Free The Archer's Castle: Exciting medieval novel and historical fiction about an English archer, knights templar, and the crusades during the middle ages in England in feudal times before Thomas Cromwell by Martin Archer

extensively with him for his success.” 
           “But more prayers never hurt do they, Archdeacon, and I’m sure he’d want them.  Unfortunately you’ve just missed him.  Lord William is off to Trematon and Falmouth to see after his affairs.  Perhaps you can find him there and pray with him.”  Though pigs will fly before you’ll get a penny or an acre from either of us.
           Both the Abbot and the archdeacon get the same reassuring answers to what I assure them is their “very reasonable” requests for money and lands – I will personally recommend their requests to William since I am sure the churches in the Holy Land will get a share of the resulting benefits.  They both enthusiastically agree that my “request” for a cut is an absolutely splendid idea.
           What they both also get in addition to my demand for a share of the proceeds, and both reluctantly decline, is a sincere offer of transport to the Holy Land so they can pray for Lord William at holy places where it will do the most good.
            It’s the first time William and I have been solicited so directly for coins by high and mighty churchmen and we need to learn how to better handle them. Just telling them to piss off doesn’t sound right.  Now that we’re gentry we need to do it more smoothly. 
           They probably ignored us in the past because we had no coins or land for them to gull us out of, wouldn’t you think?
           But we’ve got to come up with something so they go away quickly.  It seems each time a churchman shows up begging for coins he expects to be fed and dined as well.  We can handle that, of course.  Feeding them I mean.  But what is so unbearable is having a good meal ruined by having to listen to them drone on and on. 
           When William returns, I’m going to suggest that hereafter we ask everyone who shows up what they want as soon as they arrive and, if they are clerics, we’ll offer them passage to the Holy Land instead of money - and then regretfully announce that we are immediately leaving to “practice military training and maneuvers for the next crusade” and the cooks are going with us.
           There is little doubt in my mind of will happen; if they are clerics most of them will leave immediately when they see they have no prospect of either coins or free food and ale. If that doesn’t work and they still want to stay we’ll carry them off to the next ship we have outbound to the Holy Land and send them on a pilgrimage whether they like it or not.  They can help row.
           Besides, it’s true about our need for more training and maneuvers.  Our plan is for fighting men who are going to be different – they’ll need to know how to fight both on land and on sea. 
           Then a totally different problem arrives – a coiner and three mine overseers.  All are named Wartha or something like that.  It is hard to tell from their incomprehensible speech in what seems to be the local dialect of this part of Cornwall.  They aren’t here to cadge food and coins; they’ve come because they’ve heard about their new lord’s edict against slavery in Cornwall.  
           They want to know if it applies to the tin mines on the Restormel manors whose tin revenues belong to the throne.  According to them, without slaves there will be no tin and without the tin there will be no coins for Prince John.  Coins?
           “ Coins?  What about coins?”
           “No one will work in the tin mines except slaves.  Too dangerous you know.  So we have to have slaves if the coiners are to get tin to mix with the King’s silver and copper.”
           What follows is a long and tedious and hard to understand explanation about how tin is mined and heated and stirred and such to produce coins in Cornwall for the king.  It’s a pity William isn’t here to hear it.  It finally becomes apparent that only the