Hoodsman: Frisians of the Fens

by Smith, Skye

  "There have been many such accidents in Derbyshire this year. Usually a fall from a horse," said Alan.

  "Alan, you have business with John. Do not let me delay you. I wish to see this gallant knight for myself."

  Alan was about to argue, but he saw the firm set of Raynar’s jaw, and just waved a farewell instead.

  * * * * *

  Raynar spent two nights in a cave that John and he had found as youngsters. At the time, they had dreamed of finding a new mine and becoming rich, but there had been no ore signs in this cave. The cave was half way up the cliff of a gorge that ran from Stanage Edge down almost to Grindel. There was a string of pools of water below it on the gorge floor.

  With no mines above these pools, the water was fresh and clean, not for drinking, perhaps, but certainly for washing. Raynar had first met Sonja and Britta while bathing in these pools an age ago, well, three years or so, when they were all younger. At the time the sisters were wives not widows, and being older and wiser than he, they had used him shamelessly for their own purposes, but he had not minded. No, he had not minded their unbridled lust in the least. And now, both of their little sons had his look to them.

  The trail to the cave was just a ledge, and he swept the dust behind him with a branch of leaves whenever he walked to or from it. The ledge became a game trail and the game trail became a path down to the pools or up the crest of the ridge. He spent hours treading every trail along the ridge and through the woods that led away from the ridge. He knew them now, and could use them to stay hidden across the half mile from the ridge to the knight's manor. Sweyn's manor, that should by now, by rights, be Sonja's manor.

  He watched the manor for hours at a time, occasionally changing vantage points depending on what was happening at the compound. He rolled the brotherhood's creed through his mind to keep himself focused:

  * Hunt alone.

  * Strike a leader.

  * Vanish.

  * Never tell.

  * Gold buys chains.

  The "never tell" was the hardest rule to keep. Both common law and written law were dependant on the testimony of witnesses, so you could never speak of what you had done, no matter how proud you were of bringing vengeance down on some evil being. It was a rule with no end.

  The last rule "gold buys chains" was added because men were giving themselves away by showing wealth they should not have had. The leaders they struck down often carried fat purses. This rule was a reminder that "vanish" and "never tell" meant continuing with your life as if nothing had changed.

  This last rule was often used by the brothers as a way to identify themselves to strangers who may also be hoodsmen. A pun, a warning, a scolding that connected gold with chains would be noticed by someone who knew the creed.

  One of his vantage points allowed him to see faces, and he was noting the clothes and the horses and the folk so that he would know them at a distance. The knight was the easiest to spot, for he was the only knight. He wore expensive and brightly-colored shirts to mark his self-importance. When he went to town he wore mail. He must be much loved in the town to do his daily business in armour. There seemed to be only two other Normans living at the manor, both men-at-arms, however other mounted Normans often visited.

  By the morning of his second day of watching, he had found the Norman's weakness. He had a pet hawk. Early each day he rode out from the manor towards the open fields above the gorge and worked his hawk on the morning birds.

  On the third morning, while working his bird, the knight saw a man leap out of a bush close to him and run way. He was carrying a lamb. A livestock thief.

  The knight ignored his bird, drew his long cavalry sword and pointed the horse to the chase. The thief was now screaming in terror, and had dropped the lamb so he could run faster, and the knight began to truly enjoy the sport. He was closing fast on the thief, but the thief had now left the open ground and was running deeper and deeper into cover along a well-used bridlepath.

  As he closed the distance, the knight was trying to decide between trampling the man first and then dismounting to carve him, or slashing with the blade as he rode by, or skewering him by leaning sideways from the saddle and using the sword's point like a lance.

  He had just decided on the slash and he was almost within reach, when the man suddenly darted to the right between some saplings. He pulled hard on the reins to slow the stallion before he overshot the saplings, and he was pleased to see his training with the horse was having an effect. The horse assumed he would want to follow the running man and was already slowing and looking to make the turn.

  And suddenly the horse was rearing up and shying to the left. There was something across its face, some kind of animal, and the horse bolted to the left side of the pathway shaking its head furiously. And then the animal seemed to have lost its left foreleg, for it tipped down suddenly to the left and started to fall heavily and roll.

  Raynar was watching from safety behind the saplings. The barn cat that he had thrown at the horse's face had now released its claws and had twisted and dropped to the ground and was gone. The horse fell and rolled on its front left shoulder down the winter wash-out that had undermined the bridle path.

  The expert rider dropped his sword and pushed hard with both legs to clear the saddle before he was caught under a rolling horse. The rider's leap was short of the path, and he hit the ground on the uneven edge of the caved-in path. He crumpled at the neck as he hit the ground.

  Raynar stepped towards the man with a heavy stick raised to club him, but there was no movement. He lifted the man's head out of the dirt, and it came easily. The neck was broken. The horse had found its feet again, but was limping badly as it favored a foreleg. A shame to have injured such a fine horse for the sake of such a foul man.

  Raynar removed all traces of his presence. He picked up the knight's sword from the ground and felt satisfaction that the man had dropped it before he had died. He wiped the sword to a shine, and then replaced it in its long sheath that hung from the saddle. He then pulled the horse around to point it back down the path to the field and the hawk, and hit it hard on the rump.

