The Sword Brothers (8 page)

Henke nudged Rudolf.
‘Behold. Walter the Penitent.’

Rudolf frowned at his
grinning friend who pointed at the young knight. ‘You see that
handsome young knight, Conrad? That is Walter, a young noble from
one of Saxony’s richest families. Killed a friend in a duel so I
heard, and now he is full of remorse and wishes only to absolve his
sins by seeking a heroic death fighting the godless heathens. He
might get his wish, but it won’t be heroic.’

‘Thank you, Henke,’
Rudolf rebuked him. ‘The bishop welcomes all those who volunteer to
fight the pagans.’

‘His enthusiasm will
cool when he experiences the reality of our cause,’ sniffed
Henke.

The youths standing
with the handsome young knight were an unprepossessing sight: all
but one dressed in poor quality, ill-fitting shirts and leggings.
One in particular caught Conrad’s eye, a painfully thin boy at
least six inches shorter than him with sallow skin and greasy brown
hair. He looked as though he could be broken in half with ease.

Rudolf walked over to
the group and spoke to the knight first.

‘Welcome Walter. I am
Rudolf and this is Henke. The bishop informed me that you would be
travelling to Livonia before him and the other crusaders.’

Walter bowed his head
to Rudolf. ‘Thank you, Brother Rudolf. I am eager to get to grips
with the heathen to do God’s work.’

Henke smirked but
Rudolf nodded his head and placed a hand on Walter’s shoulder.
‘With a fair wind and a calm sea it shall be so.’

Rudolf next placed an
arm around Conrad’s shoulders and spoke to the four youths behind
Walter.

‘This is Conrad Wolff,
who like you has volunteered to join the holy crusade in Livonia.
You are brothers in the service of God so conduct yourself as such
and you will prosper.’

Conrad had little
opportunity to get to know his young companions as the next hour
was spent assisting the captain and his crew stowing the supplies
for the voyage. The two ships were over seventy feet long and over
twenty feet wide with a single unfurled sail tied to each mast’s
yardarm. At the stern was a ‘castle’ that contained the captain’s
cabin.

The decks were being
loaded with cages containing chickens, crates and spare timber for
repairs at sea. The casks holding water, wine and ale were stashed
below decks along with spare anchors, sails and rigging. The
chickens would be eaten during the voyage but the main food source
would be the salted fish, dried meat and biscuits that Conrad and
his comrades helped to load.

Conrad and the thin
youth began ferrying the chicken cages from the quayside to the
first boat under the supervision of an evil looking sailor with a
thick beard and filthy clothes. He barked orders at the pair to
stack the cages neatly against the starboard side of the boat,
spitting after every sentence.

‘We’ll be eating
these,’ the stick-thin boy said to Conrad, nodding at the cage they
were carrying, ‘but first they will be laying eggs for us to eat.
Lovely.’

He grinned
triumphantly at Conrad. ‘What did the brother say your name
was?’

‘Conrad Wolff.’

They placed the cage
holding two hens on top of another that also held a brace of
poultry. They stepped away and the sailor inspected their work,
shifting the cage slightly to align its edges so they were flush
with those of the one beneath. He spat over the side of the boat
and ordered them to go and fetch another cage.

‘I am Hans.’ He looked
around at the supplies being stowed on board the two cogs. ‘Don’t
think we’ll starve on this trip. Where is this place we are going
to, Livonia?’

Conrad shook his head.
‘I do not know.’

‘How long do you think
it will take us to get there?’

Conrad pursed his
lips. ‘I do not know.’

Hans rubbed his hands
together. ‘Well, at least we won’t starve.’

Conrad smiled, the
first time he had done so in days. This boy seemed obsessed by
food. Conrad also noted the large amount of supplies being loaded
onto each cog and also thought it unlikely that they would starve.
He counted thirty-five casks of water that were stowed beneath the
deck in the hold, with a further ten casks of wine and ten casks of
ale that followed them. There were also a great number of crates
holding salted fish, dried meat and biscuits that would be consumed
on the journey. The sailors were bemused to see Walter the Penitent
lending a hand loading the cog with supplies. Noble knights usually
did not get their hands dirty doing such work.

