by Smith, Skye
Six women hauled at a strong rope that ran over a large tree limb and then down to the bridge. Their hauling lifted the other side of the bridge up from the bank. That was why the lashings had to be cut on the other side. Once the bridge was up a foot, they tied the rope off to the overhanging tree and started pulling on another rope. The bridge swung easily to the island side bank and the free end was heaved up onto an old stump.
Inka and the two women were nowhere to be seen. Raynar climbed the large tree that tethered the bridge and looked over the bush on the other side. Inka was still messing about around a cooking fire. The other two were running back and forth between her and one of the huts. He could smell the smoke of the fire, and other smells beside. The smell of burning fat. The smell of baking bread.
He looked further than the village and could see a cloud of dust just beyond the village. "Inka!" Raynar yelled with his full mountain-bred voice. He saw her look up. He pointed behind her and yelled again, "They are here! They come!" She waved back and said something to the other women. They all ran for the last boat.
The boat was like the flat-bottomed boats on the Thames, but smaller and lighter and seemed to be made of bundles of reeds. The three women pushed it down the bank into the water and stepped lightly into it. The last one had the pole and she poled it away from the bank and then almost immediately had to use the pole as an oar. This channel must be deep. Raynar slid down the tree and sprinted to Abby for his bow and quiver.
Inka came running up from the bank towards him. "No, you fool! Get out of sight. We want them to think we are helpless women, with no men. Go, now, hide. And take that nag with you." She yelled instructions at a group of young women and one of them led him away from the bank and towards the huts on the island.
Some of the buildings in this village were ancient. Or rather, the foundations were ancient, as the huts were made of saplings and rushes and sedge. The foundations were mounds of earth and stones that created a platform at least three feet above the ground level. Surrounding each mound were neat plots of kitchen vegetables and herbs. Beyond were animal paddocks made from saplings woven with bramble branches.
He left Abby in one of the nearest paddocks with some costly looking dairy cows, and then he followed the young woman back closer to the bridge. She was tall, and strong, and blonde, and moved with the grace of a dancer. She motioned him up into the hut closest to the bridge. Inside, the one-room hut was surprisingly light. There was a circular hole in the center of the roof.
She motioned him to sit on a pallet, and she reached across him and pushed apart the wall's rushes beside him and at eye level. Through the gap he could see the bridge and both banks. She crawled around him to the other side of the pallet and made another gap in the rushes for her to peek through. The pallet was not large and she was very close to Raynar. He could feel the heat from her skin and hear her gentle breath.
"From here we can watch the fun," she said.
"How can you think this is fun? The warriors that come are angry and vicious. They have already killed some of your folk in the other village and your men have killed some of theirs. They will enslave and gang rape any woman they capture here, or worse."
"Do you think we are strangers to raiders? Why do you think we keep this old island village so complete? Raiders come and go. Most regret their coming. We remain." She looked at him with her green eyes wide in the dull light.
Raynar lost himself in her eyes for a moment. Her skin was soft against his and he could feel her move against him with each breath. She pulled away from his gaze and looked through her own gap in the wall. Raynar looked through his. He could see horses. The Normans had arrived. They dismounted and walked around the empty huts on the other bank. They lined up against the bank and looked across at the boats and the swung bridge. A line of women along the island's bank looked back at them.
One of the Normans hailed across the channel. "We come in peace. We wish to talk. We mean you no harm. We are looking for footpads. They are armed and dangerous. Come and talk with us."
Inka yelled back, "There are only women here. Be on your way. You have interrupted our meal."
One of the Normans came from the huts towards his group eating something. Inka raised her voice to them again. "Stay away from our eels. That is our meal, and we have little enough to eat. Would you thieve the food from our children's mouths? Be gone." The Norman with the eel started passing pieces around to the others. The Normans walked as one back to the huts.
"I am Roas," said the woman next to Raynar.
"Raynar."
"You are from far away. You speak like a Dane but you are not one. You carry a strange bow, a fine bow, an expensive bow. Who are you Raynar?"
"Not now girl, I must watch these Normans."
"The Normans are eating the best eel and mushroom stew they have ever tasted. We will go over and visit with them in about an hour. For that hour we must stay hidden here together. Would you like to talk with me, or perhaps, you know, do other things with me?" She shrugged her shoulder and her simple summer tunic slipped down one arm and displayed the silky skin between her breasts.
Raynar tried not to look, but then remembered the teachings of a wise woman he once knew. If a woman displays herself it is rude not to appreciate it. "You are too comely to flirt with me while danger is so close by."
"I told you. They are eating. In an hour the mushroom magic will be in their minds and they will be defenseless."
"The mushrooms? Inka's mushrooms. The ones with the blue dye. The Normans are eating them!" Raynar exclaimed.
"Yes, I thought you knew. Inka told me that you knew of the mushroom magic."
"I have never eaten them. I just know that the blue dye marks them as poisonous."
"I would not call the blue dye a poison. It is a potion, yes. Taking it changes your vision and makes you feel delicious."
