount seize and torture us at Launceston - and instead got himself gutted and killed for his trouble when FitzCount and his men thought we were unarmed because they couldn’t see the wrist knives under our tunics. 

       It is truly surprising that the nobles, and the bishops who are usually some noble’s younger son, are so stupid as to think someone born a serf would only use the weapons the nobles know to use and only fight as the nobles know to fight.  It bodes well for young George and my students.

@@@@@

       
Martin, Jeffrey, and I walk to our Lisbon depot as soon as I finish settling with the harbormaster for a small dockage fee and the modest bribe Martin takes me aside and suggests as appropriate. 

       Our depot is fairly well located as it is an area of metal workers and somewhat close to both the harbor and Lisbon’s great market.  It consists of a very small and very muddy walled courtyard without a single tree and a house with one room downstairs which was once used as a workshop and a second room upstairs where our treasure chests are kept and Martin sleeps.  He reaches it by climbing a ladder that can be pulled up at night and in times of danger. 

       The downstairs room is where our Marines sleep and visitors meet with Martin and his scribe to arrange for passages and money orders and the shipment of cargos and messages.  Martin’s scribe has a quiet tented place in one of the downstairs corners.  I don’t remember his name.