  One of the estate's men would find the horse, and the manor would start a search for its missing rider. The hoof prints and the spore marked this as a bridle path, and someone would be in trouble for not fixing the washout along the path which had caused this 'accident'..

  Raynar was whistling a Frisian tune as he shouldered his pack and his weapons. He stopped the whistling mid note. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He hoped no one was within earshot. His heart was still pounding from the running and the fear of being caught by the sword before reaching the washout.

  The simple trap had almost come undone when he couldn't get the burly barn cat out of his game bag. He had been forced to throw it half in and half out of the bag. The bag. He went back to the washout and found the bag stuck to some thorns. He wafted it back and forth to sweep away his fresh boot prints. He took one last look around and picked up the heavy stick that he had put down close to the body.

  Satisfied, he turned and chose a tiny game trail that would take him to the pathway that descended down into the gorge. He threw the stick over the edge, and then walked down the pathway to the pools to find his mare, Abby. In less than two hours he was sitting drinking ale and watching John's father, the smith of Hathersage, work his magic with iron.

  * * * * *

  * * * * *

  The Hoodsman - Frisians of the Fens by Skye Smith Copyright 2010-13

  Chapter 22 - The fairie walks with her goddess in Peaks Arse in April 1068

  John was not at the smithy so after sharing a hearty ale with John's father, and then another, young Raynar headed up the Porterway to the glade. At the glade Gwyn told him that John and Alan had left for Sherwood. She finished hanging up the plants that she was drying, and then led him back to her hut so they could talk in private. She had barely closed the door before she began scolding him. He knew he was in trouble because she was hissing
at him in Welsh.

  "Alan told me what he thought you were up to. You take such risks. And for who? For those manor born sluts." She pushed his hand away. "Don't deny it. John cannot keep secrets from me. I know all about those sluts and how they seduced you. Married women cheating on their husbands, and them so much older than you. They should be horse whipped. If you wanted to lose your virginity, why didn't you ask me? I would not have denied you, even when we were youngsters."

  Raynar knew better than to argue with Gwyn when she was in a rage. He pulled her into his arms to try to calm her. She kicked him in the shins and when he pulled back she slapped him hard. "They are both your sons. John says so. They even look like you. One by each of those sluts. Probably the same age to the day."

  She came at him to slap him again but he escaped by ducking and rolling onto the bed. "Now look at the risks you take, all because of those Danish whore sisters. " Her rage was turning into tears now, so it was nearly at an end. Or so he thought until she picked up his dagger from the table and twirled around with the evil blade pointed towards him.

  Raynar rolled across the bed and pulled his silk shirt over his head and wrapped it around his right hand to act as a shield. She made a jab for him but it was a feint. Welsh women were handy with weapons. She slashed at him again as he was moving away from the feint and the only way to escape it was to roll across the bed again.

  She saw a flash of his bare back and said, "Oooh!" and dropped the dagger. She pulled him back down onto his tummy and tenderly felt the length of the scar across his back. "Oh Raynar, Oh Raynar!" she cried, and then she kissed the length of scar over and over.

  He could not explain the scar without explaining the killing of the sheriff of Peterburgh, and he could not explain that without explaining the endangered island village. He hoped that her rage would be finished before he reached the description of the wondrous Frisian women who had healed him.

  He needn't have worried. Once he mentioned the capable women of Westerbur Island, she had a thousand questions about them, their healing, their herbs, their clothes, their children, their men, their way of life.

  They talked through the night, while cuddling in her bed. She even cuddle-fucked him. "John won't mind," she said, "we cuddle much, but fuck little. He is too big for me. His has the girth to please women who have already given birth."

  In the morning he woke up alone. He was just pulling on his boots when Gwyn swung through the door and spilled the contents of her apron onto the table. Mushrooms.

  "These are the ones with the blue dye that you spoke of last night," she said excitedly. "I want to try them. You must help me. Be my keeper. Take care of me. Today would be good. See, it is clear and the sun is warm. Today would be a very good day to be touched by magic."

  And she was. He prepared them for her cooked in butter, as they had been prepared for him. He estimated the strength of them by the depth of color blue in the butter. He watched her eat them, and then they waited for the nausea to pass, and then he took her away from the glade, away from her life in the glade, away from her worries as a healer, and up onto the nearest Tor so that she could watch across the splendor of the peaks.

  He walked her through green pastures, and under ancient trees, and along rushing brooks. He let her walk separately from him, so the animals of the forest would approach her. She talked to them and to the plants, all those plants she knew from her craft. He held her back from the cliff faces and sink holes, and helped her safely up and down any of the trails that she wished to climb.

  Hours later, once the colors and the wonder of life were no longer misting her eyes, and once her memory was returning, she asked him to take her to the pools where he had first met Sonja and Britta.

  He carried her down the Porterway astride his back, otherwise she would have stopped at every butterfly and every plant. She weighed nothing, this wisp of a fairie. The porters made way for the couple and sang out the words and melodies of the songs of the May poles to them as they passed. Even the rough porters could feel the magic spilling forth from Gwyn.

