The Archer's Gold: Medieval Military fiction: A Novel about Wars, Knights, Pirates, and Crusaders in The Years of the Feudal Middle Ages of William Marshall ... (The Company of English Archers Book 7) (10 page)

      
In the morning, as soon as the sun comes up, I leave Thomas and Rolf snoring in the little forecastle where we'd spent the night and walk bleary eyed off the ship to begin looking for my mother. 

       The first thing I do is wake a horse cart driver sleeping at the end of the dock and tell him where I want to go and what I was willing to pay him.  He nods without saying a single word, picks up his whip, and flicks it on the arse of the old gray horse standing stoically in front of the cart. 

       It's a gelding like most in the cart trade.

       I can afford to arrive in my old neighborhood in a horse cart so that's what I'm going to do.  And it isn't just for show and to impress the people who used to look down on me; it's really quite a ways from here at the dock to where my mum used to sell chestnuts after she got too old to work in the old Blue Bell ale house.

       My father, mum used to say before I ran off for an archer, was a fishmonger who died of the sweating pox right after I was born.

       We clattered and clopped through the waking streets until I entered what used to be my old neighborhood.  Here's where I'd grown up and lived until I ran off when my mum took up with a draper.

       "Over there," I tell the horse cart driver, "let me out over there."

       My old street looks the same but somehow it's not the same as I remember.  The houses with their stalls opening on to the street still lean this way and that and their first floors still hang out over the street to block the sun.  But the stalls on the street and the handful of people on the street are all different than I remember from more than ten years ago. 

       Actually, it is truly different than I remember.  There are even some strange looking people about wearing foreign looking clothes. 
My God, everything's changed.

       The neighborhood is just coming alive as I give the driver a couple of small coppers and carefully climb out of the cart so as not to step in pile of shite. 

       A couple of ragged men who'd obviously spent the night sleeping in one of the doorways stand up and watch as I hand the driver his coin.  My light brown tunic with its six black stripes across the front and back is new to them.  They don't know what to make of it or of me.

       "Do either of you know old Mary who used to have a barrow selling chestnuts hereabouts?"

      "No your worship, we never done.  From around here was she?" 
Worship? They think I'm some kind of official?

       All day long I talked to people as I went from stall to stall along the street where ma used to sell chestnuts off a cart.  Then I tried asking on the streets around it.  Nothing.  No one remembered her, not even at the Blue Bell. 

       Finally I saw an old hag hobble down the street and asked her.

       "Aye, I remembers Old Mary and her cart.  She was took off years ago by the coughing pox.  Don't know what happened to her cart.  Probably took by one of the tinkers.  They was big here for a few years.  Scots they all was, weren't they?"

@@@@@

      
It's a miracle I was able to get back to the stables alive. I was so drunk that I couldn't even remember where I'd been.  And although I didn't know it at the time, my knife was gone and so was my purse and shoes. 

      Thomas told me later that he watched me stagger in and had to grab my arm to keep me from falling while he lead me to an empty tack room.  I sort of remember Thomas pushing me to the floor and telling me to lay down and rest. 

       I tried to do what Thomas said but everything was spinning in a big circle so fast that I got dizzy and had to stand up.

      That's pretty much all I can remember until the next morning when all of a sudden I felt someone kicking my leg to wake me.  It was Thomas and he was holding something out to me.

       "Here's a dead man's tunic from the galley's stores.  Strip yours off and put it on.  You can wear the tunic of a chosen man for a while we get the vomit and shite washed off yours.  Freddy says there's a draper nearby whose wife is a washer woman; he'll have one of his boys run yours there for a washing."

       Thomas waited while I slipped out of my foul clothes and put on my new tunic.  It took a while because my head hurt most horrible and my new tunic is much too small.  

       According to Thomas, I can keep it for as long as I like because its former owner died real sudden like on the way to Cornwall from the Holy Land last year. 

       "Just rowing along with everyone else and fell over dead, didn't he?"

       The weather had cleared during the night but I was in no condition to enjoy it what with my head so sore and barely able to stand.  Freddy was helpful despite the way I fouled his tack room; he suggested to Thomas that a bowl of the alewife's new brew might help me recover. 

       "A bit of what caused it can cure it," Freddy suggests.  "It often works for me."  

       Thomas comes with me when I go to the White Horse and try Freddy's cure.  Annie the White Horse's alewife brings me a bowl.  It doesn't work but out of nowhere drinking it gives me an idea.    

       "Annie, how long does your juniper drink last before it goes off?"

       If it holds up long enough we could have her to fill some kegs and sell them in Cyprus and along the coast
. 
Oh God my head hurts.

                             Chapter Twelve

       As a result, of Peter's misfortune and other circumstances including the poor state of some of the horses Freddy found us to buy, I decided that we should stay in London for a few more days. 

       That decision ended up being a great mistake for the very next day several of the King's men rode up with a couple of retainers and dismounted at the stable. 

       They rode up while Peter and Raymond and some of Raymond's Horse Marines were standing around a brown mare trying to decide if she was as young and ready to be bred as her would-be seller was claiming.

       "My name," one of the King's man said as we all turned to watch them enter, "is Sir William Marshal.  I'm a King's man and I'm looking for the Bishop of Cornwall.  Is he here?"

       "No, Sir Knight, he's not here," Peter promptly answered.  "But he still may be on one of the galleys at the dock if he hasn't gone off for the day with his students.  I could ask one of the stable master's men to guide you to him if you'd like."

