The Black Sheep

by Peter Darman

  ‘Luca, come back,’ implored Jordi, to no avail.

  He did stop when he heard laughter, turning the see the others pointing and whistling at him in a derogatory fashion. Beyond them, the riders, all wearing leather armour and carrying a Catalan banner, had slowed their horses to approach the Almogavars in a leisurely fashion. Despite sweat pouring down his face he felt himself blushing. Shamefaced, he trudged back to the grinning and mocking soldiers, though one of them was far from amused.

  Sancho grabbed his zamarra and dragged him back to the column.

  ‘You run, you die, boy.’

  He manhandled him to once again stand beside his friend.

  ‘Pick up your spear.’

  Luca did so. There was no sound coming from the ranks now, just an ominous silence.

  Sancho held out a hand.

  ‘Water bottle.’

  Luca pulled the flask from his shoulder and handed it to Sancho. The commander grinned savagely, pulled the cork from the flask and poured the contents on the ground before Luca’s eyes; eyes which opened wide in alarm. When it was empty, Sancho tossed it back to him. Rage welled up in Luca, which was the boost he needed for the march back to camp. His eyes bored into the broad back of Jordi’s father as the Almogavar council leader led the way back to the tent city, which was only five miles from the spot where they had been ‘ambushed’ by the horsemen.

  His anger against Sancho Rey had not subsided by the time they reached camp, but it was rivalled by the sense of humiliation he felt over his reaction to the appearance of the horsemen. Jordi shrugged it off.

  ‘A few days ago, you were a shepherd,’ he told him as the two enjoyed an evening meal of fried onions, bread and cheese. ‘You cannot become a soldier overnight.’

  The pleasing aroma of campfires and food being cooked hung in the air, along with the excited chatter of men and their wives discussing their leaving Sicily to win fresh laurels in what was left of the Roman Empire. Luca would be going with them, and he was determined to become a soldier like Jordi, not the amusing pet, akin to an adopted stray dog, he felt like.

  One advantage with being a pet dog was that some took an interest in him, unlike Jordi’s father who made no attempt to hide his hostility towards Luca. Each day he was forced to undertake a gruelling march as part of Sancho Rey’s formation. His life before he had joined the Almogavars had been a hard one, which meant his body soon became accustomed to marching, or fast walking as he was constantly reminded. What he found difficult to master was carrying and using the weapons he was forced to haul over the countryside around Messina.

  For whatever reason, Hector, the lean, violent bearded thug who had been responsible for starting the battle against Count Carafa, took a keen interest in Luca’s progress, which the shepherd never questioned but was glad of. If only because it provided a counterweight to the hostility of Sancho Rey. Every day, after his feet and legs had been tortured during Sancho’s fast walk, Hector would provide insights and instruction on the weapons the Almogavars used. Around the camp were areas where targets – straw bales sitting on wooden frames topped with a piece of wood cut to resemble a human head – were located, and where units could be found practising throwing javelins. The crossbowmen had their own target areas, with banks of earth behind the targets to stop stray bolts.

  Hector tossed Luca a javelin and picked up another. He held it in his right hand.

  ‘First lesson. When you hold a javelin, hold it so it is balanced. If you hold it too far to the back, it will tip forward; too far to the front, it will tip backwards.

  ‘And hold it strong, with your hand wrapped around the shaft, like you are throttling someone. Ever throttled someone, Luca?’

  ‘No, lord.’

  He pointed the tip of the javelin at the shepherd.

  ‘I am not a lord, boy, though I’ve killed a fair few. None of us are lords. We hold rank because we have won it. You understand?’

  Luca did not, really, but he nodded anyway. Hector turned back to the javelin.

  ‘When you aim at a target, throw the javelin straight and true, and where you want it to land.’

  He held up the javelin at the height of his ears, drawing it back before launching it at the target, around ten paces away. The steel point lodged fast in the straw. Luca was impressed.

  ‘I showed you how to hold and throw the javelin but ignore everything else,’ said Hector.

  ‘But you hit the target, lord,’ gushed Luca.

  Hector ignored the praise.

  ‘Now you.’

