“So how can we safely convert the relics into coins, lots of coins?”
That was the question we quietly and privately asked each other whenever we met. Safely, of course, was the key word. So far as we know, no one outside of a few senior men in the company knew we already had them safely tucked away in Cornwall—but many of our men were with William when we carried them out of Constantinople, and many others saw the crates when they were unloaded here.
“You’re right,” I told Thomas a few days later when the four of us were together. “Word that we’ve got them is bound to get out sooner or later despite the Pope saying the relics are in Greece. Only God knows what will happen then.”
“Aye,” said George, who had come up from Fowey Village with Becky to check on Beth. “You’re right about that, Father. We could be in danger. Four galleys came in besides Sergeant Tinker’s before the recall was cancelled and more may have already left Lisbon and still be on their way here. Do you think we should hold their men here to beef up our defences just in case?”
Ahh. Good on my son; he’s thinking like a captain should. Yes, he is.
We all agreed that temporarily keeping more of the archers in Cornwall was a good idea. We also continued to agree that one thing was certain—it was too dangerous and too soon for anyone associated with the Company of Archers to carry a parchment to France’s King Phillip asking if he would be interested in covering the expenses of the searchers “if we found the relics” in exchange for owning them.
Helping to cover the expenses if they were found, of course, meant paying us enough to get us to part with them—and also told them we might sooner or later have them available to be stolen.
Despite the risk of motivating potential robbers and thieves, we were keen on asking the German princes vying for the Pope’s blessing to be the Holy Roman emperor, and the Swedish King who wanted it for his conquest of Finland. We wanted them to be ready to “help cover the expenses if they are found” in exchange for some or all of the relics the Pope wanted.
“We’ll have to always deny we have them and only claim to be searching for them at great expense to ourselves. Our story for the princes has to be the same as we told Cardinal Bertoli and the Pope. Next spring we’ll announce that William and his men ‘found’ the relics in Greece. That’s when we’ll offer them to the princes who expressed an interest in buying them.”
******* Thomas
As autumn approached and my brother, William, prepared to leave for his annual trip to spend the winter in the Holy Land and “find” the missing relics, Peter Sergeant was sent in a galley to carry parchments to the German and Swedish princes which the Pope had identified as potential buyers. One of my students was hurriedly promoted to be a sergeant apprentice and sent with him. He’d be Peter’s scribe and Latin interpreter if one was needed.
We had spent long hours talking about how and when we should contact the princes. Ideally, of course, it would have been me since I could go as a bishop representing the Pope. But William had been shaken by his experience and near-death in Hastings whilst George and I were in Rome. He had decided that either he or I should always be in Cornwall to make decisions. I couldn’t talk him out of it. Peter would go instead of me.
Peter’s task was to deliver two parchments to each of the two German princes vying to be anointed as the Holy Roman Emperor and to the Swedish king who wanted the Pope to approve his takeover of someplace called Finland.
The first parchment was a ‘confidential’ message from the Pope to each of the princes. Thomas and George had gotten it from Cardinal Bertoli when they were in Rome. It was a follow-up to the Pope’s original message to each of the princes. It merely informed each prince that it was the Company of English Archers, also known as the Papal Order of Poor Landless Sailors, who were organising a major military expedition to search for the missing relics.
The second parchment for each prince was from Thomas, Bishop of Cornwall. In it, Thomas told the princes he was writing just prior to blessing some of the men and galleys that would be sailing for the coast of Greece to search for the relics. He noted that the relics were worth a king’s ransom and inquired as to each prince’s interest in acquiring them “in the event they are found.”
“If you are interested in acquiring the relics,” he wrote. “Please inform the man who delivers this message. I will let you know if the relics are found.”
******
“Deliver both parchments and then wait on your galley for one week before you sail on,” William told Peter. “In case they have questions.”
Peter was excited about going and very anxious; he’d never met a prince before. The thought that he might worried him.
I told him the best thing to do if he met a real prince was kneel down and touch his head to the floor twice and then stay down until the prince motioned for him to rise. They like that sort of thing, you know.
“Everyone else you should treat as you would if you were just meeting one of your fellow lieutenants and senior sergeants for the first time.”
“What should I say if they ask questions about the relics?”
“The prince and his courtiers will undoubtedly have many questions. Tell them you are only a messenger from the Bishop of Cornwall and don’t know much about the relics. The only thing you absolutely can’t tell anyone, or even hint, is that we might already have the relics in Cornwall and the search is a sham to cover up the fact that we already have them.”
Peter still seemed quite uncertain so, with William and George listening carefully, I told Peter exactly what to say and made him repeat it several times so I could be sure he had it learnt correctly.
“I was not there, but what I heard from my fellow galley captains was that when Constantinople was falling to the crusaders, several of our galleys carried Orthodox priests and crates containing religious relics to various places along the Greek coastline. At each stop, the Orthodox priests left for a period of time with the crates they were carrying and returned without them.