@@@@@

       Rolf's galley was rocking slightly in the harbor swell and I was on the galley deck eating with the boys when the King's knight and his men appeared at the end of the dock. 

       When I first saw them they were walking their horses behind one of Freddy's ostlers.  The ostler was walking briskly ahead of them with me in my newly washed tunic walking some distance behind them. 

       I stood and wiped my hands on my bishop's gown when it became obvious that the riders were coming here to where the two side by side galleys are docked. 

      
I knew immediately that it must be about my letter to the king.  I wonder what it is that they want?

       When the riders began to dismount I sent the crew away and told the boys to take their food and watch and listen from the deck of the galley lashed alongside. I can see they are King's men from their livery, and that at least one of them holds some kind of high rank.

@@@@@

       "My name," the King's man said, "is Sir William Marshal.  I'm here regarding a letter King John received from the Bishop of Cornwall.  Are you the Bishop of Cornwall?"

     "Good day to you, Sir William.  Yes, I am Thomas, Bishop of Cornwall.  How may I be of assistance to you?"

       Sir William stood on the deck and tried me with many questions.  It seems that he, on behalf of King John, wants to exactly know how William defeated the barons on the road near Oakhampton. 

       Marshal's questions throw me into a poggle and I quickly began telling him the tale we'd all agreed to tell - that we were there to witness the marriage and buy the castle, and that we won the battle because the knights blinded themselves before they charged by lowering their visors and then running their horses straight on to our archers' stakes.

       "It was if the hand of God reached down to save us by guiding them to their deaths."  I said as I made the sign of the cross and kissed the wooden cross hanging from my neck. 
Such ox shite.  But it can't hurt; the knight might be religious.

       What I did not mention was our use of the Swiss pikes and how we had modified them to add the blades and hooks or that we were using long bows.  I also "forgot" to mention the fighting formation we used and why we use it because of our experiences on Cyprus and in front of Constantinople's walls.

       Then things got worse, much worse, so far as I'm concerned.

       When I finished giving Sir William the tall tale we all agreed to tell about the events at Oakhampton, he informed me that I must go with him to Windsor forthwith because the King wants to personally talk to someone who was at the battle.  He wants a first-hand report.

       He also asked if the William who helped Courtenay defeat the barons is the same William who is the Earl of Cornwall who fought before the walls of Constantinople and is the hereditary commander of the "Order of Poor Landless Sailors" - and, by the way, who are they and what do they do? 

       How did the king hear of the Order?  From his ambassador to the Pope in Rome?

       "Yes, I believe he is, Sir William.  I don't know much about the fighting around Constantinople.  I was in Cornwall at the time learning those boys over there how to read the bible and scribe and sum.  They'll be priests won't they?" 
And a lot more than that.

       "But I did talk to some sailors who had been there.  What I was told is that it came about because some Englishmen were being held for ransom by the Greeks.  They all agreed that William and his sailors won because the Greek army was mostly of a mob of serfs who had no leaders or weapons."

@@@@@

      I don't think I'm under arrest but I have no idea what my having to go to Windsor with the King's men means- or what will happen when I get there.  I'm not taking any chances.  Before I leave with William Marshal and his men I go to my little castle on the front of the galley's deck to get my bishop's miter and crosier.

       On my way to get them I motion to Gerard, the galley's sergeant captain, to join me.  Once we're inside the cabin by ourselves, I tell him to send a message to Raymond at the horse stable as soon as I leave with Sir William. 

       He's to tell Raymond to leave London immediately with all the available horses.  Also after I leave, he is to tell Peter to get our men back on board our galleys and be prepared to fight his way out of the harbor and go on to Rome and the Pope without me.  He's to wait three days here for me to return and then go without me.

       I put my miter on my head, picked up my crosier, and walked back out of the little castle - and immediately saw Peter on the dock off to the side along the galley's railing.  He was hanging back and watching carefully.

       "Oh Peter, there you are.  Mmm.  Peter, I'm going to go to Windsor with Sir William and his men.  It seems the king wants to ask me some questions about the fighting when the barons attacked us near Oakhampton.  So please send someone to the stables to bring me a riding horse, an ambler if one is available.  One that is not too pricey if you please." 

@@@@@

       I learn much more as I ride to Windsor with Sir William.  The king is not particularly worried about the barons being unhappy with him but William Marshal definitely is and he makes no bones about it.

       "They don't like the high scutage fees they have to pay if they don't join his army and they don't like the king taking control of their courts and abolishing their right to collect tolls on the roads over their lands.  I've tried to warn the king that they might rise and come against him but he doesn't listen."

       It also seems the King really does want to talk to me about the battle at Oakhampton and may have heard about some of the archers' successes in the Holy Land.  He also wants to know how many archers we have and how many of our ships are available to help carry the new army he's raising to France.

      
Uh oh, I tell myself, it sounds like the king wants our ships and archers for his army in France.

       "Not many of either William's archers or his ships are in England," I confide to Sir William.

       "Cornwall is so poor, you know.  Can't support them can it?  That's why most of the Earl's men and galleys are always so far away in the Holy Land - because it's the only place where they can earn their bread carrying pilgrims and refugees." 

       "Yes, it's mostly untrained recruits and sailors the Earl has in Cornwall because that's where he trains his archers and repairs his ships.  The land's no good so the people are desperate for food aren't they?"

       We don't talk much after that because, fortunately, it starts raining even before we clear the city and continues all the way to Windsor.  It makes it difficult to talk and gives me time to gather my thoughts.