One thing was sure—the Swiss were mightily impressed with the way our long-handled, hooked and bladed pikes stopped the knight and his horse. They wanted to buy one as a remembrance, their priest explained, so they could display it in their barracks. We, of course, gave it to them.
******
“What does it all mean?” I asked Father Bosselli about thirty minutes later when he met us at the gate to the Pope’s residence—and the Swiss guards were allowed to march in and we were not.
“It means the Holy Father has enemies,” was the priest’s terse reply as we watched the coin chests being unloaded from the horse carts and being carried through the gate and into the Pope’s bailey. From the way Father Bosselli said it, I knew immediately that we’d be told no more.
All Bosselli did was shake his head in disgust when I showed him the papal emblem I had cut from the knight’s tunic—and question me quite closely about the previous day’s fighting and what our prisoners and the cardinal had told us. Then he turned around and hurried away leaving me standing there next to Freddy and watching as the last of the coin chests disappeared into the Pope’s huge palace.
I had not been invited to enter.
Seeing the Pope and receiving his blessing might have been the procedure when I delivered the prayer coins, but apparently it was not the same when I delivered many more coins from a different source. I was somewhat stunned and stood there for a few moments staring at the Pope’s great palace as the entrance gate was closed in front of us.
“Well, I guess it’s time to sail for England” I finally said to Freddy.
Epilogue
George and William smiled as Thomas lifted another gold box out of the wooden crate Simon brought from London. He opened it so we could see another of the gold-coated right hands that had baptised Jesus. A cog carrying an ambassador from France was reported to be in the Fowey estuary.
- End of the Book –
There are more books in the saga of the company of archers. The Magna Carta Decision is next.
All of the books in this great saga of medieval England are available as eBooks, and some of them are also available in print and as audio books. You can find them by going to Amazon, Google, Bing, or Goodreads and searching for Martin Archer fiction.
A chronological list of all the books in the saga, and other books by Martin Archer, can be found below. And following the list are some sample pages from the next book in the saga The Magna Carta Decision and the first book in the saga, The Archers.
And a word from Martin:
“I sincerely hope you have enjoyed reading about the company of archers as much as I have enjoyed writing about them. If so, I respectfully request a favourable review on Amazon and Goodreads with as many stars as possible in order to encourage other readers. And, if you could please spare a moment, I would also very much appreciate your thoughts about this saga of medieval England, and whether you would like it to continue or could recommend it to a friend. I can be reached at [email protected].”
Cheers and thank you once again. /S/ Martin Archer
Amazon print and eBooks in order in the exciting and action-packed The Company of Archers saga:
The Archers
The Archers’ Castle
The Archers’ Return
The Archers’ War
Rescuing the Hostages
Kings and Crusaders
The Archers’ Gold
The Missing Treasure
Castling the King
The Sea Warriors
The Captain’s Men
Gulling the Kings
The Magna Carta Decision
The War of the Kings
The Company’s Revenge
The Ransom
The New Commander (coming 2018)
Amazon eBooks in Martin Archer’s epic Soldiers and Marines saga:
Soldiers and Marines
Peace and Conflict
War Breaks Out
War in the East
Israel’s Next War (A prescient book much hated by Islamic reviewers)
eBook Collections on Amazon
The Archers Stories I - complete books I, II, III, IV, V, VI
The Archers Stories II - complete books VII, VIII, IX, X,
The Archers Stories III - complete books XI, XII, XIII (coming)
The Soldiers and Marines Saga - complete books I, II, III
Other eBooks you might enjoy:
Cage’s Crew by Martin Archer writing as Raymond Casey
America’s Next War by Michael Cameron – an adaption of Martin Archer’s War Breaks Out to set it in the immediate future when Eastern and Western Europe go to war over another wave of Islamic refugees.
Sample pages from the next book in the saga – The Magna Carta Decision.
It wasn’t until we talked about what would happen next that the enormity of what we were going to try to do finally struck me.
A few minutes later my father pulled up his horse, motioned for the two of us to join him, and shouted out an order to Uncle Raymond’s major and the rest of the horse archers to keep going.
“You two are to remain here. I want you to stay out of sight and watch the road. Just watch, that’s all you are to do. Don’t show yourself unless it’s absolutely necessary even if you see outriders or some of our watchers coming in. You’re to stay out of sight, and then come tell me what you’ve seen after you watch Devon and his entire column of men pass on the road and counted them.
I’ll be waiting behind that hill over there with the horse archers. After Devon and his men pass, we’re going to ride in behind them to cut off anyone who tries to escape from the foot archers.”
He grinned as he pointed to a small, nearby hill towards the side of which the horse archers were riding, and added more to his explanation.
“The foot archers under Peter and Henry are going to ambush Devon and his men in the middle of the thick forest we passed through two or three hours ago. Devon’s survivors, if there are any, will probably run this way in an effort to get back to Rougemont. We’ll hide behind the hill until they pass and then ride back to the road and position ourselves to cut them off.”