  Luca stood square-on to the target, drew back the javelin and hurled it forward, the missile dropping alarmingly and harmlessly to the ground, beneath the target. Luca’s head dropped.

  ‘Where were you aiming?’ asked Hector.

  ‘At the straw, lord.’

  Hector pointed at the target. ‘Don’t call me lord. Lesson number two. Never aim at the body. In battle, unless you are fighting peasants, you will be facing soldiers who will be wearing some sort of armour. At the very least they will have a shield that will be tucked nice and cosy to their torso. But even if he is wearing a helmet, an opponent’s face will always be exposed.’

  He picked up another javelin, retreated a few steps, walked forward and hurled it at the target. The point struck the centre point of the face, splitting the wood.

  ‘You hit a man in the face, he will go down. He might not die, at least not immediately, but he will no longer be able to take part in the battle. And if he’s lying on the ground screaming, all the better, because he will be having an adverse effect on those around him. Lesson number three. Never throw a javelin from a stationary position.’

  Over the following days, Hector tutored Luca in the intricacies of javelin throwing. With persuasion and coercion, he imparted the principles of hurling the steel-tipped missiles.

  ‘You have to have speed coming into the throw for both range and impact power. Launching a javelin is a reaction. In essence, it is not really a throw but a reaction to what the rest of your body is doing. Retain discipline at all times to keep the throwing arm both long and relaxed behind you during the whole movement. The force of the throw is generated by the lower body, through the guts and into the upper body. And finally practice, endless practice, which allied with the correct technique will make you an accomplished javelin thrower.’

  The days passed, autumn turned into winter and Luca continued his transition from shepherd to soldier. His feet and legs got used to the endless marching, his shoulders and back healed, thanks to the delightful Carla, the wife of Sancho. She had great knowledge of medicine and applied fresh comfrey poultices to his chaffed and bruised body until it had healed. And he had the constant companionship of Jordi to keep up his spirits. When he had been a shepherd, Luca had asked his friend why the Almogavars and the Catalan horsemen, having helped to win the war against the French, did not travel back to Catalonia, a land Jordi had never seen. Indeed, a land the majority of the Spanish soldiers had not seen, those the same age or younger than Jordi having been born in Sicily. His friend did not know the answer, but Hector certainly did.

  They sat on stools restoring the keen edges of the javelins with which they had been practising using whetstones of hard schist.

  ‘King James don’t want us back,’ Hector told him. ‘If we sailed back to Catalonia, he would have a few thousand soldiers with nothing to do on his hands. Better for him we are kept as far away as possible.’

  ‘That seems ungrateful,’ said Luca.

  Hector gave an evil chuckle. ‘Kings and lords are like that, boy. Always remember that. Priests as well, come to that. They all like others to do their dirty work, but when that work is over, they want rid.’

  ‘What about the Emperor of Constantinople?’ asked Luca.

  ‘He will welcome us with open arms, and as soon as we have killed his enemies, will clear us out of his lands quicker than evicting a leper colony.’

  Two days later, Sir Roger informed the mercen
aries all the ships to transport them to Constantinople had been assembled in the harbour at Messina.

  Chapter 4

  Luca had never been to Messina, had never seen its grand cathedral or the large harbour where the ships waited to take the mercenary army of Roger de Flor to Constantinople. Some of the eighteen galleys and eighteen other vessels were owned by Roger himself, having been used by him to both line his own purse and supply the city during the recent war. It was the first and last time the Almogavars and Catalan horsemen were allowed into Messina, to be greeted at the gates by the fawning Archbishop Lentini. The prelate spread his arms and smiled at Roger, who was flanked by Sancho and the other Almogavar council members, who did not smile. Behind them was a long column of soldiers, women, children and carts carrying the weapons, tents and supplies of the Catalan Company, the name Roger had chosen for what was his private army.

  It was an impressive army – four thousand Almogavars, fifteen hundred horsemen – with an attendant two thousand seven hundred dependents. Sadly, the horsemen had been forced to surrender their mounts, there being no room on the ships to transport them. Roger had assured their captains fresh horses would be purchased once they reached Constantinople, but it left a bitter taste in the mouth to leave the beasts behind, especially as the individual who had purchased them on behalf of King Frederick had been none other than Count Carafa. Such are the exigencies of war.