"A delicious poison. That is a dangerous poison indeed," he said, still trying to ignore her cleavage.
"It makes simple things wondrous. It makes you see dripping colors like rainbows made from stars. When the danger has passed I will prepare some for you to try." Her hand was on his knee. "I will take care of you to make sure you don't come to any harm."
"If they are a good potion how can I ever come to harm?" asked Raynar out of the corner of his mouth as he forced himself to watch through the rushes and not at this divine girl.
"Sometimes they make you sick first, and if you do not know to puke them out, then you can have a nasty night as if you have been poisoned. Sometimes you feel like you are one with an animal. Say you think you are a hawk and you climb a tree and try to fly. You can't really fly. You will drop and break your neck."
Her hand was very softly moving up his leg. "Whenever someone wants to feel the mushroom magic, they must first ask a friend to keep them safe. I will be your keeper and take care of you. You will come to no harm. You will feel the full love and beauty of the earth and the water and the sky and the sun and the moon, and most of all, the beauty that is around you everyday. The beauty that you have ignored since you were a baby, because it has ceased to be special in your grown-up vision of the world."
He pushed her hand away, but gently. "How can I fight these Normans and protect all these women from them, if I am besotted with a potion? I must stay alert. My bow sense must aim my arrows. I need a clear head."
"Protect all these women? Protect us. You. Our own men stay away in the boats for six months of the year trading with the low counties across the sea. They leave us for a month at a time to trade our horses and cattle up and down the Danelaw. Who do you think protects us then?"
"I met a few of your men at the next village. We killed a handful of Normans to protect you."
"If they killed Norman raiders, it was to claim their horses and their armour. Not to protect us. This island protects us. The marshes protect us. The mushrooms protect us. The wolfbane protects us. Usually in this season the men are gone. They come back in time to help wit
h harvest.
This year half the men stayed because they heard that these Norman raiders had special huge horses, and they were hoping to win some of them for breeding into our stock.” She pushed herself away from him in anger, "Protect us?" and straightened her back in pride. The jiggle of her young breasts rose to his eye level. "You know nothing of women, Raynar."
"So I have been told." Raynar looked at her again. He had spent his life around Welsh, Saxon, and Danish women. Danish women tended to be bigger, healthier, but no more comely than the others. The difference was in their strength of character, a belief in themselves, a self-assuredness that made other women call them hussies and shameless. This Frisian woman had just pointed out something important. Something he had never thought of before.
It must be common in villages all around the North Sea for women to be left on their own for months at a time. Perhaps that is why they were so different. These women did not depend on their men to protect them or to take care of them. He tried to soften her stiffened back with a little flattery. "The women of this village are very comely but you shine beyond them. Are there any women in this village who are not comely?"
She smiled at the crude compliment. "We Frisians breed the best animals. The best horses. The best cattle. From the same knowledge, we breed the best children, too. We are all comely except for the men who are scarred from battle. The channels here run thick with fish and eels. Our diet is fish and dairy and fresh greens and berries. We eat strong food, so we grow strong and healthy. We stay comely because we stay healthy."
Raynar softly touched the skin between her breasts. "Your skin too is different. Saxon and Welsh women have white skin that often looks unhealthy. Your skin is honey-colored though you are as blonde as a Saxon. And where your skin has been touched by the sun, it has turned brown, not red or pink."
She smiled and whispered softly, "We live on an island. We fish for food. We move around by boat. Our simple daily chores keep us wet or damp, so in the warm weather we do them without many clothes. The sun dries our skins faster than we can dry wet clothes. By harvest time our skins are brown from head to foot."
Shrugging her shoulders made her breasts jiggle under the light weave of her smock. "It is always damp in this land. If you do not keep cloth dry, it rots. It is the same with the animals. Their hooves rot, and then won't heal, and the animal becomes sickly. This island is our ancient village. A safe place for when the men are away. The other village, where you met our men, is our real village now, especially in the wet season. The soil there is dry, so the herds are healthier."
Raynar thought about all she had just said and asked, "So then the men must never live here on the island?"
"Not that I can remember, but I have seen only three hands of summers. This is a women’s place, protected by the goddess Freyja. We come here when there is danger, or when there is a full moon."
"But you must miss your husbands."
"Not many of us have husbands."
"But all the children?"
"They are the children of the village." She looked in his eyes again and saw the confusion. "Is that so hard to understand? We have different customs than Saxons and Danes. My people have been living near this island since ancient times. Since the time the great cold pushed the Angles across the North Sea.
Our ancestors were all of one family, one clan. There were no other clans close by for intermarriage. This means that the blood is close in all of us, so we try not to mate with the men of our own village. We know this from breeding horses." She frowned deeply, and a glimmer of a tear came to the corner of one eye. "Inka is our seer. If I wish to mate with a man of the village, I must ask her permission first. She will track the bloodlines to make sure it is safe for us to breed."
