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) (7 page)

      
As usual, no one checks my wrists when I raise my arms over my head.  I consider saying something but decide not to; you never know do you?

       “Thank you, Bishop.  I’m sure you understand our need to be careful.  Please follow Father Alberto.  He will take you to the papal Chambers.  I will wait here and accompany you back to your men after your reception.  There is a door over there that goes to an outside alley if you need to relieve yourself before meeting the Holy Father.” 

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       Innocent III is a sturdy and surprisingly young man and this is not my first visit to deliver our tribute.  He rises with a smile as I enter and holds out his ring for me to kiss while gesturing with his other hand that I should put the pouch of coins on the table next to his chair. 

      
He probably needs the money.
 
Rumor has it that it took his family forty mule loads of gold to buy enough votes for his appointment.  But he’s canny, yes he is.  It’s no wonder they made the investment.  I wonder who loaned them all that gold and what they had to promise to get it?

       “
Bishop Thomas.  Welcome again and God’s blessing on you.  I hope my prayers for our pilgrims and refugees have been helpful?”

       “Oh, they have, Holy Father, they have indeed.  I’m sure of it.”

       “They tell me you have just been in Corsica.  What do you know of the attacks the orthodox priests and their followers made on the Templars and our own Christian people?”

       “There were problems in Corsica while we were there taking on food and water but I know of no such attacks on our people, Your Holiness.  If anything it was the other way around - although, of course, attacks on our people might have occurred afterwards without me knowing about them.” 
Damn.  What does he want to hear and what should I tell him?

       “I was told you stopped in Corsica on your way here carrying the tithes from the pilgrims that help support the church and were attacked by orthodox priests as were the Templars traveling with you.  Is that not true?”

       “Not exactly, Your Holiness. In fact, not at all - although it is true that while I was in Corsica there was an incident involving the Templars and an orthodox priest.  One of my men happened to be in the market buying supplies and saw the whole thing.”

       I tell the Holy Father the entire story including how it came to be that I was sailing with the Templars, not by choice but as a result of our obtaining the weapons abandoned in Acre by the Saracens King Richard murdered.  It takes a while because the Holy Father asks many questions about what happened in Corsica after the Templar killed the priest and what different people did and why.  He seems to be increasingly distressed at what he is hearing. 

       Then the Holy Father asks me to tell him what I know about the fighting that occurred last year at Constantinople between our Marines and the Byzantine troops.  He seems particularly surprised when I explain why the Emperor’s troops attacking our Marines occurred as a result of our response to a ransom demand by some of the emperor’s people – and that it had absolutely nothing to do with Emperor Alexios and the Orthodox Patriarch trying to prevent the ‘Poor Landless Sailors’ from helping to carry another Latin-led crusade to the Holy Land to free Jerusalem. 
Where could he have gotten such an idea?

       “Do you think,” His Holiness asks looking at me intently, “that the Byzantines are in league with the Saracens such that our crusaders must capture Constantinople before they can recapture Jerusalem?”

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       I have much to think about as I follow a young priest back to the entrance gate to rejoin Randolph and my waiting guards who are waiting patiently in the shade.  There is no doubt in my mind, and apparently not in the Pope’s mind either, that the Templars and the crusaders now on their way to the Holy Land are playing some sort of dangerous game.  But what is it and why?

      
Actually I think I know what is driving the crusaders and so does the Pope, although perhaps he doesn’t want to admit it – most crusaders don’t answer a Pope’s call and go on a crusade for religious purposes.  They go to find greener pastures in which to enrich themselves - and now they seem to be looking around for other cities to conquer because the early crusades proved there isn’t much gold in Jerusalem or viable land around it.  But what will the Pope do and the crusaders do and how should William and I respond?

                              
Chapter Six

       Within an hour of my returning to our depot a rotund little Cardinal with a big smile arrives with a parchment letter closed by with a papal seal. He hands it to me without a word.  It’s a message to me from the Pope and explains why Cardinal Bertoli has arrived at our door in the company of a large number of papal guards. 

       “In the name of God I command you and your fellow Englishmen to immediately carry Cardinal Bertoli to Venice on an important mission. It is a matter of importance and he must leave with you immediately as his mission and his life may otherwise be in great danger.” 
Venice?  That’s where the crusaders are gathering to go on the Pope’s new crusade.  And why is his life in danger?

       Bertoli explains that the Pope’s desire that we take him to Venice is in regards to the crusade the Pope has recently called to arms to recapture Jerusalem.  It will be the Fourth Crusade and second such effort to retake Jerusalem since it was lost to the Saracens due to the stupidity of the man who was then Jerusalem’s king, King Guy. 

       Cardinal Bertoli has come to me, he tells me, because he has an important letter from the Pope that must be delivered to the Pope’s ambassador to the crusaders as soon as possible.  The ambassador is a papal legate and a cardinal and, of course, an Italian.  His name is Peter of Capua.  The latest word is that Cardinal Capua is with the crusaders in either Venice or Pula.

Monk’s note:
Jeffrey and Thomas obviously sympathize with the Pope’s desire to recapture Jerusalem.  Their company of archers had gone crusading with Richard and was in the Holy Land when he got within twenty miles of Jerusalem and then decided to turn around and go home.  What was left of the Company of Archers weren’t with Richard at the time – months earlier they’d stopped serving with him and signed on to help Lord Edmund defend his fief outside of Damascus.  They did so after Richard murdered the Saracens who surrendered at Acre. 

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       Sailing all the way down the coast of Italy and back up the other side to Venice to deliver the Pope’s letter will take many days – but not as many days as it would have taken Cardinal Bertoli to travel on a mule all the way to Venice overland or to travel overland across Italy and catch a ship bound for Venice from one of the Italian ports on the Adriatic Sea. 

