Casca 31: The Conqueror

by Tony Roberts

  * * *

  Aveline shivered with cold and fear. She’d been deposited roughly in a hovel deep in the woods and locked in. She’d tried to break the door but it was too stout and well made. The walls, although of wood, were equally unyielding. So she’d sat on the dirty straw that passed for a floor and wept. Now she heard someone approaching and wiped her eyes. It wouldn’t do to be seen weeping; she was, after all, a Norman and better therefore than these uncouth Saxons.

  The bolts were dragged back and the door pushed in. Two figures stood framed in the doorway. “Ut!” one of them snapped. Aveline didn’t understand the word but got the meaning. Slowly she shuffled forward, blinking in the afternoon light. It wasn’t a particularly bright day but after a few hours in the dark hovel, with no windows or proper light except through the chinks in the planks, it was enough to cause her to hide her eyes for a moment.

  The two Saxons were a man and a woman. The man was the one who’d abducted her. The woman was a tall, blond haired figure dressed in brown leather tunic and pants. Her boots looked like leather or felt, and a belt ran round her waist. Aveline thought she was quite pretty, except her expression was hard.

  “This is the Norman pig?” she snapped to the man. Aveline had no idea what she was saying.

  “Yeah. She must be important; look at her clothes and her hands. She’s not done any hard work in her life. She’s a noble.”

  “I’ll decide that!” the woman replied, critically examining Aveline. “Yes, she’s a stranger to manual labor. Pah! Probably never wiped her bottom in her life – has a servant to do that for her. Okay, let’s take her to Ethelwin. He’ll know how much she’s worth.”

  “Who do we ask the money from?” the man asked, seizing Aveline and dragging her after the woman who had swiftly marched off towards the river, about a quarter of a mile distant.

  “We have the priest with us. He speaks one of their tongues. He’ll get out of her who will be weak enough to pay for her worthless hide.”

  Aveline gasped in pain and shock. The grip of the man on her arm was extremely painful and she tried to twist out of his grip. She received a stinging backhander across the face. Sobbing, she was dragged unwilling to the river where a few small wooden boats waited on a makeshift jetty made of tree stumps. The water lapped at their bases and the cold wind blew across the river, making Aveline shiver.

  She was dumped in one where another Saxon waited, hands on the oars, and he began to pull the vessel through the water once Aveline had sat down. Behind her the others got into other boats and escorted the prisoner across to the southern bank. They disembarked first, splashing through the muddy shallows onto firmer ground. The Saxon rower bumped his boat into the mud, picked up the unresisting Norman girl and carried her over his shoulder to dry land and deposited her none too gently at the feet of the Saxon woman.

  “Bring her,” she commanded. Together, the small group walked through the waist high reeds and grasses towards the distant line of trees that marked the beginning of the Andresweald.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “Is this it?” Casca demanded, standing with his fists on hips, glaring through the thinly falling snow at the vaguely seen outline of the Saxon village nestled close to the western bank of a medium sized watercourse. “Is this what we’ve frozen our asses off these last two days to get here for?”

  The others stood miserably alongside on the low rise where the frozen mud road finally allowed a view of Stokeham. Wisps of smoke rose from the collection of straw-roofed huts and blurred dark figures could be seen moving around. The road meandered down from the ridge Casca and his household were standing on and crossed the small river via a wooden plank bridge, then climbed up a low bank and cut through the settlement before vanishing into the distance.

  “Shit.” Casca’s one comment said it all. They were frozen, wet and tired. The journey had been a bitch. Giffard’s map had helped, although some of the roads weren’t marked, but once they’d picked up the main route to Buchingeham things had gone much more smoothly. Giffard had also left a note. Will stay in London until the Duke is crowned king, then shall go to Buchingeham. If you need me from the turn of the year I shall be there.

  Casca led the dispirited group of ten down the slope, together with two horses pulling two carts piled with belongings, the beginning of Casca’s noble lifestyle, towards the bridge. Two men wearing peasant clothing stopped and stared at the motley band as they approached. One was holding a shovel and the other a staff.