*******
Richard and I dismounted behind a stand of trees and walked back about a couple of hundred paces to where we could see the road without being seen. We took our longbows and quivers with us. Thomas, my apprentice sergeant, remained with our horses with orders to let them rest and eat grass, but to leave them properly saddled and ready to be brought forward to us and ridden on a moment’s notice.
We each sat down with our back against a tree and commenced watching. Several times we saw groups of people pass in front of us on the road, almost all were women and many of them had young children with them. They were obviously walking back to their hovels after a day of working in the fields. There were also periodic travellers on the road.
What quickly caught our eye was that all of them were walking north away from Exeter. We never saw a single traveller heading south. They were probably being held by the foot archers to prevent them from warning Devon’s army that we were waiting for them.
“Look; here they come.” Richard’s call woke me from my brief nap with a snort. I went from a drowsy nap to wide awake in one heartbeat as I rolled over on my side to look.
Sure enough, in the distance to my left a straggling mass of men was beginning to come into sight on the road. Some were riding but most were walking. What surprised us both was that they were moving north on the road from Exeter without any sort of organization or anyone riding out in front watching for danger.
Scattered amongst them were wains and horse carts and a number of women and pedlars. A few of the women were carrying or leading small children. The pedlars had their own horse-drawn carts and wains.
Richard and I had already gathered the necessary counting stones as we’d been learnt at school. We each began moving a stone into a new pile for every ten walkers who might be soldiers and another stone into
another new pile for every rider we saw and for every horse being led that looked as though it might belong to a dismounted rider who was walking.
They were moving so slowly that it took them the better part of an hour to straggle past us. Some were clearly mounted knights and once we saw what looked like a banner being carried on a lance in the middle of a group of half a dozen or so riders.
It was, Richard and I assured each other several times, almost certainly the Earl of Devon and his knights and their village levies. Who else could it be other than the earl’s army?
-End of the Sample Pages-
Sample Pages from Book One – The Archers – for those who might wish to start at the beginning of the saga.
…. I decided to leave George with Randolph to guard him whilst my brother Thomas and I went to see the Bishop to get our pay–four bezant gold coins from Constantinople for each of the eighty-seven men who had survived serving with Richard and agreed to help Lord Edmund defend his crusader castle in the Bekka Valley. And there would be additional coins for each man who lost his life or bollocks. All in all, it was quite a bit for two years of service, but we’d paid dearly for it by so many of us losing our lives.
At least we tried to see the Bishop. The guards at the city gate would not let us into the city even though Thomas was a priest.
One of the guards looked a little bit smarter and greedier than the other two. Thomas motioned him aside and blessed him. I watched as they huddled together for a moment talking in low voices.
Then Thomas waved me over.
“William, this good man can’t leave his post to tell the Bishop we are here. And it’s a pity for we only need to see His Eminence for a few minutes to deliver an important message.
“It’s a problem we need to solve because it wouldn’t be a Christian thing to make someone as important as the good Bishop upset. He’s sure to be unhappy if he has to walk all this way just to have a word with us.”
“Ah. I understand. The guard wants a bribe to let us in.
“Let us in and you and the others can come with us when we sail away from here.”
“Forget it, English. I’ve got a wife and family here. I am not going anywhere.”
It was time to take another tack. I reached into my almost empty purse and pulled out two small copper coins—enough for a night of drinking if the wine is bad enough. I pressed them into his grimy hand.
“We only need a few minutes to deliver a message. We’ll be out and gone before anyone knows.”
The guard looked at the coins and then again at us, sizing us up was what he was doing, and he didn’t like what he saw. We looked like what we were, poor and bedraggled.
“One more copper. There are three of us on duty and no one is supposed to enter. But we’ll take a chance, since it’s for the Bishop and our sergeant is not here.”
I agreed with a sigh and dug out another copper.
“We won’t be long and the Bishop will appreciate it.” No, he won’t.
Thomas waved the wooden cross he wore around his neck to bless the guard as the he put our coppers in his purse, and then he waved it at the other two for good measure.
******
We sometimes had to shoulder our way through the crowded streets and push people away as we walked towards the church. Beggars and desperate women and young boys began pulling on our clothes and crying out to us. In the distance black smoke was rising from somewhere in the city, probably from looters torching somebody’s house or a merchant’s stall.
The doors to the front of the old stone church were closed. Through the cracks in the wooden doors we could see the big wooden bar holding them shut.
“Come on. There must be a side door for the priests to use. There always is.”
We walked around to the side of the church and there it was. I began banging on the door. After a while, a muffled voice on the other side told us to go away.
“The church is not open.”
“We’ve come from Lord Edmund to see the Bishop of Damascus. Let us in.”
We could hear something being moved and then an eye appeared at the peep hole in the door. A few seconds later, the door swung open and we hurried in.
