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) Read online

  Archer Book Six

  Archers and the Crusaders

  PREFACE

  This is the sixth of the great medieval tales taken from the parchments written by an unknown monk of the Priory of St. Frideswide in Oxford. That’s the monastery Cardinal Wolsey dissolved and Henry the Eighth subsequently re-founded as the College of Christ Church after he broke with Rome in order to divorce his wife and wed the Boleyn girl.

  The parchments with the monk’s writings were found some years ago in a trunk under a pile of rubble in the basement of Oxford’s Bodleian library. The monk’s assignment, as he describes it in his own hand, is to piece together personal stories from what’s left of some earlier parchments and form them into one great history of the kingdom.

  Whoever commissioned the history wants something similar to that which the great Livy wrote for Rome so many years ago with both its use of the current idiom to make it more readable and its emphasis both on what actually happened and what everyone is actually thinking when they are doing and saying whatever it is that they are doing and saying.

  Among the problems the monk says he has to overcome, of course, is that the exciting tales in the earlier parchments contain so many surprises and often have missing parts where the mice have eaten them.

  Another problem is that the parchments are written in various languages. Some are written in Latin and Greek while others are in various versions of what is now called Middle English and Old French – which means he must both piece them together and rewrite them into today’s English just as Livy did for Rome when the Latin spoken by the city’s religious leaders and aristocracy gave way to the Italian spoken elsewhere in the civilized world.

  What follows is mostly taken from the writings of the scribe Yoram of Damascus. Almost all of what survived of Yoram’s writings are related to his friend, William, the Yorkshire serf who rose as a result of deaths in its ranks to become the captain of what was left of a company of English archers.

  One hundred and ninety two archers were in the company when it left to go crusading with King Richard; William ended up captaining the company and its 18 survivors during their desperate efforts to return to England years later.

  The position of the Church is that the changes and excitement William and his surviving archers caused in England and elsewhere with their newfangled longbows and modified Swiss pikes are God’s Will. The unknown monk is not so sure. According to him, ambitious men and the strong arms of the Marine archers are a much more likely explanation.

  This particular tale, the sixth the unknown monk has completed and illustrated, is a combination of the various parchments the monk and his assistants, presumably other monks, have been able to translate and piece together. It describes the lives and experiences of William and his priestly older brother Thomas and their company of archers in the fateful years 1199 to 1201. Those are the years following King Richard’s death when King John, as Richard’s successor, goes off on yet another campaign to reclaim what he believes to be his rightful possessions in France as the new Duke of Normandy.

  It’s an important tale for a very different and perhaps even more significant reason although it is less well known – it continues the story of the early days of what will spread across the world to become one of the modern world’s most fearsome soldiers, the English archers who will fight so well against the French, and the most elite and highly trained archers of them all, the Marines who will help the kingdom conquer much of the rest of the world.

  This then is the latest chapter in the tale of how a former serf, the itinerant priest who took him crusading, and a handful of veteran archers brought the Marines into being - and how they change the world by allowing a relative handful of English speaking fighting men to dominate the seas and civilize the lands on which they are unleashed - because they are the very first soldiers to be trained to fight both on land and at sea.

  What the monk’s translations continue to make obvious is that life in medieval England is short and brutal and crude no matter who you are or how you pray.

  What causes the events in this tale and leads to the creation of the Marines begins in 1192 when Richard is shipwrecked on his way home from his crusade. Leopold of Austria captures the shipwrecked Richard and sells him a few months later to the German Emperor of what the Germans began calling “the Holy Roman Empire.”

  In 1193 the German Emperor, following the custom of the day, offers to free Richard in exchange for a huge ransom of sixty five thousand pounds of silver. Some of Richard’s supporters and vassals, particularly those in France who won’t be taxed to pay the ransom, consider it a harsh but just amount, particularly since Richard himself levied a similar ransom on the Saracens; those in England whom the French nobles and the King’s mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, want to tax to pay it are neither so sure nor very happy.

  Severe complications and upheaval result in England when Richard’s French mother and his French supporters attempt to levy huge taxes on England to raise the ransom money. It occurs because Richard’s estranged and rebellious younger brother, the landless Prince John, who has been reigning in England ever since Richard left for his crusade, tries to prevent the money for Richard’s ransom from being collected – so John can continue on the throne. The result, according to the parchments the unknown monk has translated and pieced together, is great upheaval and conflict throughout the land.

  Normally William and the survivors of his original company of archers would not have been involved. They are now living and training their men in Cornwall, a region so isolated from the rest of England and so poor that even the Romans did not bother to extend their road system beyond Exeter, forty miles short of the River Tamar where Cornwall begins.

  However, as explained in the five Livy-like histories of England the monk has already released, William and the survivors of his company of archers initially landed in Cornwall to inform Lord Edmund’s wife of his death in battle in the Holy Land – though not the actual details of his death which had been by William’s own hand as a soldier’s mercy after Lord Edmund’s grievous wounding by the Saracens.