  Gwyn the healer, who had prepared them salves for their blisters, and poultices for their boils, and had cared for each of them for something at some time in her twenty years. Raynar took the short cut that he and John used to reach the fork where the gorge began, and then he set her down. Once she was on her own feet again their pace slowed to a crawl through the cathedral of the green canopy of the ancient trees. This was the temple of the goddess Freyja and none of it was man made.

  The mushroom magic surged stronger into Gwyn, and again she saw the patterns of color, and again the birds landed on her shoulders and rubbed their beaks against her neck. After an hour of watching her walk slowly from pool to pool along the stream, she reached the bathing pool where he had first met Sonja and Britta.

  She skipped ahead and sat in the gentle sun on the very rock where Britta had combed her hair that first time. Raynar watched her, as he had watched the sisters, while hidden in the shadows. Gwyn dropped her shift to the ground and untied her braid and let her long hair fall and cover her tiny breasts. Her body was that of a young girl, so slight, so fit, so healthy.

  She waded to her waist and then pushed herself full length along the twinkling surface of the water. "Oooh, Oooh, Oooh. The water feels so delicious against my skin. It wraps me and licks me and pushes me.” Raynar knew this feeling of how the mushroom magic makes you one with water. For this reason he had not allowed her to stop near water until now. Everywhere else in their valley, save for this gorge, the river water was poisoned by the mines.

  Raynar walked around to the sunny rock and dropped his clothes and weapons to the ground. He stepped into the pool up to his waist and shivered, despite the sun, and then glided towards his magic fairie. She was waiting for him, her dark hair dripping water across her nipples and her hands held together as if in prayer.

  She was beautiful and he loved her, but a warning was flashing hard in his brain, perhaps from the teachings of Inka of Westerbur. 'Do not pleasure her. Not now. Not here. Not while she is so full of Freyja's magic. She is a healer and a seer and her magic must not be confused and polluted with the carnal pleasures you can raise in her. No matter how much she teases you, wants you, begs you, do not succumb.' And he didn't, but it was like denying breath.

  They ended the day as they had begun. On the closest Tor to the glade, watching the wonder of the peaks. It had been clear and warm all day, and now the sunset was promising more good weather with colors and shades of red that there were no words for in any of the languages that he spoke.

  He slept well that night, but she could not close her eyes, and so she sat on the bench on the porch and watched out over her glade. Sometimes he would wake, and hear her sweet voice singing in Welsh. Sometimes it was like the chanting of a prayer. Always it was mystical. The high notes clear and magical.

  In the morning her mother brought them porridge and sat with them, and Gwyn explained to her the feeling of the mushrooms. "Everything is normal except for how it effects you. You see with different eyes, hear with different ears, smell with a different nose, and feel with a different skin. You are awed by the wonder of the world."

  "The Frisian women told me that you sense the wonder of the world around you as if you were a child again," explained Raynar. "They told me that grownups have lost the ability to feel this wonder, but the mushrooms help them to remember how to sense it."

  Gwyn listened and then said, "The afterwards was disturbing. Once I was physically feeling almost normal, my mind would still not be quiet. I could not sleep. Things and events that had always confused me no longer confused me. I now know the reasons for what used to be mysteries to me. I feel, I feel that I know things now. I can't explain, but know things that I could never know. Know things without being taught. No, I can't explain."

  "Raynar," said Gwyn's mother, "someday you must take Gwyn to your Frisian women and let her talk to them. Exchange their knowledge."

  "I w
ould do it tomorrow, except I have promised to meet Hereward in Chester."

  Gwyn needed a quiet day to recover, so Raynar visited with the sick and injured miners and told them stories of battles and kings. In the late afternoon, as he was emptying a bedpan, he saw Alan and John dismount down by the animal pool. He walked down to them and helped them take the saddles from their horses. "Where did you get a horse, John?" he asked.

  "I borrowed it for the cost of shoeing it."

  "Did you find Rodor. I mean, did Rodor find you?"

  "Yes, but he took his sweet time. We rode up and down Sherwood's cartways for a half a day."

  "John, he told you why," said Alan, "they all have homes and farms, and the outlawed men who usually watch the ways are with Hereward. Anyway, we can talk about Rodor later. We have other news."

  "Yes," interrupted John, "we came back through Scafeld. The gossip was that a Norman knight had broken his neck falling off his horse, so we went to talk to Sonja. It was the knight who was claiming her manor. The courts have switched the gardianship of her son to her brother. They are moving into the Sweyn manor. All of them. Even her brother, and most of the men who work for him."

  John walked up the hillside to find Gwyn. Alan walked with Raynar. "Accident, broken neck, lame horse. Sonja and Britta send you their thanks. They seem to think that you may have had something to do with it."

  "And you?"

  "Oh, I know you had something to do with it." Alan stopped and pulled Raynar back. "Am I right?"

  "I don't know what you are talking about," said Raynar.

  Alan laughed and accepted the answer. Admitting to murdering a Norman was the stupidest thing a man could ever do.