The light inside the room was dim because the windows were shuttered.
Our greeter was a slender fellow with alert eyes who couldn’t be much more than an inch or two over five feet tall. He studied us intently as he bowed us in and then quickly shut and barred the door behind us. He seemed quite anxious.
“We’ve come from Lord Edmund’s castle in the Bekka Valley to see the Bishop,” I said in the bastardised French dialect some are now calling English. And then Thomas repeated my words in Latin. Which is what I should have done in the first place.
“I shall tell him you are here and ask if he will receive you,” the man replied. “I am Yoram, the Bishop’s scrivener; may I tell him who you are and why you are here?”
“I am William, the captain of what’s left of the company of English archers who fought with Edmund, and this is Father Thomas, our priest. We are here to collect our company’s pay for helping to defend Lord Edmund’s fief these past two years.”
“I shall inform His Eminence of your arrival. Please wait here.”
The Bishop’ scrivener had a strange accent; I wondered where he came from?
Some time passed before the anxious little man returned. While he was gone we looked around the room. It was quite luxurious with a floor of stones instead of the mud floors one usually finds in churches.
It was also quite dark. The windows were covered with heavy wooden shutters and sealed shut with heavy wooden bars; the light in the room, such as it was, came from cracks in the shutters and smaller windows high on the walls above the shuttered windows. There was a somewhat tattered tribal carpet on the floor.
The anxious little man returned and gave us a most courteous nod and bow.
“His Grace will see you now. Please follow me.”
The Bishop’s clerk led us into a narrow, dimly lit passage with stone walls and a low ceiling. He went first and then Thomas and then me. We’d taken but a few steps when he turned back toward us and in a low voice issued a cryptic warning.
“Protect yourselves. The Bishop doesn’t want to pay you. You’re in mortal danger.”
The little man nodded in silent agreement when I held up my hand. Thomas and I needed to take a moment to get ourselves ready.
He watched closely as we prepared. Then, when I gave a nod to let him know we were ready, he rewarded us with a tight smile and another nod—and began walking again with a determined look on his face.
A few seconds later we turned another corner and came to an open door. It opened into a large room with beamed ceilings more than six feet high. I knew the height because I could stand upright after I bent my head to get through the entrance door.
A portly middle-aged man in a bishop’s robes was sitting behind a rough wooden table and there was a bearded and rather formidable-looking guard with a sword in a wooden scabbard standing in front of the table on our side of it. There was a closed chest on the table and a jumble of tools and chests in the corner covered by another old tribal rug and a broken chair.
The Bishop smiled to show us his bad teeth and beckoned us in. We could see him clearly despite the dim light coming in from the small window openings near the ceiling of the room.
After a moment he stood and extended his hand over the table so we could kiss his ring. First Thomas and then I approached and half kneeled to kiss it. Then I stepped back and towards the guard to make room for Thomas so he could re-approach the table and stand next to me as the Bishop re-seated himself.
“What is it you want to see me about?” the Bishop asked in Latin.
He said it with a sincere smile and leaned forward expectantly.
“I am William, Captain of the late Lord Edmund’s English archers, and this is Father Thomas, our priest and confessor.” And my older brother, though I don’t think I will
mention it at the moment.
“How can that be? Another man was commanding the archers when I visited Lord Edmund earlier this year, and we made our arrangements.”
“He is dead. He took an arrow in the arm and it turned purple and rotted until he died. Another took his place and now he’s dead also. Now I am the captain of the company.”
The Bishop crossed himself and mumbled a brief prayer under his breath. Then he looked at me expectantly and listened intently.
“We’ve come to get the money Lord Edmund entrusted to you to pay us. We looked for you before we left the valley, but Beaufort Castle was about to fall and you’d already gone. So we’ve come here to collect our company’s pay.”
“Of course. Of course. I have it right here in the chest.
“Aran,” he said, nodding to the burly soldier standing next to me, “tells me there are eighteen of you. Is that correct?” And how would he be knowing that?
“Yes, Eminence, that is correct.”
“Well then, four gold Constantinople coins for each man is seventy-two; and you shall have them here and now.”
“No, Eminence, that is not correct.”
I reached inside my jerkin and pulled out the company’s copy of the contract with Lord Edmund and laid the parchment on the desk in front of him.
As I placed it on the table, I tapped it with my finger and casually stepped further to the side, and even closer to his swordsman, so Thomas could once again step into my place in front of the Bishop and nod his agreement, confirming it was indeed in our contract.
“The contract calls for the company to be paid four gold bezant coins from Constantinople for each of eighty-seven men and six more coins to the company for each man who is killed or loses both of his eyes, arms, legs, or his balls. It sums to one thousand and twenty-six bezants in all—and I know you have our money because I was present when Lord Edmund gave you more than enough coins for his contract and you agreed to pay them to us. So here we are. We want our bezants.”
Gulling The Kings Page 16