  William, a serf until his priestly older brother Thomas left the monastery to rescue him and take him crusading as an archer, lands in Cornwall as the captain of the company’s few surviving archers and somewhat of a lord as a result of a patent of nobility his priestly brother purchased for him a few months earlier from the king of Cyprus - with some of the coins William had taken from the Bishop of Damascus when the bishop died with a knife in his hand while trying to murder Thomas so he could have all of Edmund’s coins for himself and use them to buy a high church position in Rome from the Pope.

  Baldwin, the Earl of poverty stricken Cornwall, hears about Edmund’s death and makes the fatal mistake of trying to add Edmund’s lands and very small revenues to his own. Unfortunately for Baldwin, he arrives at Edmund’s small and inadequate Trematon Castle when Thomas, the archer company’s priest and William’s older brother, is visiting to inform Edmund’s widow of his death. That’s when the Earl and his brother discover the fearsome power of the new English longbows wielded by trained archers – by promptly getting themselves and most of the handful of other knights Cornwall is able to support killed despite the chain mail shirts they are wearing as armor.

  William and Thomas immediately decide to
use Cornwall’s mostly idle and unproductive lands as a safe place to raise and educate William’s young son George for whom they have great plans. They also want it to use as a training base and supply depot for what they and their veteran archers have come to call themselves - “Marines” – the longbow equipped archers who are trained to fight on both land and sea and whose active duty companies are presently deployed to the Holy Land on Williams galleys and at various depots.

  After they kill the Earl and his knights Thomas rushes to London to find England’s ruler, Prince John, and buy the nearly worthless but suddenly vacant Cornwall earldom for William. It isn’t that William particularly wants or needs the title; it’s that he and Thomas don’t want someone else getting it and showing up and having to be killed or “disappeared” because he starts trying to tell them what to do and not do.

  What Thomas does not find out when he arrives in London and buys the title is that a minor nobleman from Derbyshire claiming to be a distant relative of Baldwin’s is similarly buying the earldom from King Richard’ chamberlain who accepts his coins to help pay for Richard’s ransom.

  When Richard is finally ransomed and returns to England 1194 he ends up deciding to let William and the other claimant, Lord Cornell, fight it out so that “God’s will” determines the rightful earl. Richard doesn’t care much who holds the title because Cornwall has so little value as a source of revenues.

  God smiles on William when Cornell’s army falls apart after Cornell gets himself killed in a skirmish at the River Tamar as he tries to lead his men into Cornwall. News travels slowly so that several weeks later, long after Cornell is dead, Thomas is in Derbyshire leading a company of itinerant Scotch mercenaries against Cornell’s fief at Hathersage Castle. Fortunately word of Cornell’s death comes in time to avoid any serious losses and an increasingly anxious Thomas returns to Cornwall leaving a Scottish mercenary captain named Leslie and his son to hold Hathersage as William’s vassals.

  Thomas quickly agrees to Leslie because he is anxious to return to George and the school he set up to educate George and a few other young boys to scribe and sum as part of their plan to provide the type of men they think will be needed for George’s future.

  This is how the monk pieces together the various parchment stories and personal recollections of what happens to William and the Marines of the company of archers after they kill Cornell and all but three of the gentry on Cornwall’s lands perish with him.

  Chapter One

  We get the word when Simon’s galley comes in from London with a cargo of archer recruits and bolts of linen for our tailors to make into tunics. King Richard is dead of being a fool – he got too close to a castle wall he and his men were attacking for no good reason and a boy got him with a crossbow.

  Richard’s brother John is to replace him and Thomas and I are trying to decide whether or not to go to London for John’s crowning as our new king. We are thinking about taking my son George and half a dozen or so of the older boys in Thomas’ school – and two galleys of our best men in case there is a problem or misunderstanding in London such that we have to kill people.

  As you might imagine, we have quite a debate about going. Thomas thinks we should go and I’m not so sure.

  “London is too big to ignore any longer. We need our own representative and little citadel in London and George will certainly need one there when he grows up. That means we’ll have to go to London sooner or later to begin making arrangements for an agent to represent us and finding him a safe place where he can live and our coins will be safe - so we might as well go sooner and kill two or three ducks with one stone.”

  I just look at my priestly brother without saying a word. So he ploughs on without stopping as he always does when he’s made up his mind.

  “If we go now, George and the boys can see the King getting his crown. Then you can bring George and the boys back to Cornwall and I can go on to Rome with the Pope’s share of the coins we took off last year’s refugees and pilgrims for the Pope’s prayers.”

  I’m still not so sure.

  “I’m not so sure it’s wise to go and be seen and remind the King and what’s his name, that arrogant new Papal Nuncio of the Pope’s, that we’re here, I’m not so sure at all. It will remind John and the Pope’s arse of a priest that we’re here.”

  “Nonsense, you’re going to be in Cornwall all the rest of the summer and neither of us needs to be here for the next couple of weeks to oversee the training of the apprentice Marines. The same applies to the construction work on the new curtain walls going up at Restormel and Launceston. Henry is here and he can look after the men’s training and the construction work.”