       There is no doubt about it - sailing from Rome in a well manned galley is the fastest way for Cardinal Bertoli to get to Venice and deliver the Pope’s letter.

       Cardinal Bertoli and I talk a lot during the voyage.  According to the cardinal, the crusade Pope Innocent has called, the fourth crusade as it’s now being called, will be more like Richard’s almost successful third crusade than the first two.  It will go to the Holy Land by sea from Venice via Egypt and Acre instead of marching overland from Constantinople along the increasingly dangerous and Moslem dominated route the first two crusades traveled. 

       According to the cardinal, the Fourth Crusade is leaving from Venice only because the elderly and now-blind Doge who rules seafaring Venice is the only one willing to provide enough ships and galleys to carry the crusaders to a staging area in Egypt and then on to Acre.  Acre is important because it is the port of Jerusalem and one of the few places in the Holy Land still held by Christians – the Templar knights.

       The crusaders, and thus the Pope because he’s the one who called for the crusade and wants it to succeed, have a problem.  It is that no state except Venice has enough sailors and cargo ships to carry the crusaders to Egypt and the Holy Land and is also willing to do so - and the crusaders don’t have sufficient coins to pay the Venetians enough to even cover their expenses. 

       Although no one realizes it yet, Cornwall could carry many of the crusaders to Acre if we wanted to do so.  We’ve taken so many galleys off the Moors that we have as many or more galleys than the Venetians – but we don’t want to carry them for two reasons.  First, because we know how much trouble crusaders can be and because our galleys can earn more coins carrying the refugees and parchments that will result from the fighting; second, because everyone would then know how strong we are and we’re still not strong enough.

       Providing one or two galleys for the Pope or King John is fine and won’t reveal the strength of our ships and Marines or cut deeply into our revenues; providing more than that is not fine – helping Christian religious bigots take Jerusalem from the Moslem religious bigots who now hold it is not one of our goals. 

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       Cardinal Bertoli wants to sail as quickly as possible.  Word has reached Rome that the Venetian ruler, the Doge, has suggested a way by which the crusaders can get the money they need to pay for their transportation to the Holy Land - by collecting the taxes and fees Venice claims it is due from Zara and several smaller Adriatic port cities that broke away from Venice a few years ago and aligned themselves with the Kingdom of Hungary.

       It seems the Venetians have “contributed” those revenues to the crusade and are offering to carry the crusaders to the Adriatic ports to collect them, by force if necessary - so the crusaders can pay for their transportation to Egypt and from there to Jerusalem’s port of Acre which is still being held by the Templars.

       This proposal of the Venetians is a problem for the Pope, according to Bertoli, because Zara and the other Adriatic port cities are Christian and Innocent III does not want “his” crusade to cause any more fighting among Christians.  As a result Bertoli is carrying an important letter from the Pope to Cardinal Peter of Capua, the man who is with the crusaders as the Pope’s legate.  It instructs Cardinal Capua to inform the crusaders that His Holiness will excommunicate any crusader who attacks his fellow Christians. 

       “Unfortunately,” Bertoli says with a great sigh and a shrug of resignation, “what the Pope’s letter doesn’t do is tell the crusaders how they are to get the money they need to hire ships needed to get themselves, and particularly their horses, to the Holy Land.”

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       We sail immediately from Rome and go all the way around the boot of Italy and back up the other side to Venice.  There is good news when we arrive in Venice and Cardinal Bertoli is visibly relieved when we hear it. 

       It seems that although some of the crusaders have sailed for the Adriatic ports to begin collecting the back taxes Venice claims it is owed, most of them are still in Venice - they have not yet sailed off to threaten or attack the Christian ports in an effort to collect the taxes Venice says it will contribute to the crusade.

       There is other good news - the Pope’s legate, his ambassador to the crusaders, is not in Venice to receive the Pope’s letter.  Cardinal Peter of Capua sailed for Pula and various other port cities on the Adriatic three days earlier to seek their voluntary payment of the uncollected taxes Venice has donated to the crusade.  He has gone to ask them to voluntarily help pay for the crusaders’ transportation in order to avoid the shedding of Christian blood.  His departure, of course, is quite inconvenient because it means we’ll have to carry Bertoli to Pula or elsewhere to deliver the Pope’s letter;

       What we don’t know, and no one in Venice tells us when we arrive, is that someone in Rome has betrayed the Pope by sending a galloper across Italy to catch a galley at Pescara - and he has gotten to Venice ahead of us with a parchment warning the Venetians and crusaders about the Pope’s letter.   

        For the Venetians the issue is simple - they want the money the crusaders have agreed to pay them to be carried to Egypt and the Holy Land - and they want the crusaders to get it by teaching Zara and the other ports a lesson on Venice’s behalf.  

       We, of course, know nothing of any of this when we sail our heavily loaded galley out of Venice in pursuit of Pope’s legate - we’re following the Cardinal Capua to Zara not knowing that the Venetian galleys leaving the harbor at the same time we do have been ordered to destroy us so the Pope’s letter is never delivered.

                            Chapter Seven

       Venice is a large and important city and cargo ships and galleys have been coming and going from Venice’s harbor ever since we arrived in Venice and Cardinal Bertoli hurried off to the legate’s residence with an escort of guards from Jeffrey’s Marines.  The Cardinal’s rapid return less than an hour later results in Jeffrey recalling his disappointed men from the local taverns and whorehouses and speeding up our taking on of water and supplies.

      
I’m not at all happy about having to leave to go someplace else and neither are the Marines – I was looking forward to a cup of wine one of the taverns I’d heard about and then going home.  I’ve already been away from George and the boys longer than I expected.