  Messina was beautiful that day, the city bathed in radiant winter sunlight, its streets clean and its skyline punctuated by many steeples. It was also empty. Streets were deserted, markets were closed and all windows were shuttered as the company made its way from the city gates to the harbour. But from behind those shutters a thousand pairs of eyes observed the fearsome Catalans making their last journey in Sicily. They followed in the footsteps of the crusaders who had embarked at Messina for the Holy Land, to reclaim Jerusalem from the Saracens. That had been two hundred years before and now no Christian soldiers departed for a land and a city that had long been lost to the infidels. Now the Catalans were going to prevent the Muslims from seizing Constantinople and sweeping west into Europe.

  The Almogavars, clutching their spears, glanced left and right as they tramped along eerily quiet streets, only the soft thuds of their feet on the cobbles disturbing the silence.

  ‘It’s too quiet,’ said a worried Jordi. ‘I smell an ambush.’

  His father turned to berate him.

  ‘Keep your mouth shut. You know nothing, boy.’

  Angel beside Sancho turned and flashed Jordi a grin.

  ‘The boy might have a point, Sancho,’ said the Catalan-cum-master of harems, pointing at the archbishop at the head of a coterie of priests a few paces ahead. ‘He might be the equivalent of the Pied Piper.’

  Sancho gave him a sideways sneer.

  ‘Who?’

  Angel rolled his hazel eyes.

  ‘I sometimes think I am among barbarians. I heard the story a couple of years ago, though the event took place a quarter of a century ago.’

  ‘Get to the point,’ snapped Hector.

  ‘I will,’ smiled Angel, ‘if you will allow me the courtesy of continuing uninterrupted. Heard of Hamelin, Hector?’

  ‘No.’

  A snigger. ‘It’s a town in Germany somewhere. Anyway, the town was infested with rats. I mean, really infested. They were scurrying around the streets in broad daylight, occupying homes and businesses and eating their way through the town’s granaries. Well, one day this piper appeared dressed in a coat of many colours and offered to get rid of the rats.’

  ‘Did not the town have rat-catchers?’ asked Sancho.

  ‘Please don’t interrupt,’ Angel scolded him. ‘So, the piper agreed to get rid of all Hamelin’s rats in exchange for a tidy sum of money.’

  ‘How much?’ asked Marc.

  Angel frowned. ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Then how do you know it was a tidy sum?’

  ‘He has a point,’ agreed Hector.

  Angel sighed. ‘For the sake of argument, just accept that the piper was promised a substantial amount for his services. So, the piper played his pipe and the rats followed him out of the town, never to be seen again.’

  Hector was disappointed. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Angel. ‘The good people of Hamelin reneged on their promise and refused to pay the piper when he returned. Vowing revenge, the piper returned a few days later and began playing his pipe once more, whereupon all the town’s children followed him out of town, and like the rats were never seen again.’

  He tipped his head to the archbishop, chatting away to Roger de Flor beside him.

  ‘Just like we are being led away from Sicily.’

  ‘The emperor of Constantinople should have hired this Pied Piper instead of us,’ opined Marc.

  ‘Why?’ asked Sancho.

  ‘One man with a pipe is cheaper than five and a half thousand soldiers, that’s why.’

  He gave Angel a sly glance. ‘Perhaps you could hire him to lure away wives from their husbands.’

  The others laughed, prompting Roger and the archbishop to turn and stare at them quizzically.

  Luca was not smiling. He liked the Almogavars and was cheered by their ebullience and devil-may-care attitude. But his stomach was churning at the thought of leaving Sicily. Until a few weeks ago, Rometta and the surrounding countryside had literally been his world. But he had been wrenched from that life and plunged into an alien world of mercenaries, fighting and travel beyond seas. Like most peasants, he could expect a hard and short life in a small community of other peasants. His fate was to be buried a hundred yards from where he had been born. But now everything had changed. He even looked different in his Almogavar attire with weapons strapped to his back, dangling from his belt and carried in his hand. His sense of dread increased when they reached the harbour.

