agreed to hire when their captain and a couple of his sergeants visited me in London.
Apparently Leslie heard about me being in London both from the Nuncio and from a couple of their men who had talked to one of our archer recruiters. He thought I was recruiting archers for Cyprus and came to see if I needed swordsmen as well.
The mercenaries’ captain is a big white-haired older man named Robert Leslie. According to him, he and his men are part a clan that lost a big fight over some cattle land more than thirty years ago and had to flee for their lives. Ever since then, if Leslie is to be believed, they’ve been moving around and hiring themselves out as mercenaries to fight on the side of one English lord or another.
Presently they are raising sheep on some of Whitby Abbey’s grazing land on the moors northeast of Thirsk in exchange for guarding the Abbey. Or not looting it more likely.
As you might imagine, I question Leslie rather closely before I part with some of my coins. Leslie himself is a strange man and there’s no denying it – his eyes and face look a bit different.
“Who are your people and how is it that you are mercenaries instead of living in Scotland?” I ask.
“The tale in the clan is that our blood was not pure because my father’s father, or maybe his father before him, was a mercenary from somewhere else who came here and was adopted into the clan when Malcom was King. Always outsiders we was when I was a lad, and so was my father before me.
“My cousin’s family was always feuding with us. Pushed us out and took our lands, didn’t they? Claimed we wasn’t really part of the clan. So here we are – fighting’s all we know to do.”
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Finally we retire to the ale house at the end of the dock, the White Horse, and drink ale until we reach an agreement. One of our archers, Joseph from King’s Lynn, and three of the guards will ride back with Leslie to visit his men – to see if they are real. If they are and are willing to move to Coldfield, and on to another place, I’ll accept the price we tentatively negotiated for one hundred and fifty men to conduct a castle siege and battles against an English lord for up to eighteen months.
Eight days later the three guards return with a message from Joseph saying that Leslie’s men are very real and very hungry, and are already marching towards Coldfield. So I send the three guards riding back with a message and a sack of coins for the mercenaries’ initial payment along with two more of my guards to help guard the coins from robbers - leaving me with only one guard left who knows how to ride.
The message they will tell Joseph and the mercenaries is to resume their march and meet me in ten days just south of Wakefield in Yorkshire’s Calder Valley. That’s about a two days’ march from Cornell’s Hathersage Castle.
The mercenaries don’t know my plan, of course, because they can’t be trusted to keep secrets; all they know is that they’ve been hired to fight an English lord somewhere in England. They won’t be told who and where and when until they need to know. And I’m still not sure myself about the when and where; only the who.
Sometime in the next week or two, before the campaigning season begins, I’ll ride up to Calder Valley with Roger and the rest of my men and take command myself. Only after I get there will I decide whether to attack Cornell on the road to weaken him or wait until he gets close to Cornwall and then attack his fief at Hathersage Castle so he is motivated to turn around and return.
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It’s cold and nasty early spring morning in London. The smoke from the cooking fires and fireplaces is so bad that it’s hard to breathe without coughing and choking.
Until a