The other passengers
were also lending a hand save for the handful of women who were
minding their children. Each vessel had a crew of twelve men
including the captain and could accommodate up to thirty
passengers, who slept in the hold in hammocks. However, because of
the food, ships stores and other supplies crammed into the hold
there was only space for twenty hammocks, which meant that everyone
had to share their sleeping space.

As time wore on the
two captains, who both shared a remarkably similar shabby
appearance, began to get more irritated and scolded their men and
those assisting them for their tardiness. They wished to catch the
tide and be away. Conrad was also eager to leave Lübeck and so he
and Hans worked hard to get everything on board. The civilians and
their families, who Conrad discovered were stonemasons and
blacksmiths, were carried in the second cog, along with some of the
mercenaries. The balance of the latter, along with Rudolf, Henke,
Walter the Penitent and the five youths, travelled in the first
cog.

Just as Conrad
believed that the head of the captain would burst, so flustered had
he become, all the supplies had at last been loaded and the anchors
were weighed. As the passengers gathered at the sides of the ship
sailors threw a rope to a waiting buss, whose oarsmen began rowing
as soon as it was secured to the stern. Conrad felt the cog move as
the longship pulled it away from the quay and towards the middle of
the Trave. The captain kept a keen hand on the cog’s rudder for the
harbour was full of vessels that he had to thread a path
through.

Their progress seemed
agonisingly slow as they passed by other boats moored in the
harbour, the second cog behind them was also being pulled by a
buss. But as the minutes passed the quay diminished in size and
they left the harbour to enter the wide waterway that was the
Trave. Conrad gripped the side of the boat and spat in the
direction of the spires and buildings of Lübeck, the city that had
killed his family and cast him as an orphan into the world. Then he
remembered Marie and said a silent prayer to God that she would be
safe and protected for he suspected that he would never see her
again.

After two hours the
cogs had reached the estuary of the river and the longships cast
them adrift, the captain ordering the sail to be unfurled as he
sought to catch the breeze. Everyone looked up in excitement when
the great canvas sail billowed as the wind filled it and they began
their journey across the Baltic. Conrad noticed that the sail
carried the red sword and cross emblem that Rudolf and Henke wore
on their surcoats. He also noticed that Walter was kneeling on the
deck praying, which Conrad took comfort from. God would not sink
their vessel with such a pious man on board.

Once under way the
ship’s cook began roasting fresh fish over a brazier positioned
near the bows of the boat. Soon a queue had formed as sailors and
passengers alike waited to satisfy the appetite they had built up
during the loading of the ship. Hans was near the head of the line,
eagerly waiting with his wooden eating bowl. Rudolf had ensured
that the ship’s food supplies were more than sufficient for the
journey and had purchased fresh meat and fish on the morning of
their departure so the bellies of all the crew and passengers would
be full at the start of the voyage and during the passage. From
bitter experience he knew that empty bellies bred mutinous spirits
and lethargy. There was little point in arriving at Riga with a
ship full of half-starving people.

Hans was eating
greedily from his bowl when Conrad sat down beside him beneath the
gunwale, using his fingers to shovel cooked mackerel into his
mouth.

‘I told you we would
not starve,’ he grinned.

‘That depends on how
long we have to stay on this boat,’ said Conrad, who had to admit
that the mackerel was most appetising.

Hans emptied his mouth
and scooped up some more fish. ‘Just over three weeks. I asked one
of the sailors.’

The prospect seemed
daunting but the days following were filled with work that kept
Conrad’s mind occupied. When helping to clean the deck with buckets
of seawater he occasionally glanced at the distant horizon, the
endless ocean making him and the boat he was on appear miniscule
and unimportant. He shuddered. He had never seen the sea before let
alone sail on it. He gazed at the dark water and wondered what
monsters swam below its surface. At night he lay in his hammock and
heard the creaking of the ship’s timbers and wondered if the vessel
would break apart while he slept.