“Our galley captains know where the priests landed. They also know how long it took the priests to walk from where the galleys put them ashore to where they hid the crates and then returned to the galleys. As a result, our galley captains have a rough and general idea as to where the relics might be hidden.
“Our problem, of course, is that our galley captains don’t know how much time the priests spent hiding the relics instead of walking back and forth. So all our captains really know is the general area where the relics might be hidden. Each will be intensively searched by an army of English archers and sailors until we find them, even if we have to fight our way ashore to do it.
****** Captain William
In the days that followed Peter’s departure, we talked almost constantly about how our relics might fetch more coins for us.
“I’ve been thinking,” I told George and my three lieutenants one evening whilst we were supping together, as we did almost every day.
“When I go east in the autumn to raid the Moorish coast and winter in the Holy Land, I could additionally send somewhat the same inquiry to the new Doge in Venice and the princes of two biggest of the new crusader states that arose from the ashes of the Byzantine Empire.
“In addition, without Thomas mentioning it to Cardinal Bertoli and the Pope, I could even secretly send a parchment mentioning the possibility of recovering the relics to the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church, wherever he might be now that he’s fled Constantinople. I suspect he’d being willing to pay a lot for them.
“Thomas,” I nodded over to my brother who was busy pulling apart a greasy chicken, “is of the opinion I should ask the Pope’s permission before I send inquiries to the Doge and the princes of the crusader states. He thinks it will be too dangerous to contact them unless I get the Pope’s permission and can additionally offer them an escape from purgatory and other papal benefits. He’s also worried that thieves and robbers will be drawn to us if more and more people find out we
might be selling the missing relics.
“What do you two think?” I asked George and Thomas.
******
How to safely reach out to the King of France continued to worry us. We were sure he hated us so much for destroying his fleet that he’d kill any of us who approached him. Finally, about a week after Peter sailed for Germany and Sweden, the Abbot of the Bodmin Monastery agreed to carry the two parchments to France. He was keen to help the Pope, the Abbot said, and agreed to accept a “donation” of one hundred gold bezants for his personal use and deliver the two parchments to King Phillip.
The Abbot later confided to Thomas that he intended to use the coins to buy a position in Rome; God, he told Thomas most sincerely, “must have wanted him to do this for God determines everything and he was making the Abbot weary of Cornwall’s weather.”
In any event, we used the Bodmin Abbot to deliver the parchments because we thought it would be too dangerous for any of our men to carry a secret inquiry to the French king—because the French were still no doubt seething over their recent naval defeat at Harfleur. The French might think it another ruse and not believe us. Using a senior official of the Church, we hoped, would reinforce the that the Church was determined to obtain the relics and, in so-doing, enhance their value in the eyes of King Phillip.
Our best guess was that it would take the Bodmin Abbot at least a month to deliver our inquiry to the French King and return. One of Thomas’s older students was promoted to sergeant, ordained as a priest, and sent with the abbot to act as his assistant and our spy.
It was a good appointment; the Abbot delivered the parchments and the lad came back and recommended to Thomas that we burn down the Bodmin Monastery as a den of the devil. Strangely, he wouldn’t tell us why.
Chapter Seventeen
William sails for the Holy Land.
Two weeks after Peter left to deliver the parchment announcements of our search, one of our galleys sailed for Rome carrying a message from Thomas to Cardinal Bertoli. It included some additional parchments Thomas had drafted for the Pope’s seal. In his message, Thomas told Bertoli about “certain new developments” and proposed several changes in the “Pope’s splendid original plan” in order to help additional generous princes avoid purgatory. He read them to us for our approval.
“It appears the missing relics have been hidden in a number of different places by the various Orthodox priests who carried them away from Constantinople. This, of course, will greatly increase the expense of recovering them to such an extent that it is likely they all cannot be found before the archers are forced to stop looking in order to earn their daily bread elsewhere.
“We have a problem that may become a big problem,” I wrote to my friend Antonio. “Offering all the relics to one prince requires the archers to wait for their coins until all the relics are recovered. Even worse, whilst the archers are waiting for all the relics to be recovered, a good and generous prince who might have happily provided the coins needed to cover the cost of finding the relics might be taken by the pox or unlucky in battle and thus unfairly doomed to purgatory—leaving the archers without his coins and the Pope without the relics.
“There is a solution for such an unchristian fate for a good prince who would have acquired and donated all the relics but didn’t live long enough—let him quickly buy and donate some of the relics so that he avoids purgatory if he dies before we find the rest of them.
“Moreover, if the Pope is willing to allow a few more carefully selected princes avoid purgatory, we could offer some of the lesser relics we recover to the new crusader princes. That would help more princes avoid purgatory and, of course, there would be more coins coming in to keep the searches going and cover the additional expenses, both yours and the Pope’s and ours.
“The major relics such as John the Baptist’s gold-coated hand and Saint Paul’s silver-coated head would, of course, be reserved for the most important princes and only one major relic, such as the silver-coated head or gold-coated hand, would be offered to the two German princes so they would have to bid against each other to get the Pope’s blessing with whatever coins God has seen fit to endow them. That way the choice would be made by God.