Raynar looked away from this lovely woman long enough to check what was happening on the far bank. Nothing was happening. The horses were tethered and unguarded. The men were sat on the ground or on logs or on benches and all were eating their fill. He turned back to Roas. The other shoulder was now also bare and her nipples were almost exposed. He stared at them and moaned softly as his cock lurched. "So who has fathered all the children?"
"Who sent you to us?" she cuddled closer to him.
"I have been riding to every village warning them that the Normans are looking for horses, men for slave labour, and women for whorehouses. Your village was in my area."
"But who sent you to this area?"
"Hereward of Burna"
"Some of these children are Hereward’s."
"What?"
"Four, or was it five years ago, Hereward was outlawed. He came here to cross the sea with our men. In good weather they trade with the other low counties, the other Fens, the ones in Flanders and Holland. But he came in the wrong season for crossing the sea so he had to live with us through the winter. He is of Danish stock and similar-looking to us, and was strong and healthy and handsome, so the seer allowed some of the women to mate with him. That was the old seer, Inka's mother. She died last year."
"What of the men? Are they not angry never to have sons? Were they not angry with Hereward for bedding their women?"
"Look around at all the young boys. They have many sons," she told him.
"I mean THEIR sons."
"There is more to making a son than shoving your prick up some woman’s purse," she lashed out.
Her voice was angry so Raynar did not say what he was thinking. Perhaps she was frustrated by his stupidity. Despite this, she was now stroking the inside of his thigh.
"Our men trade with other Frisian villages. They plant their seed in other women. Some of us have traveled with the men, but it is not common. Most Frisian women do not travel, unless they marry a stranger or are captured by raiders. This island well protects us from raiders. It means that our village is still pure."
Her voice softened as her temper softened. "Our own men tell us that the men of other cultures would want us, would desire us, would pay much coin for us. A successful raid would mean the end of this village. They would take us all. They would sell us all. The fertile women would be lost to the village and the village would die. These Normans are not the first to try."
She stroked the back of his neck. "What did you say before. The Normans are looking for horses, strong men, and comely women. Then this village is a gold mine for them. Our black horses are sought after for breeding stock, our men are tall and strong, our women are desirable."
Raynar risked looking at her again. Looking at her took his breath away. "This village would be a gold mine for any raiders. Norse, Dane, Saxon, Frisian, not just Normans."
"And we live without men to protect us for half the year." Her other hand slid up from his knee and she squeezed his cock through his clothes. It jumped and throbbed. She tried to capture his eyes with hers, but instead he looked back through the gap in the rushes to see what was happening on the other bank. She punched him hard in the shoulder. "Ahhh!" she half sobbed and half screamed in frustration, "what must I do to interest you?"
Raynar took both her hands in his. "Roas, when we are finished with these Normans, when I have slept, when I am clean and do not stink of horse and road, then I will come to you and I will pleasure you. But for now, please stop teasing me. Just be here and talk. Tell me more of your folk, of the women, of your village."
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The Hoodsman - Frisians of the Fens by Skye Smith Copyright 2010-13
Chapter 4 - The Women of the Island of Westerbur, The Fens in September 1067
Roas suddenly stopped caressing young Raynar and instead, leaped away from him. Inka had ducked through the doorway and behind her were a handful of other ealder women. "Roas, you should not be here, and you should not be with him. Leave," growled Inka. Roas stayed as far from the other women as possible and edged to the door. She looked back at Raynar one more time, and gave him a saucy wink, and then was gone.
Inka stepped into the middle of the hut. "Raynar, this is our cou
ncil. We must decide on what to do with these Normans. They are eating the drugged food, and soon will be of a strange mind. They will stay like that for about four hours unless we drug them again."
"Kill them," said Raynar immediately.
"Why?"
Raynar spoke quickly and forcefully. "At your dry village they killed the three old men who they were questioning. Then they raped and murdered a ten-year old girl." There were gasps from the women.
"Your men and I killed only a handful of them. The rest fled to here, so one of the old men must have told them of this place. If you were not protected by this island, then by now they would have tied you, raped you, and then dragged you to their whorehouse in Peterburgh. " He looked around the faces to measure the effect of his words. "Kill them all."
One of the ealders said, "Enough, we kill them." There were murmours of agreement.
"Good, then I will ride to the men and bring them back to slaughter them," offered Raynar.
"Not yet. The decision is not yet made. There may be other ends that would serve us better." Inka looked around at the other women. They took turns in speaking their thoughts.
"If we slaughter them, then the Normans will come back with twice the men and slaughter us."
"Klaes has already slaughtered a handful. If none survive, then who will tell the tale in Peterburgh?"
"We want to be left alone. We do not want Norman raiders here."
"What if we scare them."
"Scare them?"
"Scare them so that the Normans are afraid of us and leave us in peace."
"Does slaughtering them not make them afraid."
"No," Raynar broke in, "they have destroyed entire towns because some of their men were slaughtered. Slaughter does not make them afraid, it makes them angry."
"What are Normans afraid of Raynar?"