  Messina had originally been named Zankle, or ‘sickle’, in ancient times on account of the shape of its harbour. Luca was preoccupied with his own fears but had he inspected the harbour more closely, he would have discovered the neck of land that gave the harbour its distinctive shape was strongly fortified, with a citadel erected on the spot where the neck joined the mainland. In addition, there were four smaller forts along the neck to defend the entrance to the harbour.

  Roger left the bishop and returned to Sancho and his fellow commanders.

  ‘Get everyone loaded. I want to be away as soon as possible.’

  ‘What’s this?’ Hector was pointing at a line of carts pulling up on the quay beside the ships that would take the company to Constantinople.

  Roger turned. ‘A gift from the archbishop. A ration of biscuit, cheese, salted pork, garlic and onions for every man, woman and child travelling with us. To fortify our bodies for the fight against the Muslims.’

  Sancho chuckled. ‘He can’t wait to get rid of us. Right, let’s get everyone loaded.’

  The Almogavars travelled lightly, so there were no chests filled with clothes or sumptuous pavilions to be loaded on the ships. Nevertheless, it took time to load just over eight thousand men, women and children, plus food, tents, weapons and equine equipment. The ships earmarked to take the people and their belongings to Constantinople were divided equally between impressive-looking galleys and more modest, though sturdier, merchant vessels.

  Luca and Jordi helped to load one of the galleys, a magnificent vessel called a dromon, meaning ‘runner’. Around one hundred and sixty feet in length with a beam of sixteen feet, it sat low in the water, its two lateen sails furled until the ship left harbour. Luca forgot his worries as he formed a human chain to shift the supplies from quay to ship. The dromon had a hull that was closed by a deck, though the small hold could be accessed through ten hatches along its length. Luca glanced at the stern of the vessel where an awning on a wooden framework protected the captain’s berth.

  ‘Where will we sleep?’ he asked his friend.

  ‘On land,’ came the a
nswer from one of the crew within earshot, a rough-looking individual in hardy linen breeches and a shirt, both heavily mended and patched.

  He pointed out to sea, to the Italian mainland across the Strait of Messina.

  ‘Tonight, you and your companions will be sleeping in Italy.’

  Luca was confused. ‘Ships float at night, surely?’

  The sailor leaned over the gunwale and cleared one of his nostrils of phlegm.

  ‘Yes, they do, but unless it is a clear night with a full moon, a captain cannot see where he is going, which means a ship can easily run aground or get smashed to pieces on rocks. So, no sailing in the dark.’

  Luca was surprised, envisaging a non-stop voyage at sea with no sight of lands for days, perhaps weeks. The reality was very different, and for him very reassuring. The short uneventful journey from Messina to the Italian mainland was for him a gentle introduction to maritime travel. He actually enjoyed it. The sea was calm, the wind light and favourable, and it was reasonably comfortable for the two hundred Almogavars sitting on the deck observing the galley’s crew row the vessel out of harbour and into open seas.

  The dromon was propelled by two banks of oars along the sides of the hull, the distance between the gunnels and water short in order to generate maximum propulsion. But this made sailing in troubled seas dangerous, so galleys avoided rough water, hugged the shoreline and came ashore at night. Luca discovered that the oars were used for exiting and entering port and in conditions of dead calm. The rowers themselves, all free men and not the slaves of legend, stood while using their oars, stepping forward against a load-bearing beam on the floor in front of them.

  The trepidation he felt over his first voyage at sea proved unfounded. The fleet of ships left Messina and sailed the two miles across the strait to land in Calabria, a region of southern Italy. Once there, the company disembarked for the night and slept on the sandy shore. In the morning, the ships put out to sea once more, though they hugged the shoreline as they sailed around the tip of Italy. For Luca, boredom replaced fear as the fleet inched its way along the Italian coast before reaching the port of Otranto, in the Principality of Taranto, or rather a strip of beach near the city. The ruler of the principality, Prince Philip, had recently been a captive of King Frederick of Sicily following his defeat in battle, a battle the Almogavars had helped to win on the king’s behalf. In theory, the prince could have attacked the fleet in revenge, but he had neither the resources nor the desire to provoke the Catalans, and so instead sent them rations as a goodwill gesture, that and a letter to Sir Roger to urge speed in their departure.