He had counted himself
lucky that he had been allotted a hammock to sleep in and wondered
why Rudolf, Henke and the mercenaries preferred to sleep in the
open on deck. After the first night he knew why. The hold stank of
urine and human dung, made worse when several of his fellow youths
were seasick. Whereas Hans was talkative and jovial the other three
– Anton, Bruno and Johann – were more reticent and aloof. They
rarely spoke and kept their heads down, and even the frequent
questioning by Hans had little success. However, their bouts of
seasickness and Conrad’s offer to help them to the deck so they
could throw up over the side made them more approachable, even if
they nearly always vomited below deck, creating a nauseous stench.
Added to the odour of dung and urine it was quite overpowering.
Everyone was given a terracotta pot to piss in each evening, which
also doubled up as a sick bowl. They were emptied every morning but
in the foetid darkness of the hold many were kicked over by
accident, especially during Bruno and Johann’s desperate attempts
to reach the side of the ship before they emptied their stomachs,
which invariably failed.

Conrad emerged each
morning clutching his piss pot and his nose permanently twisted at
the reek that greeted his nostrils when he opened his eyes.
Climbing the steps slowly so as not to disturb the contents of his
pot, he always encountered a cheerful Rudolf.

‘I trust you had a
good night’s sleep, Conrad?’

Henke grinned evilly
as he and Rudolf joined the queue of those waiting to empty their
bowels at the bowhead where there were located two seats, one
projecting out either side of the prow. It was an undignified and
precarious business but absolutely essential.

Conrad noticed that
during the voyage most of the crew and passengers became a little
leaner, especially Bruno and Johann who took a week before they
acquired their sea legs. However, Hans actually gained weight on
account of the regular meals he was eating.

‘What did you do,
Conrad, before this voyage, I mean.’

They were in the hold
armed with hammers trying to hunt down and kill the rats that
occupied the ship’s interior. Hans was clutching a candleholder,
the flickering flame barely enough to see by let alone hunt black
rats.

‘I was an apprentice
baker to my father,’ answered Conrad proudly. ‘What about you?’

‘Beggar and thief.
There’s one, quick!’

Conrad raised his
hammer but he only caught a fleeting glimpse of a black shape and
then it was gone. This was hopeless. Conrad lowered his weapon.

‘A thief?’

‘Caught stealing a
loaf of bread. They were going to hang me but it was a church
court, fortunately, and so they offered me a life serving God or
dancing on the end of a rope. So here I am.’

‘What about your
family?’ asked Conrad.

Hans scratched his
head and picked a louse from his hair. ‘Don’t have any. I was an
orphan and beggar on the streets of Lübeck. Managed to survive most
of the time but I had not eaten in two weeks. I was so hungry that
I didn’t consider getting caught. I just saw that big fresh loaf
and the ache in my belly and took it. What about you?’

‘I lost my family,’
was all that Conrad would say on the matter.

The voyage was largely
uneventful, the waters of the Baltic remaining largely flat and the
winds mostly mild. Occasionally they were struck by a thunderstorm
that drenched the boat, but not before everything on deck had been
covered with canvas sheets. The rainwater was caught and stored in
the casks that had been emptied of water and so there was no need
to put into shore to replenish what had been consumed. No one
washed or shaved and so as the days passed everyone stank and got
progressively filthier. Rudolf and Henke discarded their surcoats
and chainmail and donned garnache – loose outer garments with
short, wide sleeves. The mercenaries similarly stashed their padded
coats away and wore their leggings and shirts only.

The mood was relaxed
and friendly, the sailors appreciative of Conrad and his companions
lending a hand with daily tasks on board and the mercenaries being
kept on a tight leash by Rudolf. In their spare time the sailors
played dice but Rudolf prohibited Conrad and his comrades from
taking part.

‘Gambling pampers to
our base instincts and leads to resentment and anger,’ he told
them. ‘No good comes of it.’

His words were
prophetic as two days later a fierce argument broke out between two
of the crew concerning cheating at dice. One of the men pulled a
knife and stabbed the other sailor, resulting in his death. He was
immediately arrested and placed under guard in the hold while his
fate was decided. Rudolf ensured that Conrad and his fellow youths
were in attendance as the man was hauled before the captain. The
day was warm and sunny with a light breeze filling the sail above
them as the offender was brought up the steps. The body of the dead
sailor lay on the deck, blood oozing onto the wood. Conrad
deliberately stared ahead to avoid looking at it.