  “This is Stokeham?” Casca hailed them, pointing at the village across the river.

  “Yes, Lord,” the man with the shovel answered hesitantly. He was unsure about Casca; his dress was foreign and word had come of the new rulers spreading out from London in recent weeks. The former owner of the village had fallen at Hastings and they had been waiting for the new lord of the manor for some time. Maybe this was he? A good thing was that he spoke the local tongue, if a little over formal and accented.

  Casca sighed. There was a lot of work to be done. “How many souls live here?”

  “Ah, Lord, I know not. I cannot count.” The shovel man looked for help to the staff carrier. He excavated earwax while thinking for a moment. “Two hundred, including children.”

  Casca nodded. Enough hands to help. “Good. I’m the new Baron of Stokeham. Name’s Casca de Longeville. I shall require the headman’s lodgings for my entourage and myself. Show me where it is.”

  “Lord – it is waiting for you. It has been empty for a long time. But Lord, before you go, there is one of your soldiers recovering with the herbalist down by the river. He is wounded. He said he would see you when you arrived.”

  Casca stared for a moment, then cursed. Something had to have gone wrong. “Just one man?”

  “Yes, Lord.” The shovel man looked worried. Maybe he should have asked the other man to give the new master the bad news. Too late now, he decided.

  “Show me!” Casca commanded. He pointed at the staff holder. “You show my household the headman’s lodgings.”

  Casca followed shovel man to a long dark hut by the riverside. The fenced garden was tidy and contained a number of plants poking through the thin covering of snow. The door opened as they approached and Casca was shown in. A smell of herbs faintly came to him and there were masses of dried herbs hanging from the beams, walls and posts. “Where is he?” Casca demanded, peering into the dark corners.

  “There, Lord.” The herbalist, an elderly woman, pointed to a shape lying in a sagging bed against the back wall. Casca strode over the creaking floor to the bed and peered down. Arnand, pale, looked up at him. “What happened?” Casca snapped, his heart thudding.

  “I’m sorry, sire,” Arnand whispered. Now Casca could see the blood-soaked dressing on his shoulder and arm. “They took her. Hugh died. They went into the woods.” Arnand sagged back into the bed, his strength spent.

  Casca cursed, clenching his fists. His plans had all gone to ratshit and a young woman was now in danger of losing her life. He’d have to find her – but how? He whirled on the elderly woman. “Get him on his feet; I need him fit and healthy. How soon can you do that?”

  “Perhaps a week. He’s lost a lot of blood, sire,” she shrugged.

  “Then do what you can, woman.” He strode out into the cold and squeezed his eyes shut. The pain was almost unbearable. The self-recriminations flew through his mind. How stupid it was to believe two men could take a young girl through a foreign land and get to a place none of them had ever heard of before! Something always seemed to go wrong when the risks were this big. How Lesalles would react when he found out was anyone’s guess. He decided to send a message to Giffard, when his overlord got to Buchingeham.

  His mood black, he stamped up the rock-hard mud slope to the village proper. It was a collection of huts of wood, wattle, mud and thatch. Warped wooden fences indicated animal pens and flickering fires could be half seen within the dark homes of the peasants. Two buildings stood out from the o
rdinary; a church at the top of the slope and to the right, a long building with stonework along the lower four feet of the walls. This would be the headman’s house; his new home.

  The church was a stone building, rectangular with a steeply sloping roof of wood. The cross on the roof clearly marked it for what it was and Casca sneered at the symbol. It was a sign of hate for him, something that had changed his life forever. At best he tolerated the followers of the Jew, Yeshua, but at other times he’d happily have them tied down, disemboweled and fed to the crows. Trouble was, there were too many of them now and they were constantly spreading their religion to all parts of the known world. Where could he escape the taint of the religion that its prophet had cursed him to immortality?

  Carl was waiting for him at the entrance. “How is he?”

  “Bad. Lost a lot of blood. He seems in good hands. What’s this shit hole like?”