“Letting the Germans bid for Saint Paul’s head when we find it is the most Christian way to proceed. It ensures ‘God’s will’ would decide the outcome by providing more coins to the winner. Similarly, if the Pope approves, we’ll offer the gold-covered hand to both Phillip of France and the Swede and let them bid for it.
“In each case, the loser might, if the Holy Father agrees, subsequently be offered some of the lesser relics and the same benefits for donating them except those that God has already given to someone else.”
“I’m very optimistic,” Thomas said to me as we stood on the quay and watched as one of our galleys began its voyage to Rome carrying the parchments to Cardinal Bertoli for the Pope to approve. “I know Antonio Bertoli. He’ll do his best to convince the Pope to put his seal on the parchments I drafted—he’ll like the idea of getting ten percent of the additional coins.”
******* Captain William
Six days later, it was my turn to sail on my annual trip to spend Cornwall’s cold months in the relative warmth of Cyprus and the Holy Land. I sailed on Harold’s galley. He had hurried all the way back to Cornwall in response to Peter’s recall and arrived two days ago to find out, as he put it, “what the hell happened.”
All the rest of the galleys, which had arrived before word of the recall’s cancellation reached them, all six of them, were to stay in Cornwall so their archers could be used to increase our guard force. Thomas and George would stay in Cornwall to make sure it was properly defended. George wanted to come with me, but I wouldn’t allow it; I promised him he could come with me next year.
We let some of the men on the six galleys exchange places with men in Harold’s galley so they could return to their wives and families. There weren’t all that many who requested an exchange—archers and sailor men don’t usually put down roots.
This time Anne went with me. Her baby died last year and she’d been in poor spirits ever since. Both Helen and Tori insisted I take her and asked me to let her visit her mother. They said it would help her regain her good thoughts.
Anne was very pleased when I invited her to accompany me and enthusiastically agreed. We’ll travel in the little forward castle where the galley’s sergeant captain usually sleeps. Harold will move to the bigger castle in the stern of the galley and share it with his sergeants and my new apprentice sergeant, Andrew. Andrew was a priest’s son from Acre and made his mark on our articles as Andrew Priest.
Andrew was one of Thomas’s students who had been several years behind George in Thomas’s school. Thomas had made Andrew up to sergeant apprentice and said the words that made him a priest when he selected him to take the place of my previous apprentice who’d been lost when we were wrecked on the Hastings strand.
******
It was quite a scene as Anne and I stood on the floating wharf and climbed aboard Harold’s galley. Harold was going out with a full crew of fighting men so there would be two men on every oar if we needed to row our way out of trouble or needed extra men for a prize crew. Accordingly, his galley was stuffed full of supplies with numerous ten-chicken bundles of hens tied together by their legs all flapping and cackling, a pile of a dozen or so sheep with nobbled legs struggling and bleating, and four similarly situated old oxen fit only for roasting strips and the stew pot.
My brother Thomas and son George were there to wave us off as the mooring lines were cast off and we began drifting down the river to the channel. So were Anne’s sisters and all of our children and a number of sergeants and senior sergeants. It was a cheerful group even if some of the cheer was forced, and rightly so. We were, after all, heading out into the Atlantic Sea to make a run for Lisbon and the Holy Land. No one knew what weather and dangers might be ahead of us or whether they would ever see us again.
**
****
The first leg of our voyage was to Lisbon. The weather and winds were favourable and we made such a good passage we didn’t even have to time to slaughter all the chickens and sheep we were carrying. After I recovered from an initial two days of seasickness, Harold and I spent a lot of time talking as I brought him up to date and filled him in with the details about the relics he hadn’t learnt during his brief visit to Cornwall. We saw a few sails, and ignored them as they were unlikely to be Moors in this part of the Atlantic Sea.
Harold was one of my key lieutenants, the man in charge of all our galleys and cogs and sailors. He knew we had the relics safely inside Restormel Castle. Of course he knew; they’d been carried from Constantinople to Cornwall on his galley. He also understood, from our talks at Restormel during his short visit, why one of the important things I would be doing during the next six months was pretending to lead the search to “find” the missing relics so we could sell them without being blamed for stealing them.
My voyage to Lisbon was a pleasure. Anne took particularly good care of me by doing many nice wifely things to please me—she trimmed my beard and hair, squished the lice she found between her fingernails, washed me down with a rag and a bucket of warm water, gave me nice massages to make me feel good, and promptly emptied the chamber pot.
It was so nice lazing about with Anne that I was almost sorry when the lookout on the mast cried out that he saw land and we turned south to run along the coast until we reached Lisbon.
Chapter Eighteen
An unexpected tragedy.
Lisbon was initially a joy for everyone. We stayed an entire week and Anne went shopping in the market every day. Every man was given a copper coin each day as an advance on his annual pay. Some took them all; others left all or part of their coins on the galley’s books.
Sea Warriors Page 11