  I’m in Cornwall because several years ago I came to my senses and began spending winters on Cyprus and in the Holy Land and summers in England instead of the other way around as I first did. Thomas and Helen and the children are always here at Restormel except for Thomas’ annual trip to Rome to pay the Pope his share of the coins the refugees and pilgrims contribute for the Pope’s prayers for their safety while they are on our galleys. It’s amazing how many of our passengers throw in coins when we pass the bucket; it’s also amazing how few of those coins reach the Pope. Oh well, it works and everyone who makes it safely is satisfied – and those who don’t survive the trip are dead and can’t complain.

  I’m opposed to going to London because I only just got back from the Holy Land ports and Cyprus about a month ago and because we want Cornwall to be forgotten when the King and the Pope start thinking about raising money for their wars. John, the damn fool, is already rumored to be thinking about another campaign in France even though most of his barons are said to be opposed to the idea – it’s said the Barons are afraid, and rightly so, that they’ll be taxed to pay for it.

  The barons are also afraid that if they answer the King’s call and go off to war their neighbors who pay the King’s scutage fee to buy out of serving in the campaign will try to take over some of their lands and women and serfs while they’re gone - which will also surely happen if they get themselves killed or die of the poxes that seem to afflict soldiers when they don’t wear the proper garlic cloves and say the proper prayers. That’s what happened to poor Lord Edmund those many years ago and resulted in us being here in Cornwall.

  Thomas thinks we have nothing to fear from our new King because Cornwall is so inconsequential to him because it’s so poor and its revenues so small. According to Thomas, the King knows Cornwall can only support a few knightly fiefs so why would he even bother with us?

  Moreover, as Thomas points out to me with a great deal of satisfaction in his voice after he takes a sip of his morning bowl of ale, we’re in the king’s pleasure - we were not allied with the nobles who supported Richard against John when John tried to stay on the throne. To the contrary, we bought the earldom and Cornwall’s six meager fiefs from John himself instead of Richard.

  “We will,” Thomas concludes with a great deal of satisfaction after a big gulp of ale and a little belch, “be safe if we go to London for the coronation.”

  Of course, Cornwall does have tin mines and tin refineries but they belong to the king so he already gets all their very substantial revenues. It also has some monasteries and church lands which aren’t valuable to anyone because their revenues go to the church. Other than that Cornwall is mostly fishermen and quite poor – so poor even the Romans didn’t bother to build a road to it. They stopped in Exeter forty miles from where Cornwall begins at the River Tamar.

  In the end Thomas and I decide to go to London for the ceremony. We’re mostly going because Thomas thinks it’s time for George and the older boys in Thomas’ school to see London. He wants them to see what it’s like to live in a city that is so huge that it has three castles and almost 25,000 people live in it. That’s the argument that tips the balance.

  Helen does not want to go because of the new baby. She’ll stay in Cornwall with Ann and our two little ones. Ann being the sister Helen’s moth
er sent to me from Beirut and Helen sent to my bed when she was pregnant. Now, of course, they’re both pregnant – and they’re both talking about how much I would enjoy being in Cyprus this coming winter with their youngest sister to care for me so they can stay in Cornwall and care for the new children.

  @@@@@

  Thomas and the six boys are on Harold’s galley and sleeping in hammocks in the bigger deck castle in the stern where the crew usually sleeps. Ranulph, the assistant master of Thomas’ school, is schooling the younger boys while Thomas is off to London and Rome. Ranulph’s the scribe Thomas found in Rome to replace Angelo Priestly when he and two of Thomas’ boys caught the sweating sickness and died two summers ago.

  Harold’s sailors are undoubtedly unhappy about giving up their shipboard castle to Thomas and the boys. But they’re used to sleeping rough and they’ll survive - they’ve taken an old leather sail and used it to make a comfy shelter for themselves back by where the rudder men steer the galley.

  I myself am traveling to London on Simon’s galley with Peter Sergeant. We three are sharing its little castle up at the front of the galley. Each of our ships has about one hundred and thirty men on board – ten to twelve sailors and one hundred and twenty or so of our best Marine archers. The Marines sleep huddled together on and around their rowing benches under leather rain skins.

  Peter is one of my lieutenants now with six black stripes on the front and back of his linen tunic. When Thomas puts aside his bishop’s robes and wears his tunic he also has six stripes as do Henry, Harold, and Yoram who commands in Cyprus. Our most senior sergeants, which includes all the survivors of our original company of archers, have five stripes, ships’ captains four, regular sergeants three, chosen men two, fully trained Marines one; and apprentice Marines and everyone else none.

  We’re a formidable force as we set out to row for London. Everyone except the handful of sailors on each galley is a fully trained Marine armed with a long bow and one of Brian’s Swiss pikes with a blade and hooks. And, of course, each of the galleys has its usual complement of one hundred and sixty swords and ships’ shields for each of us to carry when we’re ashore.