  “Reasonable. Aelfgar has got the three servant girls to start cleaning up. The priest has gone to look at the church. Eustace thinks we need a defensive perimeter.”

  “I agree with him,” Casca said looking round. If this was going to be a serious settlement then they’d need protection. There was plenty of wood in the surrounding area. “Find out how many woodcutters we have here. Then tell the village elders to come see me at dusk. We’ll give them a gift for Christmas Day.” He smiled without humor. He looked at the building, then the two horses standing miserably by the entrance. “Don’t tell me, no stables.”

  “No.” Carl grimaced. That meant the horses would have to sleep indoors this night.

  “First thing I want built are stables. Then a defensive perimeter. Then watch towers. Then a castle.”

  “A castle?” Carl looked at Casca agog.

  “Think I want to sit here helpless when that dog molester Lesalles comes knocking on the door?”

  “Ah. How?”

  “We’ve got wood,” Casca threw an arm out towards the gloom. “And plenty of muscle. And, besides, its winter and the peasants haven’t got much to do.”

  Casca drove his small household into a frenzy of activity. The stable-boy was given a small area at one end of the main hall for the two horses, and straw was thrown down to take care of their waste. The rest of them found places to sleep at the other end, but Casca vowed he’d get a Norman-style accommodation built fast and not have this Saxon housing for much longer.

  The food they’d bought would do for the feasting and they got the villagers to tell what they had. Casca was surprised. They had plenty of plowed fields close by as well as water, wood and animals. It wasn’t a poor manor. Food supplies were good and the stores were reasonably stocked.

  Casca’s message to Buchingeham had gotten there, and the messenger returned in two days. The road network was fair, but the old Roman road system had just about given up the ghost and now mud tracks were what the English used. Casca was dismayed at the backward steps the land had taken since Roman rule had gone 650 years back.

  Once the new year celebrations had passed and the villagers had recovered from their effects, Casca got them to start digging. He also organized his household into making stables for the horses. The stable lad was put in charge, much to his surprise, but he happily told the sweating Aelfgar and Ricsward, the new laborer Casca had requisitioned from the village, where to place the newly cut pieces of timber.

  The village blacksmith was paid to produce shovels and axes and soon the men were busy cutting down trees or digging a perimeter ditch. The earth was thrown up inside the line of the ditch and formed into a flat-topped earthen embankment.

  Wood began to pile up around the village and the carpenter was given four assistants to form regular-sized planks. The ditch was soon finished, surrounding the village, and there were two entrances; one where the road from the bridge ran up the hill into the settlement, the other directly opposite at the rear.

  Casca then pointed out where he wanted towers and gateways. The woman were put to supplying food and making new clothing, as the exertions over the week wore out a fair number of clothes. Casca took the time to explore the extent of his ‘manor’ and checked what was his and what wasn’t.

  He was returning from an examination of the woodlands to the north when he saw a number of horses and flags in his village and picked up his pace, Carl and a tough villager who had accompanied him panting to keep up. Casca came round the last corner and saw a number of well-dressed people waiting for him; the first man he saw was Walter Giffard.

  The second was Lesalles.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Aveline picked miserably at her thin broth. It was unappealing and smelt of soil. She wondered what was in it. A few lumps of some leafy vegetable poked above the grey-colored liquid and she shuddered.

  “What’s the matter, don’t like potage?” her companion, a thin, wizened Saxon woman screeched. Her hair was grey and lank and her nose dripped continuously in the cold weather. “Good for you. Put flesh on your bones.” The crone screeched with amusement.

  Aveline didn’t understand her, and in fact she felt frightened. She looked like some kind of wild nightmarish figure. To be sure, many of the Saxons in the forest camp had odd looks or features, and they scared her. Not that any had hurt her or anything, but they had made sure she knew not to try to escape. Where she could run to was anyone’s guess; the forest pressed in all round her and there was no sense of direction.

  The only one who spoke to her in any kind of friendly manner was the priest, the Latin-speaking cleric who had an unpronounceable name and terrible accent. He also had a long ugly neck and a huge Adam’s apple that bobbed up and down when he spoke. It was a mesmerizing feature and she felt it hard not to stare at it when he spoke to her.

  From him she’d gathered she was a hostage. She was asked by the leader, a tall wide-shouldered man with a thin, long nose and fair hair called Ethelwin, who would be the person to send the ransom note to. She considered Lesalles, but then decided even if he had more money, she didn’t want to be delivered to him. So she’d told them the Baron de Longeville at Stokeham.

  That had caused an argument. The priest had later told her they hadn’t much of an idea where Stokeham was, as it was outside the local area and these were outlaws and brigands who stayed within the Andresweald except on a few occasions when they needed new recruits, prisoners or food. It had been the woman, Goda, who knew where Stokeham was and devised a plan to deliver the note. This had led to another argument but Goda eventually persuaded Ethelwin she was the best to take charge of the delivery since she knew where the place was. The priest had written the note in Latin, since none of the Saxons could write in French or Latin – or in fact even write at all!

  So Goda had left with two men and now everyone was waiting for the reply. Aveline closed her eyes and swallowed the unappealing soup. The crone smiled and shuffled away from the Norman woman to eat herself. Nobody was worried their prisoner would run; she wasn’t the type who could run, and if she did, how far could she get?

  They were gathered round a small clearing in rudimentary huts. There were at any one time about twenty people in the camp, and sometimes as many as fifty. They sometimes ate meat, as deer and wild boar were brought in once a week or so by one or more of the men. The camp rejoiced at these times and feasted merrily.

  Aveline though was encased in her misery, hoping that Casca would somehow come to rescue her soon.

  * * *

  Casca faced the hostile Lesalles calmly. He was on home ground, and Giffard was present with his men-at-arms. Even so, the visitor was quite prepared to launch a verbal attack as soon as he clapped eyes on the Baron. “So here you are at last! Where have you hidden her?”

  “If you mean Aveline, then she’s not here. I’ve no idea what makes you think I’ve got her. Now either state the purpose of your visit or leave.”

  “You don’t tell me to leave,” Lesalles snarled. “I’m an earl now, so I outrank you, you piddling little upstart.”

  “Earl of
what?” Casca demanded. “Not Buchingeham, so this isn’t your territory.”

  Giffard stepped in between the two. “Gentlemen, please observe the rules of nobility.”

  Casca eyed his liege, then nodded curtly. Lesalles sneered. “As Earl of Mittel Saxe I have great influence in London. I control most of the trade that comes out of London into the countryside. The King has great confidence I’m the best man for the title. So if you want to trade with the capital and beyond, I suggest you co-operate.”

  “Nothing to do with you paying for his fleets across the channel, then,” Casca said sarcastically. “Got old man Roland in your pocket yet?”

  Lesalles flicked an irritated hand. “Your jealousy is nothing! He will sign the contract once I have his daughter wed.”

  Casca grinned. “Oh? Sounds as if the old man’s had a change of heart.”

  Giffard cleared his throat. “Ah, the King is interested in securing a wool trade deal and has spoken to the merchant. So the previous promised deal between him and the Earl here has not been completed.”

  “Yet,” Lesalles snapped. “Once I am wed to his daughter he will. Now, where is she?”

  “Go search the village. She’s not here. I don’t know where she is!” Casca stood there, his arms folded.

  Lesalles growled irritably, but snapped his fingers and two men, built like bears, moved off into the settlement. Lesalles followed. Casca nodded to Carl to keep an eye on him. While they were gone, Giffard looked round at the new defenses. “A good start, but not strong enough to withstand an attack.”

  “I’m planning a castle. A small one. Over there to the north,” he pointed at a flat piece of land close to the river but high up on a small plateau.

  “Good, good,” Giffard nodded. He leaned close to Casca. “If you marry the girl, then it might be a useful move to allow the King to secure a deal with her father. Lesalles has said no, which is a foolish move, but he has enough credit with the King for this not to be challenged; however, should you advise the King you are prepared to hand the wool deal to him…..”